Curled up on the sofa in Brooklyn yesterday under a blanket, I alternated between grading projects and organizing my phone — deleting spam, updating apps, trying to figuring out what was triggering all those annoying badge app icon numbers; you know, the little 2 or 3 or 16,240 that torments you from a little red circle. As if we all need those tedious reminders of even more things in our lives that have gone unread, unanswered, unseen, or otherwise unattended to, with no regard as to urgency or relevance.

I eventually clicked over to my voicemail list, scrolling down (way, way down) until I found the one tiny blue dot indicating the single unplayed message from June of last year.

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I knew who it was from. I even knew what it said thanks to the auto-transcription of eight short words.

But I couldn’t bring myself to click on it, or mark it “heard,” like the others.

I suddenly felt very strongly about leaving this one remaining voicemail message unheard, knowing it will be there waiting for me. Knowing I can listen to it for the first time any time. Knowing I’ll never hear those same eight words spoken in that exact same way again. Knowing it will make me cry. Knowing I can’t respond.

Hi, it’s your dad. Call when you can.

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Friends: I am so grateful for all of the kindnesses, the comments, the DMs and texts and phone calls over the past several weeks. I apologize for not responding to every one personally like I always try to do. But I promise I’ve read them all, and every single one makes my heart full.

This would be one of those cases.

Paul S. Gumbinner died peacefully on Friday, April 3, at home in Manhattan with his son Jeff, his daughter Liz, and his wife Amye of 44 years who he still referred to as “my beautiful bride.”

I can’t sum him up in a few paragraphs, so forgive this messy pastiche of memories.

He might have been named Paul G Gumbinner III, had his mother not been terrified that other children would mock him with “Paul G Gumbinner the Turd.” Thus, she changed his middle name.

This may be a reasonable explanation for his innate love of puns, clever wordplay, and silly humor. In fact, among his greatest accomplishments in life (of which there were many) were introducing his children to Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, Mel Brooks, Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, George Carlin, Buddy Hackett, Richard Pryor, Robert Klein — who was a close friend for many years — Peter Sellers, Carol Burnett, Jonathan Winters, Groucho Marx, and even though we were far too young to get most of it, Saturday Night Live.

That didn’t stop Jeff and I from begging to watch it every other weekend when we stayed with him at his apartment. If we were lucky, we were allowed to stay up until Weekend Update, crossing our fingers that we might see the Coneheads or a “Cheeseburger Cheeseburger” sketch before we went to sleep on the air mattressses in the living room.

When my kids try to understand why in the world he took me to see Animal House in theaters in elementary school, I try to explain that the 70s and 80s were a very different time.

Also, it was hilarious. So really, it made perfect sense.

My dad went to Temple University where he (in no particular order) met my mom, became president of his fraternity, wore skinny ties, drank a lot of beer, smoked a lot of cigarettes, played a lot of jokes on his friends, and, I can only presume, went to class from time to time, which is how he graduated with a degree in marketing.

My dad was, in many ways, an improbable person; a man of his generation for sure. But in other ways he never fit neatly into any stereotypes that might seek to contain him.

He was a connector and a maven — the person who could always tell you exactly where to go for what or who to call for what or where to eat for what occasion — except sometimes, when he would recommend a restaurant in Prague before admitting that he hadn’t actually been there since 1988.

I now understand a little better that getting older means 20 years ago (or 38 years ago) can feel like it was yesterday.

Of course he came back to New York after college, where he had attended high school. He loved New York. He loved being a New Yorker. He couldn’t even imagine saying he was from anywhere else.

When Amye would fantasize about retiring somewhere in the woods one day he would brush it off and say, what am I going to do there?

He needed restaurants where he knew the names of everyone from the managers to the busboys. He needed lunch counters with chocolate egg creams, old time candy stores where he could find Mary Janes and Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, and busy street corners where he was nearly always guaranteed to run into someone he knew. He needed the city architecture and the memories conjured up by specific buildings or entire neighborhoods. He needed museums and galleries, the symphony at Carnegie Hall, the piano bar at Top of the Beekman, and Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. He needed the diversity and the unmatched energy.

He loved the Berkshire Mountains, he loved visiting friends in other cities, he loved traveling the world. But he always loved coming home to New York.

One Christmas Eve, out the huge windows of The Oak Room at the Plaza where we were finishing dinner, we saw a woman trying to get a llama onto the 59th Street Bus.

Just another New York City story.

My dad had the biggest heart you could imagine. I have an early childhood memory of trip to the city to visit my grandparents. We passed a homeless person unconscious on the street, and my dad asked us to wait by him while he ran to a pay phone and called 911 to get him help. This was a time that people referred to men on the street like that as bums or winos. My dad just saw a person in need.

If you knew him, you’d understand perfectly why he became an executive recruiter after leaving advertising. There was a caretaker and dad in him that found immense satisfaction in mentoring candidates, guiding their careers, helping them negotiate for what they were worth.

He was the same way with my friends growing up — the friend group dad. They’d ask him advice about everything from movie recommendations to dating. One friend, a week before getting married, asked him how you know when you’re in love.

“If you have to ask… you’re not in love,” he said.

(The marriage did not last long.)

He became an avid collector of contemporary glass, a champion of young glass artists, and the Chairman of Brooklyn’s UrbanGlass studio for six years. But he loved all kinds of art — sculpture, photography, mosaics, fiber art — and especially the impressionists.

I was maybe 11 when my dad took me to see Monet’s Water Lilies at MoMA and explained that he could sit there for hours just looking at it. I remember sitting next to him on a bench, trying to understand how anyone could look at a painting for hours.

When visited the L’Orangerie last month in Paris, even if he was past the point of being able to check his phone, I texted him this photo anyway.

He had an insatiable love for people and their stories, which is perhaps how so many of them came to him. In fact, he put together a wonderful spiral-bound book full of his decades of Dad Stories for my brother and me, filled with childhood pranks at summer camp to the insanity of the advertising industry in the 1960s and 70s.

And yes, it was like MadMen.

He also had some jaw-dropping stories from his time in the Air National Guard after college.

“Sheriff did it,” he recalled a fellow squad member from Neshoba County, Missisippi, saying quietly and casually, as they discussed the yet unsolved murder of three civil rights workers. “Everyone knows the Sheriff did it.”

Wonderful human though he was, I’m fairly certain my dad was not the first person you necessarily wanted standing between you and another guy with a weapon, which is why he did something or other related to PR for the Guard. Still, he was the guy you’d want solving a disagreement, keeping up morale, or decorating the base Christmas tree — which he happily volunteered to do despite being the only Jewish member of his unit.

Thank you for your service.

My dad adored music, from Rachmaninov to Michael Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald to the Chorus Line soundtrack to the legendary disco-era double album A Night at Studio 54.

He took me to the Philharmonic as a kid and helped me understand that people with their eyes closed weren’t sleeping, but that were enjoying the music without distraction.

And wow did he love old musicals: Oklahoma. South Pacific. Brigadoon. Chicago. Pippin. I have memories from middle school of dancing around his apartment to “Shall We Dance” from The King and I — I stood on his toes, and he taught me to waltz, just like in the play.

I always think of my dad when I hear Blossom Dearie sing the lyric from Manhattan about old Delancey Street, where he introduced me to the joy of full-sour pickles.

They’re the only acceptable pickles, by the way, he’d have you know.

Because as much as he loved art and music, movies and great spy novels, food was my dad’s real love language.

He was a brilliant cook, with stacks of dog-eared cookbooks full of notations, and a kitchen wall full of spices from Penzey’s or the occasional secret location in Corona or Astoria — he would happily take three subways to get his hands on two black cardamom pods required for a new homemade Sichuan chili oil recipe. He spent years spending his free time taking cooking classes with James Beard honorees and and Michelin-starred chefs from around the world. He loved eating out, whether it was a fancy meal or a good hot dog. In fact, when he finally leased a car after years of living in the City, he claimed it was because he was an adult, dammit, and he should be able to drive to Walter’s for a double hot dog with extra mustard any time he wanted.

He also took great joy in sharing his meal plans over Facebook, “surprising” the kids with homemade peanut brittle each holiday season, and offering all the cooking tips he had to anyone who would ask.

His number one piece of advice: Use the best ingredients you can find.

“The best butter, the best salt, the best olive oil. Your recipe will only be as good as what you put into it.”

Which, I think, was his recipe for living too.

While he had many passions, nothing in the world mattered to my dad more than his family. Though he had few relatives left later in life, he loved his two children and his six grandchildren — four by blood, all by love — to pieces.

He hugged everyone with his whole self.

He said I love you easily and meant it.

He could not read a Father’s Day card I wrote to him, or a birthday card that the kids drew for him without crying.

The most revealing story about him is that the night he first met Amye on a blind date, he told her, “My kids don’t live with me full-time, but I am a full-time dad.”

Even when he moved to the city, a 45-minute drive from our suburban town, he never once missed a dance recital, a play, a little league game, an awards ceremony, or a graduation.

As a grandfather, he hardly missed any either.

At least for a few years.

In June of 2015, he took great pride in being able to carry my kids on his shoulders or piggyback them around the neighborhood.

In October of 2015, a taxi driver with road rage plowed him down in a 2nd Avenue crosswalk and sent him hurling through the air and onto his back.

I will never forget that bleary all-nighter in the hospital and the dire prognosis: He was most likely paralyzed from the neck down, and his cognitive function was TBD until he woke. If he woke.

They performed spinal surgery to give him, as the surgeon told us, “his best shot at being the one in a million people who may be able to walk in 18 months.”

One in a million.

We were told not to expect miracles.

Did we get a miracle? I don’t know. I do know we got the grueling physical and mental work that epitomized my dad’s character and his determination to live fully in this world.

Perhaps these days, that’s a miracle in itself.

While his spinal injury did keep in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he stuck his middle finger in the air to the impossible odds, and in 18 months he took his first steps

He eventually becoming independent enough to get himself out of bed bit by bit, make his way to the kitchen, and cook dinner.

His mind was absolutely sharp.

As long as I live, I will never forget the moment at my niece’s Bat Mitzvah that he managed to lift his hands from the walker just long enough to dance a few beats.

He could have collapsed into despondency after his accident. Especially after he had to shutter his business, rearrange his life around doctor’s appointments, and endure multiple treatments and medications and hospital stays due to the increasingly uncooperative kidneys that eventually took his life.

He could have lost himself in despair and given up.

Instead, he became the Bionic Man. He just kept going.

I’d like to think that we had a gift of 11 additional years with my dad that, by all accounts, we had no right to have had.

Even if I would have preferred less time in those years to have been spent in hospitals and rehab facilities.

(Here I must add that we are so grateful to every nurse, doctor, therapist, and caregiver who looked after him through the years. He loved them and they loved him. The only people who probably didn’t love him were a few random hospital roommates, should they have the temerity to blast Fox News from the other side of the dividing curtain. This would only lead him to play MSNBC even louder.)

This feeling of absence is strange and new. These last two days have been my first two days on this earth without him.

I can’t yet bring myself to think of Father’s Day without him and a round of frosés at his favorite little French café across the street.

The grief comes in waves, as it will. Tears come and then pass.

As time goes on it I know it will get harder. Also, it will get easier. We may not ever get used to the loss, I’m told, but we learn to live with it.

There have already been moments that I have reached for the phone, only to remember he’s not there to pick up.

Right now, I’m trying to lean into gratitude for a father who made sure that I always knew how proud he was of me. Gratitude for that one final, beautiful rally day with Jon where nothing went unsaid.

As my brother Jeff and I stood around his hospital bed Thursday morning, each of his hand clasped in one of ours, his final audible words to us were, “I love you too.”

My father didn’t want a funeral or any fussy formal memorial. If you want to honor him, please consider a donation in his name to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, Saint Judes Children’s Hospital, or the ACLU.

He would also ask you to vote in November so that everyone’s children and grandchildren can grow in in a more just and equitable world.

Or, he’d be thrilled if you simply raised a margarita in his name. On the rocks, with salt.

A frosé works too.

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The first thing I noticed when I stepped into the apartment, besides my dad in a hospital bed against the living room wall where the couch used to be, were the paper signs taped around the walls alongside the bed.

DNR was written fat red marker in my stepmother’s handwriting. If you’ve ever wondered what the opposite of a welcome mat might be, I’d go with this.

There was one on the refrigerator door too, and I’m sure she had a good reason; all I could think of was that his last words could very well be a request for a Diet Coke, and she wouldn’t want someone to forget his wishes on their way to the fridge.

The first two days of the long weekend with him were rough. He slept all the time, and when he was awake, it was only a moment at a time. Worst of all, he was in pain. His arms were wildly thin, which looked all wrong for him. I kept picturing that carnival scene in Grease, when the cast pushed their faces through cut-outs over drawings of someone else’s body.

Then again, his face didn’t entirely seem his own either. His beard was as long as I’ve ever seen it and his hair combed long long over his ears like an aging rock star turned grey — someone my dad might never want to be, but someone everyone adores.

“I’m dying,” he said with a croaky voice during a brief moment of lucidity. “I don’t like it, Lizzie.” It cut hard. Draw-blood hard.

Sometimes he’d just wake to say, “this is not fun,” and take my hand.

“No, it’s not,” I’d respond. “Not fun at all.

I don’t know how much he could hear me, but I talked anyway. He smiled when I told him about Thalia playing Hamlet during her semester in London, Leta getting ready for graduation, Marlo becoming an amazing photographer, and Sage getting into a sorority at school. I told him that her sorority house was a few doors down from the fraternity he was in when he was in college. I told him that she was the president of the pledge class but that it wasn’t called a pledge class anymore and she would yell at me for using the wrong word again.

He smiled big and this time he opened his eyes.

“I was my pledge class president too, “ he said, his memories now taking him somewhere a lot more wonderful than this stupid hospital bed.

“I love my three kids,” he would whisper sometimes when he awoke, and considering I have one brother, I am sure he was including Jon.

He ate some tiny pieces of melon I had cut for him, and it felt strange and poetic.

…….

Day Two

Saturday wasn’t much better, with the exception that Jon could join me, which was good for all of us.

“This is not fun,” my dad reminded us every so often, as if we could forget.

“Not fun at all.”

He asked for my hand, I stood over the bed holding his hands as long as I could, wondering if this is just how it was going to be from now on.

Sometimes I would think he was asleep and start to step away, but he’d jerk awake, with this terrible fear in his eyes and reach for my hand again. So I stayed standing over the bed, telling him I loved him and sharing him funny stories about the kids or reminding him about stories he had told us that would make him smile, just a little.

I told him that he’d lived a great life. I said, “who else could tell the story about ending up in a restaurant parking lot with [famous old-school celeb] at midnight while he was drunk and shooting a pistol into the air, until you and his limo driver convinced him to stop but only because there might be kids screwing in the woods nearby.”

(He loves that story.)

I said all the things that I want to be sure to have said — although the truth is, I say them all the time. There’s nothing I’ve left out.

That’s a gift, I have learned.

When I lost my ability to speak without choking up, Jon took over seamlessly. He told him he loved him too. He told him what an amazing dad he has been, and talked about all that he had learned from him. He told him that he been a good role model for all of us.

(Leave it to a great dad to know just the right words for another great dad.)

Then Jon told him that he’d been able to say I love you to him more than he did to his own dad, who he lost when he was barely an adult.

Jon knew what it was like to lose a father. My stepmom, my mom, even my own kids know what it’s like. I know how wildly fortunate I am to have such a late initiation into this grotesque club.

Every so often, my father would wake up and apologize, like we should be doing something more fun together, which is 100% on brand for him. At one point he got annoyed that the concierge hadn’t gotten back to him, because it was a nice day and we should be spending it outside.

I wasn’t sure where in his mind he was.

“I want to speak to the concierge,” he said every so often. “They make the best hot chocolate here and I asked for it hours ago.”

Later, he woke up to say we should go out for filet mignon tonight. I started naming sauces to see which he’d be ordering, and he smiled, eyes closed, nodding to every single one. We settled it there that he would have filet mignon with a whole array of sauces for dipping — blue cheese, au poivre, Bernaise, herb butter…and truffles, Amye reminded us.

Then he’d become frustrated again that we were stuck in the room on this trip.

He was in Paris.

We let him stay there, even as we went back home to Brooklyn.

…….

Day Three

Saturday felt like a goodbye and I went to bed wondering what kind of life this is for a person.

Sunday morning, my dad evidently woke up a new person: His old self.

He was asking for hot chocolate again, so Jon and I were dispatched to pick some up on the way to the apartment. We didn’t know what we would be walking into, but of all the things, we didn’t even imagine that Aging Rock Star Dad was now alert, lucid, chatty, hungry. A new course of antibiotics had worked their science magic.

“Hello Lizzie! Hello Jon!” he beamed from his bed. He lifted his arms a bit as if to pull us right into them from across the room.

It was such a beautiful day together. Almost everything we could have wanted.

(Aside from the whole dying thing with the hospital bed and the skinny arms and the DNR signs.)

He told us more of his wonderful stories, and asked about my new job, and how Jon’s was going. He called Amye his beautiful bride. He asked about the kids and recalled with perfect clarity conversations we had had recently. He talked about how bad the Super Bowl ads are every year now, and asked for any news about mutual friends in advertising. He looked at some photos on my phone of the four kids and my nieces, and finally read some Facebook messages that Thalia had sent him.

But at various points, while telling a story, he’d add something like “as I was just saying in the office the other day…”

I knew that while his mind was fully here, some part of him was lost in time and space. A quantum conundrum.

He also still wanted to leave the room and go outside.

I mean, I would too if I were in Paris. Which he was.

I assured him it was windy and a little cold out, and a good day to just hang out inside, which was true. And I told him that my French has gotten pretty good now and I could help get him whatever he needed. He asked where the delicious hot chocolates came from and Jon started to mention the bagel place across the street…but I nudged him, and he said, “from downstairs! The concierge!”

My dad was so happy that he finally came through.

I wish I could remember everything we talked about, but I wasn’t trying to remember it at the time. I was just living it, wholly present. I was giving him my full attention.

We all feel so lucky to have had that Sunday.

Especially now, as I sit typing from the seat a hastily booked Amtrak from Boston back to NYC, having cancelled today’s class after some less-than-encouraging texts about his condition with Amye and my brother.

I don’t know what I’m heading home to, but I don’t imagine it will be another day like the last one.

If there’s any consolation, I’m so delighted to know that in his mind, he’s been in a beautiful Paris hotel drinking chocolat chaud, and eating burgers and frites in bed with Amye all week.

Even if the concierge wasn’t quick enough to return the calls of a wildly cool aging rock star with strong feelings about customer service.

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“I’m weak,” he sighed.

“You often are when you get home,” I said. But I knew this time it had been harder.

He knew too.

“I don’t know that I’ll get stronger,” he said.

“I’m getting old, Lizzie.”

This is a man who talks about college like it was yesterday, who greatly appreciates the joy of an icy Frosé in summer, who still enjoys having more pepper than most 83-year-olds in his salt-and-pepper hair. He rejected wearing hearing aids for years after he needed them out of a perfectly reasonable sense of vanity.

I’ve never heard him say that he’s old unless it’s ironic. Like during our annual Super Bowl call when he rants about not understanding any of the ads anymore (looking at you, Lemu Emu), or when he tries to recommend a restaurant in Boston that closed in the mid-90s.

I’m getting old is always something he says with laughter.

This time he said it with resignation, with an uncomfortable rasp in his voice from too many weeks in an institutional bed.

“I’m 83 and I’ve lived a good life,” he said.

I could see in my head that smile of his that he makes, his lips pursed, his lower lip pushing up and curling in to flatten it out. It’s like a shrug you make with your lips. It says, it is what it is.

He’s always good at reminding me when I need that it is what it is and there’s nothing that can be done about it.

Our outdoor brunch plans rained out: It is what it is.

I’m stuck on a stalled subway and will be late for a big meeting: It is what it is.

The wheelchair ramp into the theater where my daughter is performing isn’t actually a ramp after all, and he’ll have to wait for us in the bar across the street: It is what it is.

Now, I hear it in his voice when he tells me he’s lived a good life.

That’s when I knew he had made peace with letting it all go.

Now, I suppose it’s my turn.

……

A few days later it was clear that another infection had come raging back and he would be hospital-bound again. I asked about coming back to New York from Boston.

“Take your trip,” he said. “You need it.”

I did need it.

And so I took the trip that my mom had been saving up for — three days in London with Sage and me to visit Thalia during her semester abroad, followed by three days in Paris. My first trip abroad with my girls in 14 years.

It was beautiful. It was special. There were the famous sites and the Eiffel Tower at night and the art most people only ever see in photos. There were a lot of croissants (for me) and hunts for iced matcha (for Sage) and cuddles on park benches (for all of us). There were blooming tulips and daffodils and pansies that filled my soul in ways I didn’t know I needed.

But what you don’t see in the photos is that I spent every day with one hand on my phone, expecting the call to tell me to turn around and come back home.

Between the daily texts from my stepmom and brother about creatinine levels and white blood cell counts, and lengthy paragraphs containing phrases like kidney failure, temporary dialysis and “no extreme measures,” also came the texts assuring me that I should enjoy every minute, take all the pictures, and be sure to be present with my children.

I was.

And then, sometimes I wasn’t.

And then I was again.

And then, not so much.

Which sounds about right.

Early morning at Notre Dame Cathedral on Thursday, I searched for the right place to light a candle for him, just as he had taught me to when I was 8.

We’re not religious, but I have come to believe in the power of white light.

I stepped into one chapel with a plaque about a saint who looks after the sick, but it was morbid. I was drawn past it, into the adjacent chapel with one of the few statues of a woman who was not Mary. I learned later that she was Michelle de Vitry, mother of 11, and wife of Jean Juvenal des Ursins, who was a writer, historian, and became the Archbishop who was greatly responsible for clearing the name of Joan of Arc. I’d like to think that Michelle had a little something to do with that.

I touched a thin wood-lighting stick to steal a flame, and lit a fresh votive.

I texted the photos to my dad and Amye.

I wrote in the ledger all I could manage to: For my dad, Paul, who always loved it here.

Today, the hospice program is helping Amye set up their apartment and to bring a hospital bed into their living room. Tomorrow or the next day, that’s where he will be, and I’ll be there to visit on weekends.

We all want to know how long?, but no one can really say. Six months? Six weeks?

He’s defied the odds incalculably over the past 11 years, but as he has always told me about gambling, at some point, the house will always win. Or call you out for cheating.

It is what it is.

Which isn’t to say I’m ready to accept it either.

……

When we spoke yesterday he was pretty out of it. But I was sure to tell him that his kidneys are assholes. He agreed.

When I talked to my dad’s closest friend the night before, he admitted that he would prefer to remember him at his best, before all this, and not in a hospital bed in his living room.

He said, “we’ll think of this as his hospice period.”

Era, I thought immediately.

This is his hospice era.

It sounds more like an evolution that way. Like a personal choice.

Which, of course, it is.

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Yesterday I watched another government-sanctioned assassination in Minneapolis.

Another.

I can hardly type this sentence without shaking, even a full day later.

Alex Pretti was a citizen, but it wouldn’t matter if he weren’t. He has a name that native English speakers can easily recognize, but it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t. He was white but it wouldn’t matter if he weren’t. He was an ICU nurse, simply helping another woman who was being physically accosted by ICE before they turned against him instead, but it wouldn’t matter if he had been waving a sign, giving them the finger, or singing Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.

I mention these things because together, they tick off a series of attributes that somehow manage to capture the attention of what’s left of the legacy media these days. That’s also why you’re more likely to know the names Renee Good and Alex Pretti, l than names like Keith Porter, Silverio Villegas González or Nenko Stanev Gantchev.

It’s important that I say this.

Moments after I witnessed the assassination of Alex Pretti, I saw the brutal ICE assault on peaceful protester Matthew Allen (also known as award-winning hiphop artist Nur-D) who was tackled without cause, held down by multiple masked men bearing semi-automatic weapons, restrained and handcuffed as he screamed “I am a US citizen!” after which he was pepper sprayed at close range before being tossed into the back of a pickup.

Seeing his wife collapse to her knees, screaming in anguish, the similarities to John Filo’s infamous photo after the Kent State murders were unmistakable.

I broke too.

(He is okay now evidently. But is he really?)

How can you be human these days and not have all of this rip out a piece of your heart? How can you watch someone’s children — a two year-old girl or a five-year-old child in a blue bunny cap or a middle schooler walking home carrying snacks — kidnapped off the street, then just go about life like things are normal? How can you watch our government call kind-hearted people domestic terrorists, while trying to convince us that actual convicted domestic terrorists are patriots?

How can you have a shred of decency and not say out loud and with conviction, this is wrong. This is so wrong.

Empathy is in short supply, and it means a lot these days. But, to twist an old saying, empathy and 5 bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

With that:

Here are some people and organizations that need our help. These orgs, grassroots groups, and impactful resources have been gathered from wonderful people and organizations I keep bookmarking around social media.

I have vetted them best I can myself to make sure they’re legit and reputable.

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Help for Minnesota

Stand with Minnesota
This is a great resource hub with links to mutual aid and direct relief resources (think: neighbors helping neighbors vs large nonprofits). Support them, and/or share with people in the area who may need support. You can also visit MN NOICE, which has an excellent directory of local orgs that are active in MN and support immigrant communities through organizing, advocacy, rapid response, and community care. S

The Immigration Law Center of Minnesota
A nonprofit providing free immigration legal advice and representation to low-income immigrants and refugees in Minnesota and North Dakota.

Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid
Immigration law attorneys defending detained immigrants in deportation proceedings, providing full representation for permanent residents applying for citizenship, assisting victims of crime and trafficking, and more.

ACLU of Minnesota
Boots on the ground, working their asses off for civil liberties when and where it’s needed — as always. (I’m happy to be a monthly ACLU donor.)

MIN Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC)
An all-volunteer, grassroots, multiracial, and multinational immigrant rights organization fighting for an end to immigration raids and deportations, an end to all anti-immigrant laws, and full equality in all areas of life.

Community Aid Network of Minnesota (CANMN)
Grassroots mutual aid org in Minneapolis’s Bancroft neighborhood.

Immigrant Defense Network
A statewide network of 90+ nonprofits, grassroots groups, and advocates.

Communidades Latinas Unidas En Servico (CLUES)
Minnesota’s largest Latino-led nonprofit organization, founded in 1981 by and for Latinos to ensure the advancement of social and economic equity and wellbeing for Latinos in Minnesota.

International Institute of Minnesota (IIM)
Making direct impact on the lives of immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and other displaced people via legal services, housing and resettlement assistance, and employment support.

Minnesota Interfaith Coalition on Immigration
Offering emotional and material support to immigrants who are unable to access institutional services; working with immigrant rights and legal organizations to advocate for policy changes; organizing regular vigils at the Whipple Building to stand in opposition to ICEs’ dehumanizing practices against the immigrant community.

Keystone Food Shelf and Community Services
Joyce Uptown Foodshelf
Second Harvest Heartland
Sanneh Foundation
Providing food assistance and crisis support to the community.

UNIDOS MN
Multiracial + multigenerational org working for immigration, healthcare, worker, and environmental justice; a longtime safe space and home for DREAMERs.

Indivisible Twin Cities
The local chapter of Indivisible, helping organize and mobilize voters and justice-based initiative to defeat this regime’s extremist agenda.

Minnesota 50501 (50 States, 50 Protests, 1 movement)
The local chapter of the organization behind the No Kings protests. They organize safe, accessible actions across Minnesota with the goal of protecting civil liberties, defending marginalized communities, and opposing the dismantling of federal support programs.

Accola
Serving immigrants and refugees in the Twin cities with English classes, citizenship, digital literacy, safe housing, legal support. and emergency aid.

COPAL MN (Communities Organizing Latino Power and Action)
Respected grassroots organization advocating for and empowering Latino families, especially in suburban districts.

West Side Boosters
A nonprofit, all-volunteer organization deeply rooted in St. Paul’s West Side, known for decades of youth leadership, sports, and community events. They are currently standing guard at local business doors and street corners, delivering groceries, giving rides to work and home, and protecting the St Paul community. (They, along with other hyper-local orgs have been recommended by El Burrito Mercado.)

• More helpers: @theminneapolisedit, @mspwhistles, CAIR.MN, Defend the 612.

• I suggest bookmarking this list of local ICE rapid response teams, since this is clearly not just a Minnesota issue.

• You can also follow citizen journalists, historians, trusted podcasters, and support independent investigative publications like Mother Jones and ProPublica along with local reporters from The Minnesota Star Tribune.

• Don’t stop calling your elected reps, no matter how they vote or what party they align with. 5 Calls (website or app) really does make it easy. There are some serious votes coming up over the next week, and call me crazy, but don’t you think you should get a say in how your representative…represents you?

I know it’s a lot. Don’t be overwhelmed by choices. Just pick one org or action that speaks to you and make a donation, give a follow, or amplify a message.

All I can do right now is turn the anguish, the fear, the righteous outrage into action. So that’s what I’m doing.

(Also, I’m watching the crap out of this video. Even if you don’t think you’ll enjoy it, you will.)

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Other ideas or recommendations? Orgs doing great work? Trusted mutual aid donation links? Citizen journalists doing important reporting? Self-care that’s giving you what you need right now? By all means, share what you need to in comments. 💙

“Happy holidays!” says the man outside the front entrance by the row of flowers, the one charged with sorting mums and lilies and baby’s breath into last-minute Christmas bouquets. “Happy holidays,” I smile.

A dad I’ve never seen is browsing the craft beer fridge with his young daughter next to him, explaining that no, this purchase is not for her. He sees me smiling at them and smiles back. “Happy holidays,” I say gently.

“HAAAAAAPPY HOLIDAYS!” the little girl belts.

She spins around and makes her coat twirl and we both laugh. I think of our own four kids when they were younger, each with their own coat-twirl moments.

In the cooler beneath the yogurt, I spy the one remaining package of “good salami” — the kind I’ll bring home and Jon will say, “ooh….the good salami.” I drop it in my basket.

Over in the produce aisle, a gentleman with a bandage over his eye is comparing bell peppers so intently, it’s like he’s picking out a diamond. Or deciding which upside down card will reveal the queen in a game of Five Card Monte over a rickety folding table in Central Park. I reach to grab a small bunch of scallions next to him. He looks up and smiles, then returns straight away to his peppers. This is serious business, which somehow makes that smile even more meaningful.

“Happy holidays,” I say.

“Happy holidays to you!”

At the register ahead of me, there’s an older woman at the register ahead of me with freshly coiffed silver hair and big stylish glasses. She’s vigorously debating with herself whether to give a twenty and get change or find smaller bills that are closer to the total, but at least she’s found a quarter and three pennies to cover the 28 cents.

I hold the door open for her and as she pushes her walker up over the threshold, she tells me she misses the other owner, the one who always holds the door open for her so she’s glad I’m there. She gives me the biggest smile and a “happy holidays!”

“Happy holidays!” I smile back.

As she walks away, I’m pretty sure she’s still debating whether letting go of that twenty was a good choice.

I glance back at the flower man, now wrapping up his bouquets. “Happy holidays, lady! Happy holidays!” I thank him and say Merry Christmas. “Bless you, happy holidays! Merry Christmas! ” he says a fourth or fifth time before smiling and waving goodbye.

I wipe back tears.

On the way home, I think about other things that made me cry this week: A too-small apartment for no longer small kids. The Charlie Brown tree that makes them happy, but I know wasn’t the giant one they had originally hoped for. My dad, who’s out of the hospital but stuck back in a rehab facility longer than we’d all like and my stepmother who’s recovering from Covid (again). The refrigerator that decided to conk out for no good reason on Saturday night, spoiling the massive Costco holiday order just placed two days before — let alone the sound of all that melted ice cream and all those spoiled foods being scraped into a Hefty bag. The boxes of ornaments handed down in recent weeks from parents who know they won’t live forever. The sound of the kids outside our bedroom door, laughing at something we’ll never understand. The ending of Crazy Rich Asians. The ending of When Harry Met Sally.

And then, you know. Other things. The things that go wrong when you want them to go right. The things we dwell on that maybe we shouldn’t. The things we feel bad about, even if they’re what make us human.

There’s so much we don’t know about people and what’s happening in their lives, or how gently the holiday season may — or may not — land for them.

I don’t know whether that dad and that little girl were getting ready for a big family gathering, or their first Christmas with just the two of them. I don’t know whether the man wrapping the flowers worries about speaking Spanish in public on Christmas, something he never used to feel. I don’t know whether the man in the eye patch is eating by himself tonight. I don’t know whether the woman with the walker is struggling on a fixed income but dammit if she won’t make sure her hair is done on Christmas Eve.

Some of these things may be true.

None of them may be true.

All I know is that they all found it in them to smile at a stranger today in the neighborhood grocery and wish her a happy holidays and it meant something.

I walked in the door, feeling grateful for a warm apartment and a new fridge with shelves full of food, even if it cost us the short family vacation we had planned to take next week. I felt so grateful for the happy chaos and cacophony of the six of us, together, in the too-small apartment with a Charlie Brown tree clad only in a single strand of blue fairy lights.

Soon, we’ll be dancing around that little tree, rush-wrapping gifts while singing along to Hamilton and Mariah Carey.

But for now, there are groceries to unpack and a Christmas Eve dinner to make.

(Hey, we eat late. We’re New Yorkers.)

I lay my grocery bags on the kitchen counter and Jon comes up behind me to help.

“Ooh…the good salami!”

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Happy holidays, friends. May you all have something in your life worth celebrating, on whatever day you choose to celebrate it.

“I’m so incredibly happy. So happy! But also, honestly…a little exhausted.”

“Yeah,” she laughed. “The first semester is basically ‘work 7 days a week and you dream about it.’ It gets easier from there.”

Friends: You cannot imagine the insane dreams I’ve had since oh…July.

(And thanks, Lisa. I’ll borrow that line of yours forever.)

Eagle-eyed subscribers may have noticed that I’ve given myself several weeks off from publishing. It was a reluctant sacrifice, and man, I have missed it here. I have missed all of you! But the trade-off allowed me to put all that time, thought, and emotional energy I needed to make this semester as valuable as I could for my students.

I want to extend a sincere thank you accompanied by a deep, humble bow to my readers — and especially to my patrons — for your patience and continued support during this unexpected break. It allowed me the space to do something incredibly meaningful, and I will be forever grateful that my subscriber numbers only went down…well, somewhat.

Eh. That’s okay.

Looking back, this was the right choice. It was the only choice. Not just for me as an educator, but for me as a writer.

Those of you who have also been bloggers, essayists, or memoirists know that while we’re experiencing something, we often get in the habit of writing the story about it in our heads before it’s even done. It’s not a good habit.

So these past few weeks, I’ve allowed myself to simply live in those moments and lean into this experience, mindful and wholly present.

Don’t worry, I have so much I want to talk about with you. Including the AI thing. Which…oy.

But first, I’m going to recover, collect my thoughts, and breathe.

Just a bit.

With that, I’ll leave you with my a slide from my last lesson. It seems relevant here too.

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It was called Keep Your Eye on the Ball(Room) — but then wrote about it far better and far more insightfully, so I never published it. [Gift link: Trump’s Louis XIV Moment]

Debbie wrote:

Mr. Trump is showing the world that his presidency is a royal court where a select few are invited to pledge their allegiance. This is not the first time he has made such a gesture. When he paved over the Rose Garden, he created a Beltway Mar-a-Lago he could overlook from the balconies of the White House. Mr. Trump is refashioning the presidential residence into a palace; our democracy is now a members-only club.

She explained that Trump “has long treated architecture as a tool of identity,” then reminded us that he has always created buildings as monuments to himself and his name; never as contributions to civic life in any way.

While the White House has indeed evolved over the decades, she reminds us that those additions and alterations have always respected its civic purpose and symbolism of a building that belongs to the people. However “Trump’s proposed ballroom, by contrast, suggests something else: The nation’s most enduring building will be reshaped in the image of Mr. Trump.”

Yesterday I woke up to photos of bulldozers at the East Wing, and I gasped.

Reflexively, I put my hand to my heart.

I tried to identify why I suddenly felt so disoriented and sick.

In one of my creativity in advertising courses this semester, we’ve discussed symbols, metaphors, and visual cliches — those images that are often overused because their meaning is unmistakable.

The symbol of a bulldozer dismantling an American architectural icon that embodies democracy itself has unmistakable meaning. It says: “This is no longer the People’s House. It’s mine, and I can do what I want with it. I’ll do what I want with you, too. The generals are mine. The DOJ is mine. The SCOTUS is mine. The Republican congressional majority is mine. Your tax dollars are mine. The country is mine. It’s all mine — and I’ll bulldoze you too, if you get in my way.”

There is literally no other reasonable interpretation.

That is why so many of us are collectively feeling dread and an urgency to act.

Buildings are more than buildings. Please do not be one of those people grasping for moral equivalencies, like, it’s just a building. Or it can be rebuilt. Or it’s not as bad as what he’s doing to people.

On the scale of extremely bad to wildly, extraordinarily bad, all his actions fall somewhere on that continuum. I don’t feel the need to rank them. They are intended to deliver the same message:

I’ll do what I want.

Landmarks are profoundly meaningful to people. The fire at the beloved Cathedral of Notre Dame generated more than 1 billion in donations for its restoration. Or consider the images from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a symbol of oppression literally ripped apart, weakened, and plundered for souvenirs. Think about the horrors of Kristallnacht, and the intended symbolism of 1400 Jewish synagogues burned to the ground.

And of course, think about 9/11.

If you’ll recall, terrorists didn’t think the Twin Towers would actually fall. They went after the buildings as the most iconic, visible symbols of American power, economic strength, and grandiosity.

24 years later, America’s very own president is going after the most iconic, visible symbol of American democracy and all of its fundamental freedoms.

(Wait, did I just compare him to radicalized terrorists? Interesting.)

The White House is not his.

As writer and Jeopardy phenom Amy Schneider succinctly said last night in defense of the White House, I am one of its 340,000,000 owners.

So am I.

And so are you.

It has been The People’s House since 1827, and I don’t care who you voted for in the past election, or in 2020, or in 2016. If you believe you’re going to continue reaping the benefits of a functioning democracy without a leader who cares about a functioning democracy, you might want to rethink that.

If he took a bulldozer to your own home, unilaterally and without permission, wouldn’t you try to do something about it?

I ask myself whether this will mark “the moment the First American Republic fell,” as Michael Ian Black imagined future historians writing; or, whether this could this be the wake-up call for more Americans (and complicit GOP officials) so many of us keep waiting for.

Of course I know the answer I’m hoping for. And I’m scared that, once again, I will overestimate the capacity of enough people to care and make a difference.

Please.

Please.

This is not a partisan issue.

We all need to stand up.

The call is coming from inside the House.

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I’d love to hear your own feelings about this.

And if you have suggestions for what to do besides calling your representatives in Congress, sending postcards, expressing displeasure with the architectural and construction companies involved with this, or supporting the attorneys who could seek legal injunctions, I would love to hear them.

There are U.S. cities that are certainly more diverse, have larger communities of brown immigrant workers to protect, and have been more retributively targeted by swarms of cosplaying ICE mercenaries armed with zip ties, seething hatred, and visions of head-pats from their orange overlord. (And for God’s sake, New York Times headline writers, stop calling these violent sieges “crackdowns.”)

If you’ve never been to Massachusetts, you’ve surely read about Lexington and Concord, Paul Revere, and the start of the American Revolution in history books. But when you’re here, in the Boston area, this fighting spirit against tyranny DNA-deep.

Like, we’re the Boston of Boston Tea Party fame, motherfuckers.

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Yesterday, I didn’t manage to connect with my people for the No Kings protest on the Boston Common. So I grabbed a Sharpie and a tiny piece of cardboard, whipped up a sign (which inspired the best conversations!), found something with yellow to wear (my RBG movie shirt), and hopped a T. As one does.

Friends:

I went alone, but I never once felt alone.

I stepped out of the Boylston Station and the energy was instantly exuberant. People were complimenting each other’s signs, dancing with children, posing for pictures with people in inflatable frog, unicorn, dinosaur, and Minion costumes — a wonderful example of tactile frivolity (h/t ), the effective practice of disrupting and disarming authoritarian power through absurdity.

Oh, and there was one lobster costume. Because, Boston.

I saw so many American flags.

I saw a guy double back to compliment another guy’s sign, saying, “yeah man, go science!”

I saw so many — too many? — people my parents’ age, and it made me miss them terribly. I thanked so many of them, while apologizing that they had to be out here doing this, once again.

I saw veterans nodding respectfully to other veterans.

I saw people in walkers, people in wheelchairs, people teetering on canes, as if to say this body isn’t going to stop me.

I saw people pushing baby carriages and toting infants in slings — new parents working to make the future for their children the one that they deserve.

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I saw humor, but with an underlying seriousness about the reasons we were there.

I saw a group of new friends trading contact info for a meet-up about future protest action.

I saw anger at the loom of creeping authoritarianism but not the tiniest whiff of violence or danger, despite what the propagandists in the White House would have you believe. The medics at the aid station were basically chilling and chatting with the crowd, and I can’t even recall having seen a single cop much beyond the stage area.

It was peaceful. As were all the protests around the US yesterday.

Because if we’re going to ask for a peaceful nation in which the government doesn’t go to war against its own, then we’re going to show you what that looks like.

I especially loved seeing what people were for, not just what they were against.

They showed up for marginalized communities, victims of abuse who have yet to receive justice, vaccine science, affordable health care, affordable housing, due process, free speech, press freedom, libraries and museums, free and fair elections, an independent DOJ, voting rights, SCOTUS reform, women’s bodily autonomy, public media, funding for essential university research, protections for Boston’s international students, and a return to overall kindness, decency, and the rule of law.

The U.S. Constitution got a whole lot of love yesterday.

I saw people giving a thumbs up to a group wearing t-shirts that said We’re wicked pissed. Wicked loud. Wicked united.

I saw people scanning QR codes to make donations to Indivisible Boston, start community groups, and learn how else to stay involved. (Should anyone ever ask you whether demonstrations “do anything.”)

I saw children who I hope will be old enough to remember how the commitment to peaceful protest somehow got in their blood.

I saw people wiping tears when we sang America the Beautiful together. (Me included. Of course.)

I saw some of the most fervent booing at the mention of RFK Jr.

But nothing rocked the crowd like a speaker’s call-and-repeat about resisting tyranny and wannabe kings the same way we did 250 years ago.

Massachusetts DNA.

Here are some more of my favorite photos from a day in which more than 100,000 people gathered together in America’s oldest public park, the start of the famed Freedom Trail.

Not out of hate, but out of pure love for what can and should be.

If we make it so.

This, though —

This is the one that really got me:

I told you that I went to the Common alone, but I never once felt alone.

But you know? I didn’t feel like I left alone either.

That, I believe, is exactly the point.

Tomorrow there’ll be more of us.

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You can also visit my Instagram for a short video of the day, if only for the dancing frogs.

Who fought for democracy and who didn’t.

Who looked out for their neighbors, and who tried to hurt them.

Who led with kindness and decency, and who led with malice and derision.

Who was horrified by countless videos of illegal kidnappings by masked vigilantes with no badge, no warrant, and no constitutional authority, and who mocked the pain of the victims.

Who put country over party, and who put their bank accounts over everything.

Who wrote the headlines that kept us informed and alert, and who obeyed in advance.

Who stood up and spoke out and said enough is enough, and who was “just following orders.”

Who sobbed at the stories of zip-tied toddlers detained alone in dark vans after being ripped from their parents, and who slept just fine.

History will make it abundantly clear who the good guys were and who the bad guys were.

It’s on us to decide exactly when that will happen.

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Just a few good people who can use our support right now:
Committee to Protect Journalists
Pro Publica
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project
Florence Immigrant + Refuge Rights Project
The Human Rights Campaign
Democracy Docket
Public Citizen
Brennan Center
Amnesty International
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Your local PBS station
Common Cause
Indivisible
50501

Don’t be overwhelmed — just pick the first one that speaks to you. Sure, that one. Right. Perfect.

Oh, and happy start of Banned Books Week 2025 to all who celebrate.

But if they look worried? That’s another story.

Today I’m looking at the comedians and they are beyond worried. They are fucking panicked.

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I grew up in a house full of books, and one of them was a big black hardcover, with giant silver block letters down the spine that said LENNY BRUCE!! My dad explained that he was a comedian who was arrested for saying curse words on stage, and that his shows would be filled with police officers, just waiting for him to say something that they could arrest him for.

It led to conversations about McCarthyism and the word “blacklisting,” and what a terrible, horrible time it was in our history that so many writers, artists, and performers were fired for their own perceived beliefs — true or not — destroying their lives, their livelihood. Some were put in jail. One actor committed suicide.

It was almost inconceivable to me.

This was black-and-white newsreel stuff. Ancient history.

I believe we still (as far as I know) look back on it as a shameful moment in time.

Later, when I was on the cusp of adulthood, I scored tickets to an 11-hour concert that raised money for Amnesty International. The biggest performers and artists of the time explained the concept of Prisoners of Conscience, and how in some countries, people could be fired, imprisoned, and killed just for believing something different from their governments, talking about it, or writing about it.

The day after the show, a cynical media questioned whether 80,000 of us were there just for the music. I can only tell you that that day changed me. It changed my friends.

These stories are not history anymore.

This is not something happening in faraway countries.

It’s happening here and it’s happening now, right in the open.

I hope you know that I’m not an alarmist, but I am wholly alarmed.

Stephen Colbert had his show canceled to appease the government that would happily deny an $8,400,000,000 merger of his network’s parent company in retaliation. I hope we all remain disgusted by the capitulation (“don’t obey in advance?”) and the irony of media conglomerates kowtowing to an unpredictable government, even when their own product exists as a result of our 1st Amendment rights.

Kimmel’s firing last night is different.

Here, our actual government, through the FCC commissioner with the approval of the president, has threatened to pull broadcast licenses from major television networks if they employ comedians who jokes that they don’t agree with.

There’s a word for that.

Look it up.

It rhymes with schmauthoritarianism.

Here’s the joke Kimmel made by the way. Watch it. Tell me in good faith that he crossed a line.

(Unless you’re one particularly thin-skinned orange man who can’t get over the fact that the same people who disdain him are the very A-listers whose approval he has always desperately craved.)

Are you paying attention yet?

In the past 7 months, countless TV reporters and pundits have been fired. Op-ed columnists have been fired. Professors and educators are being fired. The freaking National Archivist was fired.

The vast majority have not been targeted because they said something egregious and unforgivable — like oh, that homeless people should be involuntarily and summarily executed by lethal injection for the crime of not finding a bed in a shelter — but because they said something perfectly legal and reasonable that the current US government doesn’t want people to hear.

This isn’t cancel culture. This is a purge.

These are not people facing the consequences of their actions in a social media pile-on, as Marc Maron aptly put it. It’s not an internet pile-on gone crazy. This is the government, threatening the corporations that own media platforms, in order to deplatform voices that make that government look bad.

If I may add: A government that doesn’t want to face the consequences of its own actions, so it silences, muffles, muzzles, threatens, sues, and abuses its power to try and contain the fallout.

Marc Maron is sounding the alarm. Michael Ian Black is sounding the alarm. Mike Bribiglia is sounding the alarm. Some of our most trusted, decent elected leaders are sounding the alarm. And Kathy Griffin, bless her, sounded the alarm nearly 10 years ago.

Where was her chance to give a weak apology, Fox News host style, and be completely forgiven?

I’ll wait.

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People are asking me what to do.

All I know is we need to speak up, even and especially in the face of fear. So here I am, with whatever small platform I have.

We need to shine a light on this incredibly dark moment.

We need to listen to the experts and activists the leaders and historians, when they call us to action, then respond.

And if that feels like a lot, please start here:

Listen to the comedians.

P.S. Release the Epstein files.

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It didn’t matter.

I was so proud of that first office with my actual name on a plate outside the door — drab, windowless, narrow, with fluorescent overhead lighting that revealed every worn patch of the red carpeting. The generic plastic waste basket under the desk crunched and deformed from the weight of my legs over time; I never liked writing with my feet on the ground.

(Metaphor? Who knows.)

I spent so many early mornings and late nights in there, trying to push my work through an ad agency that didn’t quite want the “modern” creative ideas I had to offer, but somehow appreciated me anyway.

On a January night midweek, my radio was on for company. (I had a corded black desk phone too, a chonky Apple Mac II Classic, and a dot matrix printer by my feet; clock that!) I toiled into the night for an upcoming presentation, which I often did. If we stayed past 7PM, the $9 dinner stipend kicked in. Past 9PM, I could expense the ten-block taxi ride home to my apartment.

I would have stayed anyway, of course. But a free dinner on my salary wasn’t something I was quick to turn down.

I was working through a list of potential rhymes for “Baby Ruth” in a jingle (an egregious task that I still resent) when my music was interrupted.

Missiles had started firing on Iraq. Our missiles.

We could hear them exploding, live.

We were at war, the man said on the radio.

I ran upstairs to alert the senior colleagues who were huddled together in an office, prepping for the next morning’s presentation.

“We started bombing,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach. “We’re at war.”

They looked toward me in the doorway and paused in silence. They stood still for the briefest moment.

Then they did the last thing I expected:

They turned back toward the presentation deck pages spread around the table and resumed their conversation exactly where I had interrupted it, without so much as an “oh no,” or a “that’s terrible.”

I remember thinking, How is anyone supposed to work at a time like this? Do they understand we’re going to war? Where are the priorities? What’s wrong with these people?

“We’ve still got a presentation tomorrow, Liz,” the senior account manager said, without lifting his eyes from the table. “So…let’s find a way to focus and get back to work.”

I walked the stairs back down to my office, listened to the news until I realized I had no focus left in me, then finally gathered my things and left the building to hail my free cab home.

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That would hardly be the last time I had to find some way to commit to an obligation, even when the world felt like it was (sometimes literally) being torn apart.

I remember, so vividly, my desperation in trying to feed my day-old baby (latch, dammit!) while horrific reports poured in about a deadly London Underground bombing on the hospital room TV.

Or hiding behind dark glasses hours after waking up to unimaginable election results — an entire classroom full of parents palming crumpled tissues and feigning weak smiles as our sixth-graders proudly read essays about their favorite historic heroes.

Or writing an article from my stuffy, overcrowded apartment with expert tips to help parents get through the pandemic, against the live soundtrack of neighbors clanging pots and pans out their windows in celebration of our first responders.

Or taking a kid on public high school tours and asking questions about AP classes and art programs, the same day I watched violent maniacs storm the US Capitol while our elected leaders hid under chairs and barricaded themselves in their offices.

There are so many more examples.

You get it. You’ve been there too.

But I see now see stark difference between these moments, and that night in my office at the start of Desert Storm.

There is no shame in throwing yourself into work to distract yourself and reset. I have done it many times and will continue to do it. It is incredibly effective, and hey, often we have no choice. (We all have bills to pay, right?)

In fact, as I started writing this yesterday, I came across a thoughtful, short piece from Rob Schwartz on the magical healing power of productivity to give your mind time to process bad things in the world. I appreciate the advice, and he’s right.

But if I may “yes, and…” his suggestion: Try distracting, healing, and refueling by imbuing your work with purpose and finding a way to do good for someone else.

We can’t all be teachers and firefighters and activists and healers. But we can mentor someone younger. Help a customer. Look the cleaning staff in the eye and say thank you. Propose a social good initiative. Ask the receptionist if you can bring them a cup of coffee. Help someone solve a problem. Say something encouraging. Be kind.

At least for me (and I know for Rob), I’ve come to learn that it takes more than “I’ve got work to do” to refuel me for the long haul.

Let’s try to be the people who find all the opportunities we can to put something good and meaningful into the universe, no matter what it is we do, so we can go to bed knowing that at least a small part of our day was well spent. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll have planted a seed that can grow into something bigger.

The world needs that.

We need that.

I need that.

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Some posts that made me think this week:

Rob Schwartz on getting back to work

Michael Ian Black on self-censorship in the age of Trump

Karen Walrond on talking to strangers and being present

Frederick Joseph on the death of social in social media

For me.

(Related, my freshman seems to be doing great, and thanks to so many of you for asking. Favorite text so far: How crazy is it if I switch out my astronomy class for another philosophy class? And then I’m taking 3 philosophy courses? Humanities FTW.)

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My lesson plans are (mostly) done. The assignment calendar is mapped out with the kinds of projects I wish I could have done in college. I have my class rosters and a whoooole lot of names to learn, but I’m up for the task.

I have a few small items in my office; just enough that it doesn’t look like a WeWork desk rented for the day. My daughter drew some art on my whiteboard and lent me her beloved JFK bust, salvaged from God-knows-where. We tried to clean up the face with nail polish remover and now, if you catch him in the sunlight, he looks like a mime.

There’s a Clone High episode in there somewhere.

I can’t stop thinking about the kind of teacher I want to be, and how that will or will not align with the teacher I become — or the teacher my students remember.

If you recall, I have great affection for so many of the educators in my life who believed in me, and believed in my writing.

Even and especially when others didn’t.

(Those of us in creative fields are highly familiar with the “talks too much in class” note on our report cards. Bloop.)

So today I turn to you, my friends and readers, so many of whom are wonderful writers, thinkers, and teachers in your own right:

What did you value about your favorite teachers? Is there one lesson you will always remember? Is there one thing they said that pushed you, changed you for the better, made you believe in yourself?

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Note: Thanks so much to those of you who shopped using my affiliate links last month. You sure like those waffle blankets and silicone ice cube trays! 90 ordered items = $69.72 in revenue. It’s not a lot, but it’s $69.72 out of Jeff Bezos’s pocket that goes straight to World Central Kitchen. ❤️

Tomorrow I’m dropping her off at college.

I have big feelings right now.

Forgive me if my thoughts wander.

In May, I didn’t have a moment (mothers being mothers) to even slow down from the birthday planning and the invitation sending and the card writing and the gift wrapping to pause and reflect on the profound notion that, for the first time, I celebrated Mother’s Day as a mother of adults.

I will always be their mom. They will always be my children. But they are not children.

We use the same word to define our relationship as we do to define a human within 18 years of their birth, and I find that curious because I’m nerdy like that.

But then, lots of words feel inefficient for describing modern families and modern parenthood and the relationships we have and the milestones we reach.

I’ve received so many thoughtful notes and comments since Sage’s graduation about my speedy trajectory toward the empty nest phase, but my youngest stepdaughter is newly 16, and as far as we know, not intending to move out any time soon.

My boyfriend, co-parent, and committed life partner, whom my biological kids call their stepdad, is not technically a stepdad. And as a man, I guess he is not exactly a boyfriend either. Partner still sounds like a business arrangement. Yet, funny enough, it’s less of a business arrangement than a marriage technically is.

Even my ex remains simply “my ex,” or “my kids’ dad” because there’s no concise phrase to express “father of my kids and no we were never married and yes it was planned thanks for asking and yes we were together together, but when we split up it was not legally a divorce and then a few years after that he suddenly died.”

That is one huge, weighty asterisk right there after the word “ex.”

I’m not married, but I’m not a single mom either. When I was single, I still wasn’t a single mom — more of a solo mom, as taught me in a great podcast interview a few years back.

And the four kids who Jon and I raise, love, and support together — they are “our kids” but they’re not “my kids.” Still, they make up “our family.”

The words in our vernacular are wildly inadequate for all the aspects of healthy, modern relationships that are possible today, and I think that has impact beyond semantics. I think it keeps us swimming in a mess of outdated stereotypes about “fatherless” children and unwed mothers, and assholes who think less of women who don’t have — or don’t want to have — biological children.

Even “empty-nester” paints the portrait of someone embarking on a very different journey than the one I’m about to set off on.

Besides, our proverbial nest isn’t empty.

But talk to us in two years.

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Right now, I’m sitting across from Sage at the dining room table, each of us on our laptops, each drinking iced coffees in glasses slippery from condensation. I’m writing. She’s scouring her college website for work-study jobs.

I love hearing her make little comments to herself as she analyses the options, because I do the same thing.

“Should I be a lifeguard?” she laughs.

(She will not be a lifeguard.)

“Wait — how can I work as the person who moves people in when I’m moving in?”

She laughs again.

“Also, I think you need upper body strength for that,” she says.

I see the confident, poised woman she has become and I’m so proud of her.

I’ve somehow managed to become the mother of adults, which is mind-blowing to me. My kids can vote alongside me. They can walk into R-rated movies without first buying a PG ticket, then secretly switching theaters. They can get their own non-driver IDs (New Yorkers being New Yorkers) without my co-signature. They can buy or sell property, should they have any money. Or property. Or inclination to buy or sell property.

They can donate a kidney.

I have less than 24 hours remaining in this phase of parenting — the one you say you can’t wait for when your babies cry all night and your toddlers throw themselves on the floor of the restaurant because the grilled cheese isn’t cut into triangles. But as most parents of adults will tell you, when it comes, you can always use a few more weeks. Or days. Or hours.

We’re currently surrounded by a swirl of suitcases and laundry bags and packing materials, and chairs teetering with piles of books and clothes for her stepsister to dig through or send off to Housing Works. My head is also swirling, but in a different direction. It’s like one of those amusement park rides that’s both exhilarating and nauseating.

Sage doesn’t need a few more days; she’s ready to be a college student.

Which means it’s time for me to be ready to be…whatever it’s called.

(Not that I have a choice.)

My baby is off this week.

This is what we raise them to do.

What I don’t have in words or clarity of thought today I am amply making up for in feelings.

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As I wrote last week, there’s been something exciting and fresh about setting up a tiny apartment in need of…well, everything.

You can start over with a tea kettle that doesn’t splash every time you pour it. You can indulge in an entire set of white bath towels, since you no longer need to differentiate colors for six different bathers. You can mount a knife rack where it’s most convenient — not necessarily high out of reach of curious toddler hands, now that said toddlers are old enough to wield their own pointy instruments of death and bagel-slicing.

This has also been one more extremely effective mental health break from the weekly firehose of terrible news. Let alone the feelings of sending my youngest to college in four days.

We don’t talk about that yet.

I’ve gotten so many questions here and in DMs about what I’ve bought, what I’m bringing, and what I’m going to be searching for, so I thought I’d give you a peek.

(PS It’s okay to post questions and comments right here, instead of messaging me privately. It really helps create a conversation — which I love — and it’s one less place for me to forget to check online!)

First, a confession:

After six straight months of abstention, I have given in, judiciously and with great thought, to the Amazon and Target beasts.

On Cool Mom Picks, I frequently explained that I believe it’s worth it to spend a little more on things you love that will last. Practice conscientious consumerism. Shop your values. Support small local businesses and local bookshops when you can. Buy good, well-made brands. But also, buy second-hand. Take the hand-me-downs. Trade things with friends. Repair old things. Or hey, go ahead and get the free overnight shipping so you don’t have to give up your one free day a week looking for a stupid Twin XL mattress topper.

Everyone has to do what’s right for themselves and their families, for their budgets and their time constraints. No judgments.

As for me, after days of fruitless searches at local stores — where the heck have all the good reusable silicone straws disappeared to? — followed by nights corresponding with boneheads on Facebook marketplace, I caved.

(Yo, you do know that I can Google image search your “brand new, in box, PRICE IS FIRM” TV stand, Chad, and see that it’s straight off Amazon and you are charging more for it, right? Plus I have to pick it up? Best of luck to you. )

I know I don’t have to justify any of this to you, but I will note that I always make amends for my not-sticking-it-to-the-billionaires transgressions in other ways; this month, Chef Jose Andres and his incredible team at World Central Kitchen will enjoy another small contribution from me.

And if you do make a purchase through the (few) affiliate links I provide here, I will send it all to WCK. Affiliate commissions are tiny percentages, but they can add up.

With that:

Things Currently Sparking Joy:

This Gooseneck Kettle
I never saw the point of an electric kettle, until I indulged in this beautiful little Cosori model. (Let’s say is very convincing.) It takes far less time to heat water, and with far less spillage if you’re a pour-over coffee devotee like me. While Jon is a full-on Breville espresso maker fan (and damn if that machine isn’t still going strong after 15 years), the pour-over ritual brings me a little zen each morning.

The IKEA Kitchen Cart It’s Sitting On
The cart that I shared last week is sturdier and better-looking for $30 than anything I saw anywhere else. Will it make it into Architectural Digest? No. But, priorities.

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This Collapsible Laundry Basket
We spotted this genius laundry basket at Costco, and it’s so perfect for tiny apartments and dorm rooms. The website describes a pack-of-2 situation, but one was around $12 in-store.

As an aside: It is a damn delight doing laundry in my tiny apartment basement with the help of an app that tells me whether the machines are in use before I schlep downstairs. You suburbanites with laundry rooms? Bless.

This Sea Salt Neroli Dish Soap
This divinely scented Caldrea dish soap makes me like washing my IKEA plates just a little more. I even have the matching room spray.

These Silicone Ice Cube Trays
Hey, it’s the little things. I just can’t with the rigid ones that you have to bang on, or run under hot water. They are currently $4 each for 2, and come in cute colors.

The Science Oven
This is an important purchase for a Professor In Tiny Apartment Cooking for One situation, especially because I will always anything but an oven. This adorable little guy is technically an Our Place Wonder Oven, but we call it the Science Oven. IYKYK.

I absolutely love it!

It fits compactly on my no-space kitchen counter, and it toasts, bakes, reheats, air fries, and broils. You can also pour a bit of water to create steam that will refresh your favorite carbs gone stale, though I haven’t tried that yet. I have never been so enthusiastic about reheating leftover pizza.

By the way, all the tech and food reviewers convinced me that a small microwave won’t “do the job” fast enough, so I bought a highly rated 19” microwave. Then promptly returned it, unopened. You know what? It’s too big, and I’m not going to be roasting whole chickens as much as heating Trader Joe’s potstickers. I may even see how long I can live without a microwave at all.

This Waffle Blanket
Do I have a bed frame yet? No! Do I have a mattress on the floor like a college student? Yes! And yet, it’s a mattress on the floor with soft, affordable sheets like the ones we like at home, and a cozy new waffle blanket I researched nearly to death.

On night one, Jon said, “Wow, it feels like sleeping in a hotel!” (mattress on floor notwithstanding), so mission accomplished.

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This Hand-Me-Down Wooden Trunk as a Coffee Table
When I told my mom and stepfather that I was using an overturned box with a tablecloth over it as a temp coffee table, they instantly dusted off this beauty for me. It keeps the place from looking too much like an IKEA showroom floor. As do the well-worn pair of bentwood Thonet chairs that I got for a steal in the late 90s, and have since traveled with me from apartment to apartment.

This Art from Sister Mary Corita Kent.
I couldn’t stand one more night in the tiny apartment without at least some art swiped from the City. Even if I’m still afraid of nail holes in a rental.

If you don’t know her story, Sister Mary Corita Kent is incredible. My dad and stepmom gave me an old portfolio box set of her pop art serigraphs, and I splurged on high-quality framing from the best local framer in Brooklyn. Money well-spent! You may even recognize them if you’ve ever seen videos of me on the couch in my influencer days of yore.

PS When I told Sage I needed more art, she said with so much enthusiasm that I should just look for pictures I like online and print them out and tape them up! She is adorable and her dorm room will be the best. But I still can’t think about that yet.

Things Needed to Spark More Joy:

Here’s where I can truly use some help:

• A TV stand to urgently replace the (eep) two overturned plastic bins. It has to be between 44 and 56” max. I’m up for a creative solution, like a worn but beautiful bench, a funky low buffet, or something from a resale furniture site.

• Pillows for a black leather loveseat. My mom has volunteered to make some — any fabric destinations you love? Or just cool pillows for inspo? I’m a fan of retro-modern, color-blocking, Bauhaus, and the occasional kitsch to keep things light. I believe all homes need a sense of humor.

• Throw rugs because I’m terrible at picking them out. Rugs are my decorating blind spot. My brain just can’t process what works, where, and in what size.

• A night stand or night stand alternative. One of those chairs may do the job.

• A cool stall shower curtain is a tough find! This is in our NYC bath and I love it (so well-made!) but the tiny apartment bathroom has a tiny shower stall, and a lot of grey. I need something to brighten it up.

• More affordable art — all your secret destinations to browse and bookmark!

• New England area fleas, vintage shops, resellers.

• Any small space tips, besides the great ones I always get from and . Fave design blogs? Substackers? I need more ideas besides whatever Instagram ads are throwing at me these days!

• Just you, being here. :)
  

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While it’s Jon who is the master car-packer of the household, I do have the ability to eyeball a heap of boxes and bins, suitcases and Fresh Direct bags stacked up by the front door, and know that yes, it will fit.

“It won’t fit!”

“It will fit.”

It fit.

Well, everything but the microwave.

It’s been many (many, many) years since I’ve had to move, not counting the children I’ve shuttled to and from summer camp, and in recent years, college.

It’s been even longer since I’ve had to move into a small walk-up rental; long enough that I was worried about the non-functional front door buzzer, until I remembered, oh right. Phones!

As I mentioned — though now I can tell who doesn’t read to the end of my posts, bloop — I’ve found a small faculty apartment on the Boston University campus where I’ll be teaching full-time starting in a few weeks.

I won’t be at the apartment full-time, though certainly I’ll be there more often than not for now. It makes sense as I ease into the routine of a new career with a new timeline in a new-but-not-exactly-new city.

There has been something strange and delightful about my time here in these first 72 hours. Especially because I had only seen the apartment once before moving in, and I realized I had so many questions beyond the measurements of the rooms.

Where does the garbage go? I can’t remember, do the lights dim? Can I reach the top cabinet without a stepstool? How do I get deliveries? And shoot, is there even a medicine cabinet?

When we pulled up Sunday afternoon and walked into the bathroom for the first time, I turned to face the mirror above the sink, whispering please open please open please open… and it did.

Note: Why in the world are medicine cabinets mirrored on the inside? Did someone decide there was some need to create the illusion of having even more stuff in there? Now I have TWO Advil bottles! I’m rich! Rich with ibuprofen!

Every moment these past few days has brought some discovery, no matter how small.

Like lying on a mattress on the floor without a bed frame, under fresh sheets, looking up at a newly painted ceiling.

It will be banal one day of course; right now, it feels hopeful.

I am getting used to new views out the window, new light patterns in the morning, new sounds — footsteps on the carpeted stairwell, a slightly different fire engine sound, the electronic chirp chirp chirp at the pedestrian crosswalk on the corner.

I am learning the precise rotation of the shower valve for the perfect water temperature.

I am deciding where the glasses go and where the dishes go and where the spices go and whether there will be enough space for the coffee mugs that will surely accumulate because they always do.

I am processing the strange juxtaposition of favorite dresses and well-worn jackets hanging in different closets.

I am working on my curricula on the couch with hours of real daylight to energize me, and not just the tiny sliver that graces us for an hour or so around 4 PM in Brooklyn.

I am imagining walls no longer in desperate need of art that will require semi-forbidden rental apartment nail holes. (I am disproportionately nervous about this; don’t ask. I’m a rule-follower.)

I am enjoying the little coffee cart I created in the kitchen, which only sounds indulgent and twee until you see how much counter space I do not have.

And in just a few days, I have already come to realize that the IKEA dishes are indeed perfectly fine, just as Jon swore they’d be, after a good 50 minutes going back and forth between the various sets and cross-referencing them on my phone against the fancier ones on sale at Crate & Barrel, and can’t you just pick one already please, says my brain, because while Jon is the most patient man I’ve ever known, we have been here since 10:30 and it is now 3:25 and we still have to check out.

True story.

Strangest of all though, has been the realization that for the first time in 20 years, there are no children’s needs to consider in my tiny apartment.

I don’t have to figure out how to fit big cereal boxes into small cabinets, I don’t have to lug home gallons of milk, I can skip the Pop-Tart aisle (for now), no one will secretly use up my good shampoo, and I have no one to blame for the dishes in the sink but myself.

It’s everything parents always say we look forward to when our kids are little and our homes look like a rainbow vomited plastic toys over every surface. And now, it’s 2025 and here I am.

We do look forward to it.

But the secret is, the closer it gets, the less we do.

(Don’t tell your friends with toddlers, let them enjoy their dreams.)

My youngest daughter is off to college herself in a few weeks. (Another move!) My oldest daughter may be nearby, but she’s entirely on her own. We still have one kid at home in Brooklyn, and that will be a huge change for her, for Jon, and for all of us. Plus, I’m no longer a short subway ride from my parents at any given moment.

But that is all too big to think about right now. Scary big.

Today, I’m just allowing myself to focus on exciting big:

Fresh walls full of potential, stunning beds of zinnias along busy Boston roadways, strangers who ask where I found the shopping caht, a different group of dear friends to meet for dinner dates, a Dunkin’ on every corner.

Oh, and above all, a new job that is absolutely giving me life.

So much newness. So much change.

But then I’ll catch an old street sign, a brownstone I once lived in, the same Mexican restaurant I loved as a student, the above-ground Green Line stops, or a pretty church, and I’ve got my bearings.

I’ve always said that a home becomes Home the moment you stop thinking about the walk to and from the train and your feet just kind of go.

I think the same goes for a second home.

But I’m not rushing it.

I’m liking this too much right now.

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It arrived in my mailbox each year, the second week of September, without fail. I knew the second I saw her distinct handwriting on a pale pink envelope that there would be a check tucked inside a store-bought card, the kind with embossed pink and lilac roses on the front, and a swoopy script message like For a special granddaughter. Maybe there was a poem.

Occasionally there was glitter.

I know the cards were the kind you see in every chain store with a FOR GRANDDAUGHTER row in the birthday section of the card aisle.

I also know she picked each one out just for me.

As I hit my mid-20s, my career had finally hit the point that I didn’t have to choose between buying a bottle of wine for the weekend or splurging on a cab home in the pouring rain. I could shop (at least in certain stores) without first checking the price tags. I could pick up the tab for dinner with my dad on special occasions. I could pay my ConEd bill on time.

The checks from my grandmother still came each year.

$25, every time.

It started to feel a little…uncomfortable? Or maybe just unnecessary.

I called my mom to ask her advice. I felt bad that my grandmother, on a fixed income, was sending me money that I didn’t really need the way I did when I was in school. Should I say something?

Maybe I could thank her and tell her I wouldn’t cash the check?

“It’s not that you need it,” my mom said.

“It’s that she needs to give it to you.”

I still think about this all the time. I just hadn’t thought about all the ways it applies, all the small things we do to show love.

When my dad calls me while I’m on my shoot in Prague to suggest that I try this wonderful restaurant on the river, by the Kampa Dock, which he enjoyed greatly. I asked him when he last ate there. He pauses, thinks, and decides it was around 1988.

When my mom offers the brand new sweater off her back to whichever granddaughter just complimented it. It’s cashmere.

When Jon runs into the bathroom to get something for me off the top shelf, even though I’m already at the top rung on the stepladder.

When my dad tells me that I can avoid traffic at this hour if I just take the side streets instead of the BQE, but to be careful when I get out of the City because that one stretch of the Taconic is a speed trap.

When I tell my stepkids, yes, I know you have money saved from your job, but put your wallet away. The iced coffee is on me.

When I text Sage to remind her that the heat index is going to hit 100 today at camp, and do you have enough of those electrolyte packets left? Are you sure? Are you extra sure? Well, do you need other flavors?

When I walk Thalia to the elevator at 7:45 as she leaves for work, still in my pajamas, just to have 15 more seconds with her before the summer ends. I ask her if she’s remembered her water bottle, but of course she did. She always does.

It’s not that you need it, it’s that she needs to give it to you.

Yesterday, I saw that an author named had shared his own similar story about his dad, only using different words.

Yes.

Yes.

This is what goes unsaid when I walk into the sticky, humid hallway in my schleppy sweatpants, clutching my coffee mug. Or when I ask Sage for the 90th time whether she has all the Twin XL bedding she needs for her move to college next month. Or when I tell Marlo to bring a sweater to the restaurant because it’s the one where she always gets cold. Or when my dad forwards me every Facebook video featuring behind-the-scenes secrets from Young Frankenstein or Monty Python.

In response, there may be eyerolls. There may be snark. There may be “Dad, you sent me the same thing last month!” Or, “Mom, I’m a grownup. I know.”

It’s okay.

These are some of the ways that love can look.

I think it’s important that we learn to see them for what they are.

Because how wildly lucky we are to still be here, together, watching out for each other, in all the necessary and unnecessary ways.

In this world, at this time, I can’t think of anything that matters more.

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My daughter’s train stopped somewhere in Southern Connecticut on her way home from Boston last month. The lights were out. There was no power. There was no air.

Did I mention it was the first 80-something-degree, high-humidity day in June?

It was the first 80-something-degree, high-humidity day in June.

Her texts tell the story far better and more colorfully than I can.

my train just lost power lmfao

fine, just reading

in line rn for snack car

good people watching!

I should be in NY by now oh well

they’re getting the fire dept to bring us fans

everything from here to NYC is shut down

omg it’s the Hunger Games for the bathroom

apocalypse train asf

if we have a plan b getaway driver that might be good maybe

they won’t let us off the train bro…

hott

I’m getting some good writing done tho

I was glad she had the foresight to grab a few waters from the cafe car before they ran out, because I was begining to have sympathy dehydration.

I’m not so great in the heat.

My Plan B Getaway Driver brain kicked in (she really is my kid), and I started racking my brain to think of every mom I knew up and down the Northeast Corridor who might be able to step in and help at this late hour. I mentally traveled through my address book from Stanford to Westport, up to New Haven, with no idea where she might be able to get off and at what time.

Your adult children are still your children. Always.

(Mom? Dad? I understand why you still tell me to drive safely and to call as soon as I get home.)

When Thalia let me know that they planned to tow her train back north to New Haven, I reached out to the mom of one of her dear friends from camp who lived nearby. Without hesitating, Laura said, of course I can get her! She can stay here for the night, or I can stay with her until you can get her, or you can drive north and I’ll drive south and we’ll pull over somewhere on the side and trade passengers when we meet!

Friends: I cried.

While it was hardly a major emergency, the kindness of a fellow mom was a balm.

Amtrak somehow managed to repair the power lines after all — no fire department fans had shown up, but no No Plan B Getaway Driver was needed either.

I thanked Laura profusely and promised her a visit soon.

I was a little more stressed than I’d like to admit.

I knew she understood.

The train slowly crept southward, and Thalia walked in the door a mere 8.5 hours after leaving Back Bay Station, a bowl of pasta waiting for her, as requested.

One of the questions I am asked most often by friends and readers these days is how I’m staying sane and keeping hope alive in this unbelievably cruel timeline

Well first, I’m wildly busy putting together curricula for my students this fall, which is a surefire way to keep the news off and to focus on something positive and meaningful. (I hope!)

I also stay sane by practicing gratitude, acknowledging our shared humanity, and looking for the good. Is that trite? I don’t care. I just can’t read another story about horrible people and the horrible things they continue to do while more horrible people enable them. I do read about the people protecting immigrants in their communities with their bodies, the teachers defending their students, the GoFundMe goals hit by the generosity of hundreds of strangers, the clinic defense volunteers, the foreign aid workers, the first responders, the op-ed writers, the outspoken defenders of democracy here and abroad.

Maybe I need to look a little closer to home, too.

We have helpers everywhere, don’t we? In our own address books, on our group chats, in our social feeds. It’s easy to forget that you don’t have to be a deep-pocketed philanthropist or Chef Jose Andres to make a difference in someone’s day.

I’m just so grateful for small kindnesses right now.

And I hope I can provide more of them myself.

They go such a long way.

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I’m sitting in my car in the dark, just outside the camp entrance. This is where we wait to pick up counselors for their day off — 9:30? 9:45? Maybe 10 PM? Whenever they’re through with their staff meeting.

I have time.

I shut off the ignition so it’s dark enough to see the fireflies and the glow of light from a few bunk windows visible through the dense cluster of spruces and pines. I lower the window a bit to hear the crickets, but the humidity has other plans. I turn on the car without starting the engine to catch some air, and the radio turns on, barely above a whisper.

Sirius XM 1st Wave. My comfort music. Preset #2.

The Preset #6 button for MSNBC is just a pinky’s length away but I dare not click over.

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Alone with my thoughts (and OMD and Echo and the Bunnymen), I try to finish the NYT Spelling Bee, but the limited cell phone signal won’t cooperate.

I hear the distinctive opening notes of Taps, the universal summer camp signal that it’s time for all campers to scurry back to their cabins for the night, back to the rows of bunk beds covered with puffy quilts and milky blankets, Squishmallows and teddy bears from home, a little extra something to hug while they’re away.

We miss them — our campers and our counselors. Terribly. Every time. But we know how much these short weeks mean to them.

It’s lights out, and the windows go dark. I imagine the girls snuggling up under their sheets, giggling, whispering, until they’re shushed by exhausted counselors and they fall asleep to the whir of the ceiling fan.

They’ll wake up in the morning to their best friends in the world, wriggle into clean shorts and tees, force a toothbrush into their mouths, drag themselves to breakfast, and start another day of silliness, of swimming, of rock painting, of bug juice.

They’ll wake up in the morning.

I can barely bring myself to look at the after-storm photos of Camp Mystic.

The subjects are so familiar that they’d be otherwise unremarkable.

Trunks with socks and swimsuits peeking out the sides. Beach towels with name labels on the tags, hanging up to dry along a slack clothesline. Painted metal beds with their worn springs. Sleeping bags with cartoon characters. A tangle of flip-flops and Crocs. Crayon art on the walls. An array of purple and teal and bright pink bedding tossed haphazardly on the cabin floors, as if it were laundry pick-up day.

Only it’s not laundry pick-up day. And the photos are not unremarkable.

The bedding is caked in mud while sticks and leaves hang on the line alongside the crumpled, filthy, soaking wet towels. Whatever wall art left is curled up and torn. The painted wooden drawers are no longer in the dressers. The cabin floor is deep black, hardly distinguishable from the soaked ground outside.

There are no children on the beds.

I keep thinking about what else we don’t see: The friendship bracelets made for siblings back home in their favorite colors. The photos of the dogs and cats and grandparents they miss. The construction paper awards for a bullseye at archery or a campfire, well-built. The special kids toothpaste with the sparkles that costs too much because okay, fine, it’s camp, so you can pick out whichever one you want if you promise to use it.

It’s too easy to lose myself in the grief.

All children are our children, Kailash Satyarthi reminded us.

All children at Camp Mystic. All children at the US border just hoping for a better life. All children in wars, in refugee camps, in hospitals, or somewhere separated from the parents they love, whether by acts of nature or acts of cruelty.

They are all ours and my heart just hurts so much lately. Too much.

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Two slight silhouettes head toward my car with that sort of wiggly skip-bounce stride reserved for the young and happy. Can it be 9:45 already?

I see Sage and her friend more clearly as they enter the outer perimeter of the glow of the dashboard. They have pillows under their arms and tote bags full enough for a 40-hour leave.

I flash back to the first time I picked Sage up from her first week-long stay at this same camp — she was 7. She ran into my arms crying, wrapping her legs around me like a koala.

“It’s okay! It’s okay!” I comforted her. “I’m here, Mommy’s here.”

“I’m not crying because I missed you,” she sobbed. “I’m crying because I don’t want to leave.”

Now, 11 years later, I step out of the car to greet her but I don’t expect that this time it’s me who will bury my face into the crook between her neck and shoulders, hugging her, never wanting to let her go.

“Mom! You don’t have to cry!”

“It’s been a tough news week,” was all I could manage to say.

“Really tough.”

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If you want to support the victims of the Texas flooding, you can donate to Kerr County Flood Relief, H-E-B, Team Rubicon, Direct Relief, or World Central Kitchen, who was on the ground feeding people from day one, as always, because they know that hungry people can’t eat prayers. Find other vetted charities through Charity Navigator.

You might also contact Congress and tell them to stop defunding Americorps, FEMA, the National Weather Service, and NOAA.

You know that I love the dystopia.

Zombie apocalypses. Dystopian hellscapes. Orwellian governments. AI overloads gone amok. And my favorite — the survival of humanity hinging on one badass woman fighting against all odds.

Give me all of it.

That, of course, includes Squid Game.

(I have not yet watched the S3 finale, so no spoilers please.)

Watching Seasons 1 and 2 during the last administration was cathartic for me — a cautionary tale about class war and wealth inequities in which even good people have to make terribly tough choices. In the end, the bad guys get theirs, and we, the viewers, get to feel good that we’re good guys too, reserving our derision for those characters with no decency, no moral code, no allegiance to anything but cash money.

This season feels different.

The cautionary tale has become a mirror-perfect reflection of our reality in the U.S. today and it’s impossible to miss:

Billionaires are mocking the pain of people in need.

Billionaires are degrading people in desperate need and dehumanizing them in any number of ways in order to avoid feeling any accountability, empathy, or obligation toward them.

Billionaires are willing to kill babies. Children. Newborns. Hey, why not if it will make them some more billions.

They are voting to cause more pain if they can profit from it. And they often do, without consequence.

They sip champagne and gorge themselves gourmet spreads while watching the people they govern try to live on a single potato a day.

They cosplay as wannabe soldiers and deputized murderers, with the hopes of maybe getting to do a little murdering themselves.

They rig the game so that even a “democratic vote” has a predetermined outcome.

And maybe, worst of all, the people in power aim to create such an unforgiving, inequitable world, that it saps regular people of empathy and turns the working class against one another, creating enemies out of the people in our community.

I got mine, so…

Are we really that far away from our own oligarchs and morally decrepit power brokers from placing backroom bets on who will kill a baby for money?

I think we’re already there.

When I was searching the web for links to support this piece, I came across this interview with Squid Game creator, Hwang Dong-kyuk, who indeed agreed there are similarities between the series’ ultra-rich VIPs and today’s real-life ultra-rich villains.

"The people who really control the power and the system, they no longer hide behind a curtain,” he said. “They willingly take their masks off, almost as if to declare, ‘We're the ones running everything. We're the ones in control.’”

Let’s unmask them.

Don’t let up.

How to fight those who voted for this cruel, immoral 2025 Budget Bill: Updated

While the bill passed, I still believe what I’ve told my kids in November, 2024: I’ll never stop fighting for you.

Hakeem Jeffries did what he could to buy us time.

It wasn’t enough.

The bill passed and I’m sick about it.

Be sure to call your GOP House member who voted for HR1. Your rep first, but at this point, any of them.

• Use the 5 calls app to reach them.

• If you can’t get through, send a fax.

• If you can, show up at their district offices.

• Focus on vulnerable House members and those in swing (purple) districts.

  • Here is Rollcall’s list of the top 10 vulnerable congressmen. (We’re coming for you, Lawler.)

  • Here’s the Cook Report list of vulnerable congressmen. 17 Republicans are either vulnerable or in toss-up races:

    • AZ-01 Schweikert

    • AZ-06 Ciscomani

    • CO-08 Evans

    • IA-01 Miller-Meeks

    • MI-07 Barrett

    • PA-07 Mackenzie

    • PA-10 Perry

    • WI-03 Van Orden

    • CA-22 Valadao

    • CA-40 Kim

    • CA-41 Calvert

    • IA-03 Nunn

    • MI-10 OPEN (James)

    • NJ-07 Kean Jr.

    • NY-17 Lawler

    • PA-08 Bresnahan

    • VA-02 Kiggans

• Call your Dem rep too and support them for their vote to help the American people, and not just those in their own districts. They use that information for good.

• This 5 calls spreadsheet (Google sheeets) shows how many calls have been made to your own rep opposing HR1. (Not enough.)

• Take care of yourself. Turn off the TV news. Take a walk. Eat a donut. Hug your kids. Put on your favorite music. See a good friend.

• We keep moving forward. ❤️

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Yes, the GOP-led congress caved. They are craven, they are feckless, and they are more afraid of the cruel orange man on the golf course than they care about you, the people whose interests they were voted to represent.

We still fight for people in need.

To the end.

That’s what the good guys do.

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