Little Girl

You were five, I was twenty-nine.

While your mother and I laughed and talked of our business plans and then laughed some more, you quietly moved closer until you were snuggled into my side on the couch. Your mother took notice and told me you’d never done that, that you were always shy around strangers. Your mother loved signs and she took this as a good one.

I grew to love you and your brother. I loved our Chuck E. Cheese outings. I loved our Amy Grant shout-singing sessions as we drove in my red SUV, which you’d named Rosy. I loved that crazy Thanksgiving when neither your mother nor I had much money so we pooled whatever freezer-burned items we had and invited anyone else without plans to join us with whatever freezer-burned items they had. Nearly twenty people crammed into my one-bedroom apartment and you spent the night rubbing my dog’s belly as you snuggled into your mother’s side on the floor.

When your mother asked me to care for you and your brother if something ever happened, I agreed without pause. A year later, cancer happened. You and your brother, seven and nine at the time, watched as she hemorrhaged on the floor of the public library before she lost consciousness. That must have been terrifying for you.

It took a decade for the cancer to claim your mother, so strong was her desire to be there for you kids. You and she had a fight the night before she died and when she asked you to stay with her, you refused. You never forgave yourself for that, no matter how many times I told you she already had.

When you asked me to perform your wedding ceremony two and a half years ago, it was I who wanted to refuse. I didn’t think you and your betrothed were ready for the commitment of marriage, despite the baby growing within your womb. But stronger than my misgivings was my desire to remain a part of your life, to stay connected to you for those times you’d need to figuratively snuggle into my side. 

Having your own daughter changed you. Leaving your marriage changed you. You rose to the challenge of being a single mother and it seemed that all the previous false starts of your life were drifting farther and farther into your history. You held a steady job in a stable company. You got promoted. You bought a better car, one more suitable for transporting a toddler to and from daycare during the workweek. And when I came to visit you a few months ago I told you how proud I was of you, how happy I was for you and for the joy you had found in motherhood.

But I missed the signs.

I didn’t see how much you were showing your brave mommy face to the world while battling your demons in private. And now I want only to rewind the last 48 hours, to board a plane, to come to your apartment and sit on the couch with you. I want to tell you that you are loved—LOVED!—and that whenever life overwhelms, you must trust that things will get better, that they always do. 

Right now, I want nothing more than to pull you close and snuggle you into my side.

Farewell, Little Girl

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My goddaughter, Christine, had no life insurance or savings to secure her beautiful and funny little girl's future. If you would like to help, please join us in supporting Reilly and ensuring that this sweet two-year-old has the funds she needs to launch a college education or career when she turns 18. It takes a village, and every bit helps. Many thanks in advance for supporting the Christine Young Memorial Fund. Feel free to private message me with questions regarding the fund: Lauren@LaurenWardLarsen.com. 

Goody Two Shoes

A few weeks ago, I hosted my co-author on a new book project at my home in Boulder, so we could begin outlining the story of how he gave one his kidneys to a woman from Ethiopia, whom he’d never met. Just because.

Harold is tall and affable and has a bushy grey mustache that dominates his face. He’s the kind of guy you meet once and feel as though you’ve been pals forever. He met his wife on a blind date and recently celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary. He has a daughter, whose artistic creativity he regularly showcases on his Facebook page. He works with his best friend from high school who was the other half of the class-clown duo, their late ‘70s “Joke of the Day” morning program a huge hit until banned by the principal for overstepping the line.

Harold chaired his neighborhood’s annual blood drive in Virginia for years until he and his family relocated to Los Angeles, where he launched a new neighborhood blood drive program. And in between the blood drives he coordinates, he commutes to his local Red Cross to donate blood every eight weeks. Like clockwork. Just because. 

To put it succinctly, he’s a true mensch.

Since first encountering the force for good known as Harold, I’ve had the privilege of also meeting the recipient of his gifted kidney, a diminutive and soft-spoken woman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1987 and then spent more than a decade on the kidney transplant list. That the paths of these two conspicuously dissimilar people crossed in a manner so profound makes their saga a true love story, not in the romantic sense, but in the unconditional sense the Greeks called “agape”—a selfless love that neither demands nor expects anything in return.

While Harold and I were writing together at a coffee shop during his recent visit, a woman whose misfortune was apparent approached the outdoor area where he and I sat with our laptops. Her weather-worn skin and long stringy hair piled haphazardly atop her head suggested a life hard-lived. Wearing thread-bare jeans and a ratty faded print top, she looked directly at Harold, as if deliberately selecting him from the array of people that filled every table on the patio. 

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, her gaze never wavering. “Could you give me some money so I could get a meal?”

Many of the coffee shop’s patrons—myself included—had turned to face the woman during this encounter, but quickly returned to their laptops and books and lattes once they heard her request. Not Harold. Without fanfare, my giant altruistic buddy stood and walked to her side, discreetly pulled a ten from his wallet and engaged in a brief and muted conversation before returning to our table. Before I could say it, Harold cut me off. “I’m not a goody two shoes. I’m not.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, smiling playfully because I’d just witnessed yet another example of this man’s kind and gentle approach to having an impact in the world. “That woman,” Harold said, “that’s my mom. That’s my wife. That’s my daughter.” And I got it. I totally got it.

I believe this essence of agape dwells within us all. It’s there. It’s real. And in giving expression to it—as a pint of donated blood, or a ten dollar bill for food, or any number of other ways—we multiply its impact exponentially. 

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Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, free.  Click here and go to the link below the "Buy the Book" button.  Zuzu's Petals is also available on Kindle and Nook.  Hardcover signed and inscribed copies are available at  www.laurenwardlarsen.com. Happy reading!

If She Dies...

The story goes like this: After receiving the “you’d better come now” phone call from our mother, my sister Karen arrived in San Francisco on the 5^th of 38 days I would spend in the intensive care unit. I was nearing the triple-digit mark in pints of blood transfused, and apparently – though I can’t confirm this because I was comatose at the time – I looked like hell.

My brother, ever the family patriarch since our father’s untimely death when we were kids, felt the need to warn Karen before taking her into my hospital room. “Heads up,” Tim said to her in the ICU hallway. “Lauren is twice her usual size and looks as if she’s been floating facedown in a river for weeks. It’s not a pretty sight.”

They entered my room and took their places on either side of the high-tech bed, where Karen – both my best friend and nemesis growing up – got her first glimpse of me: bloated, unconscious, amber-yellow skin, lips curled back from my teeth, and tubes, wires, and machinery crowding and connecting to my barely functioning body. Despite years of working with the sick and dying in hospitals and nursing homes, Karen’s expression betrayed her shock that the ghastly and unresponsive body in the bed was indeed her little sister. It was at this point that my brother leaned across my distended abdomen (thank you, liver failure) toward my sister and said, “If she dies, I get her bike.”

It’s an age-old family joke that elicits a scowl from our mother every time my siblings and I say it to one another, usually when one of us is embarking on a lengthy journey or precarious endeavor. “I love you” has never come easily for my family, and humor – served with a healthy dose of “noogies” – was our preferred expression of affection growing up. Tim’s utterance of those seven words, at a time most would deem highly inappropriate, brought an immediate smile to Karen’s face while simultaneously incensing the attending nurse, who hadn’t yet come to know, or appreciate, my family’s sick sense of humor.

The off-color jokes continued over the coming weeks, most frequently during the worst of times. While sitting in the ICU waiting room after receiving particularly disconcerting news about my prognosis, my family and a few close friends had a group meltdown. Not one of them was able to muster any of the optimism they had taken turns providing when one or another of them would lose faith in my ability to recover. Then, without warning, my sister started laughing. “She can’t die,” she said with such certainty the others stopped crying long enough to hear her reasoning. “Why not?” someone asked. “Because,” Karen said, as if stating the obvious, “that would deprive us of the pleasure of killing her for putting us through this nightmare!” And with that, the tension broke and tears were transformed to laughter, offering the briefest of reprieves – but a reprieve nonetheless. 

Inappropriate? You bet. Lacking tact? Yup. Necessary for my family as they dealt with the devastating probability that I wouldn’t pull through? Absolutely!

Not only do I enjoy hearing the dark humor anecdotes of my time spent in the ICU, but I applaud my siblings for having had the courage to “go there.” Sometimes, the only way to face the horrific is with irreverence and absurdity. In the toughest of times, I find that humor is like chocolate: the darker it is, the better it is for you.

"No, you can't have my bike."

And I'm happy to report that my bike remains unequivocally in my possession.

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Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, free.  Click here and go to the link below the "Buy the Book" button.  Zuzu's Petals is also available on Kindle and Nook.  Hardcover signed and inscribed copies are available at  www.laurenwardlarsen.com. Happy reading!

Cruise Connections

Ever since she could speak – or so it seems – my daughter Clare has asked to go on a cruise. My husband, Jeff, would rather stick a fork in his eye than subject himself to being “trapped on a floating hotel with two thousand drunk strangers.” Me, I don’t mind the floating hotel part, but the frat party atmosphere I imagined as being fundamental to a cruise was something I outgrew in my 20s…when I could often be found at the center of many a chugging contest.

This past February, with Clare’s 13^th birthday looming and the pressure mounting to top her previous birthday celebration (think: stretch limo filled with girls in “Disney Princess Reject” costumes laughing and screaming and singing their way around Boulder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBtPKpP8_mc), I stumbled upon 300,000 credit card reward points I didn’t know I had. 

Helllloooo, Carnival Cruise Lines and Happy Birthday, Clare! 

Floating Hotel, here we come!

Within hours, I had booked flights to Los Angeles, a cruise to Mexico, even paid the standard gratuities – all with points. Clare and I left last Monday – coincidentally Jeff’s birthday; I told him his birthday gift was that he didn’t have to go with us. 

To my surprise, I discovered that while, yes, half the boat seemed to be liquored up before departure, the other half were Mormons, able to balance out the more alcohol-prone passengers. Clare and I were assigned to a dinner table with six people: four girls who had recently graduated from high school and two moms, all of them Mormon. 

While I quickly learned that our religious beliefs were quite different, I peppered each of them with questions to discover something we might have in common, a connection of some sort. Why? Because I truly believe that if we dig deep enough we can find some overlapping experience, belief, desire, or value with anyone, regardless of our obvious differences.

One of the moms, Heather, asked me what I did for a living and, well, you know where this conversation went: the life-saving impact of volunteer blood donors. Immediately, one of the young women’s eyes lit up, and while her friends’ expressions reflected their distaste for needles, Stacy told me that she had recently made her very first blood donation. I asked her how old she was. “Seventeen,” she said. I told her that I got to meet a group of my actual blood donors once and that one of them was also only seventeen when she had decided to participate in her high school’s blood drive and her blood then made its way to my bedside in the ICU. I told her how each one of my blood donors had made it possible for me to hang out longer on earth, even to be on this cruise with my daughter. I told her that without every single one of those pints of blood I received, the adorable kid sitting next to me (yes, Clare blushed) would be growing up without a mom.

At that point, Stacy seemed to understand that by sharing the story of how I got to personally thank some of my blood donors I was actually thanking her on behalf of her blood recipient. And she got it. Sure, it was only an hour of her time, and sure, a lot of kids had done it. But now she seemed to understand how amazing and generous her gift of blood had been. She might have even understood that a connection – if only in spirit – is forged with every pint of blood that someone chooses to donate anonymously. The way I see it, all those patients in need of blood transfusions are really just “friends we’ve never met.” And who wouldn’t want to help a friend?

No matter our politics, religion, socio-economic status, age, musical tastes, or whether we prefer our Philly cheesesteaks “wit Whiz” or “widdout,” blood – both the giving and the receiving of it – is one of the most universal connections we will ever experience in life. How cool is that?

Blood-red Virgin Daiquiris and Stephen King--For the Non-Mormon, Non-Drunk Passengers

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Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, free.  Click here and go to the link below the "Buy the Book" button.  Zuzu's Petals is also available on Kindle and Nook.  Hardcover signed and inscribed copies are available at  www.laurenwardlarsen.com. Happy reading!