C.J. Hall
December 3, 2019

The Genre Club: Trials and Tribulations of a New Author

The outcome cannot matter.

Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

I am doggedly slogging toward a 2020 publication of my debut novel, currently titled Evolving Elizah: Initiatum. My biggest obstacle? Me.

I recently shared a complete draft of the manuscript with a couple of industry experts — an editor and a marketing advisor. I need their help, you see. I want my novel to launch like a rocket — better yet, like the space-farm turned deep-space-voyager where Evolving Elizah unfolds. I know I can’t do that alone.

I expected to feel nervous as I wait for their feedback. It’s tough to offer up the work of my heart for critique by strangers, knowing they don’t love it the same way I do. For me, this story is essential, and my heart now beats in time to the rhythmic melody of keystrokes as we bring each other to life. Of course, it’s good that these consultants don’t love it like I do. That’s why I asked for their help, right?

Here’s the part I didn’t expect — a whirlwind of anxiety chased by a monsoon of fear, all unleashed by a simple and relatively inconsequential question.

“What genre is this?”

Oh, dear.

I thought I knew. I thought I’d settled on Young Adult. But, is that right? Science Fiction, maybe? Dystopian? Dystopian Young Adult Science Fiction? Is that a thing? What if I get it wrong?

All of a sudden, I’m back in high school. Did I dress for volleyball when I should have been planning for chess club? Can I go home now?

For whatever reason, life’s stressful moments often transport me back to some terrible childhood experience.

In this case, it isn’t a question of volleyball or chess club — I did neither in high school. In this particular case, I’m standing in a high school classroom holding a brown jumbo-sized well-used plastic margarine container. Well-used? Oh yes.

The bowl retained enough identifiable print to confirm it’s initial purpose of storing margarine. The lid, which at one point fit the bowl like a glove and matched the design, could now only be identified as belonging by the same brown color. As was typical in our household, it was warped, contorted, and worn by repeated exposure to harsh circumstances it was never intended to endure.

What was in the bowl?

Prior to entering a room full of my peers, I would have been proud to tell you. It contained my own recipe, one we ate at home several times. It was a goulash-like invention, the tangible conclusion of hours I spent in the kitchen trying to create enjoyable fare using nothing more than my own creativity and whatever my non-cooking mother happened to have on hand in the pantry.

I was proud of my effort. I found it substantially better than anything my mother would have prepared — the microwaved scrambled eggs, which somehow always ended up cornflower blue, or the broiled meat patties, prepared on a baking sheet in the oven. It was better than Hamburger Helper, or the alternative she’d make when it was time for “something different” — Tuna Helper.

So what’s the problem? I did great, didn’t I?

My mother hated cooking and loved overused, exhausted, tormented plastic food containers. These were minor eccentricities in my highly eccentric family. Despite these problems and despite my age, experience, and lack of control over my environment, I discovered a way to make something good.

I could have had a good laugh with my classmates about that pathetic bowl. Guessing the number of times the poor thing had been microwaved, dishwashed, and refrigerated would have made an awesome party game. I could have recounted my adventure, scrounging for ingredients and experimenting in the kitchen. But my levity had long-since absconded with my composure.

My anxiety mounted and then surged as I had another realization. Next to everyone else’s tiramisu, cookies, pastries, hors d’oeuvres, anitpasti, and other sophisticated snacks, my goulash bore a shocking resemblance to regurgitated dog food. No one said anything about it, but no one had to.

To me it was obvious. They were normal. I was a fraud trying to pass for normal.

My family was about as far from normal as a person could imagine. My mom was certainly mentally ill, although never diagnosed. My father was prosperous, but most of my clothes were hand-me-downs. My sister and I shared shoes that were either too small for her or too large for me because we didn’t wear the same size.

We didn’t need to save old margarine containers, or microwave and dishwash them until they melted into toxic waste. Yet, it’s what we did. We hoarded them. One tug on the wrong cabinet door and a sea of old plastic food containers promised to spill out, just like our family’s secret dysfunction.

Standing there with my peers, I had just tugged that cabinet door, and I was ankle deep in the refuse of my desire to fit in.

I tried to hold back tears. I tried to dissolve into the nothingness of some dark abyss. I don’t think I was successful on either account, but truthfully I don’t remember. The part I remember clearly was vowing I would never humiliate myself like that again. I would never let my peers see how strangely different from them I was. I would never let them see how inadequate I was. I wouldn’t let them see me as a fraud.

So what genre is my novel?

Does it even matter? The part of me that stood humiliated with my goulash — my goulash that no one criticized except me — thinks I should simply throw the whole thing away. It’s too risky. Forget about this crazy authoring scheme. Get another office job. There is so little vulnerability in a job like that.

Luckily that wounded part of me has no control over my motor skills, nor does it know any of my passwords to traditional online hiring platforms. My novel is safe, and I’m simply going to have to wait this one out.

I belong somewhere. My work belongs somewhere.

It’s a matter of finding the right label. That’s all it is — a label to help me connect with the specific readers who will love my book. It’s simple enough, but it sure isn’t easy.

Michele Laine once told me that we never truly conquer our fears, but we can get better at dealing with them. It’s clear to me that my fear of belonging nowhere remains unconquered. I struggle with my different-ness. I struggle to appreciate my talents. I struggle to love myself. Some battles I win, others I lose. Right now I feel like I’m losing.

And yet, my heart still beats in time to the rhythm of my keystrokes.

In the grand scheme of things, finding my genre is fairly inconsequential. The process continues. My writing continues. The outcome doesn’t matter, even though I know it will be great. Keep moving, people. Keep moving when you’re afraid and when you feel ridiculous. Most importantly, keep moving when you are vulnerable. I’ll do the same, and we’ll just see…

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October 1, 2019

A circle of life, in the ago

I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.

Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows

She and I, her and me — never her and I, or she and me. Always us. She was a retired English teacher. I was a West Texas girl — 7, then 8, then 9 years old. She happened to be my grandmother, but that wasn’t all she was to me.

She was a goddess, a larger than life being who descended upon me wrapped in a veil of wonder. Although, technically she didn’t descend. She never descended. I ascended to meet her — high above the clouds on man-made wings.

Who knew San Francisco was a backdrop for idyllic childhood summers?

My sister and I visited her for a month each summer. Far away in that mystical land called San Francisco, we saw and experienced things beyond our wildest imagination: the ballet, China Town, wine country, hair salons, chop sticks, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio.

We worked in her medical office for an hourly wage, filing folders, cleaning, making copies, and developing x-rays. We saved our pay for things we wanted to have or do. She taught us about money and poker and cooking. She shared her love — love of food, adventure, friends, entertaining, flowers, gardening. She shared her love of us as well — to us, for us, with us, about us. Her love was different from any I’d ever known.

She knew the richness of words and language and stories, and she read to us every night. My sister and I would nestle in our bunk beds while she read a chapter from a book she chose. I remember Where the Red Fern Grows most clearly.

She taught me how to type and also helped me get my first typewriter. “You pay half, and I’ll pay half,” she said. With those seven words, she transformed the impossible into possibility.

She taught me about gardening — how to grow and tend other living things, to help them find their place and become something beautiful, something useful and nourishing.

So, what do you get when you drop West Texas children into the heart of San Francisco?

It’s an adventure, but it ain’t always rosy. Except… “Ain’t ain’t a word, and I ain’t going to say it.” That’s what she’d say. That’s what she’d make us say whenever we used “ain’t.” We recited that sentence a lot, my sister and I.

Poor grammar wasn’t the only difference between San Francisco and two West Texas girls. We froze in the cool summer temperatures, wearing our heaviest coats while the natives tromped around in shorts and flip flops. She would chide us for fighting, for the way we spoke, for our lack of gentility. Her friends would laugh at our thick accents, which they found cute but impossible to understand.

She tried to improve us, teach us the details of table manners and place settings. She exposed us to cultures we never knew — cultures of time, geography, and affluence. She tried to help me understand that how a word is spelled is often an indicator of how it should be pronounced. She tried to help us align ourselves to success in a world even more immense than the vast nothingness we knew as home.

She was a gardener, not just of plants but a tender of souls.

She took her seeds, wrapped in hope, and nestled them deeply into my being. She planted whispers of possibility in me, ideas and experiences that could and would lead me far beyond what I might have otherwise been. Yet, at least one of the seeds grew into a suspicion, and then a notion, and then a belief that my sister and I weren’t good enough. We were backward in her eyes, but — at least at that time — we were the only grandchildren she had. So she kept working on us.

Each summer ended. Each visit closed. Each seed grew, and the family grew as well. New children eventually came, and just as quickly as their doors opened, ours closed.

It was hard to be overlooked by someone who meant so much — someone to whom I thought I meant so much. But her new grandchildren were bright and new. Their gardens needed planting, their souls tending. I knew that she loved us still — her first grandchildren — but as grandmother, she was gone. I went my own way, with everything she had infused in me as a touchstone for my own dreams.

She became someone else’s grandmother, but I never let go of the line that connected my heart to hers.

Sad? I used to think so. I didn’t see the gift in this for another twenty-five years. It was a slow blooming gift, but more beautiful for the wait. You see, in relinquishing her role as grandmother, yet loving me still, she opened a new door — a place where we could meet not as a grand-mother/child but as two women.

Apart from her personal pain-body, every woman has her share in what could be described as the collective female pain-body… This consists of accumulated pain suffered by women partly through male subjugation of the female, through slavery, exploitation, rape, childbirth, child loss, and so on, over thousands of years.

Eckhart Tolle, The New Earth

It took time for me to understand that the knowing and affirmation she gave me as a woman was even more powerful than tending my garden-soul as a child. Yes, she planted seeds of strength and possibility in my childhood. Yes, those seeds grew into a forest canopy under which I sought refuge from the worst storms in my life. Yes, it was a forest of strength, fortitude, and belief.

But as a woman, she allowed me to see a lifetime of pain that she never belabored, and would never share with a child.

She weathered her own storms, many of them fierce. She survived a marriage to a man who disgraced her again and again, and another to an alcoholic whose affliction was ultimately his demise. She survived a divorce in a time and place where it wasn’t widely accepted. She raised four children, planting them into this world with roots that only she could give them, tending their souls amidst her own chaos. She stood firm again and again, rejecting what was unacceptable and embracing what was love. She made her decisions and walked in them with her head high.

When times were hard, she’d say, “It is what it is.” When the difficulty passed, she’d say, “It’s in the ago,” to remind you that it was gone. She carried her body of pain with grace, acceptance, and determination. By sharing her experiences and wisdom with me, she showed me that I could do the same. The seeds that she planted so long ago are now nourished by the light of her wisdom.

At the end of her life, I’m not sure she was ready to let go.

Her mind and soul seemed ready and eager to keep breathing and learning and doing this adventure called life. But her body failed her. I believe she knew she had nothing to fear. I believe she knew the parts of us that matter are eternal. The rest is a brief flash of color, and then in the ago. It is what it is, right?

The day that she died, a beautiful baby girl came into the world. A good friend of mine became a grandmother to this baby. One thing ends, another begins — because it never *really* ends, it just keeps going.

I know my grandma isn’t gone. She’s just in the next place, breathing and learning and doing the adventure that comes wherever we go next, and possibly — just possibly — planting some red ferns in this one.

I know she’s keeping a close eye on all of us.

In a few weeks, I will converge with friends and family to celebrate her together one last time. I know she’ll be pleased with such a good party. At some point, my own spirit will retreat to deal with its sadness, under the forest canopy she helped me plant where I’ve weathered so many storms. I know she’ll see that too, and I believe she will understand.

When I emerge again, I’ll make my decisions and walk in them with my head high. I’ll stand firm, dismissing what is unacceptable and embracing love. I’ll continue breathing and learning and doing the adventure called life, and I’ll be grateful for everything she gave me. The rest will be in the ago.

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September 2, 2019

Walkabouts and wanderlust: Part 1

How frail the human heart must be — a mirrored pool of thought.

Sylvia Plath

After almost 22 years of service, my last day at work was anticlimactic. The tasks that needed doing were done, and the only thing that remained was turning in my identification and equipment. It was over.

I chose this path. I resigned. I could have made other choices. I knew this path was the right one for me — necessary, but “right” choices can be the hardest of all.

My heart was a sea of pandemonium, ragged with the chaos of too many battling emotions.

Lake-Superior-Stacked-Rocks
Lake Superior, Michigan

I felt it coming — the struggle against fatigue, depression, and anxiety. So… I did what I do. I planned an adventure.

I’ve read about this thing called green therapy, but for me (and I’m sure many others) it’s instinctual. I retreat somewhere wild when I experience life events that require processing. As a child, I climbed trees, visited animals, or — if I was fortunate to be somewhere dripping with beauty — sit quietly and take it all in. Now, as an adult with the power to choose my surroundings, this need to retreat manifests into travel.

I spent the remainder of that Friday — my last official day of work — loading up the car. Being a free-spirited adventurer, I sometimes find myself lacking travel companions. Not this time. I was blessed with the company of my sweet Crash, the most well-traveled dog rescued from the streets of Baltimore I know. We started driving at 2:30 a.m. the following morning.

Destination: Northern Michigan

Lake-Superior-Steps
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan

I drove and drove (over 1,100 miles) to a campsite reserved in my name outside Munising, Michigan.

Realities I discovered on Day 1:

  • Crash is not meant for the backseat. He rides shotgun.
  • I am amazingly efficient at setting up a campsite by myself. No one can prove otherwise.
  • The welcome wagon in Northern Michigan (the Upper Peninsula, or U.P.) consists of a crushing horde of large mosquitoes.
  • The Great Lakes are breathtakingly beautiful. I find them as beautiful (although not nearly as warm) as any Caribbean water.
  • The U.P. is an excellent place to unplug from technology. In fact, it’s not a choice. Obtaining a cell signal is the exception, not the rule.
Crash-camping
Crash does not rest in the dirt. Period.

We stayed three nights at our campsite, pondering life by the fire at night, touring the National Lakeshore by day, and exploring water.

Water knows no bounds in the U.P. It falls from the sky… and the rocks… and the trees. It wanders between streams, marshes, and ponds, oblivious to anyone’s expectation of where it belongs. It seeks its own company, flowing to the Great Lakes as it chases the echo of water that came before. It dominates the landscape, and yet it’s also hidden — beneath tall grass and among the looming trees of the thick forests.

The symbolism of water is hard to ignore, especially on a trip like this.

Lake-Superior-Rocks-Rock
Words of wisdom, from travelers before

Water cleanses. The repetition of its dripping, lapping, and bubbling can soothe us, if we let it. Water embraces and envelops us instantly, transforming our world from an empty air-filled experience to a thick, wet, wonderful but potentially suffocating cradle. It’s beautiful, restorative, and potentially deadly all at the same time.

What else can do all of this besides water? No wonder Crash is afraid when he gets too close to the waves. Perhaps he is awestruck by the gravity of what all this means. I’m not ready to think about what it means. I’m only capable of losing myself in the present moment. The bigger picture is too much to bear.

These observations remind me that life is a journey. It can’t be seen or known by a passing glance. It must be explored, discovered, and observed. It must be done so with reverence, or the meaning will be lost. It can be messy, tiring, and frustrating at times. But, the *knowing* is achieved through *doing,* which isn’t easy.

One night, we returned to the shore of Lake Superior, hoping to see the Northern Lights.

Lake-Superior-Kayaks
Ocean kayaks, ready to brave Lake Superior

The sun didn’t begin to set until well after 9 p.m., but I waited on the sand — wondering if I would get to check the Northern Lights off my bucket list. I hadn’t come for that purpose — I didn’t think it was possible that time of year, but a woman in town hinted that they might be visible, even in the summer. So I waited with hope and growing expectation.

By 12:30 a.m., I decided to call it a night. Crash had long since given up and complained so much about the sand and the water — and the cold breeze — that I took him back to the car to rest in solitude until my waiting and wondering came to a conclusion.

I did not see the Northern Lights, but don’t interpret that as disappointment.

My eyes, and my mind, were inundated. Blinking satellites slid smoothly and rhythmically across the sky. Meteor showers burst across the sky in fits and starts. Then there were the stars, ever-present behind it all. I was reminded that there are exponentially more stars in the sky than problems in my life.

Like many good things, all these stars are outside the scope of my vision most days.  Sometimes I can’t see them; they are obscured by light that is closer and more intense. Other times I choose not to see them; I’m not looking up. But at all times, I must gather strength from the knowledge that they are there. Some circumstances can only be endured by knowing that there is much than we can see in the  moment.

We returned to our campsite for one final sleep before packing up and moving on.

What happens next?

South Dakota happens next, which is another story for another time. South Dakota — although permeated by an impossibly sweet and intoxicating smell — is not saturated with water. I’m not quite ready to move on from the water yet.

It’s true that water cleanses us, sometimes by washing away and sometimes by dissolving. I wish it were as simple as jumping into the water and coming out clean — refreshed. If that were the case, I would dive into Lake Superior head first, welcoming the shock of the cold water, which I expect would be agonizing until my body started to lose feeling.

Yet, I continue to discover that deeply rooted beliefs and problems cannot simply be rinsed away. Twenty-two years of repressing, resenting, and enduring, as well as rejoicing, achieving, and celebrating, cannot be spontaneously washed away. I must dive into the water again and again, each time coming up a smidge less varnished, a little less entangled with that image of who I am supposed to be instead of who I am. I must purify, forgive, and accept — and then do it again and again and again. I must be patient with myself. I must have faith that I will get where I need to go, not only with my life and my heart but also my understanding. I’m working on it.

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January 17, 2019

Reflections and memories of snow

It snowed a few days ago. I sat and watched it in my warm, cozy, comfortable house, drinking coffee in front of a warm fire. It was beautiful, peaceful. I live in the woods — amongst the huge pines I love. Gazing out on the snow covered trees, I could convince myself I was just about anywhere. But I don’t need to. I’m happy here. I have come to love the snow. However, it hasn’t always been that way. The memorable snows in my life are memorable for so many different reasons.

Until the 1980s

As a child in West Texas, we never expected snow. In fact, I wasn’t sure if winter with snow was a real thing. It seemed like a fairy tale to me. But I do remember one time when it snowed, and my sister and I couldn’t wait to play in it.

It was only a couple of inches, but we tried to build a snowman. We gathered and rolled up all the snow from across the yard picking up sticks and grass and everything on the ground below to get every piece of snow we could for our snowman, which turned out to be rather small given what we had to work with. We would get cold and go inside, and each time I was convinced that we were in for the night. It was time to get cozy and warm, so I would run a warm bath and get nice and cozy in my pajamas until my sister inspired me to go outside again. Eventually my mom got quite irritated with the number of baths I was racking up that day, and so the fun ended. Rather abruptly, as was her style.

Snow was more than a one-time wonder in my childhood, however. We used to drive from West Texas up through the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and to a small Kansas town where my mother’s parents lived. The car trip felt interminable as a child, but we went for Thanksgiving and Christmas several years. Some of those years involved snow, more snow than I’d ever seen. More than enough snow to make a snowman. My sister and I would go out and play, and my grandmother would fit us with plastic bread sacks over our shoes held up with rubber bands close to our knees to keep our feet dry. She was a Depression-era woman, and let’s just say she was very resourceful.

Fast forward through time and space… (1993-1994)

I’m a woman. I’m a child. I’m an 18-year old married woman-child. My man-child husband and I travel north, to Missouri, where he is stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base. Missouri was so beautiful during the fall, but then the winter came. The possibility seems increasingly likely that I have unknowingly died and gone straight to hell — a frozen, never ending, subzero hell. I have never been so cold in my life. The only thing more inhospitable than the Missouri winter is my ill-fated marriage.

In the present moment

I can appreciate how the snow makes everything beautiful. It glistens in the air like glitter. It covers the frozen sleeping trees and earth under a mystical blanket. It is cleansing — cathartic. The cold air freezes impurities in the air, as well as the overpopulated insects. It gives me a chance to make a fire in my fireplace and bask in the heat of the glow as my mind and body slip into some level of hibernation.

Kansas City, Missouri (1996)

In the years I lived in Missouri, I never got accustomed to the snow. Of course, there was more to it than just snow. Midwest winters are rough. There is at least as much ice as there is snow, the temperature fluctuates insanely, and the wind can be so fierce it literally knocks you off your feet. I struggled against it as I struggled against so many other things in my life.

I see myself driving the treacherous roads to get to a job I can’t afford to lose. I see myself walking to college classes when I am eight months pregnant. I see myself frustrated and angry when I get stuck on the road at the bottom of my apartment complex and I have to wade through the drifts with my big pregnant belly to get to my apartment. I finally make it home and throw myself on the bed crying, not sure how I’ll get my truck up the road or how I will raise a baby, fathered by a man I barely know that I met a only a few weeks before I got pregnant.

In the present, with all that behind me…

I have learned a lot about snow. I can predict with fair accuracy whether the accumulation will stick or melt. I know it insulates itself against the sun and the heat, so well in fact that huge piles of snow will last for months. I know that dry snow blows around quite a bit but isn’t as slippery as the wet snow. It’s good for skiing and playing with puppy dogs but not so much for snowballs or snowman. I have learned that man-made snow isn’t really like snow at all. It’s more like shaved ice.

I know that most snows can be overcome with 4-wheel drive, and that anything less than 6 to 8 inches is not worth the effort to get the snowblower out. I know that the process of clearing snow should be done with the understanding that refreeze is so much harder to navigate and clear than the original snow.

Baltimore, Maryland (February 2003)

My parents come to visit for Valentine’s Day and get snowed in — for a week. Over 2 feet of snow falls from the sky. We learn together that cities were not built for snow — at least not this one. There is nowhere to put it. The city literally has to bring in huge dump trucks and truck the snow out to a location where it can be piled or melted.

I am living with my 6-year old son Austin in a row home I bought renovated. It is a quaint and beautiful home, just across the street from Patterson Park, and it works well with my quaint and picturesque life. In our unanticipated family retreat time, we all trek down to the park with Austin bundled up in his warmest clothes and hunter’s cap to sled down the tall hill with the pagoda on the top. All the neighborhood kids are there. Austin has a plastic snow saucer.

Unbeknownst to me, my mother has sprayed the bottom thoroughly with Pam cooking spray, and with a slight push from her Austin takes off at rocket speed down the hill flying off a snow ramp, separating from his snow saucer onto his own flight path, into the snow where he gets the wind knocked out of him. He later reports thinking he was dead. He’s now scared to sled again, and although I’m peeved at my mother for her part in this, it’s a wonderful day — forever burned in my  memory with me standing at the top of the hill by the pagoda watching Austin fly down like a rocket with the ear flaps of his hunter’s cap flapping furiously like wings.

Now (not then)

I love the seasons in Maryland — we get all of them. Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. Early spring, late spring, late summer, early fall. The winters can be snowy and every 3-5 years we get at least one big snow storm. When I turned 40 I learned to snow ski, and I’ve found that to be challenging but tremendous fun.

I’ve learned a few things about staying warm in the snow, all rooted in staying dry and layered. To the extent possible, I’ve found natural fibers to be the best — wool, cotton, down. More important than the thickness of your coat is how many layers and air pockets in your clothes do you have to retain your body heat? Can your skin breathe so you can be comfortable if and when you start to sweat?

Manchester, Maryland (February 2010)

Snowmageddon! A winter storm dumps over 2 feet of snow on us, and the wind blows it in even bigger drifts across the driveway. Austin is 13, and we live in an old country farm house on 3 acres. It’s a sturdy house, about 100 years old, but not exactly conducive to modern living. We freeze all winter, lucky if we can maintain a 55 degree temperature inside, and I wake up extra cold one morning to discover that the front door has blown open. The wood floor in the living room is frozen and covered in a large pile of snow. Austin gets up, and we do our best to get the snow out of the house. The old thin door has swollen in the moisture, and I have to beat it with a hammer to get it closed.

Later Austin and I start clearing the driveway with snow shovels. It’s all we have to work with, except each other and a frozen swollen front door. It’s a tremendous amount of work, tiresome, frustrating, and meant for a snowblower or plow — not 2 shovels. But it’s still good, partly for what we have —  a roof over our heads, warm clothes, two snow shovels — and partly for what we don’t have, which is anyone else there to hurt us. We got rid of those people already, for what I hoped was the last time.

Outside Westminster, Maryland (now)

I have two covered porches, and I use them all year round. The porches are high on the long list of things I love about this house. After almost 20 years of living in Maryland, I have adapted to the cold. I bundle up in a blanket (no heavy Arctic gear required) and sit on the outdoor sofa, either watching the snow fall or looking out to where it has fallen. I see deer and cardinals going about their business in the snow. They are beautiful, and I hope they are happy. I am. I am wiser. I am stronger. I am more capable than ever. Whether I sit alone or whether I have the company of friends or family, I am at peace.

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