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MammoWipes and Other Medical Indignities

Posted on 05.26.23 | Holly Robinson | Leave a Comment

I recently entered the dressing room of the clinic where I was having my annual “breast health” visit (a phrase that makes me think my boobs should be eating Paleo and doing cardio). Guess what was waiting on the bench inside?

A pink johnny, of course. But that’s not all. On top of the johnny was a white foil package the size of a condom wrapper, only instead of anything fun, it contained a sanitary wipe. The package label read “MammoWipe,” with a helpful blue bar over the “o” so that I’d know to say “MammOHWipe.” (Oh! Oh! Oh!)

My first thought: Was I supposed to wipe down the entire mammogram machine with this shitty little square? That didn’t seem very sanitary.

My second thought, once I realized the wipe was actually meant to rid the top half of my body of pesky deodorants and powders, was, “Wow, the marketing genius who came up with this brand name is definitely overpaid.”

Except, wait, it’s 2023. Probably ChatGPT did the honors.

Anyway, I tore open the package with my teeth (these are as impossible to open as those restaurant butter packets) and swabbed down before sticking my arms into the pink johnny and walking into the imaging room. The technician tried to be funny with phrases like, “Where’s my next victim? Let’s get this party started!” A+ for effort, but not helpful.

If you’ve never had a mammogram, picture a giant pannini maker in a freezing cold room. Only instead of putting bread and cheese inside flat plates to squeeze into a delicious sandwich, your boob’s going in there. The technician eases you into the machine by tugging at your breast like a stubborn horse before smashing it flat between two metal plates.

And I do mean smashing. It’s nearly impossible to get your breast out again without using a spatula to break the suction.

As I stood there being squeezed and imaged, the technician kept warning “Don’t move!” as if I could budge without turning my breast into string cheese.

If men needed their balls examined, you can bet they’d figure out a less painful machine. Or if men had annual pap smears, the tool in use would be a lot more evolved than that wooden Popsicle stick thingie, which I always imagine will leave splinters up my Lady Bits. (My husband argues that doctors check his prostate by sticking a finger up his wazoo, so maybe that’s more primitive, but it wouldn’t leave splinters and the finger isn’t cold.)

You’d think giving birth would be an exception to the medical system’s dehumanization campaign, since it’s a miracle of life and all that jazz, but not necessarily. I had a woman obstetrician overseeing my last pregnancy. When my labor wasn’t progressing after 24 hours, she crossed her arms and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have this baby before lunch?”

“Well, yes,” I said, because my mother raised me to be agreeable.

Now, did this doctor give me ANY information about what speeding up a birth might entail? Did she even MENTION that Pitocin—the drug they gave me—would turn my labor into a high-speed car chase, the sort that includes a wrecking ball and a gas tanker bursting into flames, like those Fast and Furious movies? Nope.

More recently, I had imaging done on my leg to see if the pain was from a blood clot. Into a dark room I went, wearing only underpants and a johnny (blue, this time, because hey, guys come here, too), and lay down on a table. A very cold table. The technician silently ran his alien probe up and down my leg, occasionally squeezing my calf or thigh so hard I yelped in pain.

If I’d been alone with this twerp in a dark room at age twenty, I might have been terrified. Instead I was furious. I finally sat up and said, “Don’t they train you to talk patients through procedures? Also, shouldn’t you have a female assistant if you’re going to shut yourself up in a dark room with a female patient?”

As I got dressed again after the mammogram, I thought fondly of my veterinarian, and how much time she devotes to comforting my nervous Pekinese during a checkup. She pats him, tells him how brave he is, and gives him a treat. What’s up with human healthcare, that people are treated like livestock, while our pets receive the red carpet and actual conversation?

In my next life, I’m definitely coming back as a Pekingese.

The Imperfect Mother

Posted on 05.14.23 | Holly Robinson | 4 Comments

As we creep toward Mother’s Day, that Hallmark Holiday of flowers and chocolates and too many regrets, here is the most important thing for all of you moms out there to remember: Mothering is an imperfect art. No matter how hard you try, you will never get it right 100 percent of the time.

Just to make you feel better, here is a brief list of my regrets:

Not Paying Attention

Once, I turned my back on my oldest son, then just a few months old. He chose that precise moment to roll off the bed. Boom! His little head hit the wood floor like a bowling ball.

“He’s really pale,” I wailed into the phone when I reached the pediatrician’s office.

“Take a look in the mirror,” said the nurse. “I bet you’re even paler. Take a deep breath, honey. Babies bounce.”

Another time, I was pulling that same son and his little sister, then ages 3 and 1, on a plastic sled through town, and thought, “Wow, those arm workouts at the gym must really be paying off. This hardly feels like any weight at all!”

It wasn’t until I’d gone a whole other block that I turned around to check on the kids. Guess what? There was only one left! My daughter had fallen off the sled and was upside down in a drift, only her purple snow-suited legs wiggling in the air!

Lousy Nutrition

Having two children 18 months apart, then getting divorced and remarried to a man with two young children of his own, and finally adding a baby to our blended family (if you’re counting, that’s a grand total of five kids), nixed any chance I ever had of becoming a gourmet cook.

A fast food place with an indoor playground and toys that come with the meals? Count me happy!

“How about macaroni and cheese again?” was a regular suggestion.

“Nothing wrong with sandwiches for dinner!” was my battle cry.

One night, even that was too much to handle. “Let’s have a cracker dinner!” I cheered and pulled out the box of Ritz. “It’s a make-your-own buffet!”

We had Ritz crackers with cheese, with peanut butter and jelly, and with Fluff. My son, then eight, made a website devoted to Ritz cracker recipes. A win for all!

It’s true that two of my kids wouldn’t eat anything other than white or yellow foods for the first decade of their lives, but hey. Today they’re health and exercise junkies. Reverse psychology is key.

So-So Housekeeping

My father, a Navy officer, really wanted us to make our beds every morning. I did not once ask my children to make their beds.

Did I know where the matching lids were for the plastic containers? I did not.

Did I know where the scissors and tape were when it was time to wrap gifts? Absolutely never.

Once, I took the iron out of the closet when my daughter was seven years old. “What’s that?” she asked.

If making a fort with the couch cushions and every towel in the house kept the kids busy so I could get some work done, great. Ditto for dumping out the laundry baskets so they could use them as boats for their stuffed animals in a game of Titanic.

When I sorted through old photos recently, I realized you could barely see the floor of the living room in any of them, because the floor was carpeted with toys. “See?” I said to my husband. “It didn’t matter whether I vacuumed or not.”

Being So Embarrassing

There were many times when my children wished for a different mother. More than once, I forgot to send Valentine’s Day cards to class on that hallowed day, and several times I was guilty of buying goodies for bake sales instead of, well, baking.

When I attended cross country meets or lacrosse games or soccer, I was the one cheering the loudest and trying to hug my kids at the end of the games, win or lose, even when they were exhausted and sweaty, or with their crushes and did not want to be touched, or even seen, by Mom.

Now that my children are adults, I still manage to embarrass them. I have spilled secrets I shouldn’t have spilled, failed to call them or called too often, forgotten my Spanx and bungled my speeches at their weddings. My hair is often a disaster.

“Why do you always hold us around the waist like that for photos?” one child complained not long ago. “It looks so weird.”

Another, out to dinner with me, remained steadfast as I doled out life advice to our cute young waitress and hugged her when we left. “You can’t do that, Mom,” this child said later. “You can’t just go around hugging people like that.”

Can’t I, though? Really? I don’t believe that for a second.

I am just so embarrassing. That’s because I love my children as much as I hope they’ll love their own one day. That’s my recipe for making the world a better place.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Winning at Hawaii Bingo

Posted on 05.09.23 | Holly Robinson | 2 Comments

Let me just say this right up front: I never had any particular desire to go to Hawaii. For one thing, I’m more of a hiker than a beach lounger. I don’t like rum or boating or sunning or surfing, and men in Hawaiian shirts make my teeth hurt.

Then my dear friend Toby Neal—a wonderful novelist whose books are mostly set in the Hawaiian islands, and whose unforgettable memoir, Freckled, is about growing up on Kauai—invited me along on her research trip to that island as she gathered material for her new book.

“It’s only fair that I get to show you my island, since you’ve shown me yours,” she coaxed.

By “my island” she means Prince Edward Island in Canada, pretty much as far as you can get from Kauai both geographically and psychologically. Toby first came to stay with me there about ten years ago and has been back every year since. I’ve introduced her to lobster harbors and fiddle festivals, and the beauty of flowering fields of potatoes and lupins and red dirt roads that run straight down to the ocean.

So I agreed and got on a plane from Boston. A mere 12 hours later (the last six of which were spent in that non-reclining last row, thank you very much), I landed on Kauai and Toby greeted me, as one does, with a lei that immediately made me sneeze so hard that I had to toss it into the back seat.

Kauai is the fourth-largest Hawaiian island, so it took us another hour to drive to our Airbnb in Princeville from the capitol city, Lihue. The views were breathtaking: green mountains carved like drip castles, turquoise water, tulip trees flowering a bright orange.

“Not bad,” I said.

Knowing my hiking fetish, Toby had been quick to tempt me with the Kalalau trail, the most famous trail on the island, when she was campaigning for me to join her on this trip.

“How long is it?” I asked.

“Eleven miles.”

“Sure, no problem,” I said.

Fortunately, I’d had the good sense to look up the trail before packing my trekking poles. “The most dangerous trail in the world” was a phrase that appeared in every website, along with the description of something called “crawler’s ledge.”

“Um,” I said when I called her back, “how about if we just do four miles of the trail, to the river and back?”

That’s what we did, and it was plenty. Steep uphills, even steeper downhills, with lots of slippery patches. But the payoff was huge: views of the Na’poli coastline with its ridged green mountains and sapphire sea, and a nice soak in the icy river pools before we turned around and came back down to the beach, where we saw a monk seal blubber its way off the beach and into the water with all of the grace of me trying to cross those slippery stones in the river.

The best part of Day 1, though, was seeing Toby’s childhood home, a small, square green building she calls “The Forest House” alongside the park entrance, where her mother once planted a lush vegetable garden and roses still bloom, a memorial to their family’s time in the forest.

Besides the Forest House, Toby shared many other places on the island that are special to her, like the plantation that now serves as a tourist destination offering fine dining and Rum Safaris where her father was once a groundskeeper, and the farm across the street from Anini Beach, where she used to come help exercise polo horses as a teen—all of which made me understand and appreciate who Toby has become as a woman, a writer, a mother, and the best sort of adventuring friend I could ever have. She also helped me see not only what Kauai is today, but what this island has managed to preserve, despite the steady influx of selfie tourists. There is a certain wildness here that still feels untamed despite centuries of human habitation.

The island put on her best show for me day after day. When we stopped to admire the blow hole known as Spouting Horn on the south coast, for instance, I saw a pod of dolphins, a monk seal, and a pair of sea turtles.

“It’s like winning at Hawaii Bingo,” the man next to me said gleefully.

Then, when I went snorkeling along Anini Beach, I floated over coral reefs and colorful fish, of course, but then there were sea turtles, too, peacefully pecking away at the algae on the coral like hens.

“If only I could see an albatross, my trip would be complete,” I sighed happily as I climbed back into the car.

“Well, let’s see,” Toby said. “I’ve heard they’re nesting right in our neighborhood.”

By “our neighborhood,” she meant the golf-centric resort of Princeville, where we were staying. We swirled around a couple of cul-de-sacs of overly large houses, and then, all of a sudden, there they were, hanging out on a lawn just like the ubiquitous chickens of Kauai: A pair of Laysan albatrosses—and their fuzzy chick.

“Wow,” I said. “I just won at Hawaii Bingo.”

Creativity, Cancer, and the Circle of Quiet

Posted on 04.02.23 | Holly Robinson | 4 Comments

I walked to the bench today after my MRI. My doctor ordered the test to see if I have pancreatic cancer, not because I have any symptoms or suspicion, but because my mother died of it last year.

“Better to know,” is what my doctor said. “We can at least get a baseline.”

Of course, in my head I also heard my mother’s voice saying, “Why have tests? Doctors always find something.”

The MRI experience was bone-rattling. The technician lay a blanket over me and slid me into a Star Trek sort of tube. The procedure took 45 minutes, during which I had to hold my breath at various times while trying to keep my mind from galloping away with the what if it’s cancer refrain.

Meanwhile, the MRI machine made its thumping and bumping and juddering sounds, which made me feel like I was trapped inside a 3D printer. At one point, after they injected the dye, it felt like spiders were crawling on my face.

When I told the technician this, he said, “Are you allergic to dye?”

“How would I know?” I asked. “It’s not like I make a regular habit of dye injections.”

Afterward, I picked up the dogs and took them to my circle of quiet. I usually park by an ice cream stand and hike into the woods along a pine-soft path, crossing various bridges over vernal pools and creeks. Some are the real thing, bridges built by people with tools and lumber. Others are makeshift. My favorite is a series of branches laid in tight rows like wide-wale corduroy.

I follow the path for a mile or so, wending my way beneath towering pines and past the Dow Brook reservoir; the water treatment plant; an ivy-choked ravine; and trails made by mountain bikers that shoot off in different directions. Along the way I occasionally startle deer or stop and listen to songbirds. Right now the peepers are out. Once, a barred owl tracked the dogs and me, flying silently between the conifers, its enormous eyes lit yellow as lamps.

Eventually I veer off the main path and ascend a slight hill. The bench sits on a knoll, surrounded by tall trees and overlooking the water.

What is so magical about this place? The bench itself is nothing special, with two big bites taken out of it, a slapdash plank of mossy lumber balanced between skinny stumps, its surface pockmarked by time and graffiti. But the water changes with the weather and the season; today it was a pearly blue.

Part of the magic lies in the journey to get here, during that mile where my thoughts slow to match the rhythm of my footsteps. The rest, I think, is due to the silence.

The bench is sheltered by a copse of trees. Unless you knew it was here, I’d be safe from interruptions. And who doesn’t need this kind of solitude, especially if your soul and creativity are jeopardized by the daily detritus of a busy life?

Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, wrote about this in her memoir, A Circle of Quiet, describing how, whenever family life was too much, she’d set off through the woods to a small brook.

“The sight of a meal’s worth of dirty dishes, pots, and pans makes me want to run in the other direction,” she admits. “Every so often I need OUT; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody.” If she sits by this brook, she adds, “I move slowly into a kind of peace that is marvelous.”

My visits to the bench happen in sleet, snow, sun, and even when it’s bucketing rain, when I dress in a floor-length waterproof trench coat from Ireland that makes me look like a lost spy. Today I arrived and thought about my own mortality, and about the people I’ve lost and mourned. We all struggle, and so we owe it to ourselves to find places where we can just be. If this is the only life we are given, it’s best to appreciate what we have, right now, right here.

So I come here and toss sticks in the water for the dogs, my anxious thoughts eventually lifting like knotted netting from my tired head, so new ideas can surface along with the joy of being alive. Eventually this circle of quiet works its magic, so I can go home and create something new.

Are Men in Trouble?

Posted on 02.27.23 | Holly Robinson | 7 Comments

Not long ago, I visited my son and his wife at their new place in Brooklyn, New York. We walked from their building to a restaurant where I tried and failed not to be shocked by the prices, then stopped at a bar.

The bar was hosting an open mic for stand-up comics in a back room, so we made our way there and sat in the kinds of metal folding chairs usually found only in high school auditoriums. We arrived late and ended up in one of the front rows. (Everyone avoids those, terrified of being called out by the comics.)

I was the only person between the age of 35 and 70, but this was a treat, since I used to do stand-up comedy. The room was Covid-cold, so I kept my orange scarf wound around my neck as the performers began filing up to the mic for their five minutes of fame.

As a former stand-up, I wasn’t surprised that the ratio was two women to twenty guys. Nor did it surprise me that most of the performers were in their twenties and thirties. This being Brooklyn, the epicenter of Hip Culture, most of the guys wore flannel shirts and knit caps, like they’d just finished milking cows instead of pounding the pavement or pouring pretty lattes.

No, the first surprise was how nearly every guy who stepped onto the stage was so unprepared to deliver his lines. Most brought their phones to use as prompts. Often, they’d glance up at me and completely fall apart.

“They must feel like they’re telling jokes in front of their mother,” I whispered to my son.

“Either that, or they think you’re a talent scout, with that orange scarf and those glasses,” he said.

But the bigger surprise was yet to come: well over half of the male comics worked an “I’m so dumb” riff into their material, like, “I’m so dumb I keep trying to read books, but the pictures don’t move.” It was excruciating to watch, and reminded me of that too-recent time when female comics seemed to deliver nothing but fat jokes.

What’s going on? I wondered. Do men in their twenties and thirties—a time when they’re supposed to be charging forth into the world, making strides in their careers and building relationships–really feel that stupid? Or was this just a special quality shared by a certain type of young man in Brooklyn who wants to poke fun at his vulnerabilities in front of people?

I dug around online when I got home to see if I could find any answers. Here’s what I discovered:

According to the Pew Research Center, women are now more likely than men to graduate from college. Among adults ages 25 to 34, the gap is even wider, with 46 percent of women holding a bachelor’s degree, compared to only 37 percent of men.

And, in an edition of Up for Debate, Conor Friedersdorf asks why men and boys are struggling, and cites various troubling figures from Brookings scholar Richard Reeves, author of the book Of Boys and Men, who sums things up this way: “men at the top are still flourishing, but men in general are not.”

Reeves offers a variety of statistics to support this, including:

“In the U.S … the 2020 decline in college enrollment was seven times greater for male than for female students.”

“Among men with only a high-school education, one in three is out of the labor force.”

“Mortality from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related illnesses … are almost three times higher among men than women.”

As someone who grew up in an age where feminists were striving to shatter glass ceilings in everything from sports to the job market, it’s tough for me to believe that men—especially the mostly well-spoken, probably college-educated young men I saw on that stage in Brooklyn—have any cause to think of themselves as “dumb.” And I know from watching women friends struggle to balance motherhood and careers that we’re still bearing the brunt of the load when it comes to childcare and housework, often at our own economic peril because we can’t pursue our careers at the same pace our male colleagues do.

On the other hand, having raised three sons, I witnessed how inclined the teachers were to punish my boys for being too active, too loud, or asking too many questions. Our public schools, with their emphasis on collaboration over competition and budget cuts that have made things like recess, sports and music a luxury rather than a given in the curriculum, aren’t always places where boys thrive. Unhappily, our educational system may even be leading to boys being over-medicated for attention disorders; the Centers for Disease Control reports that about 9.4 percent of boys are put on medication for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), while only 5.6 percent of girls are treated in the same way.

So what’s the solution? How can we support men and boys in ways that ensure they feel confident enough to thrive, without taking away the cultural shifts that have led to greater gender parity? Is it, as Reeves suggests, simply a matter of holding boys back in school by a year to allow them more time to develop and mature? Is that were the trouble really begins?

This seems simplistic to me, but we need a solution, and fast—look at how many men are expressing their despair and fury through mass shootings or hatred toward women, especially the “incels,” the growing group of men that believes women dominate men sexually and want to exact revenge for that. You can read about that part of the “manosphere” in a recent issue of MIT’s Technology Review and other places.

Any thoughts?

They Said I Shouldn’t Marry Him. I Did It Anyway.

Posted on 02.13.23 | Holly Robinson | Leave a Comment

When I brought my boyfriend to Florida along with our four young children to visit my mom, things went sideways pretty fast. Dan and I made the mistake of traveling to Florida by train, foolishly imagining that our kids—two boys and two girls, then ages 5, 6, 7 and 8—would entertain themselves by watching the scenery rush by.

Instead, the girls just wanted to play Polly Pockets and the boys wanted to play with their Matchbox cars. Dan and I took turns entertaining them until the kids finally passed out around midnight, at which point Dan looked over at me and said, “Ah, the romance of train travel.”

Things did not improve at my mother’s. Dan’s son caught a stomach bug and spent the day vomiting. My son and Dan both came down with strep throat. Dan’s ex-wife called to say she’d forgotten to tell us that their kids had lice. After a mere 24 hours, my mother found me weeping on the front steps after putting everyone to bed.

“You can’t marry this man,” she said. “He only wants you to look after his children, you know.”

My mom wasn’t the first person to try and discourage me from marrying Dan. Most of my friends couldn’t fathom why I’d rush into another marriage. Even my therapist was puzzled. She was also quick to unblinker my eyes with divorce statistics: while nearly 50 percent of first marriages end in divorce, the divorce rate for second marriages is even more dismal—about 67 percent.

With two kids each, Dan and I would be creating a new family and literally bringing baggage from our old families that included bikes, stuffed animals, and Game Boys, not to mention ex-spouses. To complicate matters, we needed a bigger house because neither of us lived in a place large enough to accommodate us.

“You could just keep dating,” said a friend. “Once you’re living together, all of that romantic stuff will fall by the wayside. And right now you’ve at least got some weekends to yourself,” she added wistfully.

True. With my ex-husband taking the kids every other weekend, I had more freedom to write, or even to just nap. Having Dan and his kids on weekends when I didn’t have my own children meant I was playing happy families with people whose rules and rhythms were different from my own.

Yet, I loved Dan, and I loved his children, too. I married him anyway, on the day after his divorce was final, in a backyard wedding where half of our 96 guests were children. There were so many knee-high guests that we hired a pair of clowns to entertain them. The DJ quickly learned that the Chicken Dance was the most popular song he could play to avoid chaos.

Two years into our marriage, Dan and I decided to have a baby together because it was just too weird having children with other people but not with one another. This set our clocks back by ten years, but it was a happy decision for all. We’ve moved households twice in our life together—once, because our house was too small, and another time because our house was too large as the kids started going away to college. We’ve had jobs and layoffs, kid crises and family dramas galore. We’ve celebrated three weddings in three years—our children all seem to be optimists—and the birth of our first grandchild.

And now comes the strangest phase of all: Dan took a job on the west coast, so we’re conducting another experiment in love through a bi-coastal marriage, taking turns flying across the country for long weekends because we want to keep our house but he loves this particular work. It’s a new puzzle and we don’t know if we’ve found all of the pieces yet.

But isn’t that true of every love affair, and of every marriage? You think you’re sailing along, and then there’s a hailstorm or the wind changes or, hell, Moby Dick rears up out of the water and smashes your damn boat. All you can do is keep swimming for your life and hope you make it to shore.

With Dan, I’m happy to say I always know where the shore is, whether it’s on the east coast or the west, or anywhere else in the world.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

Rat Patrol

Posted on 01.20.23 | Holly Robinson | 4 Comments

Since my husband’s departure for a job on the opposite coast, I’ve mostly embraced our bi-coastal lifestyle even though it means having to do chores previously designated as “his,” like putting out the trash, clearing the driveway of snow, identifying tripped circuit breakers, and moving heavy furniture. (Slide it onto a towel, and you can move anything.)

The only area of his expertise that I can’t wholly embrace is the removal of unwanted critters. Take stink bugs, for instance. Why do they always buzz around at night? And why do they insist on clinging to curtain rods far above my head?

Then there are the ticks. Why are there still ticks in winter? And why, even with those special tick tweezers, is it such a God awful job to get the head out, too?

Also, why do the coyotes lurking in the woods behind our house insist on howling just as I’m trying to fall asleep?

Still, I was feeling proud of my Pioneer Woman self-sufficiency until two weeks ago, when I was peacefully finishing my dinner and the dogs rushed into the dining room, barking their fool heads off as they gave chase to not just one, but two furry critters.

The invaders were small, so I decided they must be mice, or maybe shrews—we’ve had those sneak into our house to eat the dog kibble—as I grabbed the dogs in time to let the poor creatures escape. I managed to snap a photo of the slower one before it disappeared.

I sent the picture to our exterminator, Ryan, a surprisingly jovial guy whose sole job is to kill pests, or at least remove them from your house. I’d last communicated with him over flying squirrels in our attic. (This blog post makes it sound like I must live in the back of beyond, but I have neighbors on either side and a grocery store less than two miles away.)

“What is this?” I texted Ryan with the photo. “And can you come over and set some traps?”

His answer made my heart sink to my slippered feet: “Looks like a baby rat, unfortunately.”

Yikes! If I’d seen two, there must be a nest of babies. And that meant they had parents, who were probably now intent on taking revenge on my dogs and me.

I slept badly that night, picturing thousands of rats streaming up our staircase to the second floor and attacking me the way they did Willard during that horror movie. This was silly, I reminded myself: Why was I afraid of rodents? I grew up with 9,000 of them! (If you’re curious, you can read about it in my memoir, The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter.)

Still, I was horrified to come downstairs and discover that the dogs had killed one of the rats and left it for me under the dining room table as a sweet little gift. Nobody wants rats in their house for health reasons. We’ve all read about the Black Death.

Besides, what kind of housekeeper are you, if you get rats in your house? It was only when I started telling my friends about this that a number of them stepped forward, heads hanging, to whisper their own rat confessions. “It’s not like you want anyone to know, is it?” pleaded one friend.

After Ryan was finished setting the traps, he came inside to lay blame on the neighbor’s new chicken coop next door. “If you keep chickens or bird feeders near your house, that’s essentially a red carpet for rats,” he said. “I figure you probably have 17 rats in your basement.”

I had to laugh. “Seventeen? That’s a pretty specific number. Not, like, about fifteen?”

He frowned. “Well, okay. Seventeen to twenty-four, I’d say.”

“You’re not making me feel better, Ryan.” Two dozen rats working together could definitely carry me out of my bed.

Nor did it make me feel better to know that a group of rats is called “a mischief.” One thing I do not want in my house is a mischief of rats.

Luckily, as the days pass without any more rat sightings, I’ve started to calm down. Rats and humans have always lived together. In New York City alone, Jonathan Auerbach once estimated there were probably two million of them. This seems plausible. Whenever I visit New York City, I regularly see rats frolicking like squirrels on the piles of trash by the curb or between the subway tracks.

Rats are like us, searching for food to sustain themselves and their families. They are nocturnal creatures and skilled at staying out of sight. As long as they leave me alone, I’ll stop texting Ryan.

Suddenly Home Alone, After 30 Years

Posted on 01.07.23 | Holly Robinson | 26 Comments

The first thing I did before my husband left for California was go down to the basement and bring up the white wine from the downstairs fridge.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked when I returned.

Sheepishly, I stuck the bottles in the fridge upstairs. “It’s for when you’re away, so I don’t fall down the basement stairs getting wine and hit my head when nobody’s here.”

“Jesus,” he said. “That’s not going to happen!”

Probably not. Still, better to be prepared.

My husband took a job on the opposite coast right after Thanksgiving. I supported his decision—it’s exciting work, and I’ve never seen him this happy—and we agreed that we’d keep our house in Massachusetts and I’d mostly live here, since it’s unclear how long he’ll have to be on site.

For the first couple of months, things felt normal-ish. I went out to help Dan find a place to live, and he came home for the holidays a week later, along with our five children and their spouses.

Then the children left. Dan and I spent a day taking down the tree and decorations before he departed, too. Now, for the first time in nearly 30 years of marriage, I’m living alone.

For the first time, nobody needs me. Our children are busy adults. Most are happily partnered. My mother, who lived with us, died last January, so I have no caretaking duties.

Who am I, if nobody needs me? I’m not sure yet.

Right now, I’m busy conquering my fears. I’m not fond of the dark or noises that go bump in the night. I don’t like to set mousetraps, and I like to empty them of tiny corpses even less. It’s winter, so I worry about the snow being too heavy for me to shovel. And what if my husband and I spend two years apart and one of us dies before we get to live together again?

“Promise to call me every night,” I told Dan at the airport. “We have to check in with each other and make sure we’re still breathing.”

He laughed. “Maybe I should get you one of those buttons to press so you can say, ‘Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.’”

“Not funny,” I said.

When I asked various friends for advice about going solo, some of their answers surprised me. One friend chastised me for “letting” my husband live alone. “What if he likes it too much?” she said. “What if he meets someone else?”

I pictured a woman in a bikini. On a surfboard. Yeah, that didn’t help my adjustment any.

“The main thing,” said a divorced friend, “is to avoid eating dinner in front of the TV. There’s something really sad about that.”

Another warned me against the “sweatpants-are-actual-clothing” trap. “I know you have Vuoris in every color,” she said, “but you honestly shouldn’t go outside in them.”

“Not even to the post office?” I asked in shock.

“Not even,” she said. “You have to get dressed every day in actual clothes. Otherwise it’ll seem like you’ve stopped caring.” She tipped her head at me. “A little makeup wouldn’t hurt, either.”

Despite the weirdness of my new singledom, there is liberation, too. The kitchen counters are always clear of clutter. I own the TV! My friends all want to come and have slumber parties, and if I want crackers and cheese for dinner, there’s nobody to disagree. Dan and I have long phone conversations, just as we did when we were dating.

Best of all, the mornings are silent, except for the dogs snuffling around my feet and the birdcalls outside. With no voices to interrupt my thoughts, I was able to go back to a novel I struggled to write for three years and put in a drawer out of frustration. There is creative space in my head again.

Marriage is wonderful. Family life is complex and fascinating. I’m blessed to have so many people to love in my life. But, slowly, I am remembering the rewards of solitude.

Mr. Curve Ball: When a Partner Makes an Unexpected Life Choice, Then What?

Posted on 12.10.22 | Holly Robinson | 19 Comments

When my son came home a couple of weekends ago, he brought champagne to celebrate my husband’s new job. “Here’s to Mr. Curve Ball!” he said as we toasted Dan’s success. “What comes next?”

We have no idea.

Here’s the thing: we’ve lived in the same tiny Massachusetts town for almost two decades, but Dan’s new job is in southern California. So, at a time when most of our empty-nester friends are settling into retirement, garden projects, grandchildren, and early dinners, we’re blowing up our lives and going bi-coastal. Dan will live in California while I hold down the fort here.

For him, this means enjoying the California sunshine while figuring out which strip mall restaurant has the best burger, how to drive on ten-lane highways, and maybe even testing whether his knees can get him up on a surfboard.

Meanwhile, I won’t have to keep anybody’s schedule but my own. Every day will be a writing retreat. The downside is that I’ll be responsible for everything from walking the dogs to shoveling the driveway alone.

When I shared our new living arrangement with a friend, she didn’t ask whether Dan and I will miss each other. She merely screamed, “Oh my God! What are you going to eat?”

She has a point. Dan is the cook in our family.

“I guess it’ll be grilled cheese and soup, with a few carrots thrown in for roughage,” I said.

“You’re awfully good to let him do this,” said another friend.

Let him?

No: even if we have to live apart, I want Dan to take this job. My husband has played by the rules for the past 40 years, going to work steadily every day even when the work was less than thrilling. His regular paycheck and health insurance have given me the chance to be a freelance writer, doing work I love and being able to spend time with our five children.

Most Americans spend one-third of our lives at work—that’s about 90,000 hours overall. That’s a lot of time, especially when you consider one study showing that Americans spend less than 40 minutes a day enjoying quality time with their families, and another report estimating that we only spend about 117 days total (or 168,480 mere minutes) making love during our entire lifetimes.

What’s more, a recent Gallop poll has demonstrated that most Americans (about two-thirds) feel “little to no” engagement in their jobs. They’re just like kids at school waiting for the bell to ring and set them free.

Given all of that, how could Dan and I not try this social experiment, if it gives him the chance to work at a job he loves?

Even if it means tuna melts and grilled cheese are my go-to foods, it’s totally worth it.

How a Sunday Drive Led Me to an Island Home (Part IV): The Terror of Existence

Posted on 10.31.22 | Holly Robinson | 4 Comments

Recently I was listening to a Fresh Air interview with actress Rachel Bloom, best known as the co-creator of the TV series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. When asked what kind of future she most hopes for her daughter, Bloom said, “I want her to feel as fulfilled as anyone can in the terror that is existence.”

That sentence stopped me in my tracks (literally, since I was running while listening to the podcast). Like most of us, I’ve been thinking a lot about terror. Maybe you have, too.

After all, there are plenty of reasons to be afraid lately. Take your pick:

Russian missile strikes in Ukraine

257 school shootings in the U.S. so far this year

The worst drought in Europe in at least 500 years

A stampede in South Korea kills more than 150 people

A suspension bridge collapse in India kills over 140 people

Terrorist explosions in Somalia

I could go on, but the point is clear: the world can be a scary place.

Clearly I need an island fix to restore my sanity. My Wi-Fi connection on Prince Edward Island is spotty if the wind is blowing and I don’t get newspapers delivered there. Sitting out on my deck, there’s little noise but the tractors forging their steady rows in the potato fields across the street and the wind blowing through the old chestnut tree. Within a few days, my shoulders relax. I might even forget to edit the manuscript on my lap because I’m just watching the clouds.

This October, we were on our way to PEI when Hurricane Fiona swept up there ahead of us, tearing up trees, collapsing barns, flooding roads, and leaving most of the island without power for over a week. We stayed put in Massachusetts, anxiously communicating with friends and neighbors on the island who kept us informed about the damage. Our house, luckily, was mostly spared, other than a broken window. A lot of trees were torn up by the roots but fell away from the house.

Even luckier is that we have found an island community where neighbors are always reaching out. One man, who has done a lot of carpentry and roofing work for us, hurried to put up a new metal roof before the hurricane hit. Another drove by and, noticing that a pile of roofing shingles was blowing all over the yard, called me and offered to pick them up and take them to the dump.

Then, a few days ago, a woman I met only recently emailed me to say, “I noticed that the corner of your barn has shingles and wood missing creating an entranceway. I’m not sure if hurricane Fiona created it but I had my drill and screws with me, so my partner and I grabbed a couple of pieces of plywood that were inside and we boarded it up. I hope you don’t mind.”

When Rachel Bloom was imagining her daughter’s future, she said she wanted her to be happy. To work hard and be fulfilled, “as fulfilled as anyone can in the terror that is existence.”

As someone who makes a living as a writer, I’d be the first to agree that working hard at projects that feed your soul is part of what it takes to be happy and fulfilled. But, to truly keep the terror of existence at bay, we need to know our neighbors, to reach out helping hands when we can and accept help when we can’t.

It’s easier to be part of a community on an island, of course, where there are so few people, and where the same families have grown up near their “home places” for generations. Most islanders make time to stop and chat. But it’s not impossible to do the same thing in the U.S. if we’re only willing to try.

Next time you see someone in your building or on the street, don’t just walk by. Stop and say hello. Every friendship begins with a conversation, and every conversation is the first step toward building a community that might just save your life one day, or will at least lessen the terror of existence.