As I began to backstroke, I noted that the clouds were exceptionally big and ominous. The swim team was in the middle of their workout and I remember how noisy it was—the air filled with the sound of kids laughing and splashing and throwing each other into the deep end. That was the last time I heard a group of kids goofing off.

The pool and most of my world shut down the next day. March 16 became more than a square on a calendar page; it was a stop sign, marking a division between what came Before and what has happened After.

Before SIP, my last plane ride was on February 26 from Washington D.C. to Oakland. I was returning from a legislative conference where there’d been some talk of a new virus found in China. I remember being extra aware of my fellow passengers and thoroughly wiping down my armrests and tray table and that little air vent above my seat with lavender-scented anti-bacterial wipes. Upon my return, I learned that one of the other conference delegates had been diagnosed with COVID-19. Turned out that I was the airline passenger who was a potential carrier.

My last trip to a live performance was on March 11 by way of a ghostly BART car where my sister and I were the only occupants. We arrived to find a nearly empty theater and were soon encouraged to move to the front by Sting, his broken arm in a sling. We were there to see his musical “The Last Ship.” That night the production sailed for the last time.

The next day, on March 12, I met up with friends for a planned outing to the UC Botanical Garden. By then the news was alerting us that we were only safe if we gathered outside and at a distance. We did our best to keep somewhat seperated, but we hadn’t yet learned that six feet was the approximate length of a shopping cart. We spread out for a group photo and nervously chattered about what was to come.

On March 16, when I was taking those few last laps in the pool, my husband went into the office for the last time, coming home with a few files, just in case. We’d soon spend more time together than we’d ever spent in our forty years of marriage. But we wouldn’t celebrate our milestone anniversary with our family as planned.

A friend tells me she’ll never forget her last handshake, but I don’t remember whose hand I last shook. I can’t pinpoint my last meal inside a restaurant. I don’t recall the last movie I saw in a theater. I can’t hum the last hymn I sang at in-person church. I wish I could.

But if I’m counting the lasts, I must also tally the firsts.

Like my first mask, hand-sewn by my sister. The first time I wore that mask to a store and my glasses were so foggy I gave up before acquiring half the things on my list. The first time I sanitized those same groceries before putting them away.

The first time our kids drove up from L.A., not sure what to do now that their baby’s daycare had closed, and they still had full-time jobs that would now happen from home where they were suddenly full-time parenting—so, maybe moving back home would be the answer? At least they could go shopping for us.

(A week of our chilly spring weather convinced them to return to sunnier climes and figure stuff out.)

The first time I had a multi-generational, multi-location surprise birthday party via zoom. The first remote funeral I attended, broadcast from a funeral home several states away.

The first COVID test administered in a Kaiser parking lot; done so thoroughly that my eyes watered for an hour. The first (and thankfully only) time the raccoons got to the DoorDash dinner on our porch before we did.

I think about those early After months of confusion and isolation and want to weep. But I also recall how the fog of COVID-times created space to pursue new things. A Zoom lecture taught me how to sketch the birds that kept me company. A tweet tipped me off to an online book group that spurred me to finally read “War and Peace.” An Instagram post led me to a writing workshop that birthed my second novel.

Speaking of births, we just welcomed our fourth grandchild. He will hopefully be the first and the last baby born into our family during a pandemic. He is one of the gifts of this year; something I will treasure even when I’m once again backstroking to the sound of children at play.

A version of this essay first appeared in the Piedmont Exedra.

As you know, writing is a solitary profession. Writing groups and groups of writers can help combat the isolation and I’m lucky to have both–a weekly writing group as well as a writer’s collective to keep me company and cheer me on. The five women in my Paper Lantern Writers writer’s collective all share a love of history and storytelling but each explore different time periods and places. Today we’re sharing a sneak peak of some of our work through our first First Chapters collection.

Included is Ana Brazil’s Gilded Age mystery FANNY NEWCOMB AND THE IRISH CHANNEL RIPPER, C.V. Lee’s medieval work-in-progress ROSES AND REBELS, my 19th century polygamous homesteader work-in-progress THE CASKET MAKER’S OTHER WIFE, Katie Stine/Edie Cay’s Regency historical romance A LADY’S REVENGE, and Linda Ulleseit’s 19th century Californian family saga UNDER THE ALMOND TREES.

Visit us at www.paperlanternwriters.com/store to download for free!

A photo of my local gas station made it into the New York Times this week. It showed a bunch of cars lined up for gas as residents prepared for what’s become the deadliest month of the year. October is always warm and dry, but in the last few years things have gotten worse as “devil” winds fuel firestorm infernos.

In order to forestall another disaster, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) turned off the power to nearly 600,000 residents. We were one of the chosen.

With ample texts and emails this week alerting us that this was going to happen, we couldn’t claim we weren’t warned. But that doesn’t mean I felt prepared when the lights went out.

I’d gathered batteries and flashlights, cooked up some perishables and pantry items so they wouldn’t go to waste, scored some elusive ice to keep everything cool if not cold, filled the bathtub just in case we didn’t have water, charged portable batteries and printed work documents I might need off my computer. I made sure there was gas in the car; did all the laundry.

No stranger to power outages—I grew up in the wilds of Idaho, after all—I still fretted over what was to come.

When would the power go off? When would it come back on again? We were told it could be off for as long as five days. Did I have enough canned tuna and almond M&M’s for five days?

The thing is—we knew this would be a selective power shortage. I could likely drive down a few miles away where there wasn’t a shortage and buy anything I needed. I could drop by my sister’s or a friend’s place and charge my phone. Worse come to worse, I’d go watch Renee Zellweger warble “Come Rain or Come Shine.”

What I couldn’t do was work on my desktop computer or catch up on my DVR listings.  I also hesitated to listen to podcasts or make calls in case I ran down my old iPhone 6 battery.

Stranded in the silence, I made a list of analog activities to fill my day:

Read a book

Read an e-book

Write by hand

Knit

Don’t check your phone

Cut out a new quilt

Go for a walk in the woods

Play the piano

Garden

Meditate

Journal

Don’t check your phone.

This was starting to look like a list of My Favorite Things.

Add to that some long-delayed tasks like:

Sort out the laundry closet

Clear off your desk

Donate old clothes

Don’t check your phone

It seemed that PG&E was gifting me the Zen lifestyle I aspire to.

The pinch was getting all that done in the daylight. When daylight lasts less than twelve hours, one must ‘hop to.’ The sun waits for no one.

I discovered that being forced to pay attention to the sun meant I couldn’t ignore a glorious sunset. After spending a quiet day reading, sorting, and noshing through my emergency Halloween candy, I was rewarded with a sky aflame as we left the dark house for the back deck, ate rosemary beans on grilled bread, buttered turnips and apple cake, grateful there had been no firestorm to disrupt the silence.

Thinking of all those in SoCal who are suffering the fall fires now. May they be safe and comforted.

Kondo is the spritely Japanese organization guru who encourages her clients and readers to only keep objects that “spark joy.” Watching the show, you realize there’s no one-size-fits-all joy.

One episode features a woman who collects holiday nutcrackers (though not all Christmas-themed) that sprawl across her basement family room. Banker’s boxes containing her husband’s baseball collection fill her bedroom. As a viewer, it’s easy to look at someone else’s stuff and yell “toss it all!” But as they say, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

If white knight Kondo showed up on my doorstep with her black squire translator, she’d find our treasure/trash on our bookshelves. MJ and I read a lot. Always have. And though we pared down our books dramatically when we downsized, we keep reading.

Built-in office bookshelves overflow with research and reference books. The kitchen bookshelf is crammed with cookbooks. A large wooden bookshelf in the living room holds novels, poetry, piano books, and display-worthy design books. (Though many live on the floor behind the sofa.) Books are piled so high on our bedside tables they threaten to topple over and bury us in the night.

One woman’s second copy of Middlemarch is another woman’s Darth Vader nutcracker.

I recently Kondoed my night table by separating the books into categories and placing them in boxes in a little bedroom alcove. But MJ’s pile still loomed large. For Christmas, I gave him a white Story Bookcase from DWR. It stood unopened in our garage until MLK Day weekend when it took up residence in the same little alcove as my boxes of books. Empty, it looked like the spine of a small dinosaur.

I was on the road to recovery and  MJ was home from work, so it seemed like a good time to Kondo his night table books. Kondo says to tap books in order to “wake them up” before you begin sorting. MJ didn’t tap them so much as toss them from his night table to the floor. But maybe that helped, as it wasn’t too painful to sort them into “giveaway” and “keep” piles. By the end of the day forty books and a dozen literary journals rested on the new bookshelf’s vertebrae. Looks so good in our new library alcove, I’m tempted to buy another bookcase for my boxed books.

Only one P. G. Woodhouse volume—the one he’s currently reading—remained on his night table. The next morning he woke up energized by the transformation. But he also dreamed he’d slipped out of bed without the book stacks to bolster him.

Kondo says you shouldn’t keep more than thirty books in your home. We’re a far cry from that. But at least we own thirty fewer books.

Of course, new books will always call to us. This weekend we’re looking forward to the International Antiquarian Book Fair happening here in Oakland. On our last visit I snagged a 19^th century anti-Mormon novel with a salacious embossed spine showing a man lashing a whip over a woman coerced into polygamy. Given that my own novel explores 19^th century polygamy, that sparked joy!

Has Kondo’s book or television series inspired you to tidy up?  How do you stay on top of your books?

It’s tour season and two of my favorite tours–the San Francisco Designer Showcase and the Garden Conservancy Tours happen this month.  The Showcase House runs through May 28 and the Garden Conservancy Tours run in May and June in the East Bay, Marin, Santa Cruz and Mendocino.

This Saturday, May 12, take your mom to the Garden Conservancy tour happening in the East Bay. One of the four featured gardens is landscape designer Keeyla Meadows‘s garden in Albany.  Full disclosure–Keeyla is a friend and also designed my garden.  She’s a multi-faceted artist and her garden is always a delight to visit.  Look at these beautiful blooms planted in colorful pots or in front of fabulous sculpture all made by Keeyla.  Think Monet meets Gaudi.

Find out more about Keeyla’s garden and the tour in this recent SF Gate article. I’ll be working as a docent in Keeyla’s garden Saturday. Hope to see you there!

But today isn’t all about snuggling up and staying in. I’m also packing for some winter adventures.  The first is this weekend to Utah to do some novel research and attend a conference on Mormon Arts.  I’m packing with one eye on the chilly weather there and one on the frigid weather of our just-booked trip to Korea next month to attend the Winter Olympics.  A good friend who has been part of the Olympics going back to the Salt Lake City games in 2002 says the Pyeongchang Olympics will be the coldest Olympics in modern history.

Winter sports enthusiasts says that if you can keep your feet warm, you’ll be fine.  So last week I swung by REI to look at some Serious Snow Boots.  Alas, I have Seriously Long Feet and even the few size 11s they had in stock scrunched my toes.  Assuming I’ll need boots big enough to accomodate thick socks and maybe some of those little packets of feet warmers that skiers use, I went to the Sorel website and discovered that they had a few size 12s still available. Of course, this time of year the pickings are slim, but I was able to order this All-American looking pair with the Italian name. My toes have plenty of wiggle-room which means these boots are getting a trial run in Utah.

They will certainly be far superior to the footwear my characters wore while homesteading in 19^th century Utah and Idaho.  Even the fancy folk in Victoria’s court never had it so good. And poor Sunja making pickles and battling the cold in Japan and Korea would never have dreamt of the affordable yet luxurious footwear that for me is just a click away.

What are you reading this winter?  Does a change in season affect what you read?

When my brother Bruce sent an email to the whole family telling us that this summer there would be a total eclipse of the sun visible from mom’s backyard, I thought “big whoop.”  I mean, I’d seen a few partial lunar eclipses before and they were interesting but not life-changing.  Nevertheless, a major celestial event seemed like as good an excuse as any to head home to Idaho for a few days so I booked tickets and didn’t think much more about it.

Gradually, the light dawned on me and I figured out this was going to be a Really Big Deal.  Several people recommended Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse” so I read it and was intrigued–and a little spooked–by her apocalyptic recollections of seeing a total solar eclipse.  I also read an interview with astronomer Neil DeGrass Tyson  who, when asked about one travel destination that everyone should see, replied “a total solar eclipse, wherever in the world that may take you. . .the ‘destination’ is the event, not the location.” Maybe seeing a total eclipse was a bucket list item after all.

Helen Macdonald’s essay “How to Stay Sane During A Total Solar Eclipse” convinced me that experiencing the event with my extended family was going to be memorable despite the attendant inconveniences of travel, housing, bathrooms, meals, etc.  “When you stand and watch the death of the sun and see it reborn, there can be no them, only us,” she wrote.  What better bonding activity could there be than to experience a total eclipse with my Loosli-related clan?

As it turned out, forty-one members of my family gathered at mom’s place—a farm located eight miles outside of small town Ashton, Idaho. In order to accommodate everyone a small tent city rose up in the back yard. Fortunately, only one of the tents got completely soaked by a large rolling irrigation sprinkler in the adjacent field and had to be moved at 3:00 a.m.

The night before the eclipse we kicked things off with a “Light & Dark” opening ceremony where we sang songs both sacred (“Lead Kindly Light”) and silly (“You Light Up My Life”), did interpretative dance to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and played an eclipse-themed game of charades.  My brother Joel’s contribution was a dramatic reading from Stephanie Meyers’s Twilight volume “Eclipse” while other family members acted out the purple prose.  The program concluded with a scientific explanation by my brother Bruce, a Boeing engineer, about what we would experience the next day.

Everyone was up early the next morning to feast on Joel’s pancakes decorated with pink hearts. (Joel and his wife Barb raised four girls which is why he knows a thing or two about heart pancakes and the Twilight series.) I put on my Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” T-shirt and an eclipse necklace featuring a charcoal labrodite disc surrounded by tiny diamonds. We all pulled out our goofy paper eclipse glasses.

Bruce set up a demonstration area where we could use a colander to see moon-shaped shadows on white board and look through a telescope with special reflective coating on the lenses. We cranked up the eclipse playlist our daughter Sydney had put together  featuring tunes like “The Sound of Silence,” “Moon River,” and “Ring of Fire.” Everyone laid out blankets or set up chairs facing the Grand Tetons in the east.  We knew something was up when the cows in the nearby pasture all stood at attention and stared at Sydney’s husband Dan, a PhD candidate in atmospheric chemistry.  What cosmic knowledge were they trying to convey to him?

As we moved from the demonstration area to the driveway to watch crescent shadows filter past the leaves or arc through our interlocking fingers, we’d occasionally put on our eclipse glasses to check out the progress of the moon across the sun. The temperature grew distinctly cooler, enough so that MJ slipped on a sweatshirt. Mosquitoes swarmed at midday. The air grew matte and wavy. I wanted to clean my glasses. Or switch on the sky.

Then at 11:33 a.m., just as predicted, the last tangerine sliver of sun disappeared and the lights went out. Though not completely.  A band of orange at the horizon created a 360 degree sunset that silhouetted the Tetons. The big black hole where the sun had been was surrounded by a feathery white light and the sky beyond that was a pleasing purple—less Twilight magenta and more Crayola blue-violet.

We all cheered. Dan, normally so reserved, threw his arms in the air and spun around yelling at the ebony moon.  I, too, raised my hands to the indigo sky and cried “Wow!”  I wish I’d been more articulate, but “wow” pretty much summed up how it felt to be inside your own sci-fi movie.

Both Dillard and MacDonald wrote that their eclipse experience was terrifying.  Dillard said that “seeing this black body was like seeing a mushroom cloud. . .it obliterated meaning itself.”  MacDonald, too, referenced atomic tests and said her reaction was “shock . . . and a sense of creeping dread.”

As for me, when the heavens dimmed I was elated, awestruck, transported to another place. It seemed like the travails of this world were behind me and a new frontier lay ahead.  I’ve continued to tell people, only half-joking, that I saw the face of God.

Afterwards someone noted that none of us had been taken up in the rapture. (So what did that say about our clan?)  Everyone grinned at the sight of each other.  MJ kissed me and said, “We made it.”

A couple of family members left almost immediately to sit in the terrible traffic that everyone had anticipated for months but which didn’t materialize until the sun began to fill out again. Joel and his family were some of the unlucky travelers. “Worth it,” he texted at midnight after it took twelve hours to make his normal four hour journey back to Salt Lake. “Totally worth it.”

We toasted the eclipse with Tang. Later we’d share an orb-themed dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, frozen peas, melon balls and Moon Pies.  When I asked MJ what word he’d use to describe the experience, he said, “Something old fashioned . . . like ‘sublime.’”

Thanks to my brother-in-law David Kimball for the beautiful opening shot of the Great American Eclipse as seen from Ashton, Idaho on August 21, 2017.

Goodness gracious, it seems like forever since I’ve posted.  Several readers have reached out to me wondering if things were all right in my world.  Just letting you know that indeed they are.  I’ve been traveling a lot, working on my book and best of all, welcoming a new grandchild.  I’ve shared much of this on Instagram but look forward to telling you more about my adventures here on the blog. Starting with photos and stories from my wonderful trip to England last month to tour (mostly) private English gardens.  Here I am in the back garden at the Manor at Upton Grey, a magnificent 19th century garden originally designed by famed British landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll and lovingly restored by the current owner, Rose Wallinger.  I hope you’re spending some restorative time in the garden this holiday weekend. More soon!

Also, deer don’t like them.  They don’t appeal to gophers.  And the foxes and wild turkeys seem to leave them alone as well. Which means they’re perfect for our garden on the edge of open space.  We planted eleven different varieties of daffodils  (poets would call some jonquils, others paper whites or narcissus)–specifically Avalanche, Barrett Browning, Carlton, Cornish King, Ice Follies, Las Vegas, Ma Bell, Merels Favourite, Pink Charm, Pipet, and Thalia. They all had staggered bloom times.  But on those weeks where they were pretty much all in bloom, every time I opened the front door it felt like I was being serenaded with the Hallelujah Chorus.  (Did you know that Handel’s “Messiah” was originally performed in April?)

Daffodils belong to the genus narcissus which gets its name from the Greek god Narcissus.  According to legend, Narcissus was so taken with the image of himself as he gazed into a river that he drowned trying to capture his reflection.  The reflected image of daffodils growing along stream banks inspired the association with Narcissus.

We planted them along the dry stream bed in our garden where except for a few exceptionally rainy days no treacherous reflections are cast.  We planted them on a sunny day in December when my family had just started to gather for Christmas.  Though the sun was out it was still cold and it took some gumption to get out there and plant All Those Bulbs (we put 100 tulip bulbs in the back pots safely out of reach from the deer as well.) But once we got started the work was pretty easy and fun.  And boy was there a big payoff.  I’m thinking this will be an annual Christmas tradition.  Some daffodils will return but to ensure we always have plenty I’ll want to plant more.

Here you can see our daughter Claire planting daffodils  (now that they’ve bloomed, I’m thinking the elegant white on white Thalia?) near the leafless variegated dogwood draped with Christmas garland.

And here’s the rest of the planting crew — our pregnant daughter-in-law Lori, Claire, landscaper Keeyla Meadows, son Will and M.J. Right after we planted the bulbs we scurried off to a matinee performance of The Christmas Revels that happened to feature a daffodil as a magical symbol of healing and rebirth!

It’s an act of faith to plant anything but especially homely little bulbs in the dead of winter.  But look what our faith hath wrought!

Happy Weekend All!

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Hope you’re spending it with people you love doing things you love. MJ has a teaching commitment tonight so I made Valentine cookies for him to share with his students and we frosted them together after enjoying a pre-Valentine’s dinner out.  Note that I spread the frosting to the edges.  He tried to leave a neat little border of unfrosted cookie.  Probably tells you something about each of us.  But even more telling is that we both frosted the cookies in our own preferred way and didn’t care a bit if the other frosted their cookies differently.  That’s a good thing about having been married for thirty-seven years.  We can see each others’ differences and (mostly) not let them totally bug us!

If you’re busy frosting cookies or doing something else that is amenable to podcast listening you might enjoy Krista Tippett’s interview with philosopher and writer Alain de Botton about love and relationships. This is on the heels of him having written the most downloaded essay in the New York Time’s last year about Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person.  Grateful I ended up with the person who’s wrong for me in all the right ways.