I'm going to start using the patch today. A fresh attempt at becoming a nonsmoker. I want to for the sake of my family, especially our eagerly awaited newest member.

I want to do it for myself, too. I want to stop spending $6.70 a day on something that makes me so much more prone to illness, that keeps its dreadful consequences hanging over my head. Those consequences are the other shoe, just waiting to drop down like a lead anvil. It's bad enough that my own children have lived with a mother who smokes; bless society and the educational system, they do get that it's bad. So far they are still campaigning for me to stop, and neither of them seems inclined to take up this wretched habit that is actually a major addiction.

I want to stop supporting an industry that thrives manufacturing products that cause cancer and COPD and air pollution. I want to stop polluting this planet's air. I want to do whatever I can to make the world a better, kinder, cleaner place. I want to break free, once and for all (please, this time I want it to be for good), from this love/hate relationship with these cancer sticks, coffin nails, easy friends, deadly enemies.

One thing I've learned, and I am going to have to remember, especially when I'm angry/upset/sad/fill in any of myriad negative emotional possibilities: I cannot just smoke one cigarette. Ever. To smoke one cigarette is to mean being a smoker again. For years longer. The last time I tried to quit smoking I managed to be a nonsmoker for 106 days. Something irritated me (no, I don't even remember what it was); I missed my oldest friend (a 30-year-plus relationship here); and slowly but surely, that one cigarette led back to my full-blown lifetime average of slightly more than a pack a day.

My daughter and son cleaned up his living space yesterday. They cleaned their comforters together too. They worked as a team, and I have to say that his room never looked as fine as it does right now. She amazes me. So does he. They are amazing people, and I want to be an active part of their lives for a long time to come.

So I am going to put a patch on my arm in a little while and begin my life as a nonsmoker. I'm going to write about this here, but only here, because I feel clean and new here, and as though I can write about it all without too much pressure, too much of an audience. I love support but I hate a light glaring on me when I'm dealing with the worst addiction I've ever had. I have been sober and clean for over 21 years, but nicotine still dominates over every facet of my life. It's a killer in every possible meaning of that word.

Here I go.

That's what my future son-in-law said last night. Yesterday a glider and ottoman set arrived. It was an item on their baby registry I truly wasn't expecting to see, but there it was. I checked the packing slip to see who had given it to them, and it was two very special friends of mine; I shall call them Sushigirl and BB here. It was especially nice to hear him say this because he's experienced plenty of the not so kind aspects of life in his 20 years on this planet, and come through it being a truly good person.

He had a hard time finding a job, but he's working now; he gets up and out very early and gets there by 7 a.m. He comes home grimy from construction work and won't hug anyone until he's had a bath. Then he hugs me and plays around with my 14-year-old son, and then he and my daughter, who is 16 and has a tummy that shows my grandson is growing well and fine, sometimes go downstairs to a friend's apartment to hang out for a while, or most of the time just relax together in their room.

We are an unusual family in a lot of ways, but there's a lot of love in this overcrowded two-bedroom apartment. I am glad these young parents are learning what I've known for some time, through people like Sushigirl and BB, my children's father and other special angels in human form I've met along the way:

People can be so kind.