Beware the Demon Woodpecker

My next-door-neighbor has woodpecker-phobia. The official definition of this condition is “fear of a small bird that pecks wood.” I have known about his condition since shortly after I moved into my house seven years ago. Apparently a renegade gang of demon woodpeckers did significant and costly damage to a portion of the neighbors’ house once upon a time before I moved to the neighborhood. The neighbors have never recovered from this traumatic event and they remain forever on the hyper-alert for signs of woodpecker activity in the area. I suspect that they hired a woodpecker security alarm company to monitor avian movement and a red light flashes in their kitchen if a woodpecker is detected within a one-mile radius of their yard. It’s more the guy than his wife who is obsessed by this (she, however, appears to share his concern and wholeheartedly throws her support behind his anti-woodpecker efforts).

We discovered the severity of his condition when, shortly after we moved into our house, we discovered that he had shot a downy woodpecker perched in our ancient and magnificent oak tree with his BB gun. I can’t remember exactly how we found out that he had shot the bird; but I seem to recall that he announced the fact to us with pride, boasting that he had saved us from a horrific fate by eliminating this hapless bird. Shooting a woodpecker is illegal in California because it’s a protected species. We didn’t report him, but my husband told him not to do it again.

Last winter a large oak tree on our property fell. The inside of the tree had rotted out as a result of many years of drought combined with improper placement of soil around the base of the tree when the house was built. Even though there was no evidence of woodpecker activity on the tree, the neighbors were quick to commiserate with my husband by attributing the felling of the tree to “those woodpeckers.” Woodpeckers really can be quite destructive, but in a suburban neighborhood such as ours they are usually deterred by placing shiny objects, such as mylar strips or discarded compact discs, in the yard. Not all birds fear shiny objects, in fact ravens are attracted to them. But bling scares woodpeckers. Especially if the discarded discs are Michael Bolton recordings. Woodpeckers also do not like wind chimes and they can be frightened off with those fake owls (strategically placed). There are many ways to deter woodpeckers, but shooting one occasionally with a BB gun is not one of those ways. I suspect that after their traumatic experience with woodpeckers, the neighbors have arrived at a mindset where they blame everything on the woodpeckers. Leaf mold, locusts, aphids, toilet backed up, car accident, hurricane? Woodpeckers. Poison oak in the yard? Planted by woodpeckers. Brush fire on the ridgetop? Started by pyromaniac woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are everywhere and they are out to get us humans.

No one is more capable of going into battle with demon woodpeckers than my neighbor. He maintains a pristine yard and has dedicated his life to combatting nature’s chaos in every form in which it might encroach on his space. His yard is largely made up of lawn and rocks. He also has extraordinarily wonderful roses and a few fruit trees that he keeps in tip-top shape, although I have rarely seen any fruit on them (maybe he picks it off because it’s too messy). His hired yard maintenance crew arrives weekly to beat his (less than half an acre) domain into submission with an impressive collection of noisy power tools. The neighbor has a passion for noisy tools. For instance, he cut his discarded Christmas tree up into itty-bitty pieces with a large chainsaw last year. I think he cut individual pine needles in half with a saber saw. Whatever it took to subdue the dead yuletide tree, he spent a good half-an-hour at it. (Meanwhile, my husband chopped our tree in half with an axe and put it in the yard waste bin in under three minutes.)

Last week, the neighbor, ever vigilant and keenly alert, called to inform us that he had discovered carpenter ants walking on several branches of our ancient magnificent oak tree. These particular branches had encroached on his yard, so he took control of the situation by promptly cutting all these branches back to the property line. But he wanted us to know that we have carpenter ants. Fair enough. I’m not sure how much he knows about carpenter ants. It occurred to me that he might think they will dismantle his garage. (I was tempted to explain to him that they are just called “carpenter” ants and that they don’t actually have power tools, but I don’t want to make assumptions.) After his call, I went to look for carpenter ants, like a good and patient neighbor. I didn’t see any. The fact is that carpenter ants will not destroy a tree. They eat rotten and dead wood, not live wood. They are of concern when seen in or around a house because that means there is probably rotten wood in the structure of the house, which would need attention. But in the yard, they don’t do any damage to living wood. I relayed this information to my neighbor, who took it in stride, and explained that his concern is not so much about the carpenter ants per se but about the woodpeckers, because woodpeckers like to eat carpenter ants, as well as termites, worms, wood siding, shingles, porch railings, lamp posts, rocks, cars, and cities.

The neighbor suggested that we treat our trees with toxic chemicals to get rid of the carpenter ants before the woodpeckers spot them and ask for a menu. The neighbor is correct in his belief that one of the biggest problems that can arise from having carpenter ants in the yard is that woodpeckers turn up to feast and while they feel frisky from a good munch they can peck holes in houses and living trees (to get the sap flowing, to attract more edible beasties). It’s not likely that woodpeckers would bring down an ancient oak, but it’s possible if, over the course of many years, they peck a boatload of holes in the tree. They can do considerable more damage in much less time to a house. Rather than chase the little winged furies around with a rifle, I will opt to hang mylar strips, shiny mobiles, and wind chimes in my yard. I think my neighbor could deter the woodpeckers by strategically placing some of his shiny power tools in his yard, but I have not suggested this. I just hope he doesn’t start shooting carpenter ants in my ancient oak tree with his BB gun. They say good fences make good neighbors, so I hope the demon woodpeckers don’t eat the fence. I wouldn’t want any of my neighbors’ rocks migrating to my vegetable garden.

The Perfect House Guest

To some extent I became the perfect house guest out of necessity. During my childrearing years, I and my family could rarely afford the luxury of staying in a hotel. Consequently, my children considered staying in a hotel one of the most thrilling events that could occur on a vacation. For many years they believed that only rich people stayed in hotels. Money was not the only factor contributing to the rarity of our use of hotels. I have always preferred to stay with friends or family because it’s more fun and contributes to a more satisfying visit with people.

Returning to the infrequent hotel scenario for a moment, if we stayed in a hotel, we all slept in one room with two double beds. (Like the time our van broke down in Willows, which consists of six raccoons, a drinking fountain, and, lucky for us, a hotel.) As the children got bigger, we had to be creative to cram everyone into one hotel room. Sudi, being the youngest, often slept on the floor in a corner. Using all my ingenuity, I could make him a comfy nest out of seat cushions, jackets, the ice bucket, shoes, and a lampshade. I am proud to say that no one ever spent the night in the bathtub. Just being in a hotel room turned the 10-point excite-o-meter on my boys to level 11. If jumping on hotel room beds was an Olympic sport, my boys would have a dozen gold medals. Meanwhile, my daughter would systematically go through every channel on the TV to sample what was showing as if our TV at home only got two channels, which it did for many years before the advent of our satellite dish. (We lived in a forest, but at least my children didn’t think a toilet was a novelty.) The children would read the menus from nearby restaurants (provided in a binder) as eagerly as dogs in a butcher shop (and with nearly as much drool) and then beg to order in. Sudi would get so wired from being in a hotel room that he wouldn’t go to sleep. The rest of us would be lying there in the dark for hours listening to him singing to himself and throwing shoes into the ice bucket. The way my children behaved, you would think a hotel room was the best ride at Disneyland.

But, as I said, we rarely stayed in hotels. We usually stayed with friends or family. I had a bit of the wanderlust in my youth. Ron did too. And then people we knew spread out to places all over the country (and in foreign lands) to settle down. By the time our children came along, I had a friend in every port. So I planned family vacations around geographic locations where we could stay with someone we knew. Truthfully, I enjoy visiting with people more than anything else when traveling. Museums are lovely. Natural wonders are awesome and inspirational. Destination sites are fun. Activities are entertaining. Panoramic views are spectacular. I will take a day at the beach whenever possible. But nothing beats spending time with great people I don’t get to see very often, particularly if they have children around. (And if I can spend time with these wonderful people at the beach, of course, then my life is complete.)

Staying in people’s homes while on vacation all these years, I have perfected the art of being the flawless house guest. While I need to economize by avoiding staying in hotels, and while I personally prefer to stay with someone I know, I realize that it can be stressful for people to have a house guest. So I strive to make my stay as easy on my host as possible. Therefore I make a point of cleaning the kitchen after meals, making the bed after myself, emptying trash cans, cooking meals, and generally taking over management of the house during my stay. By the time I leave, my host cannot find a single thing in her kitchen anymore, the bedroom I used has been repainted, the children refuse to go to sleep without a bedtime story from me, all the incandescent bulbs have been switched out for fluorescents, and there is a brand new compost pile bacterializing (wow, is that a word? if not it should be) behind the garage. When I traveled with my children, I hope that my guestly help made up for the fact that during my stay my children devoured all the cereal in the house, broke the handle off the bathroom door, lost the Frisbee in a patch of poison oak, fed the dog corn chips, played a lot of Aretha Franklin loud on the boombox, and collapsed the posts that held up the hammock. My children were always well-behaved, but they were, of course, children. Some things go with the territory.

In an effort to make my stay easier for my host, I bring my own towels and sometimes even my own sheets so my host will not have a lot of laundry to do after I leave. In the event that I use my host’s sheets and towels, I put them in the washing machine before I leave in the morning. And depending on how long we linger over breakfast, I might have them dried and folded before I’m finally out the door. Once, Ron and I were watching an episode of the TV show “Monk” in which Monk went to stay with a friend for a night. Monk (who is germaphobic) brought several suitcases of supplies with him. As he was unpacking, the friend pointed out that she owned sheets and towels she could provide. Monk replied, “Well, as long as I brought my own, I might as well use them.” Ron busted out laughing because he had overheard me say the exact same thing only a few months before.

Last week I asked a friend if I could stay at her house while traveling. I told her I didn’t want to inconvenience her. She laughed and said that I was the easiest house guest ever since I brought my own sheets and towels, did the dishes, and cooked for her. I’m beginning to think that when people need to have some work done on their house, they invite me to stay over. Being the perfect house guest is a family tradition. Once, when my oldest child was a toddler, my mother came to visit. She shooed me and Ron out of the house and promised to look after our daughter. We went to dinner and a movie and came home many hours later. Four or five months after Mom’s visit, I glanced at the kitchen ceiling and realized it had been washed. Not just washed, but scrubbed. The grease film that had covered it was gone. I called my mother and asked her if she had scrubbed the ceiling while we were out at the movies that night. “I wondered how long it would take you to notice,” she replied.

In recent memory, my son Akili mentioned to me that he and his wife were going somewhere for the weekend. “Oh, do you know someone there?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “Where will you stay?” I asked. “In a hotel,” he answered. “I know someone who lives there. An old college friend. Do you want his contact information? I’m sure you could stay with him,” I offered. “Mom, we’ll stay in a hotel. That’s where normal people stay when they go on vacation,” he told me. He says he felt deprived as a child because he rarely got to stay in hotels. Go figure. Now Airbnb is all the rage. People stay at Airbnbs in the homes of perfect strangers. I’m thinking of giving trainings in how to stay in someone’s house for the Airbnb traveler. Lesson one:  bring lots of food (if traveling in California bring water too), trim their hedges, darn their socks, reorganize their kitchen cupboards, hang wind chimes on the deck, increase the speed of their internet connection, and wash out the barbecue grill.

The Big Mom Handbag

When I was eleven years old, I decided I was going to start a babysitting business. I liked looking after small children and I was good at it. I checked a book out of the library about babysitting. The book suggested things you might want to take with you on a babysitting job to entertain and care for the children. As if on a scavenger hunt, I enthusiastically rounded up as many of these items as possible. I retrieved my suitcase from underneath my bed and filled it with my babysitting tools. When I showed my parents the contents of my suitcase, my father remarked that I would scare the children half to death upon my arrival since they would think I intended to move in with them. My mother promptly chewed him out for being critical and told me I was very clever and would be a highly prepared babysitter. In retrospect, dad was right. Unfortunately, my suitcase full of every conceivable item needed to care for children was a mere hint of what was yet to come. In my heyday, I was Mary Poppins on steroids.

After my children were born, I became the mom with the gigantic handbag. I carried so much stuff around with me in such an enormous bag that, as teenagers, my children threatened to tell police officers, “Do you see that woman over there with the railroad car over her arm? She thinks she’s my mother and she’s stalking me.” Of course when they needed a cracker, a towel, antibiotic ointment, a coloring book, a cat, a flashlight, or a camping cot, they suddenly belonged to me again and had no qualms about rummaging in my handbag. I once overheard my adult daughter boasting to a friend that if she needed to eat a yogurt in the car as a child, she only had to ask me for a spoon and I produced not just any spoon but a metal spoon. I still carry a metal spoon with me. You never know when you might need to dig a tunnel to escape a dungeon, and a plastic spoon would not suffice in such a situation.

A good mom is always prepared. I could produce nearly anything needed in any situation from my mom-handbag and my children knew it. When they played team sports and someone got injured, my children brought them to me instead of the coach because I had more emergency first-aid supplies in my handbag than the coach had in his official kit. Our family of five could survive for a week in the event of a natural disaster on the food I carried in my mom-handbag. (Water bottles, however, were stashed in a separate container.)

The deep-seated reasons for my mom-handbag are certainly connected to a touch of a refugee mentality that has clung to me from previous generations in my family when my ancestors fled Eastern Europe with nothing but the Sabbath candlesticks and a wool blanket. I feel insecure traveling without a heap of food and all the essentials to begin life over again in a foreign land if necessary. In fact, I carry all the essentials to begin a foreign land. Back in the day, when I traveled with three young children, I carried a large duffel bag onto the airplane. My duffel bag contained food, drinks, clothing, games, books, paper, arts-and-crafts activities, first-aid supplies, tools, eating utensils, towels, cloth diapers (for about ten years when I had babies and toddlers), plastic bags, etc. These days half of my airplane carry-on bag would have been confiscated by TSA and I would have been arrested for contemplating an invasion. Whenever I saw a mom board an airplane with small children and nothing but a tiny purse over her arm, I was astonished. Sure enough, those children inevitably cried, whined, and made a general nuisance of themselves for the entire flight. My children never ran out of things to do and eat and were consequently well-behaved. Other passengers frequently took a moment to tell me how impressed they were by the good behavior of my small children on airplane flights. Well duh. Their mom had a museum, a circus, a swimming pool, Toys R Us, a garden, Cirque de Soleil, and a restaurant in her duffel bag.

These days, now that my children are grown and have left home, I still carry a million things around with me in my handbag. It’s a habit I will never break. I need those pens and mini-notebooks in case I am suddenly seized with the desire to write the Great American Novel while waiting at a traffic light. I need that extra pair of shoes in case the ones I’m wearing fall apart. Digestive enzymes. Gloves, socks, and a spare bra. Tissues (god forbid that anyone should find themselves in a public restroom that has run out of toilet paper). Comb. Snacks. Clothespins. Tea bags. Phone charger. Swiss Army Knife (the most awesome device since it has so many tools all-in-one). Needle and thread. Collapsible clothes hamper. Fan. And a book of course. There always has to be a book in case the car breaks down or the line at the Post Office is out the door. I would not survive if left with nothing whatsoever to do for more than five minutes. (My daughter insists I need a smart phone, but I refuse to get one. Maybe if they start making them with a built-in socket wrench set then I’ll consider it.)

When our family gets together for events, such as weddings or Bar-Mitzvahs, and we all go out to eat, my adult children and my husband hold their hands out to me without a word when the meal arrives and I dole out digestive enzymes (we are all lactose-intolerant), which I have in the depths of my mom-handbag. If a stranger at the table next to us cuts his finger, one of my children is likely to lean over and say, “My mom has a bandaid. I’ll get it for you. Hang on.” If a fire were to break out, I have no doubt that my children would turn to me calmly and ask me to pass them the fire extinguisher, which they would assume I have in my handbag. Spare tire. Oxygen tank. Flame-thrower. Tent. Inflatable life raft. Rabbit. Sure. I must have one in there somewhere. 

This is why it came as no surprise to my husband last week when we were discussing what to do about the toilet in our master bathroom, which kept running, and he said he just needed to pop out to the hardware store to get a new flapper valve to fix it and I replied, “Actually I happen to have a spare flapper valve here in my handbag.” True. I am resourceful. I am a problem-solver. I am:  a MOM.

I have to get some of this for my handbag. 

No idea what to use it for but it's bound to come in handy. 

Maybe useful when gluing rabbits together?

On Beyond Poetry

I have a confession:  I don’t read poetry anymore. It’s embarrassing given the fact that I have a master’s degree in English and it’s astonishing considering the fact that I wrote nothing but poetry for more than a dozen years in my youth. I didn’t purposely give up on poetry. I did not attend a 12-Step Poetry Recovery Program. The words in poems are footsteps carefully placed and each one requires attentive care and pondering. You can’t skip over words in poems; and I don’t have the patience to read every word like I used to. Though I can’t remember specifically, I think I crossed over from having an obsession with poetry to no longer writing the stuff when I became a mom. Once the children arrived, I found that I had stories to tell that could not fit into a few carefully crafted lines. So I guess you could say that I went beyond poetry when life got sloppy.

Consider the haiku, a Japanese form of poetry that I do still love, and read on occasion, mainly because it’s brief. A traditional haiku must be seventeen syllables. I mention this because I read a haiku recently that summed up my relationship (as a writer of epic fiction) with poetry. It went like this:  “Take me down to Haiku-City where the grass is green and dammit.” Ran out of syllables, couldn’t finish the thought. There you go. I need to spread out. I need a lot of space to tell a story. I can’t do it in a poem anymore. I have tried writing flash fiction and it’s painful. This is why you won’t find me on Twitter. I can’t possibly say anything in 140 characters. Unless of course by characters we mean people. I could do a lot with 140 people-characters in a marathon novel. I could, if hard pressed, crystalize a thought. But why would I want to? I am fascinated by the context.

I just looked for my old poems so I could share one, and I can’t seem to find the box in which they’re stored. (None of them are on my computer, of course.) That’s just as well because, if memory serves, a disproportionate amount of my college poetry revolved around sex. I hope my children fail to locate that box when I am dead as it would embarrass the socks off them. Super-duper ewww. In retrospect, it was excellent discipline for me as a young writer to attempt so many poetic descriptions of sex since it’s one of the hardest things to write well. I have labored over sex scenes in my novels. They should be erotic, and not pornographic. They should be poetic, touching, emotional, and not corny, silly, clichéd. One of the highest compliments I have received was when a woman told me that Memories from Cherry Harvest had great sex in it. Sex scenes should arouse and move the reader, not make the reader wince. You don’t want blather like “she felt his member throb against her thigh like a swollen banana preparing to fly on wings of longing” or “he cupped the rounded spheres of her rear-end lasciviously yet as tenderly as the first peaches of summer.” See what I’m saying? Fifty shades of pathetic descriptions of sex. Super-duper eww. In all seriousness, writers have been trying to describe the mystery of the sexual experience for centuries. It’s one of those things that tries to escape the confines of words.

Life itself tries to escape the confines of words. For this very reason, I never grow tired of the thrill of capturing the living moment with my words or reading someone else’s brilliantly constructed insight or portrayal. Occasionally I stumble across a poem that speaks to me, that delights me with its perfection. I remember many poems from back in the day that held meaning for me (not that I memorized them word for word). Here is one of my favorites by William Carlos Williams that popped into my head when I was under my plum tree the other day.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

That’s the kind of poem I can still handle. I don’t have the patience anymore for poems that require deciphering. (I once did. Can you believe I wrote my master’s dissertation on Wallace Stevens? Go figure.) I enjoy simple poems that paint a moment and go piercingly and swiftly to the heart of the matter; and I do love a good, clean image in a poem. My taste in prose, on the contrary, runs toward the complicated. I adore the many-layered grand novel, like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. When I finished that book I turned to the first page and started it all over again. Give me a long and complex novel with so many characters that I can’t keep them straight or remember their names. I want to dwell in a book. I want the author to create another world so that when I turn the pages I travel somewhere else, somewhere outside my existence. I want to enter a parallel universe that informs my life in this one. That’s probably why I like sci-fi so much.

At my book group this month, we discussed reading a classic novel together. When one of the people in the group suggested we read a nineteenth century Russian novel, I lit up like a newly minted galaxy. I think I frightened the group a tad with my roaring enthusiasm when I shared that I had read War and Peace three times. (Seriously, who reads War and Peace once, let alone three times?) The person who made the suggestion hastened to say that she thought perhaps a Dostoyevsky novella or a Tolstoy short story would do nicely. My hopes were dashed.

When I hear other people talk about poetry these days, I feel a twinge of regret. I sort of wish I enjoyed reading it. I will never write it again. Come to think of it, my passion for writing fiction has diminished in recent years as I have increasingly enjoyed writing the personal essay. Or, to be more precise, the blog. I like writing this right here; this ramble down the corridors of cyberspace; this throwing words at the wall and hoping they stick to something. Or someone. I hope that occasionally they stick to you, dear reader. If I ever become a famous blogger, it would be fun to host a writing contest for the most wincingly worst descriptions of sex. Not pornographic, just hilarious-awful. Are you with me on this?

Plums. Yum.

The Letter That Saved a Life

Today I was reminded of a letter I wrote over 20 years ago that saved a woman’s life. I have not thought about that letter in quite some time. I have always loved and honored the power of words, mightier than the sword, transcending death. The story of that letter is a narrative unto itself that is worth the telling.

I have a friend I will call Kate (not her real name). Kate grew up in a dysfunctional family and she struggled with the psychological aftershocks of childhood trauma. She was prone to depression and when she sought professional help she was medicated. There is a bottomless and complex conversation that could take place around that scenario and the medical profession’s traditional approach to mental health. I am not going to have that conversation right now. Right now I am telling a story about one woman and a letter I wrote. So Kate was medicated, and even so she continued to struggle with depression. The medication distorted her thoughts and feelings; it distorted her judgement. Kate was also a single mom with a small child, who was the love of her life.

Let me say a little more about Kate here. She is a gentle, kind, generous, and humble person. She has been known to step far out of her comfort zone to help others in need, such as inviting homeless individuals to stay at her apartment and helping people who are at a low point in their lives to connect to needed assistance and resources. She delights in making the world a more beautiful place, using her creativity to elevate the everyday miracle to a higher level of notice. Considering what she suffered as a child, she is an astonishingly forgiving person; and a loving and creative force in the world. The next part of her story is, therefore, difficult to assimilate.

One night, Kate gave her beloved child some medicine so the child would sleep. She gave the child too much medicine. I believe Kate’s account of what happened that night because only Kate knows what she thought and what she did, and she is an honest person, and she loves her child, and it is not my place to speculate or judge. After she gave the child too much medicine, she took the child to the emergency room, where the doctors saved the child’s life. Kate was arrested for attempted murder. The child went to foster care. Kate did not lay eyes on that child again for more than ten years after this incident. Her pain and despair over her separation from the child during that time was horribly difficult for those who loved her to witness.

During Kate’s murder trial, her attorney contacted me. She explained to me that there was a strong possibility that Kate would be convicted, and a conviction would carry a sentence of 25-years-to-life. People convicted of crimes against children often do not fare well in prison. They tend to meet with an early demise. The attorney made it clear to me that she firmly believed, knowing all the facts in the case, that Kate had not attempted to murder her child. She was bound and determined to have Kate acquitted. She contacted me to ask me if I would write a character reference letter that she could present to the judge. She requested such letters from a number of Kate’s longtime friends. I don’t know how many of us wrote them, or who wrote them. I do know that I am the only trained, professional writer who wrote one. In my letter, addressed directly to the judge, I described the Kate I knew, in similar terms to those I have used above in trying to explain to you how loving she is, what a big heart she has, and how she travels through life as a creative spirit spreading positive energy to others. I wrote in my letter that I could not imagine her purposely intending to harm her child. She is simply not that person. I urged the judge to seek the truth in the situation and to question the validity of the perspectives of Kate’s family members since I knew a little about the family’s dysfunction and how much damage had already been done to Kate by it. I worried that it would be all too easy for Kate’s family to paint a picture of her that was false and that would damage her case. I labored over that letter, took my time writing it, revised and reworked. I knew that a woman’s life was hanging in the balance and I could not shake the hope that my letter could make a difference.

All of this happened a long time ago. I don’t have a copy of that letter. Kate doesn’t either, although she has tried to track it down in the court records of her case. The letter has evaporated in the mists of time. According to Kate’s attorney, my letter was the deciding factor that turned the judge to rule in Kate’s favor. Rather than sending her to prison, he sent her to a psychiatric facility to undergo treatment. From there, she would be released at the discretion of the psychiatrist overseeing her case when she was deemed to be stabilized. Kate spent many months at this facility. It was probably a good place for her to be at that time since she was so grief-stricken over the loss of her child. When she was released, she found a place to live, found work, and started her life over. If she had gone to prison, she would still be there, serving a minimum of 25 years, or else (more likely) she would be dead.

As it happened, after a long, forced-separation of mother and child by the child’s foster family for reasons too complicated and private to explain in this context, Kate’s child grew up and left the foster family to travel clear across the country to find Kate for a mother-and-child-reunion. They again became a part of one another’s lives. (They had brunch together on Mother’s Day last week.) Kate works as a medical translator, using her linguistic skills (she speaks four languages) to help people who don’t speak English communicate in hospital settings, often in the emergency room in crisis situations. She also continues to pursue her many creative projects, making beauty and facilitating connections between creative souls she meets in her life’s journey. It is impossible to sum up a person’s life in a few short paragraphs, and unfair to try to do so. Suffice it to say that Kate has lived and continues to live a productive life, contributing to the communities and lives of people around her in ways that would never have been possible if she had been locked away. She has, over time, taken control of her mental health, which she now maintains without medication or the interference of traditional medical professionals. It has been a long journey, but Kate has recovered from the trauma she suffered and she is doing well.

Today, as I recall that letter I wrote, I am awed by the awareness that my words saved a woman’s life. I am grateful for this gift I have received, this talent I cherish, this passion that possesses me. I am reminded of why I have dedicated my life to being a writer and I renew my faith in the ever-astonishing power of narrative. 

This sculpture, made in Shona stone in Zimbabwe, is called Mother and Child Reunion. 

I have not been able to ascertain the artist. Perhaps it is a standard motif done by many.