Month: January 2023

Bound by Love and a Zip Code

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Nine years ago, my essay “Bound by Love and a ZIP Code,” was published  in the Los Angeles Times L.A. Affairs column.

I regularly read these columns and am always surprised/delighted/amused by the many different ways we search and find, or lose, love.

You may find it surprising that for quite a while I really didn’t think I had a romantic story to tell. In fact, it took me a while to see what was in front of me the whole time — the way my husband and I met and fell in love was pretty extraordinary.

This week, I’m pleased to share the essay with you. If you haven’t read it before, you can click here to read “A boundless love contained in a single ZIP code.” (Note – the digital title varies slightly from the in-print title.)

The Bodyguard

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I wanted the first book I read, start-to-finish, in 2023 to be a book I knew I would adore. 

That book was Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard. 

Last year, I was lucky enough to win an advanced copy through a Goodreads Giveaway. I already knew the main characters, the plot, the setting. 

Did that diminish this year’s reading in any way? Absolutely not. 

(By the way – I bought the hardcover version of The Bodyguard from Ms. Center’s favorite local independent bookstore because she signs them!)

Did I find this second read of The Bodyguard enjoyable?

Definitely!

Was The Bodyguard the reason I stayed up later than planned just so I could read one more chapter?

Yes indeed.

Here are just a few of my favorite passages:

“People who want to be famous think it’s the same thing as being loved, but it’s not. Strangers can only ever love a version of you. People loving you for your best qualities is not the same as people loving you despite your worst.”

“Was I lovable? I mean, are any of us really lovable if you overthink it?
“It was tempting to chicken out.
“But then I thought of Jack going bwok, bwok, bwok, and then I wondered if having faith in yourself was just deciding you could do it — whatever it was — and then making yourself follow through.
“So I decided something right then: Every chance you take is a choice. A choice to decide who you are.”

“I kept pushing. ‘You can’t control the world — or other people. You can’t make them love you, either. They will or they won’t, and that’s the truth. But what you can do is decide who you want to be in the face of it all. Do you want to be a person who helps —or hurts? Do you want to be a person who burns with anger —or shines with compassion? Do you want to be hopeful or hopeless? Give up or keep going? Live or die?”

“Maybe love isn’t a judgment you render —but a chance you take. Maybe it’s something you choose to do —over and over.
“For yourself. And everyone else.
“Because love isn’t like fame. It’s not something other people bestow on you. It’s not something that comes from the outside.
“Love is something you do.
“Love is something you generate.
“And loving other people really does turn out, in the end, to be a genuine way of loving yourself.”

It’s Not the Final Answer

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

“After a year and a half of talking with one doctor after another, it was Dr. W, a rheumatologist, who explained my mystery illness.

‘It’s an autoimmune disease called Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease. UCTD,’ he told us.

My husband and I had no idea what that meant except for one thing. My gut instinct told me that not knowing those letters, not immediately recognizing the name Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease, was a good thing. If UCTD was truly bad, it would have been a familiar term. A term you hear about a lot in relation to walk-a-thons and fundraisers. Multiple sclerosis. Muscular dystrophy. Even if I didn’t know the specifics of those illnesses, I knew their names. I knew they were complicated. UCTD sounded okay.”

The paragraphs above are from my personal essay, It’s Not the Final Answer. I’m pleased to share that my essay was selected for publication in Please See Me, Issue #12: Diagnosis. You can read the essay in its entirety by clicking here.

Bomb Shelter

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I don’t think I can say enough good things about Mary Laura Philpott’s memoir Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. 

Back in February of 2020, I had written a blog post about her first collection of essays, I Miss You When I Blink. (In case you missed it, you can read that blog post by clicking here.) In that post, I wrote: “And I got lost in this story. I saw myself on page after page.”

I feel the same way about Bomb Shelter. It’s not just what Ms. Philpott is writing, but how she’s writing it — the words she has chosen to express herself. 

My copy is full of sticky notes and marked passages. I’ll share a few of my favorites:

“Every joy, every loved one, every little thing I got attached to, every purpose I held dear — each one was another stick of dynamite, strapped to the rest.
“The longer I lived, the more I loved, the larger this combustible bundle grew. I walked around constantly in awe of my good fortune and also aware that it could all blow up in an instant, flipping me head over heels into the air, vaporizing everything.”

“The nursery song I sang to my baby — ‘never let you go’ — had been a lie. But it wasn’t a cruel lie. It was a hopeful one. It was a lie to me as much as to him. It was a loving work of fiction to let myself enjoy those warm, snuggly evenings without thinking about the fact that one of those times would be the last time.”

“Everybody has something. That’s one of the things John and I began saying to the kids. We meant it as a way of normalizing what our son was going through — like, hey, nobody’s without some medical adventure. Having a body means taking care of yourself in all the usual ways, plus whatever extra way might be required by your particular thing. You go to the doctor. You take your medicine. You do what needs doing, so you can go on with your life.”

“If I can scrape up some evidence of a thing made beautifully or a gesture made kindly, then I can believe, for a few seconds, that this world is careful and kind. And if I can believe that, I can believe it is safe to let the people I love walk around out there. It’s my own attempt at foresparkling, seeking out hints of good, even planting them myself, so I can believe there’s more good to come. It might all be superstition, just mental magic, but why not try?
“So I say yes for things that offer some pleasure. Yes for people who choose to be friendly. Yes for any glimmer of light through all the darkness. I mean that yes. I need it. Seriously.”

“It’s a glass-half-empty, glass-half-full kind of thing: Better to believe the world is at least half-full of decent intentions than to focus on how it’s also half-full of assholes.”

“It’s goofy, I guess, to think of myself as a still-growing child, but it’s also thrilling to remember that although it has been my job for so many years to help my children grow up, I am still growing up, too. I am becoming someone, still and always. I enjoy setting my own timing for a reset every year. It helps me look at life less like one ending after another and more like a series of starts.”

“It’s true: There will always be threats lurking under the water where we play, danger hiding in the attic and rolling down the street on heavy wheels, unexpected explosions in our brains and our hearts and the sky. There will always be bombs, and we will never be able to save everyone we care about. To know that and to try anyway is to be fully alive. The closest thing to shelter we can offer one another is love, as deep and wide and in as many forms as we can give it.”