Once upon a time, I was making a bad job of being pregnant. I was sooo morning sick, the whole way through, though working full time and going to law school five nights a week might have had something to do with my misery (and I was broke). I fainted regularly and I was anemic even on mommy-vitamins. I do not recall that time in my life fondly at all.

I do though, recall crossing paths with one of my sisters, probably the most conservative sibling of the seven of us, when I was approaching my third trimester. I was not married and not expecting to marry the baby’s father, I had not planned the pregnancy, and I was in therapy trying to sort out the kludge I had made of my whole entire, complete, overwhelming, blighted life. From this sister, I expected some judgment, or if she was feeling charitable, maybe platitudes. If she was feeling particularly saintly, maybe she’d limit herself to small talk and pleasantries.

What I got instead was wisdom. Said my sister, who is a mom four times over, unto me: This is not the time to castigate yourself, second guess your instincts, or run yourself down for past choices. You have done the best you could. Right now, just keep around you the people who are supportive and tell anybody else to get lost. That’s your focus and your job. The rest of it can all wait until you have the bandwidth to deal with it.

I was so grateful to hear a Starfleet directive that simplified my situation into a sensible, comforting, little lecture, that I about cried on the spot. I also followed my sister’s advice as best I could.

I’m struck in hindsight by how much I did not need information in that moment. I had a ton of facts in hand–how motherhood impacts earning capability (not for the best, in too many cases), how single parenting impacts children (ditto), what my options were if I had to drop out law school because the pregnancy became high risk (which it did do, of course). Facts and knowledge and data had reached the limit of their helpfulness and were in fact, making the problem worse.

I needed wisdom.

And that begs the question: In this age when we are deluged by information at chronic flood stage, when we can google anything, when we can wallow in facts, lies, statistics, and expert everything, where will we find wisdom? Where will we exchange and build on the wisdom we have? My sister’s advice in the present day could have been summarized in a social media comment, but something about her deep understanding of me–with whom she had played Barbies by the hour–illuminated what she chose to say and how she said it.

So I’m on the lookout for who and what is wise these days, though I recognize that the same person can be wise about, say, how to get somebody else’s book written, and a complete fool about how to manage her housekeeping (just fr’ instance as a random example).

Who or what has been a source of wisdom for you? Are there parts of life about which you’ve accumulated some wisdom? I suspect there are.

PS: Pre-order links are up for book two in the Bad Heir Day tales, The Mysterious Marquess!

I was sitting in an airport not long ago with time on my hands (three hour delay), and so I watched the passing scene. I noticed how unique our footwear has become.

Though 95% of the passersby were in sneakers of some sort, very few wore the same style. Yellow Nikes, black Hokas, retro bright red Keds, beat up deck shoes… we have a lot of choice regarding our tennies, and we enjoy exercising it. Not so much, the clothes we wear on a traveling day. Jeans and T-shirts, yoga pants and turtlenecks, more jeans, leggings… I saw only one truly impressive Joseph’s coat sort of jacket, but the rest struck me as drab, casually fitting, and uninspired.

Mass produced. This got me thinking about clothing in Regency England, which might have been “ready-made,” a new concept for the time, but was in the vast majority “bespoke.” Your clothing was created, or at least altered, to fit you. If your household had any sort of means, you chose the fabric and the color (or your mama did), and the cut was designed for your particular dimensions. Even the London tailors turning out the standard gentleman’s morning coat had brand-specific patterns to distinguish their coats from the other guys’ and they measured each customer meticulously to ensure a perfect fit. (Just for fun, speaking of which, some Zack Pinsent.)

As somebody who was a little taller than average and considerably wider than average (in places) for most of my adult life, I have pretty much never found clothing that fit me. Even now, my calves are so “sturdy,” that extra-extra wide half chaps don’t fit, and the triple-wide ones gap hugely at the top to accommodate the circumference of my splendid gastrocs.

I have in the entirety of my life, come across a few outfits that felt luscious on me, were the right colors for me, and made me feel more ready to take on the world. They flattered my physique and reinforced a persona I wanted to project. Part costume, part robes of state, and perfect for me. I have seen that mountaintop, though not often and not for decades.

Shopping for clothing generally became my idea of purgatory. Going naked would be worse, so off to Chico’s or J. Jill I would go, looking for elastic waist bands and wide cut everything else and feeling like a misfit. (Please note: If not for stores such as these, I would have nothing business-casual to wear. At. All. I am not dissing them.)

All of this is to say, those Regency ladies and gents had something I have only glimpsed. Within the limits of budget and time, they could make or have made for them the clothing they enjoyed wearing. Right down to whether cuffs were embroidered with violets or roses, and how much embroidery on the bonnet ribbons would be added to match.

“How do I want to look?” was a different question for them than it has been for me. I have considered the query successfully answered if I looked “presentable.” Maybe it’s time to up my game in the sartorial department, and now that I am less wide, maybe the project has a better chance at happy outcomes. I look good in raspberry, for example (most people do). I like purple with dashes of green and peach…

How much consideration do you give to your wardrobe? Do you have a few outfits that you love to wear? What is special about them? If you could have an ensemble made just for you, what instructions would you give your seamstress or tailor?

PS: A print version of The Dreadful Duke is available on Amazon and pre-order links for The Mysterious Marquess are live.

By now, I hope everybody has seen a video of skater Ilia Malinin’s world champion figure skating routine. This guy is nineteen years old, he ended up being last in the order of go, and he has fallen in competition more times than I can count. He’s also the only skater thus far to do all six competitive skating jumps as quadruples. He’s breaking records and doing what was previously considered “impossible.”  Long and happily may he skate!

Roger Bannister did what was was considered impossible when, in the middle of his med school studies, he ran a mile in less than four minutes.

Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Sir Edmund Hilary did the impossible when, as part of the ninth British expedition to make the attempt, they summited Mount Everest.

Since Bannister ran his mile, 1755 other athletes have done the impossible. In fact, Bannister’s 1954 record stood for just 46 days, though attempts to break the four-minute barrier had been going on for decades. As for Mt. Everest, more than 6500 people have seen the view from the top of the world since 1953, many of them more than once.

When I watch Malinin toss off those successive quad jumps, I want to whoop and stomp and applaud. How does he dooooo that? (He used the pandemic to practice is part of the answer, and it doesn’t hurt that his mom was an international skating super star.) Even so, some part of this guy decided that the impossible was achievable, and I promise you, quad jumps will find their way into more programs in years to come.

A broken barrier is an inspiration, for better or for worse. I’ve only broken one memorable barrier (so far), and that was when I was in eighth grade. I’d taken a year of home economics in seventh grade because it was “mandatory.” A semester of sewing, a semester of cooking. I already knew how to bake brownies, and I could stitch up a split seam. I did not consider that the first year of home ec had any value, and I wasn’t about to endure a second.

Fifty years ago, girls did not take shop, but I signed up for shop anyway. That meant some woodworking, some metal working, and some power mechanics (taking apart lawn mower engines). I learned A LOT from those shop teachers, I learned something about male spaces, and I learned that sometimes, you can create options just by being a little insistent.

That one experience led me to take a class load in eleventh grade that had no lunch. My mom shrugged. The principal was utterly nonplussed. In college I could not decide between music history and pre-law so I obtained degrees in both. I played both jazz and classical piano. I studied both Spanish and Latin in high school. Making one choice at age thirteen to color outside the prescribed lines led to other choices, and I am richer for having gone astray.

Have you seen any impossible dreams come true? Colored outside any lines? Are there any rules you wish you would have broken? It’s time once again for ye old e-ARC list. The Dreadful Duke, first of the Bad Heir Day Tales, will be published in a very few weeks, so email me at [email protected] is you’d like a copy.

I saw a post go by that made me think about how much more easily we were thrilled in childhood. Pizza for dinner was a thrill, Christmas morning was a big deal, the first snow flakes inspired our rapture, and school letting out was cause for giddy elation. We were thrilled by rainbows and cupcakes and sparklers… Life was wondrous (except when it wasn’t).

I have been thinking about this wonderfulness that was so close at hand when I was a kid, and even into early adulthood. Why did I mothball my capacity to be thoroughly delighted? I still like a good pizza, but pizza for dinner is just a “That’ll be a yummy change,” between “Have I paid the mortgage this month?” and, “I’d better wash a load of towels tonight.” The world is too much with me, late and soon–the practical, whiny, devil-in-the-details world.

And yet, in these challenging and annoying times, for wonder to lose out to a load of laundry strikes me as a sour deal. So I challenged myself to be more appreciative of wonder, to focus on the little thrills when they come my way. A partial report of the results is as follows.

Do you know what’s truly wonderful? A leaf blower. I was on evening barn chores detail earlier this week, and one of the last things you do before lights out is use the blower on the aisle. All the little bits of hay and chaff and horse poo go whooshing down the aisle before you. You can make the dirt dance, ricocheting your dust devil off one wall into the other, and when you’re done–ten minutes later–that barn looks like Martha Stewart’s horse lives there.

I had never used a blower before, and I found it profoundly satisfying. (Barn work, sure! House work? Must I really?) More wonderful happened when I rode this week. My hands bounce all over the place and I have no stamina, but once Lola The Mare and I get going, especially to the right, we approach a forward, connected trot that can even move laterally. The plain English translation for that is, we rock along, and it is wonderful.

Pansies are wonderful–they scoff at snow. Shopping at the garden store is wonderful (IN MODERATION, Grace Ann). I got to provide a little assistance on a grant writing project this week, because federal procurement and I go way back. To use what I know in that regard was a real kick. That the landscaper is coming to till up my new forty-foot long pollinator strips (two of them) is great fun. That I found a glimmer of a plot idea for Lord Julian’s sixth tale is glorious.

And when I list these moments for you, they add up to a lot of smiles and some lightheartedness and the realization that wonder is still there. I just need to savor it with more focus.

What’s wonderful for you lately? What has thrilled you, even if it’s only the micro-thrill of using a leaf blower on the barn aisle?

Lately, I feel overbooked (though not yet overwhelmed). For no particular reason, a lot of to-dos have converged at once. The car needs new tires, somebody had better file both business and personal taxes, I’m at the end of my COVID booster window and contemplating plane travel (to see the new grandson, of course), and kitties need various kinds of attention from the vet. A lot of running around and feeling scattered.

I used to run around far more peripatetically than this, and work a full time lawyer job, but them days are gone and I do not miss them.  I suspect this burst of activity on my part (I schedule the vet appointments, I book the new tires appointment, oddly enough) is simply because spring is upon us.

The sunlight is more abundant and brighter (before the leaves come out). The landscape is popping with colorful flowers and trees in bloom. I wake to sunshine in my room, even after the time change (all together: Boo, Hiss, on the time change). I spend less energy wrangling fire wood or simply maintaining body temperature.

In the midst of my busyness, I do not want to miss the joys of spring, because they are abundant. Three months from now, when I am whining about the humidity, the bugs, the noise (fans, farm equipment, pick up trucks, mama cows separated from their babies), please, bloggin’ buddies, remind me of the following:

The beautiful flowers and their bright colors. (Somebody should have pruned that forsythia bush by the barn. I wonder who it could be?). The pleasure of not having splinters in my fingers nigh daily from feeding the wood stove its many meals per day. The litter boxes going for days without use because it’s nice outside. The smell and feel of sun-dried laundry. The joy of working in my flower beds. The beautiful sound of the stream greeting me first thing in the morning and the equally lovely chorus of birdsong.

I will soon miss the wood stove and its luscious radiant heat, not only because the weather will warm up, but also because burning wood is a climate no-no, and the Big Job this year will be installing heat pumps.

For now though, I can put my tweezers away, and be grateful not to need them. I can ease up on the litter-box patrol (some), I can dress in less than three layers (whee!), and leave stuff in the car without fear that it will freeze if I don’t unload it before morning.

Spring is here (despite some backsliding in the forecast) and I am grateful.

What will you be taking for granted later that you are appreciating now? What did you take for granted that you lately hold in greater esteem?

I think it’s time for a give away. To three commenters, I will send the web store title of their choice, and that includes audio titles and a pre-order for The Dreadful Duke!

Author Patience Griffin’s “Gandigow Star” quilt

The comments inspired by last week’s post made me sad!

We’ve given up baking, quilting, scuba diving, swimming, gardening, needlework, and who knows what else, all interesting activities in their own rights, and also ways to positively connect with other people. To part with these personal joys hurts, and isolates us from those who shared those pleasures with us.

When I sit on a horse, I am not merely somebody who enjoys riding, I am a rider. It’s an identity and an activity, and that’s what struck me about the losses described in last week’s comments. We part with the identity–scuba diver, swimmer, gardener, quilter–as well as the activity itself, and there’s no memorial service for that cherished part of us that has quietly slipped away.

Perhaps these gloomy thoughts inspired me to realize that becoming a grandmother is also, for me, a loss. As a single mom with one daughter, I was pretty focused on my only child for a big chunk of my adulthood. Since she left home almost twenty years ago, I have remained in her life, a support and a comfort, I hope, even as her adult partners have come and gone. (Some could have gone a lot sooner, if you ask me.)

Now that she is a mom, I’m bumped down the list of significant people in her life. If she had to vote either me or the baby off the island, I’d be packing my bags. There’s a new kid in town, and he displaces me to some extent, and that’s exactly how it should be.

Rationally, I know motherhood gives me and my daughter something significant in common. I grasp that love doesn’t operate like search engine optimization protocols that rank every hit, and only show the first few. You can love your offspring madly, and have plenty of time and attention to give others in your life, at least some of the time.

But still. A loss.

So this seemed like a good time to say to my bloggin’ buddies, be you a lurker, a regular, or in between, that I am grateful to have this place to share the occasional thought with you. We might have to give up some roles as life moves us on, or shift the way we inhabit those roles, but the fundamental joy of connection remains available to us. I appreciate the livin’ peedywhaddles out of your willingness to connect with me here, whether you stopped by today for the first time, left a few casual observations, wrote from the heart, or caught a few of my earliest posts more than ten years ago.

Someday I will have to hang up my spurs, and that will make me sad too, but to know I’m not the only person aging out of a beloved hobby, not the only woman who will miss flower gardening on her knees, is a very great comfort.

Thank you for that, and for all the thoughtful, kind, funny, and inspiring comments you’ve left over the years. I’ve read every one of them, but I’ve never taken the time to say thank you, so I’m saying it now.

Who or what comforts you when life gets to be daunting?

I haven’t been on a horse for about a year, and I was getting that “Now or never,” feeling about climbing back in the saddle. I dislike “slow grief” situations, where you aren’t absolutely certain of a loss, but it’s looking more and more sure as time goes on, but there’s no closure, no ritual, no moment when you can say, “That relationship or role or aspect of my life is gone for good,” except in hindsight.

I was beginning to doubt that I’d find my way back to the saddle, despite all the great memories, the bond with my daughter, and the mental challenge that riding has given me. Instructors, understandably, are looking for students who will a) buy a horse, b) board that horse at the instructor’s barn, and c) have the ambition and athleticism to aim for the show ring, because competition entails hauling and coaching fees for the instructor (usually), if not fees for also riding the horse at show. Then too, teaching an old lady who mostly just wants to mess around is hardly the pinnacle of pedagogy for a true equestrian.

I observed a few lessons with local instructors, and ye gods and little fishes. So serious! So un-fun and dominance-based. My old trainer has long since moved to Florida, but I’d hesitate to ride with him even if he were available. I’m not in shape, and what muscle I had even a year ago has been compromised by weight loss. And the longer I’m away from riding, the more my courage for the sport ebbs. Horses are big, you know…

Fortunately for me, the therapeutic riding barn recently offered me the chance to ride in a class for volunteers. The horses get to do more than walk along the rail, and the volunteers can experience what our equine co-workers are like to ride. I was nervous, friends, and I’m enough of a horse girl to know that horses sense when we’re nervous, and then they can get nervous, et cetera and so forth.

I should not have worried at all. The instructor put me up on Mae, a sensible, mature Clydesdale mare, and twenty paces away from the mounting block, I was riding instead of fretting. Which is our bendy side, which is our straight side? How to approach contact with the bit when the horse is built to pull rather than push from behind? Will she move off my leg? Eyes up and soft, Grace. Remember to breathe…

The day will come when I will hang up my spurs, but I rejoice greatly to say, today is not that day. The saddle can still be a happy place for me, and my gratitude for that knows no limits. I danced a little nip-up in the barn aisle I was so stupidly happy. Texted my daughter. Cried in the car. I don’t yet have to say, “I was a horse girl.” My paddock boots and helmet are back in the passenger’s seat, and there they will stay for now.

Have you ever had the chance to revisit a previous passion? Is there a passion you’d like to revisit or maybe visit for the first time?

PS: Lord Julian’s fourth tale, A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth, is now available from all the usual suspects, and mystery number five, A Gentleman in Search of a Wife, is available for pre-order.

I saw a Facebook post go by celebrating the knock-on effect of dopamine. The syllogism went something like this: I treated myself to a fish tank I could not easily afford, but I just love that fish tank. Every time I see those little fishies swimming in their beautiful little world, I am happy. On the strength of that happy (a dopamine hit), I was motivated to tackle a bunch of other stuff I had been putting off, like organizing my kitchen shelves, because dopamine isn’t just the reward chemical, it’s the motivation chemical. Now I’m going to follow my joy. Pretty soon my house will be clean, I’ll have a savings account, and nothing but blue skies in every direction.

My instinctive reaction was, “Yeah, but you spent money you couldn’t comfortably spare, the fishies might have all died, and you were probably getting to the ‘my kitchen is driving me nuts’ point anyway. Besides, that dopamine stuff has lot to do with turning people into compulsive fish-tank hoarders, as everybody well knows.”

Do they really? I got to thinking… My parents’ rubrics were business before pleasure, and work hard and “get ahead,” whatever that means. What I saw as a kid though, was two devoted coffee drinkers who also smoked and tippled heavily right through the week (as did most of their peers), and a father who got a migraine most Sunday nights before starting out the week at a job he was outwardly devoted to. Mom’s housekeeping would be called compulsive by current standards. If business comes before pleasure, when does pleasure ever get a turn?

I’m also reminded of James Clear’s admonition that the most important part of building a new habit, is associating the habit with something pleasurable now. When you floss, if you stop to grin in the mirror at your pearly whites and say to yourself, “Good job! I’m proud of you!” you are more likely to keep up the flossing. If you bundle the daily walk with catching up with a friend, or admiring the botanical gardens, the walk is more likely to remain daily. Something about how you go about the new habit itself–not the result it produces–has to be attractive, or the behavior is hard to sustain.

And then I thought about how my day begins–with my now famous cup of jasmine green tea laced with manuka honey. I start the day with a treat, and with my treat in hand, I go to the computer and do some writer “work.” I use quotes, because I do love my job, and I would much rather do writer stuff than house work, yard work, marketing stuff (blech), or errands. As a matter of fact, when I started writing for pleasure, my migraines began to wane. Hmm.

In other words, I start my day with joy. THEN I deal with litter boxes, laundry, and life. I honestly don’t think I could do it the other way around very well now, though I ordered my life in the business before pleasure direction for decades. Now, I would… pout? Stall? I’m not sure what the right word would be, but I function better if I prime my emotional pump with some pleasure and indulgence.

How does motivation work for you? Lean into joy, or start with the hard stuff and celebrate after the race is run? Some of both? Depends on the context? Do tell!

PS: Lord Julian’s fifth mystery, A Gentleman in Search of a Wife, is now available for pre-order on all the web store and the retail sites, and even has its spiffy final cover!

People born toward the bottom of large sibling piles tend to be adaptable, in the sense that they instinctively fill vacant roles in any group situation. If the moment wants levity, they crack a joke. If there’s an invisible elephant in the room, they name it. If the dishes are piling up, they do the dishes. The team is stronger for having such personalities on the roster, and not incidentally, the adaptable party finds a lot of ways to feel useful.

This tendency doesn’t always prevail, but the trait frequently applies to me. I noticed this at the barn where I volunteer. I’m often focused on, “What needs to happen next to get this participant and their horse into the arena? What can we do now to be pre-ready for the lesson after that?” Maybe critical-path thinking comes from running my own law practice, or years of single-parenting, but I suspect it’s also just me. Vigilant about deploying resources effectively, sometimes to the point of missing the forest as I walk straight into a tree.

On of the instructors pulled me aside fairly early in my volunteer efforts and said words to this effect: In the vast majority of situations, initiative, forward momentum, and strategic thinking are great assets. I’m not suggesting you abandon them entirely. Here, though, where our participants have often been managed, structured, and scheduled halfway to perdition, a more relaxed approach can be useful. For us to move at their pace, according to their priorities, in the direction they choose, is one of the greatest gifts we have to offer them.”

Moses in the bulrushes, did I ever need to hear that. This woman was saying to me, “I see and appreciate that you are trying to solve the problem of how to be helpful. I agree that your approach has a lot to recommend it, but let me give you some context, and another perspective to consider.” She managed to be critical without in any way leaving me feeling diminished or reprimanded.

In fact, I was relieved. I was trying to solve the problem of how best to be useful, and she added an option: Be a kind, non-anxious presence. That’s a big contribution.

That wisdom in itself would be a lovely take-away, but I am also impressed with how deftly the guidance was provided. The same instructor could have said, “Simmer down, Grace. Pushy, twitchy people make the horses fretful,” (which is true). In the alternative, she might have said nothing, and I’d still be overstepping my role on occasion, wasting effort at other times, and harshing the lesson vibe, all while I just try to be helpful.

She couched her correction such that I felt valued, appreciated, and supported rather than shamed, and you know what helps me simmer down the very best? Feeling valued, appreciated, and supported, that’s what.

Other people have come to my aid in the same manner, offering gentle, constructive insights, about how I parented my daughter, managed my money, and dealt with my health. How they expressed themselves, and why they spoke up–kindly, and to truly assist me with a problem–was as much value as what they said.

Have you ever been the recipient of this kind of right word at the right time in the right way? It strikes me that good bosses have this skill, and a lot of clergy likely have it too. Maybe this is what Julian and Hyperia value most in each other… Must have a think on that!

I ended up waiting at a traffic light behind a car with South Carolina plates, and on those plates I read one of the state mottos: While I breathe, I hope. I’d come across that notion in Latin classes, “Dum spiro, spero,” and the sentiment strikes me as something Lord Julian might find useful.

And yet, real hope takes more than breath. Way, way back in my Conflict Transformation program, we learned that hope has been studied by the learned folk who apply for grants. They found that hope cannot be sustained for long without some tangible, observable hints that optimism is justified. Canaries can sing in dark, dusty coal mines, only if a healthy quantity of oxygen is available to them.

To sustain hope, we need two things: Imagination and a sliver of reality-based encouragement. So what, in these trying times, did I see that gave me hope this week? (Besides crocuses!)

The quick lube place I go to is notable for the upbeat and courteous attitude of its staff. Those people act glad to see every customer, and they go about their tasks with alacrity. Somebody dipped them all in the True Elixir of Customer Service, which is lovely in itself. This week, though, I also noticed that half the staff is female. As the first girl to take auto mechanics in my county school system (half a century ago), that sight just warmed the cockles of my float-bowl vent valve.

I have also been tremendously encouraged by time spent with a pair of great-nephews, ages four and two-and-a-half. We hear perpetually that kids today are screen-addicted, they have no imaginations, they can’t hold a conversation if they can text instead, they are physically unfit, they are struggling with post-pandemic everything. Kids are just a mess.

Not these two little guys. They are capable of HOURS of imaginative play. Pirates and dragon-hunters and Lego dragons on the Lego police force, and Play-dough, and on and on. They are perpetual motion machines, and screens in their lives are a controlled rarity permitted only if a parent is watching the same screen. I doubt my great-nephews are all that unusual in having digital native parents who do a better job of managing the various “boob tubes” than the previous generation did. When I hunt a few dragons with these boys, I am filled with optimism (we’re going to make friends with the dragons rather than eat them, according to the expedition leader).

The kids–some kids–are all right.

What else gives me hope, right before my very eyes? The town where I do most of my grocery shopping, two valleys over, has banned single use plastic bags. I realize bans have downsides (people do buy more heavy plastic garbage bags, for example, and those have a larger carbon footprint than the flimsy bags). Yeah-buts notwithstanding, the jurisdiction I refer to is far from progressive. Any regulatory step taken there suggests public concern for the planet, and that’s a good thing. If they can agree to a green step forward one county over…

So I see around me evidence that says hope is justified, though I had to give the whole question of what’s hopeful here and now a think. Maybe in addition to listing five gratitudes every night, I should also start listing some reason to hope.

What has given you hope?

PS: Print version of A Gentleman in Search of Truth now available.