What I had was determination and a very strong will, and that’s pretty good. You can go a long way with that. But one day, Katie had been screaming for hours, I was exhausted by having so little sleep, and we’d had to leave the library because she was screaming and I couldn’t quiet her. I was furious, and bursting, and I scared myself. She was in a frontpack, held close to my chest, and I put my hands around her and shook with the effort to contain my frustration. I didn’t hurt her at all, but hours later my own arm muscles ached from holding in all those ‘nots.’ And I was scared. How much longer could I do this, relying just on muscle and will? She was just a baby, just weeks old, and I was already at this stage?! I was more than scared, I was absolutely terrified.

So we got home from the library and I put her in her crib and collapsed on the couch, exhausted and drained and blank with fear. Mindlessly, I turned on the television, which was always tuned to PBS, for Sesame Street. It was an old tv, and the image came up slowly, starting from a point in the center of the screen. My eyes watched the image emerge, and it was a gentle man whose face filled the center of the screen, and he was looking directly into the camera and speaking with careful intent, directly to me. Directly to me, Lori, shaking on the couch. He said, “I like you just the way you are.”

I was not stupid, I didn’t really think he was mysteriously speaking just to me, but I’ve got to tell you — I’d never heard those words together in one sentence. I gaped. My attention was drawn to him so much that I no longer heard Katie crying in her crib. It just became Mister Rogers and me, and he sang

It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair–
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now, (no, not me right now, Mr Rogers — I’m so angry and scared!)
The way down deep inside you– (deep inside me? you know there is something else inside me?)
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys–
They’re just beside you.

But it’s you I like–
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue
That it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself,
It’s you, it’s you I like.

I was crying before he finished the second line. I certainly didn’t feel likable that day — not that I ever felt likable — but I listened to him. Before that episode was over, I got a very good idea: I’d act like him. I’d talk like him. I could watch him, and pay attention to what he said and how he said it, and just do that. Katie was an infant, she wouldn’t know I was acting, and my hope was that one day it wouldn’t be an act. One day, if I acted like him long enough, maybe I’d just know how to do it.

Years later, I wrote him a letter telling him what he meant to me, what he did for me and for the lives of my children, how his message and his life truly transformed my own, and how grateful I was for him. I told him a bit about my background and what I struggled with, and I told him how I tried to act like him. He wrote me a beautiful letter in return, thanking me and telling me how much I must mean to the people in my life. He told me he was proud of me (this makes me cry). I have the letter, it’s one of my most cherished things. A few years later, he was on Nightline (or Dateline, one of those Thursday night programs) and I didn’t see it, but friends of mine called me and said that he talked about a letter he received from a young mother…and the details were mine. There may well be dozens of people who wrote him, with the same details, but I like to think he was talking about me.

I’m not at all shy to tell people that Mister Rogers is my hero, that I am who I am directly because of him, that he helped me become a human being. I tolerate no smack being talked about him. EVER. I went to a talk once, by one of his producers, who said that the majority of his audience is actually elderly shut-ins. And think about it: it was often him, looking directly into the camera, speaking lovingly to the viewer. Who doesn’t need that. When he died, everyone who’d ever known me called to tell me, and to comfort me. I cried a lot, and can still feel the ache of him not being around.

Marnie just posted this on my facebook wall, and if you watch it, I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye at a minimum. Everything about him was just so wonderful. If I can ever be half the kind human being he was, I’ll be deeply satisfied.

#2 — So yeah. I had to frog Marnie’s sweater. But the good news is that those two little goofs I’d made in the cables, at the bottom, no longer exist! I am so familiar with the sweater now, it’s going smoothly and error-free. I’ve just finished the first pattern repeat, so I’m getting there. Slowly. I thought about knitting something else — a little amuse-bouche, an aperitif, a taste-bud-changer thing — to cleanse my palate of the frogging tragedy, but then I decided the only way to deal with my sorrow was to cast on and get going.

#3 — Do you know about Read It Later? It’s an app that works in browsers and on every platform, I think. Basically, it sits in my browser toolbar as a little bookmarklet, so when I hit something long that warrants more time and attention than I have at the moment, I click to “read it later.” Then, on my Droid, there’s the little Read It Later icon, filled with all those fascinating pieces I wanted to read. Since the few sites I reliably look at in my Google Reader (when I’m in a rush) collect long-form pieces, I tend to have a little collection. They’re the perfect size for short subway trips, standing in lines, doctor’s waiting rooms, etc., so finding this Read It Later deal has been a boon.

#4 — I had a little facebook messenger chat with Will (my son) this morning. We arranged to meet mid-afternoon Thursday for a late lunch; Thursday night I’m going to the opera with my friends to see Faust, and it occurred to me that he might want to go (since he said something like “jealous!” when I told him). So I went ahead and invited him, and he said, “I could, but Faust is so 2011, and I’ve made a pact with myself to keep looking forward.” He just cracks me up like no one else can. Then he posted this Goldfrapp song on my facebook wall: SO ME. I feel like this so often.

#5 — isn’t the 21st century cool? Just look back at this post — reading things from the internet on my phone and having virtual chats with my son who lives a few blocks away, who then publicly shares a video of a song that reminds him of me. That’s all pretty wild, if you remember to notice.

#6 — good news (very good news) behind the scenes chez Thrums. I’m very happy and filled with exuberant hope, which is a nice kind of hope to have. The other kind, the grim little feathery one you clutch when things are dark, that’s a good one to have too. Of course. But I’ve got the sunny exuberant one, and I’m enjoying it.

I’m not quite sure why, but I’m feeling off, kind of disconnected, more blah than blue but hanging out in that neighborhood. Maybe one reason is that I won’t get to be with my daughters and their families for Christmas in Austin, a crying-worthy fact that aches me. I suspect that’s the bulk of the reason for my mood, since even writing that sentence made me well up with tears. But I’m usually pretty good at scrambling around and setting things up in a way to be happy with not getting what I want……so I plan to have video chats with them on Christmas, and we’re planning to all be together for Christmas 2013, come what may. That helps.

I’ve been trying to plug into things I have to feel grateful for, to help me feel better. And you know, sometimes that’s just very hard to do. It isn’t that I can’t see them and count them — I do, and can. It’s more that they’re bled of color, or something. The warmth that comes from them doesn’t reach my skin. This feeling is one reason I wanted to do the giveaway, actually; I know the wonderful feeling that comes from giving, so I’m trying to do it in all parts of my life, which of course includes y’all.

As I made my french press coffee this morning, I did each step mindfully, trying to be present for the sound of grinding the beans, the scratchy sound of the kettle coming to a boil, the heavy feeling of stirring the wet grounds, the thick smell as I pressed the plunger, the rich taste in my mouth. I breathe, feel it fill my lungs, I pay attention. I listen to the sounds — the compressor in the refrigerator, the kids running down the sidewalk, the click of my fingers on the keyboard. I’m here.

This morning I woke up without the mean headache that tormented me all day yesterday — grateful! Yeah, that one made me wake up with a smile, but it didn’t reconnect me to anything beyond itself. Today is a busy day, going all over town up and down, east and west, ending with my book club meeting tonight, on the east side…..and it’s a gorgeous sunny day, not the rainy day that had been forecasted. Grateful! It rained yesterday [hence the headache] but today, my get-around day, it’s glorious. Oh so grateful.

But as I’ve been writing this, a thought started creeping in: wait a minute. This is a day of my life. This, right now, this is one of a numbered days of my life. I get to have this day (weird, the sun literally came through a cloud just then ). I am lucky beyond measure to have this day.

As Steve Martin says, no one can be sad when they hear a banjo play. And if one banjo is good, 5 banjos are EVEN BETTER!

Enjoy this day of your life, it’s a very precious thing!  (edit:  ha! a friend of mine just wrote a great post for Huffington on this general topic.)

this is the just-dawn light. katie and trey got up MUCH earlier than they'd have liked, but it's worth it (easy for me to say!)

two pork butts so big it takes the both of them to turn them.

that's just shy of 20 pounds of pork butt. How many more times can I say pork butt? PORK BUTT. I am so mature.

How did I get so lucky!! My husband cooks fantastic meals for me every night, we eat fantastic meals on fantastic vacations, and now my daughter and her husband make fantastic meals for me. Granted, I put in my time on their end of the spatula — many, many long hard years of getting dinner on the table every night after a long day of classes and work — but this feels like a big bonus.

Katie’s frying some okra to accompany the pulled pork sandwiches we’ll have, and there’ll certainly be leftover Halloween candy — if not, we’ll have her pumpkin cookies for dessert. And I think there’s a gallon of Blue Bell chocolate mint chip ice cream in the freezer. Have I said it’s kind of about the food already?

moody berries -- don't know why, they just struck me as moody. sullen, perhaps.

i want a little house like this, on a river. in fact, i have a very well-developed and detailed fantasy about such a house. i know what it would look like, down to the pillows on the couch.

not the most brilliant orange i've ever seen, but it'll do!

knitters and other yarn-ey folk like me might look at this and see a brilliant semi-variegated yarn. at least, i did.

a short and winding road. leads to someone's door, i'm sure.

Two weeks from today will be my birthday, and I was telling my husband this morning that in the lead-up to my birthday, I always find myself feeling more and more grateful…..about every little thing. Light. Color. Sweet air. smoke from fireplaces. Good coffee and tea. Thinking. Smiling. Everything. I feel overwhelmed by it, and I’m even grateful for that.

I can’t take the drinkable version. Can’t do it. Ask any of my kids, they’ll verify this. I used to pour the little cup, hold it, and start the drama:  “OK, I’m going to do it now. OK, here goes. I’m just going to drink this now. 1, 2, 3, ok, here goes. One minute. Ok, now I’ll do it. I’ll drink it now. OK, here I go, I’m going to do it this time.” AND ON AND ON. Such a baby. I could keep that up, without one bit of shame, for half an hour. And each time I said OK, I really meant it, OK, this time I really am going to drink it.

The thing that made it so good and so awful was the high alcohol content. I do not drink hard liquor, can’t bear to be in the presence of it, that smell, ugh. NyQuil tastes chemical green, and the alcohol forces a shudder. But of course that high alcohol content is what knocks you on your butt, what makes you sleep so hard despite being sick. They changed the formula quite a while ago and reduced the alcohol content, so while it still tastes awful, it doesn’t knock you out to the same degree.

Now, thankfully, it’s available in capsule form and I took two last night and slept like a log, didn’t cough all night, didn’t wake up due to my nose doing whatever it wanted to do (run? clog up? all at once!). So thank you, Dr. Hainer, for inventing such a wonder drug.

I made tremendous headway on one of my cardigan sleeves; just another inch or so and I’m ready to do the little ribbing. I’ll take a photo when that sleeve is done. SO CUTE.

I KNOW — Eileen, not Irene, but it’s in my head. Apologies if it’s in yours now. So far, at my place anyway, the hurricane is a big fat ‘meh.’ Some wind, sure, some rain, but really? Really? This is worth closing the subways, closing all the stores, evacuating thousands of people, taping up windows? There are leaves and small branches on the street in front of my apartment — see that often enough with regular storms, and frankly I often see worse — and that’s about it.

The worst part for me is having no voice, a shallow scraping non-stop cough, and goopy eyes. Yeah, that’s much worse. So no worries, loved ones who live far away and worry, it’s just a storm, and not even an interesting one.

Today I’m grateful for Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Well, grateful is one feeling I have about him. Others include envy, jealousy, awe, wonder, reader-love, and curiosity. This is a memoir about his father, really, who was a homeless alcoholic con man. His father wasn’t in his life growing up, except as a presence out there, a kind of vaguely menacing life lesson. His mother committed suicide when he was 22 — at least she didn’t leave a note blaming him, but like any suicide, it has a profound impact. He grew up to battle some of the same things his dad did, and he saw his life in parallel with his dad’s. If any of this is in your own history, I promise you’ll vibrate and cry with the way he describes things. If it’s not, you’ll read in the kind of awe people feel when they see a tragedy start to unfold and they can’t stop it. Here are some of my favorite passages:

I look at the photos, at Travis, look in his eyes as he speaks, somehow I’d learned to do that, like a tree learns to swallow barbed wire. (Travis is a homeless guy at the shelter where he works.)

“I was unable to throw myself in the ocean,” she writes, the handwriting more erratic as the painkillers seep into every cell, shutting out lights in empty rooms.

I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn’t a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you.

Then there is a whole chapter that’s nothing more than the euphemisms and synonyms for being drunk. I keep thinking that’s it, but then the next one in the list is the most common thing ever, and it just keeps going. Tight. Tiddly. Juiced. Plotzed. Potted. Pie-eyed. Inebriated. Stoned. High. Swimming. I say off the wagon. I say gone out. I say a slip. I say in my cups. I say riding the night train. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say the blood bank. I say drinkie-poo. I say a drink drink. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Faced. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Seeing double. Taking the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Looped. Lit. Pages and pages of it, it’s stunning.

Nick Flynn is a poet, primarily. His father always said he was a writer, always wanted to be a writer, and Flynn actually is. This book is heavy, definitely, but not grim, despite the content. There’s a way he writes about his parents that is compassionate without being overtly so — he doesn’t ever say things like “but she did the best she could,” it’s more his emotional stance in describing their lives. It’s a remarkable book, one of those that grabs you and reminds you that there are amazing surprises to be found in the world, and this is one. I am so enormously grateful for him and this book, and for the power of words and art to transform a single experience into a universal one.

blocking on the cookie cooling rack

The yarn is 70% alpaca, 30% merino, and it has a very soft halo. I’m not sure how I feel about the odd little picot edging at the top of the mitts, but I just followed the pattern this first time.

you wouldn't believe how soft these are!

Today I feel very grateful for the rain we’re getting, even though we’re anticipating getting a lot, thanks to Hurricane Irene. I just keep thinking about poor Texas, withering in the excessive heat and long drought, and wish I could transfer some of the cooler air and buckets of rain over to them. I’m also grateful that I live on one of the high points in Manhattan — I don’t live in an evacuation zone, and for me it’ll probably just involve watching the wind and rain out my living room window. And knitting. For which I’m also grateful. Plus hot tea with honey, since I’ve lost my voice and my throat hurts. That’s a lot of gratitude on this rainy old day.

I think I’ll try to finish one of the sleeves on my little red cardigan and get the 2nd sleeve going. I want to wear it, it’s just adorable…..you’ll see! Stay comfortable y’all, whether that means cool for my Texans, dry for my New Yorkers, or whatever it means for you.

what's IN there????

hearing: the hiss of the radiator and the hum of the humidifier

tasting: mint tea, yum

mint tea, always yummy

touching: besides the keyboard? well, I keep reaching into my knitting basket to touch these two luscious things:

color and texture, this counts for seeing AND touching!

smelling: the yeasty smell of homemade bread rising. pizza dough, actually. which means we’ll have a very yummy dinner tonight!

These are not senses, but I’m calling them anyway:

• anticipating: my birthday tomorrow, and leaving for our trip to Laos and Cambodia in 13 days

• grateful for: you, my life, and for being alive

• an absolutely gorgeous morning, weather-wise. no humidity or excessive heat, just 74 lovely degrees and blue and sunny skies

• a Chinatown run, which means (1) lots of fresh cherries, (2) a bunch of seafood, and (3) very interesting vegetables.

• my favorite music on the iTunes playlist: annie lennox, john prine, REM, feist, amos lee, elton john, diana krall, and bluegrass

• homemade blueberry coffeecake for breakfast, with a big mug of really great coffee

• the pleasure of having done work that was FUN and also well received

• a long day, stretching out in front of me with open arms and nothing planned

Hope it’s the same for all of you. I’m off to actually do something. First, though, I’ve gotta do the twist – “you never can tell” by chuck berry is on!

edit, after dancing: when my kids were little, and i was going to school full-time and working and raising them by myself, i had 4 chore lists – 3 kid-friendly and one for me. each week, the kids’ lists rotated. we’d do a cleaning blitz…we’d each take our list of chores, do them in a pre-arranged amount of time then we’d all meet in the living room when the timer went off. i’d put American Pie on, and we’d dance dance dance until we fell on the ground in a sweaty out-of-breath pile. we’d do the fun and easy dances – the twist, the monkey, the pony, the swim – it didn’t matter. it was just so much fun, and one of my favorite memories. dancing in the living room is the BEST.

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