Since 2011, in so much of the content I have consumed from the library and let’s be real, just about anywhere, food has been the main character. 

Chef biographies like those of and Anthony Bourdain and Julia Child, food memoirs like “Picnic in Provence” and anything Shauna Niequist and Ruth Reichl. Non fiction reads from researchers like Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.” Documentaries galore on Netflix. Iconic food movies like some of my favorites like Julie and Julia, Ratatouille, and anything Nancy Myers. For a few years there, I was on a big Food Network kick and I have a few food podcasts still in my weekly rotation. 

As I set out on this project I got to wondering, “When did food become the main character for me?”

Like so many of these food story main characters, it was thanks to my mom. Think the critic transported back to childhood in Ratatouille and Ruth’s sometimes weird relationship with her mom and food and how intertwined it all was.

My mom was, and still is, a great cook and hostess. She will come up often in these stories because there is something so important about our mothers and our relationship with food that likely goes back to the start of feeling nourished, cared for, and loved by their actual bodies. 

But, the supporting character when I knew that, for me, it was food?

August.

I was about to head back to Purdue to begin my sophomore year of college and I was buzzing on even more anticipation than is normally found in the month that feels on the cusp of everything. I was eager to get back to my friends, to live in the sorority, and to start recruitment from the other side. There was the thrill of upcoming parties, football games, and a “situationship” that, despite the summer’s long days and distance, hadn’t fizzled.

For me, the summer at home had been packed with working. I got hours at the neighborhood pool as a swim lesson instructor and guard like I had for years; but, also, thanks to my moms guidance, I took a job at the front desk at Ohio State’s university hotel, The Blackwell. 

It was a job reserved for Ohio State students only, but that summer I became the exception. The general manager was a Purdue grad from the same program I had selected, mainly thanks to the impacts of pop culture moments like “The Wedding Planner” and Lizzie McGuire movie: Hospitality and Tourism Management. My mom met him, made the connection, and encouraged me to take the job so I would actually have some experience in the industry— not just at the pool, much to my disappointment. 

I loved working at the pool. My friends were there. It was fun and easy. The pay was great and the tan was better.

At The Blackwell, I was stuck inside behind a desk, in a suit I picked up from a large uniform room that smelled like a dry cleaner mixed with banquet chicken in the basement of the hotel before every shift.

Much of the summer, I stacked my days with double shifts: 7-3 at the hotel. 4:30-9 at the pool. But, in early June, I also picked up all the Saturday nights at the hotel.

My reasons were layered. My peers— all OSU students and 21— had filled all the 3-7’s on Saturday’s in the “request off” notebook for summer fun like Dave Matthews concerts, dates, and late nights at Bar Louie. My Saturday nights were more flexible being a Taylor Swift fan, underage, and dateless. More importantly, Saturday nights in the summer meant weddings and, if I was there to learn about the industry, I should get a front row seat to every wedding that went through the hotel. I wanted to. It sounded so fun!

In many ways, it was. Saturdays’s were busy. I guided guests to local malls to grab last minute gifts. (Local malls being an area of expertise for 18 year old me.) I watched flowers get delivered and funky getaway cars—even carriages— arrive. I placed champagne and bags of belongings packed for Caribbean Honeymoon’s in the penthouse suite. I watched blissed out Newlyweds pose on the huge, regal staircase with my head in my hands thinking about love. I was quick to assist in holding bouquets and veils as they opted for a different shot. I listened to bands as they pulsed out of the ballroom and sometimes, if I was really lucky, I even got a piece of cake or a left over bougie Welcome Bag.

I was happy to be there. It was fun to be the weird, little Eloise of the hotel on the wedding night, observing all the fun, eager to lend a hand.

But, when I got into my car every night and came down from the adrenaline of those shifts something felt off. Weddings were fun, but I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life let alone much longer that summer. Part of me wondered if I tolerated it so well because I knew it was temporary. But, then that left me with  scary questions: Was I studying the wrong things? Did I really want to do this? If not… what did I want to do with the rest of my life?

That summer, “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter was popular, playing on the radio often. Inevitably it was always the soundtrack to these mildly depressive, late night drives home.

But, this August day had been a good one. I had wrapped up my busy, workaholic summer with a few days to spare before my return to West Lafayette. These days were filled Target runs and trips to the mall, a few final visits with the girls from high school, and getting organized move in. While on a visit to the kitchen for another Diet Coke, I found my mom on the home phone with my dad. He had clients in town and wanted to bring them to our house for drinks and appetizers after work. 

My event planning mind was kind of annoyed for my mom. It was already the afternoon and he was springing eight people on her? Tonight?

Rude, my nineteen year old mind determined.

But, she was cool. She didn’t even run out to the store. She called over to the pantry where I was nursing my fizzy corn syrup addiction—a sure sign of the times for me— and asked me to grab the crab.

“Crab? In the pantry?” I asked, scrunching my face looking in at the selves, food safety questions running through my mind. And also, since when and where does my mom buy crustaceans? 

My mom comes around my shoulder and grabs two flat, circular tins labeled “Lump Crab Meat” right in my eye line. 

“Crab,” she says, matching my slight sass. 

I follow her to the kitchen island and watch her dig in the refrigerator for Dijon, Worchesershire, eggs, and mayo. She pulls open the produce drawer and grabs a lemon and a red pepper.

Hands full, she points with her pinky back to the pantry. “Grab the tin of Old Bay,” she instructs, adding for clarity, “By the spices.”

I find the squat, red topped tin easily and meet her back at the island adding her refrigerator finds to a mixing bowl.

It will be another couple years before I really learn and master knife skills, and yet she tells me to grab a board and chop up the pepper. She is going to run out to the garden for tomatoes and check to make sure there is white wine in the garage refrigerator. 

She instructs me to keep working on what is in the bowl: crab cakes. After I add the pepper, I am to open up the two tins of crab, combine it all together, form the mixture into patties, and place them on the cookie sheet she has pulled from a cabinet and lands on the cool granite island with a slight clatter.

We didn’t eat much seafood in my childhood. It was something new for our family and the idea of crab cakes at home sounded fancy. I had spent the summer seeing them served as appetizers at events—like weddings— and at big, executive lunches. But, as I pressed the combined mixture into patties I was surprised how simple they really were to create.

Mom returned to the kitchen with an armful of tomatoes and a small bunch of basil from her small garden in the furthest corner of our backyard. She made the prep look like a breeze as bruschetta came together. She even had little baguette toasts in the pantry that would work perfectly for the tomato topping.

She placed the uncooked crab cake patties and bruschetta topping in the refrigerator as I retreated back upstairs to my packing (and, likely, AIM conversations). A couple hours and a shower later, I emerged as the guests were arriving. Mom had set up wine bottles, Pelligrinos, and sodas on ice on the back patio. The crab cakes were out of the oven and plated, styled nicely with some parsley and lemon. The bruschetta was on a tray and she had just topped each one with basil ribbons.

I was invited to join the guests outside and was even granted the privilege of an underage glass of chardonnay. We visited and tasted. Dad’s clients gushed about the food. Impressed and satisfied. 

I was, too.

Every thing was so tasty. The juices of the fresh garden tomatoes seeping in the the toasts was flavorful and exciting. The sweet, briny crab was perfectly seasoned and lit up with a bright squirt of lemon juice. 

But, beyond good food, there was something there for me that night on the patio. There was a little nudge from the universe to take notice. There was something here. Something telling me that this was important. It wasn’t fancy or even all that well planned. My mom had used only ingredients that were already in the house. But, this was hospitality. 

This is how I want to cook. This is how I want to live. This is how I want to share with others.

I want to take the things I have and make them into the best things I can imagine. I don’t want to overcomplicate, overthink, or overplan. I want to welcome people in and serve them. And, I want to delight alongside them in the most simple, yet wonderful ways.

That night I knew I was on the right track. 

I knew then it would always be August and food for me.

Crab Cakes

8 oz. lump crab meat, canned or fresh

2 green onions, thinly sliced (white, green, and light green parts)

2 tablespoons red pepper, chopped

2 tablespoons mayonnaise 

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce

1/2 teaspoon hot sauce more or less depending on spice level preference

Salt and pepper to taste

1/3 cup plain breadcrumbs or panko breadcrumbs

A neutral oil for frying

Lemon slices, parsley and tarter sauce, if desired

Combine all ingredients through breadcrumbs in a bowl. 

Press mixture into patties. Using an ice cream scoop will help ensure equal sized patties.

Heat oil in a large skillet (cast iron preferred) over medium heat. Place patties one at time in hot oil and cook for 3-4 minutes. Flip patty carefully and cook for 3-4 minutes more or until both sides are golden brown and crispy. 

Place patty on a paper towel lined plate and cook all the patties. Plate together with lemon slices, chopped parsley and tarter sauce, if desired.

Tomato Bruschetta

1 1/2 pounds Tomatoes, diced (Roma’s are preferred, but any type totaling 1.5 pounds will work)

1/3 fresh basil, chopped

5 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Baguette or packaged garlic toasts work really well (I find them by specialty cheese in the grocery store)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and allow to marinate together 15-20 minutes.

Top toasted, sliced baguette or garlic toasts with tomato mixture, add basil ribbons or a drizzle of balsamic glaze, if desired.

When I set out on this project, I thought a lot about “Why?” And also, “Why now?”

Obviously, there is the whole dead, younger brother thing. It for sure makes the cliches like, “Tomorrow isn’t a guarantee!” and “Do it now!” ring a little more loudly.

But, something that also comes up for so many people who have lost someone is that they wish for more evidence of their person. My sister was quick to want to take more pictures. We were always big on photos, but now we really make an effort to stop and get out a phone for a quick snap. We even just did professional family ones, a regret of us all that we had not done one since I was in college (weddings excluded).

We were all sad to find that Dan’s computer did not, in fact, have much on it. We were hopeful for drafts of musings and recordings of him playing guitar, but after months of working to gain access to his Apple account we were underwhelmed by his simple, clean desktop. (A sure sign of his engineering mind.) 

We want more of the things he thought or sang or said.

Another thing that comes up when you lose someone, is that all of us have reflected on how we would like the days after our death to go. Adam and I have created documents with tangible To-Do’s (credit cards to pay and cancel, subscription passwords, etc.) and our desires for music and readings at our own funerals. I even have a dress code and menu ideas for a reception after mine. 

I know that sounds a lil’ crazy. Just trust me. I have the makings of a really great party. (And, honestly, after drafting it all up, I really wish I could attend!) I hope I made it so that my funeral is not so much about the fact that I died; but, that I lived. And, more importantly, I want it to not be so much how I was loved; but, how much I loved— small moments, this life, great food, and everyone in attendance so very much. That’s my goal.

So, in that vein and just like Tim McGraw says: “Live like you’re dying!” Here we are. Doing it. A project about what I love, but also what I know based on ~35.98 years of living.

I wrote a draft of a memoir in 2019 and when I shared that news I was met with a handful of people questioning how I could write a memoir in my early thirties. They believed I couldn’t possibly have lived enough, experienced enough, or known enough that was memoir worthy. 

That stung, but a pandemic, a collective racial reckoning, wrestling with my own privilege, thoughts on femininity versus (and maybe not so much versus…) feminism, my brother’s death and the aftershocks felt throughout my family, and a whole lot of growing up and perspective later, their cynicism wasn’t totally wrong.

I had a lot to learn.

And, I still do.

I know it sounds a lot like a bait and switch here: “Hi! Welcome to my new series of essays all about what I know. Oh. What’s the first one? It’s all about how I know nothing.”

Joking aside and a note to those cynics: I didn’t *need* the lessons from 2019 until now to have that memoir draft be worthy. I knew plenty of really great, important, memoir worthy things then. And, I still do.

But, I do know they will make that second draft better and starting this project with the knowledge that I always will have a lot to learn is right.

As we embark on twenty-ish weeks of “What I know…,” it’s important to note that though some of these things could be great advice, it’s not meant to be. 

I’ve spent a bit of time in the advice, “girl-boss,” hustle and grind, “expert” space. I have also spent a bit of time untangling myself from it all.

With that in mind, remember these are my lessons. They are not prescriptions. These are stories that are from my life that taught me something and are to be interpreted by you as if it’s folklore. The lessons come from books, movies, song lyrics, teachers, my parents (a lot are from my parents…), or a passing conversation. They are helpful little mantras or postures I try to take with me every day. You, as the reader, have the task to take what means something to you and filter it through your own life and lens. (As you should do even with something marketed to you as “advice,” too.)

In the world of “advice” there was (and still is) a lot of talk about Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset. It’s an idea that some people have an innate mindset that tells them either, “My intelligence is fixed. I know all that I am going to know and am good at all that I am going to be good at right now, as it is.” Or, by contrast a growth mindset tells you that your intelligence and abilities can be developed over time.

If you know me, it’s no secret that I identify with the Growth Mindset. It’s such a natural posture to me that, even still, when I learn there are in fact people with “fixed” mindsets I feel like I turn into a blinking cartoon, unable to understand.

Thanks to some of the untangling I have done from “Girl Boss America,” I am now much more of a “you do you” kinda gal (more on that another week…), but this is one where I stick my feet in the sand a bit.

I think it is so good to always be open to learning.

When my mom suggested going to the library to sad-little-newlywed-in-the-country me, I kind of stiffened at the idea. We had gone to the public library a lot as kids and I enjoyed it as a “special” class in grade school, but I was never a “reader” like some kids are. Or, at least I thought I wasn’t. I often wanted to read the things I liked over and over— frustrating teachers and my parents. I did well enough in AP English classes, but didn’t make reading and books a big part of my life outside of assignments and the occasional trip to an airport kiosk for a vacation read. 

More exciting to me than a degree and my own bedroom after years of living in the sorority when I drove away from Purdue after graduation, was the idea that I would never have to study (see also: cram) for a test again. I wasn’t great at traditional learning: the retaining to regurgitate. And, I was so glad to put it behind me.

But, twenty years since the start of college and a little over ten years after my mom’s suggestion: I am a reader and I am still so very much a learner.

Reading and the library has made my mind open to learning and thinking about many ways of life and living. But, I have also come to see, it’s not just in books that you can be taught. 

Grappling with the icky feeling of sharing “What I know” and wary to be considered a “know it all” after a childhood of being called, “bossy,” I went to a wise friend of mine, Sara. (Sara will show up in a later essay, too!)

She encouraged me to take more of a posture of knowing. She reminded me that I do. She told me it’s good and right for me to be in a position of offering my experiences and saying things like, “I have done this” or “I have experienced that” and “here is what I know” because I have done and experienced a lot. A lot that my peers and even those a few steps ahead of me and those behind me in age have not, but they will.

She also reminded me that I am a writer and often we can’t see our own experiences, thoughts, or even opinions until we see them in someone else’s writing. 

She is right, of course. Being a writer is being willing to go first. To show readers they are not alone. To help give others words and offer up stories so that that the reader can see the ones they have in themselves.

I know this.

In fact, I know a lot.

But, I don’t know it all.

And, I never want to stop trying to learn as much as I can.

I want to keep reading and keep thinking. I want to take in so many more stories from others and experiences of my own and see what I can glean from them all.

I only know what I know because I have been open to learning. Keeping this posture of eagerness to notice and to observe and to learn is how I want to always live my life. I will always be learning.

Where this has shown up:

Shauna Niequest’s most recent book is “I Guess I have Not Learned That Yet” and the thesis stemmed from their family’s move to New York City from the Chicago suburbs. Her middle school aged boys, frustrated by the city’s transportation system and everyone else’s seemingly inherent knowledge of the inner workings of the city, felt defeated and “dumb.” She knew better than that— despite the city being completely new to her as well. She wrote “I guess I have not learned that yet” on a piece of paper and pinned it on the wall of their new apartment as a reminder that they are not dumb, but just new. They have a lot to learn still and that is an okay place to be. And, “yet.” Powerful “yet.” The reminder that they will. Love that “yet.”

A line I love early in Barbara Kingsolver’s book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” is, “We cannot be expected to know what we have not been taught.” I read this at a time that I was just learning about how food is grown and produced and was living in a rural area where it was expected to know the difference between corn and soybeans, that a stalk of corn actually only had one (maybe two) ears of corn on it, and that carrots grow in the ground. These were all things I had not learned until I was in my early twenties and only because I lived there. Because of location and interest, I was able to see and learn from people who worked in agriculture; but, this was not taught to me prior. So, how would I have known? Just because someone doesn’t know something, doesn’t mean they are unintelligent. This has been so helpful to serve as a bit of grace to me, but also to others. And, I can see this line serving us well as my kids move through the “school years.”

This post contains affiliate links.

He blinks with a smidge of confusion and I explain. 

The advice came from my mom, but it was not packaged as “advice,” just as her wisdom rarely is. 

Then, I was complaining. I was just married and had moved to Adam’s small hometown and it was not an easy adjustment. The funding for my job was cut three weeks before our wedding and I was suddenly jobless. Rejections for new jobs were coming in by the day. I was down and lost. And, I was bored. My friends were all now long drives away and Adam was busy with his business. 

I was sleeping in later and later… because I could. I lived in work out clothes all day… because I could. I watched a whole lot of 2011 Bravo, E! and MTV reality shows… because I could. Some days I wouldn’t even say a word out loud until Adam returned from work in the evening. 

Mid complaint and an underwhelming update on my life in nowhere’s-ville, my mom said, “Find the library and the farmers market.” 

I probably rolled my eyes. But, with nothing better on my agenda, I did. 

Immediately, my summer— my life— opened up. I read for fun for the first time in a really long time. I read to learn new things for the first time since college. I tried sewing and ballet thanks to books. I read about entrepreneurship and started to dream of owning my own business. And, because of the trips to the farmers market and the dawn of Pinterest, I picked up lots of cookbooks and I cooked… a lot.

Six months later and I would finally land a job; but, even employed, the farmers market and library were still a major part of my life. Because of both, curiosity about Farm to School and getting kids involved in cooking fueled my enjoyment for said job and just the life I was living. Library audio books (on CDs!) filled my car to make my commute more bearable. 

It was books and wanting to emulate the farmers I met, that lead me to and gave me the knowledge for our first backyard garden.

A backyard garden that would become a blog.

That would become an actual farm business at our local farmers market.

That would become opportunities to write and speak on other platforms.

Finding the Farmers Market and Library helped me find parts of me. I was a gal who, before I even noticed it, had nothing but work defining me and when that was gone, I was lost. Through the library and farmers market, I was introduced to who I really am and who I would become and to the life I want to live: Curious and creative.

And, equally special and important: Connected. 

Both the library and the farmers market introduced me to my community. We made friends the farmers market in our fellow vendors and our customers. And our local library has become a part of our every day. A stack of books for both the kids and me is replaced every other week. The library is also a place to play thanks to the programming and fun amenities like computers and hands-on toys. 

And, the library was one of my many phone calls the morning after my brother died. I worried so much about my kids— now exposed to life’s cruel reality of death. They were so sad and completely understood what had happened— surprising me a bit. And yet, they still had so many questions. I asked the librarians for help in finding appropriate books for them on death. Within 24 hours, ten children books were on hold for me at our local branch and a kind, handwritten note of love and condolences was included for me.

The young man besides me smiles as he nods his head. “The farmers market and the library,” he repeats, “I am going to check both out.”

I smile, too, as I consider how my response had come so easily. Especially as I don’t love giving advice. It’s so… 

Specific? 

Often misguided? (Or, unsolicited.)

Preachy? 

But, even if his path wasn’t food or a garden as a career and business venture, it really was good advice for someone in their mid twenties as I was when I received it and I assumed this young man might be, too. It’s good advice for any one trying to make a place “home.” Even if that place is just themselves.

For weeks, my brother’s death had a way of making me feel like I knew absolutely nothing. But, with this young man, I knew this to be good and true and even helpful. 

In my early career, I spent more time than I care to admit reminding myself that I did know a lot more than I gave myself credit. Worry and even speculation would creep into a client or manager’s voice and I would start to get thrown only to play things like, “You have been right before, you will be right again” and “You are the expert. You know this” over and over in my head.

I didn’t need my brother to die to teach me something. I already knew a lot and even with all the “Why’s?,” the slippery ground, and actual “WTF’s?,” I still did. This was a great reminder.

For a while— even before Dan died— I have been dreaming of a book of all the meals that have made an impact on my life. I thought it could be a neat collection of essays and, in my mind, I was playing with idea of doing it around my 40th birthday. The idea of digging up 40 food stories from my life to make it cute: 40 for my 40th.

But, in light of the past eighteen months and tropes like, “Life is short” and “Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed,” screw 40. I am doing it now. But, thanks to this day in the coffee shop where the conversation was a little too true and little magic— two things I love— it will be a little different. 

(For one, it won’t be 40 food stories.)

On Tuesday’s I will share a lesson I have learned over my 35 years. Something I know to be good, true, and helpful. And, then on Friday’s I plan to share a food story from my life and it’s impact with a recipe. 

The thing I know? The Library.

The food story? The Farmers Market.

Because of the nature of life and how I know myself as a writer, I am not going to be too precious in editing. There is a chance that this will read more like a journal and definitely like a first draft. And, I am not going to get too bogged down in creating a new website, instead keeping them here on Bloom as a series as well as on Substack— a platform that I am learning is great for writers and that I know is great for readers. I am often there consuming content from my favorites. If all goes according to my loose plan for this project will wrap up at the end of the year. 

So, welcome to The Farmers Market and The Library.

In the deepest, darkest days of COVID, I think we all thought about what we would do as soon as it was “over.”

On my mind at the time?

International Travel— I spent a lot of time on Tuscany VRBO

Hug People, especially my parents

Host dinner parties

Make more of an effort to see plays and live music

But, perhaps the biggest “want-to-do” for me was to write for hours and hours in a busy coffee shop. 

Between a career in territory management with a home office and years of blogging, I became accustomed—and good— at the coffee shop work sesh. It was in a Starbucks that I purchased my first domain name. I drafted contracts in plenty of cool, college town haunts. And, I have logged lots of words at Panera’s. In the pandemic, I really missed the soft music, gentle chatter, warm smells and a caffeinating me alone with my computer.

Finally, on a cold, grey day in February 2022 I got my want. I was killing time before dinner with friends in Fountain Square, so I sat for a couple hours in one of my favorite coffee shops in the neighborhood— Bovaconti, for locals– and wrote.

The small, corner shop was surprisingly busy, especially for late afternoon, so I posted up on a bar stool at the ledge along a big window with a Golden Latte. A Golden Latte isn’t my normal order— it’s a little fancy and I am probably always a little too concerned about calories. But life that day wasn’t normal. I needed a little fancy and to not worry about calories. Not to mention, the yellow glow of the drink against the white cup gave me almost as much of a delight as the first sweet, spicy sip.

After a while, a young man came up to the stool beside me, the only empty seat, and asked if he could sit there. I narrowed my mild sprawl of drink, water, phone, and notecards to make sure he had enough room and welcomed him to the now tight ledge.

He set down his steaming, paper cup and pulled a notebook and pencil from his backpack. My eyes wondered. One, because that part of the fun of the coffee shop. Two, because I am nosey. I like overhearing the college gals gab about everything from Jesus to the kind of protection they are discussing with their partners. I like peaking at the doodles that cover someones homework or at what another person is reading. 

This young man’s notebook, covered in pencil scrawl, appears to be a journal full of long pages of words. I make out “I paid IUPUI $150 dollars!!” in angry letters. 

Oof. A parking ticket maybe? Been there, I suppose as I settle back into my own scribbles.

Time passes and eventually the young man turns to me slightly, eyeing my coffee shop detritus and asks, “What are you working on?”

I hesitate.

The gold flecked notecards I am stacking up every few minutes are “Thank You”notes. “Thank You” notes for the overwhelming amount of love I received in the form of food, flowers, cards and more in the previous few weeks. My little brother died just four weeks earlier. 

Does he really want to know?

Reading a bit of his energy— and noting that he is a young man with a journal— I decide he can handle it and I tell him the truth. 

Shock and sadness wash over the unassuming young man as he apologizes for my loss and that he asked. I assure him that it is totally fine that he asked and that I am sorry Dan died, too.

He looks at the notes and then back at me, probably feeling a little awkward. I smile a bit and offer, “But, what these notes are is really just evidence of great love.”

He nods, understanding and reading my energy that runs warm and open and he kindly— and cautiously— asks if I have learned anything from this.

I try not wince at the question. My sister and I had just talked about how we do feel changed, but not really sure how. Like the old us is gone and we don’t know who we are now. Our bedrock completely shaken by the explosion of the sudden loss of Danny.

But, have I learned? I try to think. Sure there are the cliches— the “You never know how much time you have” stuff and the “aging is not just a privilege— but, a gift” thing. But, I my friend lost her husband three years earlier, when he was just 32. Another lost her best friend when we were twenty three. I lost a job just as I was getting my footing in my career. I left another job in a season of burnout and knowing that “leaning out” was the best for my family and for me. I had births go very wrong and my whole foundation shaken and shifted thanks to the massive change that is motherhood.  

The “Live your best life now,” “Life is precious,” and “Hug your loved ones?” These are not lessons I needed to learn. I knew these things. I didn’t need the universe to give me “a lesson.” And, I especially didn’t love the idea of getting one through the death of one of the best people I had ever known. 

A bitter, “Hey, my brother, who happened to be the nicest, gentlest guy I knew, died and it was like a bomb went off in the lives of everyone I loved; but, I learned XYZ. So… worth it!” runs through my mind.

No.

And, no. With this kid, I don’t need to get that deep. Maybe a kid in his 20s could use these lessons that I had already learned so I mash up the lessons that feel like cliches to me in to a response: “I am at an age where getting older isn’t “fun” anymore. Signs of aging like wrinkles and grey hair are pain and show up every day. But, maybe they are actually the price of admission to more years. Years where I also get to see the joy and really good stuff. I will happily deal with some wrinkles for that.”

He smiles, “Yeah, I hear that. I am totally worried I am going bald so I keep combing my hair over afraid that people will see it; but really, does it even matter?”

I laugh. “I get just wanting to look like yourself, but… kind of seems like an okay trade, right? Hair for years?” Then I add, with a gleeful whisper that is my “big sister-ness” showing, “My little brother was totally going bald.” 

Then, going into full big sister mode, I decide to not let him get off so easy. I ask him about his journal.

“I am a writer, too” I offer. Something that feels weird for any writer to actually say out loud, but I hope it breaks the ice as I tell him about the new journal I brought earlier that day.

He dances around a hard time he had in 2019 finally settling on: “I didn’t like myself.” 

A piece of me softens. Danny had years like that, too.

Continuing, he told me how writing about his day and about his feelings has helped him. He said he loves this coffee shop near his home because writing here feels like he can have some human connection; but, also spend time with his thoughts. Working them out on paper and trying to find the pieces of himself that he likes.

“It’s good work,” I commend him with a smile, unable to also not think of Danny who found the pieces of himself that he liked best in recent years thanks to music. “You are the person you are going to have your longest relationship with. It’s good to try to like you.”

He comments on how I seem so wise. I laugh a little. “Years of older sister-ing at play,” I shrug.

“What is the best advice you have ever received?” he asks.

I think for a beat. Big question. I consider my thoughts, looking out the window to the funky record store across the street, stray flurries of snow flittering through the air.

Then, it comes easily: “Find the library and the farmers market.”

2023 will mark ten years of writing on the internet.

To all the women my exes dated after me? You’re welcome for this vast, easy to find and sometimes embarrassing digital footprint of mine.

There have been twists and turns, but for the most part there has been relative consistency here on the old “Blog Bloom.” At least relative consistency in just having something to share.

I used to try to make sure I didn’t go a month without a blog. Since having kids and no true ambition to be a bonafide influencer, it’s gotten looser. But still, for the last ten years, writing has been a constant in my life.

Until this year, that is.

This year opened with a hardship that I have not even shared here yet. My younger brother died suddenly on January 27, 2022 due to pulmonary edema while working out in a pool. He was a collegiate swimmer and we all grew up swimming. The cause and abrupt finality of his death prompted so many immediate questions and emotions, and they still do; but, they seem so basic compared to the questions and emotions the rest of the year would bring as I saw my family change, my parents change, my sister and my kids and myself change.

Because of this, writing was tricky. This felt like a gapping wound and felt so wrong to write about. But also, when I would try to write about it or me living it, it didn’t make sense. Was I supposed to have learned something? Because all I could find were cliches that I already knew. Was I supposed to become more kind and empathic? Or realize that I wasn’t in fact all that special because hardships like this are plenty? (A quick note: this was maybe the darkest hole to fall into… Perhaps more on this unhealthy place someday.) Was I supposed to create and *DO* something? Or, was it all pointless?

When it came to writing (and many other tasks), I spent so much of the year confused and a little distracted. I have so many unfinished thoughts in my phone’s Notes App that I sometimes wonder if I should take the time to edit them. Maybe make them into poems?

But, also in my notes app are two finished pieces of writing I did complete this year. With the exception of my normal freelance articles for larger sites, these are the only finished “personal” essays I wrote all year:

• Danny’s eulogy, that I wrote with my sister in the early morning hours the day of his funeral, unhappy with our (many) previous attempts.
• And, a toast for my great friend Betsy, given at her wedding reception just four months later in mid-June.

I received great feedback for the delivery and content of both. A handful of my best friends even got to witness both. Adam sobbed his face off for both, but that doesn’t say that much about the content. Me with a microphone tends to turn him into a puddle. (That and any video of a soldier coming home, surprising loved ones. Just incase you were curious what was Adam Trost Kryptonite.)

But, what strikes me today is how different yet similar a toast and a eulogy can be. A eulogy gets a bad rep because of the sadness, of course. And, while I don’t love their circumstances, I really like eulogies. Even before the loss of my brother, I could be heard touting my love for eulogies and desire to eulogize one another more while we are alive. And, I suppose that is what toasts are for. And, that’s probably why I love good toasts, why I love giving them and why, for whatever reason, I don’t see them to be terribly different. At the end of the day, both are meant to celebrate, honor, remember and love.

In writing that sentence, it’s even more clear why I enjoy eulogies and toasts so much. Celebrate, honor, remember and love are actions that I try to bring to life in the art that is my writing, but also the art that is my life.

And, for the most part, let’s say relatively consistently, I get it right.

Not always. There are times that it’s harder.

This year was one of those years. But, even in the confusion, the grief that showed up like anger at times, I wrote these two pieces to celebrate, honor, remember and love. Just like I have done– with relative consistency– for ten years and plan to do– with relative consistency– for as many more years as I get.

A New Years gift to you: Here are the transcripts to both Dan’s eulogy and Betsy and Charbel’s Toast. Both have good messages of living big and loving well that I hope you can carry into 2023 and beyond. (Please ignore short hand, spelling and typos for these were truly Notes App creations… God bless the notes app.)

Daniel Sullivan’s Eulogy delivered February 11, 2022 alongside Kerry Sullivan Smith in Holland, Michigan

Kerry and I alternated speaking nearly every paragraph and it was well balanced, but also so good for both of us.

Claire: Hello, for those of you who don’t know us, we are Kerry and Claire, Danny’s older sisters. And on behalf of our family we want to welcome you all to western Michigan, an area that is so incredibly near and dear to our family. (Mainly for its summers. So, please come back!) A few quick thank you’s before we begin. Thank you to everyone who has put today together: our parents, who have shown such grace throughout this time; Danny’s friends, who rallied together to build this beautiful, musical service; Father Stephen, our childhood priest from St. Patrick’s in Dublin, Ohio, and Father Jay, our priest from All Saint’s in Saugatuck. We are so humbled to see so many people come together to honor Danny, thank you.

Kerry: And, most importantly, thank you to all of you for being here and for those joining virtually. Whether you’ve known Danny all his life, are a former teammate, classmate, choral member or friend, thank you for loving Danny.

Claire: This is a place we never thought we would be and it’s incredibly hard— especially as Danny’s older siblings and especially at this stage of our lives. These past few weeks, we have reflected on how many incredible memories we shared together. Danny was such a surprise and delight, breaking up our very girly existence 27 years ago with all things boy. He brought us from our world of barbies and American Girl Dolls to his world of trains, superheroes, light sabers, and videogames. We found out quickly just how much one person added to our family, and how easily our identities became linked together as we built our ‘roles’ within the family and out in the world.

Kerry:

Claire – the oldest – a responsible, nurturing, wise older sister

Kerry – the middle child – a fierce, slightly accident prone, academic & athlete

Danny – the little brother – a curious, inquisitive, shy but goofy boy

Claire: Growing with both a brother and a sister felt complete. It also felt like an identifying feature of who we were.

The night Danny died we noticed a hole in our family immediately. It feels so silly to say that, and we know that Danny will always be our brother, but right away our family felt so much smaller. 

Kerry: Even though Danny was our little brother, he was so big in our lives. He lived big: swimming and learning and fighting for what was right. Picking up his life and moving across the planet for love. He sang and strummed and danced so big. He had the biggest heart and loved us all so big.

Claire: As condolences rang out in the last two weeks, a clear common thread of Dan’s kindness was apparent. And, it’s so true, Danny’s kindness was pure, and was not an exaggeration. In our own reflections, we’ve found that what perhaps was most remarkable about Danny’s kindness is how he invited us into it and anchored us to kindness, too.

Kerry: Without Danny, we could have easily become two sisters who fought about clothes and who was on the computer. Okay, so we did fight about that. But, it never lasted that long or even got that far because we had Danny to balance us. When we were kids, we loved each other in the way brothers and sisters are ‘supposed’ to love each other, but at the end of the day, we really did like each other, too.

Claire: Some of our best memories from childhood are when we would escape to the basement during one of mom’s many parties, get out the Nintendo 64, and race across Koupa Troupa beach in Mario Kart. In that basement, Kerry and I could shed our need for responsibility, coolness, and achievement and just be us. Danny, who brought us into his worlds and invited us into his kindness, was just happy to be there. Playing with our little brother allowed us to find bigger versions of our own selves – where we didnt have to be defined by any label. And, ultimately, we were happy to be there, too. Together.

Kerry: Our parents also loved going out for date nights—and struck up a deal with Claire that if she stayed home and played babysitter one night of the weekend, she could use the other to go out with friends. In those Friday nights in together, the three of us split frozen pizza and made root beer floats, relaxing from a week of preteen performance.

Claire: We also remember the family vacations where we shared the adjoining room or huddled up together on the pull out couch; laughing together over weeknight ice cream and cable TV—specific vacation-only treats.

Kerry: As we grew into adulthood, the brother-sister-supposed-to-kind-of-love fell away into true love, respect, and friendship. Danny lived with Claire and Adam for an entire summer while he was in college. He visited Dennis and me in New York, getting to know our friends on the east coast. Any time we were together under one roof, which admittedly became less often as we all moved to our own corners of the world, we again were all just happy to be there. Together. 

Claire: Some of the best last memories we have together were our cocktail hour serenades, where Danny would bring out his guitar and bring us into another one of his worlds. He strummed along to Wagon Wheel, Blackbird, and Mumford and Sons as we sipped wine, sang along, and danced with my children. In those moments, it was no longer just the three of us, but all of us—the wonderful people we all chosen as life partners, our parents, and now, the next generation of us.

Kerry: As we reflect on these memories, we also mourn the future memories we had already created in our mind’s eye. We were so looking forward to more cocktail hour serenades and time planned together this coming summer. We are grieving a slideshow that still plays in our imagination of what our lives together should have looked like.

Claire: Danny’s life was only getting bigger and better. We loved who he was becoming. A man of conviction and kindness. We couldn’t wait to be a part of it.

We have created so many drafts of this eulogy. Wanting to tie it up with a bow. To give a lesson or a meaning to this all, but we can’t make sense of it all. As older sisters we want to say something that will fix it and make this okay, but we are not okay.

Kerry: As much as his presence added to our family, his absence feels bigger. We know something big is missing in all of us. But, now, we can only do what big sisters do best: boss you all around a little (but, thanks to Danny, in the most kind of ways). 

Live in kindness. Live big. Take up space. Allow for others to do the same. Encourage your people to live as big as they can. 

Claire: You may not notice it when they are here, but take it from us, the void of space they leave behind is vast and wide, and felt immediately when they are gone.

We’ll miss you so big, Danny.

Toast for Betsy and Charbel Harb delivered June 17, 2022 in Cabo San Luca, Mexico

Hello! I am Claire Trost Betsy’s longtime friend. Over our 17 year friendship, I have had great opportunity to meet many of you. And anytime i have met a friend or family member of Betsy and Charbel’s, I have walked away feeling so energized and happy. You all are a great group and a true reflection of who Betsy and Charbel are. It has been such fun getting to spend these last few days together. If, by the off chance, we have not been introduced yet, please come find me on the dance floor and say “hi!”

Betsy and I were linked long ago when fate and luck would have us born in such a time, to parents such as ours and to land us at Purdue in the fall of 2005 in not just the same dorm but also same sorority. Thanks to a passion for romcoms, reality tv, and subbing ice cream for dinner a fast friendship was formed. Though Late nights out and meaningful nights in we grew from teenagers into our post graduate selves and the fraternities turned into broad ripple and our first apartments.

This seem small, even a bit of a cliche of female friendship, but underneath the road trips, lunches at just about every Martha Hoover restaurant concept in Indianapolis, and many calls and texts a foundation was laid and that is how we got to today… older, with more patina of life than our original fresh faced versions; but still so close. In a place where introducing myself as Betsy’s “friend” sometimes feels like too small of a word.

Because our foundation is made up a deep love and knowing of one another that has persisted through the years, bringing us so many great gifts, and is something i pray will always continue. 

For It was that loving, knowing when Betsy recognized that a young Adam Trost just might be a great match for me and encouraged him to ask me to a dance. A loving knowing that has lead to us being the best, toughest mirrors we have ever needed to look into. A loving knowing that Betsy needed to be a first phone call the morning my world had stopped turning just a little over four months ago.

And a loving knowing, when I knew Charbel would be in our lives for forever.

It was May 2019 and Kelsey and Kyle Kasting invited us to join them for Zoobilation— the zoo’s annual fundraiser. It’s a fancy evening requiring a blow out, a gown and a night downtown at the JW. Betsy asked if she could come hangout in our room while we got ready— sure! And if she could bring the man she has been seeing. Sure!

That night, after a drink and some great conversation in our room, we headed down to the lobby where we would part ways for the evening. As we walked, Charbel pulled me back from our group— now including the Kasting’s and Katie Thomas Glick, also here tonight— and he took the moment to say “I have heard so much about you. You mean so much to Betsy and I cannot wait to get to know you more.”

It was simple and kind, but also massively profound.  Like the best kind of lightning. Because what he actually said in that simple statement was “I am listening to Betsy. I hear what she values and what she loves. And I want to know and love them, too.”

He didn’t just want to love Betsy. He wanted to know and love everything about her.

Here’s a thing about my great friend Betsy that likely many of you are aware of: she is very easy to love. She is human sunshine— kind, giving, open, fun and filled with joy. But to really get to know her takes work. But… It’s great work. 

That night it was clear: charbel was up for the task… in fact, he was already on the job. 

And I walked out onto the streets of Indianapolis buzzing on more than just the champagne.

Like so many of us, the last couple years have left me asking “What matters?” When so much does, but also so much just doesn’t. 

There is a lot of very good work being done in the world, yes. But the best I can gather  is that this might be be some of the best work we ever do. It might be the whole freaking point. To be known and loved, yes. But also to take a front row seat to someone else’s life (maybe even a many someone’s— if you are really lucky) and have the great opportunity to know and love every little bit of them. All the good and even the bad. To bear witness to the past, present and future versions of a person and know and love every single piece of them. 

Because, you see, you have to have both. To be known, but not loved is sounds scary, lonely and kind of terrible.

And to just have love on it’s own— even though it might even sound great at first— that loooove thing. But, love without being known? It’s soda pop. Sweet, but not fulfilling. All passion but no truth. It’s not even love at all.

We need both and, in order to get the full benefit of this great gift, we have to be willing to do the work really know and love someone in return.

Charbel, thank you for doing the great work of knowing and loving my amazing friend Betsy. I have been saving you a seat here in the front row for a long time and i cannot wait to get to know and love the future version of you: her husband.

To everyone here tonight in beautiful Cabo San Lucas, Being known and loved is my greatest wish for all of you. But, especially for you two as we toast your fantastic Union. May you always feel known and loved by this great crowd of family and friends, but most importantly by one another. Cheers to being known and loved. Cheers to you, betsy and Charbel.

My sister just shared an Instagram reel full of highlights from the year and the caption began with, “It’s honestly a little stupid how much has changed in 2022.”

I giggled.

I giggled in part because I am a mom to a five and a six year old… I spend at least ten minutes each day exasperated, demanding those under five feet tall in my house to stop saying “stupid.”

The other part of the giggle was a weird, dark humor that lives in me.

And also because, she is not wrong.

This will read a little bit more like a newsletter than a homily (as my Dad calls my blogs– toasts and eulogies, too), but after a year like this one, let’s get caught up with all the changes.

First, the biggest and already discussed bomb in 2022 was the death of my brother. Danny had been living in Vietnam for a year, moving there at the start of 2021 to be with his long, long distance girlfriend of a couple years. I am still working on untangling the grief and trauma of the night he died– experiencing so much of it even just through the phone as I was the one who initially got the call and had to deliver the news– again, over the phone– breaking the hearts of my family.

Guiding kids through this has been hard, a learning curve and also a great opportunity for good conversations for us. I am sure I am not doing things 100% right, but I feel content where my kids are in processing. It’s weird and I have a half-baked Notes App thought on how Danny may kind of be more like a “grandfather” of a memory for my kids. Something like how it’s not terribly unusual for a grandfather to pass away in the early years of a child’s life and yet their life is marked by his legacy and mutual, unconditional love despite him not having a big, living “role” in the story of their lives. There is something like peace, but also anger there for me. Got to work it out more…

See? There is something, sorta there in those Notes… despite the fog of the year and grief.

In terms of tangible things that I did learn from Dan’s death, there is one diamond in this mud that I can give to you today: Set up an Apple legacy contact on your phone.

We could not access Danny’s Apple devices for MONTHS and not without the help of lawyers and Apple’s legal team. It is easy to do: Go to settings. Tap your name. Tap password and security, then tap Apple Legacy. Add Legacy contact. It will ask your to authenticate and will send a text to the person you choose. This person will have access to all your Apple devices in the event that you pass away.

This seems weird because… privacy! But, when someone is gone you would love to see the world though their photo lens again. To hear their voice memos– especially if they are a musician like Dan.

My sister is my legacy and she is under strict order to make the call of either burning or publishing my Notes App. She has better judgement than almost anyone I know… So, only time and fate will tell.

As mentioned in Part 1, my year pendulum swung from what will likely go down as one of the saddest events of my life, to one of the happiest: my great friend Betsy got married in June in Mexico and I was the Maid of Honor.

It was an event! There were celebrations all spring as we geared up for the big day. Betsy knows, but serving as a Maid of Honor in the season of mourning my brother was really hard for me. Not because I was not happy for her; but, I hated that the slowness and hardships of me moving through mud served as the backdrop for that season. It was not easy and there were a few other elements that felt like loss on top of loss when slugging through.

However, once we were in Mexico with so many great college friends I was reminded of the sunshine that is always found in life and my great friend. (I even had to bring it into the toast!) Her committing to forever with her great, long awaited love, the Mexico sun and a morning laughing while doing (kind of racy) water aerobics– all while drinking champagne!– with my longtime best friends made me finally feel lighter and sunnier, too.

In July we gathered in Michigan again for Danny’s burial. My parents found a plot in Saugatuck and we planted a tree where we spread his ashes. The week or so leading up to this was heavy and strange for my whole family. I had actual physical pain that prompted me to get tested for everything from pregnancy to Lyme disease. My parents were also not sleeping well. My dad calling his own mood “dark.” #relatable Kerry was exhausted, too. I am learning that bodies can and do respond to psychological pain in physical ways… and it just sucks.

(As I write this, I am still feeling the effects of this from Christmas and perhaps even as we open up into a New Year– in so many ways ready to say “good riddance” to 2022; but, also keenly aware that time is passing and that 2023 is a year that Dan will have never seen.)

And then… Even before Danny died, back in later 2021, an idea began percolating: Adam was approached to potentially purchase a business similar to the one we purchased from his parents a few years ago. Like his own dad, the owner was looking to retire and needed a buyer.

Strategically, the location made a lot of sense. And professionally, it made a lot of sense. Adam wants to grow the business. He wants to give his current employees opportunities to grow, too.

But, it would potentially require a move from our home in order to give the new location more attention to get totally up and running.

In a weird world of fate or irony or just the natural pull to look for such a thing, hours before I got the call about Danny I was driving around Lafayette and West Lafayette after a meeting at Purdue. I was just checking out neighborhoods and plots of land I had seen on Zillow. I drove by a couple schools and started to play around with the idea of living there. The area is close to I-65 and State Route 26, the roads that would connect the would be three locations of Adam’s business.

Danny had just started his second semester in his studies for his Masters online with Purdue. In my daydreams that afternoon– perhaps even while a clot was taking the shape of a bullet that would enter his lung– I saw him and his girlfriend even moving there, too. Embracing the international impact of Purdue and living a musical and academic life in the neighborhoods close to campus, while we were further out of town… but, still in the same town. A quick drive away. Weeknight dinners and Sunday cookouts becoming a regular part of our lives.

And yet, the day continued and the daydream turned to a nightmare of moments that became our reality. But, as it does, life goes on and we kept working out details and learning from the seller of the business and kept a pulse on Zillow.

In late July we thought the deal was lost. I brought in contractors to quote finishing the basement and we also talked a lot about putting in a pool. If we weren’t moving, we were going to really make our home “home.”

But, then the pendulum swung again. The deal was back on and we need to be in the Lafayette area. My friend Laura sent me a link to a home that was in the neighborhood of her old boss and was going on the market the next morning: Danny’s Birthday.

We booked a showing, already losing a home we loved a couple weeks before due to the wild market.

The home wasn’t anything special; and yet, it was special. It was so different than our home; and yet, it felt like home.

We weren’t in a hurry, but if we had to move this seemed like the right place. We low balled an offer and just before Purdue kicked off at the first game of the season a text came through my phone letting us know the offer was accepted and we were in fact moving– soon.

Moving was the right move and really exciting, of course. Tons of work, too. But, also really sad.

Adam and I picked out the plans for our home when we were engaged in 2010. We studied books and online plans for weeks, settling on what would become ours with a few tweaks. (Omitting a tub for a bigger closet– things that a decade later I would have done differently.) Adam served as contractor as we built the home. He laid the floors. We painted the walls together after work in the early days of our marriage until daylight ran out since the electrical wasn’t in yet. We picked out every little element ourselves finally moving in in January 2013.

We planted every tree, including fruit trees for each kid, and dug the garden that lead to this blog and that would lead to the farm business we created completely from scratch, converting the once conventionally farmed land back to pasture, installing fencing and raising animals.

We didn’t just have to say goodbye to that house, we had to say goodbye to the farm, too. It was a lot of work and there are parts of me glad to have a little more free time and less responsibility, no doubt. But, updating the website this week letting visitors know that we are no longer in business was surprisingly sad. It felt a little like a let down to other people, but also like the closing of a big, important and good chapter. A chapter that could have been great for a long time, had that been the case but, life swung us another way.

This swing also came at a time that after the baby years and then the pandemic years, I felt like I was making friends regularly. What was neat about these friends was that it wasn’t a friend because of Adam’s history with them or their partner– something that happens when you move to your partner’s hometown. These were I made on my own. They were my friends because they wanted to be friends, too. That was special and exciting and really sad to leave behind.

By November, we were moved out. We are now in a 1980s home with a great layout and “opportunities” for more “style,” settled on a half acre, in a neighborhood and all in new schools. Adam is busy and stressed, but thriving with the new challenges for his career. The kids love the neighborhood and the ability for a quick game of soccer with the boys next door. Even Koda, our dog, loves the stimulation of the new place.

My role in the business is now less defined as the new location brought in the need for Adam’s sister, better suited for the full time and detailed nature of managing the books. So, career wise, I feel a little like I am treading water– available, but unsure what is needed or what direction I might go next. Who knows what “swing” may be in store for me here? But, kindly a group of women in the new neighborhood added me to their group text and invites me for walks and coffee. Maybe the pause is good.

So, TL;DR?

I started the year with a job, longtime home, and brother… and I am ending it totally differently. Crazy, stupid, and some very good and some very terrible changes.

A note: Kerry’s stupid changes? A new house for her, too! A new job for both her and her husband! And… she is pregnant!

PS- I also would be remiss to not mention in my “newsletter” a great trip to Napa with my grade school friends. It was one of those things where we have been talking about a “trip” for ages and that becomes routine. But then my amazing friend, Meghan just said, “Listen. Just book your flights. I have the rest.” She planned a quick, amazing weekend that made me feel so lucky. Lucky to be in such a beautiful place and lucky to have those great girls in my life for the last twenty plus years. If you and yours are always “talking” about it, plan the trip. Might I recommend Napa? I feel like we just barely scratched the surface. I am looking forward to going back.

So now–by a hair– I can say, ten years of writing here on dear old Bloom.

Relatively consistent, but no bonafide blogger.

You know who would have been a bonafide blogger? My grandmother.

She would have been a Pinterest Queen. She loved crafts and hand lettering. Her Christmas cards were handmade each year. She was a professionally trained singer with style. She dressed my mom and her sister like dolls (as long as she could– my free spirit aunt once vowed to give up wearing shoes for Lent!). She wrote, illustrated and self published children’s books and even her own memoir.

I have been thinking about her lately. A little bit because of this children’s book thing. I have two children’s books of my own completely written, but not illustrated. I have since 2020. But, I have not done anything with them. One of the cliches I see in Dan’s death– something I knew, but clearly don’t put into action– is to share your talents, do things imperfectly and live your dreams now. I should, and I want to, and I could get these books to the finish line.

For so long I wanted Danny to make a YouTube channel of him playing the guitar just so I could access it for my kids. Danny made the channel but was so slow in getting songs up there. I didn’t understand and got frustrated with his desire for better “sound” and perfect takes. He had tons of songs in his repertoire, but only two on his YouTube channel. Perhaps that’s a lesson for all of us in this? Listen to your bossy, frustrated sister.

But more so lately my thoughts about my Grandmother have been about her self published memoir that she titled, “Life on a Rainbow.” I remember seeing it in her home and then in her room in the Alzheimer’s unit. My cousin read an excerpt from it at her funeral. But, I have never read it and I don’t even clearly remember the piece from her funeral. I think it might be poems. But, I wonder if it was essays, too? I wonder a bit about her gumption and desire to write it. But more so, these days I am wondering about the title.

Why that?

Why “on” a rainbow? What does she mean by that?

She was a woman who lived a, no doubt, blessed life, saying in her final years that here was not one day of her life that she didn’t feel loved. She was an only child– which comes with it’s privileges; but, also likely loneliness and longing. She is a child of The Great Depression that left its mark on her for the duration of her life. She was a musician and a faithful christian. She was a mother, traveler, memory keeper, volunteer and sports fan.

Was the “on the rainbow” a musicians play on “over the rainbow?” Was it a journey story, not yet to the end of the rainbow and the legendary “gold?” Was it an overly cheery look at life and all its bright, gorgeous colors that might make my eyes roll? I still want to know.

And also, not to sound totally like Kermit; but, why are we all so hung up on rainbows?

I mean, I get the appeal. There is something magic in them that require us to have to look. If you are in the car with someone else and don’t say, “Wow! Look at that rainbow!” when you spot one, I worry you might be a sociopath. Or, blind.

They are quick to cause wonder even when driving alone.

Once when driving south on I-31, through the northern Indianapolis suburbs, I was taken by a rainbow that seemed to run the same line of highway I was traveling. Splitting the east side of my view from the west nearly perfectly. But, what was more striking than the rainbow was how the view to the east was the darkest blue. Lightning bolts still danced across the sky and the strength and danger of the storm was still so clear. While to my right, the west, the place where the storm had just been, was bright and sunny. Skies a pleasant blue. Other than a little glistening in the puddles of leftover rain, it all looked fine. Not like this huge storm had just plowed right through.

The obvious Pinterest quote here? You need rain to have rainbows.

But really, you need both rain and sun to have rainbows. And, when you really see it, what a thin line a rainbow really is between bright blue and the darkest of dark skies.

So maybe this is Life on A Rainbow? Even if it’s not Grandy’s, maybe it’s mine.

Maybe this year has been Life on a Rainbow.

Living life in a place where I can see so clearly see, feel and still fear the storm. But, also a place that can easily swing to so much goodness and sunny skies. A place where eulogies and toasts are in fact quite similar. A place where chapters close and it is good and right and sad and hard at the same time. A place where grief is anger and sadness swirling together separated from joy and gratitude by only the thinest of margins. Life on a Rainbow is perhaps where the worst days and the best days exist together.

Join me in 2023 and wherever the next ten years takes us, where I plan to paint the world with the colors on this rainbow as well as with celebration, honor, remembrance and love to make this gift of a life the most beautiful art we are capable of.

… Maybe I will start in my Notes App.

I am a part of the Coffee+Crumbs creative community, Exhale. It’s a great group of women creators and serves us with community, lessons in craft (I took a poetry class in the spring), and writing inspiration. A couple weeks ago a prompt of “I love…” was started by Ashlee Gadd, Exhale’s creator. Over the last few days, my feed has filled with notes on what all these women love. Coffee. Babies. Flowers. Warm, clean sheets.

On the surface, it’s obviously been a great departure from clatter of my feed in more recent weeks. Politics, opinions, constant content, gift guides and even pop culture— one of my loves— was all getting a little noisy.

These lists, almost like poems have been a delight. A place to get to know my internet, writer friends more. To remind myself of the things I love as I found myself thinking about good pens or the car windows down and saying, “Oh yeah. I love that, too.”

In my last blog I mentioned dulling things I loved because I was afraid a career woman shouldn’t love fashion. Or a mom shouldn’t love celebrity gossip. If it was society thing or my own imagination of what a certain kind of woman should be, I am not sure; but, I stopped sharing the things I loved. I stopped leading with them. I stopped even thinking about them. And, I wasn’t the only one.

So many of us— men and women— are burying the things we love because we feel like we can’t because of our age and our roles. We are not even giving ourselves the opportunity to really think about what we love— you know, with all this adulting we have to do. But, also because of embarrassment. Or fear of what we love seeming trivial. Or worse, too deep. And who would want to feel that?

Me. 

I want to turn my life into art and dazzle in the things that delight me. I want to see and feel all the little and big things that I love.

So, I hopped on the train. Here are (just a few of) the things I love. 

I love the sun. I love finding golden glints of it in the morning. Soaking in it on vacation or on the hottest day of the year. I love it in the bitter cold, too. I love my kids playing in it, making animals in the shadows with Adam. I love it when the sun sets. Especially over lake Michigan or in my own backyard. 

I love the midwest. I love the seasons. The food. The ability to park wherever I want. The people.

I really love late summer. A diet consisting of mainly tomatoes. Dewy mornings and hot days. The first bit of chill reminding us that things are changing.

I love a coffee shop and a chickey place for lunch. The kind that serves arugula salads and quiche. I love bookstores and the library. Paper Source, Anthropologie and flower and plant shops. I love how the office supply section at Target makes me feel like I can do anything.

I love podcasts and audio books. I love hearing someone geek out or teach me something new because I love to learn. I love passing my time with someone interesting in my ears.

I love my home. I spend time lamenting it’s new construction feel and lack of character or established trees, but I love what we have created from dirt. This space, the garden, the farm, our family.

I love the smell when you come home to the crock pot cooking all day. And, I really love when I am the one cooking all day. I love mincing garlic. The smash of the clove and the rocking of the knife. The sizzle as it hits the pan, aroma mixing with crushed red pepper as it tans.

I love a night in, red wine, candles, slow moody music, snacks, snuggles and sweatpants. I love a sparkly dress and spritz of perfume and some where fantastic to be. A play, a fancy dinner, a big wedding. I love the trill of the first sip of champagne. 

I love toasts. I love giving toasts. (Probably because I kind of love a microphone.) I love loving those I love and putting it into words.

I love nostalgia and memory. I love that some of the people closest to me are those that I can feel nostalgic and laugh at memories with. I love that these people have made a silent pact with me to honor our past— even if it included bangs and braces— and to come along for everything that the future might bring.

I love my sorority for the greatest gift it gave me: my people. But, I also love my sorority and it’s legacy and lessons of finding beauty in the common things of life.

I love Purdue. I love it on a sticky August day pulsing with the excitement of a new school year. I love it in the fall, a colorful carpet of leaves covering the ground and the buzz of game day. I love it at Christmas and will go out of my way to stop in The Union to marvel at the tree until I am an old woman. I love the fight song and how the words reflect my feelings on my time and the people I found there: Ever grateful. Ever true.

Speaking of, I love Christmas trees. The bigger the better. The smell. The twinkle. The quiet with it in the room. And, I really love taking it all down. 

I love that the reason my dad loves blue and green is because of the beauty of trees against the sky in the summer. Some thing he said he learned to love as a teenager working as a life guard, and so did I. I love my mom’s effort in memory making. The vacations she planned, the parties she hosted, the meals she made magic just with her love… and special laugh.

I love family inside jokes… any my siblings will get that one. I love that.

I love when Savannah communicates with her forehead and says things like “actually.” I love her drawings of people— big heads and little bodies. And I love how she colors in everything as if it’s a rainbow unable to choose just one color for the leaf, the shoe, the heart.

I love that Theo is a singer, a softy and a snuggler, still clinging to me like a starfish every night.

I love that Adam is the most loyal friend anyone could ever have— loving deeply all those close to him, caring a lot and never giving up. He is steady. A man of few words and if he does speak up, it matters. And I really love that of all people, he chose manic, wordy me to be his best friend.

I love musicals, sarcasm, trashy TV and the most bubblegum pop song you could think of. But, I also love poetry and prose. I love truth and heartfelt words. I love that moment when I know those words about to wreck me so hard that I have to stop reading, listening or writing to breathe, take a moment and regroup. I love that I carry both of these truths. 

I love that I carry all of these loves. 

I love to love.

Don’t you?

Totally random, but kind of fun… I did a “love list” like this in college. And, so I found my old computer from 2005-2009, recovered the list and I am sharing pieces of it on today’s podcast. It’s a journey and not entirely a great one. But, it is important to recall who we were at a moment in time. If you want to laugh about they things that delighted a superficial nineteen year old in the aughts, hop on over to Apple Podcasts.

As we prepare for the rerelease, I was listening to “Every Single Album’s” deep dive into Taylor Swift’s Red. The album is great, obviously. A journey through a break up ending full of ballads and dance bops.

It’s hard for me to play favorites with Taylor’s songs and even her albums. Each has a “mood” and as far as songs go, so many were important to me starting with the illegally leaked, “Tim McGraw,” which I found on Limewire freshman year of college. In “Tim McGraw,” I found so much of me in her lyrics and was instantly brought to her fandom.

So, I am thrilled for her rereleases and her owning her whole discography. I am planning a very cozy listening party with a couple fan-friends in November the weekend Red comes out. In the Red album, I really, really like some of the slower, acoustic versions of the songs like “Treacherous” and “State of Grace.” I feel like “Holy Ground” is an underrated bop. Unpopular opinion: I think “The Moment I Knew” is sadder than “All Too Well.” And, I always loved the title track, “Red.”

Like Taylor, I also think about feelings and people as if they are colors. I have for a long time. What I didn’t realize was that there is a word for this: synesthesia.

My sister, Kerry, and I got to talking about synesthesia and she was 1. fascinated and then, 2. Curious what color she was.

The first time I talked outloud about my ability to read colors it was Kerry’s color. And, it was my first realization that not all people feel colors for people like I do.

I was in college and people would ask about siblings and life at home. There would be conversations with friends about how we differed from our sisters and brother and I recall telling my friends, “Well, Kerry is more a maroon compared to my hot pink.”

Stares.

I went on to explain my feelings: Kerry is smart and a focused athlete. She is traditional in style and demeanor. She is more fall to my summer. She drank coffee and tea. She read long, smart books and had good longtime friends. She liked cool, moody music that would never be on Casey Kasum’s Top 40. She is prep school maroon.

I wanted to be more maroon. But, I was hot pink.

I liked magazines, parties and celebrity gossip. I lived for fashion trends, talking on the phone, reality TV and pop and country music. (See Also: Taylor Swift.) I thought because I liked these things I couldn’t possibly be maroon. Moreover, because these interests of mine were deemed superficial by so many, I felt that meant I couldn’t possibly be smart either.

My hot pink compared to maroon felt cheap, tacky and manic, all real fears of who I might be. So, sometimes I dulled these things even though they were things I loved. They didn’t seem like things a career woman should enjoy. Or, a mom should be into.

As I am growing up and learning so much more about how things are almost always never black and white, I am learning that I am not just hot pink. Liking the seemingly superficial, doesn’t make me “dumb.” In fact, as I look into my interests now and even who I was in college when I made the comment outloud, I on US Weekly’s website or listening to Taylor Swift lyrics, yes. But, I was always digging in so much deeper. I was gaining words and understanding for my relationships and others around me. I was curious to know more. I could take a column about Hillary Duff and Lindsey Lohan and have a seed planted in my mind about body image or even wealth and knew it represented more than just gossip. I could feel something in Taylors figurative language and analyze it in my mind like an AP Lit assignment. (Still can… and do.)

An interest or belief in one thing doesn’t mean just one thing. We all contain multitudes. We should be allowed to explored and show these many sides of us.

Just like how Kerry is still very maroon. But, also a cheery mustard yellow and even some earthy evergreen. As for me, I recently made this piece of art using a palate knife and so many shades of pink– from nearly white to deep maroon– to bring to life the many shades of me.

Leaning into my son, jamming on the air guitar, I sing the lyrics along with him. My daughter, pulling the move we called “Happy Feet” growing up (well before the animated penguins), moves her feet so fast and joyfully to the music and I can’t help but laugh out loud. Hits from “Powerline,” the pop sensation from Disney’s The Goofy Movie play out of my phone as my husband emphatically taps the beat with his fingers on the edge of the table. 

I smile thinking of all my dreams of “family.” Dreams of Christmas traditions, memorable vacations, the future wedding and retirement parties celebrating all that we had built together. Of all of my dreams, the after dinner dance party is a favorite and watching it play out in real life feels like a memory I want to bottle every time. To somehow capture and hang onto the magic of this moment, a reminder of fun and togetherness. I send up a prayer for my kids to always remember the dinners that ended with music and cool moves and think, “In my family, this is just what we do.”

The soundtrack moves on to the next track. I pick up plates, still humming along, and carry them to the sink. Habit has me reach for my phone on my way back in to the dining room. My thumb hops on the well traveled track to my Facebook app and taps. 

There has been an accident.

Two local teenagers, on their way to Prom, were killed.

Disney music still croons from the phone in my hand as I am overcome with sadness and my mood completely shifts. The music and dancing are now something I can’t do, even though they came so easy just seconds before.

“Oh my god,” I say out loud, getting the attention of my husband and share the news with him.

He takes the kids into the living room, knowing highly sensitive me well enough to know the party is over.

As I take on the dishes, small tears burn on my under eyes. I didn’t know these kids or their parents. They were in a community close by, but not ours. Yet, this news crushed me.

It’s a strange place to be, I consider, sandwiched fifteen years since my Prom and fifteen years until my kids go to theirs. I am so easily both the student and the parent in my active, emotive imagination. With little effort I can be in both places, remembering my own Prom night so vividly. The stress I felt as my hair appointment ran too long, leading me fumbling into my dress at the last minute and not loving how I looked. My high school boyfriend, in a tux and his dad’s car, assuring me I was beautiful. The thrill of feeling grown up out to dinner, dancing at the downtown venue and lots of late night kissing. 

But also, my breath catches as I clearly can see my own daughter on the landing of the stairs we walk up and down every day. She’s stopped for a photo, while I— as well as a young man in a tux beside me— are certain there is nothing more beautiful. I imagine sending her into that boy’s dad’s car, excited for her to experience what should be the magic of dinner, dancing and late night kissing.

________________

“Maybe we aren’t supposed to see so much,” my friends voice echos through the speakers in my car.

The two of us, always finding our way into deep, existential conversations, even in the casual report from me on how I was completely taken down by the news of the two kids who died on the way to Prom.

She continued, “It’s terrible what happened. And because it happened in our community, we would know about it, but all the other tragedy that happens day in and day out? I just don’t think we were meant to see all of that. We aren’t meant to hold all of that. It used to be that we didn’t have super computer’s in our hands and we couldn’t see it all.”

It’s a well discussed conundrum: Is the world getting worse? Or, are we just seeing more because of the “super computers” in our hands?

If you go looking for it, statistics point to many signs that the world is in fact getting “better.” Extreme poverty is lower than it ever has been, child mortality is up, more people are educated than ever before and even things like violent crime is down. But, those things are harder to see— or even get too excited about— when the last year was filled stats on COVID deaths, data on traffic stops that ended in violence, the numbers on how the pandemic drastically and disproportionality impacting those less privileged, and the dismal trends on “happiness” amid isolation. They get even harder when in more recent months, “getting back to normal” means scenes of passengers yelling at flight attendants, ransomware attacks threatening every part of our country’s infrastructure and back to back to back mass shootings. 

And, if that wasn’t enough, we are also constantly available to the clangor of the ever present ways children die in pools, their beds and the womb; To the notice that home invasions, weather disasters and cancer can happen anytime and to anyone; and, that any should-be magical night can and sometimes does end in tragedy. These sad realities have been just that— sad and realities— for decades, but now we can see it all and have to find a way to hold space for the emotion that comes with them. 

Many days it feels like too much. It grinds me down and I don’t love feeling like this. But, then I consider speaking back to her, “Yes. But, my phone has also been such a life line this year. Can you imagine quarantine without it?”

That super computer in my hand also delivered so much good news. It taught me things and made me laugh. It helped me feel connected to a friend who started cooking classes over zoom, to other creatives trying to write or draw when inspiration felt hard to come by and to my own parents who I missed so, so much.

“No, not at all” my friend immediately agrees, clearly thinking of similar things to me. “It’s definitly one of those ‘both/and’ things”

For all that makes me want to throw my phone against the wall, the desire for a boost of serotonin or hope of connection has me reaching for that super computer more than I care to admit. Both of these things are true and it’s just what I do.

_______________

The muffled rush of water sounds cueing the start of the dishwasher’s cycle. I set my palms down on the counter to take a deep breath. I still have to bake a cake, I remind myself.

Ten minutes earlier it was a task I happily placed after bedtime. Now, with the weight of this sadness, it seems a lot harder to complete. 

Chocolate Oreo cake, at the request of my newly five year old. I could put it off until the morning, I think. Or, go buy one. Other people do that all the time.

I consider it as I can already hear the other moms at the party. The comments like, “You made this?” and  “You are so good” were sure to ring out in tones that are always hard to discern from judgment or compliment. But, that something I am used to. 

While not skilled in much that translates well to a real profession like nursing or teaching or accounting, I do cook and bake well. Not to mention, I have opinions about cake thanks to spending every other weekend in my twenties at a wedding. Cake baking also was a balm to 2020 as I experimented different piping tips and flavors for each family member’s quarantined birthday in an effort to make it all a little more fun.

I like baking cakes so, I make my own. It’s what just I do.

I also like that I have reached a point in life and in parenting where I not only know what I like and what I am good at, but also now have the perspective to know that no one is killing it in all things at all times. With both of these beliefs also comes the awareness to know and see that the part where one mom shines, be it her stylish clothes, workout routine, stunning living room or hand made cakes, is what she likes and is what she is good at. It’s a part of that woman’s heart.

I believe that of all the parts of women that are completely broken and changed in the radical transformation into motherhood, our hearts bear the biggest transformation. Our hearts are different because as a girl and into young adulthood, I felt it was important to hide my emotion and would work very hard to never cry, even when things were even clearly sad. Now, I cry often and easily. And, I feel a whole lot. 

But also, there are parts of our hearts that are still there. Before motherhood, I followed any and every interest from writing and art to gardening to fashion and into the kitchen. Now, I do what I can just like the many moms around me, to keep the pilot light of the things that fuel our passions on. For me, that looks like baking birthday cakes. 

And, then there are parts of our hearts that never make their way back to us. Instead, they walk around in the world in beautiful little humans who are going to school, are influenced by media on phones and attend prom. This is tough because, as their parents, we are so aware of darkness of the world and all its sharp edges; but, we send them out there anyways. It’s just what we do.

We send them out there because despite all our awareness of the bad, we know there is good out there too. This wild world, like the phones in our pocket, is a ‘both/and’ thing. It is so scary and yet also so beautiful. Both of these at the exact same time.

So maybe, for all that is hard, that is why there are also cute boys to dance with on Saturday nights at seventeen. And, if you are lucky, again at thirty three.

And, I think swiping my index finger across a spatula, sampling some Oreo speckled icing, really good cake, too.

•