Blog

2024, Blog Writing

I’ve Always Wanted to Get to 100

Susan Greco

It’s that sweet spot between Christmas and New Year’s and a lazy vibe lingers. Ben and Evan (who my sister has cleverly coined “Bevan” – borrowing the “Bennifer” moniker from Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck) came home and in the first hours they were here, something shifted. It was as if the house were a giant Ziploc bag that in recent years had placed Joe and me in the middle and the corners had deflated and flattened. With the Christmas swirl flying about, the corners now were puffed up, and big breezes flew through nudging awake ideas and movement. The din of noise—my mom’s old Singer sewing machine hummed as Ben mended his brother’s robe, the PlayStation games, loud and until all hours of the night, the chatter, the morning ritual of pouring boiling water into not one but two French presses, and our little cat Samantha darting in closets to hide from it all–has cut through the thick stubborn silence and shifted the bag’s contents. I hope the corners stay inflated. 

After our Christmas Eve dinner, which no one lingered over, the lure of the living room TV took hold and football announcers’ voices filled the room. I stayed in the kitchen because I neither understand nor follow football, probably the reason I don’t like it. Our dishwasher has been broken for months and the dishes aren’t going to clean themselves. I remembered Christmas Eves growing up, which felt quiet and clean and dreamy, and we’d stare at the tree mesmerized, like you do when looking at a fire or the ocean. The football this year readily consumed on this most magical of nights interrupted the promise of sweet silence. Does anyone really want to sit and stare at the tree? My hand is raised. I do. Does anyone want to see who sent us a Christmas card and read what they wrote? Oh, half time is about to end? Ok, then, some other time. <sigh> 

Everyone has now gone. Ben’s back home in New York and Joe and Evan are off on a golf trip, so it’s just me here. The dishwasher still doesn’t work yet I keep right on cooking and finding new ways to balance the ever-growing vertical sculpture of clean dishes drying on a rack. One glass couldn’t take any more of the crowding and there was a stunning explosion that projected flashes of chunks and shards an impressively long way. The party is over and the mantels’ garlands have crisped, but these days gave the Ziploc a good shake and its insides now are stirred. Passing Evan’s room, I can see the energy in the Christmas gifts left on the floor and bed covers strewn about. Something indeed has shifted.

Yesterday was sunny and not too cold. I had every reason to get out into it and feel it, but I’m tired and spent from these last few weeks, and with an empty house, I can hide out and rest without explanation. I did too much gearing up for this holiday.

Mel Robbins suggests we answer six questions to jar loose thoughts for the next year and ones about the one we’re nearly finished. I think I need more sleep before I will begin this thoughtful exercise which I’m excited about. When I am low on sleep, I get sad and lonely and that has happened a good bit. Even the Energizer Bunny needs new batteries sometimes, and I realize I need more quiet times. 

It’s been four years of renovation and since Covid and cancer appeared, and they’re each exhausting on their own, but their combination even more so. Sometimes I feel like an inexperienced child looking for a parent who can answer the question, did all this really happen?

We are on the edge of a kitchen demo and it’s killing me that I don’t know when it’ll happen. Constant back and forth from the General Contractor and cabinet guy. Always the promise that it’ll be summer, or December, and now, after the new year. As if I can effectively brace for the lack of a kitchen? It’s where we all go. Where I go mostly. I can’t picture microwaving in the dining room or figuring out how the air fryer in my new toaster oven is going to simplify mealtime. All the food prep will get reduced to opening the fridge and moving something into a microwave, toaster oven or crock pot. Surely doing dishes in a bathroom sink (the only one we will have) can’t go well. We need Draino at the ready as it is. I imagine it will all feel fast. Will we become airport diners? Leaning against a counter and popping in food quickly in a just get it done approach. Get in, get out. Sustenance complete. Check. This could last three months, or it could go on for six. Either way I know I’ll need to find a cozy nook in this dining room food court I’m about to fashion. That I’ve chosen to worry about this as often as I have tells me I’ve got work to do. Quiet down and let it unfold as it will. 

How lucky to even be renovating a kitchen. And that it will come with a working dishwasher (ours has been out for nearly half the year). And a large working oven will be nice as well (ours breathed its last months ago). A level cooktop is coming and with more burners, too, a step up from our two back burners, the only ones that ignite. The sweet little kitchen has cranked out beautiful foods and moments and soon it will be reduced to a pile of rubble. An Emory writing teacher I had years ago once came here for a visit and her jaw dropped when she went in the kitchen. The wall tile is the same as her grandmother had and seeing it flooded her back to treasured times. I hope to remove several tiles and surprise her all these many years later. I will miss the room. I know its strengths and sounds and weaknesses like a dear old friend’s, and I’ve swept up a confetti of dog hair and catnip and crumbs and carrot shavings from its uneven ugly linoleum floor. I once made eye contact with a sweet mouse in here who peered at me from behind the stove. I’m hoping that the new year brings with it a kitchen, and a forward focus and quieter, calmer me.

My mother always told me, “Susie, you talk just to hear yourself talk.” If only she were alive, I could offer up a smart retort, something to the tune of, “Well, where do you think I got this chattiness? Could it be YOU?” You should have heard her. Always with a clever story, on the phone with friends, or entertaining people at our house, but she is right. I love to talk—to myself, the cats, anyone who will listen. I need it to work through things. Seems my sister gets the brunt of it, the stuff I tell no one else, and she is the smartest, calmest, warmest sounding board I know. I’m not sure she’s exactly pinching herself over her lucky lot, but I am. 

I started this Hindsight blog in 2017. Friends who liked various Facebook posts I’d write often suggested I start a blog, and their support propped me up and nudged me to actually do it. What a boost to write something that speaks to someone, because other than talking to hear myself talk, that really is the point. Connection. To know your take on things is like someone else’s, or that you aren’t the only one wrestling with something difficult or experiencing something particularly awe-inspiring, or that your strain of humor can make a person laugh is everything. It’s addictive, this fuel like no other. With the blog came a few setbacks. Initially someone remarked that my blog was not a real blog, and immediately there was that feeling like no one got my Halloween costume. I was exposed, inexperienced, an imposter. Is this any good, even a blog, what’s the point? It’s a personal blog and it doesn’t fit in a neat little box. It’s all over the place. Like me. But those details! Then there was WordPress to wrestle with, but I found a basic template that worked. Doubts would reappear if my posts went unread and unnoticed, but simply writing them fired me up, and so I kept going. Then cancer struck and the posts practically wrote themselves, stories people particularly wanted to read. The election and travels and house construction, and tales of pets and people, too, found their way into more essays.

During a recent memoir class, after reading one of my cancer blogs, one woman noticed something. While she learned all about the details of chemo and radiation, she said she was left wondering how I felt having gone through it all, and in the middle of a global pandemic no less. She thought I seemed a bit detached, disassociated even, in my writing. More like a reporter than a cancer survivor. I think I preferred telling myself things were fine maybe so I could avoid admitting I feared otherwise. You know, fake it ‘til you make it? There were times I felt alone, separate and hopeless, and for my own protection and reputation, blocked access—my own and yours–to these struggles. There’s a strange shame in fully letting you in. I kept weaving hope into it all because there is always hope, but also because the loose ends needed tying up so I could contain and tamp down the worry that kept coming around. I’m also a big fan of bows, so tying a big one around it all felt like I’d finished another story. The irony is I’ve probably only just begun. 

Going forward, I want to mine deeper for the gold, that stuff that is locked up but that can open if you notice how your insides are responding to what is going on outside. There is down deep a craving for more connection, closeness, and what we have in common. More stillness too. Breathing, letting a single thought appear versus opening the door to the dozens that want to take over–that tangled string of flashing Christmas lights that begs you to unravel them and put them up, but you know now is not the time for that. Now is for you. Not everything is an emergency. Every thought doesn’t need to get expressed. Sit with it all. Maybe something bubbles up or maybe it doesn’t. The real time moments are all you’ve got, and only you can take them in. There are no Cliffs Notes for catching up later. The lessons are coming in and will keep coming, but the gate must be unlocked and stay open.

This essay marks 100. One hundred times I had the wherewithal, the excitement, the courage, and the intention to post a story, and every time I did, my own container, my Ziploc, puffed up and the air blew around. There is more to write about, and I might try a longer form project, but I don’t yet know. I am honored and grateful that you signed up to get these posts and that so many of you read them. I would love hearing if you have a favorite post or topic and why it spoke to you. I’ve loved speaking to you and with you, and this conversation has been the whole point all along. 

The new year is a blank slate, a reset, a clean canvas to fill. As 2023 fades into the background, Hindsight and its 100 stories is taking a seat. This isn’t paint by numbers; there is no path our pencil must follow to see the picture unfold. Just as a blog can be whatever you make it, so can the chapters you create going forward. There is much more ahead to see and to share, and I can’t wait to see you there. Lots of love. 

2023, Inspiration, personal growth

Portals

Susan Greco

It’s Christmastime and all the year’s months have led up to now. Like a long simmering stew, December’s broth is rich and layered. Folded in it are bits, some evolved, broken down and now part of the stock, and others float on the surface bobbing around getting noticed when you think to stir the pot.

Like many that came before it, this year has been full of the usual hamster wheel activities, as my friend Sherron calls them, the endless repetition of house and yard work, self-care and grooming, and all the other details you attend to to effectively maintain a body, a home, and connect with family and friends. There is a reliably comfortable cadence to it all, but this buzzy busyness pulls you away from you–the core you, not the one always in the company of others.

When the dust settles or else when you decide to ignore it, there is a whole other world to explore, but it requires you hop off the hamster wheel even while it’s still turning–because it’s always turning, isn’t it? There are doors you can open that you didn’t realize were even there. Others do it all the time, but like a fringe of bangs you let cover part of your eye, I’ve leaned into a routine that isn’t exactly fostering any growth, and you could argue it’s a place to hide. I’m all for simply staying alive and thank God I am, but adding fertilizer, you can grow new shoots that branch off your trunk and climb every which way to reach the light. 

This fall I joined a meditation study conducted by the University of Arizona nursing school. Participants were breast cancer survivors and their partners who have experienced the anxiety such a diagnosis brings. For eight consecutive Saturdays we hopped on Zoom for two hours and learned a boatload about the fascinating science behind meditation and its proven benefits, particularly for breast cancer patients’ outlook and outcomes. These guided meditations transported me to that yummy dizzy place you find yourself after you get a massage, take a deliciously warm bath, or sleep especially well after a day you’ve exercised your body hard. At first it was weird to stare into a screen at everybody and then shut your eyes and try to settle without peeking, but soon the instructor’s voice became a salve I looked forward to each Saturday, and the other couples we connected with in breakout sessions seemed similarly struck. The guided meditation homework was simple enough, and I found it easy to pause my day and zone for ten minutes. The meetings are now over but over several months we will continue to collect saliva samples at various intervals to test our cortisol. I haven’t stayed consistent with my meditation—I know I am taking the least creative route and blaming the holidays—but I feel like now at least I know how to do it, how good it feels, and how little it takes. It all adds up to something in the positive column, so when you feel like pausing your busyness, it is reliably there and waiting like a good friend I plan to stay in touch with.

I also enrolled in a Zoom memoir writing class with five other writers who each week shared stories after which we’d each thoughtfully respond. Class often would run long, well into the dinner hour, but who cares when you’re doing something that lights you up? No longer locked in a vacuum, my words echoed in the grand volume of my dining room before settling onto the group’s hands, leaving them each with unique thoughtful impressions they shared. I’ve never indulged myself in this way and soaked in so much feedback or been able to formulate real time impressions of others’ work, but I now know I want more. These meetings gave me the best parts of my college English classes—reading interesting material and analyzing it to death—but it offered a far more intimate experience (just 6 of us plus the teacher) and with no grades, the challenge was simply to show up as yourself and share. Think it’s easy? Think again. These people were each brilliant in a million different ways and interpreting each other’s work brought an indispensable perspective. A few of us have since met for coffee and maybe we will keep up here and there. Even if we don’t, just to know these kinds of people exist is enough for me to know there’s more out there if I want it. 

A few weeks ago when describing this writing class to someone, I said it’s been like a portal for me, a way in to something fascinating that dials up a light inside me. I think these portals are everywhere, that is, if you decide to hunt for them, and the resulting light is blinding in the best of ways.

Finally, I discovered a book that’s now new, but new to me. Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening struck chord after chord, so I will leave you with a few bits of his wisdom:

1.  No amount of thinking can stop thinking.

2.  In release, we begin.

3.  The flower doesn’t dream of the bee, it blossoms and the bee comes.

4.  Live your worries through, and your spirit will wake from its fever, and you will want others like soup.

5.  Keep the colors wet.

6.  We are so unused to emotion that we mistake any depth of feeling for sadness, any sense of the unknown for fear, and any sense of peace for boredom.

7. Repetition is not failure.  Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind.

8.  If you try to comprehend air before breathing it, you will die.

9.  The pain was necessary to know the truth, but we don’t have to keep the pain alive to keep the truth alive.

10.  No matter where we dig or climb, we come upon the fire we left untended.

Home Renovation, Hopefulness, Uncategorized, Victorian Home

This Old Sink

Susan Greco
She’s a beauty

There’s been an old sink in an outbuilding on this property for years, and my cursory research suggests it dates to the 1880s. It’s a wide marble sink with a circle bowl, and the stone and metal faucets are worn. The marble has that yummy dull patina marble gets over time. Veiny and milky grey, and its honed matte finish and etchings tell generations of stories. This old house predates plumbing, so I can only imagine what a luxury a sink must have been with hot and cold water running out of separate faucets–like little magical rivers!

The marble has several rust spots and after trying several rust cleaners, I found it’s even better to create a DIY mixture called a poultice from hydrogen peroxide and baking soda, with enough water to give it the consistency of peanut butter. You apply it only to the rust-colored area and seal it with plastic wrap you’ve taped down. Leave it at least 72 hours and then clean it off and wipe it vigorously with a soft cloth. This worked for me, and the rust seemed to fade slightly. If you are super careful, you can also lightly run sandpaper over it which will eat into the rust layer and lighten it further. It also can scratch the marble, however, so you must take great care to not etch it further. At some point, you realize a slight amount of rust is okay since you’ve been at this for weeks, making various potions and poultices, and perhaps it’s time to move on to the next challenge before you: the faucets. 

Cold faucet on left where hot should be–maybe a brain boost?

The faucets looked dullish green and oxidized, and they weren’t responding to various methods I’d used to clean them. After more research I learned the green corrosion isn’t necessarily a bad thing and found this explanation: 

Although it makes sense to think of the green patina on the exterior of the bronze as a disease or a flaw, it’s a corrosion that protects the material inside. The greenish corrosive layer that coats the surface of a bronze faucet after repeated exposure to air and moisture is a protective shell that prevents the metal alloy from sustaining further damage and rotting or becoming porous. The coating can be seen as a good thing, indicative of this material’s ability to withstand temperature fluctuations and dampness.

Too perfect to carve

Still, I wanted to get under the charming patina and see what came before. Wandering the hardware store yesterday I came upon a product called Brasso, which is designed for cleaning and polishing seven different metals, including bronze. I found a reputable marble cleaner as well, and maybe the most perfect pumpkin I’ve ever seen (and at 30% off!). I felt as if I’d scored big and came away with a renewed energy to roll up my sleeves and get to work, now with a satisfying pride that only comes with commitment and tenacity–and hopefully the right products. 

Samantha has plans

The cat has her own project and is certain she can climb into the kitchen ceiling and maybe even on into the outdoors. For now I’ve nailed up an old sheet, but she remains terribly entertained at the possibilities and the new windows on the world she can now look through.

For my project, I had to liberally tape off these faucets so the surrounding marble wouldn’t be further traumatized by chemicals, and then I set to work. I started with a microfiber cloth and alternated between that and paper towels. After some effort, I saw a little green come off on the towel, but not enough to convince me it was working. I kept at it though because where there’s a little green, surely there is more. For the better part of an hour, I applied copious amounts of Brasso to my cloth and rubbed. And rubbed. And rubbed some more. I began to see light, hope and the loveliest shiny metal coming out. A number of distracting dark specks wouldn’t lift, so I employed my sandpaper trick I’d used on the rust, and they faded into the metal. What I’m left with is gracious and stunning and shiny. I think it must be bronze, but it resembles copper. Shiny like a penny.

Hot “Before”
Hot “After”

How long have these faucets been waiting in the wings for their rebirth? If this house could talk! All along, the green corrosion coating has been protecting them, saving their luster and shine from the elements until someone is curious enough to lure it out of hiding. 

I can’t help but think of our own coatings and hardened shells we wear to protect us from the hardness of the world, yet how much beauty there is within all of us and always has been.

breast cancer

The Sooner The Better

Susan Greco

Hey, it’s me again. I know the world is terribly troubled and noisy and you’ve a mile long list of things to do. But like other cancer clubbers I feel as if October, Cancer Awareness Month, has once again given me the green light to take off the breaks and plow forth with this pink awareness evangelism I’m about to spew. I remember these women before my diagnosis when I was blissfully ignorant. They were everywhere. On tv, on posters at bus stops, doctors’ offices, marching in the streets. They all seemed to have this smile I found incongruous with the cause that had them marching in the first place. Lock eyes with one of them and she might see right through you and know you haven’t scheduled that mammogram, have you? 

This blissful ignorance of which I refer were those years when I sauntered into the doctor and got the mammogram and went about life unencumbered, and the letter always showed up in my mailbox with the nothing to see here box checked. There was that one time when there was a call back but it turned out to be nothing. I always landed on my feet. Until I didn’t.

I recall during many a mammogram the tech often would remark about what dense breasts I had. She always seemed surprised at what my tissue presented on screen and there was almost this Little Red Riding Hood delivery with a, “My what DENSE TISSUE you have!” What’s a patient to do with that remark? Turns out, there is plenty you can do, beginning with talking to your doctor. These days much more is known about dense breast tissue. Doctors know dense breast tissue makes breast cancer screening more difficult and it increases the risk of breast cancer.

Mayo Clinic covers it well here: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/mammogram/in-depth/dense-breast-tissue/art-20123968

So back to my agenda. We can all agree that mammograms don’t rise to the top of our list. We are busy, many of us with jobs and kids and partners and pets, all vying for our attention. Signing up to be flattened on a cold metal machine just doesn’t seem all that important. We are young and we are healthy, and it doesn’t run in our family, so we will do it when we do it. Also, we are scared. What if they find something?

Wait just one minute!

We think we can wait until our schedule opens up, until it dawns on us again, or when our doctor pesters us again next year to make the appointment. But you know what doesn’t wait? Cancer. Yep, that’s right. It likes to stay busy. It’s predictable that way. 

Those of us who’ve had teenagers in the house know what can happen. Parents schedule a night out or a short weekend away and then what? Suddenly there’s a party at your house, and not one you planned. The guest list keeps growing and things can easily get out of control. 

With mammograms and self-exams we can take the reins and ensure no party gets planned or if one does, we can throw ammo at it and create an undesirable environment should any visitors dare show up again. 

So let’s shut down a party before it even begins. Get it done. Get that mammogram and do your own self-exam. It’s a good habit to start and you can stay on top of things. One less thing to worry about. 

I’ve been visited by these partyers and I’d rather you not be. There is lots of clean up, lots of expense, worry, and none of it feels good. So let’s not get this party started at all. It’s your body, your house, and you can reinforce those locks and make a party at your place too difficult to bother with. 

It can be scary, I know, but do it anyway. Schedule it, feel yourself, and put it behind you, until the next month or year when it’s time to do it again. Make it routine. You don’t have to join a march or answer to anyone, like me, who may be bugging you about your breast health. But your body is counting on you to watch out for it, and I believe you can and should. 

So please, get to it. I love you. 

Humor, Travel, Uncategorized

Belly Laughs & Brassieres

Susan Greco

They say less is more. That feeling of shedding things which no longer work for you, are broken, or are duplicates. These items are dead weight and likely never did spark joy, and they certainly don’t now. Pluck them from their spot on a table and magically the air flows freer. And your mind follows suit.

Just how many tchotchkes must a person amass in a lifetime? Is it to fill a blank tabletop, like a voice fills a silence, or maybe certain objects tug at one’s heartstrings scoring an invitation to live their lives out in our homes? Or could it be there’s a sale and getting a deal clouds our decision making?

This issue with stuff is not mine alone. It’s all of ours, and the people we share spaces with bring their baggage to the table, some acquiring more bags when already there are plenty, and some rarely pronouncing a bag primed for dismissal when it’s clearly time. Once added to the fold, these belongings sit, occasionally getting dusted and moved around, but mostly, they block the flow and if large enough, the view too.

One bizarre knickknack appeared months ago in my friend Connie’s beach condo which she and her husband co-own with another person. It’s one of dozens of things that have ended up in the place over the years, a growing collection of stuff the other owner can’t resist, many such items in disrepair and no longer useable. There are even notes he’s posted instructing that all condiments (outdated or not) stay put, despite them cluttering refrigerator shelves and leaving a shabby impression for incoming renters.

It’s become clear to Connie that the revolving door letting things in must be malfunctioning because once inside, the way out is blocked. It’s one thing to hang on to the occasional appliance that no longer works, tucking it away in a cabinet in hopes someone will get around to fixing it. It’s another to stow four of them–blenders in this case–each with various essential parts missing, and none adding up to a whole, especially when a perfectly fine blender sits on the bar in plain view ready for use. It begs the question, why haven’t these items yet been escorted into recycling heaven? To their credit, the orphaned blender components are at least hidden behind a lower cabinet door, but that was not the case for one such gaudy item the other owner, on a visit down, left front and center on a living room table. 

Not typically a complainer, Connie, however, several times pointed out this silver sparkly mass to us as if to make sure we realized its addition to the décor wasn’t her doing, but also to communicate her disdain for its existence, which she found brutally detracting from her sacred happy place–and perhaps her guests’ too. Having too much stuff can even be dangerous as Connie found out. She nearly cut herself because a broken glass platter had been shoved between two pillows on the top shelf in the Owner’s closet and she’d placed her hand directly on the cut piece when she went to pull it out.

We all see things differently, but the litmus test seems to be if you move or remove an item and it is never again noticed or needed, as has been the case for several things that found their way into the condo before and have fallen apart and been removed since, perhaps it belongs with someone else, somewhere else, including the trash, particularly if it sparks not joy but despair. That at least was our thinking.

On further inspection it became clear that this object, whose bizarre form took inspiration from sea coral and organ pipes and appeared liberally cloaked in Reynold’s Wrap, was mass produced, and by all accounts, just plain ugly. It didn’t require an intervention to convince Connie it needed to go, but since she didn’t bring it into the space, it technically wasn’t hers—same for the broken blenders and strange and useless knickknacks—so there was naturally a hesitancy to act. Although we were merely guests, after a few trips to this pretty beachfront condo we’d become equally invested in protecting the calm this place brought. After enough banter about the thing over the course of several days and in the spirit of friends helping friends lighten their load, the four of us developed a plan.

We couldn’t just trash it although it would certainly be a convenient route to take, but that would be wasteful as well as deliberately inconsiderate. Instead, regifting it was its way out and ours too. But who or where would be the deserving recipient? Adjacent to the condo is the Flora-Bama, a mainstay of the area which opened in 1964, and describes itself as a down-home waterfront bar/grill which offers oysters, pub grub & live music every day. So close is the Flora-Bama to the state line that you can step four inches out of its west door in Florida and find yourself in Alabama. It has a gritty vibe, welcoming bikers and beach babes alike, and offers that certain je ne sais quoi unique to dark Floridian watering holes. 

Celebrated musicians have played there including Kenny Chesney as well as the late Jimmy Buffet, who once dropped by to sit in with the house band and tore up the place with his music, triggering a noticeable growth in the lounge’s hanging underwear. Also famous are the Flora-Bama’s Bushwackers, a frozen alcoholic drink made with Kahlua, rum, creme de cacao, and cream of coconut, which was first invented in 1975 in St. Thomas, USVI, but has since become popular in Florida. 

On our visits down to Connie’s, we’ve always enjoying taking in the Flora-Bama, either walking to it from the beach for a Bushwacker, or for a $5 cover charge experiencing an evening there of live music and people watching, and of course another Bushwacker made extra special with a light rum floater on top. It was a no brainer that this item belonged there, but how would we do it? They card you at the door, rifle through your bags for rifles and other such crazy things some folks consider toting and thankfully and thoughtfully they screen your entry. But would the silvery blob make it through Flora-Bama security? Could it be that we were meeting a friend for her birthday and bringing this along as her gift? A little tissue paper and a gift bag and voila, the gift and celebration were born! 

Connie joked with the security man at the door, who looked through her purse and peered into the bag, that she hoped the gift didn’t look like a brain. “Indeed it does,” he remarked with a smirk, but nonetheless with our wrists now stamped we were ushered in, the giftbag too. The place is dark inside with different levels of bars and stages and has the whimsy and noise of Atlanta’s now closed Masquerade, but offers its own unique clientele and folksy Floridian grit.

We found a corner table in a small bar where a trio sang country folk covers. Our server immediately noticed the gift bag, its bulbous silveriness peering through the tissue, which we would later unveil at our pretend gifting celebration. Unwrapped, it gleamed in this dark bar and when the server returned, it was clear an explanation was in order. “It’s her birthday!” we chimed in, pointing not to a single woman, but wildly unpracticed, pointing to each other and, laughing hysterically, clearly unable to correctly identify the birthday girl. The four of us smiled like a Cheshire cat, each with a mouse tail dangling from its mouth.

Not sure if she coveted it for her own coffee table or else couldn’t believe someone’s extraordinarily awful taste, but she fixated on it each time with a frightened uneasiness as if it might move, as she looped back periodically to check on us. We felt an unspoken lightness come over us with this silvery creation now out of the condo, out of the bag, and out into the night to acclimate to its new environs. In the distance, bras hung from rafters and coat hooks or from any old place you could get a bra to hang, and on each were messages written in Sharpie ink. It’s unclear exactly how or when this tradition started, but the sheer volume of bras was impressive. These foundations aren’t just bar art, and I’ve since read that “bra slinging” fundraiser events at the Flora-Bama have raised money for groups supporting breast cancer research and other causes. Curious, I wanted in.

It had been several months that I’d been on a hunt for a comfortable strapless bra that would fit and appear effortless, a tall order, like the bra itself, which I still hadn’t filled. The one I wore this evening, the only one I owned, was over a decade old, and I didn’t much like it. To its credit it was a likable neutral nude color, and it usually didn’t show, even under my barest halter tops. However, its underwire cut into my ribs every damn time leaving my skin with grooved indentions, and the padded cups were ill fitting and gapped and formed indentions in their center.

Like all alcohol, the Bushwackers were a diuretic, so I made my way past the bar and the band to the ladies’ room. Inside the stall I pulled off the whalebone undergarment and placed it rolled up inside the pocket of my dress. Returning toward our table and passing the bar, I asked to borrow a Sharpie, but they suggested I could purchase one in their gift store downstairs. With the cover charge and two Bushwackers I’d already invested, I had little interest in purchasing a pen. Besides, I had a ballpoint in my purse and a bra in my pocket, so I was all set for this little craft project. 

As if huddled for a yearbook signing, we girls took turns with the bra, passing it and the pen around, covering our work from each other and our server as we scribbled silliness across the cups and strap. Elsie got first dibs and assigned the cups an asymmetry, scrawling “B” on one and “C” on the other. I gave the garment a succinct biting parting shot with “Fuck” on one cup, “U” on the center strip, and “Cancer” on the other cup, and softened the harshness with an “xoxo Susan” before passing it to the next girl who thoughtfully scrawled her own message. When we were satisfied with our work, I modeled our creation, and a clicking of IPhones captured the moment before we fastened it around the sculpture—a perfect fit! 

Once we’d settled our bill and were walking toward the door, our server stopped me and motioned to our table. “You left your sculpture,” she noted, to which I remarked, “It’s okay. I’m good.” There was nothing left to say, and I walked off risking the urge to turn around and take in her expression. I hope on my next trip down I will find this strapless wonder proudly hanging among the others, and I hope the sculpture sparks joy for whomever decides to adopt it, the Flora-Bama or otherwise. 

I know I feel lighter, and I imagine Connie does too. And for you ladies listening, I want you to feel lighter too not only this month, October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness month, but each month going forward. So take off your bras and check your breasts because cancer lurks in one out of seven of us, whether you live in Flora, Bama, or anywhere else. If you can feel it, you can find it, and that means you can fight it. Knowledge is power. Take yours. Love you.