Tag friendship

Pennwriters 2022: Friends, Fun, and Kidney Stones

caravanofcomposition 9 Comments

Faithful readers know that the annual Pennwriters Conference in Pennsylvania is one of my yearly highlights. Back in 2020, local writers friends and I were stoked to travel to Lancaster, a six hour drive from Buffalo, to connect with other writer friends and laugh until our sides hurt. But, as you may have guessed, the conference turned virtual and instead of jumping on beds, we jumped onto a video chat after the Friday night Read & Critique and exchanged lockdown stories. Things were virtual again in 2021, and while I enjoyed our ridiculous group chats, I missed the sound of my friends’ laughter, missed seeing their smiles after a successful pitch session, missed the energy that comes from a room full of creative people.

So when the opportunity came up to travel to Lancaster for an in person conference this past weekend, I didn’t hesitate. My friend Joy and I were chosen to teach a class on healthy habits for busy writers, and my faithful travel buddy Adrienne (we attended the conference together in 2018) was game for the trip. Unfortunately for this busy writer, the timing wasn’t great. Both boys were scheduled for their first soccer tournament of the season, and my husband had to work all weekend. My parents had only just arrived back from Florida, and my mother-in-law was recovering from COVID. It was like the universe didn’t want me to go.

But I went anyway. I wanted to see my friends and hoped the positive energy would help get me back on track with my writing. The conference was great. I loved seeing people I hadn’t seen in person since 2019 – actually giving them a hug and sharing unfiltered laughter. Our class was a hit, I learned some new strategies, and I got positive feedback on my new novel beginning. On the last night, my friends and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner at my favorite Lancaster vegan restaurant, Root, followed by the social.

That’s where things began to go downhill. Terrible pain kept me awake for most of the night, and by 5am I knew something was very wrong. Adrienne and I decided to leave early, packed up our things, and headed home. While I considered stopping at an urgent care in Pennsylvania, I decided it made the most sense to get home where I would be near my family and Adrienne could go back to hers. Bless her heart, she drove the entire way while I moaned in the passenger seat. I was nauseous and in the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. (Up until that moment, the award for worst pain went to a ruptured ovarian cyst in 2014.) We arrived at the ER around 1:30, where I waited with hubby for several more hours before being seen. Finally, after a CT scan, the prognosis came as little shock to others in the room who had experienced it (hubby and the attending nurse): kidney stone.

Thankfully, I appear to be on the mend and will be seeing a specialist later today. I’ve been examining the reason behind it, (aside from my initial reaction which I’ll admit is irrational – that the universe was punishing me for doing something for myself) and have discovered many of the items in my diet may be problematic. I eat a plant-based diet and drink mostly water and tea, but things like raw spinach, nuts, and soy are high in oxalates, which can cause kidney stones. I’ve been feeling pretty down about it the last few days, as I think about cutting back on some of my favorite foods (I laughed with the nurse, telling him I will probably be the only person who insists they can’t possibly give up spinach!) and I hope to find a nutritionist who can help me navigate the next steps. In the meantime, I was thrilled to find out on Sunday night, after returning from my nine hour stay at the ER, that my poem Bruised (featured in Time won’t give me time) won first place in the In Other Words Contest. I wrote a few other poems during the weekend, including my first slam poem, and I plan to find some in person readings where I can share them in public. Maybe even submit to a magazine and see what happens. Despite the way things ended, I am happy I went to the conference and look forward to next year’s.

Unfortunately, while we were away, there was a horrendous tragedy in my hometown – a local grocery store was ambushed in a racist attack and several innocent people were killed and injured. We are the city of good neighbors, a place where people can count on the kindness of strangers to help dig them out of a snow bank, a place recognized all over for its die hard sports fans and namesake food. I am heartbroken by the events of this past weekend and don’t understand how someone can hold so much hate. My heart aches for the families of those lost, and for the members of our community as we struggle to move forward. Buffalo is strong and resilient and full of hope. We have come together to help each other, as a city of good neighbors must, and we will seek justice and peace.

Sending love to all, far and near. ❤

We’re all in this together (alone)

caravanofcomposition 2 Comments

Despite my propensity to dance, sing off-key, or challenge strangers to pushup contests in public, I truly am an introvert at heart. I know this because if given the choice between going to a party or snuggling up with a book/cat/cup of tea, I choose the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy hanging out with friends and having fun, but at the end of the night I need to be alone and recharge. Raised in a loud, outgoing, Italian-American family, I often hid in my room during parties, scribbling in my journal, feeling simultaneously content and depressed for missing out on the festivities. Therein lies the conundrum. I like to be alone, but I’m also desperate to feel included. Ah, the dilemma of a socially awkward, attention seeking introvert.

The pandemic has been a blessing and a curse. Okay, mostly a curse. The up side is extra time spent with my family, being able to do my job with a cat on my lap (when we return to the office I may have to bring him with me), and considerably more free time now that everything has been canceled. The down side is, of course, that everything has been canceled. No more activities for the boys means they never leave the house, and now that our area is seeing a rise in cases, hybrid school became remote school once again. Coupled with the colder weather means they truly never leave the house. Ever. Or change out of pajama pants.

I worry, pretty much on a constant basis, that the next few months will make or break us. We survived the initial shock of the pandemic, the phase I like to call, “Fear overload.” I watched daily news briefings, tracked cases and deaths on a spreadsheet, and sanitized everything. I cried in the parking lot of our local grocery store after watching a teenage clerk in full PPE look completely shell-shocked as he wiped down the checkout lane. I worried about getting sick, about my family getting sick, about losing our jobs, about the people who had gotten sick/lost their jobs/lost their family members. It was a downward spiral that landed me face down in my pillow nearly every day.

When things began to improve, both the weather and our numbers, my worry subsided. We took advantage of a soccer-free summer and enjoyed extra time at the lake. I finally started reading again, something I hadn’t been able to do since the pandemic started. But I missed my friends, my co-workers, eating inside restaurants. And in the back of my mind, I knew things would get bad when the weather changed.

It has. Our county is breaking records in daily cases and the hospitals have filled up yet again. My nurse friend assures me that it is better this time around because they know what they are dealing with, but the media and government push out fear like candy. We’re back on lockdown again, not completely, but on the cusp, and with the long, dark, cold winter months still ahead of us. Before? I didn’t know a single person with the virus. Now? Every week someone else in our circle tests positive. Thankfully, they are all surviving, but it feels like the walls of inevitability are closing in, and I’m worried I won’t be able to keep my family safe anymore. Or sane.

How do we stay positive when everything is constantly so bleak? I don’t have the answer. I’m taking each day as it comes, and looking for ways to find joy. I’ve started volunteering at a local cat shelter because it gets me out of the house once a week. (Also, cats!) I try to walk outside when the weather isn’t terrible, but that’s getting more difficult with each dropped degree. I joined our local online Buy Nothing group, a movement that encourages the free exchange of goods among neighbors. It’s helped me declutter a bit and also provides the opportunity for safe social interactions. Last weekend I watched a movie simultaneously with two friends and we chatted along the way via text. It was a tiny shred of normal, and it gave me hope.

The isolation has changed us, or at least it has changed me. I will never take my local coffee shop for granted, ever. Or the library. Or any of the front line workers who face this beast every day. I make a conscious effort to be kind to any human I interact with, because we are all carrying worry and heartache, some far beyond what I can even imagine. What we need now isn’t government control, or mudslinging commentary. We need compassion. Empathy. Patience. We need to unite for the good of humanity. We need to get through this together (alone).

Peace to all my friends, family, followers. Stay safe, and be kind. ❤

The importance of real pants

caravanofcomposition 2 Comments

Social media memories are a blessing and a curse. I love looking back on times when my boys were cute and cuddly and my face had fewer wrinkles. But during a pandemic, it is heart wrenching to wake up, click memories, and be instantly reminded that we can’t do those things right now.

Three years ago today, the weather was beautiful, and we had a packed Saturday. I hung out with my family at our town’s annual Oktoberfest, where the boys participated (and ROCKED) a keg rolling contest, and then headed to our local library to celebrate the launch of my friend’s latest middle grade novel. We ate snacks from a communal table, sat next to each other, and hugged.

Hugged.

Now, I’m not much of a hugger to begin with, but I miss that human connection. I miss Wednesday night writing sessions at Wegmans and Friday afternoon gab sessions at Spot. I miss launch parties. My book releases next week, and I don’t have anything planned to help launch it into the world. Many of my writer friends continue to self-quarantine, and the thought of doing something virtual does not exactly thrill me. While I appreciate their ability to connect us safely, I am pretty burnt out on web-based social gatherings.

Our local writing group held its first meeting of the season (virtually of course) earlier this week. It was a craft session, which is always fun, 80’s themed – double bonus points, but I just couldn’t get into it. I missed the collective energy normally felt in a room full of writers. I stared at the blank page as it mocked me.

I had to finish a project in March/April due to a deadline, but since then? I’ve written once. And only because one of my Pennwriters friends organized a virtual write-in, and I felt like I had to write something in order to not be a complete fraud. I pulled out an old project, added about a page and a half, and that was it. The sum total of my writing output for the past six months.

There are projects. There are ideas. There is also a very tired mama who doesn’t wear real pants anymore. Who thinks, do my stories even matter? With so much hate and hurt in the world, what could I possibly add to the narrative? I keep waiting for the proverbial lightbulb to go off in my head. For the magical idea that will send my fingers tap-tapping again. Do you know how many blog posts I’ve drafted in my head these past several months? The sleepless nights I spent thinking, “This is what I have to say,” then instead of getting out of bed and writing it down, allowed my nay-saying brain to dismiss it all?

(A LOT.)

The world needs stories, especially now. Cheerful ones, sad ones, true ones, and fictional ones. We need to step away from social media, from the negative energy of everyone spewing their anger and ideals and also from the memories of all the things we can’t enjoy right now. I’m confident those days will return – the days of launch parties and writing/gab sessions. In the meantime, we need to keep doing the best we can, no matter how low the bar. This morning I put on real pants. They are uncomfortable. But I needed to send a message to my brain that this is serious. Life must move forward. Fingers must hit keys in order for words to get onto the page. They don’t do anyone any good swimming around in my brain like lost tourists.

So here we are. Doing that thing where the journey starts with a single step. Mask up and join me.

The New Normal

caravanofcomposition 2 Comments

Today is Saturday, March 28, 2020.

Three weeks ago, I danced in a crowded club while a DJ spun songs from The Cure and The Smiths, two of my all-time favorite bands. I hung out with the mom who would be chaperoning my oldest son on his class trip to Washington DC, and we laughed about how crazy she was to spend the long weekend with 20 teenagers. We were all acutely aware of a virus that had been spreading through other parts of the world. I washed my hands several times during the night, as I always do. I drank from glasses that other people had touched, shook hands with strangers, breathed in communal air.

We had no idea what was coming.

Two weeks ago, my family went to two plays; Friday night at our local high school and Saturday afternoon at a community theater. People’s behavior had started to change. Restrictions against large gatherings. Hand sanitizer everywhere (but not a bottle to be found on store shelves). Ushers wearing gloves. When we went to the theater on Saturday, I washed my hands before and after the show, and then again before we ate poutine at a local restaurant across the street. I made sure my family followed suit. “This may be the last time we’re out in public for a while,” I said. And it was.

On Sunday of that week, the first case of COVID-19 hit our county, and a few hours later the schools were closed down for five weeks. My youngest was due to participate in his crossing over ceremony for scouts, an event we’d been planning for months. With a heavy heart, I sent out the cancellation notice.

“Crisis school” began Monday. (It is not homeschooling. Homeschooling is a choice.) Oldest had a meltdown the first day. Youngest on day two. Mom nearly every day. I went into work on Tuesday, where the air buzzed with fear, despite the industrial sized bottle of New York made hand sanitizer. I worried that I would be sent home without pay, or worse, lose my position entirely. I worried about our office plants and packed them into my van to bring home. I worried about my mother-in-law, who was recovering from pneumonia and refusing to stay home. I worried about my parents down in Florida, especially my mom, who has a heart condition and recently had her spleen removed after a terrible car accident.

I am an anxious person by nature, a worst-case scenario person, the sort of person who was already wiping down grocery carts and door handles, washing her hands frequently, and being leery of strangers. Who imagines her spouse in a ditch on the side of the road when he doesn’t return from work on time. Who can’t stop thinking about all the people in the world who are suffering and how we need to save the planet before it destroys us. That’s me on a normal day. Before I began to consume far too many news reports and articles on social media.

Late Tuesday night we got word that our jobs were deemed “non-essential”, which seems like it would be a disappointment but meant that we could work from home. I struggled the first few days to balance work with home/kids/school. School was slow to send over plans (understandably so seeing how quickly they were forced to improvise), and the boys balked at my attempts to teach them. There were fights and meltdowns as we adjusted to life together 24-7. My husband works for a plant that manufactures pumps for power generation, so he was deemed “essential”. Classifications became important as each day more and more businesses shut down. By the end of the week, the state declared only essential employees could go to work. (He is now working from home two days a week to minimize the number of employees on site.)

One week ago, oldest would have been on his DC trip, experiencing our nation’s capital for the first time. Instead we stayed home, played games, ate takeout, and watched movies. We tried to make the best of our new found family time, as weekends are typically spent running around to practices and other events. Now, the calendar is completely empty. It is a blessing and a curse, but it is a necessity for survival.

The only public place I have been in the past two weeks is a single trip to the grocery store on March 19. I wiped down the cart, as always, and washed my hands when I got home, as always, but in the store my behavior had changed. I avoided aisles with people in them, waited for the person before me at the register to clear before proceeding, and anything I picked up to examine went into the cart because I could be an unknowing carrier. I tried to be extra nice to the cashier, a high school senior who said she was bored because she was only allowed to go to work and nowhere else. My heart broke for her and all the other seniors missing out on their final year of high school.

Last week I consumed more and more media, the daily updates my safety net in these uncertain times. My anxiety continued to rise, and with it sleepless nights and a lack of desire to start each day. There were pockets of joy – virtual chats with my writing friends and my parents/siblings/nephews, laughing with my family as we invented new games to entertain ourselves, lots of extra cat snuggles. And I guess at the end of each day, I need to concentrate on the joyful moments and pray they will help me get through the anxious ones. Every time I reached out to a friend, they too expressed anxiety, worry, fear. We are all united in the unknown of what lies ahead. People have become more paranoid, yes, but also friendlier, at least from afar. We all want to get through this, to get to the other side and return to normal. We all want to survive.

Today is Saturday, March 28, 2020. It is raining outside. I am still wearing the same clothes I put on yesterday morning. It is almost noon. I am worrying about the doctors, the nurses, the patients who are dying. I am worrying about friends and family members who are struggling, emotionally and financially.

But my husband and children are here, and they are safe and healthy, and today we will play board games and make brownies. And maybe I’ll chat with a friend or two. And I will try to focus on those moments instead.