Episode 37: Transcript

"While I still can, my answer is always Yes." - with Laurie Smithwick

Doug French: Can we please have a quick shout out to the newest member of the extended cat family, George McGovern.

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: It's true. Our child who does not like to be talked about in public anymore, but who as an adult has adopted a cat and named him George McGovern.

Doug: Which is funny because you look at first childhood memories. I have a couple of memories from like when I was two or three. But my first real vivid memory is wishing George McGovern won the ‘72 election.

Magda: Wow, you're way older than I am. I wasn't even born in 1972.

Doug: Right, yes. That was a pre-Magdanian world.

Magda: Yeah, it really was.

Doug: And, of course, he got completely thrashed. Which also was a harbinger of the way things were going to go.

Magda: Oh, boy.

Doug: Well, it's National Sons Day, apparently, so let's salute the way our sons' brains work.

Magda: Oh, boy.

Doug: Wow, you're in a mood this morning. You are not impressed by anything. There's no laugh lines. You're just like, yeah.

Magda: I'm really not impressed by anything. It's like droopy and rainy and like 38.

Doug: Right, but that doesn't give you an excuse not to be a vibrant, bubbly podcast personality that you are. I mean, the main story is how much fun I'm having editing Laurie's podcast.

Magda: Well, I hope you're having fun. We were recording this podcast and we rolled over hour two of talking to her,  and I was like, this is going to be a challenge for Doug. I had a really good time talking to her. She's just really funny. And she's really fun. And she's really engaged. I think in a lot of ways that a lot of parents are not anymore. I think a lot of parents have been so dulled down by the incessant demands that we fit in and adjust and do all the crap for our kids. She just kind of has this joie de vivre of a college student. Remember when you went to college and, like, everything was cool? She still has that, and it’s kind of amazing.

Doug: Yeah, she just came public with having taught herself bass.

Magda: Yeah, yeah.

Doug: When you hear this, the first gig will have been last night. She's playing Tuesdays with a band called Channeling Granny. Cool thing is, she inspires me a bit because whenever she and I get the chance to talk, we realize how much we have in common. There's just a lot of overlap in terms of experiences, how much we loved to play Draw Something back when that was a thing.

Magda: I never once played it. It just wouldn't occur to me. I'm not good at drawing, so I would never have–

Doug: Well, I mean, that's in itself, playing with someone who doesn't draw well is also fun and interesting because then you got to like look at what they're doing and assume that there's method there somewhere.

Magda: Well, but there isn't necessarily.

Doug: Well, but that's the optimism. That's the radical optimism that she has and I try to live up to.

Magda: Well, okay. So there's a CODA that I follow, Child of Deaf Adults, named Jon Urquhart, and I saw a video that he did that explained why hearing people should not teach ASL. That only deaf people should teach ASL. And the reason, he thinks, is that the thought of how to put together the way you speak with your hands is so different in deaf people than in hearing people who have learned ASL, even if they learned it as their first language like he did. What he said is that deaf people think in terms of pictures, whereas hearing people, even when they're making pictures with their hands, they're thinking word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word. I think that’s what it’s like for drawing. You and Laurie just have this language of drawing that I don’t have at all. So when you say “there’s method behind my madness,” there genuinely is not.

Doug: You're just mad.

Magda: Right. The only remotely artistic stuff I can do is not even artistic. It's just I can sew pattern pieces together, right? And I can knit, but knitting I can do because it's on a grid.

Doug: Well, you're creative, though. You've made recipes before.

Magda: Oh, yeah, but I'm not a visual artist, right? I mean, I can do installations and I can do digital art, but I can't do anything that involves hand-eye coordination.

Doug: Yeah, I think you're right. I think you've convinced me because there is a level of thinking. People just think differently and perceive differently. And I'm thinking about, remember that story of that guy Brain Man?

Magda: No.

Doug: He was like a savant. He was like the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man, but he was eloquent enough or lucid enough. This guy could actually tell people what his brain was thinking. Like he would say, “This is why I've memorized 100,000 digits of pi. I haven't memorized anything. I see pi as a painting. And so when I list these numbers, all I'm doing is just recounting what I see.” You know, he has a synesthesia about it.

Magda: That makes sense to me. I mean, I don't necessarily remember the numbers of the code to get into my house. I remember the colors of the numbers of the code to get into my house.

Doug: Right.

Magda: It's red, white, blue, green. So there you go.

Doug: And you tell that to the kids and they're like, what?

Magda: Yeah, exactly. I'm just feeling kind of generally mopey.

Doug: What are you mopey about? You got your whole life ahead of you.

Magda: I know, but I just finally got that Usher song out of my head from the Super Bowl. And then I was in the shower this morning and the Hot whatever we listen to in Boston. I don't know. It's not a hot even number. It's a hot decimal point number on the dial.

Doug: Come on, you synesthete. Figure it out. Use the colors.

Magda: It's black, green, black, so that would be 96.9. Do you think that's really what it is? There you go. You know, Usher's on tour, right, which is how he can afford to play for free for the Super Bowl, which irks the shit out of me that they get these artists to put on these huge shows and they do it all for free.

Doug: Yeah, the math has to add up somehow, right, the promotional aspect of it if you're... 

Magda: Yeah, I guess so. So anyway, he's got all these... 

Doug: It's just like bloggers, right? “Just do it for the exposure.” So you were listening to this in the shower, which is your first problem, because the shower, you should be alone with your thoughts.

Magda: No, my husband has a clock radio in the bathroom, so I switch it to Hot 96.9, The Get-up Crew, in the morning. I can't stand them the rest of the day because they keep playing these songs about men who are all mopey, like “I don’t wanna know if you’re playing me, keep it on the low, please just go to a hotel, don’t do it at our house.” I’m like, why are you playing this mopey song? Like why don’t you play songs about “You make me wanna,” or why don't you play songs about how we're so happy together having a lot of sex? That's what you should be playing, not this like, “if you're going to step out on me, just please don't tell me. I'm such a sad sack.”

Doug: So why not just turn the radio off?

Magda: Why would I do that? I like to sing in the shower. And I like to sing along. So there I was in the middle of the shower, and they were trying to get people to text in to get Usher tickets, and I heard “boo boop, boo boop, boo boop, boo boop, yeah!”

Doug: Well then, the answer is don’t shower before we record together, because apparently singing in the shower with mopey songs dulls your personality.

Magda: Oh, boy.

Doug: Do you feel like laughing at anything?

Magda: No. (laughs)

Doug: Okay, the irony here, I love it.

Magda: I don't want to laugh at anything.

Doug: Do you feel like laughing at anything? No. Laughs.

Magda: I'm having a very contrary moment here. I started more sourdough bread last night. I mean, it's not really sourdough bread. It's just bread. Non-sour bread used with sourdough starter, right? And I think I screwed it up, so I don't think it's going to really rise very much. We'll find out by noon today. And so, you know, it's just like a lot of... 

Doug: So you'll make sourdough focaccia.

Magda: It's like death by a thousand paper cuts.

Doug: Well, enjoy your Wednesday, everybody.

Magda: Right.

(Theme music)

Doug: And we can talk a lot about the importance of Leap Day as well.

Laurie: Yes, it is. Yes, I own the word leap, so... 

Doug: What?

Laurie: Yes. Well, my company was called Leap Design.

Doug: Right.

Laurie: For about 16 years, that was when I would send out cards to clients and stuff. Like, yes, I did a little Christmas something, a little holiday thing, but I always made a big deal out of Leap Day. 

Magda: That's cute. 

Laurie: Yeah.

Doug: It makes me feel like there's actually intelligent design behind this podcast because we talked last week about politics and it was George Washington's birthday.

Laurie: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so funny.

Doug: So the string of appropriate recording dates has now hit two, so it's officially a streak.

Laurie: Yeah, the coincidence machine is in full gear.

Doug: And what better way to spend an extra day of life on this earth than to chat with Laurie Smithwick?

Laurie: Well, I am thrilled to be here talking with you guys.

Doug: And the timing is good as well because you just got back from a trip to Connecticut.

Laurie: I did. Yes. My husband and I drove to the northwest corner of Connecticut. He grew up on Between the Lakes Road on lakes called Twin Lakes. And it's absolutely gorgeous. Mountains in the distance. It snowed while we were there. And we spent four days with in-laws. And then after that, we went and spent five days in New York City.

Doug: As a bit of a palate cleanser.

Laurie: As a bit of a, yes, exactly, a change of pace.

Doug: Wait a minute. Your husband is from Twin Lakes.

Laurie: Yes.

Doug: And you have twin girls.

Laurie: And we have twin girls.

Doug: So are we talking about a correlative here? Have you contacted the National Institutes of Health to indicate how you can bring about a cloven embryo in your reproductive cycle?

Laurie: Yes. What you need to do is you need to start dating somebody who grows up on Twin Lakes. That's apparently it. Yes, it didn't seem to work for either of Bob's sisters, so that's why I'm thinking that maybe it needs to be an outlier. You need to bring whatever you're bringing and then crash headlong into Twin Lakes in order for it to happen. We have a funny picture from our wedding that is equally spooky. In this photo, there are three couples standing next to each other. None of us had children yet. But in order, each of those couples had twin daughters.

Magda: Oh, wow.

Laurie: And we had actually a pipeline of clothes that went through those three couples. So Shelly and Chris would send us clothes. And then when we finished with them, we would send them to Mark and Elham. But something weird happened in that picture. So we warned people on either side of us. “Hey, y'all, we just need to let you know there's something weird about this photo and you're next. So, you know. Beware.”

Doug: Well, I believe in these phenomena. Magda will tell you, you know, the building we lived in in New York, while we were there, seven babies were conceived and they were all boys.

Laurie: Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah.

Magda: Interesting, yeah.

Doug: Yeah, so there's something in the water in that joint, too. And you should know, I mean, Laurie knows a lot about New York. She went to Parsons, right?

Laurie: I did. I lived there for six years. We called our little corner of New York “Little China Ho.” It was on Lafayette and Spring. And it was right where Soho, Chinatown, and Little Italy meet.

Magda: Yeah, and you know, I lived right there, too, for a couple years right before I moved in with Doug. And two years after I left, they had renamed that officially “Nolita.”

Laurie: Yes, exactly. We called it Little China Hoe.

Magda: I like that better than Nolita.

Doug: Yeah, that's better. I think we should get on the horn to the real estate people and work that out. And then there's a story there, too, because then you move back home because your family is so close. Your family's in Charlotte and then Bob's family is up in

Laurie: Yeah, so Bob is the youngest of three kids. He had two older sisters. His middle sister passed away unexpectedly in 2019. His eldest sister is still there, and she lives in southwest Massachusetts. Bob's mom is not going anywhere. Bob's father passed away in 2016, I think. And in fact, when we were there, one of the things that we did is Bob, his sister, his mother, and I went to tour one of the retirement communities that we're hoping she'll move into sometime in the next few months.

Doug: Oh, that's her. Okay.

Laurie: She's still in the house that they built when Bob was two years old. It's a split level so that you cannot live in the house without going up and down stairs. It's big. They live on three acres. So she's paying people to take care of an immense amount of land and home. And she, we're trying to move her into one of the retirement communities that's right in the middle of town. It's really interesting. She's absolutely ready. She's very much on her own out there. And we haven't been up there in a year. And I was actually shocked by how much the next door neighbor has aged. And it used to look like the next door neighbor was going to be the more capable one as they age. But that is 100% no longer the case. So that made us feel sort of even more urgent about the need to get Bob's mother into a place where she could be with people. She's an extrovert and really just doesn't have anybody to be with right now. A lot of land, a lot of stairs, and a lot of stuff all over her house that she doesn't need.

Doug: That's another issue too, right? Have you already started the de-stuffing?

Laurie: That has to take place once she's out. She very much believes that one of her grandchildren is going to want everything in her house.

Magda: Oh, boy.

Doug: And she doesn't want a referee at all. She's just like, “you kids take care of it.”

Laurie: Well, that's basically what I've said to her to calm her because she's like, “how will I get rid of everything to move?” And I'm like, “you don't need to think about that. All you need to do is decide what you want to take with you will take care of everything else.”

Magda; Is she going to be okay with that at the end?

Laurie: She is, yeah. 

Magda: She knows that if she doesn't take it with her, it really doesn't exist anymore to the family?

Laurie: She won't know that. Nobody's going to say that to her, right? We're just going to say, we will take care of it.

Doug: Yeah, exactly.

Magda: They went to a farm.

Laurie: Yes, Happy Valley Puppy Farm. One of the aces up our sleeve with anything to do with Bob's mother is this: She is very much in love platonically with her son, my husband, Bob. Like when we lived in New York and they lived in Connecticut, we would take the train up there to see them all the time. Even in the earliest years of my relationship, I knew that all she really wanted was to hang out and talk to Bob. And so we would get up there and I would just have this vacation up in the mountains of Connecticut. Bob and I would go hiking. We would go swim in the lake. We would water ski. We would snow ski. We would cross-country ski on the lake. We would do all the things that New Yorkers want to do when they go to the northwest corner of Connecticut. But then in the afternoon and evening, I would go off in the corner and read a book, and Bob and his mom and sometimes his dad would sit at the table and talk for hours and hours and hours. So all that is to say, at the end of the day, she'll do anything Bob tells her to do.

Doug: Which I guess is helpful, but how does that impact your relationship with her? I mean, that's got to be an interesting dynamic, or maybe it's not.

Laurie: It's not. Like, I'll give you an example. I have recently started becoming someone who can call themselves a musician. I'm not quite ready to say I'm a musician yet.

Doug: Don't oversell it, Laurie, please.

Laurie: Yeah, but I'm in a band and we have a really big series of gigs coming up starting on Tuesday.

Magda: Oh, wow.

Laurie: I play bass.

Magda: Okay.

Laurie: I've only been playing for about two and a half years, and everybody else in the band is a really good musician. Like, they know what they're doing on stage. I'm really confident, but I'm very new to this. And there are reasons why I don't necessarily feel comfortable with it. Being gone for eight days, it was not great that I was going to be missing however many rehearsals took place during that time.

Magda: Right.

Laurie: And so what I did is I brought my bass with me. We drove. And so that wasn't a big deal. And so one of the nights of our trip in Connecticut, I just vanished and went back into Bob's and my room and practiced the bass for like two and a half hours. But because it's quiet, they didn't know where I had gone.

Magda: Right.

Laurie: Bob comes back there and says, “oh, here you are.” They hadn't gone looking for me for two and a half hours. They knew I hadn't left, you know. No questions about where I had been.

Doug: Well, it seems like you've figured out how to game the system, you know, and make sure people who need to be happy are. That's great.

Laurie: That's right. Almost 32 years I've learned how to do it.

Magda: Because, you know, like I like to think about how I'm going to be as a mother-in-law because I have two boys who are both are straight, and so I sort of like to think about how I'm going to be as a mother-in-law, and I like to think that I would notice that my daughter-in-law was gone, but unless she was specifically asking for help, I would just be like, you know, she's an adult. She can do whatever she wants to do. But then when she came back and told me what she was doing, I would have a lot of questions about it. Just out of interest.

Laurie: I mean, you have a podcast, so you clearly like asking people questions.

Magda: Yes.

Laurie: I did not marry into a family of people who likes asking people questions. My husband is the outlier.

Doug: A family from New England that doesn't like questions? What?

Laurie: An Irish Catholic family from New England.

Doug: That's an outlier if any have ever heard that.

Magda: Wow.

Laurie: Yeah.

Doug: Well, first of all, great news on the band. That's actually a big part of our podcast as well, is people trying new stuff in their 50s and getting out of their comfort zone. It makes you feel alive. It makes you feel younger. When you're in that phase, when you're learning something for the first time, you remember what it was like to learn something for the first time in your 20s and 30s and how exciting that is, especially when you start getting good.

Laurie: It's the best thing in the world, learning new things. I feel like that's the biggest discovery for me of empty nesting and growing older is learning new things is the greatest thing in life. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Doug: And I actually made that distinction. I was thinking that was the real reason why, because we talked a bit before about what it's like to have just twins, and so your family increases by two people at the beginning and then it decreases by two people and your nest is just empty.

Laurie: Sudden, yeah.

Doug: There's no step ladder into the whole just you and Bob staring across the table at each other.

Laurie: Yeah.

Doug: It struck me that one of the reasons you were, I'm not going to put words in your mouth here, but it sounds like you were best prepared to empty your nest so suddenly because you try to stay super busy with your own growth, pursuing other talents and things. Because I was wondering, you know, what do you think is tougher? Having twins or sending twins off to college at the same time?

Laurie: 1000% having twins was tougher.

Doug: Yeah.

Laurie: Yeah. Oh, I mean, that was trauma. Honestly. I mean, I love my kids so much. It's insane. But having suddenly two children at once, having never had children before, it was trauma that I sometimes can looks at ways that I still haven’t excised that trauma.

Magda: I think parenting in general, especially in North America, is so traumatizing. Especially in the zero to three years. And we do not acknowledge that as a culture. And I think a lot of us are just carrying trauma around like that. And twins is a special, more intense version of that real trauma. I have a friend who has twins now that are three months adjusted, and they’re her third and fourth child, so you’d think, right? But she is in the middle of it, like every time I communicate with her I can tell she’s just barely hanging on.

Laurie: Barely hanging on. Yeah.

Magda: And, I mean, she’s doing a great job, but.

Laurie: I'm sure she is.

Magda: Oh, my God. You know, and I just want to be like, I wish that you could just be put into a medically induced coma and fed, like, liquid nutrients for like four years.

Laurie: Six years for twins.

Magda: Six years. Okay.

Laurie: Six is when they suddenly recognize that they're each other's best playmate, not you. Single kids kind of figured that out a little bit differently. The way I like to say it is you were back to sitting and reading magazines at about four. I wasn't back to sitting and reading magazines until six.

Magda: Right. And I think that's true of single kids, whether they are the only child in the household or whether they're just single siblings.

Laurie: Yes. Yes. There's something about twins because it's more of a revolving door. Things happen more like a revolving door than consecutive.

Magda: Mm-hmm.

Laurie: Right. I mean, so the good news is, is that like with twin newborns, Bob and I can count on one hand and not use all our fingers the number of times we were both up in the middle of the night walking a non-sleeping baby around. But we were up all night walking non-sleeping babies around, just not both at the same time. So it was like we would finally get one down and then the other one would wake up. So life with twins is more of a revolving door. They're constantly coming in versus both of them coming in at once, except when they're born and then when they leave.

Magda: So did you consciously prep for them to leave home to go to college?

Laurie: One of the things about having twins and being an overthinker is you're constantly looking ahead at what's coming.

Magda: Right.

Laurie: Right. So, like, the day that we found out we were having twins, I jumped very quickly from “we need to get another crib,” went directly to “two bikes,” went directly to “we're going to have to pay for two kids in college at the same time.” And that was like on the drive home from the gynecologist's office. So I think I've been looking ahead all the while. My kids went to a dream of an elementary school. It was a public Montessori that had begun three years before we started there.

Magda: Oh, that is a dream.

Laurie: And the principal was not a Montessori trained principal, but a Montessori mom. So she brought her emotional intention to the creation of this school. And the teachers were all hand selected and the parents were all parents who had dared to send their children to this brand new, not yet tested public school. So it was a whole community of families who were excited about creating this new Montessori public school together. We were all best friends, right? And we built that school together. So we were friends with families whose kids were older, younger, et cetera, right? And some of my closest friends all had kids a year older than my daughters. So I watched them go to middle school with one kid. And that was the first time I understood how different it was going to be for me because none of us were excited about leaving for middle school.

Magda: Yeah.

Laurie: And I, all of a sudden, as I watched them leave, I was like, oh my God, I'm just going to be gone. I'm just going to be cut off the listserv, and I'm not going to be going in for gallery crawl, and I'm not going to be a part of that school anymore like that. And that, I think, is when I realized what sending them to college at the same time was going to be like. 

Magda: That makes sense.

Laurie: And that was harder. Leaving Chantilly all at once was harder for me than sending them to college. Although, like Robert, my kids were seniors in 2020.

Magda: Right.

Laurie: So their senior year sucked and their freshman year sucked.

Magda: Yeah.

Laurie: So that's the outlier that I didn't know how to prepare for.

Magda: I think that made the separation anxiety and the identity piece of it for the parents not as important. So we got a break on that because there were bigger fish to fry.

Laurie: One of the ways I like to describe parenting when your kids live at home versus parenting when your kids don't live at home is daily parenting versus non-daily parenting.

Magda: Yeah.

Laurie: And that first year of college in COVID still was kind of daily parenting, even though they weren't living at home.

Magda: It was absolutely daily parenting.

Laurie: That was unusual.

Magda: I think that divorced parents had an advantage in that I didn't have to change my daily parenting routine with Robert because there were weeks when I was daily parenting him at my house and there were other weeks when I was daily parenting him at Doug's house because he's just in contact with us both all the time. People were like, “oh, how are you doing with Robert gone?” And I'm like, “I don't know. It just sort of feels like he's at Doug's for a really long time.” Especially because our kids worked out a system.

Doug: He actually has been here the whole time. I didn't want to tell you.

Magda: During the first part of the pandemic when they were finishing high school, they didn't want to spend too much time together, and they also felt sorry for Doug and for me, and they didn't want either of us to be alone. So they worked out a system where one of them would be with one of us and the other one would be with the other one, and they would switch every two or three weeks. 

Laurie: Wow, that's so interesting.

Magda: And they just decided and then presented it to us like, “this is what's happening.”

Laurie: And how did y'all feel about that? Were you guys like, oh, well, we actually like the break. Or did that work for you?

Magda: I thought it was great because I liked spending the one-on-one time with each kid, and I got so much more time with my kid who was a senior in high school than anybody ever does.

Laurie: Right.

Doug: When they were younger too, they grew to like one-on-one nights. When we lived across the street from each other essentially, they liked having it just, you know, Thomas would be over here by himself and build this enormous fort in the living room and just have the place to himself and not be someone's younger brother, and that's why he likes, he went to a different high school and he liked being his own person and not his older brother's younger brother.

Laurie: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, my kids have a lot of that identity with their twinness, so I totally understand that.

Magda: But they chose to go to different colleges.

Laurie: Exactly. The way I describe their relationship is that they love each other except when they hate each other. That's all it is. Either they love each other or they hate each other. And my goal as mom was to hope and try and guide so that there was more of the love each other than the hate each other, right?

Magda: Right. There's only so much you can do as a parent.

Laurie: Oh, without a doubt, right? I mean, you can say, “we don't hit in this house” all you want, you know, while you're watching them smack each other.

Magda: Right.

Doug: I'm glad we're talking about all this just because, especially when you talk about the trauma of bringing the twins into the world.

Laurie: Yeah.

Doug: I found out last night that a friend of mine who is 51 is expecting his first child.

Laurie: Oh my gosh, wow.

Doug: And they just got married a couple years ago. And I think this was part of the plan. She's 40. They want to have children. And when you think about yourself as a young mom of twins and you think of yourself now as a mom who just sent her kids off to college, what would you tell that young mother 22 years ago when Zoe and Lucy arrived?

Laurie: Oh, I have a great single piece of advice for new parents. And so I'm going to use that as this answer. And that is: Parenting is hard, period. But what you don't know when you're in the middle of it is that everything they do that's hard at every single age will eventually one day not feel hard. It will just feel like something you went through. Now, I'm not talking about extreme trauma. Like, I'm not talking about your kid becomes a heroin addict. I'm talking more, you know, and that's its own impossible thing, I'm talking more about your kids won't stop fighting. Your kid has learned how to climb out of their crib. Your kid won't put clothes on. Your 16 year old won't let you come into their room. That type of common issue. The thing you never know at any stage of parenting is that every one of those things, no matter how hard it feels when you're in the middle of it, eventually doesn't look hard and in fact becomes something that you're probably going to laugh about.

Doug: Now how does this calm you when you're caring for the older generation?

Laurie: Yeah, I use that to inspire what I think is my mantra for parenting my almost adult children and caregiving my aging parents. And that is, at least up till now, and I know this won't always necessarily be the case, if they need me, my answer is yes. This is time that I will not always have in both cases, right? So like, I'll give you an example. Yesterday, I had to drive to Greensboro and back in the morning. Greensboro is about an hour and a half from Charlotte. I had had some art in a show there and I needed to pick up the stuff that didn't sell. I was getting back into town at about two o'clock. I hadn't eaten anything yet. And so I'm thinking in my mind what I'm going to do. I'm going to go, I'm going to drop the art off at the studio. Then I'm going to run home. I'm going to make something for lunch and then I'm going to do blah, blah, blah. And while I'm driving, my daughter who's at Davidson, which is only 30 minutes away. So theoretically I can see her pretty often, but she's in college, so I don't, right? She works in Charlotte, but I still don't see her very often. She goes to work and she goes back to Davidson. She texted me while I was driving and said, “have you eaten lunch yet? What are you doing?” And so no matter what my day was, the answer was, “where are we having lunch?”

Magda: Right.

Doug: What time and what do I wear?

Laurie: That's exactly right. And I feel the same way about my parents. You know, if my dad calls and says, our TV's not working and I say, have you tried this? Have you tried that? Have you tried this? I will stay on the phone with him as long as I can continue to help him. And that may change, right? Like, my father is struggling with a little bit of mild cognitive impairment, and so that may become less mild. That may become more extreme, and I may not view it quite the same way. But right now, my answer's yes.

Doug: So who's further along in the whole downsizing trajectory? Your mother-in-law or your folks?

Laurie: My folks.

Doug: And is one informing the other?

Laurie: So we lived in a house from when I was 12 years old until my kids were 12 years old. Nine years ago, my parents moved out of the house.

Doug: So how was that process? Were your folks ready to downsize as well? I mean, did they go quietly?

Laurie: It was their idea. We helped them decide what to downsize to. We went through the journey of looking at smaller houses, and then we looked at retirement communities, and we looked at apartments versus condos. And in the end, we decided on a condo, and we helped them every step of the way.

Magda: Do they have outdoor space?

Laurie: They do. They have a huge terrace. They're on the fourth floor of their condo, so they don't have anyone living above them, which is great. And they eat dinner out there when it's warm, and it's great.

Doug: So there were no obstacles. Everything went great. The siblings live nearby, and that's all the time we have. I'm sure you consider yourself very lucky because plenty of people are dealing with all sorts of stuff that arises out of nowhere like a sandstorm. It's never too early to start preparing for the inevitable. So is there anything that you look back at? Was it all just serendipitous or did you actually put some things in play so that when the time came, it would go as smoothly as it has?

Laurie: Yeah. So hang on, there's going to be an interruption because my daughter from Davidson just walked in. (to daughter) Hey there. (back to Doug and Magda) So this is Zoe. (to daughter) And we're doing a podcast right now. We were just talking about you. We're still talking about you.

Doug: We were just amazed how much you unconditionally love your sister and were always there for her and there's never any friction whatsoever. And the bond is just unbreakable.

Laurie: Never. So the reason Zoe is here is she's about to leave for spring break. And so she brought our grandchild to stay with us for the week. This is Juniper. (shows us a cat)

Doug: So how often do you work in Charlotte? So it would kill you to come home and do laundry?

Laurie: Like we knew she was coming with the cat and she texted and said, “would it be okay if I brought my laundry to have ready for when I get back from spring break?”

Doug: Oh, so she's okay. So you've asked her to do your laundry and have it ready for you to take back to Davidson.

Laurie: Well, although in this house, dad's the laundry man.Yeah.

Doug: Well done, Bob. Well done.

Magda: This house, too. My husband does all the laundry.

Laurie: Well done.

Magda: It actually bothers me because laundry is like the one domestic task that I'm good at and don't hate.

Laurie: That's so funny. We're fighting over who gets to do the laundry.

Magda: Yeah, it's like I'm really not pulling my weight here.

Doug: Well, I live in a ranch house that's all one level. I'm already prepared to retire.

Laurie: Nice, that's great.

Doug: Because I have no basement, so the washer and dryer are in the kitchen, which I love. 

Laurie: Oh, that's a dream, yeah.

Doug: Because you can just kind of, yeah, you can just walk by and there's no stairs involved. My 80-year-old parents have more stairs in their lives than I do, which doesn't make any sense to me.

Laurie: Oh my gosh, yeah.

Doug: So I feel as though I'm ahead of the curve in this way.

Laurie: You are, yeah. Well done.

Doug: Things have worked out pretty smoothly. So if you were to offer a primer on how that worked out, what do you think the best advice is?

Laurie: So, one thing that you have to know is I am a serial, almost problematic optimist.

Doug: I've known that about you for many years, and that's why people gravitate to your presence.

Magda: So you're like a borderline Pollyanna?

Laurie: No, I am not a Pollyanna. But I do not expect bad things to happen. And then after bad things happen, I don't dwell on the fact that bad things happened.

Magda: I see that as being very practical. It's almost Occam's razor, because I think more good things happen or more neutral things happen than bad things. It's just sometimes the bad things have more severity.

Laurie: As I've gotten older, I've come to understand something about myself, which is that my favorite thing is a new thing. The new thing, whatever that is. Right? A book, a phone, a new drink to taste. A new thing to me is a whole world unto itself.

Doug: I know exactly what you feel like. My son bought me a six-inch gummy pickle. And it was revolting. It tasted like it was a sour apple Jolly Rancher with some dill extract in it. Got it. Nice try. Several notes.

Magda: The presentation was like 90% of that pickle, though.

Laurie: I am a bit of an optimist in that I don't see the point in staying upset about things that were hard because they're in the past. We survived them, right? As I like to say to my kids when they're in the middle of hard things in college, when they finish them, my new thing that I say to them is, congratulations, you have continued your run of surviving 100% of all the hard things that have ever happened to you. And I think that's kind of how I view life, right? Like, I'm here. It's over. We're done. What's next?

Magda: Right?

Laurie: My parents moving had a lot of challenges, right? A ton of challenges. It was so hard. My mom was really stressed out. My dad's mild cognitive impairment was incredibly apparent during this time. That was a lot for my brother and me. That was a lot for my mom. It was a lot for each of our partners having to support us, supporting them. It was a lot. But it was a great move. Everybody's happy it happened. And they are on a list for one of the retirement communities here. And they have been called from the list. And so we have gone to see available apartments. The condo is the right place for them right now. And that when it stops being the right thing for them, they are so well situated that we can move to the next thing when it is no longer the right place for them.

Magda: Is there anything more validating than having the chance to figure out that the decision you made was the right one?

Laurie: It's insane. And they're so happy in their condo. That's what's so crazy. It adds value to their life.

Doug: Right. Yeah, was it known as an intermediate step when you were in the thick of it?

Laurie: It was always viewed as an intermediate step, but as their 80-year-old friends are now moving into the retirement community from their houses, they're not as happy as my parents are in their condos.

Magda: Moving into like a retirement community or an assisted living someplace that has more care feels like giving up so much control, and moving to a condo feels more deliberate. Like shifting the locus of control from taking care of the house to controlling what you have in the house and how you use your space. I think it really is all about control.

Laurie: Everything's about control at the end of the day. I mean, that's what most trauma is all about is a loss of control of anything.

Doug: Have your parents felt that or expressed that to you? The whole idea that the older they get, it's easy to feel as though this world is not quite for you anymore. You age out of the demographic. My parents don't do crossword puzzles anymore because they don't understand half the clues and it pisses the hell out of them.

Laurie: Yeah. So my mom is a writer. She's a published author. She has published seven books and she's just in the process of negotiating the contract for her eighth book to be published sometime next year, 2025. That book is basically called Notes on Turning 80.

Magda: That's awesome.

Laurie: And it is all about what it was like to turn 80 and what that means. How lucky you are, how awful it is, how scary it is, how fun it is, how easy it is, how hard it is. All the things. 

Magda: That's awesome.

Laurie: We're really hoping that it becomes That Book. It would be kind of cool, right? Especially with the Boomers joining them, right?

Magda: Yeah. And I think people our age will really like to read it, too.

Laurie: Gen X definitely seems to be reinventing everything, right? I read all her manuscripts, but I haven't read this one in a while. 

Magda: What are her other books about?

Laurie: She had three books of poetry. First one came out when I was in high school.

Magda: Okay.

Laurie: And then she wrote two novels, and then she's written, now, three memoirs. Her first memoir was called Losing My Sister about the challenges she and her sister faced growing up together, and how they managed losing their parents together and how they stopped talking for many, many years and how they reunited when my aunt was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Magda: Wow.

Laurie: Her second memoir was about my father and their relationship and it's called Together. So 18 years ago, my father was the victim of a medical mishap that paralyzed him. He was an athlete and then the next day he couldn't walk. And so ever since then he's walked with a cane and had a brace and it sort of hastened his general decline. He went from being a vital, vibrant 60-year-old to being a disabled older than a 60-year-old in a day.

Doug: You've got to feel 10 years older than you really are because all of a sudden that fundamental part of your personality and yourself is just gone.

Laurie: Yeah. My dad was the champion racquetball player in Charlotte when I was a kid. My dad was an optometrist, and he would bring his gym bag to work. He would leave work at lunch, go to the Y, play racquetball, shower, and go back to the office. That's the father I grew up with. When he retired– 

Doug: So that's why you're an optimist. Right. He was an optometrist, and you're an optimist. So that's where that comes from. Exactly.

Laurie: I don't need as many letters. I can get to the point more quickly.

Doug: Yearless is a better editor than he is.

Laurie: Exactly, yeah.

Doug: I can't wait to read that book. An 80-year-old book. I want to talk about what the inspiration for that was. Is there any particular thing that set her off in this particular trek?

Laurie: The biggest lesson my mom offers when she teaches writing workshops is a variation of “write what you know,” and that is “write what keeps you up at night.”

Doug: And now we're talking about sciatica and heartburn.

Laurie: Right, exactly. I think we're talking about that, not 80-year-olds, right? They're talking about what happens when you suffer mild cognitive impairment, what happens when your husband dies, what happens when your children start disrespecting you. And what she did in this book is, it's a lot from her, because my mom lives a very examined life, and it's also a lot from her friends. It's a lot of interviews. She interviewed everyone she knows. Everybody she knows well who was in the realm of 80 has been interviewed and has something in this book.

Doug: Is she free to be a podcast guest?

Laurie: Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. Especially on that book.

Doug: So she'll look at us bellyaching about 50 and be like, oh, grow up.

Laurie: Yeah, she would love to have an opportunity to talk about that book because she's still doing the last of the little bits from her last book. So she has not shifted into gear at all yet for this new book.

Magda: So I've been running this series of memoirs by women who graduated from my undergraduate alma mater. And what I have observed is that women especially in their 50s are extremely hungry for knowing what it’s going to be like when we’re 80. Like, we just need something to say, It’s going to turn out the way you make it turn out.”

Laurie: Which is what Gen X has been doing every step of the way, right? I mean, like, I am a big Gen X soapboxer, and I believe that one of the things that ultimately, when our Wikipedia entry is complete, what it will say is “at every major turning point in their development, Gen X experienced collective worldwide trauma.” 

Magda: Right.

Laurie: Right?

Magda: Right.

Laurie: Like all the depressions, all the recessions that happened just as we were going to college, just as we were graduating from college, just as we were thinking about getting married. And so I think that we have learned that it's better to know what's going to be out there so that we can figure out how we're going to deal with it. Right.

Magda: And if we're individually scrambling for information, we need to scramble for information together and tell everybody else what we're seeing too.

Laurie: Right.

Magda: Even though nobody listens to us.

Laurie: Right. Listening to each other, though. That's right.

Magda: And we're telling our kids whether or not they're ready to listen yet. Like, they're probably not ready to listen now, but they'll be ready to listen in 20 years.

Laurie: I honestly think that one of the reasons Gen Z is looking so promising is because they're the kids of Gen X. 

Magda: Yeah, I agree.

Laurie: And I think they feel that way, too.

Magda: Yeah.

Laurie: This, to me, is the biggest indicator of what Gen X is capable of. Right here, I think we are actually finally having a major impact. Have you noticed that everyone is talking about menopause?

Magda: Yes, suddenly.

Laurie: That's all us.

Magda: Just over the last three years.

Laurie: It's all us. That is the only reason. It's almost boring.

Magda: Yeah. Right?

Laurie: All these OBGYNs who are turning their practice into menopause only. I mean, that never happened before.

Magda: No.

Laurie: That's Gen X is doing. And that's what I believe our impact has always been capable of being, but nobody listened. And so, like you said, we're like, fuck it. Let's just talk to each other. And lo and behold, we've got a loud enough voice this time and it's working. Yeah.

Doug: So do you want to ask the question or shall I, Magda? Because I know you talked a lot about how one of the main issues why no one has talked about menopause until now is that our parents were not conditioned or socialized to talk about it as a thing.

Magda: Well, we weren't conditioned or socialized to talk about a damn thing. We had to figure it out.

Doug: If I were to pick a pair of women who would talk frankly about menopause, it would be you and your mom. Am I wrong in that?

Laurie: I lived it in real time with my mom, of course. My mom was part of the generation that was, as a thinker, she was terrified of taking hormones. And so in my house growing up, we had paper fans, like church fans.

Magda: Oh, church fans!

Laurie: All over the house.

Magda: In your house.

Laurie: You know, we'd be sitting there and all of a sudden she was waving a fan in front of her face.

Magda: I'll show you guys. I just took a flight yesterday, so my bag's still right here. I always travel with a USB powered fan in my carry-on because I read a story about a flight where they were stuck on the tarmac for five hours and they weren't allowed to put on the air circulating system. And my terror since being in perimenopause is of no air.

Doug: Yeah, people think those outlets on planes are just for charging phones.

Laurie: That's exactly right. No, they're for peri and postmenopausal women. Yeah, I have a little USB fan on my bedside table that points right at my face.

Magda: Right. I also said a few months ago on Facebook that I hate turtlenecks and people were like, how can you hate turtlenecks? And I was like, I don’t hate turtlenecks on everyone else. I'm just saying I personally cannot wear turtlenecks because if this part of me was covered up, how would I breathe? Right? Right.

Laurie: Well, I feel that way about wool sweaters. I don't understand how I ever wore wool sweaters because now it's like you put them anywhere near you and it feels like you're wearing burlap. Like, never mind how hot they are. I'm sort of like, were wool sweaters always this itchy? So I'm going to tell you a great one that brings us back a little bit to some topics we've already gone over. I'll tell you a great post-menopause story because I'm post-menopause now a few years. I'm good. I mean, I still have, you know, 

Doug: You still have the fan.

Laurie: Yeah, I still have the fan. I still have issues, you know. And I think that's one of the things that everybody's learning is that it's not just like once you go through menopause, life goes back to normal again. I think that's what people used to think. And it's like, no, no, everything's different. But I'll tell you one of the amazing things that have happened to me that's clearly hormonal. I was a wine drinker. And after Lucy and Zoe were born, I could not drink wine anymore. And I mean like I would drink it like no matter how much, this much in a glass. Within an hour, I would have a wine headache.

Magda: Oh, yeah.

Laurie: Immediately. Over the years, I tweaked it a little bit. And I discovered that white wine wasn't quite as bad. Organic wine wasn't quite as bad. But at the end of the day, what really was fascinating about it to me was that I actually stopped liking wine. It was like my body just said, no wine. Wine didn't even appeal to me. But here's the thing. I literally just discovered this in the past month. Not only can I drink red wine again, it's delicious again.

Magda: That's so interesting!

Laurie: Time has passed and I am back to having good taste in wine. I can tell the difference between good wine and not good wine and it is delicious and it does not give me that hangover headache anymore.

Magda: That is a beacon of hope to anybody who has developed any kind of food aversion. I think it's probably hormonally related because it happened right after you had your kids, right?

Laurie: It has to. And can you imagine the hormones that were in my body giving birth to two daughters?

Magda: Right.

Laurie: Right. I mean, my body was cranked up to something. Who knows what? And when it started to recover after childbirth, it was like, so you know what? No more wine. You can't do this anymore. And luckily, we're going to also make you not really like it anymore, which is crazy. I don't know when it happened, but just all of a sudden I took a sip of somebody's wine and I was like, wait! Oh my God, I can taste that that's really good wine.

Doug: Well, we've established now since you love new things, it seems like the best thing to have is a menopausal body, because there’s something new to discover about it every day.

Laurie: Even though some of them are awful. But this is one of them that I’m really excited about. And that's the nature of me right there. That's the one I'm going to talk about, right? Like, I would much rather talk about how I get to drink red wine again than that, you know, oh my gosh, you know, I have to always dress in layers so that I can take off something to make sure I've got something presentable underneath, right? That's dumb and trite and not that interesting, you know? But I get to drink red wine again. That's unbelievable, you know?

Doug: I might develop a taste for gummy pickles.

Laurie: There you go. You just might.

Doug: Yeah, it has a shelf life that will last long into the future where I might develop a taste for it when my taste buds are completely in the crapper and I'm just doing nothing but drinking hot sauce and praying for the best.

Laurie: Right.

Doug: I wanted to ask as well about … you're a dynamic person.

Laurie: Thank you.

Doug: And you are the offspring of two dynamic people. And the energy in that triad must be just a great thing to witness, frankly. As that dynamic evolves to the point where the caregiving is kind of slowly shifting from them parenting you to the other way around, they're still very dynamic in their 80s, which is a great gift. And they won't always be. So how do you navigate when to assert yourself with people who are very comfortable with asserting their own opinions? And how is that energy evolving to the point where you're evolving into the child they can trust to take them where they need to be.

Laurie: If we can solve that problem, I think we'll fix the sandwich generation, right? I don't know that any of us have that all figured out. It's really just trial and error every time for me. But I do feel like I've had some successes with that. One of the keys for us, my brother and me, because we have a great relationship, too. We are very much taking this on together. And one of the things that we have leaned on as we've had to do some of the harder things with my parents, the things that were going to be harder for them to swallow, is we've been able to say either, this is exactly the sort of thing you would do for us or you would never have not done this for your parents, right? And that usually enables them to sort of sit down and let us do what we need to do. But that means that something came before that that was hard where they were fighting us on something. And it's two very different types of fighting from each of my parents. My father's is for sure, as we deal with his mild cognitive impairment, which at this point is the closest thing to a diagnosis that we have, we struggle with who gets to make the final decision about what is and is not done for and with him. I told you about my father's accident. He walked with a cane forever and ever. And he has reached the point now where he really, really needs a walker. He uses his cane like a crutch. And my father was leaning the entirety of his weight on his cane and standing completely crooked. And it is incredibly unstable looking. Right. And it's untenable physically.

Doug: Yeah, you can't just lean into that. Your old body can't handle that. Right.

Laurie: Like at one point he actually broke his cane. It's a really nice looking wooden cane with like a marled amber handle that he has. And he doesn't use a hospital cane, right? It's this gorgeous cane. And I was like, you know, canes don't break. Right? Like that shows that too much weight was being put on that cane. So we were fighting about this constantly. It was frustrating. It would make us angry. It was actually sort of driving a wedge in there. Like we were more frustrated with him than we needed to be because we couldn't get him to do this because we lived in fear that he was going to fall. Right? Why is this? Because we love him. He didn't see it that way. He saw it as us trying to control him, right? What finally caused me to say, I need to make this happen, this has to happen, is we were in a restaurant and when I was helping him get up from the table, the table next to us was watching. They always watch. In every restaurant, in every location, everybody watches my dad get up because it is such a process, because it is so hard, right? And this guy actually got angry with me. Like, why are you letting him do this? And I was like, you obviously don't have aging parents yet, right?

Doug: Well, that's the world we live in, right? People have opinions and feel compelled to express them whether they know anything or not.

Laurie: That's exactly right. But this person actually gave voice to what I was seeing on everybody's faces any time we were in public with my dad.

Doug: So you went to your dad, you said, “See?”

Laurie: Yeah, I did not. What I did was I did something that felt very, very harsh to me. And what I did is I had a conversation with him. What it ultimately came down to is that to my dad, walking with a walker was not just giving up control because he knew he was more stable with a walker. But what he didn't like about it was he thought it made him look old, right? And what I did is I said to him, I need you to understand, Dad, how old you look walking with your cane and how much more youthful and vibrant you look walking upright with a walker. And so I said, I'm going to video you and make you watch it. Because you don't know what you look like walking with a cane and I need you to see it. And so I did. I made him walk toward me and then I kept videoing while he turned around, which is very hard to do with one cane if you're using it entirely, right? And when I showed him the video, I said, I want you to see what your body looks like. I mean, it was, you know, it was so hunched over and so wrong. And then I got his walker out and I did the same thing with his walker. And then I came prepared to this duel. I then showed him some really cool-looking walkers. Like, there's a style of walker that here in America is called a European-style walker that is way cooler than the walkers we have here, even the rolling walkers.

Doug: With the tennis balls?

Laurie: Yeah, oh my god. Forget about that. They've got these wide, flat tubes and, you know.

Magda: All kinds of people use walkers. Anybody who needs assistance with balance in motion uses a walker. Right.

So after I made him watch these videos, and he was a little bit quiet, but he was like, “I got it. I didn't realize how much older I look walking with the cane than I do when I walk with the walker.” And that's when I sealed the deal by saying, look at these walkers I found. Look how cool they are. They're also really lightweight because my mom is the one putting them into the trunk of their car.

Doug: And that is how you bring a sword to a cane fight.

Magda: You've been working on that for 10 minutes, haven't you?

Doug: I had that locked and loaded. Absolutely.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: Do you perceive this as kind of a watershed moment?

Laurie: My mom gives all the cred. We don't have any issue with that with her. That is not in any way her issue. She is grateful and vocal about it for everything. My dad is grateful and kind and wonderful, but fights us on everything every step of the way.

Doug: He's still working off that accident. He absolutely has not processed what that accident did to him.

Laurie: Doug, you're exactly right. That is literally what it is. Sometimes in the heat of a really hard conversation between him and my mom, he will say, “you will never be able to understand what was taken away from me when I had that accident.” That is 100% what it is, Doug. My mom actually says that “I married my bodyguard.” My mom saw herself as weak and not very capable, and she married this tall, linebacker-looking, athletic, smart, capable guy who could do anything.

Magda: We have this idea that anything can be fixed if people try hard enough or want to or realize their mistake, and the fact that there was no way to fix it for your dad has to just, like, it's kind of bottomless in a way. Like there's no way to get your footing.

Doug: And that's a male thing, too, I think. Not to overgender things, but in general a lot of males are just raised with the idea that things can be fixed and you should be able to fix them. And if you can't fix them, that's a failing in your own abilities.

Laurie: 100%. Growing up with my mom taught me a lot about what it's like to make a living as a creative person. As a kid, I would literally sometimes see my mom pick up the mail and open a rejection letter. Like how many people get to see their parents get rejected?

Magda: Right. That's amazing that you got to see your mom get rejected because you're right. And when you get rejected, it's never because you weren't good enough. It's because your voice didn't sound the way they wanted or you were too tall or you were too old or your nose was some way or something like that. It's never really about you and your skill.

Doug: I've often wanted to talk to you about your nose, Magda. I think your nose cost you a lot of gigs.

Magda: I've never been a nose model. There's that. Right.

Laurie: Yeah, I mean, it was obvious to me early on, too, so I'm glad we've gone ahead and just, like... 

Doug: The elephant in the room has been slain.

Laurie: Literally.

Doug: But I'm glad we got to talk about that as well, just because another thing, when Wendi Aarons was on, we talked a lot about how many people feel they're most creative in their 50s. That's kind of a renaissance in that way. It's not a coincidence because in many cases you have a bit more time to concentrate on whatever talents you may have. Your inspiration to put Leap Design behind and become a freelance artist.

Laurie: My mom did exactly the same thing. She was a copywriter and she stopped being a copywriter and became a poet.

Doug: Did she work at Sterling Cooper?

Laurie: Yes, she did actually. That's exactly where she worked. She was Peggy.

Doug: And this is why you and I get along so well. She was a secretary who became a copywriter.

Laurie: Yeah.

Doug: That was my mom's job, too, for a while. And I told her to watch Mad Men and she kind of watched the whole thing with her mouth open.

Laurie: Same with my mom. 100%. She took issue with one thing. And that was during one of the elections, some of the creatives were portrayed as Republicans and my mom was like, totally bullshit.

Doug: Right. Right. Well, I thought you were going to go somewhere about, you know, foundation garments, but I'm glad you went there instead.

Laurie: Oh, God, no. No, everything about the women was 100% true.

Doug: I'm glad we did get a chance to touch on the creative aspect of your life now. If there's a piece of advice out there, apart from “have a really supportive mom who's done the same thing you have and will give you all the advice you need,” what kind of a mindset do you think it requires to launch a new solo creative process at this time in our lives?

Laurie: I can go very meta with this because I have recently been working with what is at the core of my art making. What's my “why,” right? In fact, I just led a workshop at one of the art centers here on Monday night called Finding Your Why. And the reason I feel qualified to lead that workshop while I'm in the middle of doing it, is because it took me a really, really, really long time to find my why as a creative person. I was a cartoonist at Duke. I majored in English, colon, Creative Writing. I went to Parsons School of Design and I worked as a graphic designer for 20 years. And then I left my life as a graphic designer and have become a full-time artist. Through all of that, until like last year, I didn't know what my why was, ever. But the thing is, is that through doing the program The Artist's Way, which I recommend to anybody who ever touches on creativity in any way with their lives, I discovered the reason it took me so long to find my why.

Doug: Is your why a secret?

Laurie: No, definitely not. It turns out that I really at my core seem to be kind of an old soul about one thing and that is change. I know how to make it. I know how to get excited about it. I know how to make it go well. And I know how to bring it about when it's necessary and how to recognize when it's time to bring about change. That seems to be my superpower in this life.

Doug: How related is that to the idea of how to react to change when it's thrust upon you?

Laurie: Yeah. Right now, I'm obsessed with painting portals, like literally portals, like the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Magda: I was looking at your portals and thinking they are just the most awesome thing, and like the labels that you gave them.

Laurie: Thank you. Thank you. That's the key, okay, Magda? That's the key. The magic of a portal is this one moment. Here you are. You discover that you're standing in front of a portal because you never know they're there in advance. They're surprises. Right. Right? The minute you understand that you are going through a portal, your brain goes, ooh, I hope this goes blank, right?

Magda: Yeah.

Laurie: Right? Where is that? That's the magic right there in that moment. If I said to you, hey, later today, you're going to get to go through a magic portal. Your brain is going to make a joke and say, oh, my God, I hope it takes me to the other side of this thing or to this exciting thing that I want to happen. That's the magic. We are all optimists. But I choose to use the word possibility because I think it's a lot less trite, it's a lot more active, and it opens it up for even people who self-identify as pessimists.

Magda: Right. Well, because not every portal you go through is going to be fun and games.

Laurie: For sure.

Magda: So calling it optimism isn't

Laurie: It's not accurate. It's not. But how you go through it, that's where the possibility is. So helping your aging parents move from the house they've lived in for 50 years into a new space, whatever that is, there are two basic at their core ways of viewing it, which is going to help you go through it the better way, seeing it as something awful to go through or seeing it as something hopeful to go through. And that, grabbing that magic, to me, is, I think, what I have somehow, I was somehow born with the ability to do that. I've been doing it my whole life, and now I all of a sudden recognize it.

Doug: See, this is why they rebooted Quantum Leap.

Laurie: Right. Totally. Yeah.

Doug: I loved the original with Scott Bakula, and the new one actually isn't that bad either, but I think it's...

Laurie: It is an interesting discussion or treatment of just coping with change when it just happens and you got to adapt.

Doug: That's exactly right.

Laurie: And portals are these very glorified pieces of magic in children's literature, right? I mean, I'm going to name for you two of the all-time most popular book series for children. One of them is The Chronicles of Narnia. All because of the wardrobe. And the other one, very unlikely, is the Magic Treehouse. 

Doug: Really?

Laurie: Yeah. Every single book of the Magic Treehouse series, when they go to the Treehouse, there's a different book in there. And when they open it, it takes them there.

Magda: Wow.

Doug: See, this reminds me of why I loved Myst so much. Remember that game?

Laurie: Yes! Oh my God, that game was amazing.

Doug: And they've redone it now. It's making its way into more modern platforms. It's on my son's Switch. I got it for his birthday.

Laurie: That's awesome.

Doug: And we play it together now. And of course, the great thing is now the images aren't static anymore.

Laurie: I was just talking about that game with someone like a month ago saying that would be a really good candidate to have a TV series made out of it.

Doug: Well, and I hope they do the same with Riven and Exile. Yeah, because those were great too.

Laurie: So this is the other part of what I've learned. We as humans, or at least we as westernized humans, we think that change is the exception and the status quo is normal. And we dread change. We say things like, “I'm terrible with change,” right? And we all hope to get “back to normal.” But the truth of the matter is if you actually look at your life, change is normal, status quo is the exception. And so what I believe is that change just needs a reframing, a new marketing message that helps us understand that the way to deal with change is by viewing it as possibility instead of something that's being foisted upon us. Even when it's something awful, even when it's your dad becoming paralyzed after a medical procedure. I'm not trying to turn anybody into Pollyanna, but when you're on the other side of the traumatic part of it, what good comes out of it? Does good come out of it? Very likely it does because that becomes the building block for the next step of your life.

Doug: Well, as we're getting into the whole philosophical aspect of is anything good or bad, right? 

Laurie: Absolutely, right.

Doug: Because something bad can lead to something great.

Laurie: And it usually does, right? That's kind of the ebb and flow of life. It rarely leads to something else.

Doug: Especially if you have that optimistic viewpoint that says, I'm going to find something great so that this bad thing bears fruit somehow. So it doesn't just live in my life as a bad thing. So let's talk about where you are online. I mean, as an artist, you have to put your stuff out there and advertise all the time. So where do we find your work? And how else do we keep up with what your portals are doing?

Laurie: So like everyone else, I spend a great deal of time on Instagram. So you can find me on Instagram at my first and last name, Laurie Smithwick.

Doug: Or Smithick if you're in Europe.

Laurie: Right, or Smithick if you want to go even a step further. Yeah, for a long time when Smithick's beer started being imported in America, we always kept it in our fridge as our house beer, and my mother-in-law still does.

Magda: That's cute.

Laurie: Yeah. So @lauriesmithwick on Instagram and lauriesmithwick.com on the web.

Doug: Well, and it's been great to talk to you. I'm glad you met Magda and this could go on for another bunch of hours because we have a lot in common and it's just a joy to talk to you. So thanks so much for talking about all that's going on in your life.

Laurie: Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me. And Doug, it's always a treat to get to hang out with you and I'm thrilled to have finally gotten to meet the mythical Magda. It was really great to meet you. 

Magda: It was really great to meet you too.

Laurie: And even greater to hang out and talk with you. I look forward to when we can do that over coffee or drinks.

Magda: The mythical.

Doug: The mythical ex-mytheth.

Magda: Yep.

Doug: And thank you all for listening to Episode 37 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been Laurie Smithwick or Smithick. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter, Friday Flames, every Friday. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review there. That really helps. We are off next week for secret reasons. I've always wanted to say that. You know that E.B. White has a letter of note saying, you know, I must say no for secret reasons. So for secret reasons, we're just off. We'll be back the following Wednesday with Episode 38. Until then, have a great week and bye bye.