I made a young woman cry twice last evening, in part by doing my job well.

I felt cruel  but she understood the hard truth of my words.  She held the tears in her eyes as long as possible, sitting in a coffee shop with her hands held tensely in her lap.  I had delivered my message in soft tones on many other occasions. When her actions showed that I had not penetrated the fog, I steeled myself and came down with force.

I don’t know if she can or will change; but I know the quality of the fiber which runs through her, the merits of her soul, the charity in her breast.  She craves change; she’s just lost in a destructive grid.

I have hope.

Tears flowed a second time towards the end of our meeting; tears of grief; tears of sorrow; of release perhaps.  I put my arms around her; I wrapped her in encouragement, using the tenderest of tones learned from my mother, murmured to me as I cried each time failure cratered my dreams.

I glanced away so she could recompose herself.  I watched a man driving a Mercedes barrel through the intersection outside the coffee shop, cutting through oncoming traffic, halting parallel to the window facing in the wrong direction.  He ignored the blare of horns, the darted dirty looks.  A teenage girl hopped out of the vehicle and sashayed into the restaurant.  The driver, her father possibly, pulled away from the curb without heeding the cars coming towards him, causing those drivers to swerve and brake.  He sped off in the wake of their wrath and frustration.

I turned to my companion.  I guess the rich live different than you and me, I remarked.  I guess if you drive a fancy car, you can break the law.  She laughed through her tears.  The tension broke.  We rose and embraced, then she hurried off to work and I drove home, thinking, as I carefully steered the Prius into the rush hour traffic on 63rd street, that I am grateful every day.  I’m not rich; I’m not successful by the standards of the oblivious man in the sleek car driving wild through Brookside just because he feels entitled to do so.  But I’m surviving, and once in a while, I get something right.

It’s the ninth day of the twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  Rain gently falls on my neighborhood, washing away the winter’s grime.  Life continues.

I stared at the computer screen for a half an hour yesterday willing the numbers to change, or for my brain to glom onto a different understand of them.  Eight lab tests; seven positives; static or rising values.  I copy the names of the various viruses and paste them into Google to try to broaden my understanding enough to convince myself that the direction of the graphed results should not alarm me.  Finally, I message the ID department of Stanford requesting a telephone consult, shut down my computer, and bolt.

Nothing that plagues me will kill me.  Though some of these little bugs qualify as “infectious”, most of the human population throws them off like scattered sand on a beach as you head indoors for dinner.  Me, not so much.  Something about my genetic structure causes me to be particularly susceptible to viruses that most other people experience once as an annoying illness.  I’m not complaining, mind you — just explaining.

So I left the office early yesterday  and drove to CVS to claim the twice-a-day anti-viral that combats the worst of these little buggers and which had been out of stock for the last five days. My need for it rages like the craving of a crack whore.  My joints throb, my temperature has spiked, and believe me when I say that I feel as though I’ve been hit by a car — since I have been, and I well remember the terrible pain of lying on the asphalt shattered and beaten.

Oddly, I don’t take the little pink pill immediately on arrival at the house.  I plop the package down in the middle of the dining room table, pull the clogs from my aching feet, and make a cup of tea.  I walk around the house grumbling about the chores that I’m too weary to undertake.  Periodically I cast a resentful glance towards the CVS package, muttering about a drug that cost so much having so little impact.  At the laptop, I answer the rash of requests for passwords that has followed from my notice to my Rotary Club about downloading the Clubrunner app.  Eventually, I tear open the package and administer the anti-viral, glad it’s just HHV-6 and not HIV.  I’ll live.  It could be so much worse.

But I know it’s not a competition.  I accept that I’m allowed to feel discouraged.  At some point in the evening, I publicly acknowledge my disillusionment on social media, not anticipating the instant wave of support, comment after comment of encouragement and devotion from my tribe.  Friends from coast to coast respond, sending love, hope, humor, and one or two swift kicks in the bottom.

This morning’s cup of tea has just begin to hit my synapses when I hear the call of a text message on my phone.  I lift the device and swipe the screen, expecting a notice from the water department about a main break or from KCPD about a missing person.  Instead, I see my friend Phyllis Norman’s cheerful words, wishing me a brighter day, complete with illustration.

And now I’m smiling.

It’s the eighth day of the twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  Despite a bit of a setback, my life continues.

Benton, son of Phyllis and Ivan, brother of Morgan. Because who doesn’t like beautiful pictures of babies?

I’m changing my idea of a charmed life.

I knew a whole mess of girls in high school (a hundred years ago) of whom I would have said their lives had been easy.  Pretty, smart, two-parent households, seeming grace on the playing field, good grades — and likable.  They possessed that air of entitlement that I lacked and could never have acquired.

For decades, I resented folks with perfect teeth, straight limbs, investment savvy, and rhythm.

But I’m changing my view of the parameters of a charmed life.  I don’t have cancer — check.  I can manage to pay my bills on time every month (more or less) — check.  My car starts in the morning, I make it out of the driveway, I don’t burn myself when I brew coffee.  Check, check, triple check.

Sandy Thomas Dixon and her husband Chuck read my blog every day — check check.  Same for Andrea Sununu, Pat Reynolds, Brenda Dingley, Phil Carrott, and Joyce Kramer.  Smiles abound.

The light switch works; the dryer starts; the dog’s seizures seem to be under control.  Groovy.

My kid calls me every couple of days and seems to be thriving. Ditto my shared children. Marvelous.

Twice a year, with a little finagling, I get to sit in an old deck chair on a sidewalk above the ocean and watch its waves crash against the rocks.  No matter that I’m within hailing distance of the medical facility that regularly tests me for a growing number of barely contained viruses.  I can come and look at the sea, thanks to the help of a few nameless ones and that eight-hundred dollar bill which I plunk down each month for kick-ass medical insurance that makes those Stanford gurus in-network.

it’s all good.  Life continues.

Too long have I huddled within a cocoon.  Now I grant myself the freedom to spread my wings.  I emerge, whole, new, dazzling.

Unknowing, I lay in darkness, senseless until a shattering blow cracked my grotesque armor. Shimmering light streams through the dark.  Mystified, I wonder: Did I grow this protective shell; or did silt wash over me, collecting debris, winding around my struggling limbs?

Searching hands have reached within the muck from time to time and still, I remained trapped, amid the accumulated tangled mess woven around me.  Now I raise my arms and claw at what has gripped me.  I feel myself rising.  Wind buffets against me.  What once ensnared me falls away.

It’s the sixth day of the twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues, unfolding, exhilarating, filled with promise.

As I sat eating lunch in a restaurant across from Family Court yesterday, my phone buzzed.  I glanced down, expecting to see that someone had made a Words With Friends move, or posted to my Facebook page.  But the icon indicated an incoming message so I pulled the phone from my pocketbook to read.  And my stomach fell to the floor as I saw these words:  Maddie McDowell died last night.

I met the McDowells when my son attended Purple Dragon Pre-School.  A compact, blonde, beaming child, Maddie sashayed around the place tossing her braids and bestowing her glowing smile on everyone.  My son moved upstairs to PS1 Elementary before Maddie did, she being younger.  But still we saw her on the shared playground, dancing everywhere, running around, laughing, excited about life.

Over the years, I kept some contact with Maddie because of my family’s continued friendship with her neighbors, the Kenyon-Vogts.  I watched her grow to young womanhood and then began to follow her life on Facebook.  Once in a while she would post a sad note, and from time to time, I messaged words of encouragement to her.  But mostly she shared her zest for life, her love of her family, her excitement about cooking, and her delight in her job as a nanny.

I last saw Maddie in person at a family gathering at the Kenyon-Vogt household just a few months ago.  We talked only briefly, but she hugged me on leaving, and the radiance of her smile lingered after the door closed behind her.  Just this week, she spoke of medical issues confronting her but nonetheless, posted about family night making dinner for her mother, and about watching a movie snuggled on the sofa in her parents’ home.

Any complaint that I might have; any difficulty that I must confront; any loss that I struggle to overcome; pales in comparison to what Mary Ann and Steve McDowell, and their son Kiloh, must feel today.  Their love and their loss can know no comfort; and to say that time will heal the pain they feel today makes small mockery of the depth of their grief.

It’s the fourth day of the twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  One life has ended; for one beautiful soul, life on this planet does not continue.  But her sweet spirit touched everyone whom she knew, from those of us who were tangential to her world to those who occupied the close-knit circle in which she thrived.  I cannot say that I knew Madeline McDowell well; but I am glad that I knew her at all.  Heaven has another angel; and here on earth, life continues just a little dimmer for our loss.

I collect angels.  Oh, yes, the human kind — but what I meant by collecting angels? The china kind.  Little statuettes, preferably no more than four inches tall.

A few days before my trip to California, I stopped in one of my favorite thrift stores to troll for books and angels.  One called to me from a bottom shelf.  I struggled to lift her.  She’s perfect!  Unblemished!  Who would throw such a lovely little lady in the trash?  I marveled at the delicacy of her features, the little flowers, the curve of her wings.  I paid $1.50 for her and considered myelf blessed to have stumbled on her.

Yesterday as I stretched in my breakfast nook, I spotted my newest angel on the shelf.  I thought again how fortunate I was to  have found her; how odd that anyone should cast aside this sweet china creature.  As I bent and stretched, I found myself smiling at this particular, perfect angel sitting on the shelf among my other angels.

My last stretch ended with my eyes squarely on the newest addition to my angel collection.  And suddenly, I saw what I had not previously noticed about this china cherub.  I understood why someone tossed her into the give-away box.

And she is no less beautiful to me.

It’s the third day of the twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  I seem to have turned another corner.  I don’t know what lies in the road ahead, but I step forward with more certainty.  Life continues.

When I’m in Palo Alto, I always go to Coupa Cafe.  Not just any location:  the one on Ramona Street.  I have dinner at Garden Fresh Chinese Vegan restaurant and then walk a block and a half down Ramona, past the Aveda Salon and a strange, dark bar filled with unhappy-looking couples and tense waiters to Coupa Cafe where Tiffany remembers that I like my coffee in glass mugs.  My lily white spastic hands don’t do well with the little fussy handles of the regular vessels.

Tonight I had dinner at Local Union 271.  A phenomenal curry, with cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms and tofu.  Did you save room for dessert, the waitress gently asked.  Alas, no, I replied, which really meant that I would be strolling down the street for an Evasion and a coupa cafe.

I can’t do an Evasion justice with my description.  It has chocolate ganache, mousse, and pistachio cream at the center.  Last night, I had a Royale, equally delicious.  But the rich, smokey coffee and the smiling servers make this place.  Soft music, pleasant photography on the walls, and a veranda of tables with heaters rising above them.  The wi-fi has no password and if you want, you can swipe a little box at the table with your Smart phone to order. But why would you, when Tiffany or one of her colleagues will take your order, exclaim over the virtues of the dessert which you select, and beam when you compliment the coffee?

Evening falls on Palo Alto.  I had six appointments today, from Infectious Disease at 9:30 a.m. to Neuro-science just before closing at 4:30 this afternoon.  I gave blood for the virus-hunters, wore a safety harness for the balance lab, and nodded when the otologist gently acknowledged that he would not be relying on the tests done in the Midwest.  Nothing personal, he assured me.  I told him that I understood.  They are Stanford after all; what’s the sense of traveling all this way to ask them to draw conclusions based upon somebody else’s data?

I have faced the cheerfully unavoidable conclusion that I like California.  I have no friends here, but that could be a positive.  No one knows about my mistakes, or my failures.  I walk down Ramona Street and people smile at me.  They don’t seem to mind my awkward gait.  The Israeli guy selling “natural botox” woos me into his chair and spends fifteen minutes trying to sucker me into buying his eye treatment without once implying that he thinks I can’t afford it.  Maybe it’s my Ann Taylor dress.  Maybe it’s the fact that I shambled by his glitzy store front with a certain casual air, as though I come this way every evening, not just twice a year.

At the medical center today, Joseph the concierge did not sit behind his desk on my arrival.  But when I rounded the corner to Cafe Via, I saw him reaching for his order at the counter. He turned, and a smile broke across his face.  Mrs. Corley! he exclaimed.  You’re back!  Honest to Pete.  I’ve met this kid three times, four or five months apart, and he remembers my name.  I told my ID doc this story when I saw him a half hour later.  He said, You’re very memorable, Dr. Corley.  He calls me “Doctor” because in his country of origin, it’s the proper title for an attorney.

I speculated that it must be my green hat.  He shook his head.  No, no, Dr. Corley.  It is not the hat.  It is your smile.

I had a spot of trouble today with a check-in clerk at the Neuro-science clinic.  Frustrated, I finally demanded a chair and the supervisor who  had overseen the complicated arrangements for my afternoon treatment.  I got both, and eventually, moved forward with the day’s events.  But I did, in fact, lapse into complaint.  As it turns out, had I not done so, I would have gone away without undergoing a critical component in my day’s scheduled activities.  I nearly lost my cool but I stated my case in low, reasonable tones, and nobody got hurt.  I’m kind of proud of that.

It’s the evening of the last day of the second month of my third “year without complaining”.  I travel back to Kansas City tomorrow, for some reason by way of Milwaukee with a two-hour lay-over.  The day will no doubt be long, and I cannot be assured of any down time to write.  So know this, and know it well:  Despite immeasurable odds, and against all prognostication, life continues.

The baristas at Coupa Cafe on Ramona Street.