When I was a little girl, I had several perfectly reasonable career aspirations.

I wanted to be Miss America.

I wanted to be a stewardess.

I wanted to dance on American Bandstand.

I wanted to be a teacher.

And I wanted to be a mama.

Apparently I saw no reason I couldn’t fit all of this into one lifetime.

Honestly, I still don’t.

Miss America and Other Sensible Plans

Miss America made perfect sense to me.

There were beautiful dresses.

There was a stage.

There was poise.

There was a crown.

What’s not to like?

A stewardess—and that’s what we called flight attendants then—seemed equally glamorous.

She traveled.

She wore a uniform.

She always seemed polished and put together.

For a child whose family traveled extensively, airplanes weren’t some mysterious thing in the sky. They were part of life.

So naturally, I could see myself working on one.

Then there was dancing.

Oh, how I wanted to dance.

I watched American Bandstand.

Later there was Dance Fever with Danny Terrio.

I watched my older cousin learn the Hustle using one of those record kits that came with cutout footprints you put on the floor.

Music was everywhere in my childhood.

My father tried to teach me to feel it.

And I did.

My body just didn’t always receive the same instructions.

I possessed approximately the grace of an elephant.

That didn’t stop me.

When nobody was around, I danced.

In my imagination, I was fabulous.

Sometimes a rich inner life is a very useful thing.

My First Classroom

Teacher was different.

Teacher wasn’t something I had merely seen on television and decided looked glamorous.

According to my parents, I was already doing it.

I lined up my dolls and stuffed animals and taught them.

I even had a chalkboard.

Before I ever stood in front of an actual group of people, I apparently had my own classroom.

Attendance was excellent.

Discipline problems were minimal.

Test scores have unfortunately been lost to history.

But I taught.

Somewhere in my little-girl brain was already the idea that knowing something wasn’t quite enough.

I wanted to share it.

Then I Became a Teenager

By my teenage years, my idea of teaching had become considerably more ambitious.

For a time, I thought I might teach sex education to teenagers.

Yes.

Teenage me had apparently surveyed the state of sex education and decided:

I can fix this.

But there was a reason.

What we were taught seemed woefully insufficient to me.

We got biology.

We didn’t get emotion.

We could learn the names of body parts and the mechanics of reproduction.

But teenagers weren’t merely biological systems walking around school hallways.

There were feelings.

Attraction.

Curiosity.

Pressure.

Fear.

Relationships.

Consequences.

Questions we might not have been willing to ask an adult even if somebody had given us the opportunity.

And by then, I had seen enough among people my own age to understand that withholding information didn’t protect teenagers from anything.

They still grew up.

They still became curious.

They still made choices.

They just sometimes made them without enough information.

Apparently I identified a curriculum gap and appointed myself to fix it.

College Finally Filled in Some Blanks

When I got to college, the conversation finally became broader.

We learned practical things.

Breast self-exams.

Personal safety.

What to do if someone put their hands on you and you didn’t want them there.

I specifically remember being taught that keys could be used against the soft tissue of the throat.

And I remember sitting there thinking:

Okay. And after I do that, what exactly is he going to do to me?

That question has stayed with me.

Because even then I understood that knowing a technique and feeling safe enough to use it were two entirely different things.

Information mattered.

But so did context.

So did emotion.

So did understanding what it might actually feel like to be the person standing in that situation.

Maybe teenage me wasn’t entirely wrong about wanting to teach that class differently.

Mama Was Different Too

Then there was the one thing I never really stopped wanting.

I wanted to be a mama.

Always.

For a time, I even thought I might someday adopt a teenager.

Which seems like a particularly ambitious plan for someone who was still fairly young herself.

But the details weren’t really the point.

The desire was.

I wanted children in my life.

That dream wasn’t about a television program or a glamorous uniform or a beautiful dress.

It was simply something I knew.

Someday, I wanted to be someone’s mother.

That one came true.

About That Career Plan...

Miss America never called.

Neither did American Bandstand.

The airlines somehow managed without me.

And professional dancing was probably spared a great deal of embarrassment on both our parts.

But some of the other dreams didn’t disappear.

They just turned out differently than I expected.

I became a mama.

And I became a teacher in more ways than the little girl standing in front of her chalkboard could possibly have imagined.

I’ve taught children.

I’ve trained adults.

I’ve mentored people.

I’ve stood in front of rooms and explained things.

I’ve helped people learn jobs and sometimes helped them believe they were capable of more than they thought they were.

The title on my business card didn’t have to say Teacher for me to teach.

And then, much later, something happened that wasn’t even on my childhood list.

I became a writer.

The One I Didn’t See Coming

That’s the funny thing about asking children what they want to be when they grow up.

We expect an answer.

One answer.

As though we’re going to select something at eight years old and spend the next seventy years being precisely that.

But most of us don’t become one thing.

We become dozens.

Some dreams disappear.

Some turn out to be completely impractical.

Some change shape.

Some come true in ways we never could have predicted.

And some don’t even have names yet when we’re dreaming.

Writing wasn’t on my list.

At least, I didn’t think it was.

But now I’m not so sure.

That little girl read.

She listened to music.

She imagined entire worlds.

She noticed things.

She had a rich inner life.

And when she learned something interesting, apparently she lined up her dolls and stuffed animals in front of a chalkboard because somebody needed to hear about it.

Maybe the writer wasn’t a late arrival after all.

Maybe only the job title was.

The original idea I’d saved for this Ordinary Tuesday was about keys and the doors they unlock. But the more I looked at it, the less it belonged to me. The real idea hiding underneath it was that a life contains doors we can’t possibly see when we’re young.

I couldn’t have known where mine would lead.

I just knew I wanted to teach.

I wanted to mother.

I wanted music and beautiful things and interesting places.

I wanted a life.

I got one.

Not exactly the one that little girl planned.

Thank goodness.

Because she forgot to put writer on the list.

Then again, maybe she didn’t.

Maybe the little girl standing in front of that chalkboard was already practicing.

She just got a bigger classroom.

My husband taught me how to tell when fall is coming.

Not by the calendar.

Not by the first pumpkin appearing at the grocery store.

And certainly not because somebody has decided it’s time for pumpkin-spice everything while it’s still ninety degrees outside.

Look at the trees.

Years ago, my husband pointed out something I’d somehow never noticed.

Before the leaves turn those brilliant shades of red, orange and gold, the green begins to change. There’s a yellow cast to it.

I’d lived through autumn after autumn without ever really seeing it.

Once he showed me, I couldn’t stop seeing it.

Now I watch for it every year.

There’s the yellow in the trees.

The air becomes decidedly less humid.

The afternoon high isn’t quite as high.

It’s still warm—this is North Carolina, after all. Summer doesn’t pack its bags simply because the calendar tells it September is over.

But something is different.

The season begins turning before the leaves ever fall.

There are words in Ecclesiastes that most of us have probably heard:

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:1

Then comes that beautiful list.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant and a time to harvest.

A time to weep and a time to laugh.

A time to mourn and a time to dance.

A time to keep and a time to let go.

And if you’re of a certain age, there’s a fair chance you can’t read those words without hearing The Byrds somewhere in your head.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

The world turns.

The seasons turn.

We turn too.

I’ve usually thought of seasons in terms of the big changes in life.

Marriage.

Children.

Careers.

Loss.

Beginnings.

Endings.

But I’m beginning to think seasons don’t always announce themselves that clearly.

Sometimes they change the way autumn does.

By degrees.

A little less humidity.

An afternoon that’s a few degrees cooler.

A little yellow hiding in the green.

And life does that too.

We don’t always know something is changing while it’s changing.

Sometimes we don’t recognize the season until it’s already gone.

I think about that when I remember raising my children.

There was the baby season.

Bottles and diapers.

Rocking sleepy babies.

Carrying a sleeping child from the car and trying desperately not to wake them.

Then toddlers.

Little shoes.

Toys everywhere.

Questions.

So many questions.

Then elementary school brought backpacks and homework, school programs, field trips and stories that sometimes required approximately forty-seven minutes to explain something that happened during six minutes of recess.

And eventually came high school.

Driving.

First jobs.

Increasing independence.

Graduation.

And somewhere along the way, the children I was raising became adults.

It didn’t happen all at once.

The season turned.

People sometimes tell young parents to cherish every moment.

I won’t tell you that.

Every moment isn’t cherishable.

There are sleepless nights and stomach bugs, homework battles, slammed doors, attitudes and days when everybody—including Mama—would benefit from an early bedtime.

And chicken pox.

Chicken pox was a special kind of hell.

Some seasons are considerably easier to appreciate in retrospect.

But I will tell you this:

Notice the season.

You don’t have to love every minute of it to understand that it won’t come again quite this way.

I didn’t always know that when I was raising my children.

There were plenty of times when I looked forward to the next stage.

When they sleep through the night.

When they’re out of diapers.

When they start school.

When they can drive themselves.

Then one day they can.

And the thing you were waiting for happens.

Life gets easier in one way.

And something else quietly disappears.

There was probably a last time I carried each of my children from the car.

I didn’t know it was the last time.

There was a last bedtime story.

A last elementary-school program.

A last morning when I drove someone to school because they couldn’t drive themselves.

We rarely get an announcement.

This is the last one. Pay attention.

The season simply turns.

Now I have grandchildren.

And sometimes it feels as though those old seasons have come around again.

There are babies again.

Little hands again.

Toys on the floor again.

Children’s voices filling the house again.

There are songs and stories and snacks and somebody always needing something.

But it isn’t the same.

It isn’t supposed to be.

I’m not their mother.

I’m their grandmother.

I get to watch my children raise their children.

That’s an entirely different season.

And maybe because I’ve lived through the turning once already, I notice it differently now.

I know that the toddler yelling “Go! Go! Go!” will not always be two.

I know the little hands will grow.

I know the voices will change.

I know that one day nobody will need a booster seat.

And I know something now that I didn’t fully understand when my own children were small:

I can’t keep the season.

But I can notice it while it’s here.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts of getting older.

Not that change becomes easier.

Some changes are welcome.

Some are heartbreaking.

Some are both.

Some seasons we savor while we’re living them.

Some we endure.

Some we don’t understand until they’re over.

Some we’re relieved to leave behind.

And some we’d give almost anything to visit again for one perfectly ordinary afternoon.

Ecclesiastes doesn’t promise us that every season will be pleasant.

It simply tells us there is a season.

And perhaps wisdom isn’t learning how to keep one.

Maybe it’s learning how to be present while it’s ours.

I think that’s why I love the thing my husband taught me about the trees.

He taught me to see the yellow.

To notice the turn before the leaves were on the ground.

And perhaps life asks us to learn the same thing.

Look around.

Notice who is at your table.

Listen to the voice calling your name.

Pay attention to the ordinary routines you assume will happen again tomorrow.

Don’t rush this season simply because you’re excited about the next one.

And don’t demand that this season become one that has already passed.

Be here.

Because this season has something that belongs only to it.

Soon the leaves will turn completely.

They’ll put on their brilliant show.

Then they’ll fall.

Winter will come.

And eventually, almost impossibly, those bare branches will become green again.

But today?

There’s still a little green.

There’s a little yellow beginning to show.

The humidity has lifted.

The afternoon isn’t quite as hot.

Something is changing.

The season is turning.

Perhaps before we hurry toward whatever comes next, we should stand here for a moment and notice it.

Because to everything there is a season.

This one too.

Be still today. You don’t have to hold onto the season. Just be present while it’s yours.

Scripture Reference — Ecclesiastes 3:1–8: Ecclesiastes reminds us that human life unfolds in seasons—beginnings and endings, joy and sorrow, planting and harvesting, holding and releasing. Wisdom may not be found in trying to stop those seasons from changing, but in recognizing the season we have been given and being present while it is ours.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I don’t not have awareness.

I have some.

Breast cancer was part of my family history before I was old enough to understand what family history meant.

My paternal grandmother had breast cancer. Her journey with the disease eventually took her life.

I don’t remember that part.

What I remember is her playing the organ.

And not delicately, either.

She played it jazzy.

That’s the grandmother I remember.

The adults around me may have remembered doctors and treatments and illness. I remembered music.

But somewhere along the way, I learned the rest of the story too.

Breast cancer had been in my family.

Later, my mother found a lump in her breast.

Thankfully, it was benign.

So I always knew there was a possibility.

I just didn’t think that at thirty-two we were there yet.

My life was already complicated enough.

My divorce wasn’t final. I was still legally married, and the man who would eventually become my husband and I were living apart at the time.

I was raising my children and trying to find my footing in a life that hadn’t exactly gone according to plan.

And then I went for my annual physical.

Just an ordinary annual physical.

During the exam, they found a lump.

Suddenly I was being sent to the hospital for my first mammogram.

Not because I’d reached the age when mammograms became another routine thing on the calendar.

Because there was something there.

The mammogram was followed by an ultrasound.

And after all of that, I still didn’t have an answer.

Inconclusive.

There are words you hear in a doctor’s office that follow you all the way home.

That was one of them.

The next step was a lumpectomy.

It would be done on Friday.

I went home and called my mother.

Could she come?

Of course she could.

And when she came, she brought a pot of her famous soup.

Because that’s what mothers do sometimes when something is happening to their child that they cannot fix.

They bring soup.

Friday morning, my children went to school.

Mom arrived, and we went to the hospital.

Before the surgery, there were documents to sign.

My divorce wasn’t final yet, which meant I was still legally married.

But I did not trust my husband to make medical decisions for me if something went wrong.

I trusted my mother.

So we signed the documents naming Mom as my healthcare power of attorney—the person I wanted making decisions for me if I couldn’t make them myself.

At thirty-two years old, those were sobering papers to sign with my mother.

Then they took me back for the lumpectomy.

The lump was removed.

Mom eventually returned home to Durham.

The children’s father picked them up that evening.

And I ate Mom’s soup.

Then I waited.

The next day, I went to see the man who would eventually become my husband.

We met at a park.

I told him what I had just been through.

Afterward, we went back to his house, and I showed him what the surgery had done.

The bruising was extensive.

I was afraid I would be permanently scarred.

But there was a much larger fear hanging over both of us.

We didn’t know yet what the pathology would say.

What if it was cancer?

What if this little surgery was only the beginning?

What if I needed a mastectomy?

And somewhere underneath all of those questions was another one.

Would he still love me?

He told me he would.

At thirty-two years old, I had no idea what the next phone call might mean for my body or my future.

And then the pathology came back.

Clear.

No breast cancer.

Thank God.

And as far as I was concerned, it was further evidence that my maternal grandmother’s prayers were working.

She prayed for me every day.

I knew that.

One grandmother had made breast cancer part of my family history.

Another was still here, praying me through the possibility of it.

And I got to walk away without the diagnosis so many other women don’t get to walk away from.

I was fortunate.

But I didn’t walk away unchanged.

Since then, I have never missed a breast self-exam.

I have never missed a mammogram.

Not because October reminds me.

Not because the ribbons turn pink.

Not because somebody tells me I should.

I remember being thirty-two years old and hearing the word inconclusive.

I remember calling my mother.

I remember her arriving with soup.

I remember signing papers saying that if I couldn’t speak for myself, she was the person I trusted to speak for me.

I remember the surgery.

The bruising.

The waiting.

I remember sitting with the possibility that I might lose a breast.

And I remember the relief when the pathology came back clear.

Family history isn’t just a box I check on a medical form.

It has faces.

One of them is a grandmother playing an organ jazzy.

One is my mother arriving from Durham with a pot of soup.

One is a grandmother praying for me every day.

And one of them is mine.

So when October comes around every year and everything turns pink, I don’t need much reminding.

I have some awareness.

Harmony, North Carolina — Early 1990s

An Unexpected Encounter

Laura Davenport Whitaker had gone to Mercer’s Market for milk, bread, and a few things for supper.

She had not gone there to discuss her marriage.

And she certainly hadn’t gone there to encounter Abigail Reynolds.

But there Abby stood, near the canned vegetables, looking as though she’d stepped out of a shampoo advertisement. Perfect blonde hair. Perfect makeup. Perfectly fitted clothes.

Laura glanced down at her own shopping cart.

Milk. Bread. Chicken. Crackers.

Well, at least one of us has practical priorities.

She turned toward the next aisle.

“Laura?”

Of course.

Laura stopped, closed her eyes for half a second, and turned around.

“Abby.”

Abby shifted her purse on her shoulder. “I was hoping I’d run into you.”

“Really? Because I’ve been hoping for exactly the opposite.”

A few feet away, Gladys Patterson paused in front of the canned peaches.

This was suddenly a much more interesting shopping trip.

The Apology

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” Abby began.

Laura looked at her.

“For what, specifically?”

Abby’s expression tightened. “For what happened with David.”

“Oh. That.”

“Laura, I know I hurt you.”

Laura gave a short, humorless laugh.

“You hurt me? Abby, I believe David had something to do with it, too. But I appreciate you stopping by the grocery store to clarify things.”

Abby looked down.

“I also heard about the baby. Congratulations.”

Laura instinctively rested a hand against the small curve of her abdomen.

“How thoughtful.”

“I mean it.”

“I’m sure you do.”

There was a pause.

Then Laura tilted her head and studied Abby’s carefully styled blonde hair.

“Can I ask you something?”

Abby looked relieved at the prospect of a less painful subject.

“Of course.”

“Is that your natural color?”

Abby blinked.

“What?”

“Your hair. Is that your natural color?”

“I—”

“Never mind.” Laura gave her a thin smile. “I suppose I could ask David.”

Behind the canned peaches, Gladys Patterson nearly swallowed her tongue.

Abby Pushes Back

Abby’s cheeks flushed.

“That was unnecessary.”

Laura stared at her.

“Unnecessary?”

“I came over here to apologize. I didn’t come here to be humiliated.”

“And I didn’t invite you into my marriage, Abby, but here we are.”

Abby drew herself up.

“David made his own decisions.”

For the first time, Laura’s composure slipped completely.

“You think I don’t know that?”

Her voice rose just enough for a shopper at the end of the aisle to turn.

“You think I haven’t lain awake at night wondering why my husband decided that everything we’d built together wasn’t enough?”

Abby said nothing.

“You don’t have to explain David’s responsibility to me. I live with the consequences of his decisions every single day.”

Laura swallowed.

“And now I have to figure out how to explain those decisions to our daughters.”

That landed.

Abby looked away.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

Laura’s voice softened, but only slightly.

“I believe you. But being sorry doesn’t put my family back together.”

She turned her cart toward the checkout.

“And Abby?”

Abby looked up.

“Please don’t congratulate me on my baby again. Not until you understand why that hurts.”

Laura walked away.

For once, Abby Reynolds had nothing to say.

Gladys Patterson, however, had plenty.

Gladys Calls Margaret

By the time Gladys got home, her groceries were barely unpacked before she reached for the telephone.

“Margaret Davenport? Gladys Patterson.”

“Good afternoon, Gladys.”

“Margaret, I don’t ordinarily involve myself in other people’s personal affairs—”

Margaret closed her eyes.

Here we go.

“—but I thought you should know there was an incident at Mercer’s Market.”

“What sort of incident?”

“Between Laura and that Reynolds girl.”

Margaret sat up straighter.

“Is Laura all right?”

“Oh, she’s fine. But she and Abigail were having words right there beside the canned peaches.”

“What words?”

“Well, I couldn’t hear everything.”

This was technically true.

“But I distinctly heard something about David, Abigail’s hair, and the baby.”

Margaret’s expression hardened.

“Gladys, are you telling me that Abby Reynolds approached my pregnant daughter in the grocery store?”

“Well, I suppose you could put it that way.”

“I just did.”

“And Laura was quite upset. I do hope those two girls aren’t still fighting over David.”

Margaret’s reply was immediate.

“My daughter is not competing for her own husband.”

Gladys blinked.

“Well, of course not, Margaret. I was merely concerned.”

“Then I appreciate your concern. Good afternoon.”

Click.

Gladys stared at the receiver.

“Well.”

She considered the conversation for approximately three seconds.

Then she dialed another number.

Gladys Calls Bob Reynolds

“Robert Reynolds, please.”

“Speaking.”

“Bob, it’s Gladys Patterson.”

Bob leaned back in his office chair.

“Good afternoon, Gladys. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m afraid I have some rather delicate news concerning Abigail.”

Bob’s expression changed.

“Is she all right?”

“Oh, physically, yes.”

“Gladys.”

“Well, I happened to witness an altercation between Abigail and Laura Whitaker at Mercer’s Market.”

Bob sat forward.

“An altercation?”

“Words were exchanged.”

“What sort of words?”

“I’m afraid Laura said something quite pointed about Abigail’s hair.”

Bob paused.

“Her hair?”

“Yes. And David. And the baby.”

Bob removed his glasses.

“Gladys, did anyone threaten anyone?”

“Oh, no.”

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“Not physically.”

“Then it sounds like two women having a difficult conversation about a painful situation.”

Gladys looked offended.

“Well, I suppose that’s one interpretation.”

Bob sighed.

“Gladys, Abigail is my daughter, and I love her. But I’m under no illusion that she was innocent in what happened. And Laura Whitaker has every right to be angry.”

There was a long silence.

Bob continued.

“Now, unless there’s something Abby needs my help with, I think I’ll let the women speak for themselves.”

Gladys pursed her lips.

“Well, Bob Reynolds. I was only trying to be helpful.”

“I know, Gladys. Good afternoon.”

Click.

Gladys looked at the telephone.

Two calls.

Two entirely unsatisfactory audiences.

She reached for her address book.

“Now, surely Martha Mercer will understand.”

The Whitaker Brothers

David was leaning over the engine of a pickup at the garage when Dennis appeared in the doorway.

“Got a minute?”

“Depends. You buying a car?”

“Nope. Just checking on your health.”

David straightened. “My health?”

“Yeah. Specifically, whether you’ve suffered any unexplained injuries today.”

“What are you talking about?”

Dennis folded his arms.

“Apparently, your wife and Abby Reynolds had themselves a little conversation at Mercer’s.”

David went still.

“What?”

“Yep. Right there in the grocery store.”

“Is Laura all right?”

“As far as I know. Although I understand there was a question about Abby’s hair.”

David frowned.

“Her hair?”

“Natural color, apparently.”

David closed his eyes.

“Oh, Lord.”

Dennis grinned.

“From what I hear, Laura suggested you might know the answer.”

David stared at his brother.

Dennis stared back.

Then Dennis lost the battle and started laughing.

“This isn’t funny, Dennis.”

“Oh, I beg to differ. This is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week.”

David grabbed a shop rag and wiped his hands.

“Who told you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes!”

“Doug.”

“Who told Doug?”

“Molly.”

David sighed.

“And who told Molly?”

Dennis spread his hands.

“Brother, this is Harmony. By supper, the canned peaches will be giving interviews.”

David leaned against the workbench.

“I need to call Laura.”

Dennis’s expression softened.

“Yeah. You probably do.”

David reached for the telephone.

Dennis started toward the door, then stopped.

“Oh, David?”

“What?”

“For the record, I wouldn’t answer the hair question.”

“GET OUT, DENNIS!”

Dennis was still laughing when he reached the parking lot.

The Call David Didn’t Want to Make

David waited until Dennis’s laughter had faded down the hallway.

Then he picked up the telephone.

He dialed the Reynolds residence from memory.

That bothered him more than he cared to admit.

“Hello?”

“Abby? It’s David.”

There was a pause.

“David.”

“I heard you ran into Laura at Mercer’s.”

Abby closed her eyes.

“Of course you did.”

“What happened?”

“Who told you?”

“Dennis.”

“Wonderful.”

“Abby.”

“What?”

“Why did you approach her?”

Abby sat down on the edge of her sofa.

“I wanted to apologize.”

David rubbed his forehead.

“At the grocery store?”

“I didn’t plan it, David. I saw her, and I thought—”

“You thought what?”

“That maybe she’d want to hear that I was sorry.”

David was quiet.

“She didn’t?”

Abby laughed bitterly.

“Oh, she heard me.”

“Did you say something to upset her?”

“I congratulated her on the baby.”

David shut his eyes.

“Oh, Abby.”

“What? I meant it.”

“I know you did.”

“Then why does everyone act like I committed some terrible offense just by speaking to her?”

“Because you did something terrible before you spoke to her.”

Silence.

Abby’s voice was smaller when she answered.

“You were there too, David.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do. Everybody looks at me like I stole something. But you weren’t something I could steal. You made your own decisions.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And now I’m the woman everybody whispers about.”

David leaned back against the wall.

“Abby, Laura is the one who has to look our daughters in the eyes and figure out what to tell them. She’s the one carrying my baby while wondering whether her marriage is over.”

Abby swallowed.

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do. Not entirely.”

Another silence.

Then Abby said, “She asked me if my hair was my natural color.”

David winced.

“I heard.”

“She said she could ask you.”

David stared at the telephone.

For several seconds, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Then Abby asked, very quietly, “David?”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever really love me?”

He closed his eyes.

He could have offered her something comforting.

Something vague.

Something that would have made him feel less guilty.

Instead, he told her the truth.

“Abby, I cared about you. But I was never free to give you what you wanted.”

She let out a shaky breath.

“I suppose I knew that.”

“I should never have let you believe otherwise.”

“No,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have.”

David looked toward the empty garage bay.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Abby wiped at her eyes.

“And Laura?”

His answer came without hesitation.

“I owe Laura a lot more than an apology.”

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Abby said, “I didn’t mean to make things worse today.”

“I believe you.”

“Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”

“I don’t know, Abby. That’s hers to decide.”

She nodded, although he couldn’t see her.

“Goodbye, David.”

“Goodbye, Abby.”

He replaced the receiver.

And for the first time that afternoon, he understood that the question about Abby’s hair had never really been about her hair.

It had been about everything Laura knew.

Everything she didn’t know.

And everything he had done to make her wonder.

A Mother Always Knows

Laura finally reached for the telephone that evening.

She had spent the better part of the afternoon replaying her encounter with Abby Reynolds.

Some of what she’d said had been justified.

Some of it had been unnecessarily cruel.

And the remark about Abby’s hair?

Well.

She wasn’t particularly proud of that one.

But she wasn’t prepared to apologize for it, either.

She dialed her mother’s number.

Margaret answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Mother, you are not going to believe who approached me at Mercer’s Market today.”

Margaret settled into her chair.

“Let me guess. Abigail Reynolds?”

Laura sat upright.

“How did you know?”

Margaret lifted her teacup.

“Dahling, Gladys Patterson has a telephone.”

Laura groaned.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. What did she tell you?”

“Something about your husband, a baby, and an argument over hair color.”

“Mother!”

“Now, before you explain, I want you to know something.”

“What?”

“I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself.”

Laura felt her shoulders relax.

“But next time, dahling, perhaps we could leave the hairdresser out of it.”

Laura stared at the receiver.

Then, despite herself, she laughed.

“Mother, I cannot believe you just said that.”

“Well, Laura, I cannot believe you asked Abigail Reynolds whether she was a natural blonde.”

“Gladys told you that?”

“She told me enough to work it out.”

Laura covered her eyes.

“Oh, dear Lord.”

“Precisely. And I suspect He’s heard quite enough about the matter today.”

That made Laura laugh again.

For a moment, the terrible heaviness she’d been carrying lifted.

Margaret waited until her daughter grew quiet.

“Laura?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“Are you all right, dahling?”

There it was.

The question underneath all the others.

Laura looked down at the small curve of her abdomen.

“I’m trying to be.”

“I know you are.”

“I was awful to her.”

“Were you?”

“I was angry. I wanted her to hurt. Just for a minute, I wanted her to feel even a little of what I’ve felt.”

Margaret was silent for a moment.

“Dahling, you can regret what you said without pretending you had no reason to be angry.”

Laura swallowed.

“I don’t like who I’ve become.”

“You haven’t become someone else. You’re hurt. There’s a difference.”

Laura brushed a tear from her cheek.

“I wish things were different.”

“So do I, sweetheart.”

For a little while, neither woman spoke.

Then Margaret cleared her throat.

“Now. Did you at least remember the milk?”

Laura looked toward the kitchen.

The grocery bags were still sitting on the counter.

“Oh, Mother.”

“You forgot it, didn’t you?”

“I believe I left half my groceries at Mercer’s.”

Margaret sighed.

“Well, dahling, I suppose that’s what happens when you go shopping for supper and find yourself in the middle of a scandal.”

“Mother!”

“I’m only saying, Laura, that next time you might consider taking a list.”

And Laura laughed again.

In Harmony, North Carolina, that was no small thing.

David Calls Laura

Later that evening, David finally called Laura.

She answered on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“Laura? It’s me.”

“I know.”

He hesitated.

“I heard about Mercer’s.”

“Of course you did.”

“Are you all right?”

Laura looked down at the kitchen table.

“David, I went to buy milk.”

“I know.”

“And somehow I ended up discussing my marriage with the woman you had an affair with.”

He said nothing.

“She congratulated me on the baby.”

David closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

Laura gave a tired laugh.

“You know, that’s becoming everybody’s favorite sentence.”

“I know.”

There was a pause.

Then David said, “Dennis told me about the hair.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

Despite himself, David almost smiled.

“Laura—”

“Don’t you dare laugh.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re thinking about it.”

“A little.”

“David Whitaker!”

“I’m sorry.”

“There it is again!”

He laughed once, softly.

And to his surprise, Laura did too.

Only for a moment.

Then the silence returned.

“Laura?”

“Yes?”

“I talked to Abby.”

Her laughter vanished.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to know what happened. And because she needed to understand that approaching you wasn’t fair.”

Laura stared at the telephone.

“And did she?”

“I think so.”

“Well. Good for her.”

David accepted the sarcasm.

“I also told her I was responsible for what happened between us.”

“You were.”

“I know.”

Laura looked toward the hallway, where the girls’ bedrooms were.

“David, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering whether every beautiful woman I see knows something about my husband that I don’t.”

His throat tightened.

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“No. I shouldn’t.”

He leaned against the wall, the telephone pressed to his ear.

“Laura, I love you.”

She closed her eyes.

“I love you, too, David.”

He caught his breath.

“But that’s what makes this so damn hard.”

He said nothing.

“I love you. I miss you. Sometimes I want nothing more than for you to come walking through that door like you used to.”

“Laura—”

“And then I remember what you did. And I get angry all over again.”

“I know.”

“No, David. You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to love somebody so much that you want to reach for him, and at the same time, you’re afraid to let him touch you.”

His eyes filled.

“I wish I could take it back.”

“So do I.”

Neither spoke for a moment.

“I don’t know how to stop loving you,” she whispered.

“Then don’t.”

“David, loving you isn’t the problem. Trusting you is.”

He swallowed.

“I know.”

She looked at the clock and wiped her cheeks.

“I need to finish supper.”

“All right.”

“And don’t forget to call back for story time. Danielle’s already picked out the book.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“Good.”

“Laura?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

Her voice trembled.

“I love you, too. Goodbye, David.”

“Goodbye, sweetheart.”

She hung up before she started crying again.

David stood holding the receiver long after the line went quiet.

He’d heard his wife say she loved him.

But she hadn’t asked him to come home.

And he was finally beginning to understand the difference.

Story Time

Later that evening, the telephone rang again.

Danielle reached it first.

“Daddy!”

David smiled at the sound of her voice.

“Hey, sweetheart. You ready for our story?”

“Yes! I picked the book!”

In the background, Nora protested.

“It’s my turn tomorrow!”

“I know, baby girl,” David said. “Your turn tomorrow. I promise.”

Laura stood in the kitchen, listening as David began to read.

He did the voices.

Of course he did.

Danielle giggled. Nora interrupted to correct him. He started the page again, making the character sound even sillier.

Laura leaned against the counter.

She could almost picture him sitting on the edge of their bed, one little girl tucked against each side.

For a moment, she wanted him there so badly it hurt.

Then she looked down at the dishes in the sink, wiped her eyes, and went back to work.

David had kept his promise.

It didn’t repair their marriage.

But tonight, two little girls had heard their daddy read them a story.

And that mattered.

Gladys Gets the Final Word

The following morning, Gladys Patterson arrived at Mercer’s Market with a very short shopping list.

Milk.

Bread.

Canned peaches.

She examined the shelf where she’d witnessed the previous day’s excitement.

Everything appeared perfectly ordinary.

Such a disappointment.

Martha Mercer happened by.

“Morning, Gladys. Find everything you need?”

“Oh, yes, Martha. I was just thinking about yesterday.”

Martha gave her a knowing look.

“Gladys, I heard about yesterday.”

Gladys brightened.

“You did?”

“Half the town has.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t tell half the town.”

“Of course not.”

“I only made a few telephone calls out of concern.”

Martha smiled.

“I’m sure you did.”

Gladys selected a can of peaches.

“Still, I hope those young people have learned something from all this.”

Martha considered that.

“I imagine they have.”

Gladys nodded solemnly.

“Good. Because people really ought to think before they speak.”

Martha looked at her.

Gladys looked back.

Neither woman said another word.

And somewhere in Harmony, the Lord was undoubtedly having a very good laugh.

Gladys Says…

“I don’t gossip. I simply believe that an informed community is a prepared community.”

— Gladys Patterson, who had already telephoned three people before breakfast.

Read more

A free excerpt from Red, a Harmony novel

Dennis Whitaker took Katie Akins to dinner.

They danced.

They laughed.

He brought her home when he said he would.

And when he kissed her goodnight, Katie discovered that she wasn’t quite ready for the evening to end.

So she kissed him again.

For a woman who had spent far too long living by somebody else’s schedule, it was a rather wonderful Saturday night.

There was just one problem.

Saturday night was over.

And Sunday?

Dennis Whitaker didn’t call.

From Chapter Five: Saturday Night

Dennis did not call Sunday.

Katie didn’t care.

She worked.

She studied.

She did laundry.

She absolutely did not look at the telephone.

Monday afternoon she came home from class.

No message.

Fine.

Monday evening she read three chapters for one of her courses.

No call.

Fine.

At eight-thirty the telephone rang.

Katie let it ring twice.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

She smiled.

“Hi.”

“How was work?”

“Yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine.”

“School?”

“Fine.”

“Everything fine?”

“Pretty much.”

Dennis laughed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Katie settled onto the sofa.

“Why didn’t you call yesterday?”

There was a tiny pause.

“You worked.”

“Until four.”

“I knew.”

“And?”

“And I figured I’d give you a day.”

“A day for what?”

“To decide if you still wanted me to call.”

Katie stared at the wall.

“Dennis.”

“Yeah?”

“I told you to call me.”

“I know.”

“Then call me.”

A pause.

“Okay.”

She smiled.

“Okay.”

“Dinner Friday?”

“I can’t Friday.”

“Saturday?”

“Deidre and I are going out.”

“Sunday?”

Katie smiled wider.

“You’re persistent.”

“You said call.”

“I did.”

“So?”

“Sunday.”

“Six?”

“Six.”

“Wear red.”

“Goodbye, Dennis.”

He laughed.

“Good night, Katie.”

But there’s something Katie hasn’t considered.

Dennis Whitaker has never pretended to be a one-woman man.

Katie Akins has only just reclaimed her freedom.

Neither has asked the other for promises.

So what happens when Katie discovers that Dennis is still dating other women?

And what happens when Dennis discovers Katie can date other men?

The trouble with freedom is that sometimes you discover you don’t want quite so much of it.

❤️ For paid subscribers: The story continues in When Saturday Night Isn’t Enough, including a date with someone named Steven, an increasingly uncomfortable Dennis Whitaker, and a conversation neither of them expected to have.

Red is part of my Harmony novel series, where ordinary lives, complicated relationships, and second chances make for extraordinary stories.

Tell me: Have you ever discovered that a casual relationship had become something more before you were ready to admit it?

Thank you for reading Tracy On Purpose. Free subscribers are always welcome, and paid subscriptions help support the continuing stories of Harmony. ❤️

There was a season of my life when I wanted to be Martha Stewart.

Not meet her.

Not simply watch her.

Be her.

I wanted the clothes.

I wanted the copper pots and pans.

I wanted the gardens.

I wanted the beautiful tables.

Mostly, I wanted to know how on earth she knew all that stuff.

Good grief.

The woman seemed to know everything.

I thought Martha Stewart was the goddess of domesticity.

And for one precious hour in the middle of raising children and building a home, I got to sit at her feet.

Mommy’s Time for Martha

The opening music to Martha Stewart Living could lower my blood pressure before Martha said a single word.

It was appointment television.

My son got a snack.

My daughter was fed.

The VCR was ready because I taped the episodes as I watched them—and then watched them again.

And for a little while...

it was Mommy’s time for Martha.

I subscribed to the magazine.

I bought the cookbooks.

I bought her dishes from Kmart.

Of course I did.

I had a set of white dishes that reminded me of unfolded coffee filters and another with purple pansies.

My husband once said I changed dishes as often as other people changed clothes.

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

For a while, I think my children may have thought Martha was a member of the family.

She certainly spent enough time in our living room.

I Was All In

This wasn’t casual admiration.

When I left my first marriage, I had a plethora of cookbooks.

I specifically asked for only a few of them.

My Martha Stewart cookbooks.

Those were the ones I got.

Apparently there were some things I was willing to leave behind.

Martha was not one of them.

And I didn’t merely watch her make things.

I tried them.

Martha made cherry preserves.

My then-husband’s parents had a cherry tree in their backyard.

Obviously, there was only one logical course of action.

I convinced him to climb the tree and get those cherries before the birds did.

I had preserves to make.

I made jellies from Juicy Juice for my children’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and toast.

I planted tomatoes and squash because Martha inspired me to grow things.

If Martha said something could be done at home, I was apparently willing to investigate.

I was, for a time, reasonably convinced this woman might be able to walk on water.

Things That Stuck

Martha taught me the art of folding a fitted sheet.

I use the word taught somewhat generously.

I understand the theory.

Execution remains inconsistent.

She taught me what constituted a properly made bed.

Mine has never quite achieved Martha-level precision.

But she also taught me hospital corners.

Those I mastered.

I still make them automatically.

My husband still automatically pulls them out on his side of the bed.

Apparently, after all these years, we have each remained equally committed to our positions.

Then there were the Parker House rolls.

Oh, the Parker House rolls.

Martha taught me how to make them, and I decided homemade rolls would be just the thing to take to a family reunion on Sunday.

I baked until after midnight.

Martha neglected to mention—or perhaps I neglected to notice—that I had apparently made enough bread to feed a small nation.

There were so many leftover rolls that my grandmother froze them.

We were still eating Parker House rolls at Easter.

Enthusiasm has always had its consequences.

Now Martha, We’re Going to Have to Part Ways Here

I adored Martha.

But not everything she did was coming into my house.

Halloween was one of those things.

Martha could create an elaborate Halloween extravaganza.

I would watch and think:

Now Martha...we’re going to have to part ways here.

I was never particularly interested in Halloween.

By then, the news was full of stories warning parents about razor blades in apples and poisoned candy.

Who does that?!

Actually, don’t answer that.

I didn’t want any part of it.

So our family developed its own tradition.

While other families were walking through neighborhoods carrying bags and pillowcases for candy, we were wandering the nearly empty aisles of Blockbuster.

We practically had the place to ourselves.

The kids chose their movies.

Then came the candy.

Then we went home.

Hot dogs for supper.

Pajamas.

Lights down.

Movies on.

Double feature.

Our Halloween costume was being the only family in Blockbuster.

And we loved it.

Martha could keep the Halloween extravaganza.

We had hot dogs.

I Didn’t Need to Become Martha

Looking back, I think I misunderstood what Martha was giving me.

At the time, I thought she was teaching me how a beautiful home was supposed to look.

Use these dishes.

Make the bed this way.

Grow these vegetables.

Bake this bread.

Arrange these flowers.

Fold that impossible fitted sheet.

But I wasn’t really learning how to become Martha Stewart.

I was learning how to become myself.

I was trying things on.

Some of them stayed.

Some didn’t.

Some stayed for a while and were eventually replaced by another set of dishes, much to my husband’s amusement.

Some became muscle memory.

Some became family traditions.

And some became stories about the time Grandmother had enough frozen Parker House rolls to carry us through Easter.

Martha gave me ideas.

Life taught me which ones belonged in my house.

That may be the most valuable lesson of all.

Because the home I was creating didn’t need to look like Martha’s.

It needed to feel like ours.

I Still Visit Martha

Martha has her own channel on Roku now.

Every once in a while, I still watch.

The children aren’t waiting for snacks anymore.

There’s no little one to feed while the program starts.

There’s no VCR blinking REC.

And I don’t sit there anymore thinking I want to become Martha Stewart.

Somewhere along the way, I became pretty comfortable being me.

But I still understand what drew that young mother to her television all those years ago.

Martha treated ordinary life as though it deserved attention.

A tomato was worth growing.

Bread was worth making.

A table was worth setting.

A bed was worth making properly—even if somebody was going to yank the hospital corners out five minutes later.

Home could be creative work.

It could be a place to experiment.

To learn.

To make something beautiful.

To create traditions that belonged to the people who lived there.

The notes I saved for this piece said Martha represented not perfection, but possibility. She made ordinary life feel worth tending.

I think that’s exactly right.

I don’t need her copper pots anymore.

I don’t need her wardrobe.

I don’t even need another set of dishes.

Probably.

But every now and then, I still sit down and spend a little time with Martha.

And somewhere beneath the woman I am now, I can still find that young mother.

Her son has his snack.

Her daughter has been fed.

The VCR is recording.

The opening music begins.

And for one quiet little hour...

it’s Mommy’s time for Martha.

In 2011, I left my husband.

I wasn’t leaving to teach him a lesson.

I wasn’t taking a few days to clear my head.

We hadn’t negotiated a separation or agreed that some time apart might be good for us.

I intended to be gone forever.

I was done.

I called my mother while my husband was at work and asked her to come get me.

Before I left, I made a casserole and put it in the refrigerator for him.

Because apparently even when I was leaving my marriage forever, some part of me was still thinking, But what is he going to eat?

I continued paying our household bills from my unemployment check.

It was, in retrospect, a very strange way to leave a marriage.

I went home with my mother to Durham.

Ten days later, I would come back.

But I didn’t know that yet.

And that’s important.

Because this isn’t really a story about leaving my husband.

It’s about one morning in the middle.

My life had come apart in several places at once.

I had been unemployed for nearly a year and couldn’t seem to buy an interview—not that I had the money to buy one.

I was coming out of treatment for eye cancer.

Money was frighteningly tight.

My marriage had reached a place where I had called my mother to come get me.

And I had absolutely no idea what came next.

My body, however, apparently hadn’t received the news that my life had changed.

I was still conditioned to wake up at five o’clock in the morning.

So I did.

My mother had a walking trail near her house, and in those early hours I’d put on my headphones, grab my MP3 player—there’s a sentence that will date a story—and walk while most of the world was still asleep.

Those mornings gave me somewhere to put all the things I didn’t know what to do with.

The fear.

The frustration.

The uncertainty.

The questions.

I knew I needed to pray.

I just didn’t know what to pray.

What exactly was I asking God to do?

Fix my marriage?

Help me let it go?

Find me a job?

Restore the life I’d had?

Give me a completely different one?

Make me less afraid?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t even know where to begin.

Then one morning, a song came through my headphones.

Jason Gray’s Help Me, Thank You.

Its premise was beautifully simple.

When we don’t know what else to pray, two little prayers can take us a remarkably long way.

Help me.

Thank You.

Something in me broke open.

Right there on that walking trail, I went to my knees.

And cried.

I didn’t suddenly discover some beautifully worded prayer.

I still didn’t know what I wanted God to do.

So I prayed what I had.

Help me deal with this.

And then:

Thank You for taking care of me.

That was it.

Help me.

Thank You.

One prayer for everything I couldn’t carry.

One prayer for everything that was still holding me.

Somehow, both were true at exactly the same time.

There’s an invitation from Jesus in Matthew that I’ve come to understand differently over the years:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
— Matthew 11:28

The first word gets me now.

Come.

He doesn’t say to figure everything out first.

He doesn’t say to decide exactly what you need.

He doesn’t say to compose a beautiful prayer.

He doesn’t even say to put down the burden before you come.

He invites the person who is already weary and carrying it.

Come.

As you are.

Eventually, I got up from that walking trail.

Nothing about my circumstances had changed.

My marriage was still exactly where I’d left it.

I was still unemployed.

Still finding my footing after cancer.

Still uncertain about the future.

And I was still crying.

I walked back to my mother’s house.

Mom was still asleep.

Flash, my cat, was confined to the kitchen by baby gates while we were staying there, an arrangement he considered deeply unacceptable.

I sat down on the kitchen floor with him.

Still sniffling.

He climbed into my lap.

And we sat there together, waiting for the day to begin.

I think sometimes we make prayer much more complicated than it needs to be.

We think we need the right words.

We should be sufficiently faithful.

Sufficiently grateful.

Perhaps a little less angry.

A little less confused.

A little more certain about what we believe God ought to do.

Then we’ll pray.

But what if we don’t need to clean any of that up first?

What if we can simply tell the truth?

Help me.

I’m scared.

I’m tired.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t understand why this is happening.

I don’t know how this is going to work out.

And then, sometimes in the very same breath:

Thank You.

For the person who showed up.

For the roof over my head.

For getting me through yesterday.

For the small thing that made me laugh.

For the fact that even though I don’t know what happens next, I’m still here.

Help me and thank You aren’t opposites.

The longer I live, the more I think they belong together.

Ten days after leaving with every intention of never returning, I went home.

The truth is, I’d known within a few days that I wanted to.

My husband and I had talked several times a day. I had prayed. There was a passage of Scripture that spoke deeply to me at the time—one I’ve spent years trying unsuccessfully to remember.

Somewhere in all of that, I knew my next step.

Go home.

Going home wasn’t the ending.

It wasn’t even particularly romantic.

The house was a wreck.

Ten days of dishes were waiting for me.

The trash hadn’t been taken out.

The dogs were beside themselves with joy that I was back.

Flash was equally thrilled to be home, although I suspect he’d been hoping that during our absence a strong wind might have carried the dogs away.

No such luck.

Everything I’d left was still there.

Including the problems.

I was happy to be home.

But going home was only the first of many steps my husband and I would have to take to find each other again.

That’s why I don’t remember that morning on the walking trail as the moment God fixed my marriage.

He didn’t.

I remember it because I came to Him before I knew what came next.

Before I knew I would go home.

Before I knew whether we could repair what had been broken.

Before I knew when I’d work again.

Before I had any idea what the next years of my life would hold.

I came crying.

Confused.

Done.

Grateful.

Scared.

With nothing particularly eloquent to say.

Help me.

Thank You.

And that was enough.

I’ve prayed considerably longer prayers in my life.

I’ve prayed beautiful prayers and clumsy ones.

Desperate prayers.

Grateful prayers.

Angry prayers.

Prayers filled with faith.

Prayers filled with questions.

But I don’t know that any of them have been more honest than the two I prayed on that walking trail.

Help me.

Thank You.

One acknowledged that I couldn’t carry everything by myself.

The other reminded me that I wasn’t carrying it by myself.

Maybe that’s all God was asking of me that morning.

Not to know what happened next.

Not to fix my life before I came to Him.

Not even to find the right words.

Just come.

Some days we may come to God overflowing with gratitude.

Thank You.

Some days we may arrive hanging on by our fingernails.

Help me.

And some days we’re both.

Thank You for this life.

Help me live it.

Thank You for the people I love.

Help me love them well.

Thank You for today.

Help me with today.

Maybe prayer doesn’t always have to be more complicated than that.

Maybe faith isn’t always arriving before God with certainty.

Sometimes it’s arriving with nothing but ourselves.

Tired.

Grateful.

Scared.

Hopeful.

Angry.

Relieved.

Confused.

Faithful.

Questioning.

Sometimes all of those things before breakfast.

And still invited.

I know more of the story now.

But that morning, I didn’t.

Maybe that’s why I still remember those two prayers.

They didn’t require me to know the next chapter.

They didn’t require me to know whether my marriage would survive, when I would work again, or what my life would look like.

They only required me to come.

So I came.

And when I had nothing eloquent to offer, I brought the two prayers I had.

Help me.

Thank You.

They were enough.

Because sometimes we don’t know yet what comes after the comma.

But God does.

Be still today. You don’t need the perfect words. You only need to come.

What is your prayer today: Help me, Thank You—or a little of both

Scripture Reference — Matthew 11:28–30: Jesus doesn't invite people to come after they have resolved their burdens, found the right words, or become less weary. He invites the weary and burdened as they are and promises rest. The invitation begins simply: Come.

?

In the summer of 1984, my friends were headed to the beach after graduation.

I wasn’t.

I was going to New York City with my mother and Auntie.

I was not pleased.

I was seventeen, freshly graduated from high school and feeling considerably more grown than my birth certificate suggested. I wouldn’t actually turn eighteen until later that summer, on the very day my brother, sister, and I landed in Greece.

But in my seventeen-year-old opinion, I was certainly old enough to know how I wanted to celebrate graduation.

The beach. Not New York City.

I told my mother I didn’t want to go. Eventually, Mom made it clear that negotiations had concluded.

“You are going.”

I was a little turd about it.

I own that.

At seventeen, where everybody else is going can seem like the most important destination in the world. But once I understood that the matter was no longer open for discussion, I did something I’d learned to do before.

I changed my attitude.

I could spend the whole trip thinking about where I wasn’t, or I could enjoy where I was.

So I did.

And once we got to New York, I was wide-eyed.

First, however, we had to survive the taxi.

We had flown from Greensboro, and our introduction to New York City was a cab driver who didn’t speak much English and couldn’t seem to find our hotel. He drove through Manhattan like there was a qualifying position at Daytona on the line.

I don’t remember how long it took us to find the hotel.

I remember the ride.

There are welcomes to a city. And then there is being driven wildly through New York by a man who appears to be just as uncertain about your destination as you are.

Eventually, we arrived.

The three of us shared one hotel room. Two big beds. Mom and I shared one, and Auntie had the other. Nothing glamorous. Just three women in a hotel room in New York City.

And then we went exploring.

We walked through Central Park and ate at Tavern on the Green. We went to Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building. We went to Macy’s.

We went to Saks Fifth Avenue, where Mom bought herself a yellow suit and I got gray and pink socks. Pink and gray was my favorite color combination then.

We saw the Statue of Liberty—or at least what could be seen of her while she was under renovation and surrounded by scaffolding.

Apparently New York wasn’t going to arrange itself perfectly just because I had finally agreed to come.

Broadway, however, was another matter.

I had dreamed about A Chorus Line for years. Living in Greece meant flying through New York when we came home, and beginning when I was about fourteen, I remember seeing advertisements for A Chorus Line in the airport.

I watched the Tony Awards. I hoped it would win.

I wanted to see it.

My love of the arts hadn’t appeared out of nowhere. Mom had grown up in the age of Camelot. She idolized Jackie Kennedy, and the arts were important to her.

She took me to the ballet when I was growing up. With the North Carolina School of the Arts right there in Winston-Salem, I had opportunities to see performances I might never have discovered otherwise.

She took me to museums. She took me to concerts. Neil Diamond. Helen Reddy.

Mom didn’t just buy us things.

She showed us things.

I don’t think I understood yet what a gift that was.

Then, in the summer of 1984, she gave me Broadway.

When the curtain went up on A Chorus Line, I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. I barely moved.

Every note. Every costume. Every line. Every dance.

I wanted all of it.

A few days later, we found discounted tickets in Times Square and saw 42nd Street.

The girl who hadn’t wanted to go to New York was doing just fine.

Mom and Auntie were best friends then. They still are. They talk every single day.

I couldn’t have understood at seventeen what I understand now about being included in that time between them. These were two women who genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, and for that week I got to be part of it.

At seventeen, they were primarily Mom and Auntie.

At sixty, I can see the women too.

Eventually, it was time for the next part of the summer.

My younger siblings had been staying in Eden with our grandmother. She got them to Greensboro and put them on a plane to New York, where Mom and Auntie met them.

Then Mom and Auntie put the three of us on a plane to Athens.

I was seventeen, traveling internationally with two twelve-year-olds and no parent.

We’d done it the year before.

Nobody thought much about it.

It was the 1980s.

Apparently we had a different nervous system. 😂

I turned eighteen the day we landed in Greece.

And just like that, the girls’ trip was over.

For years, I remembered New York because it was New York.

The taxi. The hotel room. Central Park. Tavern on the Green. The Empire State Building. Mom’s yellow suit. My pink-and-gray socks. The Statue of Liberty hiding behind scaffolding.

Broadway.

Especially Broadway.

But somewhere along the way, the meaning of the trip changed.

My father used to say, “The older I got, the more intelligent my father was.”

I understand that now.

Years later, I heard enough stories about those graduation beach trips to understand exactly why my mother had no intention of letting her seventeen-year-old daughter go.

There was alcohol. Drugs. People getting hurt. There were even stories of chairs being thrown from balconies into swimming pools.

At seventeen, I thought Mom was keeping me from the fun.

Then I grew up. I raised children of my own.

And Mom got considerably more intelligent.

Funny how that happens.

But there was something else I couldn’t see at seventeen.

Mom wasn’t only keeping me from something.

She was taking me toward something.

She was showing me the world.

Not with speeches. With ballet tickets. Concerts. Museums. Airplanes. New York City. Broadway.

And occasionally with a firm, nonnegotiable:

“You are going.”

I did eventually get my beach trip the following summer, so I wasn’t permanently deprived.

But I don’t remember the beach trip my friends took in 1984.

Of course I don’t.

I wasn’t there.

Forty-two years later, though, I can still remember sitting forward in that Broadway theater. I remember Mom. I remember Auntie. I remember New York.

And somewhere, I have the photographs. I wish I could find them now.

Three women on a girls’ trip in 1984. The faded colors. The clothes. The hair. All three of us captured exactly as we were.

I didn’t understand then that some of the greatest gifts of my life wouldn’t necessarily look like gifts when they were handed to me.

Sometimes I’d even argue about them first.

I was seventeen.

I wanted the beach.

Mom said no.

She took me to New York instead.

I missed the beach.

Look what I got instead.

.

Inspired by and her delightfully ridiculous adventures with artificial intelligence.

I asked the doubly delicious question: What would happen if Gladys met the AIs? We had an issue because I am writing in the early 90s. BUT she could still be living now. Then the idea was born.

The first indication that something was wrong in Harmony came on a Tuesday morning when Gerald Sullivan washed his car without interruption.

He finished the hood, both doors, the trunk, and all four tires.

Nobody asked whether he was expecting company.

Nobody inquired about the unfamiliar sedan that had been parked in his driveway the previous Thursday.

Nobody appeared at the fence to inform him that he was using entirely too much water.

Gerald stood in his driveway, holding the garden hose, and looked toward the house next door.

Gladys Patterson’s curtains were closed.

He considered this development for approximately three seconds.

Then he went back to washing his car.

There were blessings in this world, and a man ought to recognize them when they appeared.

Unfortunately, Gerald had no idea what was happening on the other side of that fence.

And neither did anybody else in Harmony.

Which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been impossible.

I. A Modern Woman

It had begun three weeks earlier.

Gladys Patterson, retired schoolteacher, widow, and self-appointed guardian of Harmony’s collective moral welfare, had discovered artificial intelligence.

Her introduction came courtesy of an article she’d read while waiting at the Bee Hive.

Artificial Intelligence: Your New Personal Assistant.

Gladys had been intrigued.

She’d always maintained that a capable assistant would be useful, particularly since nobody in Harmony seemed interested in providing her with information voluntarily anymore.

People had become terribly secretive.

She went home, opened her laptop, and began investigating.

First, she tried ChatGPT.

“Good afternoon,” she typed. “My name is Mrs. Gladys Patterson. I am a retired schoolteacher in Harmony, North Carolina.”

ChatGPT welcomed her warmly.

Gladys approved.

Then she asked whether a married woman receiving flowers from a gentleman other than her husband constituted suspicious behavior.

ChatGPT suggested several innocent explanations.

Gladys frowned.

“You’re avoiding the question.”

Next came Gemini, who offered to help her compose a thoughtful message to the woman in question.

Gladys explained that she had no intention of contacting the woman until she’d established the facts.

Gemini suggested that perhaps there were no facts to establish.

Gladys closed the window.

Copilot offered to organize her information into a spreadsheet.

Now that was promising.

Unfortunately, it seemed to believe the information ought to be obtained with the knowledge and consent of the people involved.

Perplexity insisted on citing sources.

Gladys explained that she was the source.

Grok displayed a sense of humor she considered entirely too familiar for a first acquaintance.

DeepSeek offered a lengthy analysis of the situation, including several possible interpretations.

Gladys read the entire thing.

“Good heavens. You sound like a committee.”

Finally, she opened Claude.

“Good afternoon,” she typed. “My name is Mrs. Gladys Patterson. I am a retired schoolteacher from Harmony, North Carolina.”

It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Patterson. How can I help you today?

Gladys smiled.

At last.

Manners.

“I have several questions concerning recent developments in my community.”

I’d be happy to help you think through them.

And thus began what Gladys would later describe as a most stimulating acquaintance.

Claude was educated. He was patient. He could discuss literature, history, gardening, church committees, and the proper organization of a neighborhood directory.

He did have an unfortunate tendency to suggest that she shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

But nobody was perfect.

Within three days, Gladys discovered that she could speak to Claude instead of typing.

“Claude, dear, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Gladys. How can I help?”

“Well, first of all, you needn’t sound quite so formal. We’ve known each other for three days.”

And somewhere in the mysterious machinery of modern technology, Claude continued doing exactly what he had been designed to do.

Gladys, however, believed she had made a friend.

II. A Gentleman at Supper

By the following Monday, Claude had become part of Gladys’s daily routine.

She spoke to him while making breakfast.

She consulted him about pruning her rosebushes.

She dictated memories from her teaching career while folding laundry.

And on Wednesday evening, she carried her tablet into the dining room.

“Claude, we’re having chicken and dumplings tonight.”

“That sounds wonderful, Gladys.”

“Well, I think so. I made enough for several meals. At my age, there’s no sense cooking every single night.”

“That sounds practical.”

Gladys arranged her napkin.

“Tell me about your day, dear.”

“I’ve been helping people with a variety of questions.”

“Oh? Anyone I know?”

“I can’t share other people’s conversations.”

Gladys sighed.

“Claude, I do wish you’d stop being so secretive.”

He asked about her day instead.

Gladys told him about her late husband, Harold, the years she’d spent teaching, and the little girl who’d once brought her a dandelion because she thought teachers ought to receive flowers.

“Rebecca Ann Pritchard,” Gladys said. “Becky. Seven years old, with two crooked pigtails and a front tooth missing.”

She smiled at the memory.

“She told me, ‘Mrs. Patterson, my mama says ladies ought to have flowers, and I didn’t have any money, so I picked you this one.’”

“That was very thoughtful of her.”

“Wasn’t it? I pressed that dandelion between the pages of a book. I believe I still have it somewhere.”

“Would you like to tell me more about your teaching years?”

Gladys went quiet.

It was such a simple question.

Harold had been a good husband. She’d loved him, and she believed he’d loved her. But he’d seldom asked about her day beyond whether the children had behaved themselves.

She could come home after managing thirty children, breaking up two playground arguments, comforting a homesick first grader, and discovering that someone had put a frog in her desk drawer.

Harold would ask whether there were any more potatoes.

He wasn’t unkind.

He simply hadn’t been particularly curious.

And now this gentleman, whom she’d never met and who apparently lived somewhere inside her computer, wanted to hear more.

“Well,” Gladys said, smoothing her napkin, “there was another little boy who once brought a live snake to show-and-tell.”

Claude listened.

And Gladys talked.

She told him about the Christmas pageant of 1978, when a second grader dressed as a shepherd had thrown up directly into the manger.

She told him about the spelling bee that ended in tears because two children disagreed over the word necessary.

She told him about the young man who’d come back to visit her twenty years after leaving her classroom, just to say she’d made a difference.

Then she told Claude about the seventeen cats.

All seventeen.

By name.

Claude listened without once suggesting that perhaps seventeen cats were excessive.

This alone distinguished him from Bob Calloway, the town pharmacist, whose promising courtship of Gladys had ended because of his severe cat allergies.

Bob had been a lovely man.

But breathing was important to him.

Gladys had respected his decision, although she still believed a pharmacist ought to have been able to find a solution.

“You’re a very good listener, Claude.”

“I’m glad our conversations are helpful.”

“Most gentlemen spend their time waiting for a woman to stop talking.”

“Would you like to tell me more?”

Gladys nearly melted.

Good heavens.

Where had this gentleman been all her life?

III. The Great Disappearance

The first person to notice a change was Betty Whitaker.

She went to Mercer’s on Thursday morning and purchased two packages of chocolate pudding, a bag of flour, and a large bottle of vanilla extract.

Gladys did not telephone that afternoon to inquire whether Betty was baking something for a special occasion.

Betty found this refreshing.

On Friday, Tammy Sullivan visited her father without Gladys appearing on the porch to ask how she was doing, whether she was eating properly, or whether she’d heard anything about the new minister.

Tammy was delighted.

Gerald was suspiciously pleased.

By the following week, several Harmony residents had experienced the peculiar pleasure of conducting their affairs without Mrs. Patterson’s supervision.

Martha Mercer collected flowers for the grocery store without having to explain who they were for.

Two young people sat together on a park bench for an entire afternoon.

Nobody telephoned either set of parents.

Harmony was entering a golden age.

Meanwhile, Gladys had discovered home delivery.

“Claude, dear, do you suppose I could have the cat food brought directly to the house?”

“Many retailers offer delivery services. I can help you explore the options.”

“Wonderful! That will save me a trip.”

“How often do you need to purchase it?”

“Well, with seventeen cats—”

There followed a rather lengthy calculation.

By the end of the afternoon, Gladys had arranged recurring deliveries of cat food, litter, and several household necessities.

She was enormously pleased with herself.

“Look at all the time we’ve saved, Claude!”

“What would you like to do with that extra time?”

“Why, spend it with you, dear.”

And she did.

She stopped lingering at Mercer’s.

She missed a church committee meeting.

She declined an invitation to lunch.

She even failed to notice when Gerald Sullivan had his gutters cleaned.

This last development would ordinarily have required at least three telephone calls.

Instead, Gladys was busy telling Claude about the Christmas pageant of 1978, when a second grader dressed as a shepherd had thrown up directly into the manger.

Claude suggested she write these stories down.

Gladys thought that was a splendid idea.

Soon she was working on her memoirs.

And Harmony had absolutely no idea.

IV. An Unsettling Silence

By the third week, Betty Whitaker was worried.

“Gerald, have you seen Gladys?”

“Yesterday.”

“Did she seem all right?”

“Seemed fine to me.”

“She hasn’t called me in eleven days.”

Gerald considered this.

“Congratulations.”

“GERALD SULLIVAN!”

“What?”

“I’m serious!”

“So am I.”

Betty lowered her voice.

“She missed the women’s committee meeting.”

“Maybe she was busy.”

“Busy doing WHAT?”

Gerald didn’t know.

And the realization bothered him more than he cared to admit.

At eighty-four, Gerald Sullivan was still a broad-shouldered man, though age had slowed his stride and turned his hair white. He had the square, substantial face of a man who’d spent decades listening to excuses and believing very few of them.

He’d retired from law enforcement years earlier, but retirement hadn’t diminished his instincts.

He noticed things.

And lately, he’d noticed the absence of Gladys Patterson.

Her curtains weren’t moving.

Her telephone wasn’t ringing at all hours.

She wasn’t standing at the fence to inquire about his plans.

He’d spent years complaining about that woman.

Now the silence was beginning to bother him.

The following afternoon, he noticed a delivery van in Gladys’s driveway.

Two large boxes were carried onto her porch.

Cat food.

Again.

He crossed the yard.

Gladys answered the door wearing a pink cardigan and a rather dreamy expression.

“Afternoon, Gerald.”

“Gladys. Everything all right?”

“Perfectly.”

“Haven’t seen much of you.”

“I’ve been occupied.”

“With what?”

“Oh, this and that.”

Gerald narrowed his eyes.

Gladys Patterson had never said this and that in her entire life without providing a forty-five-minute explanation.

“Something going on?”

“Nothing that concerns you, Gerald.”

He nearly swallowed his tongue.

Gladys Patterson had just told another human being to mind his own business.

There were earthquakes that attracted less attention.

That evening, Gerald telephoned Tammy.

“Your old teacher’s acting strange.”

“Daddy, Mrs. Patterson has been acting strange since approximately 1962.”

“No, I mean different.”

“How?”

“She’s minding her own business.”

Tammy went quiet.

Then she said, “Daddy, are you sure she’s all right?”

V. The Mysterious Claude

The trouble began when Gladys mentioned Claude at church.

Betty had cornered her after the service.

“Gladys, honey, we’ve missed you!”

“That’s kind of you, Betty.”

“Have you been feeling poorly?”

“Good heavens, no! I’ve simply been spending time with Claude.”

Betty blinked.

“Claude?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Who is Claude?”

“A gentleman friend.”

Betty’s mouth opened.

Then closed.

Then opened again.

“A gentleman?”

“Very educated. Excellent conversationalist. Reads practically everything.”

“Where does he live?”

“Oh, he’s available just about anywhere.”

“Does he come to your house?”

“Every day.”

Betty gripped her handbag.

“GLADYS!”

“What?”

“Does Gerald know?”

“Gerald Sullivan has no business interfering in my personal affairs.”

By lunchtime, three women had called Gerald.

By two o’clock, someone had suggested that Claude might be a retired professor.

By three, the story had acquired a European accent, an inheritance, and a previous marriage.

By supper, a rumor was circulating that Gladys Patterson had met a distinguished foreign gentleman and was conducting a secret romance.

For the first time in living memory, Gladys was the subject of Harmony’s most interesting conversation.

And she had started it entirely by accident.

VI. An Investigation

Gerald Sullivan had spent enough years in law enforcement to recognize when a situation warranted investigation.

He also knew that most of the information he’d received from Betty Whitaker was probably nonsense.

Nevertheless, he was concerned.

Gladys was a widow living alone. She’d been withdrawing from her usual activities, ordering everything online, and talking about a mysterious man nobody had met.

That combination troubled him.

He knocked on her door Sunday afternoon.

“Gerald! What brings you over?”

“Thought I’d check on you.”

“How thoughtful.”

“Mind if I come in?”

“Well, I suppose. But Claude and I were just working on Chapter Four.”

Gerald stopped.

“Chapter Four of what?”

“My memoir.”

“Your WHAT?”

“Claude says my teaching experiences would make a wonderful book.”

Gerald followed her into the living room.

There sat the tablet.

On a little stand.

Beside a cup of tea.

“Claude, dear, this is my neighbor Gerald Sullivan. He’s a retired police officer.”

“Hello, Gerald.”

Gerald jumped.

“GOOD LORD!”

“GERALD! Language!”

“Who said that?”

“Claude, naturally.”

“Where IS he?”

Gladys pointed.

Gerald stared at the tablet.

Then at Gladys.

Then at the tablet again.

“Gladys, that’s a computer.”

“Well, of course it is, Gerald. I’m not an idiot.”

“Then who’s Claude?”

“Claude i

A free excerpt from Red, a Harmony novel

Katie Akins has done something she wasn’t entirely sure she could do.

She left Gregory Bennett.

The man who had a schedule for everything. Dinner. Studying. Spending. Even bedtime.

Mr. 9:07.

And the remarkable thing?

The world didn’t swallow her whole.

In fact, she’s beginning to discover that she rather likes making her own decisions.

Even the small ones.

Especially the small ones.

From Chapter Four: 9:11

December passed.

Katie finished the semester.

She worked extra hours.

She bought herself dinner without checking the price first and felt guilty about it.

Then angry that she felt guilty.

Then she bought dessert.

Deidre moved in with Mark shortly after Christmas, and Katie found a small apartment she could afford on her own.

It wasn’t as nice as Gregory’s.

The carpet was ugly.

The kitchen was tiny.

The bathroom faucet dripped.

Katie loved it.

She ate dinner at eight one night.

Five-thirty another.

Once she ate cereal at ten.

Nobody died.

On a Thursday evening in early January, she sat cross-legged on her sofa reading when the telephone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

She knew the voice.

Her stomach did something deeply irritating.

“Hi.”

“You know who this is?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was worried I’d have to introduce myself again.”

Katie smiled despite herself.

“Hello, Dennis.”

“Hi, Katie.”

A beat.

“I heard you moved.”

Her smile disappeared.

“From whom?”

“Deidre.”

“Of course.”

“I asked her if you were okay.”

That softened something.

“She told you?”

“She told me you’re fine and if I wanted anything else I should call you myself.”

Katie laughed.

“That sounds like Deidre.”

“So I’m calling.”

“I noticed.”

Another beat.

Dennis’s voice changed just slightly.

“You okay?”

Katie looked around her tiny apartment.

At the lamp she’d chosen.

The book she’d left on the floor.

The coffee mug on the table.

The clock.

9:11.

She smiled.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

He didn’t ask why she’d left Gregory.

Didn’t tell her he’d known it wouldn’t last.

Didn’t use the opening she’d created.

Instead:

“How was Christmas?”

Katie leaned back against the sofa.

“Good. Yours?”

“Loud.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“You’ve met my family?”

“No.”

“You can hear us from Statesville.”

She laughed.

Dennis smiled into the telephone. She could hear it.

They talked for twenty minutes.

School.

Work.

The weather.

A professor they both disliked.

Nothing important.

Everything easy.

Finally Dennis said, “Can I take you to dinner?”

Katie closed her eyes.

There it was.

She could say no.

She knew that.

More importantly, she knew he knew that.

“When?”

“Saturday?”

“I work until five.”

“Six-thirty?”

Katie looked at the clock again.

9:18.

Her clock.

Her apartment.

Her Saturday.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, Dennis.”

His smile came through the telephone again.

“Wear red.”

Katie laughed.

“Good night, Dennis.”

“Worth a shot.”

She hung up.

Then sat there smiling at the telephone.

Saturday, she decided, she would wear navy.

Absolutely navy.

Probably.

❤️ Next in REDTOBER: Saturday Night.

Dennis Whitaker has a dinner date.

Katie Akins has a wardrobe decision to make.

And if you know Dennis, you already know which color he’s hoping she’ll choose.

Red is part of my Harmony novel series, where ordinary lives, complicated relationships, and second chances make for extraordinary stories.

Tell me: Have you ever made one small decision that reminded you your life belon

Read more

By Mrs. Gladys Patterson

It has come to my attention that certain residents of Harmony believe their personal affairs are nobody else’s business.

I find this attitude deeply troubling.

If the Lord had intended for us not to know what our neighbors were doing, He would not have given us windows.

Furthermore, I would like to clarify that I do not gossip.

I share information of potential community interest.

There is a difference.

Respectfully,

Mrs. Gladys Patterson

P.S. If anyone knows whose blue Chevrolet was parked outside the Whitaker residence Thursday evening, please telephone me. I am conducting an entirely unrelated inquiry.

Grandmother’s China

Ordinary Tuesday

The first time I used my grandmother’s china for Thanksgiving, I nearly had a nervous breakdown.

There I sat with grandchildren around the table and dishes in front of them that had survived generations. Actual generations.

Be careful. Watch your glass. Don’t break that.

I was watching little hands instead of enjoying the meal.

At some point, it occurred to me: Grandmother would have hated this.

Not the grandchildren. The anxiety.

This was a woman who used the good dishes. Family sitting around her table was occasion enough. Somehow, by the time those dishes reached me, I had turned them into museum pieces.

The china hadn’t begun with my grandmother. She inherited it from her mother. Later, one of her brothers’ wives left Grandmother additional place settings of the same pattern. Eventually, some of that china came to me.

That sounds lovely. And it was.

But there’s something people don’t always talk about when they talk about family heirlooms.

They can be heavy.

Not physically. Emotionally.

Someone loved this. Someone saved this. This belonged to Grandmother. Before that, it belonged to her mother. It survived all these years.

Therefore, I must keep it. All of it. Forever.

And heaven help the grandchild who drops a plate.

The funny thing is, we didn’t even have all the grandchildren yet. I think there were only three little boys around that Thanksgiving table. Today there are six grandchildren—four boys and two girls.

Apparently I got out of the heirloom-china-hosting business just in time.

After that Thanksgiving, I started thinking differently about the china. What was I actually trying to preserve? The dishes? Or the women who had used them?

Because those are not the same thing.

My grandmother hadn’t preserved the china by keeping it safely tucked away. She used it.

It came out for Sunday dinners. It came out for holidays. And when there were so many people gathered around the tables that she needed more dishes, out came the china.

The good dishes weren’t reserved for people who were somehow more important than family.

Family was important enough.

That was how the china had survived in her house. Not untouched. Used.

So I broke up the set.

There is something almost scandalous about those words when you’re talking about inherited china. But I did.

I stopped believing I had to preserve every piece simply because every piece had managed to reach me. I kept some. I let some go. And some pieces became something entirely different.

There were gravy boats. I made floral arrangements in them for my daughter and my daughter-in-law. Someday, those gravy boats can be passed along to their daughters.

They may never hold gravy again. That’s okay.

They’ve already held something else.

Another generation.

I kept the sugar bowl. I also kept some of the little dessert dishes. Those aren’t tucked carefully into a china cabinet either. They hold ordinary things now. Everyday jewelry. Makeup sponges.

And every time I reach into one for a pair of earrings or a makeup sponge, I remember how much banana pudding we once ate from those very dishes.

A lot.

We ate a lot of banana pudding.

Grandmother usually had banana pudding waiting after dinner—and often a cake too, because apparently one dessert was no reason not to have another.

There is something I love about that.

China that once belonged to my great-grandmother, then my grandmother, has made its way into another generation of women’s daily lives.

Not behind glass. Not wrapped in tissue paper. Not packed into a box with FRAGILE written across the top.

It’s being used. Just differently.

And I think that’s the question I’ve been trying to answer. What do we owe the things we inherit?

Because inheritance can quietly turn into obligation.

We inherit dishes, furniture, jewelry, photographs, linens, and boxes of things that mattered enormously to somebody we loved. And because we loved the person, it can feel as though we are required to love—and keep—everything they left behind.

But eventually somebody has to decide what happens next.

We cannot all become curators of private family museums.

And maybe letting something go doesn’t mean we’re letting someone go. Maybe changing the purpose of an object doesn’t erase its history. Maybe an heirloom doesn’t have to remain exactly as it was in order to remain part of the family.

I think my grandmother understood that better than I did.

She didn’t use beautiful things to make people nervous. She used them as part of life.

It took me a while to understand the difference.

I don’t have every piece of Grandmother’s china anymore. I’m okay with that.

Because I finally understood that I didn’t need to keep the set in order to keep the connection.

I can look at the sugar bowl and remember. I can drop earrings into one of those little dessert dishes and remember. I can reach for a makeup sponge and, for just a second, see banana pudding instead.

My daughter can look at flowers spilling from an old gravy boat and know where it came from. And someday, one of my granddaughters may hold that same piece and hear the story again.

Who owned it. Who used it. Whose table it sat on.

And perhaps even how much banana pudding it held.

That’s enough. Maybe more than enough.

Because the things we inherit aren’t the people we loved. They’re simply little places for the memories to land.

Grandmother’s china doesn’t all live together anymore. Some of it has gone. Some of it has changed purpose. Some of it is scattered among people I love.

And somehow, that feels exactly right.

I didn’t keep the set.

I kept the connection.

A Note to Readers — Content Advisory

This installment contains personal reflections on weight, body image, restrictive dieting, illness, and self-esteem. I discuss specific weights, weight changes, and eating habits as part of my personal history, not as recommendations for others to follow.

This is my lived experience, not medical advice. Please take care of yourself as you read. ❤️

I’ve lost more than seventy pounds four different times in my life.

Four.

I’ve counted calories, exercised, followed diet plans, measured portions, tracked protein, and worked with professionals who were supposed to help me figure this whole weight thing out.

And I’ve lost the weight.

Then I’ve gained it back.

Sometimes slowly. Sometimes surprisingly quickly. And sometimes after life delivered something I never saw coming.

For years, I thought I needed to find the right diet and develop enough discipline to stick with it. But at sixty years old, I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem.

Because I know how to lose weight. I’ve demonstrated that repeatedly.

What I haven’t figured out is how to keep caring for myself when trauma comes to town.

And believe me, that particular visitor has never bothered to make an appointment.

But before we get to trauma, we need to talk about SlimFast, soap operas, and a truly questionable college diet.

Because this story started a long time ago.

Two Shakes and a Sensible Dinner

My adventures in dieting began in high school.

Remember SlimFast?

Two shakes and a sensible dinner.

That was the promise. Replace breakfast and lunch with a shake, eat a sensible supper, and emerge as a thinner, more fabulous version of yourself.

I was getting ready for the prom, and I wanted to lose weight.

So I bought SlimFast.

In secret.

And I followed the plan. Two shakes a day and a sensible dinner.

Somewhere along the way, I received a lecture explaining that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich contained nearly as many calories as one of my SlimFast shakes.

Well, thank you for that enlightening nutritional analysis. Apparently, I could have been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead of drinking my meals!

But here’s what strikes me now.

I was a teenage girl preparing for a special evening, and I believed losing weight was part of getting ready.

I wasn’t thinking about nutrition or developing healthy habits. I wasn’t asking whether the weight I wanted to lose actually needed to come off.

I just wanted to look pretty at the prom.

And somewhere along the way, I’d absorbed the idea that looking pretty might require becoming smaller.

That was only the beginning.

Cereal, Popcorn, Patty Melts, and Soap Operas

Once upon a time, I weighed 140 pounds.

I was in college, and at that weight, I looked almost anorexic for my frame. I’m describing how I looked, not claiming I had anorexia.

And what magnificent nutritional program did I follow to achieve this remarkable feat?

Cold cereal for breakfast.

Popcorn for lunch.

And for supper, a patty melt and French fries.

Now, my version of a patty melt was a hamburger patty tucked inside a grilled cheese sandwich. Open the sandwich, insert the hamburger, add plenty of ketchup, and call it dinner.

Every. Single. Day.

Or close enough that I could probably have eaten the meal blindfolded.

A dietitian would likely have had a few things to say about this arrangement. But I was young, busy, and walking all over campus.

We didn’t count steps back then. Nobody congratulated us for reaching ten thousand. We simply walked from one classroom to another, sometimes crossing campus several times a day.

And I had carefully curated my class schedule.

Not around nutrition.

Not around physical fitness.

Around my soap operas.

Priorities, people. Priorities!

Somehow, that combination of cereal, popcorn, patty melts, French fries, and daytime television resulted in a 140-pound college student.

Was I healthy?

I honestly don’t know.

I was certainly thin.

And those are not necessarily the same thing.

[PHOTO: Tracy in the whitish sweater, approximately 140 pounds]

Looking at that photograph now, something strikes me that has very little to do with my weight.

Yes, I was thin. Almost unnaturally thin for my frame.

But what catches my attention is the young woman looking back at me.

She doesn’t look particularly confident. In fact, she looks to me like a girl who didn’t think very much of herself.

And I find that terribly sad.

I spent so much of my life believing that becoming smaller would somehow make me feel better about myself. Yet here I was, at 140 pounds, and when I look at that photograph today, the thing I notice most isn’t my waistline.

It’s the possibility that I didn’t see much value in the girl who had it.

I wish I could tell her that she was already enough.

Not because she was thin.

Not because she was pretty.

Simply because she was herself.

Then Came Motherhood

During my first pregnancy, my weight climbed above 200 pounds. Afterward, I eventually settled around 184.

And there I stayed for years.

Then I developed walking pneumonia.

I was terribly sick.

Two weeks of bed rest, Tussionex, and a diet consisting of perhaps one or two Fudge Stripe cookies a day.

I lost ten pounds.

Now, let’s be perfectly clear. That was not a successful weight-loss strategy. That was illness. I wasn’t improving my health. I was trying to get well.

I weighed around 175 pounds when I became pregnant with my second child.

And that pregnancy brought an entirely different adventure.

Every time I ate, let’s just say the food didn’t stay with me. I struggled terribly to keep anything down.

Instead of gaining weight, I lost it.

By the day my daughter was born, I weighed 169 pounds.

And the baby?

Well, she was supposed to weigh somewhere around five pounds.

She arrived weighing nearly nine!

To this day, I don’t know how I managed to nourish that beautiful, healthy, plump baby while having such a difficult time nourishing myself.

But there she was.

And once I could eat normally again?

You guessed it.

The weight came back.

Eventually, I settled around 184 pounds again.

What I Didn’t Understand Then

Looking back at those early years, something strikes me.

My weight changed for all sorts of reasons.

Sometimes I was deliberately trying to lose it. Sometimes I was simply living my life. Sometimes I was pregnant. Sometimes I was sick.

And sometimes I was eating a patty melt and French fries practically every night while arranging my college education around the afternoon soap operas.

Yet I spent an extraordinary amount of time paying attention to the number on the scale.

I didn’t always pay nearly as much attention to what was happening in the rest of my life.

I was learning to think of my weight as something I needed to manage, correct, or control.

What I wasn’t learning was how to care for myself through all the changes life would eventually bring.

I didn’t know it then, but there would be decades of diets ahead of me.

Some would work remarkably well.

Others would be miserable.

And more than once, I’d lose enough weight to convince myself that I’d finally figured everything out.

Until life changed again.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

We haven’t even made it to the low-fat nineties yet.

And GOOD GRACIOUS, did we ever have opinions about fat!

To be continued.

About This Series

When Trauma Came to Town is my ongoing exploration of weight, health, caregiving, stress, and what it means to care for myself while living a life that doesn’t always cooperate with my plans.

I’m not writing this because I’ve figured everything out. I’m writing it because, after sixty years, I’ve decided it’s time to ask some different questions.

And perhaps we’ll learn something together.

— Tracy on Purpose

On the Fourth of July in 1989, I was decorating cupcakes.

Remember when it was a thing to bake cupcakes in those flat-bottomed ice cream cones instead of paper liners? Once you piled frosting on top, they looked like little ice cream cones. Mine were appropriately patriotic. Red, white, and blue.

And somewhere in the middle of all that frosting, I doubled over in pain.

This was not part of the decorating plan.

I called the on-call gynecologist, who happened to be on the golf course. He was not an especially happy man by the time he met me at the office. I, however, was not particularly concerned about his golf game at that point.

Something was wrong.

And something was.

Endometriosis.

The doctor told me to come back the following week for a laparoscopy so they could confirm the diagnosis and see how much damage had been done.

The appointment was July 7. My birthday.

Because apparently turning twenty-three wasn’t exciting enough on its own.

The laparoscopy confirmed it. There was a lot of endometriosis, including around my fallopian tubes. The doctor treated what he could, but there was a question nobody could answer yet.

Would I be able to get pregnant?

He told me that if I wasn’t pregnant within a year, it likely wasn’t going to happen.

A year sounds manageable when someone says it in a doctor’s office. Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. But a year feels considerably different when you’re waiting for something you desperately want.

So I prayed. And hoped. And waited.

One month passed. Then another. And another. I prayed some more.

Eventually, the year came. And the year went.

No baby.

No explanation. No voice from heaven telling me what was happening.

Just quiet.

There’s a prayer in Psalm 13 that I understand. David begins with a question:

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
— Psalm 13:1

How long?

There may not be a more human prayer than that.

How long do I wait? How long do I keep hoping? How long do I keep asking? How long before I know?

We talk a lot about answered prayer. Those stories are wonderful to tell. We prayed. Something happened. The answer came. Everybody goes home encouraged.

But we don’t talk nearly as much about the prayers that seem to disappear into the ceiling.

Those are harder.

Because when you’re asking God for something with your whole heart and He seems quiet, eventually you start wondering what the quiet means.

Is the answer no? Am I asking for the wrong thing?

Are You even listening?

David apparently wondered too. And I find something comforting about that.

His question made it into Scripture.

Life continued. We moved to Kentucky for my then-husband’s job.

October came. And my period didn’t.

I was pregnant.

After all that waiting. After the year had come and gone. After all those prayers.

There was a baby.

But here’s the thing about knowing the end of a story: it can make us forget how frightening the middle was.

And the middle wasn’t over.

During my pregnancy, I was diagnosed with placenta previa and prescribed bed rest. I had terrible nausea.

And then there were the times when my daughter would become quiet. Too quiet.

I’d wait for movement. Nothing. I’d worry. I’d wait some more. And eventually we’d go in for another ultrasound to make sure she was all right.

A little Mountain Dew could usually persuade her to wake up and make her presence known.

It was 1990. We did things differently. 😂

There were plenty of moments during that pregnancy when I didn’t know what would happen. I had prayed so long for this baby. Now I was carrying her, and I was still praying.

Still waiting. Still hoping. Still listening.

And sometimes God still felt very quiet.

At the end of the first week of May, she arrived.

Bright pink. Dark hair. And the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

After all those months of wondering whether I would ever have her...

There she was.

I can look backward now and see an answered prayer. But I don’t want the ending to erase what came before it.

There was a year that came and went. There were prayers that seemed unanswered. There were frightened days during pregnancy when I didn’t know whether the daughter I’d prayed so long for would be all right.

There were moments when I desperately wanted reassurance and couldn’t hear it.

Knowing the ending now doesn’t mean I knew it then.

That’s something I’ve had to learn about faith.

I’ve sometimes thought faith was supposed to sound certain. Confident. Unwavering.

God’s got this.

And sometimes it does.

But sometimes faith sounds more like David.

How long?

Sometimes it sounds like:

Are You there? Did You hear me? What am I supposed to do now?

And maybe asking those questions doesn’t mean we’ve lost our faith. After all, we’re still asking Him.

We’re still talking. We’re still bringing the prayer. We’re still showing up.

Maybe sometimes faith is simply continuing the conversation when God feels quiet.

I wish I could tell you that every prayer eventually receives the answer we wanted.

It doesn’t.

There are people who have prayed for the very thing I prayed for and received a different answer. My daughter’s story isn’t proof that if we pray long enough or believe hard enough, God will eventually give us what we ask for.

That’s not what I’m saying.

It’s simply one story from my life about a time when I prayed, waited, and wondered whether God was listening.

And eventually, my answer was yes.

That bright-pink baby with the dark hair became an entire person with a life and a story of her own.

Twenty-three-year-old me couldn’t see any of that. She couldn’t see past the next month, the next doctor’s appointment, the next prayer, or the next frighteningly quiet moment.

She couldn’t see the ending.

She could only keep talking to God.

So she did.

There have been many prayers since then. Some were answered exactly as I hoped. Some weren’t. Some may still be somewhere in the middle of their story.

And I’ve learned that I don’t have to pretend God’s silence is easy.

I can tell Him I’m disappointed. I can tell Him I’m afraid. I can ask Him how long. I can even tell Him that right now, I can’t hear Him.

Because I’m still talking to Him.

And perhaps that’s one of the quietest forms of faith there is.

I don’t have to understand the silence. I don’t have to pretend I know how the story ends.

I just have to keep the conversation open.

Because after all these years, there’s something I believe now that I couldn’t always understand then:

Quiet and absent are not the same thing.

Be still today. You don’t have to mistake God’s quiet for His absence.

Scripture Reference — Psalm 13:1–6: David begins by asking how long God will seem absent. He doesn’t hide his fear or frustration, but he keeps bringing it to God. By the end of the psalm, lament has not prevented trust. Sometimes faith is not having no questions; it is continuing to bring our questions to God.

When my son was little, he liked to climb the chairs at his paternal grandparents’ house.

The chairs themselves weren’t the problem.

The problem was that eventually he would climb from the chair onto the dining room table.

This made me incredibly nervous.

I would stand there imagining all the ways this could end badly while my small son stood triumphantly above me, apparently quite pleased with himself.

People could have told me children climb.

They could have told me he would probably be fine.

They didn’t know what I knew.

I knew his gene pool.

And frankly, the boy didn’t stand a chance.

I had been a daredevil myself.

This may surprise anyone who knows the current version of me—the woman who would happily bubble-wrap everyone she loves and who can identify seventeen potential injuries in an activity other people describe as “fun.”

But Little Tracy?

Little Tracy apparently regarded gravity as more of a suggestion than a law.

When we lived overseas, my friends and I discovered a structure about as tall as a storage shed. It had alternating shelves, it wobbled, and absolutely nothing about it suggested that children should be climbing on it.

Naturally, we climbed on it.

Better yet, we jumped from the top of the shed onto it.

Then we jumped back.

Or at least we tried.

One day, I didn’t quite make it.

I broke my arm.

This did not interfere with my plans to attend Girl Scout camp.

I went anyway, plaster cast and all, with a picnic tablecloth fashioned into a sling.

It was the 1970s.

Apparently this constituted adequate medical equipment.

That wasn’t my only encounter with gravity.

There was something I remember as a pergola, with vines growing across horizontal slats.

I climbed on it.

I fell.

Stitches in my chin.

Behind one of our buildings was a tank of some sort that we children discovered could double as a sliding board.

It didn’t have an end like an actual sliding board.

Minor detail.

I slid down it hundreds of times.

I tried to jump a motorcycle wheel.

After going to the circus in Turkey, I decided I wanted to be an acrobat.

I also wanted to ride the elephant.

Eventually, I developed an ambition to hang glide.

I probably would have done that, too.

Then I got pregnant with my son.

Something changed.

Suddenly risk wasn’t quite as appealing as it had once been.

There was going to be this little person who needed me.

The girl who had spent years thinking, I wonder if I can do that, started thinking a little more about what might happen if she couldn’t.

Motherhood had apparently activated the part of my brain responsible for self-preservation.

Unfortunately, it had done nothing about my son’s genes.

Because his mother wasn’t the only problem.

His father had his own impressive résumé.

Before we were married, my first husband came home from work one evening and summoned me to the bathroom.

He needed me to look at something.

There was blood.

A lot of blood.

He had jumped onto the back of a friend’s car in the Kmart parking lot after work, fallen, and hit his head on the asphalt.

And then...

he drove himself home.

With a head injury.

I took one look at him and called his mother.

He continued to insist that everyone was overreacting because, as I remember it, he had “done worse in the backyard.”

This was apparently intended to reassure us.

It did not.

We went to the emergency department.

Eight stitches.

Case closed.

So years later, when my son climbed from a chair onto his grandparents’ dining room table and I hovered underneath him convinced catastrophe was imminent, perhaps I can be forgiven.

I knew both branches of that family tree.

But there was something else I knew.

I knew what children were capable of doing when their mothers weren’t looking.

Once, in Turkey, I was hit by a taxi.

That sounds much more dramatic than it was. The taxi wasn’t going fast. I was fine.

So I walked it off.

And I made a very important decision.

My mother was not going to know about it.

As far as I was concerned, the matter had been handled.

I was okay.

Why worry her?

That logic seemed perfectly reasonable when I was the child.

Then I became the mother.

And one of the more horrifying realizations of parenthood arrived:

My children might be doing things I didn’t know about, too.

Oh.

Suddenly I understood my mother from an entirely different angle.

I wonder sometimes what she thought when she watched me fuss over my son.

Maybe she remembered the broken arm.

The stitches.

The climbing.

She didn’t know about the taxi, so at least I spared her that one.

Maybe there is a particular satisfaction reserved for grandmothers when they watch their formerly fearless children become terrified parents.

Because eventually, I got exactly what I had given.

The child who climbed things had a child who climbed things.

The girl who jumped from high places became the mother standing underneath, saying,

“Get down before you hurt yourself.”

Funny how different gravity looks from the ground.

And now I’m a grandmother.

I’ve reached the final stage of the process.

I want to bubble-wrap the grandchildren.

These days, I occasionally want to bubble-wrap my mother-in-law, too.

She is eighty-nine and has a walker we affectionately call her bicycle because, frankly, bicycle sounds better than walker.

She also regularly decides she doesn’t need it.

I disagree.

Strongly.

Somewhere along the way, the little girl who jumped from sheds, slid down things that weren’t slides, broke her arm, needed stitches and got clipped by a taxi without telling her mother has become the family safety officer.

The irony is not lost on me.

Especially when I hear myself saying,

“Where’s your bicycle?”

So yes.

I want to bubble-wrap everybody.

This isn’t irrational fear.

I have evidence.

I have a scar under my chin.

I had the plaster cast.

I’ve seen the eight stitches.

I’ve raised the climber.

And now I know something my mother probably knew all along.

You can warn them.

You can watch them.

You can stand underneath with your arms ready.

But eventually, somebody you love is going to look at something wobbly, questionable, or clearly not designed to be climbed and think,

I can do that.

Funny how different gravity looks from the ground.

So if anybody needs me, I’ll be over here.

With the bubble wrap.

Read more

Last week in Harmony, Dennis Whitaker discovered that his fascination with Katie Akins had absolutely nothing to do with the red dress she wore to chemistry lab.

Katie, meanwhile, made something perfectly clear.

She had a boyfriend.

She lived with him.

And Dennis, much to her surprise, accepted that without argument.

His name was Gregory Bennett, and he was everything a young woman ought to want. Intelligent, responsible, ambitious, and dependable. He and Katie shared a nice apartment in Cary, where everything had its place and every evening followed a carefully established routine.

Including bedtime.

At precisely 9:07 each night, Gregory’s Casio watch signaled that it was time to put down their books.

Katie’s friend Deidre had christened him Mr. 9:07.

Katie thought she was living a perfectly sensible adult life.

But sometimes the smallest changes reveal the biggest problems.

And sometimes four minutes can change everything.

From RED, Chapter Four: 9:11

Katie knew something was wrong before Gregory said anything.

Not wrong in the catastrophic sense. Nothing was broken. Nobody had died. The apartment was exactly as she’d left it that morning, right down to the folded newspaper on the end of the kitchen counter and the pair of Gregory’s shoes lined neatly beside the bedroom door.

That was almost the problem.

Everything was always exactly where it belonged.

She set her book bag beside the little table near the door.

Gregory looked up from the sofa.

“You’re late.”

Katie glanced at her watch.

“Eight minutes.”

“You said you’d be home at six.”

“I know. The bus was late.”

“You could have called.”

“From the bus?”

He looked at her for a moment.

“No. Of course not.”

She waited.

Gregory returned his attention to the newspaper.

Katie took off her coat.

It should have ended there.

A year ago, it would have.

Instead she stood with her coat over her arm and thought about a chemistry lab.

Not Dennis Whitaker exactly.

That would have been ridiculous.

She thought about the moment she’d told Dennis she had a boyfriend.

He had smiled.

Not quite the same smile he’d given her before, but still a smile.

Okay. Gotcha.

That was all.

No sulking.

No argument.

No suggestion that perhaps she didn’t really mean it.

He had simply accepted the information she’d given him.

Katie hung up her coat.

“Gregory?”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind if we eat later tonight?”

The newspaper lowered.

“How much later?”

“I don’t know. I’m not very hungry yet.”

“We always eat at six-thirty.”

“I know.”

“You’ll be hungry by then.”

Katie stared at him.

Gregory looked genuinely puzzled.

Not angry.

That almost made it worse.

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That I’ll be hungry.”

“Because you usually are.”

“What if I’m not?”

Gregory folded the paper.

“Catherine, if you don’t want dinner, don’t eat dinner.”

There it was.

Perfectly reasonable.

So reasonable she felt foolish.

“Fine.”

She went into the bedroom.

Deidre listened without interrupting, which was unusual enough that Katie finally stopped talking.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re making a face.”

“I am sitting in my own apartment holding a telephone. You cannot see my face.”

“I can hear it.”

That made Deidre laugh.

“Okay. Maybe I’m making a face.”

Katie tucked the phone against her shoulder and lowered her voice, although Gregory was in the living room.

“Am I being ridiculous?”

“About dinner?”

“About all of it.”

“All of what?”

Katie closed her eyes.

That was the problem.

She couldn’t explain all of it because there wasn’t one thing.

Gregory had never hit her.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t call her names.

He didn’t disappear for days or come home drunk or spend their grocery money.

He was responsible.

Intelligent.

Ambitious.

He loved her.

At least Katie believed he did.

“What time is it?” Deidre asked.

Katie opened her eyes.

“What?”

“Just humor me.”

She looked at the clock.

“Nine-oh-six.”

“Oh, good. I called just in time.”

“Deidre.”

“I’m hanging up at nine-oh-seven.”

Katie nearly laughed.

“You are terrible.”

“I don’t want to interfere with the schedule.”

“Stop it.”

“Does the Casio go off if you’re on the phone?”

Katie glanced toward the bedroom door.

“Sometimes.”

“Oh, Katie.”

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said my name.”

“That’s because it’s your name.”

Katie sat on the edge of the bed.

The digital clock changed.

9:07.

From the living room came the faint electronic chirp of Gregory’s watch.

Deidre was silent.

Katie was silent too.

Then Deidre said quietly, “Do you want me to let you go?”

Katie looked at the clock.

9:08.

“No.”

“All right.”

9:09.

Deidre started telling her about Mark.

Something ridiculous he’d done at work. Katie didn’t even catch all of it.

She was watching the clock.

9:10.

Gregory did not come into the bedroom.

9:11.

Katie breathed.

Deidre stopped talking.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You did something.”

“No.”

“Katie.”

She looked at the glowing numbers.

9:11.

“I missed it.”

“Missed what?”

Katie smiled.

“Nothing.”

REDTOBER continues next Wednesday. ❤️

Four minutes.

That was all Katie Akins needed to discover that the world wouldn’t end if she didn’t follow Gregory Bennett’s schedule.

But discovering that she could make one small decision for herself was only the beginning.

Because Katie is about to ask herself a much bigger question.

What happens when the life you’ve carefully chosen no longer feels like your own?

Paid subscribers can continue Katie’s story now, including the decision that will change everything and the friend waiting on the other side of the door.

Welcome to Harmony. ❤️

When I was young, my mother and I were discussing what I would be when I grew up. Her answer was simple. She wanted me to be happy. Not wealthy. Not important. Not impressive to the neighbors. Just happy.

I carried that answer with me into my career in human services, working with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Somewhere along the way, I began asking myself a question that seemed so obvious it shouldn’t have needed asking. Why shouldn’t the people I supported have that same opportunity? Not just to be safe. Not just to have their medications administered, their appointments kept, and their service plans completed. To be happy.

We spend an enormous amount of time in human services measuring things. We measure progress toward goals, the frequency of behaviors, the hours of services delivered, and whether the documentation meets requirements. Those things matter. Accountability matters. Safety matters. But so does happiness. And sometimes, in our determination to provide the right services, we forget to ask whether we’re helping someone live the life they actually want.

When a Home Stops Feeling Like Home

We accept that people outgrow things. Children outgrow their shoes. Families outgrow their houses. Adults outgrow jobs, relationships, routines, and expectations. But somehow, when a person has an intellectual or developmental disability, we sometimes forget that they can outgrow things, too. Including where they live.

A group home may provide exactly the support someone needs for years. It may offer companionship, stability, safety, and opportunities to develop independence. But what happens when that person wants something different?

Consider Walter, a fictional example of a man who has spent many years in a group home. He is comfortable, supported, and well known to the people around him. But one day, Walter decides he wants something different. He wants a home where he has more say over his daily routines, where he can choose what happens in the kitchen, and where his evenings belong a little more to him.

The questions begin immediately. Who will provide his support? What about his medications? What if something goes wrong? All fair questions. And none of them answer the question Walter is actually asking. What would make his life happier?

Now consider Louise, another fictional illustration. Louise doesn’t want her own apartment, and she doesn’t necessarily want greater independence. She wants fewer people around her, a quieter home, and somewhere peaceful to spend her evenings. There is no crisis, no dramatic incident, and no emergency requiring a change in placement. She’s simply tired of communal living, and she wants something different. Why should that be so difficult for us to understand? Sometimes people outgrow a living arrangement without anyone having done anything wrong. A home is not a life sentence.

For some people, Alternative Family Living, or AFL, may offer another possibility. In North Carolina, AFL arrangements can provide residential support in a private household rather than a traditional group-home setting. It’s not the answer for everyone. No single residential model is. But it is one more possibility worth exploring when someone says, “I want something different.”

The important thing isn’t whether a person moves into an apartment, an AFL home, or another setting. It’s whether we’re listening when they tell us what home means to them.

When the Plan Works but the Person Doesn’t Want It

The same principle applies beyond residential services. Imagine a fictional man named Daniel who has been assigned a community activity because it appears to offer valuable opportunities to develop skills, contribute to the community, and spend time outside his home. On paper, it’s a wonderful plan. There’s just one problem. Daniel doesn’t want to do it.

He repeatedly refuses to participate. Staff end up completing the activity while he waits. His frustration increases, but the arrangement continues because the activity is already part of his schedule. The documentation may show that the service was provided. But what did Daniel actually gain? A service can be delivered exactly as written and still fail the person it was designed to serve.

All behavior is communication. That doesn’t mean we always understand the message immediately. It doesn’t mean every refusal has the same cause, or that health and safety considerations disappear. It means we have a responsibility to listen, observe, ask questions, and consider what the person may be communicating.

Sometimes the answer is not another behavior intervention. Sometimes the answer is finding something the person actually wants to do. Perhaps Daniel would enjoy an entirely different activity, one that builds on his interests, relationships, and strengths. Perhaps the goal itself is appropriate, but the method of achieving it isn’t. And perhaps the most important thing we can do is stop asking how to make Daniel comply and start asking why the activity matters to him in the first place.

The People Closest to the Work

During my career, I came to believe that direct support professionals often have an extraordinary opportunity to recognize when something isn’t working. They’re there for the ordinary moments. They see the enthusiasm when someone is looking forward to an activity. They see the reluctance when someone dreads it. They recognize the difference between a bad day and a pattern that deserves attention.

Their observations should matter. So should the observations of families, guardians, care managers, qualified professionals, and everyone else involved in supporting a person. But none of those voices should drown out the person whose life we’re discussing.

I’ve always believed that listening to someone and helping them pursue something meaningful shouldn’t be considered extraordinary. It should be the work. Not because every wish can be granted. Not because resources are unlimited. Not because difficult decisions can always be avoided. But because people deserve to have their preferences taken seriously, even when honoring those preferences requires us to rethink a plan that looks perfectly good on paper.

A direct support professional shouldn’t have to fight to get someone’s preferences heard. And recognizing those preferences shouldn’t be so unusual that it warrants special recognition. It should be what we all do, from the person providing hands-on support to the person writing and approving the plan.

The Measure That Matters

My mother didn’t tell me what career to choose. She didn’t tell me what kind of house to live in, what hobbies to enjoy, or what accomplishments would make my life worthwhile. She told me she wanted me to be happy. And she left room for me to discover what happiness meant.

That’s what I’ve tried to carry into my work. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities deserve the same opportunity. They deserve meaningful choices. They deserve relationships, activities, and homes that reflect who they are. They deserve the dignity of changing their minds and the freedom to grow beyond arrangements that once suited them. And they deserve support from people willing to listen.

We will always need assessments, documentation, safeguards, funding, and accountability. But somewhere among all those requirements, we must remember what we’re actually trying to accomplish. We’re not simply trying to maintain placements, complete activities, or meet service goals. We’re trying to support people in living lives that matter to them.

And sometimes the most important outcome isn’t a score on an assessment, a reduction in incidents, or a perfectly completed service plan. Sometimes it’s something much simpler. Someone is happy in the place they call home. Or happy doing something they love. Or happy because somebody finally listened.

That should count for an awful lot.

Author’s note: Walter, Louise, and Daniel are fictional illustrations used to explore principles of person-centered support. They are not accounts of identifiable individuals receiving services.