My Word for 2025

And a cautionary tale about the dangers of gift wrapping

Jan 11, 2025

Hi Everyone! Hope your new year is off to a great start! Thank you to my new subscribers and my new paid subscribers, including my dear sister-in-law. (Laura, I’d happily babble to you for free any day but I’m so grateful for your constant support!)

My 2024 ended with some highlights and lowlights. I went limping (metaphorically) into the holiday season as I was a bit unprepared. As 2024 came to a close, I found myself limping quite literally.

Here’s how it started: On the Monday evening before Christmas (or Christmas Eve Eve as my kids call it), I was determined to catch up. Because I’d run out of tape after wrapping exactly one item earlier in the month, I had a pile of presents for extended family waiting for me. I sat on the drafty floor for about 40 minutes, wrapping and labeling. Apparently, there was a lot of stretching involved. Too much. When I stood, I felt stiff but not like “I need to see a chiropractor immediately” stiff. Then I sat on the couch for another 30 minutes. When I got up, I knew something was very wrong.

Forgetting I’m 53 and not 23, I took some ibuprofen and believed I’d be good as new by morning. But when I awoke, I felt worse—somewhere between getting kicked by a horse and falling down a flight of stairs.

I tried to make light of my condition and posted links to pieces I’d written about ways to injure yourself when you’re past 40 and 50. (If only I’d known about the dangers of gift wrapping!)

Despite more ibuprofen and laying flat on a heating pad, by the next day (Christmas morning) I could barely walk, and by Christmas dinner there wasn’t enough red wine in my brother’s house to make sitting or standing even remotely comfortable. I needed to get home and back to the old muscle relaxers I’d discovered between ancient tubes of Ben-Gay and Biofreeze. All I wanted for Christmas was 10mg of this drug that seemed to include every letter of the alphabet and had expired in 2021. (If you’ve read my memoir, you know I was raised in a family that considers expiration dates to be mere suggestions.)

Initially, these pills helped but by Thursday, they couldn’t touch the pain that was radiating down my leg. I resisted contacting my doctor because any time I tell him something’s off, he shrugs and says, “We’re getting old.”

I’ve seen enough House episodes to know that’s not a real diagnosis but I usually nod and go along with it because I like him.

By Thursday evening when my lower back was a yellowy-purplish-red I’d only ever seen after holding a handful of melty Skittles, I hobbled my way into an urgent care (at my brother’s recommendation, thank you, Chris!) and was diagnosed with a lumbar sprain. Mercifully, I received super-strength ibuprofen and new muscle relaxers.

The timing here was critical because my family was headed to London the following evening—a last-minute trip/gift that came about when my middle son, Ben, signed up for a short college course in London and Edinburgh.

When he told me about this opportunity in November, I was excited for him (and more than a bit jealous). He asked for my thoughts on booking his flights. He said the course started Jan. 3 so maybe he could leave on the night of Jan. 2.

As if that didn’t give it away, he’s not much of a traveler. I explained that he could encounter weather-related flight delays and he might experience jet lag. Err on the side of caution, go early, I said.

Then I tried to picture him in airports on his own. He’d tell you himself that he gets lost picking up pizza in the next town. Then I had a thought: Why not drop him off? Call it maternal instinct (or an intense urge to get out of New Jersey), but I had a strong feeling we should accompany him. So I booked flights and hotel rooms. New socks and underpants be damned, this would be everyone’s gift!

Like most passengers who were traveling as couples or in groups, our family was divided and scattered around the aircraft. I sat next to a lovely man who was reading Anna Karenina because his girlfriend’s name is Anna. He told me they were flying to Turkey for a two-week vacation. He was thrilled to be aloft as his original flight was canceled after a man in first class refused to buckle his seatbelt.

My seatmate and his girlfriend missed their connecting flight from Ohio. Rather than seem upset, he focused on the positive: they’d only miss an hour at their final destination. I admired his attitude. Would I have been so calm? No, I’d have offered $20 to the kid who found that first class passenger and stuck his head in a urinal.

Anyway… a few hours into the flight, he was reading Anna and I was reading

Laura Leffler

’s highly addictive Tell Them You Lied (which also has an Anna as a main character!) when I heard a garbled call for medical assistance followed by something about a medical emergency.

I’d taken my pain meds and was fully engrossed in Laura’s book so I was only half-listening. Still, when you’re a parent, you’re never off the clock so I thought “Maybe I should check on the rest of my family?” I spotted my husband’s head, then two sons’ heads. I scanned the plane. Where was the third kid? Ben—the one heading to this program.

Reader, he was passed out in the aisle.

“Excuse me,” I said to my seatmate and staggered toward my child, bypassing my sleeping husband and Ben’s bewildered brothers.

By the time I got to Ben, a kindly doctor and midwife had already come to his rescue. Flight attendants were on a call with a doctor “on the ground.” All assured us fainting was common while flying.

Fortunately, Ben was conscious and had kept his sense of humor. When I asked him what happened, he said, “I felt hot, dizzy, and nauseous. I was trying to get to the bathroom in case I got sick and next thing I heard this announcement about a medical emergency and I realized, ‘It’s me. I’m the emergency.’”

He received oxygen and returned to his seat in less than an hour. In addition to my worry about Ben, I was afraid for my Turkey-bound seatmate’s sake that they’d turn the plane around. Could he keep his composure twice? I didn’t want to find out. Selfishly, it felt fantastic to stand and stretch my legs for 45 minutes while they tended to Ben rather than remain crammed in my middle seat.

After this early drama, we had a great time in London.

I spent most of the trip disconnected from my phone, other than to take some photos, and it was a nice break.

We dropped a healthy Ben at his hotel on our way to the airport to return home. After almost a week away and no longer in pain, I was looking forward to opening my laptop again and getting back to work. My oldest son and I went to get coffee. I opted for a large cappuccino as I was excited to spend the entire flight back to Newark writing—an odd coincidence, I’ve been drafting something with a character named Anna (which I’ll probably change) from Ohio on and off for a few months now.

As we approached the gate, my husband was standing in the tense, pre-pacing posture that I’ve learned over the past 25 years means something’s wrong.

“The pilot called in sick,” he said. “They’re flying in another pilot from New York, but that pilot needs to rest 11 hours before flying again.”

My first thought was “Wait, don’t we have ER doctors pulling 16-hour shifts?” (Not that I think that’s a great idea either but…)

My second thought was, “What about the autopilot the movie Airplane promised me?”

My third thought was this: My word for 2025 is surrender … as in “You have no clue what may happen next so just go with it.”

Because what can you do? Flip out like a fellow passenger who began screaming “I need alcohol!” Sob like a woman who said if she didn’t fly out on time, she couldn’t catch her connecting flight and she’d miss a wedding in Texas? (This is why you need to allow ample travel time, Ben!)

Yes, you can do all those things and more, but none will get you off the ground faster.

The airline put us up in a hotel connected to the airport. While on line to check in, I chatted with a man who also marveled at the fact that there wasn’t another pilot in all of the U.K. but as we agreed, we were safe—mildly inconvenienced—but safe. And that was all that mattered. Surrender.

We awoke at 5 a.m., challenging after falling asleep at 3 a.m. (see large cappuccino mentioned above) and once more went through security and the Amazing Race-like labyrinth that is Heathrow.

What I’ve read:

Scrap by Calla Henkel

A true-crime-obsessed young artist is drawn into the lives of a deliriously wealthy family in this fantastically entertaining thriller from Calla Henkel, author of Other People's Clothes

This is a wild ride filled with dark humor and I flew through it.

Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie

A theater critic at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe writes a vicious one-star review of a struggling actress he has a one-night stand with in this sharply funny, feminist tinderbox.

I’ve always wanted to attend this festival and this novel is taking me there vicariously! I’m halfway through and really enjoying it. It comes out in July and I’m thankful Doubleday sent me an advance copy, which includes a note about how the book came to be — really interesting!

And please check out Tell Them You Lied. The art world, toxic friendships, and the past and present collide in this stunner that comes out in May and is already making the 2025 must-read lists. Don’t miss it! I did not see the ending coming at all!

I love reading everyone’s Ins & Outs for the coming and past years. Mine is simple:

In: Gift bags

Out: Wrapping paper

In: Stretching

Out: Remaining in the same position for longer than 5 minutes

In: Going with the flow

Out: Presuming any semblance of control

While we were in London we saw Hamilton and I’m also attempting to take Aaron Burr’s “Talk less, smile more” into the new year with me. I’ll keep you posted on that one!

Until next time…

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