O'er the Fields We Go, Cussing All the Way

Happy Thanksgiving, my leetle cabbages!

In honor of all who are presently cooling their heels in an airport lounge in Chicago as the Thanksgiving feast cools upon the table in Connecticut... in honor of those who are now sitting in their automobiles on a parkway that has turned into a parking lot, wondering why they didn't have the foresight to bring along a bucket of Kentucky Fried before embarking...in honor of those who are currently thinking, "To hell with this - next year, let's just stay home and send out for pizza!"  :

I bring to you a Guest Blogger.

Here, without further ado, are the less-than-merry misadventures of my cousin Christine, who guilelessly agreed to visit us from Canada two weeks ago in honor of my mother's birthday party, patriotically entrusted herself to the tender mercies of her national airline, and is here to tell us the tale, after learning for herself that, in sorry truth, no good deed goes unpunished.  But I'll let Christine tell you about it....

I am not a morning person, and would have been grouchy all the way to the JFK airport were it not for the beautiful sunrise and spectacular view of the Hudson River and New York City along the way.  I was supposed to leave at 5:30 p.m.; that's what I booked and that's what I paid for, but a certain national airline of a certain country bordering the USA to the north has decided that I should leave at 10:30 a.m. instead, and has graciously changed my flight without asking my permission. 

Unfortunately, my connecting flight in Toronto was not changed, leaving me with a 9 hour layover.   At check-in, they assume my final destination is Toronto.  When I correct the nice gentleman at the counter he replies "Wow, you have such a long layover - your connecting flight doesn't even show on my screen!"  I thank him for reminding me, but tell him that customer service has told me there are no earlier flights.  "On the contrary", he replies "there is an earlier flight which appears to be fully booked, but when you arrive in Toronto, you should ask to be put on standby".  I thank him and check in. 

After an uneventful flight to Toronto, I head over to the customer service desk, where a clerk informs me that she is not allowed to put anyone on standby for the earlier flight.  "Fine," I say "then perhaps you could give me a complimentary pass to the lounge so I can at least be comfortable for the 9 hours I will spend here."  I am informed that the lounge is only for elite passengers, which makes me feel highly valued. 

Speaking a little louder now, I wonder how an airline could steal an entire day of my vacation and offer me absolutely no compensation.  This prompts the clerk to check with her supervisor, which results in her obtaining permission to put me on the standby list for the earlier flight.

When my name is called in the departure lounge, my heart skips a beat.  I joined another lucky standby passenger, and, trotting down the ramp to the aircraft, we giddily comment on our good fortune and pinkie swear that we'll both buy lottery tickets as soon as we land. 

Settled in my seat and waiting to push away from the gate, I notice a couple of drops of liquid dripping on the head of the man in front of me.  He notices, too.  He calls the flight attendant over and informs her that something is leaking.  She indicates that it is likely condensation caused by the cold weather.  I point out that the liquid is bright yellow (obvious on his snow-white hair).  She calls for a mechanic.  The mechanic comes and checks out the situation.  Shortly after the mechanic leaves, the captain announces that de-icing fluid is leaking into the cabin, which is indicative of a hole in the fuselage, so we will not be using this aircraft today.  We are directed to disembark and wait in the lounge area for instructions. 

The lounge lady tells us that they will be securing another aircraft, which will leave gate D28 in two hours.  In the meantime, we can go to any food kiosk, show our boarding pass and have up to $10 worth of food at the airline's expense.  I am not particularly hungry, but am genetically predisposed to frugality and therefore decide to get my $10 worth of food.  I try two different kiosks, where they have no idea what I am talking about and looked at me with such suspicion that I feel like a criminal. 

I give up on food and go to gate D28.  Unpack laptop, get to work.  Next gate over, they are preparing to board a flight from Vancouver and announce that instead of a 777 they have received a 767, so about 40 passengers will not be boarding the flight.  The guy sitting next to me freaks out, as he has been away from his family for 3 weeks and doesn't want to miss his kid's birthday.  Mayhem ensues, and 40 ticked-off people shuffle off.  Things are quiet again.

Looking up from my keyboard I notice that the board at the gate in front of me no longer lists my flight, but a later flight is up there.  I pack everything up, go find a monitor, and discover that my flight has been moved to another gate.  Find gate, unpack, check monitor 30 minutes later, notice monitor has changed, pack up, move to new gate, unpack, and FINALLY board my flight at five minutes prior to the rescheduled departure time.  Wait and wait for de-icing and, fortunately, there don't seem to be any holes in this aircraft.  Takeoff is about 30 minutes late.

So, in the end, I arrive in Winnipeg at 9:30 p.m.  One hour earlier than my originally scheduled flight…the 5:30 p.m. one that they cancelled on me in the first place.

In Winnipeg, I wait for the longest time for my luggage and just when I decide it probably didn't make the flight, someone from my flight comes over, taps me on the shoulder, and suggests that if I didn't find my bag on the carousel marked AC 267 Toronto, I should try the carousel marked with a Calm Air flight arriving from Thompson.  Sure enough, that's where it is.

I think WestJet really needs to speed up their expansion plans.

Giving Thanks

I know someone who likes to say, "I'm grateful today for everything I have, and for everything I don't have... And what I don't have today is pain, misery and suffering."

It's a funny thing about the nature of discontent.  Much of the time, it seems to be a matter of comparing oneself to the wrong people.  I could, with perfect reason, wake up every morning overwhelmed by my good fortune at living in a house whose roof does not leak, and whose mortgage is paid (this month, anyway), as opposed to waking up freezing in a tent in Afghanistan, or in a cardboard box under a scaffolding off the West Side Highway.  And some mornings, I do.  I am cognizant of the fact that a series of lucky breaks - among others, having been being born in this particular country, having been given a free education, having had parents who gave me a good start in life, having a mate whose business had managed to survive the economic roller-coaster of the last decade - are the reasons I'm waking up in a warm bed, instead of on a sidewalk or a dirt floor.  I did not reap these advantages because I am intrinsically more deserving of them than is anybody who did not get them.  I just got lucky.  I have these blessings for no discernible reason, and all I need to do now is to hold onto them, and not throw them away with both hands.

But there are the mornings when I wake up in a bad mood, and suddenly I want what I don't have.  Suddenly I'm comparing my Blooper Reel to other people's Highlights Reel.  And suddenly, all my blessings become my burdens.  For, as Lucifer remarks in Paradise Lost, 

The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

Those are never the good days.  It swiftly becomes apparent what they mean when they say, "Compare and despair."  Compared to me, everybody is suddenly more successful than I am.  Compared to me, everybody who lives in Manhattan is luckier than anybody who no longer lives in Manhattan - i.e., me.  Compared to me, everybody I ever attended school with made better career choices than I did.  Compared to me, everybody is in better physical shape, and compared to me everybody looks like a gym rat.  Suddenly, I have become the only three-toed sloth on the planet.  Compared to me, everybody is winning either the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, or the National Book Award. (Seriously.  All of a sudden, I'm the only person I know who hasn't swept all three.)

So today, I'm going to think about what I don't have, and I'm going to think about what I do have, and I'm going to be grateful for both.

1. I don't have an incurable disease, chronic pain, or severe mental illness.  I have known people who have these things, and their lives are heroic daily battles just to survive and make it through the next 24 hours.  I do have a good chance of staying healthy if I take care of myself, eat right, and exercise. And for that - I am grateful.  This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

2. I don't have a miserable marriage to somebody who does not love me, or who, God forbid, actively mistreats me.  I do have a loving and supportive spouse who has stuck with me through thick and thin for the last ten years, and whom I can always count on to try his best to do the right thing, every single day since I have known him.  And for that - I am grateful.  This is a blessing many people would give anything to have.

3. I don't have a child who drinks, drugs, or gets into trouble.  I do have a child who is healthy, who has all his limbs and his organs intact, who is polite and well-spoken, and who is attending college and working hard to make good grades.  And for that - I am grateful.  This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

4.  I don't have to visit a cemetery if I want to see my parents.  I do still have both my parents, alive, and even still married to one another.  And for that - I am grateful.  This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

5. I don't have to break my brain wondering how on earth we are going to scrape together market-rate rent in Manhattan by December 1, so that we can do it all over again and break our brains wondering how we'll do it again on January 1, at which point the rent would be going up because the lease would have expired. I do have a beautiful, spacious home which we will own outright in a relatively short time - short, that is, compared to the 34 years I spent paying rent and never actually owning anything in the city. Oh - and when I get home, I don't have to circle the block for thirty minutes looking for parking, because I do have space for one-two-three-four-FIVE cars in my very own driveway.  And for that - I am grateful. This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

6. I don't have blindness.  I can read anything I like, anytime I like.  And I do live in a country where books and journalism representing a wide variety of views are readily available, and where artistic creativity is not censored and free speech is considered a right.  And for that - I am grateful.  This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

7. I don't have to go dip up unsanitized water with a bucket for my daily washing and drinking needs.  I do have an abundant supply of fresh, clean water, and all I have to do is turn on a tap whenever I want it.  And for that - I am grateful. This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

8. I don't have to depend on the fruits of my own labors to produce enough food to get me through the winter.  I do have a car, gas to make it run, and plenty of places to buy food - both supermarket and local farm stands - and have never yet had to face the prospect of being hungry because there was literally nothing available to eat.  And for that - I am grateful. This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

9. I don't have to be alone if I don't feel like it.  I do have an abundance of cherished friends who love me, and whom I love in return.  And for that - I am grateful. This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

10. I don't have somebody who cleans my house for me.  That's because I do have sound limbs, the willingness, and the energy to do my own cleaning.  As I get older, I realize that the day may come when I will wish I was still able to mop my own floor and do my own laundry.  Right now, I still can.  And for that - I am grateful. This is a blessing that many people would give anything to have.

I feel good now, and I hope that you, Gentle Reader, feel good now, too.  And, as another friend of mine used to say, "If nobody told you today that they love you - I love you."  The fact that love exists in this world, and that all I have to do to get my fair share is be willing to give it and receive it - for that, too, I am eternally grateful.

She's a Winner!

I hate to say "I told you so" (that's a lie - I actually LOVE to say "I told you so") but -

I TOLD YOU JACQUELINE WOODSON'S BROWN GIRL DREAMING WAS DA BOMB!!!

Thrilled, excited, delighted, and absolutely chuffed-out-of-my-mind that Jackie Woodson's memoir in verse has won

THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

for

Young People's Literature

Congratulations, Jacqueline Woodson! Long may you write!

The Relatives Came

Sorry for the silence...

We have been having (as Martha memorably informed George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) "Guests...GUESTS!" 

Ours was a somewhat larger, yet withal less pyrotechnically-inclined crowd than Albee's, and the occasion was my mother's birthday.  She won't let me say which one, because at the age of (cough-cough) she is still working and she says that no one she works with has any idea that she has passed the possible age of retirement.  Since I'm a writer, I guess I retired for her - in any event, I have no steady source of paychecks or health benefits in that capacity, although I do have endless available time to drive visiting relatives around to see the local sights,  hit the German bakery in Hoboken for a special eggnog-flavored birthday cake, and select nice wrapping paper for birthday gifts.

The last time you heard from me, Gentle Reader, I was hoping very hard that the Kindly Carting Man would take away the unsightly pull-chain toilet that was adorning the top of the stump where I leave my garbage twice a week before the Guests arrived.  I am happy to say that the Carting Man was Kindly and did so.

The jamboree began last Thursday with the arrival of my cousin Christine, who flew in from Winnipeg with my aunt and uncle, who were to stay in my mother's guest room while Christine came to stay in ours.  Christine was one of my favorite cousins when we were children, and that hasn't changed, although we had not seen each other for many years because we live so far apart.  On Friday morning, my brother arrived from Sacramento and was assigned the living room sofa as his dormer.  He was the Surprise Guest - at least, we hoped he would be a surprise.  It seems that, as soon as we'd decided it was the better part of wisdom not to spring too many family members on my mother at once - in particular, not the ones who would be staying at her house - and agreed only to conceal my brother's attendance at the party from her ("You don't suppose we'll give her a heart attack?" he'd asked anxiously, to which I'd replied that I hoped not, but that if worst came to worst, at least we'd all be assembled for the funeral) she called my brother up, told him all about the party, and demanded, "Don't you want to come here for my birthday, too?"  At which direct question he rather lost his head, foomfled, and blustered, "Uhhh...what kind of question is that? Now if I do come, you won't be surprised."  Which left me, as they say, SMDH and groaning about the fact that I am the only sibling who's ever mastered the art of Lying to Mother.

Christine and my brother were rewarded for their early arrival by a Friday afternoon at Spa Castle in Whitestone, Queens, where we lolled around in the varying saunas and hot tubs and got all pruney before the Big Day.  Since my husband, thankfully, used to be a professional chef, I could relax and take his word for it that everything would get cooked in time for the luncheon party. We finished up with dinner at Elias' Corner in Astoria, where we ate far more charcoal-grilled Greek seafood and French-fried potato chips than was good for us.

The next morning was all about cookery.  When my husband starts thinking about a simple buffet luncheon for 12, this is what he comes up with:

- A 3 lb marinated roast salmon

- An entire braised brisket

- Fresh fettuccine and gnocchi tossed in a cream sauce with roasted garlic, eggplant, red peppers, and wild mushrooms

- Lobster, shrimp & langoustine salad (home-made, of course)

- Sauteed mushrooms & shallots

-An enormous salad of baby greens tossed with avocado, local tomatoes, and a home-made maple balsamic vinaigrette dressing

- Mashed potatoes

- Fresh-baked ciabatta rolls

For afterward, of course, there was coffee, birthday cake, and a platter of fresh berries.

The party was supposed to begin at 1:00 p.m.

At 11:30 a.m. sharp, a car door slammed in the driveway, and, to my consternation, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and my cousin from South Carolina all tumbled out of it, looking, to my startled eyes, like the clown car in the circus that never stops disgorging passengers.  We barely had time to take our places.

After I'd hissed at my brother to "Get in the bathroom, get in the bathroom!" I hurried downstairs to greet everyone. After coats were hung in the downstairs closet, I adroitly maneuvered everyone upstairs by shrieking, "Mom! You simply have to come upstairs and take a look at the brand new toilet in the powder room!"

(Note to other potential Surprise Party Throwers: This approach works beautifully if the subject of the surprise happens to be a real estate agent - they will look at anything in the way of home improvement, and not find it a bit odd that you want to drag them away from all their friends and relations to look at a toilet.)

True to form, my mother opened the powder room door with an imperious shove, only to fall back with a scream when my brother, who was seated (fully clothed) on the commode, lowered his newspaper, raised his cell phone camera, and calmly inquired, "Lady, don't you ever knock?"  He not only succeeded in surprising her, he also succeeded in obtaining a photo that is going to be making the family rounds for the next twenty-five years, and that my mother made me swear upon the head of my only child not to share on the social media. (Sorry, Gentle Reader - you would have loved it.)

The party was a splendiferous one, and, having traveled this far to attend it, many of the guests stayed on for a few days afterward.  Which I why, once again, I didn't do my homework.

Death of a Pull-Chain Toilet

As my Gentle Readers know, we bought the kind of house commonly known as a Fixer-Upper.  As my Gentle Readers doubtless also know, Fixer-Uppers gobble up money like voracious Congressmen on a meth spree in a department store full of costly armaments and cheap hookers.

As a result, we ran out of the Ready.  As a result of running out of the Ready, the charmingly wonky pull-chain toilet in the powder room has not worked since we moved in, because we never seemed to have enough of the Ready to fix it.  As my Gentle Readers may recall, we moved in last June.

I haven't made an issue of it, since the house had three full baths and so to whine about the powder room toilet would have been what my teenage son elegantly terms "A Dick Move."  However.

The However is, we're about to have guests.  Lots of guests.  International guests.  (Okay, they're my uncle, my aunt, and my cousin, and, being family, they will probably be kindly and forgiving of such small flaws as toilets that don't do what toilets are supposed to do,and they are actually coming from Canada.  But that's international, isn't it?) And there are other guests besides the International Guests.  There is the Transcontinental Guest. (My brother is coming from Sacramento.)  And there's the Southern Lady Guest, winging in from famously Gracious Charleston. (Well - technically - she's my father's cousin once removed, and she actually lives in a steel town 45 minutes away from Charleston, and speaks with a truly fascinating accent that combines the German inflections of her childhood with more than forty years spent living in South Carolina, heavily seasoned with 20 years spent living in Queens before that.  Hmm. Maybe I should re-categorize her as an International Guest.)

The reason for all these Guests is that my mother is turning - well, another year older - this weekend.  It's one of those landmark birthdays, and so we are having a party, and the Relatives are coming.  So naturally, I want the house to look nice.  And naturally, I want to be able to take down the piece of    8 1/2" x 11" paper bearing the legend scrawled in black Sharpie:

Out of Order!

Do Not Use!!!

Water's Turned Off!

And so, Gentle Readers, the quaint and entirely useless pull-chain toilet with the charmingly dated brass fittings and the flush tank the hovered above the head of the sitter like an especially large and cumbersome Sword of Damocles had to go.  But not yet.

Not yet - because first my Dear Husband decided to have a go at repairing it.  It was a noble effort, and it was, indeed, Dear of him.  But after five hours of labor, two trips to the Home Depot, and an awful lot of cursing, he finally had to admit defeat.  I wish I had been a better sport about the fact that, in the process of his being such a Dear, the freshly-painted walls of the powder room got rather scratched and dented and no longer look quite so freshly painted as they did before he was Dear.  But as I say, I was hoping that the house would look nice for the Relatives.

In any event, he deconstructed the old toilet and put it outside to await the coming of the Carting Man on Thursday, who I hope will remove it, as it looks rather awful sitting on a stump next to the driveway and would fool no one into thinking it was merely us being Witty and Artistic.  The party is on Saturday, so if the Carting Man balks on Thursday (and who could blame him if he did?) I will have to think of something else.  Fortunately, there is an unattended dumpster that I know of behind the local Starbucks.

After the deportation of the Old Toilet, we got back in the car and made a third trip to the Home Depot, a store I am heartily sick of, and whose door I never, no not once, darkened in those dear dead days beyond recall when I lived on the tenth floor in a Manhattan building that had a super.  As I write this, it occurs to me that in the 34 years that I lived in Manhattan, I never once had occasion to buy a toilet, either.

But times have changed, and not necessarily for the better, or at least that's how it feels when you are comparison-shopping in the toilet aisle and you realize that it's come to this, and that there's hardly any point in comparison-shopping anyway because you know good and well that what you're really looking for is the cheapest toilet, because all the rest of the money that you thought you were going to spend on getting highlights and a trim so you'd look nice at the party is actually going to be handed over to the local handyman who already installed the dishwasher you found on Craigslist last week, and who was clearly thinking the entire time he fiddled with the hoses and gaskets and doohickeys under the ugly brick-red kitchen sink that the former homeowner had inexplicably installed - on purpose! - that City People are idiots for not being able to install their own dishwashers.

So now we have a new toilet, and it works, and I can hold my head high when the Relatives are here, and not shame my mother on her birthday.  And I only wish we had a little extra cash, because I'd really love to do something about that ugly red sink.

Be the Reason Somebody Smiles Today

Today I got my tires changed, and, in the process, changed somebody's day.

We've been putting off buying the tires, because as all car owners know, four new tires add up quickly to a staggering sum. But it made sense to do it before the snow flies, and I had a new store credit card for a national chain that was supposed to get me a 5% discount; I had the cash to pay the credit card off on the spot; and I had a handful of those slips of paper that the register spits out when you buy anything at this chain, which supposedly will get you a further discount. It never works out that way - there are a million exceptions to the offers, and frankly, it's a classic bait-and-switch.

But the salespeople are invariably kind, hardworking, service-oriented people who do their best to accommodate your requests and expectations, despite the fact that they are hog-tied by company policy if they want to retain their jobs.  But one thing that goes with this job is that customers get crabby when they don't get the discount they're expecting.  I seemed to have walked in on the tail end of one of those conversations this morning.

From my place in line, I could see the back of the woman customer's shoulder-length hair, and the tired face of the sales associate.  Although it was only 8:30 a.m., he looked like he'd already had a long day.

"I'm doing my best for you, ma'am," he was saying in that lovely lilting accent that means a childhood spent in Jamaica.  "I'm just saying - people have to understand.  You get up.  You go to work.  You have a good attitude when you leave your house, and you want to give people good service.  And then some people think they can treat you any which way, just to save five dollars. I'm just trying to tell you, there's only so much I can do."

To her credit, the woman seemed abashed into better behavior.  She finished her business without an argument and quietly took her departure.

Now it was my turn.

It was not my best morning of the year either, for reasons I'll go into later.  But now I had a choice. I could either sour this man's day still more, or I could try to lift us both into a better frame of mind.

I looked him in the eye, gave him my best smile, and told him what I was there for. He nodded wearily and came out from behind the desk.  As he fell into step beside me, I blurted, "Excuse me. I couldn't help overhearing the end of that last conversation, and I see your day got off to a rough start. I think you need a hug."

And I gave him a hug.

He looked a bit surprised, but the ghost of a smile formed at the corner of his lips, and he thanked me. A little alacrity came into his step as we went outside to inspect my tires.

Of course, the tire change cost a lot more than I had budgeted for when my husband and I looked at the website.  Which was not a surprise, because it always does cost a lot more.  The website doesn't tell you about things like the "valve kit" and the "state environmental fee" and so naturally you can't have the slightest idea how much you're actually going to wind up paying.  And yes, it's a shame, and yes, it's a nasty surprise.  But it's not the fault of the sales associate.

So we went back inside, and he ran some estimates for me, and gave me some sound advice on what would be best for my particular car.  As he clicked away on the keyboard, I watched his hands.  One hand was missing its middle finger - there was a stump just above the knuckle, right below where the first joint ought to be.  The index finger was heavily scarred, though the scars were clean and well-healed.  Long ago, this man had had a traumatic accident.  A terrible day involving a lot of unanticipated pain, and a slow recovery that meant learning to live without a part of himself he'd always taken for granted up till that moment.

I called my husband, gave him the estimates, and he said not to get the tires yet, because he wanted to check a few websites once he got to the office.  The fact that my husband was able to get up and go to the office at all on this day, November 3rd, is in itself such a miracle that I wasn't going to argue, so I said okay, hung up, thanked the sales associate (whom  by now I was mentally terming "my friend") and said I would be back if we didn't find a much better deal, which, of course, being a man who pays bills, he understood.  He shook my hand fervently, wished me a beautiful day, and made sure I knew which days he'd be on duty so that he could be available to make sure I got the best possible service.

I said, "I'll bring you a cup of coffee if I come back and get them here," and he said, "I don't drink coffee - I like hot chocolate."

By the time I got home, my husband was calling to say that after some comparison shopping, he'd decided that I might as well go back and get those tires after all, because they were a fair deal.  Which was what my new friend had been telling me all along.

So I made a cup of hot chocolate - the kind I used to make for my son when he'd had a long day at school and the weather was horrible and he came home exhausted and in need of some pampering. Two spoonfuls of Dutch cocoa, two of sugar, plenty of milk, finished off with a good-sized glug of heavy cream.  As I stirred it together, I thought about one of those inspirational slogans I'd recently seen online -

Be the Reason Somebody Smiles Today

I hopped in the car, drove back, and was greeted by a huge smile that got even bigger when I handed over the hot chocolate.  My friend was smiling like he meant it, and that put a smile on my face, too. He did his best to get me every discount he possibly could, went to bat to get me 10% off on aligning the front tires, and gave me the best service of my life.  

I knew it wasn't about the hot chocolate.  It was about the fact that somebody on the other side of the counter had taken the time to see him as a person, another human being - instead of just a visible extension of a huge corporate entity that had to be harangued and bludgeoned into coughing up discounts.

After I'd paid for everything, he shook hands again and thanked me once more.  I thanked him for all the effort he'd put forth on my behalf.  

I thought about whether or not to tell him what was on my mind, but decided against it.  Instead, I just smiled and said, "Promise me you'll remember - you can start your day over at any time."  

 I never did tell him the thing I was really grateful for: The fact that today, on the second anniversary of my stepdaughter's death, my trying to make his day a little nicer had given me something to smile about. 

My stepdaughter had been a server in a national restaurant chain.  She'd battled clinical depression for much of her life before her death at the age of 23.  Once in awhile, she'd mention that it was difficult to keep smiling and provide good service when customers got nasty or impatient.  But she always showed up at her job with the aim of giving the best service she possibly could, and she never missed a day of work.

Not all our scars are visible upon the body.