I went to the gynecologist yesterday for an annual exam. I’m 36 years old. I know my period has been fucked up for over a year now, coming infrequently. I assumed it was because of the weight loss and stress of moving. The nurse asked me what I used for birth control, and I answered honestly. “Marriage.” I thought it sounded better than, “abstinence.”

Yesterday they took blood and also did an ultrasound of my ovaries. The doctor believed I had poly-cystic ovaries (my whole life, I’ve never heard this) which results in fewer periods, but a technician looked at my ovaries with a giant wand up the crotch and saw two cysts on one ovary and one cyst on the other, all smaller than 1-inch. With poly-cystic, he said, people have like six to eight cysts. He said he thought I was ovulating right now, consistent with my silky thin discharge (normal), and TMI, I know. He said I should take Provera for 10 days to bring on a period, and then he wants to start me on birth control, to regulate my period, so it comes more often than THREE times a year (which is how often I had it last year).

This morning, 8:27am, I get a message from him.

“Hi, Stephanie, this is Dr. Silfen. I got the results of your blood work. You’re not pregnant, as we expected. Your thyroid is normal, your prolactin level is normal. You’re estrogen level is high. And your FSH is in the menopausal range, which does not make sense. Your LH is very high, consistent to what I spoke about yesterday, PCO, poly-cystic ovaries, so what I’m going to recommend is that you take the Provera for ten days. I think you’re going to get a period, but if you don’t get a period, give me a call and we’ll decide what to do. But first let’s just take the medication and go we’ll go from there. Bye.”

So, now, I’m my father’s daughter. A wreck. I walk around the grocery store looking at people. Fat, thin, old. People buying ingredients, fondling fruit, living their lives. I feel removed from it, from the everyday, seeing daily events as motions. Medical news can shift things in your life, especially your perspective. Literally.

Lord love a duck! Here’s hoping that I soon, very soon, see spot run. Period.

This morning I was invited to Lucas’s school for “Torah Time,” an intimate meeting with rabbis, where together with our children, we learn the significance of the Torah. At one point, the parents and caregivers of nineteen children were welcomed onto the bima (the stage/platform), and forming a semicircle, facing the Ark (basically a cupboard for the Torah scrolls), we each had a chance to hold the Torah. We were asked to introduce ourselves to the group, to share if we’d ever held a Torah, if so when, and to talk about how it feels to hold it.

I didn’t want to be there. That is, yesterday, upon learning that this event was taking place, I replied to Lucas’s teacher that we weren’t religious people and that I wasn’t exactly sure what this event even was, aside from a push into religious schooling. So, I met with her yesterday, and she encouraged me to come, explaining that Lucas could, if we wanted, spend time in another preK classroom, or he could join us. “It’s really a parent child experience.”

Listening to the other parents share their stories, however short, felt like an opportunity that doesn’t happen enough as adults. That opportunity to watch people open up, even if it’s in a small way, to talk about their childhoods, to think back, to see body language open, to watch a room warm up. I love that everyone has a story, that a nanny with broken English, many parents raised Catholic, converted Jews, girls given the choice to Bat Mitzvah in the face of brothers who were all required, all opened to the experience.

Most remarkable to me was a moment when a rabbi talked about needing to remember how sacred the Torah is. She wasn’t speaking at us, but was sharing herself, her own need as someone who handles the Torah as often as she does, to remind herself of the history, the hands—and lives—in history who’ve touched these same scrolls before her. Just then, as she mouthed the words, I felt myself nodding. What a wonderful reminder, to hear from people who’ve maybe never held one, to listen to them tell you that holding a Torah feels like a hug, a child, a comfort, a part of something bigger.

In that moment, I thought of my writing. I’ve been circling this idea for the past two weeks, that since fourth grade I knew I wanted to be a writer, to spend the rest of my life “doing just this,” and then “it happened,” I was published, and that strong longing to be validated as a writer, that hunger to prove something, that eagerness to write, it stopped—just as a film ends the moment the central question is answered (Who will she choose, the good boy or the bad boy?). The hunger abated but the instinct to write, that natural reaction, is still there.

I know it because the other night, as I shared a cozy night among new friends, women sharing their stories of heartache, marital strife, and ex-wife woes, I kept thinking, “This would make a great premise,” or “I love your meet cute! I’m totally stealing that.” I wasn’t putting pressure on myself; it’s just my instinct, what I’m naturally drawn to do. That next morning, I awoke with a flood of ideas, beginnings of something.

And then today, as I heard the rabbi speak of that inclination to be desensitized, to take things for granted, it just clicked. That’s what I’ve been doing with my talent. I haven’t been valuing it, haven’t nurtured it, respected it. I believed that maybe there was something else I should be doing. And maybe that’s true. Nothing is keeping me from doing whatever it is I’m drawn to do, but I’ve been keeping me from fully valuing and appreciating my innate talents. I’ve taken my own strengths for granted.

I’m blessed today for having paid attention to my surroundings, for grabbing this meaning from a semicircle of preschool parents. And I’m sharing it with you to bring it top of mind for you, that you were born with distinct strengths, and it’s your responsibility to continue to discover and develop them. Maybe it will even help if you “play” along… what’s one strength you remember having as a child?

My Beautiful Sissy Lea

Now that I’ve been living in Texas long enough to own burnt orange, I now have the right to refer to my sister as “sissy.” From my sissy last night via Facebook:

“I love that when I am feeling sad or in need of your advice, and you won’t answer your phone, I can just go to your website and start reading… and within moments I feel better. Even if whatever I am reading has nothing to with why I am sad… I love you…and miss you. My big sister is the best. “

Love. Just love. It will be so nice to live closer to Lea Pea Eats Diarrhea… and closer to LINUS! Heavenly.

Go on, tell someone in your family how happy they make you. It’ll make you happy just thinking about how happy you’ll make them.

Aside from stories, I don’t sell anything. Photographs, art, books, scripts, words, I sell. I don’t sell out people or cameras I’ve outgrown, mostly because I’m loyal and lazy—though, not necessarily in that order. I also don’t sell houses, glass or otherwise. But…

But I need to rent a house in Boca Raton for a year, and we’re willing to side-step a broker (keeping the owner from paying the fee). This blog, and more pointedly its readers, have always been a remarkable source for my family. I’m not speaking in advertising dollars but in support, in friendship, and in wisdom. I felt less alone in all of it. Whatever “it” was. Being single. Moving to Texas. Having sex. Not having sex. Fertility challenges. Pregnancy. NICU nights. Lucas’s brain surgery. Phil’s heart surgery. Giving up Linus. Taking up with Bikini. Feeling like a traitor. Wanting to pass Phil’s testicles over a French mandoline.

Once strangers, and readers, some of my closest friends have become just that because of this Greek Tragedy blog. Hell, I met my husband through this small white screen! And once again, you’ve reached out to me, offering advice on schools, synagogues, babysitters, restaurants, and communities. Thank you! You fukcing rock. Seriously.

A facebook friend and reader has introduced me to her family, truly warm, understanding, welcoming people. They have a home in Woodfield Country Club, and although they’d planned on selling their house, not renting, they were willing to rent to us for the year. Win win. We agreed on a price, terms, all of it. Then, not Phil, but I was terrified.

Because the house has a pool.

No, this has nothing to do with my wiggling my bod into a swim suit and everything to do with my fears of accidental drownings. It is my greatest fear. Not just my own children, but if another child comes to our home to play. You can’t look away for a second. I’m sick even writing this. The though of lifeless bodies, sprawled, floating, hanging, at the bottom of a pool. “With twins, one follows the other in.” I can’t, CAN’T, take it. Locking doors with bolts, adding alarm systems, it’s not enough. I’ve heard stories of kids that found their way out of the house through the garage, and within moments, it’s all too late.

If there’s a pool, there simply must be a child safety fence put up. Only to put one up, the installer must drill small holes into the decking, and some homeowners, understandably, aren’t comfortable doing that. So, now, we’re figuring out our next move (literally). So, if you know of anything, anyone, we’d love to know. In the meanwhile, I’m here in Austin, stalking Gwen Hurst for her intensive (read: Nazi-esque) swim lessons, once again.

They say these things happen in threes. I don’t know what it is; there’s something happening. Over the past two weeks I’ve received news. None of it is my news, but it’s the kind of news you turn over and sit with, news that steals your breath and intrudes on your dreams. Then you spend the day talking in sympathy cards.

Two weeks shy of his forty-fourth birthday, Jay, Phil’s friend from college, lost his battle to cancer.

Twenty-two weeks pregnant, one of my closest friends went into pre-term labor and lost her son. She called me and got the news out in sobs. I don’t know why, but as she told me, I found myself crouching down, then sitting on the floor, under my desk. It’s the kind of news that brings you back, if that makes any sense. I can’t know what that’s like, not even close, even with my pre-term labor and NICU nights. Because we all wear it so differently.

I’ve been really quiet these past weeks. Being still. Just feeling it, sitting with it. Life’s joys and the way they’re taken from us, a lot of the time without warning. And even when we are warned, when we can see the signs, when we know it’s the end, we’re not really ready for it. We use the word surreal because we’re too tired to say anything. Anymore. To anyone.

Another friend of mine was at the airport, waiting for her husband to pick her up. Maybe he was running late or got a head start. It takes time to load a car with four-year-old twins and a sassy six-year-old—who has to pee, okay, who needs water, stop pushing, you’re sitting on the seat belt, if you’re going to argue we won’t listen to anything. An eighty-nine-year-old woman drove her car onto the highway, into oncoming traffic. It was dark. Foggy. She slammed her car into my friends’, and she and my friend’s husband, Grier Laughlin, were pronounced dead on the scene. He was 37. The children survived and are home recovering and mourning. All the while my friend was at the airport, waiting. I still cannot believe it. He was buried this past Friday. Yet, still, I keep thinking, “No, they got it wrong. Someone just needs to turn that lady around. Grier will be fine.”

I was a guest at their wedding. They opened their home to me after my divorce, despite the fact that Grier went to college with the wasband. They remained my friends and visited with me for hours when I was in Denver on book tour for Moose. Just the other day I was organizing my bookshelves and came across All About Us, a fill in the blank type of book the wasband and I had begun to complete together. I opened to a random page and saw the question: which of your partner’s friends is your favorite? The wasband wrote Smelly, and I wrote Grier.

I can’t even begin to think of the road in front of, ahead of, the living. Or all the thoughts back, the replaying of daily details, the saved texts, his voice on the answering machine, an unfinished to-do list and to-live life. I wish there were something each of us could do to take the hurt out of living. Grier, I am sure of it, loved his family with the win or lose love they’ll carry with them deep inside. I hope they are all feeling supported, surrounded by love, and that they’re each finding comforts, however small, in the ordinary moments of their extraordinary lives.

Or anywhere, for that matter. Just, ew. Yet.

Oh, yes, there is a yet, a yet with a proof.

New York Jetsons in Texas

Yesterday we all dressed in JETS clothing for “the game.” Mind you we weren’t going to any game, nor did I have anything approaching a clue as to what game it was when people spoke in vague questions of “the game.” It’s like saying, “the city.” Well, which city? Which game? Apparently it was the New York Jets (is it even NY or is it NJ?) vs. the Steelers from some other city, Philadelphia, perhaps. Or was it Detroit? Does it even matter? A quick Google tells me it was Pittsburgh. All I knew was that I was handed a Jets shirt, donning the number 6, with a player’s last name marked on my back. “Sanchez.”

“Oh, like as in a Dirty Sanchez.” At least it was something I could get behind (oh, that pun was badass). And I’ll say this, as a redhead, at least the Jets have a good color palette. I am not in the practice of wearing hats, but I like saying that I’m the type of girl who can throw on a baseball cap and go. I like the idea of it. But here’s what I liked more:

I liked being part of something, a matching family with t-shirts, and a bigger family, where strangers talk to you, pumping a knowing fist in the air to signify their solidarity.

“We’ll slaughter ‘em.” Some freckled boy said to me in passing.

That’s why people wear sports jerseys in public! Because it starts a conversation, because it makes you feel less alone. I couldn’t give a flying pig skin about football, but at least now I’m beginning to “get it.”

I’ve matriculated from a high school as big as my pinky, sans football team. Then an ivy league college where Columbia football was (eek, sorry, a sad joke). I’ve never known school pride or felt a connection to anything organized. But yesterday, for at least a few hours, I felt a glimmering of all the sports glory.

This is going to sound strange, but if it took me this long to become a Jets fan, if or when I leave Austin, I’m willing to bet that I’ll finally become a Longhorns fan. But ain’t no way I’ll be rockin’ the burnt orange. I had that bit of orange trauma when I was forced to play a conceited, spandex clad, cat in the drama school musical. Never, ever, again.