Happy New Year

Like most people, I love new beginnings: new years, new journals, new books. All the fresh starts and possibilities! But as tempting as it is to say good riddance to 2011, it brought good things as well as bad, just like every year does. Some years we just need to look a little harder for the good than we do other years.  For me, getting a cancer diagnosis was bad. But the peace I have found and am still finding is so very good. It helps that this cancer may take so long to kill me that everyone will be completely bored by the time it finally does. Or I may be hit by a truck or a meteorite way before then.

In the meantime, I have a resolution for 2012:  I’ll be checking in here more often. I’ll be reading your blogs more often. It’ll be a good place to rest in between organizing all my photos, recording all my passwords, making a financial spreadsheet, purging and reorganizing the file cabinets, oh Lord have mercy.

You’d be surprised how many times I think about you, even you whom I’ve never met. As my She likes to say, “Tah dah!” Happy New Year, y’all. Peace be with you.

What Not To Say To Someone Who Has Cancer

I have leukemia. There’s just no way to sidle up to that one, foreshadow it, or drop hints, so there it is. I just found out about it, and I don’t have a lot (if any) specific information about my particular case. I do know that I can either live a long time or not. Pretty much just like everyone else, maybe only tireder and more bruised up. Unfortunately I do not have and knowing me I will not ever get “unexplained weight loss,” which can be a symptom for some people. I am actually happy to have a good reason for being so fatigued all the time. I was feeling like a bad, lazy person. Now I can truly nap without guilt.

Here’s what I do know a lot about after just a couple of days. People will say the darnedest things to someone who’s just received a cancer diagnosis. I’m making a list of what not to say or do, no matter how much you want to fix things for your friend or how much you need comfort yourself . (If I could get cancer, so could you. If I can die, so can you.)

Don’t tell them that they will be fine and that this could be so much worse. A few minutes ago, you couldn’t even pronounce what they have. You know nothing about their particular case, even if you have or have had cancer or Uncle Jim has “the same thing.” Don’t tell them to take a deep breath or not to worry until they have something to worry about. They’re breathing fine and with or without your reassurance, they’re actually impressed with how calm they are, and they’re still going to be thinking “cancer cancer cancer” just about every waking moment, kind of like a Greek chorus, while they empty the cat’s litter box or watch the news.

Unless your cancer-diagnosed friend lives in a forest up in the mountains with only weekly stagecoach service, or is technologically challenged as well as cancerous, don’t send them articles. They read everything in print on the first night after they heard the diagnosis. As a sub-category of this “don’t,” don’t send them inspirational poems or stories that appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul.

What about telling your friend that you’re praying for them? This is a sticky wicket. If your friend knows that you really are the praying sort and that you will actually spend a minute or so thinking about them every morning and wishing them well, go ahead and tell them. Unless he or she is a total sourpuss, your prayers will  probably be appreciated even by the non-religious. However, If your friend has good reason to doubt that you pray at all, you’re going to come off as a lying, cliché-mouthing hypocrite. Your choice. But please don’t take this opportunity to urge your friend to trust in God’s will, accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, or pray with you. This is not your big chance to save a soul.

So what can you say? It can be as little as “I’m so sorry!” It can be “I love you,” if you do. It can be a quiet hug. It can be an offer to kill anyone or anything who is mean to your friend. If in your shock you say something stupid or careless and you realize it, admit it on the spot or as soon as you can. It’s probably better not to say “Let me know if there is anything I can do.” If you want to do something, just tell yourself to be on the lookout for what the person might need. Maybe it’s just a card in the mail next week for starters. (This is the area where I’ve most often failed with friends. Never again.)

I bet that I’ll have more to say as time goes along. About everything! It’s almost heady, this feeling of liberation that’s come upon me.

Mary Margaret McDaniel Black Harvey (Peggy) 12/08/23 - 5/14/2000

Today I tried to sing all the songs my mother loved. Some kids got lullabies; I got The Tennessee Waltz, Melancholy Baby, and Embraceable You. I got The Eyes of Texas and Mairsie Doats. I got rafts of World Word II songs like I’ll Be Seeing You and Mamselle.  I got a ballad that I have never been able to remember after these lines:  “Oh listen boys listen to this story I gotta tell. This little epistle concerns our Nell.”

Eleven years ago my mother died, and I still cannot explain why it was that I was mean, impatient, critical, and completely without empathy when it came to her. I had a ball of anger inside that wouldn’t quit. And yet I loved her, though I wouldn’t admit it. I love her still, and now I am grateful for that love.

Peggy could suck all the air out of the room, literally, with her ever-present Marlboro; and figuratively, with her insistent ability to draw everyone’s attention to her. The expression “It’s all about me!” is supposed to be a joke delivered with a self-deprecating smile. With her, it was real, and it was so desperate. She would clap her hands together and shout “Oh, let’s have fun!” and the fun, if any, would come to a screeching halt. She could spoil a Christmas or vacation without even breathing hard by indicating her disappointment or hurt.

She would interrupt anyone’s most serious and urgent communication to ask them to fetch a Kleenex, bring an ashtray, or in my case, urge me after three sentences to “get to the point.” She “worried” about me all the time, but it was clear that it was what worry was doing to her that was important, and not whether or not the thing she worried about would actually happen. When my friends who had children were around, even when I was in my forties, she would trade stories with them about the trials of childbirth and motherhood before they even realized what was taking place. I’d be sitting or standing in the same room, silently, while my friend became a deer caught in the headlights.

My mother’s worst failure, in my mind, was that she loved me because she thought she possessed me, and for the daughter she imagined I was; not because she loved the real me and not because she wanted to give me permission to be a person, too. My secret revenge was that I wanted another mother, and my overt revenge was that I closed myself off  to her in every way that I thought I could, even when she was dying, to lessen her power over me. I couldn’t even give her the 1940’s black and white movie ending where everything is forgiven and made right at the deathbed. She would have loved that.

Eleven years later, I know that she was simply a woman who could annoy the daylights out of a saint. She had no negative power except what I stupidly gave her. I am painfully aware, especially when I annoy my own daughter, of how easy it is to let the wish to do and say the right thing drive me into doggedly doing and saying the wrong thing. My mother wanted to be loved. That is all. I finally get it. I wish it were not too late to be forgiven, because I’d like the movie ending, too.

 

Cutting the Cord

It’s been a week today. We don’t have cable TV anymore.  And tonight is the Super Bowl.  We could (gasp) not watch the game and just catch the commercials later on YouTube.  We were prepared to accept that. Instead, we are sitting at the kitchen table with big mugs of tea, followed by a glass or two of Pinot Grigio, watching a perfectly clear picture of Super Bowl 2011 via the $10.00 set of rabbit ears I picked up at Radio Shack. The kitchen works best for reception, and the picture is clearer than cable because the digital signal is not compressed. Most of the time, however, we don’t need a TV at all.

We have not missed a single one of our favorite TV programs all week:  Grey’s Anatomy, Harry’s Law, The Good Wife, Detroit 187, CBS Sunday Morning.  We watch them whenever we want to, and we can hit “pause” on the laptop or the iPad for rest stops.  We can even watch the nightly NBC News with Brian Williams if we want to wait an hour for it to show up on Paddy.  In addition, our $8.99 a month subscription to Netflix allows us to watch movies like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo instantly online or via a DVD that arrives in the mail practically as soon as it’s been ordered.  We can watch all of this in any room in the house, or out on the screen porch when the weather gets warmer.

We are saving over $100.00 a month, and enjoying it.

Oh, and an hour into the Super Bowl, we’ve only had one second of signal interference, when we both screamed  “Yes!” and raised  four arms in victory.  Then we laughed. 

Music Lesson

Forty old people, arranged around rectangular tables

in a rectangular room with black and white squares

on the floor.

Today's speaker has a microphone next to which he

stands so close that every “p” makes an unwanted

punctuation of amplified air.

He talks so fast that “program music” sounds like prora

music, something new and perhaps extraterrestial that

we are just now finding out about

in this angular room, early in the 21^st century.

But no, we are learning about music in the mid-

nineteenth century, long before even the oldest old

person in this room was born,

long before our parents or even grandparents were born.

The speaker puffs into the microphone about piccolos and

preludes, and the old people are polite, their papery

faces inscrutable.

We listen to the river, beginning very quietly as two

streams, high in the mountains of Austria.

Some cannot hear the beginning at all, but they do better

when the two small streams become one big sound,

and white heads bob up and down,up and down.

The river leads us past a wedding party with dancers,

and into a night scene of dark currents and a moon and

perhaps some magic.

“Therapidswillcomequickly”

warns the speaker, his glasses glinting.

And sooner than we expected, but

we did know, he intones “The Rapids” and no one is

surprised.

Forty old people, still attentive, still inscrutable, past the

rapids now,  sit in the rectangular room

and listen to the river disappear from sight.

Like A Prayer

All of my life, I have wanted to keep a journal.  I’ve started one at least 35 times.  When I was a pre-teenager, nothing would do but a diary with a key.  My mother had a 5-year diary.  It was dark green with gold lettering, and she wrote in it sporadically starting at the age of 11, from 1934-1936.  I still have it.

On June 16, 1934, she went to see “The Thin Man” with William Powell.  She noted “I spent most of the time to-day [sic] writing.  I am writing a jungle story.  I think I will call it ‘The Killer Camera Expedition.’”  Sounds like a promising title, but I doubt if she ever really wrote the story.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  I once thought I should try to publish a book full of all the  great titles and first lines I’ve thought of, and nothing else.

As life rolled on, I kept buying journals that I never kept up for more than a week.  Friends gave me beautiful blank books, covered in suede or tapestry, which I was afraid to write in.  When the word-processing age began, I typed journal entries with enthusiasm and a sense of fulfillment until the long vacation weekend ended, and then I was back to sleeping, eating, working, chores; sleeping eating, working, chores.  Sometimes I jotted quotes and tucked clippings into yet another lovely journal.  Cheaper, spiral-bound notebooks turned into pages of to-do lists and scrawled phone numbers.  Nothing became a steady practice. 

A year or so ago, I read Phyllis Theroux’s wonderful book The Journal Keeper, and Sheila and I even went to hear her talk at the Library of Virginia.  Ms. Theroux was incredibly inspiring, and I seriously thought about buying the same blank books she uses and the same Sharpie pens.  I didn’t, though.  And I didn’t begin another journal.

In September, I signed up for a small group at church called “The Seeker’s Path,” which I wrote a little about here.   One of the suggested spiritual exercises was journaling in the manner described in the book The Artist’s Way.  That journaling method sternly recommends writing first thing in the morning, without any coffee, for three pages every day.  No typing, either.  However, I’d tried that over a decade ago, and it didn’t work for me.  I was working ten-twelve hours every day, and I sure as hell didn’t have time to write three pages.  Three words, maybe.  Plus, no one is going to tell me I can’t have coffee if I want to, or order me to write three pages. 

But some of the questions we were asked to respond to in a journal intrigued me.  In Week One, we were asked to describe our most profound experience of God; and what one thing might we commit to pursue over the next nine weeks that might significantly enhance our spiritual lives.  I decided to commit to journaling.  It was just nine weeks, but even that would be beyond any regular writing I’d ever done. 

I went to the grocery store and bought a black and white cardboard-covered composition book with lined pages.  I decided that I would get a cup of coffee and drink from it while I journaled.  I would use a plain old ballpoint pen that moved smoothly over the pages.  I would not attempt to answer every single question or prompt posed by Sam, our group leader.  And I would definitely write only until I was done, whether that was one page or four pages.  I decided to sit in the wing chair in the office, with the afghan over my knees.  Miss T decided that she would sit with me, on my lap.  And we promised we would do it every day, come hell or high water, for nine weeks.

That was September, and this is the middle of January.  I’m on my second black and white composition book.  I’ve made an entry every single day, except for two of the days we were in Philadelphia.  I don’t grapple with theology or the concise issues of my “spiritual development” on a daily basis, although I think more of our lives than we realize are directly related to our spiritual paths.  I do write about what my place in the world in relation to others could be, what I do and do not understand about a person or a situation, what frightens or saddens or angers me, what I found beautiful or moving or important or funny the day before, and what that spark of the Divine inside me may be trying to tell me or show me if I will but listen.  Some days I have written only three quarters of a page.  Some days I have gone on for four or five.  I know when I am done.

Sheila has read a few things out loud to me from her book of the diaries of Dorothy Day, the great social activist and advocate for the poor and underprivileged.   Dorothy Day said that for her, writing was like a prayer.   Right on, Dorothy.  She said "The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart." Yes.

 

How To Live Forever

A stack of books just crashed to the floor from my bedside table.  It was a sign.  Every year about this time, I anxiously await inspiration to strike so that I can write our  annual Christmas letter.  It hasn’t struck yet, and I’ve decided to keep procrastinating loosen up by describing the books on my bedside table, as I did almost a year and a half ago here.  Uh oh, I have changed bedside tables since that post—I now use the top of an old wooden trunk—and I have a lot more space.  Yeah.  That’s why one of the stacks just gave up and fell to the floor.  The books here can be divided into several categories:  re-reads, dip-in-tos, poetry (always a re-read), and new books waiting to be munched on.  You’d nod off long before I listed all of them, so here is just a sample.

My favorite re-read is almost always at my bedside:  Yearnings:  Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life by Rabbi Irwin Kula.  Here’s what Mitch Albom had to say about it.  “This wonderful book…embrace[s] the magic of day-to-day living, the spirituality that can be found in our questions, our mistakes, and our doubts.  Life is indeed messy, but as Irwin Kula shows us, sorting through it is what transforms us to higher ground.”  Of course I would love someone who encourages me in my favorite activity:  sorting through things in my head.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a re-read from almost 40 years ago.  But for me, it’s a whole different book now.  Do you ever feel like even though you’re decades old, you just woke up last week?  I feel that way all the time.  What was I thinking 40 years ago?  I don’t think I had a glimmer of insight into this book.  When I read it then, I became fascinated by the idea of buying a motorcycle and traveling across the country.  And that’s about it.  I was a clueless dork, and I’m just a tiny bit less dorky now that I’ve been awake, alert, and alive for a week or so.

Right now, I’m reading these books for the first time:  No Death, No Fear, by Thich Nhat Hanh; Farm City:  The Education of an Urban Farmer, by Novella Carpenter; and The Nine:  Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin. 

A dip-int0-start-reading-anywhere book is Jack Smith’s LA, a collection of essays on the city of angels by the long-time and much-beloved columnist of the LA Times.  Jack Smith made me laugh out loud for years and still does.

Poetry books roam the trunk, because I usually grab one and read a poem before I go to sleep.  Right now there is one by Billy Collins:  Picnic, Lightning; a poetry anthology edited by Billy Collins:  180 More:  Extraordinary Poems for Everyday; and a collection of poems by Mary Oliver:  Thirst.  I love them all, as well as their brothers and sisters on the nearby shelf.

Having a big stack of books yet to be read is a hedge against dying, at least for me.  I admit it.  As long as all those unread pages are within arm’s reach, I get to keep living.  It’s like sleeping with the light on if you’re afraid of the dark.  Here are the latest still-to-be-reads:

Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle; Mattaponi Queen:  Stories, by Belle Boggs; No Death, No Fear, by Thich Nhat Hanh; The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker; The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, and not because Oprah likes him; and Look at the Birdie:  unpublished short fiction, by Kurt Vonnegut.

I’ll live a long time yet.

Christmas Poem

I was looking for a poem about

Christmas to send to a few people,

whether they liked it or not.

I wanted one with cold and clear stars,

A voice singing something about

Angels;

And animals waiting to speak at

Midnight.

And love, which I believe really is

All we need.

Bilingual Turkey

When we lived in Mexico, we both made a concentrated effort to speak Spanish to the Mexicans.  (They tried equally hard to speak English to us.)  Our efforts had mixed results. 

In general, my Spanish vocabulary and grammar exceeded Sheila’s.  She is half Mexican, but she is from Michigan and was raised as a non-Spanish speaking Midwesterner, whereas I spent a good part of my childhood on the Tex-Mex border. 

Prior to our arrival in Mexico, She only knew such important words as taco, enchilada, margarita, cerveza, gracias, corazon (heart) and alma (soul).  Just a few words, but they took her places and won her friends. 

We arrived in October, and by the time Thanksgiving was almost upon us, Sheila had learned the Spanish word for “turkey,” which is pavo.  She had also somehow caught on to the word polvo, which means “dust.”  You can sense where this is going, can’t you?

Sondra, a young neighbor whom we employed as a three-times-a-week maid, spoke less English than Sheila spoke Spanish, but by and large they managed to communicate with smiles, gestures, and eye rolls, the latter sometimes launched in my direction.  They bonded.

A day or two before Thanksgiving, Sondra arrived in the morning and started sweeping the tile floor.  With the usual smiles and gestures, Sheila proudly trotted out her new Spanish word, pavo, and sweetly informed Sondra that there were many turkeys on the floor over by the windows.

Now Sondra had respect for her elders and her employers, and she was also patient and gracious with mistakes in Spanish.  But at the startling news of the many turkeys on the floor, her normally kind and serene expression turned to total mystification mixed with concern.   Her new boss was perhaps a little loco.

Sondra turned to me for help, and saw the big grin on my face as I choked out “No es ‘pavo’!  Polvo!”  before bursting into giggles.  I explained that Sheila was thinking about the gringo custom of Thanksgiving, Dia de Accion de Gracias, where one serves pavo, when she meant to say the word for “dust.”  Sondra’s face cleared with relief.   “Ay, Senorita Cheela!”  she laughed and clucked, shaking her head with affection.

We have never forgotten the Spanish words for turkey and dust, and I had to share the memory with you.  May your pavo be delicious, and if there’s a little polvo on the floor, who cares?  It’s the corazon that’s important.   

I Saw It On Fox News

We’ve all kind of wondered, right?  Did Lee Harvey Oswald really act alone?  What about the detailed symbology in Dan Brown’s popular suspense thrillers?  For me, those are fun reads.  I think it’s perfectly normal to be intrigued (briefly) with potential conspiracies from time to time and there’s nothing like a good old edge of the seat conspiracy thriller at the movies.

Then there’s the wacko obsessive paranoid crazy person, combined with a dash of pathological liar.  We met her on Saturday.  A neighbor of ours asked us out to lunch with another friend of hers, who will be pet/housesitting our friend’s dog next week.  We were unprepared, as it turned out, for the meeting. 

For two plus hours, “Tamara” held forth.  If we had been able to break free from horrified paralysis and interject a comment or two, it would have been difficult to interrupt her stream of consciousness monologue on the following topics:  microwaved water (poisonous), scalar weaponry (You don’t know what that is?  I will tell you, and let you know the five countries that employ it),  Jesus’ face on the ocean floor, the successful manipulation of weather by They and Them,  the meaningful “fact” that cell mitochondria (she called them  “mitrochondria”) are supported by cross-shaped structures, the purposeful connection between Jewish holidays and the conception and gestation of a human fetus, and the cause of her brain aneurysm and subsequent miraculous survival.  Oh, and this woman drinks decaf expresso.  Because, she asked rhetorically, can you imagine someone like her on caffeine? 

I will make just a few comments now that lunch is mercifully over.  Microwaved water is not poisonous, and no, it does not stunt the growth of plants.  Really.  Scalar weaponry, which apparently involves electromagnetism and invisible domes similar to the ones used on Crest toothpaste commercials decades ago, does not exist even though in 1986 “they” did a practice run over Atlanta, Georgia.  You would have known about the scalar dome over Atlanta, but you didn’t, because it was only a practice run, see.

If you look it up on the Internet, a tracing of the alleged face of Jesus allegedly seen on the Ocean floor shows a humanoid with a low forehead and a receding chin, more like Neanderthal Man than the commonly accepted artists’ renditions of Christ.  I told She that if you could see this face on the Ocean floor and you thought it was really an image of Jesus, it would change your whole relationship with Him.  And not for the better, in my humble opinion.

If you don’t believe Tamara about the successful and ill-intentioned manipulation of weather, it seems that somewhere  there is a weatherman who used to be with an NBC affiliate in Pocatello, Idaho, and he knows that there isn’t a single flood, hurricane, drought, or even earthquake that wasn’t planned and executed by Them.  And if you are still skeptical, consider this:  Tamara saw it on Fox News!  Yes!  It was on Fox News!  How could you ever doubt?

Rock Star

I’ve been a religious rebel (the word “maverick” has been ruined for me by politicians) since I was young.  Perhaps this fact was foreshadowed when I played an angel in the first grade Christmas play.  You can easily see in the large photo of that occasion that my mother has pinned my wings on upside down.  The rebel made herself known during a slumber party I had at my house when I was 15.  I announced, prompted by what I do not recall, that most probably the first man and the first woman were not really named “Adam” and “Eve.”  A near riot ensued, and at least one girl threatened to call her mother to come pick her up in the middle of the night.

All my life, I’ve had trouble finding my footing on a spiritual path; stumbling over traditional church liturgy, much of the Bible, and even the prayer that all who call themselves Christian know by heart.  I’ve always felt alone.  My belief in the Source of Love has never seemed to be a good enough reason to feel that I really belong in any faith community.  And yet I persist.  I have longed for validation.

So it was that a few weeks ago, I signed up for a 10-week small group at church called “The Seeker’s Path:  Moving Beyond Belief.”  One of the major goals of the group is that “each participant will have been able to move beyond any traditional beliefs or practices that have hindered his or her spiritual growth and will have gained a new understanding of, and deeper relationship with, God.”

There are about ten of us.  Ninety minutes goes by in a flash.  We are safe to expose our hearts and minds to each other.  Safe!  We are encouraged, but not required, to do journaling and reading and homework assignments.  This week one of the homework assignments, #1 on the list of possibilities, was to “write a short poem, haiku, a very brief narrative or simply list key words that summarize your current relationship with God.” 

I thought I’d skip that one.  Not in the mood.  Too hard to pin down.  I’d feel a little bit shy.  OK, a lot shy.  Didn’t wanna.  Not going to do it.  But walking into the kitchen this morning to get my first cup of coffee, the image of God as a rock star hopped unbidden into my mind.  I have no idea where that came from.  Heh.  I sat down with the coffee and wrote this:

Note To My Rock Star

Love, we’re good together when we’re alone, or with my friends.

We can talk about anything, and we laugh and cry together.

You understand me better than anyone ever has in my whole life.

But when your groupies and go-fers are around, and you’re wearing costumes and makeup and the crowd is screaming your Name, I wonder if I really know you. 

I wonder if that song you’re singing was really written for me.

Oh, honey, I’m just bitchin’.

I know your gift is for the world.

Bedbugs

“Sleep tight; don’t let the bedbugs bite!” exhorted my beloved grandfather Mac every night before I got in bed as a child.  I knew there weren’t really any bedbugs.  It was our joke.  I passed the saying along to Tara when she was little, but apparently I wasn’t as trustworthy as Mac; she didn’t take kindly to the idea of bedbugs, joke or not.  Stories about Tara and bugs, existent and non-existent, are legend, and involve baseball bats and whole rolls of toilet paper.

Bedbugs are not a joke these days.  According to all the news media, if you don’t already have them, it’s just a matter of time.  Exterminators are paying $10,000 for specially trained bedbug-locating dogs, I saw on TV.  We are barraged with warnings and what-to-do on a daily basis. 

Yesterday CNN urged against picking up any “free” furniture from curb or alley discards.  The same caveat applies to yard sales and the eponymous flea market, I assume. 

Good thing we didn’t worry about bedbugs back in the sixties.  In my graduate year of college, four of us lived in an old house near campus, which we furnished with parental discards and the perennial brick and board bookcases.   The focal point of decor in our living room was the red and white-checked front seat of an automobile.  An old automobile.   Two of us were at a flea market when we spotted the seat.  Five dollars later, the prize was ours, and it never caused us a moment of worry.  We dragged home anything that wasn’t obviously breathing, moving, or sprouting at every opportunity.

It can cost “tens of thousands” of dollars to remove bedbug infestations, trumpet the newscasters.  For  homeowners, that’s just one more grim fact to add to the endless nightmare of ownership.  Your landlord won’t let you have pets or paint the living room red?  Move.   Homeowners have to worry about thousands of dollars for  leaking roofs, dead front lawns, falling trees, worn-out heating and cooling systems, rotted beams, termites, backed up sewer lines, faulty fireplaces, squirrels in the attic, and a plethora of other potential hazards.  I gotta say, though, that a bedbug infestation might be worse.

Sleep tight.

Inflation

We were on our way to the library.  Sheila asked, “Have you thought any more about what to take Sue tomorrow?”  We have been invited to lunch at Sue’s house. 

“Yes,” I said.  “I thought we’d take a nice chilled bottle of that ChocoVine.”  She grimaced sourly.  “What?” I exclaimed.  “You don’t like it now?  You sure acted like you did!” 

“It’s ten dollars,” she said glumly.  “I know,” I replied, thinking “What isn’t?” 

“Ten,” she grumped.  “It’s the new one.”

Making Plans

I’m lucky I didn’t break something.  I was alone in the house, dustbusting the rug in the living room, when I did a side-step on my flip-flop and sloooowwwly fell to the floor, hard.  On my $50,000 hip replacement.  I always wonder, is it better to fall on your titanium hip replacement, or on your regular 66-year-old hip?  I’m sure the official answer is “it depends.” 

Anyway, I lay there for a few minutes with the dustbuster humming away on its green back and out of reach, thought about the above, and mentally checked over my body parts.  She’s cousin Shannon, who is a number of years my junior, fell recently and sustained a terrible shoulder injury.  I thought about her, too.  I thought about how shocked She would be if she came home an hour later and found me lying there all broken with the dustbuster, now quiet and battery-dead.  You never know the time or the place, as She is fond of saying.

But I’m okay this time.  Just sore and not laughing quite as heartily as I was about She’s recent visit to the funeral home.  She went with her friend Mary, who is 87.  Mary had a stroke last month, so she was nervous about not having her “Plans” finalized.  They went to get some information.

“So whajuh find out?” I queried later that day.  She sat on the couch with her pocket folder from the funeral home.  She had a look of determination on her face that made me worry.  “I want to get this paid for,” she said.  It’s $50.00 down and $101.00 a month for 36 months if you get this insurance policy, and if you die before it’s paid up, that’s all it costs.”  “Such a deal,” I snorted.  “Where are you going all of a sudden?  It would sure pay to die early!”   She drew herself up defensively.  “This covers quite a lot,” she said, starting to read some of the included “services.”  “Three hundred ninety-eight dollars for a bath, comb-out and makeup.”  “What!!” I yelled.  “I thought you were being cremated!”   “Well, it’s for visitation,” she said patiently.  “Medical examiner, $50.00.”  “Why do you need their medical examiner?” I screeched.  “It’s required,” she replied somewhat venomously.  “You mean after your own doctor has provided a death certificate, this other guy says ‘Yep, she’s dead’ as you roll past on the conveyor belt to the furnace?  Boy, I could do that job,” I snarled.  “I am not going to talk to you about this anymore,” she snapped, slapping down the folder.

The next day, she talked things over with the other volunteers at the hospital.  When she came home, she’d decided that the funeral home thing was a big rip-off.  Of course I had to point out that I was the one who recognized the scam-like schtick right out of the folder, and I made some snarky comments about the snake-oil funeral dude.   But we agreed that having our Plans in place was a good idea, and vowed to work on it. 

I thought about that when I was lying on the floor.  Life comes at you fast, and you never know the time or the place.  (That’s another reason for not pre-paying, I said earlier today.  How do you know you’ll die in Virginia?  Maybe you’ll go to Wyoming and be eaten by a bear.  You wouldn’t even need a bath or a comb-out.) 

Rabbits At Dusk

A typical “conversation” in our house this morning:

She (shouting from the bathroom where she has just gotten out of the shower and is looking out the bathroom window to the back yard):  “There’s a cat in our yard but I don’t know if it’s one of ours or not.  I don’t have my glasses on.”

Me (shouting back from the office where I was sitting down, now looking out the back door to the yard):  “It’s Miss T lying in the grass.  She’s probably watching for rabbits.”  (Miss T has never caught anything in the 7 years she’s lived with us, but she still has lust in her heart.)

She (still yelling from the bathroom):  “No, I think they are usually out around dusk.”  (Pause.)  “I’m a rabbit expert.”  (Slightly longer pause.)  “I should have a TV show.  Rabbits At Dusk.”

Hotter Than Hades

Sheila went back to jail today.  What’s that all about, people have asked, and we’ve enjoyed playing coy with some.  But it’s serious.  She has joined a prison ministry through her church.  From what I understand, nobody is trying to get converts or thump on the Bible or lecture anyone on their sinful ways.  They’re mainly visiting the prison to listen and to provide a measure of quiet comfort. 

Today there were about 15 women and 6 men making up the two prisoner groups; Sheila and one other person providing the ministry.  What do the prisoners talk about?  Well, a lot of them talk about how much they miss their children.  They talk about what’s good in their lives and what’s not.  They talk about the better choices they hope to make when they get out.

Sheila worries each time (but a little less each time) about how well she will rise to the occasion.  I’ve been the beneficiary of her listening ear and her quiet comfort countless times, and I tell her not to worry.  She’s the right person for this job.  Last time, a prisoner seated next to her sobbed and sobbed.  Sheila handed her a Kleenex.  Then another.  And said, “You’re going to have to stop crying.  I don’t have any more Kleenex.”  If you knew her, you’d smile to yourself and you’d know that it’s all part of her ministry, and her gift.

Since I last posted here, a few non-routine things have happened.  I lost part of a tooth.  The result is that I will have to have the tooth “crowned,” and I absolutely understand why it’s called a “crown.”  It costs a fortune. 

Our darling new greyhound, Carmen, got out of the yard during a distant thunderstorm and wasn’t found until the next morning.  We were sure we would never see her again, or that if we did, it would be her dead body at the side of a road somewhere.  I thought during the search, “Our lives will never be the same, and they will never be good again.”

A couple of dozen people helped us look until late at night.  Some were complete strangers; others were good friends and close neighbors.   Our friends were back at it early the next morning, but as it turned out, we were all looking in the wrong places.  Carmen had run a long way, and when found by Animal Control near the Country Club (we’ve heard some jokes about that) she was almost unconscious, with mangled paws.  Now it’s been a little over two weeks, and she is fine.  She is fine!  Two dear people fixed the low spot in our fence, and we don’t take our eyes off Carmen when she is in the yard, but she has not shown any interest in jumping again. 

Oh, and two nights at the Emergency Veterinary Hospital cost about the same as four crowns. 

In the middle of the Carmen incident, I got a call from my high school reunion committee.  I thought it was someone calling about the lost dog flyers.  Our 50th—gah!—reunion is in 2012, in California.  I have not attended any of the  reunions so far, and only keep in touch with one person.  What do you think?  Have you been to your high school reunion(s)?  Good idea or bad idea?  (I weigh about 70 pounds more than I did in high school, have chins and would have to use a cane.  Is this important or unimportant?  It suddenly seems like it is.)  Experiences, please!

That’s the news from here.  Stay well and keep in touch.

Uh Oh

When Sheila got home from the jail this afternoon (ah, but that’s another story) I buzzed over to the grocery store where we spend a good part of our lives and our money.  I had just a few things to pick up, mostly for the sweet onion pie I am making for dinner tonight, and the chicken piccata I am making for dinner tomorrow night.

I had scrawled a list of the few items I needed on a green post-it note.  As always, I started in the produce section on the right, and then moved farther and farther to the left around the store.  About halfway around, I consulted my list to see how I was doing.  I read:

Ritz crackers (check)

Ched cheese (last aisle)

Vidalia (sweet onions—check)

Bread crumbs (crossed out—do not need)

Lemon (check)

Walnut pieces (check)

Ice cream (last aisle)

Asp (?????)

Asp?  What the hell??  The image of a dying Cleopatra surfaced in my mind.  What?  What in the world had I meant by “Asp”?  I didn’t need aspirin.  Must be an old post-it note from when I did need aspirin, I thought.  I couldn’t imagine.

I breezed over to the self-service checkout.  Not everyone is smart or clever enough or brave enough to use it, but I am definitely above average, tech-wise.  I confidently scanned my items, bagging them quickly.  When you have produce, the screen asks you to type in the item, and then it shows you some pictures and you select the right item.  Usually it only needs the first two or three letters of the item.   I typed in oni and selected Vidalia sweet, lem and selected lemons, and asp and selected asparagus, which I had thought would go nicely with the chicken piccata.

Oh.

On The Road

For a number of years, I was a divorced working mother living from paycheck to paycheck, and not doing the financial thing very well at all.  When Willie Nelson’s “On The Road Again” became a hit in 1980, I started singing it every time I deposited a paycheck in the ATM that would temporarily save us, and I continued singing it through somewhat better times at the end of the workday every Friday until I retired.

I loved the Willie Nelson song, and I also loved books about life on the road, starting with Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, and including Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Blue Highway, Walk Across America, and the several Bill Bryson books.  But although it was published in 1957 and I was an English major in college in the 60’s, I never read Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel On The Road.  As of today, I still haven’t read it.

This week I was at the library and spotted in the featured/new book section On The Road:  The Original Scroll.  Turns out it is the “legendary first draft—rougher, wilder, and racier than the 1957 edition.”  Why not, I thought, and picked it up.  If I don’t like a book, I never feel obligated to finish it, so no skin off my nose to take something home from the library.  I scanned the scholarly essays that introduce the book.  Scholarly essays seldom convince me that I need to read something.  I flipped to the end and read this last paragraph:

“So in America when the sun goes down  and I sit on the old brokendown river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all the raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the evening-star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks in the west and folds the last and final shore in, and nobody, just nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody beyond the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Neal Cassady, I even think of Old Neal Cassady the father we never found, I think of  Neal Cassady, I think of Neal Cassady.”

I cried when I read this, because the writing is so elegant and true, because I was so grateful to be reading Jack Kerouac before my reading time in this life is over, and because it is always such a relief and a blessing when somebody expresses so perfectly what you have thought about passionately and tried your best to say in your own words. 

Yes, I went back to the beginning of On The Road:  The Original Scroll (not including the scholarly essays) and am loving every word in it.  Maybe someday I’ll read the novel it became.

Three or Four

My blog friend Isabelle posed a question on her blog not long ago:  “What were you like when you were nine?”  I loved reading about Isabelle’s nine-year-old self, and I’d like to write about that, too.  But not today. 

Today my blog friend Laurie listed three good things she was thinking about, and that sounds like an excellent practice. 

My three good things for today are:

1) Iced coffee with half and half in the afternoons.  Summer must be almost here.  Just make it yourself with leftover morning coffee.  No trip to Starbucks necessary.

2) Sunflowers.  Tara sent us a bunch for Mother’s Day, and they are still fine and fresh, the happy things.

3) The book I’m reading right now:  Birdology.  The author is Sy Montgomery, who wrote another book I own and love called The Good Good Pig.  Now mind you, I would never even briefly consider owning a pig, but I laughed and cried over Sy’s pig.  Birdology begins with “The Ladies,” Sy’s hens, and although not particularly desirous of owning birds either, I have been known to fall in love with parrots, owls, eagles and falcons from a safe distance.  I love Sy’s ladies, and am hanging on every word of her search for a cassowary in the wilds of Australia, leeches and all.

4) Gotta make this four things because we just came back from dinner with a friend at a little gem of a new Greek restaurant in the neighborhood.  If you have never had pizza with Greek sausage, pepperoni, salami and freshly made feta, you haven’t been anywhere or done anything.  And if you have eaten such a slice of Heaven and then stopped in at Boyer’s for coconut ice cream, and then you sat down in an old leather booth and savored your scoop(s) with full-on lust, you are one lucky devil indeed.  And you know it.

Happy Friday, everyone.  Shabbat Shalom, too.

Eventide

My favorite time of day, when the birds are getting into their pajamas and the sun is setting.  And the word “eventide”:  I love it. 

Today is birthday eve for me.  Tomorrow I will be, impossibly be, 66.  The other day I was laughing cynically to myself and thinking that the only two good things about being 66 are that “6” is supposed to be my lucky number, and that I’m on the right side of the flower bed. 

But I think now, on the eventide before my 66th birthday, that things are a little bit better than I’m making them out to be.  After all these years, I seem to be amassing a drop or two of wisdom, and sometimes those two drops will stay with me for several hours at a time. 

A tattered black and white photo of me taken around the time of my 5th birthday shows me holding an Easter lily.  I can still feel the hot sun as I stood on the dirt driveway, see that clear blue Texas sky, breathe in the delicious smell and feel the soft petals of the lily I held in my hand.  I saw dozens of lilies yesterday at our local botanical garden, and I was 5 again in a flash.

I am not happy about all of my chins, but I am at home with them.  I am grateful to have pretty hair.  I am just as grateful to have a new Rollator, which is pushed like a stroller without the baby and allows my arthritic spine and joints to go places and enjoy things that I’ve been missing out on.  I have grieved the loss of mobility.   Now I’m rolling with it!  I have people and animals who love me and whom I love back with a knowing fierceness.  Every day brings gifts. 

Happy Birthday to me!