No, You Are Not Welcome, 2024!

I have always hated leap years! With a passion ... 

They roll in like an unruly teenager, full of pluck and insolence, trashing your house, your car, and emptying out your bank account before they take off into the sunset never to be found with your whole life in shambles behind!  There is no reasoning with them and nothing to do but step aside, let the damage unfold and hope it passes. Because you know, we are told that everything has an ending. Even the tragedies ... 

2024 was much like all the other leap years that have passed over me. Maybe it’s because it’s the most recent, but this one really left a mark! I feel exhausted and totally uninterested in what is next, if you can believe it ... Me, the nosiest, most curious person you know - couldn't care less about what comes next! Because this year has taught me: “don’t ever ask: what else?!” - because to you that’s a rhetorical question, but to life, that’s a challenge! 

This has been a year spent under the watchful eye of the cardinals, announcer of bad news but promise holders of happy endings, too. They greeted us every morning in our back yard and bid us 'good night' almost every evening.
At one point, a whole Vatican of cardinals flew over our heads during one of our walks, and then we knew we were going to be in for an interesting one ... 

In a (large) nutshell, this is about as well as I’d summarize this year (and you’d need a long drink if you dare be here for the whole thing): 

In January, mom collapsed alone, in our home in Romania, and was in a coma for some number of days ... We had family and friends gather around her to care for her around the clock after that. The ER doctor wrote to us that she can never be left alone for the remainder of her days.  

In February, mom collapsed to her second coma, this time with a very severe case of sepsis. Her doctor urged us to come back to Romania, because she was not sure she would come out of it. But mom is like a cat with about 10,000 lives so she did come out of it. Damaged, and weak, never to be herself again, but she survived it. 

March gutted me! It asked me to make the hardest decision I have made in my entire 49 years of life. It was time to find a place for mom. Even if the family lived with her, we were urged that her mental state and her health is too precarious to be at home. 

You know those idyllic commercials for “A place for mom”? They are all a bogus bunch of nonsense! No place, no matter how polished and advertised in slow motion with plenty of light and smiles is ever as good, as loving, as safe as you would want it to be for those you love. It was like someone was pulling my heart out of my chest with no anesthesia and promising me this is for the best reasons and it’ll be good! I didn’t see it. I never saw it. And for me to make this decision the week of Mother’s Day, it was just cruel! I kept asking why? What have I done? Who have I wronged to be asked to make this decision for the woman who gave her all to have me ...?

As my personal life was in this much turmoil, the world was stewing with bad news, as well. March was the month that reinstated Putin (after a rigged election) as the president of Russia - all while the world shuddered, and all but a feeble reminder of what we’re headed towards! 

In April, I tried really hard to start some semblance of a healing process ... I came back home after the hardest, most cruel month in Romania and I looked for ways to lick my wounds and heal ... We went up North to be with my sister for my birthday. Watching the total solar eclipse together put some things into perspective: when something makes you feel that small, you realize your woes are only infinitesimal on the firmament of life and the universe ... Aa. and I then headed South, to Florida, to learn more about how to advocate for Homozygous FH - the genetic disease that both my parents so generously gave to me and my sister ... I learned of new ways to help the world live with this sometimes invisible and cruel disease. You know what a smart man once said: when everything falls apart around you, look for the helpers ... I try to do that: be a helper to whomever might need me ... 

The solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 - Montreal, QC

May continued with this year’s streak of pain: mom was rushed into the ER for the third or maybe fourth time this year (in five months!). This time with pleurisy. This on top of her lung cancer and COPD, of course ... May was a touch-and-go month for her - several visits to the hospital for lung fluid punctures, a tooth infection and more complications ... The little bit of diversion we had here (a trip to the mountains on Memorial Day weekend) was always accompanied by long all-night calls with Romania to coordinate mom’s care and with my sister who was there for Easter, trying to be there for her in spirit while she handled mom on the ground through the ups and downs... 

The world continued to boil over, as the prime minister of Slovakia was assassinated in May. Trump is formally convicted of a crime the same month - the first former president to do so. In May, we also lost the Greensboro News and Record’s building, the place where Aa. and I met in 2007 - as it was torn down by bulldozers in Greensboro, NC. There is nothing that reminds you how transitory we all are more than watching something once standing proud as a beacon of truth turn to rubble. 

June was another touch and go month for mom. She went to the hospital for a week to undergo a procedure for her lungs that would hopefully prevent her from ever building up fluid again. We spoke every day, as we normally do ... and she begged us daily to take her out of the hospital - but it was not possible ... A few weeks after being released she had to be rushed into ER again because her operation stitches had become infected. How’s that for adding insult to injury?! With every painful breath she takes, I feel a pang of pain in my side. But I must keep going. For me, for my family, for her. 

July seemed that we were well enough to try to sneak in a bit of a bright spot, as we took some time for ourselves: we flew to Chicago (my first time) and then we visited with Aa.’s mom for July 4th in Michigan . But then, shortly after we came home, while we were at a baseball game in Greensboro, NC, then former president Trump is shot in the head, in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. About 5 days after that the world is back to normal, with the story barely in the headlines anymore. Whatever your stance on the matter or the person shot here, what kind of a world do we live in where an assassination attempt is just normal?! The whole event made me feel dirty for being human, really! 

The timeless Chicago and its "Bean"

President Biden announces he is stepping down from the race to the White House in the fall and is making room for Kamala Harris to replace him. This is also in July, 4 months before the elections. I don’t think this country has ever been more divided and thrown into confusion before as it is now - but of course I was not here for The Civil War and for the 60’s ... It’s like: just when you thought you got your balance this year, here’s another punch in the gut! 

And even worse news came from people much closer to my heart: my best friend’s mom dies at 70 from complications of lung disease. The streak of sadness would not let up this year, I figured, by this point ... But I stopped counting a long time before then ...

August came roaring with another piece of bad news from home: my only aunt also moved into an assisted living home after making the decision that she can no longer care for herself either ... On the backdrop of my family just falling apart this year, I didn’t want to be anywhere for my sister’s birthday in August but with her. So, we surprised her with the only surprise I have been known to successfully accomplish in my life when we showed up at a restaurant in Boston for her birthday dinner ... Everyone that knows me knows that 1. I hate surprises and 2. I am just about the most predictable person you’ll ever meet. For me to pull this one off successfully was an accomplishment of a lifetime. But we needed each other, my sister and I ... She gave me some much needed strength for my April birthday when I got to go up there and spend it with her, that I just wanted to give her that gift in return. I hope she felt the same as I did in April ... 

The JFK Library in Boston, MA

September was another bleak month. One of my sister’s best friends from work passes incredibly young with two small children after a short and cruel battle with cancer. My former philosophy teacher dies in his 70’s from many complications from a stroke he had over a year before. My aunt is sent to the ER from the assisted living facility with respiratory block caused by her heart condition. 

On this backdrop, I fly to Romania to spend mom’s 71st birthday with her. Her birthday was a bright spot during that trip, as she got to come out of the place she is in and have lunch at her favorite restaurant. As I was trying to leave my home town, at night, the Tarom (Romanian airline) could not find my ticket for the flight out of there. I was livid. Their own app showed the confirmed ticket, the app where I bought the ticket showed it, too, but the check-in agent said a passenger by my name does not exist on his flight and the flight was full so they could not just give me a seat. Huge scare, but averted because they had ONE person NOT show up so after check-in was closed, they snuck me in at the insistence of my uncle who is a retired Tarom official. Glad that the universal “knowing people in the right places” still works sometimes. Also in September, Trump manages to survive another assassination plot - this time averted with no shots fired. September also brings unprecedented weather to North Carolina, too, and absolutely trashes the West (yes, not the ocean-front East) part of the state, the mountains, after the passing of Hurricane Helene. 

And just because pain gets lonely and needs injury for companionship, I test positive for Covid in October. Yes, folks, this is still something real and this is still going around! North Korea ships 10,000 troops to fight in the Russia war in Ukraine, while the US lifts all restrictions on how the Ukrainians can use the arms and ammunition that they bought from America. I am not even brave enough to imagine what kind of world we would wake up to the following morning - every morning ... This feels like the ultimate straw. Except it is not ... 

On a personal level, I meet with a new vascular surgeon for an update on my abdominal aorta and he pretty much waves me off that I am OK, when the CT scan he ordered and never reads shows the status of my aortic stenoses is worsening. I am used to medical doors slamming in my face, but it’s especially hurtful when you know the situation is worse ... The fight continues, I can tell you that much! 

We all know what November brought at a national and even international level ... It brought a new (old) president to the US for the next four years. Everyone I know is mad or sad about this - regardless of what side of the fence they both stubbornly hug! Some people are mad at the result, some people are mad at the loss of identity of one party, some people are mad because they lost friends and even broken up families in the process. The vitriol and hatred continues to boil as the world seems to  continue to not figure this out at all, but instead, to dig us all into a deeper grave. 

My mom’s last living aunt was hospitalized (she is 86) with a ruptured large intestine in November, as well,  and has been very slowly healing with several complications for over a month now. She is now bed-ridden and without a clear future yet. 

To get away from it all, Aa. and I decide to take a bucket-list trip to follow the sites of the Twin Peaks series in the Pacific Northwest. It was a trip much like a Lynch movie: part mystery, part dream, and all real ... I need a whole book to document this as one paragraph would not do it justice. 

My happy place: Kiana Lodge in Washington State - filming location for Twin Peaks

The pay-back for having a breather came when we got back, when we had a small cancer scare that ended up being benign right here, in our home ... But sigh of relief on this one for now! Then, also in November, the same out-of-control political nightmare that threw America into chaos earlier in the month repeated the feat in the Romanian elections. Foreign interference, social media manipulation, and all other means of political corruption thwarted an otherwise free election to cause it to be canceled by the Constitutional Court - an unprecedented event in Romanian history. But this is how leap years roll, I tell ya! Remember 2020?! 

December rolled in with a bang. Quite literally, when the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was assassinated in New York. It feels some days like this country sees only two solutions for every problem anymore: a lawyer, or a gun. Nothing besides or in-between. 

Aa.’s closest friend’s wife spent most of this month in the hospital between this world and the next one (including during her birthday), and another one of my best friends broke her leg in New York at the end of November. This left both these women out of commission at this time of the year - either in bed or in a wheelchair ... Pain and sickness is emotionally contagious, so we cry and mourn and suffer with those we love, here and far ... And always, always feel helpless. 

All of late fall, early winter has been peppered with more international instability and bad news: from the war in Israel that’s spilling into several other Middle Eastern countries, to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, to the second collapse of the French government and the turmoil of Canada, and of course, through the long, bloody, and painful war in Ukraine which is next door to my other “home” - miles from my home town in fact ... it feels like this Titanic is flooded and going down fast ... 

And now, as I write this, I am getting ready for my third trip this year to Romania to be with mom, my aunt, and briefly with my sister and nephews for a few days ... I am even scared to put that foot down outside my front door and start this journey, but life has always taught me that hiding is how evil wins! So onward is the only way ... 

This was the least productive year for me, literary-wise ... I felt no desire to write, no reason to do it, it all seemed useless and futile. I also probably read the least, because I cannot focus enough to go through a book. Not really ... 

There have been some (not many, but a couple or five) bright spots this year that made the going easier, at times - and for that I am so grateful, of course ... 

Despite the sadness and the back-paddling, besides the aging and the sense of loss, this is also the year when we saw Bob Dylan and Alanis Morrisette. The year that I followed in the footsteps of David Lynch, one of my brilliant guiding minds. As technology and science are still advancing, this was a year of partaking more of their new offerings for a better, more efficient life; the year when I finally found a more stable (albeit painfully expensive) cure for my HoFH (the only thing that ever truly worked for me - a new once a month infusion called Evkeeza thanks to medical discoveries). I am grateful that the world still innovates despite all the calls to the contrary. Or maybe it does because of it ... 

It was the year I saw a full, total solar eclipse, the Aurora Borealis and a comet - all in the span for 3-4 months. The year I saw the most architecturally beautiful city that I have ever seen (Chicago) and the year I met up with a long-lost friend from way back in high school that happens to live in the Pacific Northwest. Through some kind of a blessing, he and his wife were available to meet us on our Twin Peaks tour. I don’t like surprises, but this was one of my favorites, to be sure.

Above the clouds: Mount Rainier, WA - challenging us to always reach higher

Unrelated to the leap year, as I get older, I am finding out with every year that I have fewer and fewer friends ... Especially in times like these, where you feel like you’re barely hovering over the abyss, I have felt most of my “friends” drift away. I am sure everyone is busy handling their own tragedies, perhaps, so I am not too bitter about that. But it does get quieter and quieter in the friends zone for us ... I have no judgement to add. It’s an observation, and nothing besides. 

The people we did get to see and spend time with this year, whether in good times or bad, were God-sends. They made the journey more manageable by sharing the load. For that I am forever grateful. Even those we cared for in sickness and even those who had sadness of their own were a welcome balm, to be able to share their sorrow as much as they shared ours ... To them all, I owe the lessons I have learned and the energy that I have to keep going ...

Everything does have an ending and so will this wretched year. Good or bad, much more sad and painful than light and joyful for sure, it is part of my life. Like any link in the chain - the whole life would not make sense without it in it. I am changed. I am morphed into whoever this new person is now. I feel in my body like I am still 10, but in my heart and my mind, I feel 120. Don’t even dare look in the mirror ... Most days I am scared of what stares back at me - this scared mouse, afraid for her and her loved ones’ life, with only a glimmer of what used to be hope in her eyes. I am not too convinced the actual hope is indeed still there most days ... 

But ... at the end ... we don’t want evil and sadness and death to win. At the end, as long as there is breath, we move on ... At the end - always remember: tragedies are not endless ...

Now for the next year, the only promise I am making is this: I will work the hardest and the most diligently that I have ever worked to see that there is a next year and a next 50, even. 

Happy new one, all! I hope we all meet again after the threshold - braver, stronger, and readier ... 

(Photo from the Londolozi reserve - South Africa)

A Birthday for the Books

We are broken and stranded today.

We are lonely and drifting aimlessly in a sea of doubt. 

We sleepwalk through every challenging day like ghosts or mummies, stiff and gloomy. 

It's nice out - way too nice for a February day: snowdrops are on sale on every street in this old Moldovan town, people are wearing their thick coats wide open, or on their arms ... There is a smell of spring in the air, of new life, of new hope, but our heads down in our problems, we barely notice ... 

I have no presents. I have no card. I have no food nor plan for where it might come from on your special day ... 

My heart cries because you deserve so much more. You deserve everything. You deserve the world and the moon and the stars, all the kittens and puppies of the world, all in one neat package, tied with a green bow. Like your favorite color, like the Montana pines, like your eyes ... 

We are hurt. And we are drifting. We are lost, truly. Far from home and with no definite map of where to next ... 

But most than anything, more than any of all the material things we are not, we are together. We are drifting, but we are drifting together … I can reach out across the bed, across the table, across the pavement when we walk the streets and feel you there. And my world is whole again. My dark hours light up like the skies during a Northern Lights exposure. Amazing, beautiful, hopeful. I hear your voice first thing in the morning and I know I can tackle it all. I see you smile at our kitten's picture and I know you're the one. 

There are no words in any amount of dictionaries that can explain how much I love you and how much I worship the day you were born. February has brought me and us a lot of tragedy, a lot of pain, but all is forgiven because it has also brought you. 

I am not even sure if I would be here today without you, without your care and your unwavering love, but if I were, I would be even more lost and more dark and more desperate than I am now ... 

I know this is not a happy birthday - not in the wholesome sense of this word - but I wish you a birthday where you know how happy you make me and others by just being in the world. My family, your mom, your friends love you and are ever grateful for putting color in their lives and smiles on their faces. And me - you build me up; you hold me; you heal me when I am cracked; you catch me when I fall. You are everything, Mr. Aa. And I can only hope I can be an iota of all that for you... 

Try to enjoy today and let's make it amazing the first time we get a chance for a do-over, hopefully soon. I love you! 

Happy February 27th! 

When I picture us the happiest, I picture us like this.

A Drive through the Heart of the Nation during the Most American Week of the Year

Columbus, OH was really a nice surprise. I am not sure why, but I was thinking it’ll be another depressing, Midwestern town, loud with darkness and sad people looking down, gray skies, and putrid humidity in July. And it was nothing of sorts. It was clean, and svelte, and cosmopolitan, a mix of historic and modern, loaded in stories of German ancestry as loud as the brick walls are red. It had a vibe - people were walking, and skateboarding, and running amok towards the baseball stadium, restaurants were open and so diverse in every way. All the staff was friendly, with a sunny (and not gray) disposition, chatty, even, and kind. We stayed at a historic hotel, during “modern times” bought by Marriott (who, we hoped cured it from all the ghosts), but with a history of its own - originally called when it opened in 1896, “The Great Southern Fireproof Hotel and Opera House" - I’ll let you dig that story up! It’s fascinating! 

Street corner in Columbus, OH

The lobby at The Westin Great Southern Columbus hotel, formerly The Great Southern Fireproof Hotel and Opera House

The making of The Bourbon Twilight at Bar Cicchetti - The Westin Hotel

The breakfast at the hotel was a different story. Who puts butter on a smoked salmon bagel sandwich? Apparently Bar Cicchetti does. The cocktails the night before were spectacular, especially the Bourbon Twilight. Bourbon flambé, anyone? 

The vibe was gone in Charleston, WV. I have not really experienced West Virginia more than just driving through it and cursing the broken highways. What I have seen of it is indeed “wild and wonderful”, as the state slogan advertises. But I also know of poverty and deep challenges, cracks in infrastructure and education so big that they seem that can never be mended. I have always wanted to visit at least Charleston, the state capital, even if for no other reason than because they have - from the speed of the highway, at least - the most beautiful Capitol dome that I can remember of any other US State I have been to. Gilded in 24K gold, it reminds one of the riches of castles of Europe or the church domes of Russia. 

The Capitol in Charleston, WV

As I have already said, Charleston did not have a vibe. It felt like a town that is virtually, generally closed for business. We arrived on a Thursday evening and most restaurants were already closed at 7.30 (had already closed at 6PM). The handful that were open would have closed by 9 PM. Driving through the city felt like driving through a ghost town. Maybe it’s because it was the week of July 4th and the government (and maybe the city folk) were on vacation? But there were tons of businesses closed, some stripmalls that looked deserted truly, and some of the houses in what one would deem the “desirable” neighborhood of The Capitol block, right along the Kanawha river (waterfront, in fact) bore many signs that announced them to be “available”, “for sale” or “for lease.” Most had the sign of age and decay written clearly on their chipped brick walls and cloudy windows thick with cobwebs. 

The Capitol building is indeed impressive. But, Charleston was sad, dark, and lonely ... I wished that the stereotype of West Virginia being one of the poorest states in The Union, lacking opportunities and draw would be busted ... But from the little time we spent there, we were left wanting for more ... 

Indiana Dunes is the 13th National Park we have visited so far. You’re not really sure when you’re drifting from Ohio into Indiana and into Michigan onward. The park is unique because it’s a National Park surrounded by a State Park beach that opens up on Lake Michigan. The National Park piece is wild, criss-crossed by trails, and really diverse, a mix of sandy dunes, juniper trees and desert-like vegetation, right along marshes filled with birds, turtles and ducks. The State Park piece is full of people sunning on the beach, bringing all their people-ness along - noise, mess, busy-bodiness ... Quite mysteriously placed, only to remind us we’re still in the manufacturing Midwest, a very active steel plant neighbors the parks; its flames rush towards the skies frantically, adding more heat to the already melty summer air.  I wish we had a wee bit more time to explore the trails ... 

The beach at Indiana Dune State Park on Lake Michigan

An oasis in Indiana Dunes National Park

Kalamazoo, MI used to be somewhat of a sad, gray, Midwestern, blue-collar city, too, when I first started visiting, back in 2009. But with every visit since, it has come more into its own. Tons of new stripmalls are popping up, new construction, condos, new homes, some of them incredibly modern in architecture, new coffee shops, updated diners (instead of the greasy-spoon ones of the 50’s). It was particularly cheery in the summer - weather does cast a more somber shadow on it, when days on end fail to show the sun during winter and fall ... But the feeling of fresh, new blood and life was refreshing.  

Holland and South Haven, Michigan have similar characteristics to one another. My husband said they are “typical coastal towns” which I guess makes sense: they are both sitting proud on Lake Michigan. Holland is a college town meets mid-century modern homes. South Haven leans more towards the colonial, or even Victorian architecture. 

South Haven Lighthouse in South Haven, MI. You can tell the muckiness of the smoky and humid air above Lake Michigan

Outside of Holland, we went for some baked goods at Crane’s Orchards. My companions raved about the freshly baked pie. My pretzel was delicious, so hot out of the oven that it burned my lips. But the waitress had a terrible time figuring out how to charge for two slices of pie and a pretzel. You see, people come here for pies, mostly. That part, she figured out. The pretzel was an appetizer, and although I ordered it as it was on the menu, she was taken by surprise and could not figure out what to tell “the computer”. Crane’s is one of those places that has ‘regular” dining options (like sandwiches) just to attract the new folk, but they are known well for one thing only by “the regulars” (pies) and they draw probably 99% of their customers for pies. They are on autopilot for pies. The rest of the options on the menu seemed to be a mystery to them ... A nice stop, overall, but just be ready to allow for some ungainliness if you crave something other than ... a slice of cherry pie a la mode.  

The pie place: Crane's Orchard in Fennville, MI

Speaking of ungainliness, at Anna’ House (a modern diner with a very exhaustive and diverse menu in Kalamazoo), they will spill two pints of ice water and half of a hot cup of coffee on you without much of an apology. After drenching my mother-in-law in said liquids, we all got free coffees ... No apology, really (other than “Sorry, this happens sometimes”), no manager came to visit, no one offered a dry cleaner’s coupon for the snow white shirt that was not splotchy brown from coffee stains ... But the food is delicious! 

We passed through Springfield, Ohio, where we stopped for a couple of hours to visit The Westcott House, a Frank Lloyd Wright construction which was finished in 1903. This is only the second F.L. Wright building we have seen (the first one was Taliesin West which is a home and a school - a bit of a different purpose), and the first one that we have seen that was built for a family. If you are at all interested not only in architecture, but human innovation, history, and the daring ideas of a visionary spirit, I strongly encourage you to get into the mind of Frank Lloyd Wright. The possibilities of learning about looking at the world through different-colored glasses are endless with this guy! When you think of the period he grew up in and of the years during which he created (between 1860s and 1950s) and the type of architecture he created (some elements of which did not become mainstream till 1980s and 1990s), your mind will be blown away! 

America was still designing homes with 2x4 ft closets all the way into the 1970s! Wright designed walk-in closets (arguably some of the first ones ever), with built-in drawers, shelves, areas separated by function and purpose ... When people hardly had indoor plumbing, he added bathrooms to every bedroom or, for smaller bedrooms (meant for children), he connected them by Jack-n-Jill bathrooms. The craftsmanship, the wood paneling, the unique pigmented stucco walls, the stained glass doors and light fixtures, the long, tunnel-like, canopy gardens are signature items we have seen in both of the places we visited. They bring everything together into a cohesive style, stamp it with his unique signature ... Oh, how I wish I would have met him and seen his thinking process. As the granddaughter of a construction engineer, I am fascinated by how people create something from nothing. Or something from a dream, or a feeling of where things should go ... I wish I could see a house from a plotting design, but I can’t ... And it’s perhaps because I can’t see this that I appreciate and respect it so much. 

Full disclosure: The Westcott House you see today is almost a 100% restoration. The home was inhabited by the Westcott family who commissioned it from the famous artist between 1903 and 1926. After that, it went through many identities, being anything from a single-family home, a boarding house, and later an apartment complex. The house was later left in disrepair which made the ubiquitous wood fixtures rot and the foundation collapse. The floors, the built-ins, the roof beams collapsed and made it unsafe to live in. The Wright Foundation eventually bought it from the last owner and restored every inch of it. They used the original plans, and pictures from different stages of the house’s life to restore it. I think the job was done well and the place shows like the masterpiece that was intended to be. You’ll learn about the Springfield and Ohio history and industry while you're here - the docent is a retired newspaper employee and she is full of facts. After telling us the many details about the many industries of Springfield and Ohio, in general, she concluded with pride “We are pretty cool!”. 

Frank Lloyd Wright's The Westcott House in Springfield, OH

We traveled for the entire week through the smoke of the wildfires in Canada. Couple that with the normal wet heat of the East Coast, you’d know that the weather was a hot stew: wet and burning any way you breathed it ...

I love summer travel when kids are out of school and they are instead serving customers at the fast foods on their summer jobs. Their innocence and sometimes charming absent-mindedness is somewhat endearing to me (maybe now that I have nephews old enough to work in a restaurant for the summer is what causes this nostalgia).

In Columbus, we had to allow our car to be parked by the valet. We had a 6 pack of beer in the trunk and someone got a little happy with the steering wheel on the way to or from the parking lot. The following morning, they brought it back with broken beer bottles in the trunk. We drove from Columbus to Kalamazoo the next day in beer fumes, trying nervously not to get pulled over and charged with drunken driving, considering the obvious stench ... 

West Virginia had the most, shall we say, unique ...  billboards. Some websites advertised in big, bold letters things like helltruth.com and hicksoutdoor.com. I am afraid to ask! 

We passed innumerable mobile homes on this journey, some of them so decrepit and run down, we wondered how many breaths they had left before their time was over. Leaning walls, leaking roofs, boarded windows, but with perfectly-looking cars parked up front and small, half-naked, mired in mud, little kids upfront. I would only wonder what they had for breakfast or dinner the previous night ... It could not have been much. The penury was palpable. And yet, on so many of them, there was a sign on their front door that spelled in bold, bright letters very clearly: “BLESSED”. I have zero room to complain! 

One of the most beautiful drives is along the river Kanawha through West Virginia. The river flows right along the side of the highway like a good, loyal companion. It, with the road and the train tracks, snake along together telling the same coal-dark story ... 

America is a country of contrasts. Of rich and poor. Of sad and happy. Of light and shadows. 

Confederate flags hanging on farmlands like bleeding wounds, Trump political signs reading like the sure threat they are.  All this while the cd was spinning in our dashboard and Jeb Puryear of Donna the Buffalo was bellowing out: “Let’s build a fortress of love by the river with all the happiness that we can find.” 

Let’s! 

Quintessential America: Charleston, WV around the Capitol block, and on the side of the road somewhere in the Midwest.

The Past?! No. More: the Future!

Dad used to say that birthdays and New Years are great times to "draw the line" and remember how far you've come.

So, today, as I celebrate you, I am also celebrating all the memorable, sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary times we have shared. I can't help but feel grateful and blessed that you were born to share all these times with me!

I look back at all the years that have gone by since that fateful day when we glanced at each other in the newspaper hallway. I would have lost good money if someone would have told me we'd be where we are today on that day. And I am glad I would have lost!

Do you remember ...

• Our first camping trip on Kerr Lake (2008) - I could not believe it that Mr. “Comfort Man” agreed not only to a tent-camping trip with me on Kerr Lake, but also agreed to it in the middle of Bug Season, North Carolina. This was back when we were just “work friends” and not even dating. I guess a man does a lot when he’s (somewhat secretly) in love. You worked tirelessly for days to prepare to make sure we'd have everything, but still forgot your newly-bought, much-talked-about lantern at home. Maybe that was a good omen since our life together has been just that: a mix of well-planned years as well as feeling in the dark. Who knows?!
• That hot July 4th in the Moab desert, when we rented a hot-red Jeep Wrangler to drive around Canyonlands, totally off-grid, when it was so hot that our ice melted in the hard-top cooler inside the car with the A/C blasting? We had no cell-signal, our water boiling hot, 30 miles away from any paved roads, and truly I thought we will just die in the middle of nothing and they’ll find our bare bones, meat shriveled up from heat, maybe a week later, we'd cook that fast!
• The “big proposal” in a poetic and friendly spot called “The Devil’s Kitchen”, in the middle of nothing, atop a mountain desert in Utah?
• Our wedding day when the wind picked up so strongly it was impossible to light our unity candle. Our minister said “it’s mostly symbolic” and everyone laughed, as in "isn't it all?!". Two people had to hold the screen behind the "unity table" so as not to be blown away by the wind. In the nervousness of it all, I had to also drop your ring and scratch it before I could put it on your finger. Should we say "ominous" again?! Hmm ...
• That time when we drove to Bryce Canyon for our first anniversary, having booked a hotel and paid for it and everything, and arrived around 11PM (after work, tired, and weary, driving through the desert with no soul around) and finding that the hotel is “closed for the winter” (April is “winter” in Utah, I guess!). Good thing that another, smaller, local hotel was open right across the street, and almost empty and could put us up for a couple of nights. That "luck" followed us years later, when we tried checking into another hotel we thought we made reservations for in Boone, NC, only to be told they have no record of us. Again, we were lucky that we found another room nearby, despite it being Labor Day weekend. Life is just fussy enough for us to make us remember it, isn't it?!
• Why is it that our weirdest memories are hotel-related mishaps?! Hmm ... Like that time when we were haunted in our hotel room in Blowing Rock, NC.
• The time when we flew to Europe and we almost got stuck there in the middle of the French airline workers’ strike. We got rerouted through Germany on our way back, only to have me detained and patted down three times before allowing me to book the flight to the US.
• The first time you took me to a casino in Mesquite, NV, the day I got laid off and on my first try, the first time in my life when I touched a slot machine, I won $20. I reckon life knew I needed it that day ... 
• We have all the luck with the snow, too - especially hitting us at the least expected times: on top of Grandfather Mountain in early November (early for North Carolina for sure), when the snowstorm wind got us locked out of the car, we got snowed in in Deer Valley, UT one year and then again in Jackson Hole, WY the following year both on Memorial Day weekend (end of May). Someone up there must know you’re from Michigan and that you of all people can take it. Little do they know that 20+ years of The South melted you up.
• That time when we rode the motorcycle on the Alpine Loop in Utah (25 miles away from home) and our battery died in Lehi (50 miles away from home), on our way back in the middle of a scorching hot July summer day!  We had to walk our cycle to the nearest grocery store to get into some A/C for comfort, and wait for a tow truck. But how available is a tow truck on July 4th?! I have never in my life spent that many hours in a grocery store without buying a thing, let’s just say that. 
• That time when we took your mom for her 70th birthday to Niagara Falls and the only restaurant open for dinner was in a ... discount t-shirt store?! Yeah, classy all right! 
• That time you walked into my parents’ kitchen for the very first time, at night, famished from a 24 hour trip across the world, grabbed your first morsel of meat sitting on the table and said “I love this! What is it?!” We all answered: “Cow tongue!”
• The time when we ended up in a shipping container in Bucharest, in the middle of a foggy, wet, November night, trying to rent a car on the black market from these kids who declared the container their very legit and very official “office”. 
• Do you remember the wind- and sand-storm in Sulphur Springs, Montana, in the middle of the prairie, waiting for Donna the Buffalo to start playing at the very originally named “Red Ants Pants Music Festival”? I have never eaten that much dust in my life! I swear, 10 years later, I am still dusting off my camera and my backpack, 10 years later!
• That time you volunteered to slice lemons for a friend’s wedding and you sliced your finger instead, bad enough to require stitches?! You never touched a mandoline again, but I can't remember if you even ever attempted to slice lemons either! If life hands them to us, we eat them whole nowadays, it seems.
• You remember how you did not die, despite all your protests and refusal to advance, when I made you climb up to Timpanogos Cave (6700 feet) in Utah, nor to the end of the South Mountains Park trail in North Carolina?! I love when you just trust me ...
• That time we saw the black bears hang out in the trees off a trail in Georgia?! 
• That time when you fed the iguanas in Honduras? 
• That time we thought we bought a turkey breast and all we got was turkey nuggets in a bundle and we had a house (almost) full of people to feed for Christmas? Hmm... yeah - good times! 
• That time we were so excited to see Willie Nelson in concert and he walked off the stage and never returned?! 
• That time when we lobbied together in the halls of Congress in DC for FH Awareness (serious) and made fun of the Ben & Jerry's cow decal outside Senator Bernie Sanders' office (not so serious)?! And that is so you: a mix of stern elegance and casual comedian all rolled-up into one!
• That time when we had our first Thanksgiving dinner in our brand-new house in North Carolina with an unboxed, newly-delivered but uninstalled yet dishwasher in the middle of the dining room? 
• Our big trek in our camper, The Pup, across America?! Boy, how I want to do that again soon!
• That time when we judged the beers at the Athens Beer Festival in Ohio and actually felt like we knew what we were doing? I guess everyone thinks this after a few sips of craft beer?!

But much, much more than the many times we have spent together, I love the possibilities of what is coming ahead of us! There will be hard times but I am sure as I am of these two hands typing this that there will be good times too. I just pray for health and peace and strength and cannot wait to see the future. With you, hand in hand.

Whether we are climbing a mountain, shooting birds, making dinner, or buying a car, a house, or a camper, I know we’ll have a good time and live to tell the stories for whoever is there to listen. Even if it's just us, recollecting.

Whether I am mourning a friend, a parent, or a pet, or I am going through some near-death health scares, I know you’ll be there, stronger than the Rock of Gibraltar to support me.

I love you with all my stitched up heart. I would be lost, scared, confused and adrift without you.

Thanks for being you.

And thanks for being mine.  

Happy birthday, my love! Can't wait for the next 50+ years ...