In 2001, I stress fractured my left foot in a typical bout of ALC hubris: Despite increasingly intense pain, I kept kickboxing. The cure for an activity-related injury could only be more activity,  or so I thought, and after those tiny, delicate bones in my left foot were good and fractured, my body got the last laugh. The border collie in me cast wild eyes about for a new outlet for my energy, and spying a how-to book that my children got in a Chick-Fil-A kid’s meal, I decided to take up swimming. The soggy book and I made it to the pool a few times a week, and after I taught myself how to swim all wrong, I joined an adult swim team.

My time on that team is its own story. It is one I need to write, if for no other reason than it got me writing. The team needed a newsletter, and as a full-time lawyer with two very small children, I desperately needed yet another time commitment. As I quickly learned, swimming is not the NBA: There are no trades, there is little drama, there is not a never-ending season. So I would write about swimming some, and then I would write about the world around me even more, and people in varying degrees of chlorination would read “Gutter Talk,” which is what I called the weekly newsletter.

Sometimes we start in unlikely places. And sometimes things — even enjoyable things — end for unlikely reasons, for I was a swimmer with a bad sensitivity to chlorine.

This was, to put it mildly, hard.

Hard or not, I was still me, and as undeterred as ever, I kept swimming. Over the next six years, I swam my way right into multiple bouts of bronchitis, an elephant constantly sitting on my chest, and incredible fatigue. Even better, I swam my way right into asthma, four prescriptions every single day (Advair, Rhinocort, Albuterol, and Claritin), and my very own pulmonologist, Dr. Porter. I would see Dr. Porter twice a year for maintenance, more if I got sick, and the beginning of every single visit played out exactly the same. I would arrive at the window and announce that I had an appointment with Dr. Porter. The receptionist would practically beam at me, and ask, Did you bring doughnuts?

Doughnuts? I would wonder. I mean, I enjoy the occasional doughnut as much as the next person, but I would never shamelessly ask a near-stranger if she had brought them to me. For one thing, I think we all know this truth: Doughnuts are best acquired in the name of philanthropy, a purchase from a neighbor’s child to aid a band, a school trip, a swim team. The sugar just tastes sweeter. For another thing, this was a doctor’s office, for heaven’s sake, and when did doughnuts become the coin of the realm?

I finally asked one day about why the staff kept shaking me down for doughnuts. The answer? They thought I was a pharmaceutical rep. But I wasn’t. I was a hard-headed patient ignoring the warnings of Dr. Porter and Chris that chlorine was doing a number on my lungs. My lungs eventually got a reprieve when my station wagon got T-boned by an errant SUV. The resulting shoulder injury was a rather drastic, but terribly effective, way to cure the breathing issues.

Problem solved.

If I were more of a problem solver, I would have figured out on my own why my ears, the area behind my ears, and my neck line itched. I had no idea — just that any scratching would be the death of me — and then I started breaking out in rashes all over my torso: First the chest, then the back, then my right side. After months of trying desperately not to itch and watching the migration of raised welts up, down, and all around, I finally broke down and saw the dermatologist on Monday. (No one asked for doughnuts, by the way.)

I have a sensitivity to shampoo and conditioner.

So I purchased the product offered by the dermatologist, a brand called Free & Clear. It is completely free and clear of irritants, which is a nice way of saying that I no longer smell like the love child of a coconut and rain forest every time I wash my hair. The bottles are hilarious. Since its users are a captive audience — tormented and desperately itchy souls advised to use the product by their dermatologists — Free & Clear also describes its advertising and product design budget. The bottles remind me of cans of generic vegetables, circa 1981, white paper cylinders emblazoned with CORN in blocky black letters. They look like they belong on a cheap movie set, one where no one wanted to pay for product placement. But my hair is clean, even if it smells only of hair and lacks a certain sub-tropical luster.  And for the first time in ages, I don’t itch.

Perhaps it was my own experience with irritants and sensitivities that kicked in when Chris woke up sick Wednesday morning. Stress is a terrible monster, and practicing law offers plenty of it. The New York Times recently had an article written by a reporter whose ex-husband, a successful and very intelligent attorney, had died from an overdose. The reporter observed that attorneys have an exceedingly high rate of alcohol and drug addiction, most of which goes untreated. Her ex-husband’s drug of choice was heroin, and in his possessions, she found a meticulous log of doses and uses, a well-chronicled and straight-forward account of his attempt to control the uncontrollable. More than anything, this broke my heart because it was such a lawyerly thing to do, an obsession I understood: If I write it all down and analyze it just  one more time, I can unlock the mystery and solve the problem.

Neither Chris nor I have addiction issues, but I have had days where I can understand the temptation to drink a little too much, to self-medicate myself into a stupor. Those days typically involve a charming cocktail of confrontation, yelling, bad news, human suffering, and feelings of powerlessness.

On Wednesday morning, I had so much to do. I had briefs to write and clients to call and adversaries to engage. I had a keyboard awaiting my touch, a phone longing for action. I had to get in and make a living.

But I had an ailing Chris, the man who is my partner in all things. With him, I have made a life.

It was an easy choice. It was an obvious remedy, thanks to my shampoo bottle: Free & Clear. As he slept late, I called our assistant and moved all appointments off for 24 hours. I booked a hotel room at the beach. I loaded him into the car, and I drove south.

As he reclined on the passenger side, I stayed quiet. On a trip of 80 miles, I maybe said 80 words. We had barbecue, and then we sat in the sun, reading a newspaper and drinking Coca Cola as we waited for our room. He napped, and I occupied myself in town, and we walked on the beach. In the sweet spot of that magic hour near the ocean, Chris glowed. There was dinner at the hotel, an early bed time, a sound night’s sleep.

We were back at work Thursday before lunch.

Everyone felt better.

Problem solved again.

When overcome with irritants, I have tried to power through. That did not work. The chlorine won, the shampoo kept causing harm, the body failed. Yet I could not succumb: I could not live when I could not breathe, I could not live when my skin felt on fire. I had to face facts, I had to make changes.

I tell my clients, my children, anyone who will listen that life is a game of moving forward. You try not to move backwards, and if you are tempted to do just that, step aside for moment and leave the path to catch your bearings. That was what Wednesday felt like. A deep breath to reorient myself for the long walk ahead.

When I got back to work, it was all there exactly where I left it. Even more work had arrived, and I reminded myself to be thankful. I dug in, occasionally glancing at this photograph that Chris had taken as a souvenir, and awash in memory and looking to the future, I felt like I was right where I needed to be.

If I’d only had a doughnut, the moment would have been perfect.

ALC

For 12 of my 25 years as a lawyer, I worked for the federal government. I knew it was time to leave that employment when I unwrapped a Dove Dark Chocolate Promise about eight years ago. This was way before Dove converted to its current practice of printing breezy sentiments on the foil wrappers, affirmations like YOU’VE GOT THIS! No, this was in the glory days of chocolate wrappers, when would-be philosophers dispensed pithy advice that actually solved problems and offered food for thought.

Where is this going? you may be wondering. I will tell you. One day, I unwrapped a piece of dark chocolate and read this statement:

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

And I cried.

With figurative paddle in hand, I resigned my federal job, bid farewell to health insurance that can be best described as “bonkers,” made a final contribution to my Thrift Savings Plan (a name that connotes a certain Yankee frugality), and plunged into self-employment. After a period of calling my own office line to make sure that the phones actually worked, I began to get business, and even more business, and as I stand at my desk right now, I can tell you yet another dirty little secret: I am a happy lawyer. I love what I do. And I absolutely adore my boss.

But I really missed something from federal employment.

Federal holidays.

Especially the B-sides of federal holidays, like Columbus Day and Presidents Day, those days when it takes a beat to figure out exactly why there has been no mail delivery and why the bank is closed.

In the early days of self-employment, I worked on these holidays, and then I realized that working on Columbus Day was really overrated.

Which explains Monday.

When I woke up on Monday, I decided to do exactly what I wanted to do. Perhaps that type of blanket statement works for you, but it never works for me. Monday was no exception. I cannot say that I wanted to do battle with certain invasive hellions that have taken root in my front yard — I’m looking at you, creeping fig and spider plant! — but for three hours, I did. So I made up for it with lunch at a local chicken salad purveyor, a restaurant that I refer to not by its own name but by my name for it: Estrogen Surge.

Men tend to fear and avoid Estrogen Surge, for it is a world of women. There is even a sign in the women’s restroom to the effect that if a man has accompanied you, there is a star in his crown in heaven. Chris, a man who loves women, has eaten there exactly once, and even though he insisted on eating outside, he looked spooked. But I tell Chris that if something happens to me, he needs to eat every. single. lunch at Estrogen Surge, for there is a 40:1 female to male ratio.

He tells me that he hopes nothing happens to me.

In a nearby store after lunch, I had one of those encounters that I do not think went exactly as planned. I was standing in line when a woman in yoga pants walked up hauling a screaming young girl under one arm and her purchase under the other. I gathered from the young girl’s screams and the mother’s referring to herself in the third person that the young lady, when let loose, would wander off — a state of affairs that made mommy very, very unhappy.

So there I was, an innocent bystander rather quickly losing all hearing in my left ear, when the mother decided to involve me.

Look at that pretty purse!, she said, in a decidedly loud and sing-song mother voice. And the child replied, That is an ugly purse. To which the mother said, You don’t mean that. It’s a very pretty hot pink purse. Which prompted this from the child: It’s the ugliest purse and the ugliest lady that I have ever seen. And then she really screamed.

(I did not, kind reader. I wanted to.)

In defense of the purse, the mother was right. It is a very pretty hot pink purse, small and cheerful with fuzzy orange and blue medallions on it. In defense of the child, when I was her age, my father took me to buy new shoes. As dad tells it, when the salesman leaned down to measure my feet, I offered this observation: That is the fattest man I ever saw. Dad tells me that as the man glared, I practically shrunk into him, trying hard to be absorbed into his left leg. I still remember that feeling.

Paybacks are hell, especially when they are 45 years in the making.

Anyway, after winning the dubious honor of Being the Ugliest Lady with the Ugliest Purse that That Young Girl Had Ever Seen, I figured that it really was time to head home and do exactly what I wanted to do.

I pulled out the quilt that I have been working on lately. Here is a photograph of a corner of it:

This type of fabric is called “toile,” pronounced “twall” — a word that rhymes with “y’all.” (I offer the pronunciation because after years of reading about it, I went on an embarrassing streak of saying it all wrong.) It is both the French word for cloth and a type of fabric that features repeating medallions or prints, often pastoral scenes.

I am crazy about toile, y’all, and the fabrics you see above are fabrics throughout my house — in blinds, pillows, tablecloths, slipcovers, napkins, place mats, you name it. These squares and strips are leftovers of projects, lovingly saved and tucked away, some for many years. The circus toile running down the left side was the fabric for the blinds and bedding in my daughter’s nursery. She is now 18. The orange squares are the dining room blinds I made in 2000, when we moved into our current home. The black and white strip on the left remains from the new shades that I made for our bedroom after I redecorated it following a particularly difficult year.

I am making this quilt, and it overwhelms me. It is literally the fabric of my home, of my life.

I have been surprised by something else that this quilt makes me think about.

I recently tried to read a book called “Hillbilly Elegy,” written by an Ivy League law school grad who is the grandson of Scot-Irish stock who moved from Appalachia into the mid-west for a better life. The Economist called it one of the most important books of the year, so with that recommendation, I picked it up.

I did not finish it, for the simple reason that it told some of the same stories that my own grandfather told to me, but in less engaging terms. My grandfather — the one who looked like Winnie the Pooh, right down to the too-short red velour shirt that barely covered his belly — was Scot-Irish stock who was reared by his grandparents in Robbins, Tennessee. He spoke of Robbins all the time, yet I never visited the mythical place. (If you do not know where Robbins is, there is no reason to: It is in Eastern Tennessee, a community whose 2010 census count numbered 287 residents.)

Listening to him, I grew up convinced that everyone had an Uncle Tack, an Aunt Flonnie and an Aunt Flossie (the twins), a gold coin paying off a death at the coal mines, a bottle of Jack Daniels for medicinal purposes. I heard stories of his grandmother, who was my mother’s namesake and the town undertaker. I learned that there were many ways to prepare squirrel. As a child, I remember the level of pride in his stories. I did not understand until later the abject poverty of growing up in Appalachia during the Great Depression. To be fair, my grandfather did not speak of it.

About a decade ago, my mother gave me one of his grandmother’s quilts. It is an odd and uneven assortment of strips, a collection of old flour sacks and dresses and garments and God knows what. It shows its age, and even beyond the fact that it is very old, it shows signs of having had a very hard life. At first, I treated it as a museum piece, which is a kind way of saying that I stuck it in a closet to keep it out of the light, and I forgot about it. But around Christmas a few years, I opened the closet and it hit me on the head, using gravity to make a desperate bid for freedom. Here was a quilt that had made it one hundred years. Certainly it could make it a few more. So I tossed it on the couch, where it remains.

It is odd to feel kinship with a woman you have never met, but in making this quilt, I have. I have such an imperfect understanding of the power of memory, of the heft of time. I did not know what it meant to dig out a scrap of fabric and see myself as if from above, sitting on the floor, quite possibly on a federal holiday years ago, and stitching the original creation. I remembered a nursery, a new home, many family dinners, a fresh start. With these memories, I also imagined her — my grandfather’s grandmother, a woman that everyone described as incredibly strong — having a pleasurable deluge of memory as she cut apart an old dress, a worn shirt, a singed apron. I had mistaken the quilt — in all of its unevenness and mismatched glory — for a purely utilitarian creation. I never imagined it as a thing of beauty in a life that offered few creature comforts. I never imagined it as treasure. I was wrong.

I am wrong about so many things these days. But I am right about a few: federal holidays, the prettiness of pink purses, the power of small children to say the wrong thing, the pleasure of paddling one’s own canoe.  I lift my oar overhead, and I salute you.

ALC