Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 4
February 21, 2022
Learning To Love Myself
Last week, I finished a major novel revision. The kind of revision that takes 6 months to complete. This is far from the end of the process, but still, it’s a big milestone, and one I’ve been working toward with increasing intensity as the months have passed and it took so.much.longer than I wanted it to take. Since the first of January, I’ve holed up in my house: Jazzercise in my bedroom and revise, revise, revise.
Throughout it all, I told myself: When I’m done, an evening celebration with a mixed drink and some TV. When I realized when this was going to fall on the calendar, I thought: margarita and Olympic figure skating!
I sent my manuscript to my agents on Thursday afternoon.
I finally managed to have that drink on Saturday night. After:
1) a snow day
2) grocery shopping
3) logistics-ing Jazzercise for one kid at the same time as another kid had a long-delayed outing with friends
4) a jazz festival for the third kid
5) volunteering at the Courtwarming dance
And let’s be honest, there’s also this:
6) we have one TV in the house and six people jockeying for position. Sacrificing is what parents DO.
As I surveyed my situation with deep, existential aggravation—I mean, how hard is it to carve out time for ONE DRINK with some ICE SKATING?—I saw a pattern emerging.
I promised myself a week off work when I finished the last revision of A SONG FOR THE ROAD. I had a long list of “me” projects I was going to undertake—outdoor stuff, scrapbooking, a photography Great Course, etc. But the weather was bad and the kids were busy and soon I had a hundred work projects again.
I promised myself a day-long bike ride in the fall, with a mid-point lunch in a charming little town near me, where there are shops that do jewelry making. I saved my birthday gift money for this purpose. Then I got Covid EXACTLY the week I had targeted for the ride. And on top of that I discovered that those shops had gone out of business during the shutdown.
I kept my birthday money in my wallet, vowing not to touch it until I could do something for me, but of course, you know how that goes. And now, 6 months out, there’s $20 left, and virtually none of what went out was spent on me. (Not that I’m bitter.) (Yes, I know there is no one to blame here but myself.)
My husband promised me that on publication day last May (LAST MAY!!!!) we would have a celebration dinner anywhere I wanted. But–Covid. Our most vulnerable child was still not quite vaccine eligible, and we didn’t want to accidentally bring it home with only a few weeks to go. So we put it off, and suddenly it’s been 9 months and we still haven’t done it.
There is a pattern here.
I often say that growing up on a farm in the 1980s shaped my whole approach to life. We didn’t have money for things other kids took for granted. I was mocked the other night by my husband & some friends because I didn’t know what Funions were. (Incidentally: gluten free.) 
I told them we didn’t go into gas stations and browse the shelves, because we couldn’t buy anything. It was a huge deal on a road trip to get to buy a candy bar. In college, when I went to TIGF with a boyfriend’s family, I discovered I didn’t know how to order off a menu at a sit-down restaurant.
I’ve learned the lessons of self-discipline and delayed gratification pretty well. Perhaps too much so.
Generally, I would say I’ve learned to moderate this character trait, but clearly not universally. I need to figure out how to love myself a little better. Because I am old enough to recognize that life is fleeting and you really need to love yourself enough to enjoy it while you have it.
February 14, 2022
A Song for the Road on “Hear Us Roar” podcast
I have been a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association almost since it was founded, and I am so thrilled to have “A Song for the Road” featured on WFWA’s “Hear Us Roar” podcast this week. Click the image to listen!
January 31, 2022
The Celiac Report, Week 9… plus related updates on my daughter
We’re 9 weeks into the celiac journey with our daughter. My past celiac reports have resembled diatribes more than anything, so I thought I’d do something different this time. Bear with me a minute.
Item 1: Julianna has always been a bit of a cutup. She laughs—loudly and lustily–whenever anyone laughs, even when she doesn’t get it. She’d tell jokes that were funny because they were nonsensical.
Item 2: Julianna has never, ever, shown evidence of celiac symptoms. You ask her if her stomach hurts and she says no. We’ve suspected for a while that she has a high pain tolerance, which is particularly ironic given the level of drama that surrounds any medical procedure of any kind.
Item 3: Julianna has had behavior issues at school on an ongoing and escalating basis for the past 9-12 months. Now, mind you, these are not “behaviors” the way you’re thinking of them. They’re avoidance behaviors. Refusing to make eye contact. Hiding books inside her binder so she looks like she’s working when she’s not. A couple other things, but you get the idea. Behaviors that were NOT classroom disruptive, but which WERE causing her not to progress toward her IEP goals.
She had her endoscopy on Nov. 22nd. She started gluten-free diet that afternoon and returned to school the next day.
On day two, her teacher emailed me: “Julianna is a totally different person the last two days. I feel like we have our sweet girl back. I just wanted you to know.”
As the weeks of gluten-free diet have unfolded, we’re seeing the effects ourselves at home. It’s subtle, but there. We’re getting fewer nonsense answers. You can ask her a question and have about a 60% chance of getting a real answer, rather than about 25%. She will always have difficulty making the leap from concrete to conceptual, but she seems much sharper, much more with-it, than she used to.
It’s nice to see some results for the trouble we’re going to (and the $$ we’re spending). The down side is that those results are pretty hard to nail down into something measurable. When I screwed up and gave her the wrong leftover lasagna early in January, it took 3 days for them to see a “sassy day” at school. I never saw anything happen at home.
But still—it’s good to see an impact.
All of this stands as context for Julianna, this past Saturday, in form so rare, I had to capture it on Facebook:
January 10, 2022
This is not “the best health care in the world”
(This is my daughter at age 6 weeks old, on a ventilator. Just to give you a visual)Strap yourselves in, folks, because today I’m talking health care.
I know, this is an author website. But I’m also well aware that any post I write about Julianna and Down syndrome touches some visceral spot in my readership. I accept this without fully understanding it.
So let’s talk health care, because as a disability mom, we’ve got a lot of experience.
Health care is one of the fringe culture war issues. Periodically someone gloats, “America has the best health care in the world! Show me what other country in the world you can get (fill in the blank)! People come here from all over the world! Why would anybody want those evil single payer systems?”
Well, it’s true that American medicine is brimming over with innovation.
But that’s not the same thing as having a great health care system.
A health care SYSTEM is how you ACCESS medical treatment. And our health care SYSTEM is a mess. It has been for decades. Some people want to point fingers at the ACA, but the ACA was an attempt to fix a problem everyone already knew was there.
The trouble with health care as a policy issue–like every other contentious issue–is that until it touches you directly, you just don’t really care. And by “directly,” I mean you, yourself, are the one sitting on hold for hours waiting to argue fruitlessly with insurance flunkies who have no authority; making two phone calls because the bills are so convoluted even the first level billing people can’t tell what you’re actually being billed for; argue with doctors.
Unless you actually walk the path yourself, you just can’t get excited about the health care system. It’s working fine for you, ergo it must be fine for everyone.
So this post is for those of you who are blessed to have had basically healthy lives, as I and all my sisters did.
Here are a handful of examples of what we’ve experienced.
Example #1:
When Julianna was two, Alex four, and Nicholas a newborn, Julianna got sick. I called the doctor for an appointment, was given one at nap time—EVERYONE’s nap time. But what can you do? You take what you get. So I showed up at naptime with three small children in a double stroller. Baby needed Mommy because nursing and naptime. Toddler needed Mommy because sick and naptime. Preschooler needed Mommy because bored and naptime.
We spent two excruciating hours alone in an exam room. More than once, I considered opening the door wide open so everyone in the clinic could suffer through the screaming, wondering if it might speed things up.
At the end of two hours, the doctor came in, barely apologized, looked at Julianna for two minutes, and told me to come back tomorrow.
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If this were a restaurant, you would never, ever pay for that lack of service. But in our health care system, the doctor will always get paid, no matter how little service is provided. That’s how it works.
Example #2:
In 2021, our insurance was billed $52,000 for Julianna alone. But the amount the plan actually paid was $12,000. Now, that right there should tell you we have a problem in our health care system. Because if it actually costs $12,000, why is it getting billing at $52,000?
Example #3:
You can probably intuit that if our insurance was billed $52,000 in 2021, Julianna had a lot of appointments. In her life, she has seen:
-genetics
-cardiology
-audiology
-pulmonology
-urology
-GI specialist
-opthamology
-orthopedic surgeon
-soon-to-be PT (she dislocated her knee before Christmas)
Right now, five of those are active, and three of them want to see her every three months. One of them wants to see her every two weeks.
Imagine having to pull your kid out of school for that many appointments, even though she is dependent on routine and consistency to be successful in school.
This fall, I finally put my foot down and said, “You guys are going to have to coordinate these visits. I am not pulling her out three different days of school every three months. They need to be on a single day.”
The receptionist looked at me and said, “We don’t do that. That’s not our responsibility.”
Aware of the strain on health care workers in the pandemic, and in gratitude for them, I have been trying to be super nice at all times. But I confess: that day I was not.
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We had a doctor tell us Julianna HAD to have an MRI and that she had to come back to see him afterward specifically and only to read the MRI, even if it’s all clear. Even though most of our doctors prescribe tests and only call us in if the test indicates a problem.
We were told she almost certainly had celiac disease, and it was destroying the lining of her small intestine, yet we shouldn’t change any dietary things AT ALL until she had an endoscopy—and then took six weeks to go from blood test to specialist appointment and another five weeks to get an endoscopy scheduled, because they only do pediatric anesthesiology one day per month.
Does this really sound to you like the “best health care in the world”?
I don’t think so.
Folks, I am grateful that we have access to incredible innovations that save lives. (Though it would be nice if people would, y’know, take advantage of them. Cough-cough-Covid vaccines-cough-cough.) I am grateful for rock star nurses–you are my heroes! I am grateful for the fabulous doctors who talk to us outside work hours and bend over backwards to make the system work for us when it’s clearly stacked against us. Heroes!
But America… it’s time to be honest with ourselves.
This is NOT the “best health care in the world.”
January 3, 2022
Have Laptop, Will Travel
Thursday morning, I dropped my husband off at his (closed) office so he could declutter his desk and continued south to a giant, bubble-enclosed pool so my 12-year-old could fulfill the last of his Second Class requirements.
I walked in carrying my computer, and the adult, who’s seen me sitting on the floor outside many, many scout meetings working, shook his head and chuckled. “You carry that thing everywhere, don’t you?”
Um, yes. Yes, I do.
Some people crank out novels and songs at breakneck speed. I am not one of them. I have many thoughts on this, but none of them really matter except to acknowledge the reality. I will never be a book-a-year author.
But now that I have a book out, I can’t just pick at the edges anymore. I really do have to get the next one ready. And 2021, with its 70+ medical appointments and 4 kids in 4 schools, half of them online for some portion, was a bruiser of a year for getting a novel ready for publication.
So yes, I take that thing everywhere. If I’m picking up my husband to go to lunch or waiting for Kid #3 to get done with band or musical practice–laptop is out in the front seat of the car. If I’m biking out to sit by the river for 3 hours–75% of the time the laptop is in the backpack. If I’m sitting at scouts? Laptop. Holding seats at a Christmas concert? Laptop. Early for Jazzercise? Waiting outside piano lessons? Waiting in an examination room? Laptop, laptop, laptop.
I suppose I AM still picking away at the edges, aren’t I? Because that’s the reality of this season of my life. But by golly, I’m picking away much more intensively than I used to!
Status report: major revision 2/3 finished!
December 29, 2021
The Celiac Report, Week 6
Same picture, new observationsOur adventure with celiac-disease-inspired gluten-free cooking has progressed in the last month, so I thought I’d share my updated insights.
1. I have done so much web searching that Google now knows to add the words “gluten-free” to any food-related search string.
2. I’ve looked up so many ingredients. If you’d asked me two months ago what guar gum or xanthan gum were, I would have labeled them an evil of the corporate food machine. Now I see them and I rejoice, because it means no wheat flour. But…
3. Nobody agrees on anything. Take maltodextrin. Multiple websites created specifically for celiacs assure me that maltodextrin is fine. Then I run across a reference on a medical office out of Ohio that warns to stay far, far away from it. Really????? Make up your minds!
Then there’s the question of modified food starch. Conventional wisdom promises that in the U.S., modified food starch is GENERALLY gluten-free. But it’s not specified in ingredient lists, so…. What do you do?
And the sausage. MANY SAUSAGES ARE NOT GLUTEN FREE! shout the online warnings. But I have been through the ingredient lists of every sausage we buy, and not one of them is a problem. (Thank God!) But when we went to a Christmas party, the grocery store caterer insisted the breakfast casserole was NOT gluten-free. But I’ll be darned if I could figure out what in that was not gluten-free. My guess is the grocery store caterers are too lazy to read the ingredient lists, so they just play it safe. Not cool.
4. Another thing nobody agrees on: whether 1:1 flour is actually a thing. Some people insist that you can get Bob’s Red Mill, Pillsbury, etc. and simply go forth and bake all your usual recipes. Other people—a LOT of them—insist you need recipes made specifically for gluten-free baking.
In my one month’s experience of gluten-free baking, I have developed a theory: the answer is “it depends on what you’re making.” I substituted Trader Joe GF flour into my Kitchn chewy brownie recipe and it worked fine except the brownies wouldn’t totally bake, so they were gooey. But who cares if brownies are gooey? No one in my family! Score: Kate 1 celiac 0.
However, if you are trying to stack cake layers, or roll out a pie crust (or, say, gingerbread), not so much.
I hypothesize that any flat thing you can serve out of the baking pan (English muffin bread, zucchini bread, etc.) is probably going to work just fine, but not the rest. And I’m unlikely to waste $$ & time testing that hypothesis.
5. I made a batter-style GF bread that everyone in the house wanted to eat. We’d eat it all the time, if the flour weren’t 5-10x as expensive.
6. Speaking of GF flour: There are lots of people who insist on particular formulations for regular baking: cake flour, soft wheat flour, bread flour, etc. I get that, but the reality is, you can use all-purpose flour in any recipe and it will work. It might work better with a different formulation of wheat flour, but it WILL work.
This is not the case with gluten-free flour. I thought it was weird at first but now I understand. I have at least 5 kinds of flour and the textures are wildly different, because the blend of grains is different. Some lead with rice, others with tapioca, etc.
7. The day I discovered that Gerbes (Kroger) has 2-3 “health food” frozen sections of their frozen aisle, I realized my life was going to get way easier (albeit more expensive). I can now offer my daughter donuts, waffles, pizza crust, chicken fingers, etc., etc.
8. You have to watch out for the b.s. monitor. As in the prepackaged microwave meal that shouts, “Gluten-free Mexican rice dinner!” And I’m like, um, that was gluten free to begin with.
Although given the number of things I’ve discovered have gluten in them lately, maybe it’s not a slam dunk that said convenience meal would, in fact, have been gluten-free in the first place.
So clearly I’ve figured some things out. What I have not yet figured out yet?
Cross-contamination. Stay tuned.
December 14, 2021
What my kids think is an “emergency”
Those who know me, know I am an anachronism: I do not use a smart phone. I don’t like them. I recognize their value, but I hate texting, I hate typing on a flat screen, I don’t like being that available, and most especially, I like being able to go places where I CAN’T be distracted.
So instead, I have a prepaid emergency phone.
However, my children’s concept of what constitutes an “emergency” could use some help. Here are a few of the “emergency” calls I have gotten in recent months:
What is your library card number?What is my schedule this weekend?What are we doing on Saturday?What time are you coming home?Can I download a new Xbox game?Can I have a snack?(in hysterical tears): Where is my scratch art kit?Did you hear that Space-X (fill-in-the-blank)?I think we have some work to do.
#momlife
December 9, 2021
The Celiac Report, Week 2.5
First round of gluten-free purchases. We’ve done 5 or 6 more now.We’ve been doing the celiac thing now for 2.5 weeks, and I have a few initial experiences to share:
Gluten free ≠ celiac gluten free. I keep hearing, “This is the time to be gluten free. There are so many options there didn’t used to be.” This is all true, but nonetheless it’s a big deal. People who are gluten sensitive are in a whole different category than my daughter. They may feel bad if they accidentally eat gluten via cross-contamination, but they aren’t going to experience medical fallout from it. Celiac disease is diagnosed by the destruction of the villi in the small intestine, and what our doctor told us is that even trace amounts cause the damage. Eating ALMOST gluten-free is not good enough. And gluten, because its purpose is to make things stick together, sticks to everything else, too. Fingers. Counters. Etc. And on that topic…Cross-contamination is EVERYWHERE. One good thing about a celiac diagnosis is that we are cleaning our kitchen WAYYYYYYY better and more consistently than we were two weeks ago. Our kitchen counters are havens of bready things. Our family is having to learn a whole new paradigm for interacting with the kitchen. For instance: I spent copious amounts of time planning which cutting boards and which knives and which order to make the food so that we would have chicken salad in a bowl on the table, which people could put on their plates and eat with the appropriate starch–the family with Ritz crackers, Julianna with her gluten-free crackers. Then my husband walked in the house hungry after work, grabbed a Ritz cracker, and dipped it in the bowl. #mamasnothappy. However, in all candor, I did the same thing three days later with the leftovers and I was way farther into my meal before I realized what I’d done.Measuring spoons, etc. This week I have been making Christmas cookies. I cut WAY back on this endeavor this year, and the kids are cranky about it, which I am responding pretty sharply to, because I’m the one that has to figure out the logistics of using the same bowls, measuring spoons, etc. without cross-contamination. We are making gingerbread in two forms and that’s it this year. Generally, I make the GF version of something first and set it out of the line of fire, then dive into the regular. But yesterday, I didn’t have one of the ingredients for the GF gingerbread, so I started with the regular and then wiped the counter down and used different measuring things. At least that was the idea. See, another quirk of our household is that Julianna puts away clean dishes in random places, so by the time I realized I couldn’t find the second set of measuring spoons, I was too deep into the process to put it on holdNow, none of the things measured with the measuring spoons were gluten items. Salt, cinnamon, etc. But the measuring spoons had been plopped down on the counter in between ingredients, and the counter was definitely NOT gluten-safe. Envision me pulling my hair out.Eucharist. I wrote about that here. I am pretty hot about this one and doing some investigating in advance of a letter writing campaign. Since the bishops are talking Eucharist right now anyway. But everything I said above about cross-contamination goes triple for a church where the people handling the Eucharist don’t really understand cross-contamination. (If you wipe out the low-gluten pyx with the same corporal you used on the regular patens… cross-contamination!) I am not blaming them b/c two weeks ago I had no idea either. But it’s a pain in my butt!Buying brand name sucks. I have spent my life campaigning for Aldi and off-brands as, in most cases, equal to or better than the fancy-schmancy name brands. This is how you feed a family of six. This is no longer an option, because the generics don’t offer gluten-free options. Speaking of which….Why the %^$%$#^*%*^$&% do I need to buy THAT gluten-free? OATS ARE GLUTEN FREE NATURALLY! (Hello, cross-contamination.) And what the heck is with the CHICKEN BROTH?????? It’s chicken, salt, and water! Really? You have to find a way to add gluten to THAT????? Come on, food companies!!!!!You can’t FIND ↑ gluten free ANYWHERE!!!!!! Gluten-free chicken broth exists from Swanson. Gluten-free oats, from Quaker. But do you think ANYONE CARRIES THEM????????????Gluten-free flour ≠gluten-free flour. One of the key pieces of advice I was given by a woman who is “allergic to everything” and gave us a bunch of recipes was: “Do not substitute. If a recipe says use Bob’s Red Mill GF flour, don’t use King Arthur. These recipes are tested for particular blends.” Well, I have Trader Joe’s and NONE of the recipes call for that, so I have to play around a bit. But for instance, today I was trying to figure out how to make bread so that we have an easy starch to go with sausage-and-kale soup next week. And lo and behold, I discovered that although I have Bob’s Red Mill, KrustEase, and Trader Joe’s blends, plus rice flour, what I ACTUALLY need to make bread is Pillsbury!!!!Grocery planning and shopping lasts all week now. If the above didn’t make that clear, now you know.
So that’s the two-week report on going gluten-free. Be judicious with advice. I’m handling this reasonably well, but I am easily annoyed on this topic at present. Sympathy always welcome.
November 29, 2021
Unwanted Adventures
Photo by Anna Rye on Pexels.com
Last week, my chromosomally-gifted daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease.
Let me insert this appeal up front: We’re getting tons of advice from all quarters, so please don’t fill up the combox with that; I can’t process it all anyway. I have to learn things bit by bit. That was true when she was born and it’s true now. This post is not about that.
With that out of the way…
Eight weeks or so ago, I posted about our forty-seven medical appointments since April. Now we’re up around sixty.
It’s been an intense year, to say the least, and there’s nothing quite like getting a phone call from a GI specialist at 6:15 the night before Thanksgiving, telling you that you officially have a developmentally disabled child who needs to be totally gluten-free for the rest of her life. Did I mention it was THE NIGHT BEFORE THANKSGIVING?
It’s been a trying fall, with this on the radar. She has no symptoms whatsoever, and in fact, her brother’s nickname for her is “Pasta Noob” because pasta is her favorite food. We only found out because in August they did a blood workup that is standard for people with Down syndrome. Thyroid was fine, but the indicator for celiac was the highest the doctor had ever seen. So high, we had great skepticism that it could possibly be an accurate result.
For three months, then, we’ve had this gluten-free thing on our radar, while being told not to change anything, lest we skew the results of the endoscopy.
Advice or not, we’d already been skewing more toward gluten-free in the household, and when they redid the bloodwork the day of the endoscopy, her number had been cut by 2/3—though it’s still so high it seems like it’s on a different scale altogether.
But still, I had a full-on meltdown last week. My choices are to make the whole family go gluten free (healthy, obviously, but also a total nonstarter) or to prepare double meals. And leftovers are a staple in our house, which makes storage a Thing. And cross-contamination. Holy cow. I’m looking around my kitchen and thinking how much work this is. And Communion! That’s a whole other can of worms.
My daughter also had a meltdown. At her teacher’s recommendation, we sat down with her and made a list of all the foods she can still eat, then made a list of foods we have to find substitutes for. Of course, she still scavenged Oreos while we weren’t looking.
I am grateful for my family, who went out of their way to make sure the Thanksgiving meal would not exclude my daughter. We had gluten-free rolls, gluten-free green bean casserole, and gluten-free stuffing, and I made my first foray into gluten-free baking with one pumpkin pie crust. Of course, the dog ate over 3/4 of that pie while we weren’t looking. But you know. I shouldn’t have left the pie carrier unzipped on the deck.
Most striking in all this is how my own attitude and behaviors are shifting. I am a gluten girl. All those bready starches are my downfall and my joy. But when I’m with her, I’m finding myself perfectly willing to abstain from restaurants and foods that she can’t have, out of solidarity. I went without bread at a friendsgiving last week so she wouldn’t have to do it alone.
And so it goes. I’m struggling for a neat and tidy bow to wrap up this bloggy package, which I suppose is appropriate, given that this is among the messiest things I’ve had to deal with. Like Bilbo Baggins, I’ve been sent on a journey I didn’t want. I’ll just have to trust that the end point is as worthwhile as his.
November 5, 2021
In Defense of Uncertainty
Photo by Bruce’sArtCollection, via FlickrIn my mid-twenties, I once changed addresses twelve times in twelve months.
That time between college and real life is a time of transition. I hated being unsettled. In flux. I often say I am the type A of type As, and that level of uncertainty was really tough.
But I’ve been thinking about uncertainty a lot lately, because the pandemic was and remains another long period of feeling deeply unsettled. The guidance is always changing for good reason–because we’re learning more and more about the virus. Our personal circumstances are also constantly shifting—who’s vaccinated, who’s not yet eligible, what the community case numbers look like, what the mental health status is of family members, what the regulations in the community are and how that impacts the danger for better or worse. All these variables are constantly in flux, and so our decisions are, too.
Uncertainty is exhausting. I am a person who likes predictability. I run my life, and my family’s, with routines. Routines make life run smoothly. Obviously, you’re going to have wrenches thrown in the works. But if you have a routine, you can tweak the known to accommodate the unknown and unexpected. Without a routine, you waste tons of brain power trying to figure out life on the fly. You risk wasting time and squandering opportunities, because you’re wandering in clueless circles.
However.
The thing about routines is that they can become ruts. They don’t have to, but they can.
Those two periods of flux and uncertainty I described above have something else in common: they have both been periods of incredible growth in spiritual and emotional maturity, in insight and understanding and wisdom.
When routines become ruts, we build up the bubble around our own experience and become mentally rigid. Reality must be this way, because it’s always been this way. We go plodding along, with our eyes fixed on the two square feet of earth right in front of our toes, without ever looking up at the dizzying—and revelatory—world around us.
Times of uncertainty offer an invitation to break through the invisible barriers we’ve built around ourselves and allow us to grow. If we ignore that invitation, we end up digging our ruts deeper and wrapping ourselves more tightly in the chains that keep us stagnant as human beings.
I am grateful for what I’ve learned in the past twenty months. How long would it have taken me to learn those same lessons from within the ordinary routines of my life? How much have those lessons influenced my writing?
The pandemic hasn’t been fun. It continues not to be fun. But I wouldn’t go back to the person I was in February of 2020.
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