Yesterday morning I was lying on my front lawn, face to the sky, trying to decide what kind of lawn mower I needed to buy. The hedge clippers beside me were my perfectly illogical stand-in for a mower.

The grass felt silky and the light was in between, not quite sunrise. After my husband died, I disappeared into myself. Grief can make you feel small without you noticing. But something shifted. Just like when I was in my teens, my latest decade is about self discovery and trying on new identities. My friend, Sheila, told me I would become many new versions of me. “Try them all on,” she said. And I have, reclaiming pieces of the girl I used to be, the one who tried things simply because she could.

“Have you lost your filter?” someone might ask.

No, I have not. I have simply moved past the territory of complying, fading away, bending to stereotypes, and into the frontier of being true-blue. It is an independence our grandmothers rarely had the social permission to claim.

So there I was, completely content on the grass, testing out a gymnast-level lying leg tuck. My doctor may call it a functional fitness test, but for me it is the ultimate age defier.

You begin the maneuver with the enthusiasm of a gymnast. One leg stays long, a steady anchor. The other begins its ambitious journey.

You hoist the active leg, guiding the thigh to drape over its partner, twisting the pelvis just so, until, with a final rotation, the sole of that foot meets the surface on the other side. Squarely. Flat. Unmistakable.

In that moment, I was not a widow with a lawn mower dilemna. I was the fourteen-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on my bed, folded into herself like origami. That girl is still present. I just needed to shake her awake.

It is a hilarious, private flex, a physical middle finger to the concept of time. As I admired the sky, twisted into a human knot, feeling a deep, satisfying flexibility, I heard a voice.

“Oh God, maybe I have lost it,” I said to myself.

I looked over and saw my beloved neighbor, her beautiful lab puppy, and what appeared to be two cups of coffee headed my way.

She was half whispering, half calling my name as she moved low to the ground, stealth like, as though entering a stakeout.

“Bren,” she said, “are you okay?”

For the first time, I realized how ridiculous I must look. I laughed out loud, my hand over my mouth because the sun was not quite up yet. It was trying too.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as I raised myself up and gratefully accepted the coffee she offered.

She looked at me, then at the hedge clippers, with a half smile and a half concerned glance. Laughing, I explained that I was planning to trim my lawn with hedge clippers while contemplating what kind of mower to buy. But in between, I could not help noticing the sky.

Coffee cups in hand, we both lay down on my front lawn, and taking a cue from us, her puppy did the same. We were silent for a moment, admiring the beautiful pink, crushed-rose hue that had appeared for the second day in a row.

Then she said,

“You should buy an electric mower. Make sure it is light so it does not catapult you across the lawn.”

I smiled to myself. I am pretty sure me winging wildly across my lawn with an electric mower would look normal compared to tucking myself into the blades of grass. Remembering my newly defiant, non-compliant emerging self, I said,

“Our neighbors will think we are nuts.”

She smiled and said, “Who cares, let them. And you are the nicest, most fun neighbor I have ever had. Please never move.”

Later that day, her son mowed my lawn and I ordered my mower. As the sun set, I felt an odd freedom I had not felt in a long time.

Turns out I am not finished with myself yet. Not even close.

She is a collector of words.

Holding each one in her palm

with the fragile care of a baby bird.

At night, she wraps them in satin,

sleeping softly beside their quiet breathing,

dreaming in spoken sounds,

verbal watercolors of deep affection

her heart knows to be true,

words she tends until once more they rise warm and real against her skin.

Morning arrives, and she uncovers them gently,

guiding them out to find their place

in a world where she remains,

forever,

an incurable romantic.

When she weeps, her tears do not break her;

they only wash her eyes clean,

so she can see how to believe in love again.

Your eyes are your doorway,

make them soft,

corners gathering, tiny creases,

the flush of your cheeks,

drinking in the light of another,

like night-blooming flowers,

widening, wondering,

silently confessing that what is being beheld

is vast, intoxicating, and worthy of space.

Let those tiny windows be the tenderness,

that unique,

unrepeatable essence,

the path to your heart,

of who you are.

Allow your flaws, your struggle,

and vulnerability,

the terrifying, beautiful space where we stop hiding

and finally let ourselves be truly loved.

We are not perfection,

but what we have always owned freely

and completely,

a gentle power

creating beautiful ripples,

profoundly, wordlessly,

transforming our gaze into love,

holding someone exactly as they are,

the most enchanting alchemy,

the moment where souls touch

without a single syllable spoken.

It’s funny how we are undone by the familiar,

as familiar as the grip of a steering wheel,

except it is all new to me again,

in a way I haven’t felt since I was sixteen,

sitting on the driver’s ed wall,

waiting for independence to begin.

I deposited my girl, my friend, my chosen family at the curb,

leaving her to the restless pulse of the terminal.

I watched the strangers: the early‑risers and the dreamers,

and wondered if I could spot the desperado,

Banderas would be the lead,

where do such random notions emerge?

Am I dreaming... imagining

something wild and cinematic

in a place that is aggressively mundane?

Who was chasing a tropical isle or homecoming.

I peered at them and wondered

who was flying toward a beginning,

and who was traveling toward a painful reckoning,

the finality of letting go.

We never know the hidden cargo of another heart

with just a glance.

Then I began the drive back.

The road was an empty ribbon,

like the sky had swept the horizon clean,

a brushstroke of crushed rose and amber.

A pink morning makes me feel as though anything is still possible.

Why do the most beautiful things have to be temporary?

Even with the spilled hope of a bright new day,

highways are lonelier when you’re the one behind the wheel.

The steadiness of the tires only reminds you

how bumpy the path has been.

I talked out loud to you today

wondering where you were.

Now, the front door key turns

into a strangely specific kind of stillness.

I am back in the quiet,

wishing the engine were still running

just to drown out the fact

that I cannot hear your voice.

The cards were stacked before the deal, a blueprint drawn in invisible ink.

No familiar eyes to trace, no mini me to find,

but life has a funny way of winking when you’re about to blink.

The doc’s news was sharp, the tears were real,

but he said, I’ve got you, Boo,

and signed the Mother’s Day cards from the puppies in a messy, paw printed hue.

(I laughed, because what else can a Pookie do?)

So here I am: the Ringleader, the rule bender,

the shhh don’t tell your mom secret tender.

While they do the heavy lifting, the veggies, and the chores,

I’m the one opening the magical, forbidden doors.

I’m the Aunt Bestie, the chocolate treehouse queen,

the purveyor of ice cream and extra time on the screen.

I powder the princesses, I hand out the capes,

I turn no into maybe in all of its shapes.

I didn’t get the branch, so I became the whole sky,

the irreverent sidekick, the twinkle in the eye.

No, I don’t see my soulmate’s chin or my own stubborn nose,

but I see the joy in the chaos that unconventional love sows.

So, to the women who held on when fate changed the plan,

who found a different magic with a redirected hand:

Despite what nature withheld, you found a strength and beauty in your own blooming,

the ultimate nurturer, without the rules, forever illuming,

lighting the hearts of others with a love that is fierce and wild.

You are the confidantes, the enablers, the grace,

the most inner child.

Happy Mother’s Day to you,

glowing in that rare, earned, beautiful space.

Photo: Before language, before theory, before hurt, we learn each other like this.

Need is the ground.

It’s the rhythm that keeps her steady, the truth she will not negotiate.

It’s what allows her to rest inside herself: safety, respect, equal standing.

Need is not weakness. It is the framework of her wholeness.

Want is the reach, the sky.

It’s the spark that makes her move, the color, the curiosity, the rising.

It’s the part of her that chooses, that creates, that insists on beauty even after survival.

Want is not indulgence. It is the expression of her self‑possession.

She lives in both.

Need roots her.

Want lifts her.

Together they form the way her mind works, the way she measures truth against desire.

Men often mistake this duality for contradiction.

They hear need as dependence and want as excess.

But for her, both are forms of honesty.

One says, I cannot thrive without this.

The other says, I am most alive with this.

It is non‑competitive.

It is a conversation between the ground and the sky.

Between what sustains and what ignites.

Between the woman who refuses to misplace herself and the one who dares to ask for more.

Author’s Note:

Inspired by a beloved friend who wondered out loud about the dynamic between need and want. This is my answer. A map, really, because there is nuance in all of us as we navigate emotional intelligence.

Caught the light on my cheek this morning,

like love that warms your face with its hand.

Pressing through the glass and leaning into that exact spot

where my coffee cup was perched.

It didn’t promise a miracle,

it just made a quiet case for the present,

tilting the room until the ordinary everyday looked like something worth keeping.

There is no hurry in the way it moves,

just a steady golden patience reminding you that you are here,

and for a moment, the world is easy to hold.

Once upon a time,

one of those new shoes you talked yourself into at full price

slipped off your foot at midnight

while you were on your cell with Sheila,

briefing her on the evening’s collection of you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up,

clicking to find your ride,

and down you went

like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality...

“Whoa, Nelly,” you exclaim,

because you know you have sparkle-cursed the F-word

more times than your mother would find reasonable.

You close your eyes, wondering if it’s a sign;

can your current kingdom

spin it into serendipity,

because we all love a good love story,

when really

you just had too much prosecco

and the night tilted a little.

There is no prince sprinting down marble stairs

with your size-eight dignity in his hands.

There is only you,

barefoot,

laughing too loudly,

trying to remember where you left your debit card

and why you ever thought magic had a curfew.

We are all hummingbirds in a heavy wind world,

vibrating at twelve hundred heartbeats of I want you here

and I want you gone.

We want to slap the revenant of what was,

to pout like a child in the ruin of a nest,

and then, with the same hands,

to mold the raw nerve back into a mud packed lip of longing,

to be vulnerable once more.

But sometimes the cold is too much, and the nectar runs dry,

and we must surrender to the torpor,

that quiet, glass cracked stillness where the heart crashes,

like a city of cells pullulating in despair,

sealed in glass,

a bell jar

lifting toward a sky that only mimics the light,

a cold, flat lie

with no passage to the other side.

Falling from the shimmer, we hang upside down, stiff and unresponsive,

a miracle of existential arrest masquerading as disappearance.

It is not a choice, but a compromise with the dark,

a brining of the spirit.

Preserved in the salt of saudade,

we wait for the wash of a sudden water.

And when no water rises,

we turn outward

toward the people who hurt us,

and see their wings moving at eighty beats a second

just to stay level, or see them hanging, frozen,

in that shivering wait for the sun to return.

They are not being cold.

They are simply siphoning the leftover heat of being alive.

It is a dignified silver grey peace we allow.

There is a loveliness in that decency,

the way we excavate the old self

just to find the singing, magical parts worth saving.

We hug the people we want to ignore.

We console the part of them currently in the deep sleep of survival.

It is a grace:

clumsy, unplanned, and profoundly honest.

Photo: Penn State, ML Haring

*****

Author’s Note

Sometimes in life we circle ourselves, balancing that place where love, gratitude, instinct, risk, reclamation, and ache all meet. I found myself there recently. A beautiful weekend, unseasonably warm. Friendship as gift. Nature doing what it does so spectacularly: a robin, a cardinal, the peony bush rising. Soon, my sweet little hummingbirds.

I leaned an elbow on the windowsill and rested my cheek in my hand, staying still for a long time. From that stillness, this piece emerged.

It’s Sunday, and it should be easy, right... right?

NO!

I’m a meme today,

NOT mean, meme...

Like that duck one,

If it looks like, talks like, no the other one.

I’m pretty sure my ducks are not all in a row:

One is staring at the fridge,

One is speed‑walking in circles for no reason,

And one is stuck behind the laundry basket,

And I am pretty sure one is a seagull,

Or is that a pigeon...

Oh, Shhhugar!

It’s an itty day with a big Shhh!

I know pigeons, people like pigeons,

The kind you wish you had, umm...

Screen‑shotted, deep‑fried, and vibrated right off of a cliff.

I am staring at the wall, cold coffee in my hand,

How did Kim Carnes show up in my YouTube rotation?

I am uneased, blurred,

Like the 4th video capture in a carousel reel...

The one everyone skips because it’s a blurry photo of a receipt or a crying cat.

Maybe I should stand in front of the oval mirror and try on my new shoes...

Are we random today?

It would appear so.

I should text Jane.

She may be talking to inanimate objects and I should join her.

So, we laugh, because we must.

Life is being ridiculous, absurd,

But that's okay,

Because despite the digital glitter, it's still possible to clean up, toast some bread, and

Smile

Big

Wide‑Eyed

Alive.

I saw a photo of a young couple on a moped

and I didn’t just smile, I wanted the keys.

I’m searching for the Italian ignition switch,

hidden somewhere in the bloom of my chest,

a second skin you graze with your fingertips,

catching your breath,

then go straight to Geronimo.

I want the vibration of a Vespa,

not the polite buzzing appliance version,

but that vintage 2‑stroke screaming through a Simonini pipe,

high‑pitched, raw, exhilarating.

I want a nape‑to‑hip sweep to tingle my spine,

to smell crushed rosemary and exhaust

drifting off sun‑baked stones.

My internal clock is ticking,

but it sounds more like a three‑minute egg‑timer,

and I want it to sound like Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia roar,

that feedback‑drenched, two‑stroke scream.

I’m told to “manage the decline,” to check the oil,

but I’m too busy waiting for the engine’s outward gasp,

the sound of throttle bodies swinging wide.

I’ll trade the wisdom of “knowing better”

for the quick, sharp break‑in of breath

that comes when you take the curve too fast.

Is the fountain of youth just a potent salad dressing?

I’m fueling on Sea Buckthorn oil like it’s moonshine,

the tart, orange sting of Omega‑7 hitting like nitrous on my tongue.

And those tomatoes… Ruggiero, “Red‑Gold,”

high‑octane pulp tasting of sun‑scorched earth and an all‑out ride.

And those gears are flooding with my DNA,

my mitochondria are bitch-slapping, raving,

kicking a backfire rhythm across the biological countdown,

strong, steady, and loud.

I don’t want to go back,

I want to carry every heartache and every lesson

like heavy leather luggage bolted down to the chrome.

I feel like the rookie of the year with more fuel than fear…

hunting down those beginner hours,

the sticky, sweet humidity of some new skill,

where absolutely nothing is a chore.

I’ve decided to age at the speed that suits me;

I am holding my own cells for good wine or a better face cream

and making them reconsider everything.

I’ll take the Dolce Vita sky‑melt glow,

the wild seaside salt air, and that reckless tilt,

pedaling toward that hill with the grip of a yeah, I know already pro,

and the absolute, beautiful ignorance of a beginner.

*****

Post‑Ignition

Someone told me that American widows are an interesting addition to the piazzas and porticos of small Italian villages. That was enough to get my attention. The fact that we’re mostly left alone, aside from a discreet protective eye, only sweetens the deal.

My friend Sheila sums it up better than anyone:

“We are like a wheel of artisanal cheese, revered, aged, and slightly nutty.”

Honestly, that works for me. A little defiance, a mid‑morning prosecco, and really good cheese feels like its own kind of freedom.

The tomb did not open to let Him out;

The stone was displaced by a Weight.

A sudden, imploding, chaotic shout,

That crushed the very concept of Fate.

He was not a shadow or shimmering glow,

But a Diamond, like lattice nitrogen crowded in stone,

A pressure coiled inward, waiting for the world to know

Of the brilliance that drove the dark out, voidites scattering as they go.

The silence of Sheol was finally betrayed.

This was no haunting, no vaporous drift,

As the gray of that stone-bound world at last began to fade,

It was the tectonic, biological shift

Of the Maker reclaiming the made.

Lewis once wrote that the grass of that Height

Would cut through a ghost like a blade;

For Heaven is heavy, a mountain of light,

Before it, all our summits surrender their might.

The “spirit” we dream of is hollow and thin,

But the Risen is solid and deep,

A Star that collapsed, but with Life, not with Sin,

Too wakeful for the oversoul to sleep.

The Ascension was not a float to the sky,

But a sinking through layers of “less,”

Until the true Hardness of Glory rose high

To drown every No into a Yes.

*****

Author’s Note

I have learned that profound loss and deep betrayal reshape the way a person understands glory, weight, and reclamation. They have not made me hardened so much as more alive, alive to what endures, alive to what is real, alive enough to never turn from light or hope again.

Resurrection outweighs ruin.

She looks to the sky, to the one she can see,

Her pink la lune, her secret, ma chérie,

The only one left, her mon ami.

She whispers her grief, her mélancolie,

To the glow of the night, so silent and free,

"Oh, bring back my love, ma rose, to me."

But the stars only stare from the dark, l’infini,

And she waits in the silver, her soul, ma vie,

Alone with the moon, her mon ami.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Pink Moon, rising in the east just after sunset on April 1, blooms in the sky for three luminous nights. Though her face is a brilliant silver, she is named for the creeping phlox, the “moss pink” waking at her feet to welcome the spring.

Dedicated with love to Angie, Lindsay, Julia, and Luke as you step into your beautiful new chapters. Shelby, sweetheart, yours is not far behind.

Let fighting never find a home in our time

(Che la contesa non trovi mai dimora nel nostro tempo),

nor upon our lips (labbra) 💋

Our love is too precious (il nostro amore è troppo grande),

for a single heartbeat to be in pieces (cuore a pezzi) 💗

I am sorry we argued today,

That we misunderstood (ci siamo fraintesi)

beneath the olive moon 🌙

You were my first love (il mio primo amore),

Tesoro mio, per sempre (my sweetheart, forever),

the one who kissed color into my black-and-white world,

Who made me believe il principe azzurro (Prince Charming) 👑

wasn’t just carved from fairy tales.

I should have bitten my tongue (avrei dovuto mordermi la lingua).

Don’t let our fire speak, (non far parlare il nostro fuoco) 🔥

la mia tempesta interiore (my inner storm),

Il mio slancio ardente (my burning impulse)

Rushed out like waves crashing against the Faraglioni 🌊

You deserve dolcezza (sweetness),

that miele (honey) le mie labbra (my lips) carry only for you 🍯

You deserve to be apprezzati (appreciated), ascoltati (heard),

and amati (loved) in the way the sea loves the shore.

Let our passion be like il merletto del mare (the lace of the sea),

white foam that turns the roughest wave into a gentle touch.

May we be as steady as the antico ulivo (ancient olive tree),

rooted deep even when the wind blows.

All the softness tucked beneath la mia forza (my strength),

All the passione (passion) stitched into breath (nel mio respiro) 🌬

All the perdono (forgiveness) learned through aching hours

It’s yours. Sempre. Always.

You’ve lived through too many affanni (heartaches).

And I refuse to be another storm you must weather.

Let me be la calma (the calm) that follows thunder,

Il sole (the sun) that warms your tired shoulders (le tue spalle stanche) ☀️

La voce (the voice) that murmurs

we won’t fight (non litigheremo) anymore

We are safe (siamo al sicuro)

Let us just love (amiamo)

and be loved (e lasciamoci amare) ❤️

I want to be mean today, to hurt back at the hurt,

To scan the genome sequence, the library’s entire length,

Dusting forty-six chromosomal volumes on the shelf.

Twenty-three thousand gene chapters,

yet not a single volunteer,

not a single line

on how to properly weaponize the defense I need to find.

I searched the lineal archive for the hands that talk in fire,

The hereditary temper, the electric angry wire.

But the biological instinct is a familiae spirit, a Bella ’Mbriana who cannot will not do what I require.

I’m looking to clone, me, be an eye-poker, a colder tone,

I’m all “Prego” and “Basta” oh hell no, that won’t work.

“Prego” has no place at an authentic Italian table,

Not when I want to throw the plate but find I’m barely able.

I can’t seem to write it into my own active code,

My blood won’t boil or break, it just simmers back to “Prego”

for my own kindness’ sake.

My search for a vendetta gene

turned out to just be a recipe for sauce.

Hunting for a weapon,

finding a woman drenched in loss,

a polite hostess instead.

I sighed, “Please pass the red,”

and slathered butter on my crusty Italian bread.

*****

Author’s Note

It was one of those days I wanted to summon a storm and found… hospitality. I wanted to be darker, colder, meaner. Except I can’t. Cruelty is a missing trait. Some days, everything around you begs for rage. But you aren’t built like that. That’s not flinching, it’s proof. Proof that your heart will always lead.

Be the music in your own life. Don’t let the world decrescendo you.

I try to listen to life

the way a musician leans into a melody,

a wrist shake shimmer,

the squeeze of a biting reed,

hunched over the bell for the sweet spot.

Waiting for the subtle shift,

harmony bubbling up,

a slow bloom,

like a French press, like soup,

the place where something delicious

begins to stir us.

Some days it is a brushed drum morning,

soft and steady,

the kind of rhythm that lets you walk yourself awake.

Other days it is a piano shimmer,

zzhhh liiiing...

a day that starts with a hum

and blooms at the top of the keyboard,

unexpected brightness

sliding across the spine of an ordinary hour.

And writing feels like that too.

Like playing a single clean note

and letting it ring long enough

to see what it wants to become.

We practice every day

not because we have to,

but because something in us

wants to hear what we sound like

when we finally get it right.

Even the sad notes matter,

the cello low ones,

the ones that sit heavy in our chest

like an inconvenient truth

waiting in the wing.

Just standing there, really,

until I finally looked its way.

They are part of the score.

They give the bright parts their lift.

Last night I watched Shrinking

and let the music slip in like a friend,

Harrison Ford grumbling low,

Jason Segel being the clumsy syncopation,

Jessica Williams floating in like a muse.

The art gallery scene its own hum,

owning the ex, a piano key thud.

I thought, yes.

This is how I want to move,

with conversations that feel like jazz,

no sheet music, just something shared.

I want to catch the notes

that would have slipped past me.

Tightening the strings

until they are almost at the breaking point,

the only place the note is silver.

Recognizing when I have gone flat,

having the courage to twist the peg

until I am sharp again.

It hurts a little to be that tense,

but I do not want a thud

where there should be a ring.

Maybe that is all I am really after,

to be the needle in the groove,

feeling every scratch, every pop,

every deep down bass line.

I am listening to be vivified,

refusing the decrescendo,

letting the world play through me

until I become

my own little snap of sound

Author's Note

When we speak of love and creating, whether it is writing, music, or art, we are divining in equal parts passion, crafted nuance, and surrender. Divining is not a mistake. It is the right word. Let us live, love, and create in musical notes. The high notes, the bass, and all the in between.

I dedicate this to my beautiful sister, my cousins, my girlfriends, and to any woman at any stage of her life who may read this. You are everything, and more than worthy. Whether you are seventeen or seventy, may love and romance always stay alive in you. May you keep seeing possibility even through chaos and brutal loss. May you remember your value, especially in the moments when life tries to convince you otherwise.

We have been known to swoon like teenagers, long past that prepubescent stage, and there is a secret we rarely say aloud. It is never the movie star. It is the archetype that helps us name what we see in you. We love the light that gathers in a man’s face as he grows into himself. We love the way a man carries his years, not the number of them. We see the crinkles, the silver, the softened jawline, but what we really see is the light that was not there before. The comfort. The depth.

Movie magic helps us see that so clearly, like a young girl in a dark theater, head tilted back, eyes softened, balancing a tub of buttered popcorn and a box of Milk Duds. We see the things men often do not realize they are radiating. These names are not about fame. They are shorthand for the way women read men.

The truth remains. When a woman loves a man, most of the time, she loves the man he becomes. This piece is for every woman who has ever loved a man deeply, in marriage, in memory, in rediscovery, or in the heartbreak of what almost was.

You Are Not a Boy Anymore

You are my Robert Redford,

sunlit and sure,

the kind of quiet that turns heads

without asking for applause.

My Clint Eastwood,

grit in your gaze,

a man who has walked through fire

and still tips his hat to the wind.

My Paul Newman,

eyes like electric blue rebellion,

a heart that races

but never runs.

You are my Cary Grant,

charm pressed into every crease,

a laugh that lingers

like cologne on silk.

My George Clooney,

silver‑templed and irresistible,

the kind of handsome

that does not fade. It deepens.

My Brad Pitt,

all golden edge and gravity,

a man who has learned

how to hold both beauty

and a deepening burn.

My Lenny Kravitz,

barefoot soul and leather swagger,

a rhythm that undresses the room.

My Mick Jagger,

lips that remember

how to make a crowd believe

in the gospel of desire.

My Matthew McConaughey,

drawl and dare,

a man who has made peace

with the wild in him.

My Jake Gyllenhaal,

storm‑eyed and strange,

a tenderness that startles

like thunder in a kiss.

You are not a boy anymore.

You are the man who never left,

who grew without fading,

with the intention of thunder,

like a love letter in a cedar chest,

the wax‑red seal broken alive with time.

You are the breath we still lose

when you walk into the room,

the proof that some fires

do not burn out.

They burn brighter.

I love you and miss you Pete.

Thank you for being my leading man and a lifetime of magic.

We made a movie sweetheart, Pete and Brenda.

*****

Author’s Note

My latest piece is something I held onto for a while. It was a late-night, and the magnificent Robert Redford was gone. I remembered all those movie nights with my sister and girlfriends. Handsome men and happy endings. Could it be, would it be for me one day?

Love never strikes in the way we imagine. The heart does what it wants without permission. Even if we don’t get the happy ending, may we never forget that we are deserving.

This week I returned to my home for the first time in months. Walking through that door I carried a deep healing wound and a newer emotional scar. Then, a small unexpected moment reminded me how love stirs the dust, quiet but unmistakable. Fine Particles felt like the right companion for a Sunday morning.

My friend Terri sends me the loveliest Instagram messages. Healthy recipes. Buns reducing Pilates movements. Hairstyling suggestions. A steady stream of “How are you?” and “Are you okay?” notes. We’ve spent years trading the kind of humor only a loyal girlfriend can understand, the kind that lets you laugh your way through life’s cruelty, its silliness, and its tears.

This morning she sent me a video clip about grief.

“Grief is like a stone. You always carry it in your pocket. It never goes away. But as you get stronger, it gets lighter, and you forget it is there. I hope your stone gets lighter everyday, Bren.”

Being back in Portland after four months on the East Coast has been its own kind of emotional jet lag. It reminds you the stone is still in your pocket, a weight you have grown strong enough to carry, even on the days you forget about it.

Ragan picked me up from the airport after 10 p.m. We hauled my suitcases upstairs because I travel with full size everything. I always tip the curbside guy well, like he is saving my life, because honestly, he is.

I started unpacking and unloaded my potions first because I wanted a bath. But I realized I had been awake for eighteen hours, twelve of them flying, and held together by airport salad, so I decided a shower was safer. The last thing I needed was to fall asleep and drift into the afterlife in a tub full of lavender bubbles.

After four months away, I returned home like the proprietor of a traveling apothecary. My suitcase was a mobile Sephora. I definitely came back with more than I left with, defying both physics and probably the suitcase weight limit.

Ragan, who most definitely practices countertop austerity with the discipline of a Zen monk, peeked into my room at the pharmacy I had erected.

She said, “Oh. Do you...use all of that?”

I laughed. Our friend, Terri, is the only one who truly understands. Between us, we have enough body lotion to hydrate the entire Sahara. We compare notes weekly. If two women could run a black market hydration operation, it would be us.

When life changes dramatically, painfully, irreversibly, it peels off in layers. You move between the funny, the bizarre, and the practical because the alternative is to let tragedy win. But you can’t let that happen.

It is the supreme irony of the feminine spirit:

you are soft enough to be shattered,

yet practical enough to hire your pain to work for you.

Without warning,

you turn vulnerability into a cold, hard business transaction.

You walk through a sea of fools,

those who underestimated you,

freezing them in place without breaking stride.

Then you finish your wine

and fold your laundry.

A much more formidable version of yourself has arrived.

The next morning, Ragan was already downstairs. I smelled the coffee before I saw her, the way I used to smell it when Pete was alive, when he somehow sensed I was waking up and had it ready before my feet hit the floor. In that moment I heard his laugh and how, incredibly, even after forty years, his eyes twinkled at my arrival in the kitchen.

I walked down the stairs to her smiling face at the table.

Ragan has a practical streak so wide it should be zoned, yellow taped. I have one too, but hers wins. She had hinted at a surprise on our way home from the airport the night before. So after coffee we played the hot cold game.

At first I spun around not quite sure which direction to follow. Like a kid blindfolded in search of a pinata. As I approached the kitchen sink, she shouted,

“You are red hot.”

I stared at the porcelain Kohler double sink.

“Hmm,” I said.

“Will it spit out money?

Regift groceries?

Produce a hairbrush?

Better yet, an axe?

Something useful?”

I said it lightly, the way women do when we are joking but also not joking. The kind of line that sounds innocent unless you know the history. A hairbrush can be menacing in the right hands. An axe for the nonsense you no longer tolerate.

I breathed out a quiet “holy shit,” barely louder than a thought.

Then I looked up at the ceiling in that Catholic raised,

daughter of an Italian mother

who still hears your thoughts way and said, “Sorry Mom.”

Ragan burst out laughing. She jumped from her chair like a contestant on The Price Is Right and flipped a switch with dramatic flair.

“Voila!” she bubbled out.

The sink roared to life.

A garbage disposal.

We shrieked and clapped like two women who had just won an all expenses paid summer in Paris, not a machine that eats soggy Cheerios. That spot had been a decorative hole since 2016.

The newest addition to my kitchen? A brand new InSinkErator and I love the low-pitched velvety thrum. Funny how something that adds noise feels like a luxury.

It was unexpected and perfect. Sometimes the smallest fix feels like a rescue. Sometimes a humming sink feels like someone taking care of you again.

My sweet Pete was many things, but a handyman he was not. To Pete, a screwdriver was something you bought and kept in the cabinet in the laundry room. Using it meant handing it to me and admitting, “you’re better at this.” Yep, he always did that with a straight face, no shame. I always laughed and rolled my eyes to the ceiling.

While I spent years elbow deep in lukewarm dishwater, treating our broken dishwasher as a very expensive drying rack, Pete had a greater power: managing the heart of a wife who always felt life deeply.

I may have been the one who knew how to use the tool belt, but Pete was the heart whisperer. My life was beautiful every day because of him...and funny. If only I could have given my power drill magical powers to save him. His memory always softens my eyes and makes me smile, pause, quiet. In our world, while I was fixing the literal foundation, Pete was building the scaffolding for my soul.

Pete did not do honey do lists. He did honey I worship the ground you walk on lists. He brought me coffee like it was a sacred rite and flowers just because it was Tuesday. The small stuff was always the big stuff.

He could not fix a drain to save his life, but he made sure I never woke up in a world where I was not loved.

I handled the mechanics. The lists. The logistics.

He handled the surprises, extra doses of everything. The meaning.

And the woman I am today is the one we made together.

The daily sounds will never match the beautiful resonance of my husband’s missing voice, that laugh that warmed our home. But I delight in every kindness, creak, whir, and nail strike. It’s the sound of progress, as my life, my heart, and my kitchen are being fixed one thing at a time.

***Thank you Ragan and Rich. I have the best family and friends anywhere.

I had only been home a couple of days after months on the East Coast. Still jet lagged, still catching up on sleep. I finally pushed myself outside for a walk. I meant to head toward the park, the one that keeps its green shimmer even in early March, that grateful sheen the rainy season leaves behind. The air had that crisp, spa‑like cool‑warmth the Pacific Northwest does so well, the kind that makes you feel embraced and alive.

Barely a block in, I saw my neighbor. The dentist. The one Pete always stopped to talk with during his daily neighborhood loop. Pete had a way of turning neighbors into friends.

I slowed my rhythm, warmly embracing a familiar face and neighborly company.

His son ran over, maybe nine, cheeks flushed from playing. He stood beside his dad, curious and quiet. His dad said, “Remember Miss Brenda.” The boy shook his head and kept studying me.

Then he asked, gentle and wondering, as if he had been carrying the question for a while.

“Where is your husband?”

His dad froze. Hands on his son’s shoulders. Eyes flicking to mine with a silent apology. I felt the sting behind my sunglasses, that warm salt coating the corners of my eyes.

Children know things, the silent processors of adult talk. They can read the unspoken. They hear fragments. Try to make sense of it all, intuitively picking up on the emotions we believe we are concealing.

I looked at his dad and mouthed that it was okay.

Rather than breaking down, it was heartwarming that he felt safe enough with me to be curious.

The boy’s name is Ethan. Sweet kid. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Ethan was trying to understand something. The nice man with the ever‑present baseball cap and kindness in his voice was missing, and it mattered. Maybe he had overheard his parents say something like, “I saw Brenda walking alone today. I miss seeing Pete out there.” Maybe that stayed with him in the quiet way things stay with children.

Regaining my composure, I bent a little, hands bracing my knees, so I was closer to his height.

“Ethan,” I said softly, “my husband’s name was Pete.” Saying it out loud for my sake as much as his. “He is in heaven.”

My faith has always been quiet and humble. A profoundly deep seed I carry without needing to do any Godsmacking.

His dad smiled, pulling his son closer, but Ethan kept watching me. Trying to read my face. Trying to understand the rules of grown up life. For almost two years he had seen me walking alone. Something in him must have noticed the pattern break.

“Mr. Pete is an angel now,” I told him. “He watches over me. I will ask him to watch over you too. Would that be okay?”

He thought about it, then nodded. A small smile. Then he turned and ran back to his friends.

When he was out of earshot, his dad began apologizing.

“Mark,” I said, “truly. I was deeply touched. Your son was gentle. He understood something was missing, and he cared.”

I watched Ethan rejoin the circle of kids. I hoped I had protected his innocence while giving him something kind to hold. I hoped I had shifted his worry into something lighter.

Children are mirrors. They feel the weight of what we tell them.

Mark squeezed my hand and said, “If you need anything, anything at all.” I thanked him and kept walking.

As I walked, I began naming the things I loved about Pete. One by one. When I looked up again, Ethan was watching me from across the street. He smiled and waved.

I have cried out so many times, asking why there are not more signs from Pete. But in that moment I understood. They are everywhere. In the colors he loved. In the birds. In the garden. In the small kindness of a child who noticed my aloneness and wanted to understand it.

The most beautiful sign yet was Ethan.

Pete is still here, in the neighborhood he loved.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I whispered into the air, and kept walking.

*****

Author’s Note

Sometimes the smallest moments arrive without warning and open something inside us. This one did.

For anyone navigating the absurdity of life, undone and redone, minus one, discovering how a messy, brutal, beautiful life can be absolutely hilarious, mildly homicidal before coffee, and somehow still sparkling.

*****

chapter excerpt

My family and friends are my daily inspiration. Especially my friends in that awful club of widowed or divorced, and not by choice.

I know, I know, people who are, well, down one person, sounds like a real snooze-fest. Honestly? Same. You probably have sad casseroles and awkward silence popping into your head. But I promise you, this crowd? We don’t do boring. It is all hilariously filterless, zero bullshit, and I am absolutely living for it.

I call it high-speed intellectual shorthand. The wisdom moves at a clip most people cannot keep up with. Oh, we are not getting old. Sit your sorry ass over there if that is your take. We are finally getting to the point, making room for the lightning to strike.

Sheila called the other day and lamented about her beloved neighbor, whom she adores, but who, in her words, texts her the craziest shit.

“Like what,” I asked.

“Like the birds in the morning. They wake her up and I tell her, you cannot control them, why are you mad.”

I laughed at the absurdity of being angry with birds, their dawn chorus, a true wonder. But also at the absurdity that we are talking about birds. Of course we are.

It is a special kind of madness, isn’t it. To lie there at 5:15 in the morning, staring at the ceiling fan’s rhythmic wobble, and feel a genuine, homicidal heat rising in your chest because a three-ounce robin has decided to rehearse its solo outside your window.

You wonder who gave this feathered narcissist the permit to broadcast its joy, or its horniness, let us be honest, into your bedroom before the coffee has even considered brewing. It is the height of audacity.

You imagine opening the window and delivering a Shakespearean monologue on the virtues of silence, or maybe throwing a fluffy pillow at the sky. Then you remember pillows are expensive.

The hilarity lies in the scale of the war. You, a reasonable human being who has navigated the wreckage of a life suddenly unraveled, who has signed the papers, packed the boxes, and survived the silence of a house that used to be full, are now losing a psychological battle to a creature that eats worms and lacks a neocortex. You, a strong, independent woman, a titan of resilience, are being dismantled by a chirp.

Sheila and I laugh about her neighbor’s battle with the birds. We laugh even harder that it has made it into our purview at all.

My friend Sheila is one of my closest companions in widowhood. She is blonde and elegant like a champagne flute; she bubbles and fizzes, lifting the room’s emotional temperature just by walking into it. She swears like a poet, and so do I. Nothing vulgar. We have names for it. Pearled profanity. Sparkle-cussing. We are girls who love to animate, to punctuate, to season heavily through the absurdities.

Sheila once asked, “Can we be this well-seasoned and still be girls?” I told her, “Of course we can. It isn’t an age. It is a feeling. To be girl-silly. To laugh like a bachelorette party on its third round of mimosas.”

The other night, I sat behind a pack of thirty-somethings just like that, at a birthday bash, all shimmering, flowing hair and skin tanned to the color of an expensive handbag.

Remembering that humid Florida glow from that last day of February, I blurt out over the phone, “I am not cutting my hair.”

Sheila did not even pause. “Nor should you,” she said, as I listen to her sipping her drink. “Let it go wild. But neat wild. Not like you just woke up dazed in a hedge.”

She has a point. Because there is a very fine line between neat wild and looking like you have been recently rescued from a storm drain.

In this world, any world, we need to break some of those ridiculous rules that harness us as we age. No one needs to be a punchline. We simply need to be tastefully irreverent, and to try on shoes we have no business walking in. We need to sparkle.

We all have our own sparkle. Sheila carries hers in pearls, pearls that have become her signature, a strand of cultured beauty her late husband bought her years ago. Not prim pearls or debutante pearls, but pearls that wink. She has survived the fire and somehow come out sparklier. She detonates laughter. She was the one who walked into widowhood first, turned on the lights, and said, “Well, shit. Here we are.”

I want to grow up to be like her. To wear a tiara and sunglasses to bed after a bit too much wine. To gather joy and a generous dose of “go ahead, try me, asshole” when deserved. To wear pearls to the grocery store. To hold grief in one hand and glitter in the other. She is a warm gust of air in my life and the funniest person I know.

When you have survived the big storms, the little raindrops start to look hilarious. My awful club and I are living in the space where the pretense has burned away, leaving only the sharp, electric truth of the present.

There is a specific, high-altitude delirium that sets in when you realize the mundane and never-before-considered might be your salvation.

I smile listening to Sheila as she continues, her voice a mix of awe and accusation.

“I found a missing sock,” she said. “In my underwear. The ones I am currently wearing.”

I laughed so hard I had to lean against the kitchen counter, that sharp, full-throttled sound that comes when the world finally confirms its own insanity. “Not even,” I replied.

I caught myself on the word. Even. It is the linguistic white flag of our era. To the younger demographic, I cannot even is a nervous system overloaded by TikTok and dating apps.

But for us, Sheila...Barbara, Carol, Deb & Deb, Debbie, Deborah, Denise, Gailjean, Jane, Jeanne, Judith, Kathy, Kristin, Lynda, Lynn, Merrie, Patty, Ragan, Rose, Ruth, Sandi, Terri, Yasmin, and me, the survivors of the lightning, the even is an epic eye-roll toward the heavens. It is the mathematical proof that the day has exceeded its quota of nonsense. It means I have survived a funeral and a lawyer, but I cannot and will not tolerate a stowaway sock in my underwear.

“You wear socks,” I ask, realizing how silly it sounds the moment it leaves my mouth.

“Don’t you,” she replies, amused, anticipating the signature West Coastness from her friend.

“Not if I can help it,” I say with a laugh. “The same reason I do not wear bunny slippers, pajama bottoms, or eyeglass chains.”

We both laugh as she declares, “You mean stuff that announces we have reached the age of losing things.” We grow quiet, considering these things for a moment.

“Anyway, I am switching,” Sheila announces, her voice tightening with the resolve of a woman planning a coup. “All lace underwear. From now on. I refuse to give the laundry a hiding place.”

She pauses, the high-speed shorthand clicking into gear as she visualizes the catastrophic potential of her own wardrobe.

“Imagine,” she whispers, “I am walking through the grocery store, the fancy one with the organic heirloom tomatoes, and it just falls out. Right there in the aisle. A rogue sock on the floor.”

Sheila lowers her voice for no reason at all, which makes me laugh because she is alone in her house. Women do this. We whisper on the phone as if the walls are listening.

I consider the image for a beat, the lonely sock making its grand debut next to a display of artisanal kale. “Sheila,” I say, “take the win. A sock in the condiment aisle is a far better thing than your actual underwear surrendering to gravity and hitting the floor.”

The silence on the other end lasts exactly three seconds before the dam breaks.

“Am I diminishing,” she asks between gasps of laughter. “Is this what is left. Are we shrinking into rolled up socks.”

“Not at all,” I reassure her, wiping tears from my eyes. “We are not shrinking. We are paying attention. These are things to consider. We are on the frontline and we have been liberated.”

The trapdoor swings open then, as it always does. We are not just laughing at the sock or the birds. We are laughing at the indignity of having a body that survives the wreckage only to be haunted by the mundane. We laugh because if we can find the comedy in a stowaway sock or a warbling creature, then the universe cannot touch us.

So you lie there, vibrating with ridiculous, petty fury, until the absurdity finally catches up to you. You start to giggle because the alternative is to howl. You realize you are a woman who has survived the lightning, only to be taken out by sparrows and socks. And in that high-speed shorthand, you forgive the bird because it is the only thing loud enough to drown out the sound of the empty side of the bed.

We are finally getting to the point. Life is a brutal, beautiful, rhythmic mess, and sometimes the only way to navigate the lightning is to make sure your socks are accounted for. That is, if you own any.

Because the truth is, it is never the lightning that undoes us.

It is the quiet afterward.

And if we can laugh there, in that silence, in that absurdity, then we are still alive.

Still here. Still sparkling.

Excerpt from A Reasonable Woman, Mostly