It’s a luxury to cry, when you’re socialized to be a tough guy.

It’s a luxury to drive a car, when old age reaction time slows too far.

It’s a luxury to touch your toes at 77, when in my 20s, I could not leaven.

It’s a luxury to no longer own a home, no responsibility for maintenance groan.

It’s a luxury to create flower gardens around my apartment, a large rain barrel now included in the rent.

It’s a luxury not to use plastic – maybe like choosing to nurse your baby, tacit.

It’s a luxury to bicycle Black Diamond Trail through trees, several waterfalls sending a breeze.

It’s a luxury to dance swing, cha-cha, hustle, Argentine tango, and waltz, when trusting my body to live music – schmaltz.

It’s a luxury to cherish my two amazing daughters, never a love I would alter.

It’s a luxury to remember an extraordinary nurturing father (dad), for whom tears flow often four decades later.

It’s a luxury to be healthy, more than to be wealthy – to clutch knees to my chest as I sit in the kitchen table chair, husband Dave stating an admiring declare.

1. It’s a luxury to live in Ithaca, New York where there are no tornadoes, flooding, or wildfires…yet to know that much of America is truly suffering from climate change…the suffering of Mother Earth and Father Sky!

It is spring 2024 when my dancing friend, Virgilio is walking out my front door, then calls me to come outside to see the rainbow overhanging my driveway. Of course I run to see, surprised it can be seen through gray clouds. A first to be seen without sunshine as its cloak.

As special as that is, it doesn’t compare to the miraculous timing of how I met my fifth husband, Dave. I’d driven as hour to Skaneateles, NY to find a waterfall on a hot August day 2020. I am a waterfall freak.

In the midst of downtown, Skaneateles Lake provides a swimming area where lifeguards keep swimmers safe although not from a stranger who follows me to where I am swimming laps. His friendly smile says: “What a beautiful day!” As I swim by, I say: “Yes, it’s a great day to be alive!”

All I have seen of this stranger is his face, so when we walk out of the water, I am pleasantly surprised to be following a 6’2” man with wide muscular shoulders, arms attached to big hands. I think, which is rare, I am attracted and want to do what with his body?

We sit on the grass conversing while time makes no difference. I learn he lives in Depew, NY, is on vacation with his wife, who is not interested in hiking to waterfalls like we are. He had hiked to Carpenter Falls that morning and offered to show me where it flows. His marriage of 30 plus years is rocky. He’s a carpenter; I’m a Marriage and Family Therapist. He agrees that he wants an “open and honest” relationship.

I hand him my business card picturing a waterfall and say if he comes to Ithaca, NY where I live, I will show him many waterfalls as “Ithaca is Gorges” flaunts my Jeep’s bumper.

Another surprise comes after Dave and I begin seeing one another; he tells me that what made him want to know me was hearing me say: “It’s a great day to be alive!” Not just me squeezing my bikini top causing a waterfall between my boobs.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, coal burned in our furnace, warming the basement where dad’s workshop lived, and where mom’s canned peaches, tomatoes, and preserves waited on shelves. Where dad’s love was fashioned into two doll beds for my sister and I, and a wooden wheelbarrow for my younger brother. And…where

Another kind of love swirled like paint being mixed by a stick, only used once by my dad on our butts, where misty eyes say, “you know this hurts me as much or more as it does you,” to his three disobedient children, so dear to him, where love mists my eyes as I write.

The basement also smelled dad’s farts I was told, where he disappeared after dinner for a short time; longer after we were asleep, I imagine, to craft those wooden gifts for whom I felt he would give his life. Like he gave a new paint job to a secondhand bicycle as my Christmas gift.

Sometime in my teens, I learned he smoked cigarettes in the basement. Hiding, his wisdom knowing it was a bad habit, not wanting to pass it down to us; before 1965 when America’s government mandated “hazardous to your health” printed on packs.

Dad labeled LOVE on my heart with his many actions, especially his vulnerable weekly letters sent to me in college and during my early marriage. Just recently taken out of hiding from a back shelf (earlier years boxed in storage.) Now his precious words are resting atop a hand-crafted stand at the head of my bed😊.

My husband lost his dearly loved dad to lung cancer when Dave was fourteen, reluctant to talk about his great loss, to cry. Recently, I have learned that they spent precious time together in their basement where he helped his dad remodel their dark dusty spider haven scary basement. They cleaned it and killed many spiders which got him over his fear of spiders. They put up 2×4 walls, paneling, built a bathroom, and closets under the stairs.

When his dad was starting to get lung cancer operations, the doctors would take out parts of his lungs and follow with chemo and radiation. Dave did not fully understand how painful it was for his dad. He also did not understand the mental anguish his dad felt. His dad kept most of his lung cancer pains to himself or to his mother. Many times, Dave could hear his mother crying in the bedroom with the door closed. (It was usually open.) Dave tells me that he thinks his dad did not want him and his older brothers to know he would die soon.

Although his dad did not talk about his pains and feelings with the family, he did tell Dave a lot when they were working in the basement. Dave would ask him questions about his cancer and pain, and he would tell Dave everything. The thought that stuck with him the most near the end is hearing that his dad just wanted one day without pain before he died. Dave told him that he would gladly take all his pain for him for a day, crying as he tells me his feelings and of his dad’s appreciation.

Because his dad had cancer and several operations, Dave did not want to start smoking cigarettes. All his friends were smoking in the fields, off St. James Street by the viaduct at the time; he would hang out with them as long as Dave promised not to tell their parents. He never did. Some kids that knew his father understood; other kids made fun of him, but Dave didn’t care and told them about his father’s operations, but they didn’t care. To this day, Dave has never smoked cigarettes despite his ex-wife and that many of his campground friends still do. He is very glad that he never smoked and has had healthy lungs until his hemothorax in 2019.

I would never have pursued a relationship with Dave if he was a smoker.

Dave tells me that he thinks about his dad every day and misses him, as I do my dad, which ties us closer together with greatfulness! With deeper truer and acknowledged appreciative love!

I am presently in a commuter marriage, my husband living in Depew, NY just outside of Buffalo that is wall to wall houses, and buildings with wings. I live outside the small city of Ithaca, NY because I am a country girl that seeks flowers and trees, and waterfalls as my playground.

I know of a couple who live separately and am surprised when I learn that after making love, he leaves for his apartment to sleep. And I am dumbfounded when current authors advise you must distinguish, be accurate, not just be comfortable, but then read: “He’s a nice man, but he’s sleeping with my seventy-year-old mother,” or “She’d babysat him as a child, and the two had been sleeping together on and off for years.” Meaning they are having sex – a misunderstanding?

It is like being misunderstood when accused of sexual harassment by Natural Habitat Adventures, an environmentally conscious group I have traveled with to four different foreign countries during the last decade. I am dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and shocked this February 2024, to be barred from future trips. The director refuses to divulge the behaviors they identify as sexual harassment, citing that the two people accusing me do not want to be identified. I reassure him that I do not need to know their names; that I would not retaliate in any way; I am a Marriage and Family Therapist. I ask him to find out what they are afraid of, as I have a right to know what I did wrong so I could correct. I thought I had been respectful of the customs of those in China.

I did ask them if it was acceptable to hug them, as we were photographed together. The director tells me that the two who complained are “not comfortable” sharing my specific behaviors, that I would know who they are. I have no other recourse than to be advised by a lawyer and submit my complaint of their unethical behavior of not informing me yet accusing me.

“I am sorry they are so fearful,” I tell the director. I own disdain for the shame.

I own that I have had casual sex and left to sleep at home. I have also slept with men and not had sex with them. So, why can’t we own the true understanding of the word sex? I am reminded of my three-year-old granddaughter looking at a drooping flower, saying, “maybe it is sleeping.”

     My husband owns he is quick to anger and according to google, “8 in 10 Americans express significant anger, road rage, or aggression at least once a month, and escalates into anger fueled violent actions,” according to a recent study by AAA. The APA says, “road rage incidents involving firearms more than doubled between 2014 and 2016.

Most mental health workers agree that anger covers up hurt. As a Marriage and Family Therapist for over 30 years, I am unusual because of my added training in primal therapy, where FEELINGS are the best F-word going, I joke with my clients.

It is well known that a therapist cannot help their clients any further than in their own healing; I have learned that my tears fuel love. Some men have told me that they want to cry, but the tears won’t come. Many say they have been conditioned to not show weakness. Vulnerability.

On the other (non-aggressive) hand, I recently read SAD HAPPENS, a celebration of tears, edited by Brandon Stosuy who admits: “it became a way to get to the why of crying that had always interested me and that I’d never had the guts to ask about.”

Research as of 2019 is still controversial as to the effectiveness of Time outs versus Time INS. I encourage my adult clients to have TIME-INS where one can express their feelings out loud, aggressively, verbally and/or physically in a safe place, such as one’s car, or with a punching bag of some sort. Eventually the anger turns into tears, sobs, for a hurt encountered usually from parents.

My 55-year-old client, Michael, causes me to feel happy and proud as he has learned to swear, scream, rage by hitting or kicking when triggered by his wife, co-workers, his children, outside or in his car. A Time-IN for his truest hurt feelings to be heard. Some waitresses at his work now say, “I wish I had a dad like you.” Michael was told he was worth nothing by his alcoholic dad, was beaten, himself attended two drug rehabs. Now, he says “I’m sorry” to his wife. His boss, a restaurant owner asks, “how come you aren’t angry anymore?”

“I go to therapy,” as tears fall, fueling love.

PS. I’ve been told by The SUN magazine staff not to be “preachy” …I hope Michael is the preacher.

I am nine or ten years old, still in pajamas as I sit on the toilet watching my dad swivel the brush in the bowl of shaving cream, then apply to his cheeks and over his moustache. His tongue then pushes his cheek outward to become a smooth bump to shave cleanly, to become smooth as cream.

Soon I notice the fly of his pajamas is slightly open, enough to see a penis for the first time in my life; at least an adult penis, as I’m sure I’d seen my brothers as a baby six years younger than me.

I knew I shouldn’t look, and the image is still emblazoned in my memory, his penis limp, yet full in its extension. Sex was not talked about in our very christian family. Modesty was.

Because I grew up feeling very loved by my dad (not by my mother), I’ve been very aware of being attracted to men who carry similar physical properties: broad shoulders, muscular arms, brown eyes, and wavy hair. Although I have loved blonde boyfriends. I have always liked moustaches too – that aren’t too bushy.

My present husband has donned a moustache most of the three years we’ve been together…and has trimmed it to the top of his upper lip so it doesn’t scratch me; but when I ask him to try shaving it as thin as my dad’s, he refuses.

I wish I knew or better yet, felt my parents falling in love, returning from WWII on the ship Huddleston where my mother writes on a NY Port of Embarkment autograph card “Yours Forever.” And my dad wrote: “The most wonderful girl in the world.” Maybe I felt it then as she was pregnant with me. Maybe even now?

My mother the nurse.

My dad the diabetic patient.

Sadly, how soon my mother fell out of love, while courageously my dad loved her until their divorce while I attended nursing school.

Despite vowing I would never become a nurse; I changed my major from marine biology to graduate with a Bachelor’s in Nursing (from Cornell University).

My maternal grandmother finished eighth grade only to marry a man with a PhD. In chemistry who became a farmer.

Despite my eldest daughter graduating with a Bachelor’s in Natural Resources (from Cornell University) she went on to receive her RN from John Hopkins in 1999. I remember seeing her in blue scrubs at her first nursing job on the open-heart step-down telemetry unit. No white uniforms for her like mom and I.

Now being in my seventh decade, taking more time to reflect, I stare at long-stored away photos, feeling the distant relationship with my religious controlling mother – yet here we are alike wearing white organza nursing caps; then wonder if I could ever be as brave as her to volunteer to dress in the US Army uniform of WWII, hearing bombs bursting overhead as she cared for wounded soldiers.

Appreciating how unique and similar we humans are.

Salt of the earth –

Although I loved to splash and ride the ocean waves as a child each summer at Hither Hills State Park and years later drive my two daughters each summer to Ocean City beaches, bury them in the sand, I never liked the salty taste of breakers.

I like the taste of carrots cooked lightly, naturally sweet, no salt please, nor on the fresh ears of corn on the cob, often eaten raw. Yet, I love the slice of garlic, white or red pizza, my usual lunch from Pizza Aroma. I’m of the mild, not bland; that raw wild taste of vegetables pleasing my taste buds.

But when it comes to clothes: I can wear a bright yellow T-shirt emblazoned with large letters, “I AM BOLD.” The clearance aisle at TJMax flashes bright yellow pants and a deep-necked rosy, red blouse with yellow flecks like a goldfinch flying by. I must buy it …to dress to the maxx!

Just the other day, I try on a vintage pair of Kelly-green corduroys that fit snuggly to my smallish waist, unusual, at Mimi’s Attic – a consignment shop where I have accrued store credit – but it is not to my credit that I add clothes to my closet when I am trying to lessen my attachments…lighten my load. To my credit, I take away a tan pair of pants I rarely wear to the Thrifty Shopper, recycling clothes.

But my taste in men barely changes. Broad shoulders please, providing a broad chest to lay my girlish 77-year-old head on, usually enveloped in muscular biceps and forearms. The height can vary, and the eye color although I prefer taller than my 5’9” stature and the intensity of brown eyes, opposite of my grayish blue.

My variety of LOVEs is always compared to the father who loved me without conditions – not being his biologically, a child of rape.

That being distasteful to everyone else, while I am happy, so happy to be here. Present.

As I bicycle 6-7 miles down ‘my’ road, named Coddington, I notice a home surrounded with several piles of chopped wood needing to be stacked. In the 1980s and 90s I owned a home with a wood stove, not only enjoying soaking into cozy warmth, but also stacking the cords of wood delivered each spring.

I didn’t realize how much I missed that simple ‘chore’ until the summer of 2022, when I was propelled to stop at a stranger’s home on Coddington, to ask if I could stack their wood – the 80-year-old man unable. Who thanks me many times.

This summer 2023, I walk up to the 2021 Coddington Road home, owned by a couple in their sixties, very fit, saying, “the gods have sent an angel,” after I volunteer to stack the four piles, feeling glee like a child.

Most September days I spend an hour or more, bending, lifting, or throwing the wood into a wheelbarrow, or scraping mud off the ones sunk into mother earth. Being about ten miles outside of Ithaca, NY proper, provides the freshest air, and mostly quiet for contemplation of why I become excited to ride my bike, or scooter to stack wood for a neighbor living 6-7 miles down ‘our’ road.

One of these days, I tell myself how much I love to touch the wood, feel its essence, recognizing how much it gives: oxygen to breathe, warmth to our skin, brightness to our eyes as it fires. Burns in sacrifice. Sometimes snapping me to pay attention.

I notice how satisfied I feel in taking down the bamboo branches that invade the piles, providing shade that prevents drying of the wood. I push the bamboo down and pull it up by the roots if possible and use the leaves to cover the muddy paths between rows. A revelation sprouts: you enjoy destroying the bamboo because it suffocates other flowers, as do fields of golden rod; as religion did to me growing up. I could not believe what I felt was true – only what I was brain-heart-washed by my parents and church.

One day, while my 77-year-old body is stacking, Lewis expresses a pile of gratitude for my service, to which I share my fantasy: “I must have been a tree in a past life.”

As I ride my bike along rural Coddington Road I see a sign, “Estate Sale” in front of what I learn is a columned-house built near 1920, from the owner who has built a large hill of possessions on her yard. Although I am downsizing my apartment, I do not resist a stop to peruse. To STARE.

I buy an old-fashioned rusty push-out-two-level step chair so I can reach to change the smoke detector located on the high ceiling of my 1840s home. It’s the off-limits backyard I wander into where I wish for three of her flowerpots unused except by weeds. Karen, the owner, is not willing to part with them in late June when most gardeners have filled their flowerpots.

I return in late July, when she agrees to sell me the three I want, to replace the plastic ones I’ve owned for years and now am on a rampage to get rid of, recycle, an EVOLution from no longer buying water in plastic bottles for at least two decades. No Puffs tissues for three decades, me and my clients using bandanas to absorb our tears and snotty noses. No paper towels allowed. Only TP.

Telling and showing my love to Mother Earth who gives up part of her yard for my possessions: a ceramic window box, growing me feelings: happy, proud, greatfull and love.