When I initially sat down to write this post, I had nothing. Nada. Absolutely no topic nudged me to say, “Write about me this month.” I was feeling meh. Worse. I worried I’d forgotten how to have fun.
This struck me as crazy, given my past few weeks. They’d been filled with day trips, house guests, and end-of-school activities. Time on the water, family outings, and getting back to the garden. But instead of feeling jazzed to write about these experiences, I felt exhausted. Empty.
Then I discovered a new (to me) podcast called Kelly Corrigan Wonders, specifically,her January 25, 2022 episode (Season 1, Episode 72) called The 2022 Regroup: The Power of Fun. On it, Kelly talks with Catherine Price, science journalist and author of The Power of Fun – How to Feel Alive Again.
I listened to science-based facts about how fun reduces stress, which impacts our hormone levels, making us more relaxed, resilient, and productive. Yada yada, I’d heard it all before. Yet listening to the podcast reminded me of something equally important: Each of us has our own collection of activities, settings, and people that generates fun.
Each of us has our own fun magnets.
Hearing this stirred a memory. When our granddaughter Charli was three, my daughter Quinn ribbed me that Charli said all her grandparents spoiled her except her JJ (me). I bristled a little but shrugged it off. Until Charli’s next visit, when I had to learn more.
“Do I spoil you?” I asked.
“No.”
“But your Nana and PauPau and Big Daddy do?”
“Yes.”
She said this without sounding bitter, with more maturity than I was feeling myself. Brooding, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was I being too stern with her? Did I not pepper her with enough treats?
“Charli,” I pressed, “how do your other grandparents spoil you?”
She cocked her head. “You know.”
I didn’t. And her expression radiated a message: I was an idiot. But she loved me anyway. She walked over to me and reached up her arms.
“They do this,” she said, wriggling her fingers under my armpits as though she was scratching an itch. “Ticka. Ticka. Ticka.”
“They tickle you?” I felt my eyes widen. “That’s how they spoil you?”
She giggled an affirmation, continuing to tickle me until I giggled, too.
To this day, I don’t like being tickled. It reminds me of when I was little, how my sisters would pin me down and tickle me until I practically cried. It was all in fun (I think!), but holy man, I vowed to never do that to anyone else.
To Charli, though, being tickled is fun. It’s being spoiled and loved. For her, it’s a fun magnet—something that makes her feel playful and connected and in the flow, all at the same time.
It’s great to discover and share a family’s overlapping fun magnets. If we can find them. Media paint others’ lives as a series of overlapping happy moments. They’re not. But when we feel like we’re not having fun like everyone else, we blame ourselves. We feel isolated and inadequate. Or maybe just meh.
For years, a personal fun magnet for me focused on quarterly Sunday dinners where extended family ate and played catch-up, capping it all off with a toothy family photo. It took me a long time to realize that wasn’t a magnet, it was a fantasy. Mine. And mine alone.
Yet sometimes, life surprises us. In early May, our family gathered—not on a Sunday, but on a Saturday. We combined a couple birthdays with an early Mother’s Day. We met at a bowling alley, wolfed down pizza and pretzels, and topped it all off with a whole lotta strikes and gutters. After I begged, the family posed for a photo, and when Rice posted it on Facebook (see below), a friend asked him this question:
“Are you short less?”
Oh, my. He isn't, but in my humble opinion, the photo effect is fabu. Unintentional, yes. Still, a lovely surprise.
And maybe that’s the point about fun. Often slippery and elusive, it ebbs and flows, never constant. If its absence becomes constant, we need to seek help. If it merely evades us now and again, perhaps we can get by granting ourselves a little extra grace.
Having fun sometimes takes more work than we’d like. Other times, it shows up when and where we least expect it.
But it isn’t optional. Our lives depend on it.
So tell me, m'darlin', are we having any fun yet?
In June 1999 at an extended family getaway, my sister Lisa—then 35, athletic, the youngest of five girls—showed up in a state of poor health and exhaustion. Her bouncy step was a mere shuffle, and she complained that her muscles had ached for months, ever since she contracted a virus she couldn’t shake. At our mom’s insistence, I drove her to a local medical center, where blood and urine tests delivered shocking results. Lisa was in acute renal failure, her kidneys operating at only 7 percent.
She qualified for placement on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) list immediately after returning home and starting dialysis. A two-port catheter was inserted into her chest, one to remove blood from her body for cleansing, the other to re-feed the cleansed blood back into her system. That became Lisa’s new normal, reporting for dialysis every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m.
“I really feel lucky,” she told me back then. “I can drive myself to and from dialysis, continue to teach, and still work out.”
Lucky? God love her. That catheter remained part of her life for 11 months. So did the low-sodium, low-potassium, low-protein, and ridiculously low-liquid diet prescribed for patients undergoing dialysis. As the months crept on, her immune system weakened, and she developed several infections that required medications with harrowing side effects, like extreme dizziness and fatigue.
Questions and concerns plagued the whole family. How do we get this strange party—this transplant journey—started? Could one of Lisa’s four sisters serve as a living donor? Where would the transplant take place? What do you mean the lab lost one of the sisters’ bloodwork? Why did so many books on transplant focus on technical issues? Or ethics? We just wanted to see Lisa well and living a quality life once again.
Fast forward to today, when all is well because Lisa did receive a kidney from our sister Tina at the University of Michigan’s Transplant Center in Ann Arbor. The procedure took place in June 2000, and both sisters recovered well and remain healthy still.
In the years following the transplant, I felt frequent tugs to write about our family’s transplant journey—beyond just a summary and a happy ending. The idea intrigued me even more after attending my first Transplant Games of America in Orlando in 2002. This multi-day sports festival celebrated the transplant community while generating funds and building awareness. Snippets of people’s stories filled my heart, especially as I walked through the Hall of Quilts, where candles flickered and quilt squares represented the lives of donors no longer living.
After attending a few more Transplant Games—and working for a stretch at the Georgia Transplant Foundation—I felt almost called to write about organ donation and transplant. For my master’s project, I created a proposal for a book of individual stories about people’s unique experiences along the road toward donation. Sadly, writing the book itself got sidelined. As often happens, life got in the way.
I didn’t think much about that project again until fall 2021, when my daughter-in-law Lauren called to say her sister Kristen needed a kidney transplant. She wondered if she and her mom Jane could hear more about our family’s transplant story, ask questions, and make some sense out of all the unknowns. While Kristen’s story of renal failure differed from Lisa’s, the bottom lines remained the same: Kristen’s family wanted to get this strange party underway. They wanted to see her well and living a quality life once again.
They got their wish that December, when Kristen received a kidney from Lauren at the AdventHealth Transplant Institute in Orlando. Another happy ending. Hearts filled again.
Jane reminded me recently of a conversation we had back then, when she asked how our mother handled having two daughters undergo surgery at once. She told me, “I expected you to say, with the help of faith and prayer. But you didn’t. You looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Not well.’”
I opened my mouth to apologize for being so blunt, but Jane stopped me. “My sisters and I got a bit of a chuckle out of that. But it was exactly what I needed to hear.”
The truth is, life is hard and holds no guarantees. We don’t always know why things happen, and we certainly can’t control outcomes. But we can cling tightly to faith and hope. And we can advocate for the things we believe in.
That said, I’d like to share one last thing, a quote credited to Maxie Scully, for anyone who might be ready or needing to hear it: “Don’t take your organs to heaven; heaven knows, we need them here.”
You can register to be an organ, eye, and tissue donor by visiting the National Donate Life Registry. Google it. And thanks for your consideration.
Cheers ~ J
It finally happened. Three years in, COVID finally made a visit to Honey and Rice. Their cases were thankfully mild and have pretty much run their course. But man, oh, man, does it show once again how differently men and women—husbands and wives, especially—see each other “through sickness and health.”
Here’s a recap of how late February/early March played out.
Day Zero: Rice comes home shy of midnight from an invigorating Atlanta United soccer game. His voice is raspy, and he’s coughing some. He chalks it up to the excitement of Atlanta’s win as he climbs into bed and rubs his cold limbs and torso all over Honey, trying to warm up.
Day Zero-Plus: Rice’s voice remains husky, and his cough lingers. He’s extra tired, but he reminds Honey (and himself) that he’s used to going to bed earlier than midnight, so being pooped post-game night is to be expected.
Day One: Rice asks Honey to check the expiration dates on the two COVID test boxes stored in the downstairs bathroom. He tests positive and makes an appointment with his GP. “Why?” Honey asks. “Because I’m over sixty-five years old,” he says, “and I need a prescription for Paxlovid.” Oh. He sequesters himself in the upstairs master bedroom until it’s time to go to the doc. Honey’s feeling fine but follows protocol, masking up when she drives him to the doc…when she shops for some incidental groceries…when she picks up his prescription. She moves into the guest bedroom down the hall.
Day Two: Rice continues to sequester in the dark master bedroom, where he sleeps almost nonstop and has to be roused awake and reminded to eat.
Day Three: Honey continues to push food, feeling a bit like Annie Wilkes at the master bedroom door, tray in hand, a slightly evil grin on her lips. She keeps the liquids coming and the stash of fresh fruit on the dresser replenished. She’s pleased when Rice asks for a repeat of her specialty—PB&J on wheat. It’s within the parameters of her current culinary skills and his food preferences. She no longer cooks; he now eats vegan.
Day Four: Honey is pleased Rice’s appetite is returning as he makes a few more requests. Like, “For breakfast, could you bring me a cup of Basic 4 with a half-cup of almond milk?” To clarify, Honey asks, “You want the cereal in a cup?” “No,” he says. “A bowl is fine, once you measure the cereal out with a cup.” Oh. Honey marvels at so many things, like why, in the throes of COVID, does he give a sh*t about measuring his cereal? And how, for the love of all things holy, is it possible the two of them—a modern Jack Spratt and his wife--are still married?
Day Five: Rice declares he’s read that starting tomorrow, he can move about more (with a mask for Days Six through Ten) if his symptoms have subsided. Honey tells him she’s glad. She woke up with a sinus headache and just tested positive. “Do you want me to drive you to the doc?” he asks. “We’ll see,” she says. But unless she starts to internally combust, she sees no reason. She’s been vaxed and boosted up the wazoo. Willingly. But so far she feels pretty good. Why invite potential Paxlovid side effects like an altered sense of taste, diarrhea, muscle aches, or abdominal pain? Not that Honey’s saying Rice experienced any of those. (Not her place to share, she’s been told.) Besides, she’s not over sixty-five. She fights back a smirk at that thought, opts for self-care, and passes on going for the meds.
Day Six: Honey watches Rice measure his own food as she scoops herself a bowl of ice cream before heading back to her computer. “Did you have dinner?” he asks. She nods toward her bowl—her version of self-care.
Day Seven: Rice says he enjoyed his morning breakfast, avocado toast and tomato. “That’s nice,” Honey says, pondering what she’ll have. A little later, she asks him, “If I heat up some tater tots, do you want any?” “Yes,” he says. Her heart twinges a little. A smile tickles her lips. And not an Annie Wilkes-like expression this time. It’s sweet.
In moments like this, she’s encouraged. The original Jack Spratt and his wife stuck it out until death did them part, didn’t they? Granted, it’s undocumented. Still, she’s filled with hope. She and Rice just might make it that long, too…barring their supply of tater tots not run out.
Listen, y'all need to stay healthy out there, okay? Cheers ~ J
