I wanna be related to Eleanor of Aquitaine, I thought to myself yesterday.

This wasn’t entirely random.

I had read through a copy of my ahnentafel (genealogical) table, compiled by my grandfather many years ago. I have piles and piles of material from him, arranged in not always helpful ways (more on that in future posts).

My table goes to the 17th generation (if you count me as Gen 1). There are 19 ancestors listed in that generation.

In other words, my grandfather had traced us in various countries to the 15th century; this was his retirement project (and he retired in his forties). His greatest achievement was tracing our Finnish line back to the 1500s.

I hadn’t had a close look at my table in a while–I wanted to go through this one because it had info I didn’t know about my birth father (more on that later too).

As I was flipping into the more distant past, I noticed one of my Holland ancestors (gen 15) was noted as a bastard son of a Duke.

In the Gen 16, section, Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, was listed, with his death year. It’s just a line.

That same section has a few paragraphs under a German relative’s name, with information about the town, German spelling, and how one guy can’t be another guy’s father.

So this Duke seems pretty unimportant, since there are no notes.

But, I realized, if he’s a Duke, we know who his parents are, surely.

Which took me down a rabbit hole. Henry Holland (and his ancestors and relations) were all heavily involved in The War of the Roses. Henry was an asshole by all accounts. He worked as a Constable at the Tower, and the rack (torture device) was nicknamed “Exeter’s daughter.” He ended up in the Tower much later, when his wife’s family (York) was in ascension, since he was loyal to the other side. (His wife? Richard III’s older sister.)

It was perhaps this disloyalty to the Yorks that enabled his wife to eventually divorce him (something rare at the time).

While my (Grand)Daddy recorded the death date, he didn’t note that most historians think he was likely thrown off a ship on orders of the King (while doing a job for him). (The official story was that he fell off and drowned.)

But what does Daddy go into on that page? How the now nonexistent German village’s name might have been spelled.

Henry Holland’s parents aren’t even on the Gen 17 page, though of course we know who they are (he was the third Duke of Exeter, after all).

Henry was a descendant of King Edward III on both sides of his family.

Why have I always been obsessed with the Order of the Garter?

Now I know I’m descended from one of the original knights–and from a Lady of the Garter.

I know about some beheadings.

About being descended from “the Unready.”

And yes, through my relation to this guy:

. . . I am related to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her husband, Henry II.

Today, I’ve traced us back to the 800s, to generation 38. There are other veins to follow, but since they don’t lead to English kings, they probably won’t go back so far.

One name on the tree caught my eye. In Gen 27, Henry I was married to Matilda of Scotland. Her dad was Malcolm III, whom I know as a boy who flees after Macbeth kills his father in the eponymous play. Thus, in addition to the Scottish line I can trace through the Andersons on my maternal Grandmother’s side and the Pagans also in (Grand)Daddy’s line, I’m descended from King Duncan, this guy:

My Masters was on Macbeth, my favorite Shakespeare play.

There are a lot more cool stories in my tree now.

I will read them the way you should read Shakespeare’s Macbeth (not quite history). I will also read them knowing that there are likely mistakes in the record and at least a few men were probably raising children they only thought were theirs.

My (Grand)Daddy was obviously not really interested in these stories of English and Scottish kings. My son’s guess is likely true: once he hit a royal, the fun was over. Everyone else had already built the trees. It was the search that drove him. His discovery that a sale of land happened between his wife’s ancestors and his many generations back was further proof for him that they were meant to be.

He was interested in what happened to the laborers, the peasants, the bastard children, the ones not famous to have a coat of arms.

The bastard son of the 3rd Duke of Exeter, Thomas Holland, had a grandchild (Gen 13) who immigrated to America. And then a long time after that, Bessie Christina Holland married Waito Walter Waltonen (Gen 4). They had my (Grand)Daddy.

Then I went and had a bastard son, shown here, being fed by his Great-Great-Grandma Bessie.

Springtime is officially here, which means allergy season is in full swing. What’s making it worse: I haven’t been able to get my allergy shots this year. My new allergy doctor quit (or something, not sure), so none of us can get the treatment we need. My system is going to farm me out somewhere else, but they can’t see me until the beginning of March, and even then, it won’t be for treatment, but for an evaluation. And I have to go without any allergy medication for a week beforehand. See, they want to treat me like a brand new person who didn’t have a working treatment plan to keep me out of the ER.

I’m using my rescue inhaler every day already. God help me when I have to go off my daily zyrtec and claritin (yes, both: I’m that allergic to every. fucking. thing).

In other news, I’m getting ready for my show on Saturday: I’m headlining at 8 p.m. on 2/19 in Kleiber Hall. I rehearse* every day, and I’m happy with how it’s shaping up.

*Rehearsal consists of me saying the routine out loud while taking a brisk walk around the neighborhood. I carry a pen and paper to write down new tags. I probably am getting a reputation.

I’m still doing pretty well, post-surgery, but I still get fatigued really easily. But it’s hard for me to rest. The boy catches me doing things I shouldn’t and yells at me to go lie down. The file cabinets have been cleaned, I’m trying new recipes, and working on my syllabi for Spring, though.

I’ve also been watching one short film every day this year. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it up when I’m back in the classroom, but it’s been a good New Year’s Resolution so far.

Finally, it’s Valentine’s Day. I’m going to have a quiet one here at home, with Jack.

The green light in the pictures? That’s just a bright bulb on the Christmas Tree.

Yup. It’s still up!

Happy Valentine’s!

In some of my classes, I offer book club extra credit. Students read a book, and we meet during finals week to talk about it.

Several years ago, I chose Maus for my Writing in Social Justice class.

We had a wonderful discussion, but one moment will stay with me forever. One student said Maus taught her about the camps.

The rest of us were aghast. She knew about the Holocaust, right? Yes, but she had never heard of the camps.

She thought all of the Jews and other people the Nazis didn’t like were simply shot on sight.

She had never watched any of the great films: Life is Beautiful, Schindler’s List. She didn’t know where and how Anne Frank died.

A student dedicated to social justice was missing a key part of history.

That’s why we must not ban books; we must read them.

It’s my half birthday! (Yes, I had cake.)

It’s been a little over two weeks since my surgery, which went well, though the immediate recovery didn’t. The doc and I were both relieved the surgery didn’t get cancelled; the nurses hadn’t even been told that was a possibility. I asked the anesthesiologist to use a smaller tube, due to the malformations in my neck and to my TMJ–she did, and I didn’t have a scratchy throat for days or major flaring of my TMJ. Instead, when I woke up, my back was absolutely killing me for some reason–and I was terribly nauseated. For hours.

Even though I was the first surgical patient, I was the last one out. The doctor expected them to admit me, but the nurses decided to send me home at 5 p.m., even though I was puking in the wheelchair down to the car. A little while later, I was on my hands and knees, with bile coming out into the bushes in front of my apartment.

All in all, the boy and I were at the hospital for 11 hours.

Once the nausea cleared, things were much better. I started getting an infection last week, but antibiotics cleared it up quickly. And I’m up and about and off the pain meds faster than anyone anticipated. I think it’s because I’m in pain all the time. If I lay in bed all day every day I hurt, I would be in bed all day every day.

That said, I’m being careful with what I lift and taking it as easy as possible. I get fatigued really easily, so I’m trying to let myself rest.

My shoulder is still messed up, two months after falling. It’s much better than it was, but there are still certain positions I can’t put it in, and I scream when I accidentally try to stretch it above or behind my head.

My friends made sure I had lots of yummy food the first week after surgery.

In other news, I’m sad Louie Anderson died. He has been one of my favorites since I was a kid.

The boy wanted to eat all vegetarian this week, so we’re doing that, including trying some new meat substitutes.

My car reached the unfixable point (more money to fix than I paid for it), so I had to buy another used car–in this market. Still, I got a decent price, all things considered.

It doesn’t have a working CD player, which means the hundreds of CDs, mostly burned into themed playlists, have to be replaced by an MP3 player, which is basically just going to be on shuffle forever. This upgrade hurts my OCD.

I’ve been slowly digitizing some of my old pics. Somehow digitizing apps make things fuzzier than just taking pictures of pictures.

Mostly, of course, I’ve been reading and watching tv. I recommend: Framed: A Sicilian Murder Mystery, Acapulco, Invasion, and Silent Sea.

Last night, I dreamed I was Serena Joy–the one played by Faye Dunaway in the movie adaptation. I was in my step-father’s dining room (lots of my dreams are set in his house). The Commander was dead, and Gilead was trying something new: it was dissolving all marriages and redistributing partners, to increase the chance of successful baby-making.

For some reason, I was going to be married off to a very young commander. I told a confidant that I suspected something would happen to make me a widow again soon after the wedding.

I woke up and told myself to remember this dream, so I could tell you about it today.

As I slipped back into sleep, Serena/I was retelling the dream story to help me remember it. Of course, it morphed into other things. I was all of a sudden Serena beset by suitors, other commanders who had always wished I was theirs instead of Fred’s.

I was trying to decide which suitor would allow me to be freest–for a woman in Gilead.

Next Friday, if I don’t get Covid and if my medical team doesn’t get Covid and if the hospital isn’t completely overwhelmed by Covid, I’m going to have a hysterectomy.

All of the pamphlets warn that I might be depressed, because I won’t be able to have children anymore, but aside from the general concern about having a major surgery, I’m elated to lose it.

When I started birth control after my son was born, I told God (I was a believer then) my terms: I would faithfully be on hormonal birth control until I wanted another child. If I got pregnant beforehand, I would have an abortion.

I expected that at some point I would want another. I expected to get married and build a family. Let me be clear, though: I was a kid myself, and I didn’t know myself very well.

A few years on, I knew I did not in fact want another child. Every time I pictured it, I pictured all of the hard parts: the sleeplessness, the not being able to go to the bathroom by myself for a few years, the arguments over pickiness. I love my son, and, even more importantly, I like him, but motherhood as a practice and vocation didn’t appeal to me enough to start over. Many relationships have either not really started or have ended because I won’t budge on this.

I was also afraid that since my son was so great, I couldn’t possibly get another child I liked. Would another child share our humor? Our affinity for reading and learning over sports? Our intellect?

Having another seemed like hubris, tempting the gods to temper my good fortune.

Having been abandoned by my son’s father when I was seventeen, two weeks before I gave birth, I was also wary to have another child unless I wanted one enough to do it completely alone. I didn’t think I would necessarily be abandoned again, but divorces and deaths happen. Now, too, I know that I don’t ever want to live with a partner again.

Being a single mother is really fucking hard, and I have no desire to repeat it.

So I’m thrilled that I don’t have to worry about an accidental pregnancy anymore. Excited that I can tell all the men my age and older who are just now ready to have children, as women their age approach menopause, that I’m not the one for them and that they won’t be able to think they can talk me into letting half their genes take up residence in my womb.

That’s not to say there isn’t sadness, though; it’s just not the kind the pamphlets warn about.

I’m sad when I think about how my one and only pregnancy, birth, and motherhood should have gone.

It should have been planned.

I should have been an adult.

I should have had even one person say, “Congratulations.”

I shouldn’t have wondered where I was going to live as I held him in the hospital.

I should have known more about who I am.

I should have been able to live as an adult for a while without also being someone’s mom.

I should have been able to date for a while without being a single mom. (So many men were jealous of my son and the fact that I’d carried someone’s child.)

I should have been more financially secure.

I should have been more in step with my friends as they were having kids, so we could have gone through this together.

I should have had fewer people assume I’m my boy’s sister, or sometimes now, even worse, his girlfriend.

I won’t be able to have another child at this time next week, but it doesn’t change anything fundamental. I’m still a working single mom; he’s just an adult now.

And I’m still the woman who wants to hold all the babies. Until they’re gross or crying. I’m still the woman who loves my son and my nieces and nephews. Even when they’re gross and crying.

Christmas was quiet and lovely. We had our traditional orange rolls for breakfast and appetizer lunch. (We tried Trader Joe’s Green Bean Casserole bites–we’re not fans.) The boy wanted Lamb Shawarma, so dinner was an easy crock pot creation. For dessert, we had local salted caramel ice cream in waffle bowls.

We watched the first Simpsons Christmas episode, the Christmas Futuramas, three classic Christmas movies, and two early Eddie Izzard specials.

We sat on couches under blankets and cats.

It was perfect.

(Except for how I worried that there was something in my ear for a long time because of weird noises coming from inside. But then the boy got it out–a stray piece of my hair was touching things and driving me mad.)

Right now, I’m half-watching the new Matrix, after rewatching the originals throughout the week. The first was so astounding all those years ago. The technology is of course not new now, and I prefer Matthew Vaughn’s fight scenes to these. I want to love this series, but maybe I’ve read too many boring, formulaic undergrad essays about whether we’re living in a simulation . . . Spotting all the layers of allusions and myths engage me mentally, and the meta-ness of the film I’m sort of listening to while I type might too, but I don’t think the series will ever have my heart.

And I started forbidding “what if we’re living in a simulation” papers last year.

In the last week (plus, since I left a lot out of the last one), I’ve gotten to see many of my closest friends, I’ve gotten a swell heated blanket, gotten a Margaret Atwood stamp from Margaret Atwood, gotten to see the Banksy exhibit, which I have mixed feelings about, have had to shift my pill times around (it went from five to seven and back to five times a day), made my annual Christmas music mix . . .

I forgot three important details about my colonoscopy last time: how I bled all over the blanket before I went under, when the nurse putting in my IV messed up, how three of my nurses were named Julie (which was convenient when I needed to get one of them “hey, Julie, I’m bleeding all over everything”), and how they did a pregnancy test for everyone except me, not even asking if they needed to, even though had a whole month of fertility possibility!

The best thing that’s happened recently, though, is that Paul, my beloved primary is back. When I went to the ER a few weeks ago, there was a message from Paul about it before I even got back home.

My arm is still fucked up, but my throat is healed from the colonoscopy day, and I have good doctors, and I’m typing in the light of a Christmas tree, so I’m very lucky.

I think it’s been three weeks, so there’s lots.

Anne Rice and Bob Dole died. I wrote about Rice’s passing, but not Dole’s, for whom I had a grudging respect. After he lost to Bill Clinton, he let his splendid sense of humor show. It’s rare to find actually funny Republicans, and I cherish them when I do.

I tripped a fell over two weeks ago, ending up in the ER instead of my very last class of the term. My chiropractor keeps taking down the swelling, but it’s really bad. I can’t move it in some ways at all–including to shave. I can only get deodorant on with a lot of painful noises, and I sometimes scream when I change tops or put on a coat. I probably have a tear.

The quarter ended–and the grades got in!

I had facet injections in my back for the first time. I wish they’d numbed me more.

Even one-armed, I simply had to make Christmas cookies. They shall comfort us this very cold and rainy week.

We finally got the Christmas tree up, but it only has the lights on. We’re very tired.

Complicating matters this week is my colonoscopy and endoscopy. Unfortunately, they decided to intubate me, which has hurt my throat and my jaw. It’s severely inflamed the TMJ pain and arthritis on my right side, so it hurts to talk, and eat, and also not to do those things. Happily, the abdominal discomfort seems to be over. Most embarrassing, though, was how I found myself after I woke. While I had forgone fluids for a long time, and emptied my bladder three times at the hospital, I guess the IV fluids I got while waiting had time to work themselves through. I woke up from my anesthesia having wet myself (and then still had to pee when I got home–maybe I’m a camel?); additionally, I started a good heavy period while while under, so I woke up literally a bloody mess.

Still: I am very happy to have had these tests; we’re waiting for the biopsies to come back, but so far, there’s no cause for alarm.

The car is acting up, but since I can’t drive with my shoulder like this, figuring it out will just have to wait.

In the meantime, I’m trying to balance the desire to see my beloved California family with the desire to be safe from the new variant, indulging in excellent TV, like Station 11, Seaside Hotel, The Expanse, and the BBC Ghosts, and working on getting the next issue of Margaret Atwood Studies out.

And there may be some good news. Mohela said my loans were decoupled back in August, but the Department of Education wouldn’t verify it–and for the last many months, they’ve said I owe double what I do: the original amount to Mohela and the same amount, consolidated, to FedLoan. Last week, I finally got a letter from FedLoan saying the consolidated loans were “paid in full.” I guess, since loans never get decoupled, this was the closest notification I was going to get. And then this week, the DOE finally listed the correct loan amount.

So I’ve filled out the PSLF paperwork again and mailed it in.

Fingers crossed!

I can’t remember who recommended Anne Rice’s vampire series to me when I was a teenager, but I quickly fell in love. I quickly moved on to her other books.

I loved how engrossing they were and appreciated that they were long, so I could stay in those worlds for a long time.

I also loved that so many were set in New Orleans. My stepfather had a time share there–one week a year, it was my home.

In my early attempt to read everything she’d written, I picked up Sleeping Beauty, only to discover S&M. It wasn’t my thing, but my mom and aunt thought it was hilarious that I’d accidentally read porn.

It wasn’t only the Vampire series, though. The Mayfair witches books weaved their spell. The two books I remember most, all these years later, though, are stand-alone: The Feast of All Saints, about free blacks in antebellum New Orleans, and Cry to Heaven, about the castrati in Italy. They’re the books I still own, the ones that survived all the purges and the moves.

I haven’t read an Anne Rice book in a long time. I tried a late entry in the Vampire series a few years ago, and while it felt . . . familiar, it wasn’t anything I wanted to sink my teeth into.

But I will always remember those early days with her books. Once, I was reading Cry to Heaven on a beach. When my boyfriend tried to ask me about lunch, coming back to reality was a struggle–I had to blink several times, to reassure myself I was in fact in Florida and not in Italy. I said we could do whatever my boyfriend wanted, hoping he would let me get back to the cobblestone streets of centuries ago.

I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, but I’m sure Rice’s S&M book was written better.

When my students say Stephanie Meyer made vampires sexy, Antonio Banderas’s Armand rises from his slumber and wraps his lips around my heart.

Tonight, I’m going to raise a glass of very red wine to heartthrobs, New Orleans, and Anne Rice.