Debbie Russell's Blog, page 7

What I Just Learned About Tina Turner

I’m going to start right off by telling you that before last week, I hadn’t thought much about Tina Turner.

As a card-carrying member of Gen X, I remember her hits from the 80s. My close friends will tell you that my musical taste is all over the place and rarely involves deep cuts and learning all the words. But I can hear “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and be transported back to a super fun time in my life. I also was vaguely familiar with the first part of her life, the horrific, awful part that involved her marriage and musical partnership with the monster Ike Turner.

So when I saw the news of her death, and learned that she had not lived in the US for over two decades, my curiosity was piqued.

My curiosity is often piqued…but I digress.

This illuminating article in People focused on her residence in Switzerland. I learned she’d given up her US citizenship in 2013 when she became a citizen of Switzerland.

I learned she wrote not one, but two memoirs: one at the age of 47 and the other at the age of 79. I believe she wrote the first, simply entitled I, Tina: My Life Story, hoping to get the Ike part of her life over and done with. Despite her best efforts, that didn’t happen. It seemed Ike would forever be a part of the conversation.

What I didn’t know, was that Tina Turner wrote a second memoir entitled My Love Story: A Memoir. She also cowrote a book entitled Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good. She wrote the latter two within five years of her death at 83.

I’ve read none of these books, but my guess is, the common theme in all of them is resilience.

Tina Turner embodied resilience right up until the end.

From the moment in 1976 when she ran across that freeway in Dallas and begged the management at the Ramada Inn to give her a room, she clawed back her life and began the process of redefining herself. Despite being forever tied to the shadow of Ike, Tina lived the rest of her life bravely, and with kindness toward others.

She appeared to have it all in the 1990s when she settled in Switzerland with Erwin Bach: an unlikely partner—except who among us has the right to even say that? He treated her with respect and gave her a kidney, thereby prolonging her life. After twenty-seven years together, they finally married. I’d like to believe she found peace.

These days, 83 is not considered old. I don’t know the extent of Tina Turner’s health issues, but after watching the 2021 documentary Tina over the weekend (yes, I needed to know more), and focusing closely on the scene from the 2019 Broadway premiere of the musical about her life, as the camera caught her walking somewhat shakily—Oprah on one arm, her husband on the other—I’m just glad she was able to celebrate her final chapter knowing just how loved she was.

Memoirs of famous people can provide enlightenment and inspiration because the universality of being human touches all of us - no matter how rich or how famous.

Thank you, Tina Turner, for generously giving of yourself right up to the end, especially when it would have been far easier just to shut the rest of us out.

Remembering my Late Father...on Mother's Day

I want to begin by recommending another Substack newsletter: Nedra Nuggets. I’ve been following therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab on social media for awhile now, and today she made an Instagram post about how hard it can be to find a card for a parent with whom you don’t have a healthy relationship.

That was me with my mother. Every. Single. Mother’s Day.

I never really understood why, until quite recently. As I did the work to unpack the very painful relationship I’d had with her, I remember asking my therapist how it was that I hadn’t gone completely off the deep end. Many daughters with mothers like mind turn to very destructive ways to manage the pain of having a mother who didn’t attach properly and created an environment that was essentially upside down.

Her response was so revealing:

“Your dad was both mother and father to you.”

She was right, of course, as she was about so many things. And now I’ve written a book in part about how my dad made me the person I am today.

There was that time in 1988: right after I graduated from college with no job in sight, returned back home to Wisconsin for several months to stew in a whole lot of misery, until finally deciding to return to Washington DC where I’d lived while going to college. My mother was apoplectic about it, as she tended to be with most things.

Dad, on the other hand, recognized that it was the right thing to do. Shortly after I’d settled in, he sent me a cassette tape “letter.” Remember, it was 1988. I’m sharing a couple of excerpts from that recording on the day we celebrate mothers, because Dad doing double duty gave me all the support a child could ever hope for from a parent.

“I thought, let's get this going while it's on my mind, and I can get it done, and get it back to you so that you'll have it there, and it'll be all ready to go for you to report back to us all of the exciting things that are happening to you, which are going to happen. And there's no doubt about it in my mind. I just—I don't know. I have great feelings of—of course, I've had them all my life, but they even seem to be stronger now some way. I think this is going to be a real good year for all of us.

I'm very optimistic about this coming year, about the future. I feel very good about my job and my situation, and I feel that at least having a steady income gives me a base. I'm still keeping my eyes open, and if some kind of an enterprise presents itself that has very little or no risk connected to it, and I can make a little extra money, I want to do that…

I think that's going to work out well for me. I'm not sure about Mom. As far as Mom is concerned, why, you know, that's kind of status quo. We're just going to have to hang in there and keep her—stop thinking about how bad everything has been and how awful things are going to be in the future, because the things were bad in the past, and they'll continue, and all that. So, I have to keep working on her to keep forgetting about all that.”

It wasn’t until almost three decades later that I was able to start to understand how Dad tried to take care of my mother. He spoke to me on this recording in a way that respected my ability to understand her situation. Only I’m not sure I ever really did until many years later.

All I knew is that I found my mother very challenging to be around. Dad, on the other hand, was someone I knew loved and supported me, no matter what.

“I think you have a very bright future ahead of you. I—every time I think about the resume and those letters of reference and your positive attitude, I think you've inherited at least some of that from me. And I think you're so right to get back there and retain these connections that you have with these various people. And there's no question about it. The opportunities, I think, for what you want to do are at least started there in Washington.

So I guess the theme of this tape today is optimism and bright future. These are just kind of some of my thoughts as I was sitting here and looking out, and I see the sunshine, and I think this time of year is one that is very conducive to optimism because you’ve just come through the winter months when the sun is at its lowest ebb, and the days are the shortest, and now we're gradually seeing the days getting a little bit longer, and the sun seems a little brighter and warmer because the angle is getting better, and that sort of stuff.”

Dad was a philosopher of sorts. For whatever reason, I never recorded over that cassette. And when he was in the last chapter of his life, I was able to play it back for him and thank him for being there for me at a time when I had no idea what my future held.

Today, I honor him for the extra mothering he took on, without either of us even realizing it. Happy Mother’s Day, Dad.

Introducing My New Friend Bentley

Last Friday, I accompanied part of a fourth grade class during their visit to the local wildlife refuge. For those of you who’ve been reading this blog forever, you may recall I wrote about the first time I did it here. Since then, I’ve become more comfortable with both the curriculum and the subtle differences between the grades. For example, first and second graders are much more likely to worship the ground you walk on and follow your directions, while fourth graders are a bit more challenging to wrangle.

Because I decided it suits me, I’ve assumed the role of wrangler. I bring up the rear and make sure we don’t lose anyone along the way, while my co-volunteer handles the teaching part. My first time out, I found myself surrounded by all the kids who felt compelled to spell the name of every single plant we observed. That slows things down significantly.

But I digress…

The kids in the rear are the ones that just can’t be rushed. They stop and marvel—almost to the point of obsession—with every little thing they see. Then they want to tell me about the deer bone they saw at Grandma’s house, or that they like to go fishing with dad. And of course, they are extra careful with their spelling. Some even draw pictures.

Which brings me to Bentley.

Friday’s group was a fourth-grade class and I was bracing myself for all sorts of shenanigans. After all, shenanigans were in abundance the last time I volunteered for a fourth grade class. As we made our way along the trail from the nature center, the stragglers immediately began the process of separation.

“HEY LOOK AT ALL THOSE FLOWERS!!!”

For a moment, I had to concentrate, as my middle-aged eyes weren’t seeing much in the way of flowers. But once I focused, I could see the tiny yellow specks everywhere. Bentley’s enthusiasm was contagious, and he was the first kid to notice ant hills. By this time, we’d fallen a bit behind, so I had to urge Bentley and his friend Jackson to keep up. It’s hard to keep up, though, when there are just So. Many. Things.

One of the skills we try to reinforce for the kids who come out to the refuge, is the skill of “noticing.” I’m finding that in this chapter of my life, my noticing skills have really improved. Life as an adult can often get in the way of noticing and appreciating little, simple things. But if you’re lucky enough to spend time with kids, you’ll find they notice more than you’d think they were capable of.

As we continued our walk in nature, I noticed that Bentley was wearing a Green Bay Packers hat. Now, a couple things about that. First, I’m a life-long Packers fan, having grown up in Wisconsin. Second, I know first-hand what it’s like to be a Packers fan living in Minnesota—quite brutal at times. So as soon as I noticed Bentley’s hat, I had so many questions. But, as the grown-up in the equation, I also knew that we needed to concentrate on observing nature’s signs of spring. That was the assignment.

So…I bided my time until we were heading back to the nature center. Once I knew we were not expected to do any more “work,” I shared with Bentley that I liked his hat and I, too, was a Packer fan. I told him I admired his courage to wear his hat at school.

And then, we were off to the races…discussing the recent trade of our temperamental star quarterback (good riddance, we agreed), how well we thought this season would go and who our favorite all time player was. I had to tell Bentley that I’ve been around a really really long time, and, when I was his age, the Packers sucked. I felt it my duty to prepare him for years of losing seasons.

I mean, I’m guessing he no longer believes in Santa, so this revelation shouldn’t take too much out of him.

The Packers last won a Super Bowl in 2011. Bentley was born in 2012. He’s endured a lot of playoff disappointment and is remarkably Zen about it all. He’s just the type of fan we’re going to need as the team transitions to younger, more inexperienced players.

Come to think of it, Bentley’s exactly the kind of kid this world needs going into a future that sometimes appears bleak.

My long term outlook got just a wee bit brighter after meeting Bentley.

The 5 Stages of Fear

I recently underwent a procedure called a “laparoscopic ileocolic resection.” I thought about writing this prior to surgery but could not muster up the mental and emotional energy to put words on a page. Now that it’s in the rearview mirror, I’ve come to view it as a journey through fear. And more specifically, I’ve decided that the phases I went through are quite like the five stages of grief. In the interests of keeping myself organized, I thought I’d use them as a sort of outline for this piece.

Denial

Back in December, at age fifty-seven, I underwent my first colonoscopy. Now before you get on me for delaying, let me just say that I’d had prior clearance to submit poop samples instead. Who’s going to reject that option? Anyway, after my rural primary care provider transferred to urgent care (I will be writing about that at some point), I decided to make the hour trip back to my old primary doctor of almost twenty years. She immediately put the kibosh on any more poop tests.

So, I underwent the colonoscopy. As I was coming to, the endoscopist informed me that, while I had no polyps (yay!), he discovered a 4 cm mass of unknown origin. He couldn’t tell if it was outside the colon, pushing on it—in fact, he went so far as to say it could be an ovary for all he could tell. My confidence in him dipped considerably after that statement. He’d taken a small sample for biopsy and ordered a CT scan for the next day.

At first, I decided that the biopsy results as well as the CT report—both of which indicated nothing abnormal—would be good enough for me. Why go looking for trouble? Plus I didn’t really think about how big 4 cm actually was. Even at my subsequent appointment with a specialist, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she wanted to go in and take something out just because she didn’t know what it was.

“It’s a simple procedure…” she said. “It’s possible you’ll be in and out the same day, and at most, you’ll only be in the hospital a couple of days. The recovery is easy.”

Or at least that’s what I remember her saying.

The problem was, there was no convenient time for a procedure for which I did not have a definite timeline for outcome. Not to mention the whole possibility that I could die on the operating table. For some reason, I now see more of those stories popping up:

“So and so (often a famous person) age (under 60) died after complications following surgery…”

Didn’t Andy Warhol die from complications of gallbladder surgery? Wasn’t he only fifty-eight?

But I digress…

Because I have a book coming out in June, I needed to schedule this for when all the editing work with the publisher was finished. I didn’t want to be the cause of any sort of delay on their end. So, I picked the end of April. I’m busy, you know. I have a lot going on…

Anger

It wasn’t until the week of my pre-op appointment that I decided to get serious about understanding what exactly I was supposed to do. This was a procedure that required (ahem) prep on my part. I reviewed the medication list and realized I had not yet picked up the prescriptions the surgeon ordered for me. Then, it turns out, one was missing. When I called for clarification, I was informed that it was on “backorder,” so they were just not giving it to patients.

Now would be a good time to share that during my prior hospital stay for a hip replacement, I contracted a most dreadful infection that about tore my insides apart. So…if I had this straight, I was being denied an antibiotic that might prevent me from getting that awful infection I’d gotten in the past. Great.

Bargaining

Reminder: I’m a former lawyer. Although I haven’t actively practiced in a couple of years, I’d like to think I’ve kept my advocacy skills sharp—especially when it comes to my own self-interest. After deciding that the professionals didn’t care about me sufficiently to give me some sort of substitute antibiotic, I decided that I could take matters into my own hands by simply refusing the more invasive procedure that would require me to stay in the hospital. There! Done!

After I declared my intentions to my doctor at the pre-op appointment, I watched her roll her eyes behind her mask. “So…you’re just going to come back in six months to get the rest of it done?” she chided. “Look…anytime you can avoid general anesthesia you’re going to be ahead of the game, and the older you get, the harder it is on your body.”

Depression

That’s when the tears started rolling down, turning my own mask soggy.

“I can’t think that far ahead. I can only take one day at a time,” I stammered. What a mess I’d become.  That’s what happens when we spend just a bit too much time in the world of denial. At some point, reality is going to crash through, oftentimes with ugly consequences.

After that appointment, I encountered several other well-meaning people who conclusively dispelled any lingering notions that I’d be in and out and back to my regular life within a couple weeks. I had less than a week to pivot to a different head space.

Acceptance

So that’s what I did. What else can you do?

I took care of business. I let my friends take care of me. I let down my guard. I did what the medical professionals told me to do.

And where my mind went, my body followed. So far so good. The pathology results are not back yet, but preliminary reports are all positive. So I will sit in this feeling for as long as I can.

I know there are those who can start the journey at acceptance. I’m not one of them. But I think if I can get there eventually, I’m doing okay.

The Changing of the Guard

Eastern phoebes are grayish birds with dark heads, smaller than robins. They winter in the southern U.S. and Mexico and some of them summer at Russell’s Rustic Retreat, or the RRR, as I like to call it. This is the fifth spring that I’ve been fortunate enough to welcome my summer guests. The first spring, when the snow melted, revealing a barren wasteland of mowed grace, I attended a weekend workshop put on by the local Arboretum and devoted entirely to establishing and promoting habitat for birds. As beautiful as my property was, the part closest to the house was more suitable for a golf course, than sustaining birds and other wildlife.

But I digress…

I knew this was not my vision for the property. It’s ten acres—mostly prairie with a swath of wetland running through it, anchored by a county ditch. My backyard faces the wetland, which contains a lovely stand of aspen and elm, along with a smattering of young red oaks.

Between the time I closed on the property and when I moved in, a large dead pine of some sort toppled over and lay prostrate near the far side of my backyard. Just like that, the view out the kitchen window was sullied by an overgrown brush pile.

I learned something at the backyard bird workshop which persuaded me to embrace the eyesore, despite receiving numerous offers to cut it up and haul it away. You see, in nature, death promotes life. I’d really never given it much thought while I lived in the city. City yards are meant to be tidy; in fact, some municipalities require it. Native gardens are considered unsightly, although popular opinion may be shifting in that regard.

I decided to let the toppled pine lay there and it soon evolved into a multipurpose dwelling/eating space for birds, bunnies and squirrels. I positioned my bird feeders close enough for the birds to easily fly to safety if a predator appeared. Speaking of predators, on more than one occasion, I’ve observed a sharp-shinned hawk swoop in and linger for a few minutes, hoping to grab a quick snack. The little birds seem to know how to stay safe until it moves on.

Back to the eastern phoebes, though.

They are among the first to arrive back in the spring and they announce themselves with a fierce FEE-BEE call that starts at dawn and often times is still going at dusk. This year, they arrived the Saturday before Easter. I’m sure I’d just been bemoaning the wretched winter we in the upper Midwest had endured, but as soon as I heard the familiar call, my imagination called up images of these little creatures making the thousand-mile trip up here while I hunkered down in my warm, cozy house.

We humans are truly a pitiful lot.

Today it’s been snowing all day. I don’t hear much of anything and I hope they’re okay.

According to Robert Frost, they should be:

“For them there was really nothing sad.

But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,

One had to be versed in country things

Not to believe the phoebes wept.”

(From The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, by Robert Frost)

The Lucky and the Not So Lucky

$5.5 million dollars for one ruined life.

That’s how much the state of New York will pay Anthony Broadwater for the sixteen years he served in prison and the almost twenty-five years after he got out and couldn’t get his old life back.

Let me begin by reminding you that I’m a retired prosecutor who just wrote my first memoir. While the book touches on my work, its focus is on my family—the dysfunctional parts as well as the inspirational parts. I recently composed the disclaimer. I believe it’s important to provide one, especially when throwing memories out to the world as one might toss rice at a wedding. The thing about memory, is that it’s entirely unique. Two people can attend that same wedding and recount the event in such different ways, the listener might doubt they were in the same place at the same time. I used this very analogy in a couple of closing arguments as I urged a jury to convict someone based on testimony from several eyewitnesses which did not entirely match up.

So with the perspective of lawyer turned memoirist, I felt my worlds collide when I read about the Anthony Broadwater case in the New York Times. An all too familiar sadness blanketed me, as I absorbed yet another instance where the criminal justice system—a system I had toiled in for the better part of three decades—had destroyed the life of an innocent black man.

But this case hit home in a different way, when I dove further into the story of Mr. Broadwater’s accuser, Alice Sebold. Ms. Sebold is a bestselling author, most famous for her novel The Lovely Bones. Significantly, the success of The Lovely Bones directly drove up sales of her first book Lucky, the memoir she wrote about the sexual assault. I had not read either of these books, as I tended to steer away from all “entertainment” based on criminal law and court cases.

While Mr. Broadwater lived the life of a convicted sex offender, Ms. Sebold rocketed to fame and fortune with The Lovely Bones. In an article written for the Independent in 2003, Christina Patterson wrote: [Lucky] got some good reviews and then ‘sank into oblivion.’ She (Ms. Sebold) is famous because her first novel, The Lovely Bones, was last year’s publishing phenomenon. It sold two-and-a-half million copies in hardback, a record for a first novel. The paperback shot to the number one slot on Amazon six weeks before it came out. It hasn’t left the top 10 since.”

Publishing phenomenon. The prize every writer strives for, whether they want you to believe it or not. I fight increasing nausea as I continue reading. Another statement in the article stops me completely cold.

“I never thought about writing a memoir,” she declares matter-of-factly, “because I wanted to be a novelist or poet.”

Initially, Ms. Sebold’s report to police was determined to be “not completely factual,” despite her showing up bloodied and bruised. Her glasses remained at the crime scene, having been knocked off her face during the attack. At the bench trial, she testified that she had been grabbed from behind, punched, threatened with a knife, dragged by her hair and then raped in a tunnel.

Having not read the trial transcript, I don’t know what the lighting conditions in that tunnel might have been, but I can certainly hazard a guess. All of this notwithstanding, Ms. Sebold subsequently was able to testify: “I could not have identified him as the man who raped me unless he was the man who raped me.”

Except, of course we now know that she identified someone who did not rape her.

I have so many questions.

Because numerous devastating details have now emerged around Mr. Broadwater’s case, I will not repeat all of them here. Suffice to say, I struggle to comprehend how a case with no physical evidence and a misidentification could have gone forward, even in 1982.

I began my career as a prosecutor in 1994. One of the first cases I was involved in was the prosecution of a serial rapist. The DNA matches were blown up on large posterboards and placed side by side for the jury to compare. It was one of the first of its kind in my area.

The last criminal case I would try to a jury involved allegations of sexual assault on what our office characterized as a “vulnerable adult.” I was one of only a couple of attorneys assigned to these cases, primarily because I was one of only a few lawyers with the skills to work with this type of victim and litigate the case. By 2015, morale was dropping precipitously among us prosecutors in the violent crimes division. I had already gone toe to toe with a manager regarding a case of mine that I knew I could not win. My assessment of the case fell on deaf ears. I was such a good trial lawyer that I got it to a hung jury. After that, I refused to try it a second time and prevailed in the case being dismissed.

I say this only to establish that as a line attorney in a large District Attorney’s office, my ability to speak out was hampered and, in the end, punished with an involuntary assignment to a position I did not want. When I look at the Broadwater case, I wonder if there was pressure brought to bear on those prosecutors to bring such a weak case to trial, based on the racial dynamics of the case.

But I digress…

In my last criminal trial, the victim—disabled, obese, and wheelchair bound—alleged that she had been forcibly raped by an individual she had met on a dating app. When I met with her prior to trial, I found no reason to doubt her story. The defendant had not denied the event, but claimed consent. In Minnesota, consent is a legal defense to sexual assault. Once the defendant has established foundation for consent, the prosecution must prove lack of consent beyond a reasonable doubt.

These types of cases are often referred to as “he said-she said” and are extremely difficult to prove, absent some other evidence to corroborate a victim’s testimony.

In support of his claim of consent, the defendant testified that after the sexual encounter, he informed the victim that he no longer wished to have a relationship with her. The victim then threatened to go to the police and report a rape. According to the defendant, the victim made the threat in a message hosted by this dating app.

The police investigator assigned to the case was renowned for laziness and a general bad attitude. We prosecutors would joke among ourselves every time one of us received a case of his. The problem with having someone of this caliber assigned to investigate sexual assaults was that evidence was rarely, if ever, vigorously pursued. When the defendant testified at trial about these messages, a year had passed since the rape had been originally reported. For some reason, the investigator did not find those messages worthy of his time and energy to collect.

The trial resulted in a hung jury. Afterwards, the judge met with the jury and later informed me that the missing messages were the reason the jury could not agree to convict. I can’t say I blamed them. Following this outcome, I requested our office in-house investigator to track down the messages through the app itself. He obtained an administrative subpoena, which we served on the app itself—something unheard of when I first started out as a young prosecutor in 1994.

The results tore the case apart. The Defendant had told the truth. The victim, very clearly, threatened to report a rape if he did not continue their relationship. I wish I could say that was the end of it. But even more startling was the victim’s response when we showed her, in writing, the message exchange between her and the Defendant.

“I don’t know how those got on my phone.”

If that weren’t enough, her daughter berated us and threatened to call the news media and accusing our boss, the elected official, of trampling on victim’s rights.

The whole thing was quite surreal.

Which brings me back to Ms. Siebold. I’ve dug into reviews of Lucky as well as the response to the statement she issued around the time Mr. Broadwater’s exoneration became public, which opened as follows: “First I want to say that I am truly sorry to Anthony Broadwater and I deeply regret what you have been through.”

As a lawyer turned writer, I know more than many, how passive voice comes across. My editor, in her opening comments on the messy first draft of my memoir, noted that I tended toward passive voice, which is common in legal writing. I now wonder if a lawyer prepared Ms. Sebold’s statement.

She went on to express regret that “the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you.”

My God, this reads as though she was sitting in the back of the courtroom as part of the audience for the trial, not on the witness stand, selecting the only black man in the room as her rapist, knowing her prior identification from a police lineup had been incorrect.

I’m not going to repeat the entire statement, just the passive voice parts:

“he became another young black man brutalized by our flawed legal system.

I will forever be sorry for what was done to him.

“my own misfortune resulted in Mr. Broadwater’s unfair conviction…”

Memory can protect us when we choose to let it. Ms. Sebold seems not to remember that she testified falsely, which directly led to Mr. Broadwater’s conviction. She then profited off of Mr. Broadwater’s conviction by writing a sensationalized story and offering it up for public consumption. After all, Ms. Sebold admitted that she originally aspired to be a novelist. The thing about fiction is it provides a safe space to create stories that might otherwise not be believed.

The victim in my case created fiction, just as Ms. Sebold did, all those years ago. I feel lucky that I cared enough to get to the truth when things didn’t add up.

I just wish all prosecutors could act in the same way.

"She's Called Debbie"

It was the summer of ’80 and I was almost fifteen. The Milwaukee Brewers were still a couple years away from their run for the World Series, but I was singularly focused on (and desperately in love with) Robin Yount. He was 23 and was, as far as I was concerned, the cutest shortstop to ever play the position.

As president of the local Kiwanis Club, my dad had somehow scored the opportunity for some time with several of the players and he brought my brother and me along. My memory for the details has faded, except for being down on the field, face to face with my imagined boyfriend, hands trembling as I clutched a photo I’d cut out from the Milwaukee Journal’s special pullout section from the previous year which highlighted each member of the team.

“She’s called Debbie,” my dad told Robin, while I focused on not passing out. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a minute before we were being shuffled off the field again and I dared to look at the autograph.

I was mortified. I mean, quotes around my name??? I remember fuming at my dad.

“Why would you say she’s CALLED Debbie????”

I don’t recall his response. When you’re fuming, there’s often no room to hear someone’s explanation—however logical and well-meaning it might be.

The whole episode was a painful reminder of how my name had become a source of major conflict between my mother and me. You see, my legal name is Deborah. Deborah is one of those names like Elizabeth, Robert, Katherine or Thomas—all subject to varied treatment usually depending on the preference of the person to whom the name belongs.

As a child, I was Debbie and life was fairly uncomplicated. All of that changed around the time I started first grade. Among other difficult memories from that time is the one of my mother expressing her displeasure with my name.

“We should have named you Laura…” she’d say, wistfully.

I don’t know about you, but as a first grader, that was not a great thing to hear. And it wasn’t like she only said it the one time. She’d say it often enough that my self confidence started to falter. When I started fourth grade at a new school, she instructed me to tell my teachers to call me Deborah.

The problem was that I didn’t feel like Deborah. And fourth grade is about the time when kids hone in on any little thing to tease you about. So Deborah became De-BRA—accompanied by gales of laughter. I wish I could say I joined in, but I only recall feeling humiliated.

At home, I was mostly Debbie, but my brother called me Deb. It all became so cumbersome.

By the time I got to middle school, I’d had enough. In seventh grade, I defied my mother and asked to be called Debbie, thus setting the stage for my dad to clumsily request that Robin Yount sign my picture using the name I wanted to be called.

“She’s called Debbie.”

I fight back tears when I think of how he tried to advocate for me, in all the little ways that would turn out to be so damn important.

In high school I was Russ. In college, a few close friends called me Deb, otherwise I was Debbie. I always introduced myself as Debbie. I liked myself as Debbie.

The first time I wondered about whether a Debbie could be taken seriously was at the big law firm where I worked during my later college years. I had a boss named Debbie—not Deborah— and she had to have been close to middle age. I had another boss named Barbara—not Barb. And don’t even think about calling her Barb.

As a practicing lawyer, I decided to use Deborah on my signature block and when in court. Even though it came with a gravatas appropriate for a grownup with the job I was doing, I never felt like a Deborah except when I was in a courtroom. Reading that version of my name in the newspaper was a whole other trip.

A friend once let me have it in a judge’s chambers when I slipped and called him Bobby. I get it. There are some names that just feel diminutive. In my situation, the Little Debbie brand is case in point.

But I digress…

A couple years ago, when I was finishing up the manuscript for Crossing Fifty-One, I put D.L. Russell on the title page. After all, I’d shared quite a bit of personal information in the book, and the idea of putting my name on the cover felt scary. But then I had to ask myself: who IS D.L. Russell? Certainly nobody I knew. That left two other options—Deborah and Debbie. Deborah seemed like a name that could be taken seriously. It looked good on a book cover.

But in the end, Debbie is who I am.

Amor Fati

This is what coming in 13th out of 46 award applicants looks like:

******

The artist's sample was incredible. I was completely in the world they had created. I felt like I understood this person - I felt like we shared a mind. I cannot believe what an amazing story this is. This took my breath away - to be able to explore mental health, addiction, abuse, and the theme of family through a historical, personal, and objective lens. It is brilliantly written and completely electric.

******

This person clearly understands art, people, and the magic of storytelling. I was in tears by the end of their manuscript. It was raw, it was edgy, it was soft, it was human. If I could describe this person's sample in one word, it would be "wow." What a talent!

******

In case you’re wondering, I submitted the first chapter of Crossing Fifty-One as part of an application for an individual artist award/grant. Those terms were used interchangeably throughout the process. The funding organization recently announced that awards totaling $21,500 were given to the top eight applicants. Seven of the eight were visual artists, including this one:

The eighth winner was a playwright/composer. No writers/authors were among the award recipients.

In dog training, there’s a mantra, “go home with a ribbon or go home with a lesson.” In this case, I didn’t get a ribbon. I did get an email encouraging me to attend a “grant writing workshop” to further improve my grant writing skills. The organization’s director also invited me to contact them to discuss the critique of my application.

Because I’m not one to shy away from critique, I jumped at the opportunity.

I won’t go into detail here, needless to say, I felt even more discouraged after that conversation. I learned that at least several of the recipients were repeat winners. Apparently, as long as you haven’t received the lifetime maximum of $5,000, you can apply every year until you do. More importantly, though, I learned that, rather than a grant program, it’s basically a contest. There’s no requirement that the award money be used in furtherance of one’s art. In fact, according to the director, I could use the money to build a deck if I wanted to.

In full disclosure, it’s only March, and I’ve already paid out for ice dam removal, vet bills and next week, a new set of tires. That money would have come in handy.

But I digress…

My total score was 86/100. That’s a B+ by my calculation, and not a winning score.

The prior critiques could hardly have contributed to an 86, but I’m pretty sure this one dragged the average down:

I love the ironic juxtaposition of Nat King Cole's song and the slumping Dad.

"getting from the car into the restaurant was touch and go." I don't understand. Did Dad faint? fall? What happened?

I don't quite have a sense of the narrator's age. "That was about ten minutes ago. Or was it ten hours?" Is she a child? A teenager?

"the last two decades prosecuting" Now I have a sense of the narrator's age. Great. And it's very interesting.

For some reason, I assumed it was dinner and was surprised to learn it was lunch. (page 4)

"laboriously" I'd like to be shown this. Does Dad lunge or shamble between the tables? Does he hang on to his wife or daughter?

I wanted to know more about what gifts "Dad had picked out for her" jewelry? a sapphire ring? a toaster?

Not gonna lie, I read this reviewer’s critique through increasingly clenched teeth. Especially when the third sentence of page 1 of my submission states “The absolute last thing Dad would want is to be responsible for LUNCH (my emphasis) being called off.” Kind of hard to miss that, unless you’re skimming.

I could go on, but then I’d quickly be sliding into the “sore loser” category.

I aspire to be a gracious loser. I aspire to a lot of things, and sometimes fall short. But to cope with these recent events I’ve turned to the philosophy of amor fati. It’s more than just accepting what happened, it’s loving what happened.

Ugh. So much not to love about what just happened.

One thing the director reminded me of, was the total subjectivity of art. Having only recently gained the courage to identify as an artist, it’s important that I embrace all of what it means. I’ve written about it previously, as it related to someone far more famous and accomplished than me. Somehow, my ego doesn’t trip me up in those circumstances.

In the end, I remind myself of what my ultimate goal was when I set out to write Crossing Fifty-One. It was NOT about winning contests or making a bunch of money as a best-selling author, although honestly, that would be awesome. But in this moment, I see no upside in ruminating about the score of 86 and missing out on the money.

Instead, I bask in the comments from the reviewers who loved my story.

Will I try again? I don’t need to decide that today. At least now I’m armed with a bit more knowledge that might make a future failure less painful.

That’s something to love in and of itself.

When Our Words Betray Us

Boy was I wrong about that one…

As someone who spent about a week wondering who is this Alex Murdaugh (pronounced Murdock) person? Why is his murder trial all over the internet? I caught up with record speed, first reading everything I could find on the history of the Murdaughs and then binge watching the Netflix documentary that focused on dead younger son Paul, the tragic boating incident and subsequent cover-up.

Predictably, I became outraged. I don’t know why I still get outraged over rich, powerful people gaming the system, but this family sure took it to the extreme. Despite that, something struck me about Paul’s story. How as a teenager, he was a drunken disaster. How the cover-ups progressed over time. How the young people in his circle were so ill-equipped to deal with the wreckage around them. I was reminded of my time as a juvenile prosecutor—dealing with the rich kids who had easy access to alcohol and drugs and crossed the bridge from innocence to delinquency. I still get sad about it.

When I finally circled back to father Alex and learned that he was being tried for killing Paul and his wife Maggie, it was right at the time he was testifying in his own defense. By this point, however, I’d learned about the kid who was run over on a back road, the dead housekeeper and a whole host of other mindboggling incidents, none of which could be definitively tied to the Murdaugh family. Lots of rumors, though.

I couldn’t watch more than a couple minutes of his crocodile tears without my mind fast forwarding to predict the verdict.

It would be either not guilty or a hung jury.

Why? Because, in my experience as a prosecutor, as soon as a defendant testifies, it becomes a “he said – she said” scenario, the testimony is equalized and, well, the burden of proof is on the State (as it should be) and, well, because the defendant denies the crime, well, there you have it.

And all it takes is for one juror to feel sorry for him, or have a hidden bias against the prosecution and there’s your hung jury served on a silver platter. So if I had been betting, I would have taken a hung jury over any verdict at all.

Now, I had limited familiarity with the State’s case in the Murdaugh trial, but no murder weapon was found and, although prosecutors had done a great job of establishing Alex as a lying you-know-what, and he admitted to all sorts of crimes for which he was not on trial, I got hung up by the fact that they didn’t seem to establish what actually happened.

Again, the burden of proof kind of demands it.

I ran up against this in the biggest case of my career, where the defendant, the wife of a locally well-known NFL player struck and killed a person with her car. Because of the massive cover-up undertaken by the defendant and her legal team, we had to try to construct a story out of mostly circumstantial evidence. Not always easy, despite the law not preferring one type over the other.

In my case, the defendant testified, just as Alex Murdaugh did in his trial. In my case, the jury took almost three days to find her guilty. So, I must confess my total astonishment at the guilty verdicts returned in three hours for Mr. Murdaugh.

A former federal prosecutor I follow on Twitter commented: The jury must’ve have despised him.

I know I did. There’s a certain amount of arrogance that comes with money and power. The confidence that you will be believed because of who you are. On top of that, when you suffer from addiction, your sense of reality gets all screwed up. When you’ve been manipulating the system for as long as the Murdaugh family had, it’s no wonder the investigation was messed up.

We may never know how hard Murdaugh’s lawyer fought to keep his client off the stand. But people like him and the defendant in my case are conditioned to get their way. I’m not sure it would have gone any better for Murdaugh if he hadn’t testified, but he never would have had to admit all the other crimes he’d committed and all the other lies he’d told.

I remember being asked at a press conference after the verdicts in my case whether I believed it was wise for the defendant to have testified. In those days, I was very careful in my response. After all, my boss was standing right there. With a slight smile, I demurred.

“I’ll let you decide that one.”

Lying is hard. Reciting a story you know in your head to be false will only get you so far. Thinking the rest of the world will believe it is a risk that only the arrogant and delusional seem willing to take.

I grossly underestimated the jury’s ability to see through Murdaugh’s lies and for that I’m more than happy to admit my mistake.

To All the Dogs I've Loved Before (Part 4) Casey Mae

It’s been a minute since I last added to my loved dogs series, so I figured now is as good a time as any. The next dog in the lineup is Casey Mae, my beautiful, life-changing Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever.

Because she was life-changing, and because I’d just started my blog during her later years, she was featured in several of my early posts, which you can read here, here, and here. If you’re looking for a lengthy story on her battle with cancer, I journaled it here.

“… today, I feel like she has dragged me back into the light. She was always in the light, and for that I am eternally grateful.”

Because it’s still hard to write about her without tears, I’m simply going to add a short bit to all the pieces I’ve already written. You see, I’ve come to recognize her impact on me far more fully than I did even at the time of her death five years ago.

Why is that? Simply put, I’m no longer the person I was when she first came into my life. As a puppy, her seriousness and focus made me uncomfortable. Remember, Molly and Josie came before her, and neither of them exhibited seriousness and focus.

Casey Mae, or CM as she was known more informally, was my introduction to the world of pure-bred dogs. She was also the first dog that seemed capable of doing some of the sports I’d attempted previously with the other two. After abandoning conformation (see my prior post about that), we trained and competed in all sorts of dog sports - agility, flyball, obedience, field, and even lure coursing (a sport where a dog can earn a title by chasing a plastic bag).

Thus began a chapter in my life where I expended an inordinate amount of energy chasing what I’ve now come to learn is external validation. I was desperate to prove myself to people who, in the end, probably didn’t care one way or another about how good I was at any of those dog sports. Or maybe they did. I remember lots of people wanting to be my Facebook friend after we earned our first Master Agility Championship. I remember wondering: was I finally worthy of their attention?

I spent a lot of time in the land of comparison, envy, and arrogance.

It’s a place where I now make every effort to not return.

With the advantage of hindsight, I fully embrace the shock to my system her cancer diagnosis provided in 2014, because it forced me to take a break from that relentless treadmill we’d been on. That, plus an involuntary transfer at work, forced me to reevaluate a number of things and try to figure out a path forward mentally and emotionally.

Most people had no idea.

CM steadied me in ways that were mostly unappreciated at the time, but now are crystal clear. She endured my crappy, impatient training, my anxiety every time we stepped to the line at some performance event, and the cancer that would ultimately take her from me before I was ready to let her go.

Dogs can do that for us, if we allow ourselves to let them. More than all the ribbons and titles she left behind, my memories of CM’s resilience are her lasting legacy.

*****

This post is short, but you will find more of CM throughout my writing. I’m excited to say she’s featured in my forthcoming book Crossing 51: Not Quite a Memoir, which you can find out more about here. I’ve also started writing my next book, which is partly about our rollicking road trip to the National Agility Championships in 2012, in which she has a starring role!