by Laurie Wagner | Apr 2, 2024 | Blog
Illustration by Zoe Wagner What if We Already Loved You? 11 years ago, when I started dating again after my divorce, I was excited at the thought of meeting new people, but I was also riddled with nerves. I’d been with my husband for over 24-years, and here I was putting myself out again. Was I still attractive, was I smart enough, funny enough, deep enough, whatever enough. I meant to be myself, but in my anxiousness, I often ended up importing what I though was a better version of myself; funnier, deeper, a better listener, more compassionate, more hip. This was also supported in part by a fair amount of alcohol, which created a false confidence, and a false sense of intimacy, which helped both of us get through the date, because I wasn’t alone in my nervousness, and seemed to choose men who also liked to drink. There was a good amount of wildness, and Oh-my-god, what-was-I-thinking, as well as some experiences that I don’t like to remember. I didn’t get close to too many people, not really. I came to realize that the woman on the dates was a version of me – the one I thought was datable – but I wasn’t really myself. I would save that self for later, when I got to know someone and I could trust the relationship to tolerate my more vulnerable, deeper bits. Sometimes I never got that far, though there were a few people who I did let in. It was a lot of years of this before I realized a couple of things: One, no more...
by Laurie Wagner | Mar 19, 2024 | Blog
A Few Things I Won’t Be Writing About How the 20 something nurse assistant looked down at her clipboard during my appointment and asked me if I was sexually active. And the way I said no – with no qualifiers – no comments about the dating pool for women in their 60’s, or a joke about hormones, how I wouldn’t know one if I slammed into one. It was the simple way I said no, and how I wondered what it meant and whether I should do something about it. Had I crossed over into a new world, a one way passage into a nether nether land from which I wouldn’t return? And after a lifetime where being seen and desired by men had defined so much of my worth, what would this mean? It’s my duty as a writer, as a person who pays attention, to recognize that moment, to part the veil, to sacrifice my facade on all the ways I’d rather be seen; smart, vibrant, strong and desirable – and to see it as a portal – a way to shine a light on all the ways I’m changing. It’s not easy to write about this, but wasn’t that me who told the writers in class today that if there’s something you’re not writing about it will clog the channel, make all other writing nearly impossible, sometimes even making you sick? Aren’t I the one whose favorite jump off line is: A few things I won’t be writing about. 1. The post menopausal weight gain, the fogginess, the exhaustion, and how it reveals so many things I never...
by Laurie Wagner | Dec 15, 2023 | Blog
It helped that I was dirty, that I hadn’t showered in three days, and that what we called “shower” meant standing naked in the sagebrush in the late afternoon sun, in the middle of nowhere New Mexico, and lifting a hose over our heads. It was the miracle of clean water every few days, how there’s nothing like being dirty to have you appreciate your innate smell, your skin. It was the early mornings, so cold that all I could do was pull a pair of jeans over the long johns I’d slept in, then a sweatshirt on top of a t-shirt, a jacket and a beanie, and the way I wore those same clothes all day, every day, for days. It was living out of a small suitcase; a couple of t-shirts, a pair of jeans, long sleeves, enough underwear to get me by, and a sweater, that kept things simple, eliminated choices, kept me less distracted and connected to something more essential, instinctual, more animal, more trusting of what was coming through me. It was the way we cooked, keeping a pot on the stove for days, heating, re-heating, adding stock, a few more vegetables, an egg. And those mornings – coffee, a fire and music – that woke something up inside of me, something clear, something more close to the bone. It was also the mountains, and that endless New Mexico sky, the sagebrush, and the hawks overhead that had me pick up a pen and write without worry, without self consciousness, without the critical editor that can often accompany my task. It was a rare...
by Laurie Wagner | Dec 5, 2023 | Blog
(1) When the llama, who looked to be my age, maybe younger, said he’d been diagnosed with bipolar and depression in his 20’s, he said it so sweetly, so softly. He’d heard about depression, but until he experienced it, he said he had no idea. And because he didn’t have medicine, he relied on his mindfulness practice, separating what was real from what was not. “It was very hard,” he said, looking down and then looking away as if remembering that time. “Very, very hard.” (2) He’d come to the monastery at 9 years old because his father had died. He said families collapsed after the death of the father, so his mother walked with him through the mountains for eight days, arriving at the monastery in Kathmandu for an education. “I cried every day,” he told us – he was close to his father, and it would be a year until he saw his mother again. The monks, feeling for him, excused him from class to go outside and play. (3) At the Nagi Gompa nunnery high in the mountains, it was Ani, the abbess, the head nun who greeted us with a tray of cookies as we entered the monastery, later standing behind a picnic table in the field, ladling yellow Dahl into our bowls for lunch. “Time to eat,” she sang, in the few English words she knew. And when Jeff couldn’t hold his plate, his walking stick, and the banana Ani offered him, she tucked it into his pants pocket for later. “I don’t know anything,” she told us through an interpreter, but we leaned...
by Laurie Wagner | Oct 31, 2023 | Blog
If you find yourself with a pen in your hand, but you don’t know what to write. If you mean to put down a few lines, but you’re speechless, and you don’t know what to say. If you find yourself staying in your pajamas for hours, promising yourself that you’ll get up, that you’ll make something happen, but then the day spins away. If you’ve been unusually down, even though you don’t live near Maine or Gaza or Israel, and you’re not even Jewish or Palestinian, but you’ve noticed a deep grief, and you wonder whether its one thing or many things and whether you can shake it. If you find yourself refreshing the news app on your phone every five minutes, as though you’re waiting for something to happen, but you don’t know what. Even though you know better, even though you know your phone doesn’t have the answer. Maybe you burst into tears for no reason. If so, you’re the third person who’s told me that this week. Maybe you’ve distracted yourself, as I have, with games of solitaire and a TV show about ranchers in Montana who fight over land and cattle, a show with beautiful panoramas of golden valleys and wild horses. Or maybe you saw a show about 20 women in their 60’s and 70’s who are vying for the love of one man who hands out roses to some, but not to all. Maybe you swim, as I do, counting laps, wondering what I’ll have for lunch, or how my mother is doing in L.A., or If I should buy that land in...
