The family story was amusing, a drunken Scottish doctor, me on a doorstep in London, age three, smashing milk bottles. And then kneeling in that broken glass. Getting stitched up by that doctor who squinted at the gaping wound and apparently stitched it up with something like a fishing line. I found the scar useful for remembering my right from my left. I never thought about the other details like being alone on a doorstep at age three, breaking milk bottles. And why was this doctor drunk?

I am chronically discontent. Set a goal, draw a line in the sand, set a bar, articulate a dream, an intent, an aspiration, and I will get there and immediately embrace some version of failure. Here are some of the things I’ve achieved, a master’s degree in writing, four published novels, a marriage lasting into the third decade, a healthy, happy adult child, a sulky but secretly content cat, several houses, the ability to swim over a mile, a full-distance triathlon, bicycling over seventy miles a day for six days, wonderful friends, over forty years of continuous sobriety. Guess what? It’s all slightly flawed, not quite perfect, shadowed by an overwhelming feeling that while I am fully aware, the life I inhabit is privileged and, at times, extraordinary, there is that pea under the mattress I can’t avoid, the slight flaw in the dream, the cloud in this sky where I live in such aching beauty here in Northern Michigan.

My publishing history has been…interesting. Back in 1990 after getting fired from my editing job at Bantam-Doubleday-Dell, I started to waitress and do things that artists sometimes do; I was a fake patient for training foreign doctors, I posed naked for a photographer wanting to diversify his portfolio, (Me: “Do you want a picture of me naked? Boyfriend: “No! You look terrified.” Me: “I’m smiling!” Boyfriend: “Your eyes are filled with fear!”) I edited a few essays for money and I wrote.

Fraternity row was walking the gauntlet of men screaming at you, telling you what they would like to do with your body, suggesting you come into the frat house to party, something to be avoided if possible. Belonging to a fraternity at Rutgers marked you, at least as far as this hippie was concerned, as an asshole to be avoided at all costs. My scene partner in my acting class belonged to a fraternity. Despite this, he seemed okay, modest and prepared for our scene together, almost apologetic about his living with the bros, not your typical drunken idiot. So when he asked me to a party at his fraternity, I agreed to go, briefly was the plan, but I did not count on being drugged and apparently, since all was a blackout, raped.

Teaching is a privilege like aging but, like aging, it is not for the faint of heart. Last week, at the start of a new adult writing class I was waiting for my students to arrive when the door opened and a young man and an older woman entered, the young man clearly agitated, hitting himself, and making noises that were, honestly, very like a wounded animal. In short order I discovered his companion was his aide and she was extremely reluctant to provide me with any information about her charge except to state he was a genius and a writer. I had yet to meet any of my students and wondered how I was going to manage to help/teach/contain this person while providing attention and information to the rest. Somehow, with the help of my kind students, this person calming down, and my own experience with crazy situations, we managed.

"When we finished with our laps, we hoist ourselves up out of the pool, dripping and refreshed, our equilibrium restored, ready to face another day on land." ―Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers

I was hiking in the woods up here when I heard on the drive home that a person I knew a long time ago was about to release a book, a sequel to an earlier book. I was flung back to my experience as a writer for the magazine that he edited. His reputation was bad, one of those '80s-era men who saw any woman as prey no matter how inappropriate the situation. I received a dream assignment from him, which would have been a cover story. The subject was basically the end of the sexual revolution, an era I had lived through but sadly did not find anything revolutionary. There was just the expectation that you would sleep with someone no matter how brief the encounter; no one took you on dates, and when someone said anything vaguely romantic, it was a tool to achieve a goal of meaningless sex.

I’ve had a lot of roommates. The first one in college was so different than me it was almost comical. Waking up several hours before her first class, Lisa would wash and blow dry her hair, apply makeup, and dress in something she had chosen the night before. I either went to bed with wet hair, which was still damp in the morning, wore no makeup unless I was on a dating warpath, and dressed in whatever emerged from my closet. Lisa had moved in with two dozen frozen steak dinners but after they ran out, I discovered she couldn’t cook, I mean she really couldn’t cook. Once I asked her to boil water for pasta and she put a box of noodles into cold water and turned on the heat. I returned from a late class to find a ball of starch floating in a pot of water. Lisa wanted to marry a Jewish dentist. I wanted to live in sin with a gorgeous man.