I drove, parking far back in the parking lot because I like a pull-through space. Sorry if that makes me a loser, but give me a long walk over auto body repairs any time. As we were walking in, I saw the worst bumper sticker I have every seen in my life, which is saying a lot.

The car, a jeep of some sort, had decals in the rear window. There was a Marines seal, and that black and white American Flag with a blue stripe that honors the police. On the bumper was a sticker that read: “I’d Rather be Waterboarding.”

Looking for indoor/outdoor carpeting felt lame after seeing this, but we didn’t come across Alt-right Rambo and I managed to find something acceptable. I took a moment out of my existential despair to marvel at how fluidly Sam moved up and down aisles, like a fish in his native waters.

When we were walking back to our car I saw another bumper sticker that read: “I hope something good happens to you today.” It landed like the waterboarding bumper sticker’s antidote.

Home Depot parking lot as national microcosm. Welcome to America.

Years back, I said they could take a random rock from our backyard because they’d lost the beautiful tree in their front yard and were left with a front lawn that was basically pachysandra. According to Suzanne, who works in an art museum and is highly attuned to aesthetics, a large rock would add texture and interest. The rock itself, dun-colored and lumpish, is quite unremarkable, and not only did I not expect to have it returned, but I’d completely forgotten about the entire transaction.

Now, my sister Suzanne is the most exquisitely thoughtful person I know. This is just a fact. Her eye for detail and restoration are unparalleled. My brother-in-law John delights in wordplay, connecting obscure dots, and has a penchant for diving down deep rabbit holes that test his offbeat singular focus.

But back to the rock. When it first appeared, I consulted Google’s AI overview feature. Sam and I selected the most plausible of the four highlighted possibilities, that we’d been marked as a break-in prospect, and started researching security options. I alerted several neighbors, cautioning them to pay attention to items in their walkways or in front of their houses that home invaders might plant. I removed a package of coffee pods left under our neighbors’ mailbox and concealed it in the back corner of their porch, out of view. Then, I wrote the Mystery Rock story, published it, and immediately got Suzanne’s mystery-solving text.

John later appeared, bearing paper and a pair of scissors (rock, paper, scissors, get it?) and apologized for not leaving a note. I told him that what had seemed sinister was now hilarious and it brought me to a sweeping conclusion: AI is a flat-footed sleuth and no match for humans, who act as we act, in given moments, for our own reasons, or for no reason at all. We are and always will be originals, not sequels or reliably minable aggregates of data.

The rock sits again in our backyard. Its removal and restoration were never part of a logical progression, just a funny thing that happened. I am grateful for every weird-ass curve ball we humans throw, those we miss and those we catch, especially ones like these, that bring us closer, and we can laugh about.

This past Sunday, we left our house at noon and returned at four p.m. to find a rock (well, technically, a small boulder) placed at the bottom of our front steps. The steps are wide and we could easily circumvent it, but, as I said to Sam, what the hell? Where did the rock come from, who would leave it, and why?

I took to Google and considered its presented options.

1.) A youthful prank.

2.) Witchcraft. Rocks left at doorsteps signify both a curse and a counter-curse.

3.) Ill-will, deliberately left to intimidate or harass.

4.) Criminals marking a house they suspect might be empty and ripe for robbing. They keep driving by and checking to see if the rock gets moved.

The rock weighed maybe eighteen pounds and was not easy to lift, so it seemed like a lot of trouble for kids to go to pull off a prank. A witch’s curse or counter-curse struck me as intriguing and Sam as utterly ridiculous. As for intimidation/harassment, the MAGA guy around the corner was a possibility, but unsubtle; he would have definitely written something like “libtards” on the rock. Ultimately, the criminal activity angle seemed the most probable.

Despite the two home invasions and two car thefts we have experienced, Sam and I are shockingly lax about home security, but now, we’ve settled on a Ring camera. Sam thinks it will effectively discourage intruders and I agree. Also, I’m really hoping to see a witch.

reads the instructions

and saves the manuals.

a numbers guy,

balanced equations and crossword puzzles,

answers exact.

as dad, he is love expressed in terms of stalwart practicality

multiplied by infinity times six, and, like the universe, ever-expanding.

randomized grilled cheeses on demand

and hit or miss puns equal to, or greater than,

truly home.

turns regular kid between breaths;

she can inhale popsicles on the backyard swing

and exhale a secret path through a magic forest,

tracking her narrative about eluding a mean fox to rescue twin kits, the size of peanuts.

bath follows dinner, stories follow pajamas,

the cycle of safe childhood, spun on certain;

insulated from the weird national lurch

toward alpha male claw and cage match,

women as breeding stock or disposable plastic.

this nana says fuck that.

on this independence day,

when stars and stripes form a pornstache,

i pledge my allegiance to tuille and sparkle,

a country thick with popsicle princesses

rising alongside their imaginations,

equipped to outfox foxes.

to never ignore a casual bigot,

the toss of ugly into the nest of social chitchat.

like every time it happens, it stuns, and the moment to speak passes,

or so i tell myself. coward.

all day i revisit the landing, fat steaming turd between tennis bags,

and there’s no redemption, just next time,

i come prepared. that smoking crater

will be close as i can get

to real courage.

Yesterday, though, as I was leaving for my morning walk, Sam approached, pointing to the backyard. “I saw something back there.” He looked scared.

“An animal?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll show you, ” he said, pulling out his phone to show me a screenshot of a bloody, slimy clump. “It looks like an animal ate another animal, then threw the other animal up.”

“Ugh. Why are you showing me this?”

“Because Charlie kept gravitating toward it, and you might want to keep him away.” After telling me where the horror was located, he left for work.

I had stuff to do yesterday, but I knew I should bury whatever it was when I got a chance. The grisly image was stuck in my head. Would it have fur in it? Discernible organs? Would it stick to the shovel? Could I just throw it into the pachysandra and call it a day?

When I made it out to the yard with a shovel, I found nothing. “It was right between those two bushes this morning,” Sam insisted.

I know gross wild animal shit like this happens everywhere, every day. But without Sam to record it on his phone, who would even know? Not me. Nature could just go on its merry way, being disgusting.

I’m fine with an accounting of Charlie’s digestive output. But when it comes to feral animals, their business is their business. As I told Sam, for the love of God, keep me and your cell phone out of it.

do one thing every day that scares you.

a feisty ring, but daily testing

sets its own routine,

mundane as scheduled car maintenance.

better to wake up with your day in formation

like the north korean army,

then a friend says, how about a walk? and you say, sure.

my credo is gentler than eleanor’s:

every day, leave room for surprise.

don’t waste a precious second on ground lost

while breathing in the view.

She wasn’t polite, but she was honest, and she taught me an invaluable lesson I’m embarrassed to tell you about but here goes.

Bear in mind I was a college English major, a lifelong bookworm, and teaching seventh grade.

I was fond of assigning in-class essays, and the kids would write all of a sudden. These were the same kids who wrote nip it in the butt and take for granite so I felt confident, correcting their all of a suddens to all of the suddens.

If you’re cringing now, imagine me, when a teary twelve-year-old insisted she was right, and my mentor-teacher, with a look of disbelief on her face, confirmed I’d been wrong.

“What do I do?” I asked her. “This whole semester, I’ve been doubling down and deducting points.”

“Tell them you were wrong,” she said.

“But I’m a teacher. I’m supposed to know this stuff.”

“Who told you that? You’re human, and you never stop learning.”

The next day I told the kids I’d been horribly wrong my whole life and we shared a good laugh. (I have to say that even now, “all of a sudden” sounds weird, just like “I feel bad” instead of “I feel badly” but I know it’s right.)

I worried I had set a terrible example of what it means to be a good teacher, but my mentor was right about the bigger lessons I got to teach, and by example: no one’s perfect, and never stop learning.

Joyfully inhabiting this global macro-moment would require blinders and a heart of dry ice. The light isn’t winning.

Life in general feels unreliable. I used to believe my eyes and ears, but now they can be easily fooled. Truth isn’t stated, but spun. Content is fed to us by algorithms.

What is objective reality? In 2026, perception is everything, and Machiavellian.

That is why, these days, those moments I manage to stay in are found in nature, which is simply as it presents, whether a sweep of ocean or dandelion on my front lawn. There are habitable moments when I allow Charlie to walk me, tracing every square inch of neighborhood with his nose before tagging it with pee. Then, there are the moments I successfully occupy in the company of people I love that exist in the air between us, the charged connection of rapt exchange.

Finally, there’s this, writing, where for me, the subtext of every single word you’re reading is now.

gown open in the back

the p.a. says;

doctor will be in shortly,

and we all know what that means.

i grab a brochure about eczema

which is not my concern,

here for my annual skin cancer screening.

doctor is an infant, impossibly doe-eyed and efficient,

she inspects what’s uncovered before

crinkling the paper gown to check belly and breasts.

i’m about to lampoon my silly putty skin

that has stretched over six humans;

maybe a balloon three weeks after the party dig,

but already she’s examining my back and butt.

i bet you’re thinking this is above my pay grade? might be a good one here

but i say nothing, blue paper gown open in the back,

thinking what an odd moment, this one, to summon dignity

like we’re both professionals.

Since I’m asleep when I do it, I have maintained offended denial until recently, when Sam provided proof after recording me on his phone.

I had always thought of myself as sleeping soundlessly, like an angel or female lead in a Lifetime movie. But the fact is, I have a short upper lip, so my mouth only closes when I intentionally clamp it shut. Hence, I wake up most mornings Saharan-mouthed, with dim memories of Sam poking at me and hissing turn over.

This is unfortunate, but what can I do? I’m asleep! Not only am I not conscious, in addition to my short upper lip, I have a deviated septum! And if you’re going to suggest I get the deviated septum fixed, I would, except that I’m scared and don’t want to.

But maybe it’s some kind of progress that I woke up this morning, dry-mouthed and alone, and instead of pretending nothing happened, I’m acknowledging my shameful secret in a very public apology to Sam and Charlie, who are sleeping peacefully in distant rooms of our thick-walled house, and have so far managed to love me anyway.

and wear a normal swimsuit at 70 in public, thoughtless as a toddler.

to keep yes on a long leash

while weaving no a stronger one.

to stay soft and goddamn sweet

square-eyeing bitterness and inevitable decay.

to grow from sorry

and live in thank you.

to be afraid, but still, to jump

wearing this life like borrowed wings.

Growing up, we didn’t have leftovers because my mother made the exact amount of food she deemed necessary, i.e. not enough. This justified my frequent stealth forays into the bathroom with a jar of Jif peanut butter and a spoon.

As a grownup, I intentionally make more food than we can eat because the next night, there will be a second coming with serendipitous accompaniments.

Let me tell you about tonight’s leftovers.

Salmon

Chicken

Noodles

Potatoes

Other potatoes

Zucchini

Cole slaw

The piece of salmon is small, which is fine because Sam’s not a fan. We also have three perfectly seasoned chicken cutlets. Last night’s noodles are my favorite shape, rotini, corkscrews that hold clumps of Rao’s jarred marinara sauce. The potatoes, sliced and roasted, are the from last week, but they were nicely browned and can weather a crisp-up. Then, there are a half-dozen or so other potatoes, originally packaged and frozen, a whimsical mélange of salty shoestrings, spicy sweet potato waffle fries, and sweet potato puffs which I saved in a single Tupperware and will toss in with the other potatoes for diversity. The zucchini, I admit, is a wild card. In its maiden roasting it got slightly burned, so I’m putting it in the microwave and hoping for the best. Last but not least, Sam’s trademark coleslaw, which makes the perfect binder for everything on our plates.

I should also add that leftovers taste like virtue, as we have wasted nothing.

Turns out my ex-therapist was right about interrupting my brain’s natural negativity bias! Not only do I feel suddenly cheerful, but I just remembered the leftover guacamole.

(seasoned adolescent, i knew everything);

you answered in the language of longing

your absence had yet to teach me

you hoped yes, because you wanted to see your parents again.

this struck me as childish,

my mother, after all!

and i, your smug daughter, untested in endings

and that circle back to the beginning.

Last weekend, for example, while looking at a house with my son and daughter-in-law, I met their real estate agent.

Sam and I arrived for the showing early, while Jake, Jill, and daughter Gemma were running late. After an hour’s drive and two ferry voyages across Long Island Sound, broasting in the Subaru with Charlie the dog, we looked as bedraggled as we felt, but I pulled myself from behind the wheel with a grin on my face aimed at the real estate agent, who had just pulled up in her Lexus.

The agent, who I’ll call Barb (not her real name, but it suits her) had a the taut face of a surgical cat, and she wore her nose in an 80’s bob. She was attired in luxe neutrals and a serious belt. I wore granny jeans and sneakers, striving for casual, rather than leprous. I offered Barb my hand, but she waved it off like she was batting away a Zika-infected mosquito and said, “That’s okay. I see you have your dog with you.”

I told her we’d come in from Connecticut and we couldn’t leave Charlie home alone for that long, small dog, small bladder, hahaha, and Barb interrupted me. “There’s another dog on the property. I’m afraid yours will have to stay in the car.” Then, with the same expression as Marie Antoinette approaching the guillotine, she said that even though Jake and Jill weren’t here yet, Sam and I might as well get started.

There was a path of stepping stones to the front door, and still trying to woo her, I walked at Barb’s side. “I think we should stay on the stones,” she told me. “I’m not sure how particular they are about their lawn.”

My guess would be not too particular, because in addition to poison ivy and crabgrass, they have a tenant living in an adjacent guest house raising a pot crop in the side garden and keeping a dozen or so egg-laying ducks in plastic wading pools in the front yard so duck shit was everywhere, but I didn’t argue. At the front door, she handed me and Sam those blue bonesaw booties like Dexter wears to put over our shoes “just in case.”

At the moment, Jake, Jill, and Gemma arrived, walking breezily over the grass to meet us. Barb smiled, shook Jake’s hand with gusto, and hugged Jill. She complimented Gemma on her dress. She said that for them, the Dexter booties wouldn’t be necessary.

That’s when it hit me. As a flagrant double-standard bearer, she was just doing her job. I was along for the ride and she works for a commission. I am irrelevant to that transaction but integral to another, where Gemma gives me a flower to put behind my ear and we spring Charlie from the car to run on the beach which is right around the corner. That’s where Barb and I can agree on what matters: location, location, location.

One fine place to be is by the shore. Another is at an outdoor brewery. You can even check both boxes at one location, which is what Sam and I did with our friends this past Saturday. Our picnic table of ossified specimens drifted in a merry sea of young and youngish nippers.

Golden Hour mixed alcohol-fueled conviviality with the smell of low tide. It was the experiential equivalent to, after months of nothing but thin gruel, strapping on a feed bag of chocolate ice cream and plunging schnozz first into a sweetness created to melt.

We ran into the grown friend of one of our adult kids, no longer a doltish miscreant but a dad. He was there with his first awful high school girlfriend who somehow became the mother of their passel of kids.

Standing at the intersection of shared timelines past and present, everything got reduced into whatever catch-up we could shout at each other over the background made foreground music, Blink 182’s “Please Tell Me Why.” It got me thinking, with delight, that even after all this time, I have no answer.

The patriarchy is formidable, but girls will be girls.

In and of itself, completing book two is a personal first. I have never attempted or had any interest in writing a sequel to anything, though it was suggested to me by my agent (hey, Peter) that I consider it, because YA series sell well.

So, I thought about it, and my conclusion up to now has been nah. I like one-offs! I like ending on the unresolved! Writing to the market feel obligatory, rather than exciting! Too complicated! Too tethered to a fixed, existing framework! I had my reasons. But this story feels different, and even I am eager to see how it resolves.

With book two out, the tide shifts, and I feel confident I will complete not merely what I set out to do, but I’ll also tell a story I want to tell, with characters I want to keep hanging out and messing with.

I am writing a trilogy; in a few months, give or take, I will have written one.

a hopeless romantic,

flit of fey and rainbow tuille

swept off her sparkly feet by dad,

safe in the tender cradle of mama’s arms.

a life rife with popsicles;

a trust fall on loop

into a benevolent universe.

**********************************************

i’m taking this moment, gem, on today, your birthday,

to freeze you in girl time

while imagining the lucky future that gets to hold you.