My father wasn’t one to open up about his feelings. He preferred to let his jokes and stories reveal to us who he was and what he was thinking. But during important times in life, he did like to dispense advice and words of wisdom. Before I got married, he asked if I wanted to know what the most important ingredient in a good marriage was. That was his way. He would always ask you first if you wanted to know something. And usually before you even got the chance to say yes, or even nod, he would launch into his answer. It turns out that although being compatible, and listening to one another, and putting up with each other’s differences knowing you couldn’t change them were all important, the most important ingredient was…luck. My father talked a lot about how luck - in either the good or the bad direction - could change your life.

As luck would have it, my parents met at a weekend for singles at The Concord, a resort in the Catskills. They were lucky enough to find each other, and then to have the money and time to travel all over the world. I love this photo of them. So youn… — As luck would have it, my parents met at a weekend for singles at The Concord, a resort in the Catskills. They were lucky enough to find each other, and then to have the money and time to travel all over the world. I love this photo of them. So young and glamorous.

I have thought a lot about the role of luck in our lives over the past year. We just passed the one-year anniversary of Peter’s sudden heart failure. Was it just rotten luck that caused it all? After so so many doctors huddling together and test after test, there was no clear answer about what exactly happened and why. It might just have been a very unlucky series of circumstances that came together in a perfect storm to cause a problem. What caused our luck - five years of adventures in and around Amsterdam filled with more beauty, good food, and great friends than two kids from N.J. had the right to ever expect in life- to suddenly run out? But if bad luck was to blame for the cause, was it just good luck that led to his recovery? Either that or a miracle, which I think is like luck, but just in huge portions.

None of us were quite sure how - or even if - to acknowledge the anniversary of such a troubling time. My instinct was to try to forget it, to flee from it and focus on the future. In a recent article about how and why so many people left NYC for second homes when Covid numbers there were soaring, the professor/writer Andy Horowitz noted this fleeing behavior isn’t a new phenomenon. It has happened throughout history, not just during pandemics, but also during “run-of-the-mill” disasters like hurricanes and armed invasions. “This is a tried-and-true human strategy — that when you encounter trouble, run away,” he said.

Running away is certainly my go-to strategy when it comes to trouble. On the anniversary day of our trouble, July 20, we decided not to celebrate. It didn’t seem like something to celebrate. How does one appropriately acknowledge the anniversary of something traumatic? And what would we even call the “event”? I haven’t found the right word. The only one I can settle on is “heartbreak”. That’s what I’ll call it in the absence of an official diagnosis from a doctor. It’s what happened to Peter, of course, when his heart stopped. But it’s also what happened to me, to his children, parents, sister, the rest of our family, and his many friends when they heard the news. Heartbreak. Peter decided we should save the toasts for a different milestone day: the day he finally left the hospital. Stay tuned for that.

Last summer, we sent updates about Peter’s battle and his progress under the name Team Drucker. Rachel had this necklace made when Peter recovered. Here it is on top of the beautiful jewelry box he bought for my birthday when we were in Modena, Ital… — Last summer, we sent updates about Peter’s battle and his progress under the name *Team Drucker.* Rachel had this necklace made when Peter recovered. Here it is on top of the beautiful jewelry box he bought for my birthday when we were in Modena, Italy, before all our luck evaporated.

I started this blog both to help myself keep track of my life in Amsterdam and to somehow stay in touch with people I know and love. The writing of it grew into a part of my experience, causing me to have a secret running dialogue with myself about what words and photos might be blog-worthy. I worried about being accused of blog-bragging and leading you into blog-boredom. Did anyone else really care about my first glimpse of a fjord or those oysters in Brittany? I’m not sure if all of you did, but you put up with me. I kept writing because it helped me and I enjoyed it and then I just kept doing it. Can I just say - to those who do care - those oysters were amazing.

O.K., it’s not Italy, but this early a.m. trip to Cheekwood Gardens in Nashville had some darn pretty views. We talk a lot about our past trips and try to imagine a time when we will be exploring the world again.

Now I’m not writing about our travels, but about a much smaller world, and a sadder one as well. I don’t have as much to tell you. So I’m going to try something different. I’ll write about some books I’ve read over the past year because some of my best adventures lately have come through the books I have read. I remember my dad once told me he didn’t need to leave his own house. He could do all the traveling he needed in the books he read. He only travelled to make my mom happy, or so he said. I love my books, but they are no substitute for the real thing, Dad. I’m sorry that we’re not going to Brittany together, or Umbria, or Paris. We’re staying inside the four walls of this house. So join me as we travel through the pages of some books I’ve read over the past year, and how they have each helped me in some way, the way books so often do. The writing about books might just be a way into talking about the rest of my year, the parts I’m usually trying to flee from.

“I get up in the evening
And I ain't got nothing to say
I come home in the morning
I go to bed feeling the same way
I ain't nothing but tired
Man I'm just tired and bored with myself
Hey there baby, I could use just a little help”

While the world of this blog has indeed shrunk, there is a lot to see from our own backyard. I wasn’t sure if this fluffy mass that arose over my neighbor’s house was a cloud, a nuclear explosion, or an invading alien spaceship. In 2020, no disastro… — While the world of this blog has indeed shrunk, there is a lot to see from our own backyard. I wasn’t sure if this fluffy mass that arose over my neighbor’s house was a cloud, a nuclear explosion, or an invading alien spaceship. In 2020, no disastrous possibility is off the table.

Lots more time to enjoy New Yorker cartoons these days. This one was on the money.

It is true that we all get some rain. Some of us get more than others. I’ve had enough of my share for awhile, I think. Too bad we don’t get to decide how much rainfall we will have to endure.

Orange is The New Black, by Piper Kerman.

This is the first book I was able to read when Peter was in the hospital. I searched the bookshelves at my friend Sue’s house, looking for something I could easily read, something that would distract me. When things in your life go South, it helps to think about others whose lives are even worse, or at least equally terrible. It’s like an extreme example of the advice/warning my parents gave me when I left food on my plate: “Think of the starving children in Armenia.” The women in this memoir have troubled lives and are locked away behind bars. I drove in an ambulance with my husband to the hospital. I called our children, not knowing what to say, but somehow keeping it together to tell them what happened. I called Peter’s parents. And then sat in the hospital not knowing what the outcome would be for what seemed like forever. Somehow, knowing these women were in prison, some for the rest of their lives, was oddly comforting to me in the early days of Peter’s heartbreak. If they could have hope for the future, so could I.

“Day after day I'm more confused
But I look for the light through the pourin' rain
You know, that's a game, that I hate to loose…”

In the Woods, by Tana French

I have never really liked mysteries, and certainly not murder mysteries. When our dear friends Darlene and Rob showed up at the hospital and brought me this book, I immediately thought I would leave it in the bag unread. A murder mystery doesn’t seem like a comforting read in the midst of heartbreak, does it? But this book changed my mind about mysteries. The writing was so good, and the plot so intricate, that I forgot (sometimes) what was happening in my own life. In mystery books, the mystery is often solved. It doesn’t always work that way in life, as we well know. If you want to escape your world with books set in Ireland with some beautiful writing in between the detective work, Tana French is your gal. She has a new one coming out this fall, and I’ll be waiting for it. What else do I have to do?

Centennial Park, Nashville. There are few mask wearers at the park, but if I go early enough, I can practically have the place to myself.

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, by Terry Tempest Williams

This is like no other book I’ve ever read. It’s part memoir, part natural history journal, part call-to-action to save our environment. Tempest Williams starts by including the poem Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver with this line, “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” She goes on to describe her mother’s and grandmother’s deaths from cancer. This is far from light reading for sure. It’s not something I picked up by accident. I read this book as part of the Living Writers course that Colgate University also offers to alumni and parents of alumni. The reading list every year features an all-star cast of contemporary writers who come to campus to speak at the end of “their” week. I started taking the course when we first moved to Amsterdam and Rachel was a junior. I loved reading the books alongside students and commenting online, just as if we were wedged together into a classroom. There were a few other old people like me in class, and the reading helped me keep busy, with my mind functioning, feeling less far away from “home”. I watched the authors speak via Livestream, and pretended I was there in person, not in our apartment in Amsterdam.

Last summer, the professor who teaches the course reached out to me via email the day after Peter’s heartbreak. She asked If I would be willing to serve as a mentor for this book, which meant making sure I read the student comments and kept the online discussion rolling along. I didn’t think I would be able to. Then as Peter started to slowly recover, I took a peek at the book description. I saw the invitation to share my despair in the opening epigram. I decided to participate. The reading schedule gave a structure to my mostly formless days. I will always be grateful to Living Writers for that. Who knew it would also be great practice for learning in the Time of Covid? I’m now starting my 6th year taking the course. Let me know if you want to join. You don’t need to have a Colgate connection. I think you’ll love being back in college, reading great books alongside other readers. David Sedaris is on the reading list this year. Interested?

Coincidence is a cousin of luck and miracles, I think. What else can I call it when I’m out walking and thinking about our life in Amsterdam, and then stumble on random reminders. Coincidence?

The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez

I read this one recently, along with my beloved former book group in N.J. That’s at least one happy side effect of the pandemic: the ability to reacquaint yourself with people who live miles and states away. This book group has been a tough act to follow. They were my first, so that’s always going to mean they are special. And the members are all so darn smart. I’ve been accused by subsequent book groups - or maybe I just accuse myself? - of being like the character Muffy from the cartoon Arthur. She was always going on and on about how much better things were “in her old school”. So boring to her new schoolmates. And yet, still I muffy on about my former book group.

Anyway, back to The Friend. This is a slim book (just a shade over 200 pages) with so much inside. Thoughts about grief, the writing process and being a writer, friendship, and at the center, the relationship between a woman and the dog - named Apollo - she cares for when her friend dies. So poignant on the subject of dogs and their feelings. I thought of Casey, of course. The author describes the bargaining that goes on when you have a older dog, wishing for one more year together. “And not just another summer, or two or three or four. I want Apollo to live as long as I do. Anything less is unfair.” In between the sadness in the book, there is humor. “Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I’ll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.” Bravo.

I also loved the section when the narrator notes that so many of our favorite books from childhood include animals who die or suffer. Old Yeller. The Red Pony. Black Beauty. Flicka. It’s as if she could look inside my head and see the books I knew and loved. I think those childhood books gave many of us our first glimpses into grief. Who knew back then there would be so much of it in real life?

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, by Samantha Irby

When you are writing about difficult subjects, it can help to sandwich the sadness in between some humor. That was the advice I was given in a recent course I took on memoir writing. As part of the course, we studied Samantha Irby’s essay Nashville Hot Chicken, which appears in this collection of essays. Needless to say, I was drawn to the title. In the essay, she travels to Nashville with her girlfriend for a little vacation, and also to finally disperse the ashes of her dead father. She texts her girlfriend, “Hey, instead of flying first-class to Jamaica to drink rum out of coconuts and risk skin cancer roasting under the sun, how would you feel about instead spending nine hours wedged into a rented car with my dead dad’s ashes to to to Nashville and eat biscuits and gravy and listen to terrible country music for a week?” There are lots of “curse words” in this set of essays, but you will veer between laughing and feeling unbearably sad or just anxious because of her anxiety, sometimes all on the same page. It’s a good reminder that this is just what life is, so get used to it.

The jazz singer Annie Ross died recently. I think Samantha Irby would be happy to know I included Twisted after the description of Irby’s book. Joni Mitchell does a fantastic cover of this song.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson

This book somehow manages to tell the stories of people who are in prison - many on death row, and others for life - and yet give you hope. Bryan Stevenson, the author and lead attorney for the Equal Justice Initiative describes his unflagging work to challenge the mass incarceration and unequal and excessive punishment in our criminal justice system. I’m listening to this book on Audible, and Stevenson himself narrates. I feel like he’s talking just to me. Like an old dog trying to learn new tricks, I’m trying to develop my listening skills late in life. As a teacher, I expected my students to sit with rapt attention while I read aloud. Who wouldn’t love being read to? It turns out, I didn’t, at least at first. Listening to books is a skill, and if we don’t work at it, I guess we get flabby. I used to listen a lot when I walked Casey, and would find I returned from a long walk with no blessed idea of what I had just listened to. Now, a few years into it, I am better able to concentrate.

In Just Mercy, Stevenson pulls you in with stories about some of his clients. By putting faces onto the grim statistics about unequal justice we have all heard, he shows us how broken our system of incarceration truly is. When you read these stories, you can’t help but feel lucky for the life you are living. If these folks can have hope, then so can I. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I need to.

The folks in Fiddler on the Roof were religious, and yet still they sang: “We'll raise a glass and sip a drop of schnapps/In honor of the great good luck/That favored you”!

I’ve gone on some tiny travels in the past few weeks. Every Saturday, there’s a local Farmer’s Market in our neighborhood where we pick up peaches, pies, produce, and other goodies. This is the only place in town where everyone wears a mask.

I almost leapt across the lawn when I first saw this bagel stand, only to see the “Sold Out” sign as I grew close. The following week, we arrived when the market opened so I didn’t have to face that crushing disappointment again. Mission accomplished. The bagels are pretty darn good, as were the baby cinnamon babka rolls.

Every Saturday in June and July, I headed to Green Door Farm in Nashville to pick up the flower share Ben and Rachel gave me for Mother’s Day. That was the best Mother’s Day gift ever. I got beautiful flowers every week, and the excuse to visit this farm in the city, but a world away. It was a tiny travel I always looked forward to.

Here’s another tiny travel discovery: Baked on 8th, a sweet little bakery in town. I miss the pop-up conversations I would have back-in-the-day with store and cafe owners. Now, I pull up in my car, and out comes a masked avenger with baked goods. Sh… — Here’s another tiny travel discovery: *Baked on 8th,* a sweet little bakery in town. I miss the pop-up conversations I would have back-in-the-day with store and cafe owners. Now, I pull up in my car, and out comes a masked avenger with baked goods. She places them in the trunk of the car and I pull out without her story. At least I have the scones and cookies to talk to.

I discovered this treehouse on a recent walk. It made me think back on the treehouse I wanted when I was a kid. After reading The Swiss Family Robinson, I was ready to build one in Trenton, N.J. I was really disappointed when my parents said no. For… — I discovered this treehouse on a recent walk. It made me think back on the treehouse I wanted when I was a kid. After reading *The Swiss Family Robinson,* I was ready to build one in Trenton, N.J. I was really disappointed when my parents said no. For some reason, they also shot down my proposal to clean out the garage so we could fit a pony in there.

There is so much more I could tell you about our summer of heartbreak. The most important thing I want to say is that it is over. We got lucky. For now, the rest of the story will stay inside.

“If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell”

There’s a recent documentary out about Gordon Lightfoot. At the age of 81, he’s still singing away.

Bill Evans is Peter’s very favorite. Coincidence that he has a song about luck? Anyway, I’m grateful for the big servings of luck and miracles we had on our plates this year. Wishing the same for all of you, if you ever need them. I know my father would agree.