WELCOME TO

MIDDLEHOOD
BY JUDI KETTELER Then we went to Menards to shop.
Since it was the first time we’d left the
house together without children in
months, it felt like a date. It was July 4,
so I giddily threw sparklers into our cart
on the way to the lighting section. That’s
where I found exactly what I was looking
for: thick black corded lights with big Edi-
son bulbs. “I think those are too big,” my
husband said.
“No, they’re perfect!” I replied. They
were too big.

EVERY TIME WE TRIED TO STRING THE

patio lights over and around the posts,
the buckets threatened to tip because the
lights were too heavy. They pulled in all
directions, sagging like waterlogged jeans
hung out to dry. So we investigated how
to attach the lights to our house, ordering
special hooks for the siding. Another fail.
We tied the posts to bushes lining the pa-
tio. Fail. I offered up the soffit as a possibil-
ity. That was a step too far for my husband.
A ladder may have been thrown.
I. Wanted. String. Lights. Because
when you have a year of missing so many
things, you fixate on having one piece of
something magical. And lights, to me,
were magical. I had a few strands of those
battery-operated fairy lights woven

My Year
through the rose of Sharon bushes around
the patio, but they weren’t enough. I want-
ed to bathe our patio in light, to illuminate
this 15-by-15-foot concrete slab of safe
air for the kind of socializing that had

of Light
become our lifeline to friends and
family, our space for novelty, and our
place for marking any kind of milestone.
It was the place where we had our
end-of-the-school-year campfire, which
featured s’mores and my kids throw-
IT TURNS OUT OUR SMALL PATIO WAS THE PERFECT ing worksheets into the fire and saying

PLACE TO HUDDLE AGAINST THE STORM OF 2020.

things like, “Distance learning? More like
distance burning!” and “Take that, frac-
tions!” It was the place where I’d had my
ON THE LAST SATURDAY IN SEPTEMBER, I BOUGHT STRING LIGHTS FOR MY PATIO. I HAP- mom and four of my siblings over for
pened upon them at the Ace Hardware in Deer Park while looking for a fire poker. I came her 85th birthday. We spaced the chairs
home and announced to my husband, “I finally found the perfect lights!” He groaned. I apart on the patio, ordered food, and faced
understood. The theme of the summer had been Judi Has a Vision About String Lights outward as we sang “Happy Birthday” to
That’s Impossible to Execute. her, laughing at the ludicrousness but glad
It started with me asking him for an outdoor plug in the patio area. After research- to be together.
ing how to cut into the siding and hook the new plug to the existing indoor wiring, he It was the place where I invited a group
installed it. Next, I showed him a bunch of Pinterest images of ways to secure and string of new neighborhood friends to have
outdoor lights. He cut four tall wooden posts, stuck them into four galvanized metal difficult conversations about race and
buckets, poured concrete around them, and covered them with river rocks. equity. We burned through a dozen logs

2 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 ILLUSTR ATIO N BY D O L A SU N
WELCOME TO MIDDLEHOOD
while discussing mobilization tactics. It
was the place where my husband and I
got into heated matches of Ruzzle on our
phones (it’s an addictive word game that
combines Scrabble and Boggle and that my
WHEN YOU HAVE A YEAR OF MISSING SO MANY THINGS,
YOU FIXATE ON HAVING ONE PIECE OF SOMETHING MAGICAL.
AND STRING LIGHTS, TO ME, WERE MAGICAL.
husband always wins) while our son prac-
ticed spinning a basketball on his finger,
trying to set a record, and my daughter did
TikTok dances.
It was the place where we hosted
popsicle night with our neighbors. The
kids tried to eat them before they melted
while the grownups talked about if school
would start, what we could be doing to
help more people, and what a fraught,
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2 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1
strange, and eye-opening summer it was.
It was the place where the weeks simulta-
neously stretched on, with long and bright
evenings, and counted down ominously
toward the even-longer darkness. Twelve
weeks until the first frost warning. Six-
teen weeks until the end of Daylight Sav-
ings Time. Twenty weeks until the trees
would be bare. And all of those weeks
would mean more Americans had died
from the coronavirus.
But then I found the lights in the
Christmas aisle at Ace, a hilarious out-
come since there would be no Christ-
mas gathering this year. No matter, on
that bright Saturday, when the trees were
showing a strong hint of orange, my hus-
band and I hung the much smaller lights
around our patio. The poles did not tip.
The sag was exactly right, the slightest
bow-shaped curve.
We invited another couple we’ve
known for a dozen years over that night.
We ordered Thai food, I brought out my
stash of cookies and Not a Cheesecake
Cake bars from Sweets by LaDawn (on
Plainfield Road; go there now), and then,
as dusk threatened, I plugged in the lights.
Some things you remember as perfect mo-
ments. When I got a 9.4 on balance beam
in 1986. The night Barack Obama won in
2008. When each of my babies laughed for
the first time. And now the site of these
small round bulbs, illuminated above us,
was on the list.
That evening, under the lights, I didn’t
think about how it was only nine more
weeks until my family wouldn’t gather for
Thanksgiving.
PH OTO G R A PH BY J O N ATH A N W I LLI S
 THE ONE THING 2020 GOT ABSOLUTELY
right was the weather on Halloween.
Do you remember what a gorgeous day it
was? What a clear, navy blue evening it
turned out to be? I put up a table close to
the sidewalk and set candy on it for trick-
or-treaters. My husband and I scooted our
patio chairs to the driveway and built a
fire, so we could sit out and watch the kids
come by (our own, ages 10 and 12, were
already out with friends). The patio was
lit behind us, and in front of us dinosaurs
and goblins took packs of Skittles and
Starburst. We mused about the year and
about how lucky we were that Halloween
at least worked out.
Sitting there, I thought about the novel
I’d just finished reading that afternoon,
Oona Out of Order. The premise is this:
On New Year’s Eve, as 1982 becomes 1983,
Oona suddenly wakes up in 2015. Instead
of turning 19 (it’s her birthday), she turns
51. From then on, every year at the stroke
of midnight on her birthday, she leaps to
January 1 of a different year.
Some years, all she wants to do is leap
away. Others, she doesn’t want to leave.
One year, she can’t wait until December
31 to escape the pain of the year—only to
land in the year right before the one she
just left. All of her mistakes are ahead, and
she’s unable to prevent them.
It was a thought-provoking little piece
of fantasy to think about, especially as I’ve
spent this past year trying to hold on to
moments of 2020 and also leap the hell
away from 2020. Did my cross purposes
get me anywhere better? I don’t know.
But I do want to make something of these
months. Even Oona, who lives out of order,
gets to take what she learns from one year
to the next, cobbling together the pieces of
her life. We’re all cobblers too, even if time
moves only one way for us. Even if every
leap is only forward.
What helped me endure 2020, from
March onward, was the idea that I just
needed to ask one question every day: Was
I in the group that could offer help or in the
group that needed help? If still in the group
that was able to help, I should try to help.
Help turned out to be so many things:
wearing a mask, helping my mom down-
load a Kindle book (or use a Kindle in
the first place), saying a kind word
to someone, supporting a local busi-
ness, hugging my scared kids, telling
my husband he was doing great when
I really wanted him to stop throwing lad-
ders, sharing an idea, showing up for racial
justice, and campaigning and voting.
And money. Giving as much money
as I could.
This daily question is the best thing I
have to carry forward into 2021. Though I
do have one edit, gleaned from the feeling
of luminosity my patio provided these past
months. My revised question for the new
year is: Am I in the group that needs the
light or in the group with light to spare? If
I have the light, I must shine it. Especially
in the cold darkness.

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