Sugah's Shack

Shifting Focus

2011-05-27T11:38:00.007-04:00

I've long neglected this space, using it primarily when my head is chewing over something that it can't quite swallow. I still have plenty of that floating in my gray matter, but for now, I think I'd like to do as I've been doing on Facebook and some of my other online hang-outs: chart my garden.

I'll start with today, do a little retrospective (after all, gardening season started the second week of March when we planted the peppers seeds in the mudroom), and hopefully, within a week or two, catch up in the chronology.

With all the rain we've had this spring, we're in good shape compared to some of our country neighbors. The surrounding farmers have plowed and planted their fields late, and though we didn't get everything in as early as we'd like, we took advantage of the few sunny (or not sunny, but rainless) days. All that's left to go into the ground are peppers, a few more tomatoes, and the squash/cucumber patch. Pictures to follow.

Today's big news, though, is that for the first time since the year we got married (2005), we have a rose blooming. Our friend, Jamie, gave us a Golden Showers for our wedding, but it didn't make it through the winter of 2005/06. This year, for my graduation (MFA - University of Pittsburgh), our friend, Becky, gave me a Midas Touch hybrid tea rose. It's planted at the corner of the porch, south-facing, same place as the Golden Showers and the home last year of our most successful cucumber planting (picklers that, from four seeds, provided a shelf full of refrigerator pickles -- we're hoping for a larger crop with some new methods we're trying in the main garden).

Here's the Midas Touch, in various states from bud to bloom.

Happy Birthday, Ma

2011-03-10T10:53:00.005-05:00

It's spring break, my last spring break as a student. Graduation is in two months. I will, at that time, have the degree of Master of Fine Arts conferred upon me. I came home with a boatload of work to do so that I can make it to graduation--a book to finish writing, a paper to plan for a feminist pedagogy class, a redesign of the remainder of the composition class I'm teaching.

I have other, nonacademic work to do, too. Seeds to start so that they'll be ready to plant when the ground warms and all danger of frost has passed (check). Tax forms to prepare (not yet). And a visit to my mother.

Today would have been Ma's 85th birthday. I checked the calendar more than a month ago, just as I did last year when she was still alive--to plan my visit to her. Last year, she was still alive, and I was recovering from surgery. I wasn't cleared to drive on her birthday, but Sage drove me. I was thinking earlier--what did I buy for her? And then I remembered. Books. I had stopped buying nightgowns and sweatsuits unless she specifically asked for them. Books, though, she enjoyed. When she was alone, when she could still be alone, she would perch her reading glasses on her nose (the same reading glasses she'd been wearing since the 1980s), settle into her chair, and read aloud. It kept her sharp, I told myself. Something to work her mind like the images scrolling by on the television couldn't. No way to passively read a book.

Today, I can drive, but I won't. The plan was to go and purchase an artificial flower arrangement and some accessories to make it into a birthday bouquet (something simple; something I could do in the car), go to the cemetery, which may or may not permit real flowers (I will check, but it would be silly to put them there today with more snow, more freezing weather on its way), and visit her there. Dad, too. He's there with her.

I haven't been there since the day she was buried. We've always said it that way in my family: so&so is buried in ________ Cemetery. Buried. Like treasure? Like a secret? Like a civilization and a way of life that may or may not be discovered in some future generation?

But I'm not going. I knew it as soon as my feet found the floor this morning. The pain that's been creeping into my "good" foot for days now, which may or may not be another manifestation of arthritis (which has already appeared in the ankle of that foot from where I broke it at 18; and on the instep, where I broke another bone right before Jade's first birthday; and is now throbbing at the heel, which I can't remember if I've ever injured, but it's possible). I knew it when I looked out the window and before I checked the weather report, that says more rain, which will turn to snow, and, don't you know, it's still winter. For a little while longer.

I knew it without words as the solid knot of guilt settled in my stomach. It's irrational guilt. Ma, and Dad, too--neither are there under the ground not far from the police barracks, just south of the interstate. Some symbol of them is interred there. Buried. We bury them and place a marker on top of the spot to anchor them to us, to say: They lived. Here lies a part of ourselves. Here, we can come to remember, to pay homage to our own existence. Without them, we would not be. But Ma, and Dad, too--they're not there.

As I make peace with my decision to stay at home, inside and out of the elements, to work and nurse my new pain, introduce it to all the other pains that will subsume it, rarely letting it have the spotlight of my conscious awareness, I reach for the old, pilled blue sweatshirt that somehow, though it's been washed several times since she gave it to me (She outgrew it--that's what she'd tell me, "Here, take this. I outgrew it."), still smells like her as I pull it down over my head. I could go today and visit the part of her that's buried and gone, or I could stay here, think of her, and visit with the part that still lives in me.

Happy Birthday, Ma. I have a feeling you'd get a real kick out of turning 85.

Till later...

Problems So Large

2011-01-09T14:47:00.002-05:00

For the past two days, I've been watching news coverage of the shootings in Arizona--the grave injuries of Congressional Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the injuries and deaths of others, including the death of a nine-year-old girl. I've discussed the 1st Amendment with my husband and children. I've read article after article about the shooter, his mental state, and his unclear, possibly nonsensical politics. For every claim about this tragedy, there's a counterclaim. Ultimately, the discourse about speech and the power of language has taken a turn, I pray, in the direction of reason, peace, sanity.

I pray a lot today. I've spent a long time learning to be happy, learning about living my life in a peaceful manner, in harmony with the Universe. When I look up at the world and hear the hate that so often speaks the loudest in our public rhetoric, the emphasis on the superficial and the material that tops our list of cultural priorities, the narrow-minded hubris that strives to dictate so many of our personal choices, from whom we can love and to what way we can or must worship God, I get discouraged.

I almost forget that change begins with the individual, and I'm the only individual I can change directly. In order to be hopeful about problems so large, I must first tend to those little ones--those that originate in me.

Till later...

Summer

2010-08-29T16:19:00.004-04:00

June 23 1.5 quarts sweet peas, frozen
June 24 2 quarts sweet peas, frozen
June 27 2 quarts sweet peas, frozen
Total: 5.5 quarts sweet peas, frozen

July 11 2.5 quarts broccoli, frozen
July 13 4.5 quarts yellow wax beans, frozen
July 18 2.5 quarts broccoli, frozen
July 19 7.5 quarts yellow wax beans, frozen
Total: 5 quarts broccoli, 12 quarts yellow wax beans, frozen

August 1 9 pints Hungarian hot wax peppers, pickled and canned
August 4 2 quarts broccoli, frozen
August 7 1 quart butter & sugar corn, frozen
August 8 4 quarts butter & sugar corn, frozen
August 13 30 stuffed peppers, hot and sweet, frozen
August 17 2 quarts Silver Queen corn, frozen
August 19 3 quarts Silver Queen corn, frozen
August 19 4 quarts carrots, frozen
August 20 3.5 quarts carrots, frozen
August 22 14 quarts spaghetti sauce canned + 2 quarts to use fresh
August 25 5.5 quarts carrots, frozen
August 25 4 quarts refrigerator pickles
August 26 7 quarts whole tomatoes, frozen
August 26 28 stuffed peppers, hot and sweet, frozen
August 27 14 quarts spaghetti sauce canned + 2 quarts to use fresh
August 29 10 quarts whole tomatoes, frozen
August 29 4 quarts refrigerator pickles
Total....... Two days left, two days left, two days....

The Road Well Traveled

2010-07-20T14:47:00.000-04:00

I called a friend the other evening while I was driving along Route 210, a long stretch of twisty-turny country road with very spotty cell phone reception. Probably not a place I should be making cell phone calls, anyway, but over the past couple of years, I’ve driven it so often that I know where all the deer crossings are, know where the bends in the road are likely to conceal an Amish buggy (therefore require I take them a little more slowly than my curve-hugging Subaru can handle), know the sections that contain a crumbly shoulder and have trained myself to look ahead for traffic, adjust, either swerve slightly toward the middle or slow so my tires and suspension don’t take a beating.

I don’t often make calls on that stretch of road, but I did Sunday evening. I was on my way to Pittsburgh, but only for one night, sleeping there and waking for an early morning medical appointment rather than hitting the road at dawn and fighting rush-hour traffic to get there. Short trip, easy as pie, but I felt melancholy, nonetheless. Didn’t want to be away from home, didn’t want to be in yet another setting where I couldn’t do what I’m doing right now (and likely not doing well). I can’t write, so when Amy answered, I told her, “I need to talk to another writer.” Bless her, she’s younger than I am, and though she might not agree, more disciplined, and she told me, “Just write anything and don’t worry about it. It’ll come back. Just get through it.”

I was doing well, not producing the straightest-line-as-I-can-write cohesive stuff, but okay. I was seeing the narrative, seeing the logic in the narrative, where it wanted to go, remembering where it had been, rearranging in my mind, slowly shaping and reshaping into a real manuscript.

And then my mother died. Everything about her life and her death is begging to be put on the page, and at the same time, I can’t manage more than a few notes in my Moleskine. Some writers would tell me I need distance. Fuck distance! It’s all here, all here now, and how it stubbornly defies my efforts to distill even a sentence of it has me floored. I wrote a little about God’s will, before and after, and that wasn’t easy, but Ma – you lived eighty-four years in such a way that never attracted a whole lot of attention (it wasn’t your way), such an incredible life, even though parts of it have made me want to scream, and I need to tell the world about you. I can’t. I try, and I can’t.

I’m beginning to think I know your life so well, and perhaps that’s the problem.

Till later…

The sparrow and the jay

2010-05-10T19:24:00.002-04:00

At first, I thought it was a squirrel: the darkish gray-brown undercoated in white. But when it fell from the trees above the stone wall, followed by a flash of feathered blue, I saw the angled appendage that wasn’t squirrel-like.

Too soon, it lay on the sidewalk; too soon, its body covered (rescued?) by another creature, unlike it in coloring, unlike it in size. The bird, a jay, was bigger. Not a squirrel at all. The angled appendage was a wing, broken. The jay did not swoop to rescue, but to attack. The smaller, squirrel-colored creature: a sparrow.

Later, I search. I find that jays are omnivorous, relatives of the crow.

Knowing this does not ease the sense that, in Shadyside, just one block from Mellon Park, where young men and women stroll and sprawl, books open, on the lawn; dogs strain on leashes, sniffing at something half a pace ahead; children tumble and laugh, framed by the cowboy sculpture on the rise, murder is committed on the sidewalk as rush hour traffic crawls slowly by.

Miss you, D. Estitute

2010-05-08T21:08:00.001-04:00

Life as Art

2010-04-29T20:26:00.003-04:00

art

–noun

1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

sub·lime

–adjective

1. elevated or lofty in thought, language, etc.: Paradise Lost is sublime poetry.

gro·tesque

–adjective

1. odd or unnatural in shape, appearance, or character; fantastically ugly or absurd; bizarre.

–noun

3. any grotesque object, design, person, or thing.

A Happy Mess

2010-04-26T22:44:00.005-04:00

I skipped a gathering after my class tonight and instead came home—or rather back to the home that I refrain from calling home. My temporary abode. As I circled the block twice, looking for an easy-in, easy-out parking space, I didn’t feel any regret that I couldn’t find two open spaces—nor any deficiency that I was too tired, too wired to attempt what would be (I assume) for most an easy parallel park. Parallel parking has never been easy for me, and I accept it. But all day, and for a week prior to today, I intended to join my classmates and my professor. I was looking forward to it, even after a very long (and enjoyable) weekend of travel with my daughter and a friend. We road-tripped to Dayton, OH to meet, for the first time, someone I got to know “out here” – an internet friend and musician who, with his wife, a vocalist & percussionist and young bass-player friend, performs at the BRD House, a place too cool for me to do justice to it if I tried describing it in my fatigued state.

I’ve spent a lot of time today in awe that my body did not resist more rigorously the fourteen hours of driving, the four hours of sitting Saturday evening, and the additional get-up-and-go this morning (which included another two hours of driving) to get back to the city. I allowed myself to be fully aware of my body, what it was doing, how it was feeling. I couldn’t get to my apartment this morning to grab the bag of tortilla chips I bought last week. Bucket trucks blocked both lanes of traffic, and I don’t know the neighborhood well enough to scoot around the side streets efficiently; I had a meeting at twelve-thirty, and I didn’t want to be late, so I turned back, and after I got to campus, I walked the half a block to the 7-11 to buy another bag.

There and back, I practiced mindfulness: I am walking, I am walking. My right foot comes up, my cane with it. My right foot comes down, my cane with it. Now my left foot, up, down. I see the grass growing in the lawn of the William Pitt Union. The dandelions have grown tall, gone to seed. The seed has been blown away. They are in the beds of hosta, too. Purple petunias sprinkled throughout. The tulips are fading. The rain has begun again, just sprinkles. I left my umbrella in the car, and my hair has already begun to mat over my eyes. It needs to be cut.

Where is the pain? In my hands: the left, gripping my cane. The right, holding the grocery bag with the tortilla chips and a bottle of water. The water is half-empty already. I opened it and gulped as the cashier rang it up. I’m thirsty again, dehydrated-thirsty.

The pain is in my knees, acute as each foot touches the pavement, and then takes my weight. The pain is in my feet. I can feel each individual bone, especially those in the right. I can feel the inside bones of my ankles poking out. The right is not a bone at all, but it feels like real bone. I think about it. A steel shoe horn, hugged around my tibia. Now I feel the steel and each of the seven screws anchoring it to the bone underneath.

The pain is in my shoulders. My purse strap, slung across my body diagonally, cuts into the meat of my right shoulder. No pressure on the left—my messenger bag is in the car. But the pain is there, as if it were.
The pain is in my lower back, and I suck my gut in, tuck my tailbone. Keep walking.

I have so much “I,” where is the “Not-I?”

All day, all day yesterday, all day the day before I felt, acknowledged and acted, not in spite of, but with the pain. To resist is to say the pain is something
foreign, something I have to deny in order to function. Delusion.

And when Helen said to me tonight, “You look exhausted,” I realized that following through on the plans I had made this evening was more an assertion of the “I” than accepting that this body I’d been observing so closely had finally run out of steam. So I didn’t feel disappointment that I couldn’t find a parking spot I so self-consciously knew I couldn’t slide into, at least not then. But I did realize some regret that all the imagined conversations would not take place, that the good wishes to the soon-to-graduate would not be made, at least not in festive surroundings—although I’ve rarely imagined and found reality to be even close to those imaginings. “All I’d imagined” is usually a wish more than a truth. Saturday evening and the music my friends played wasn’t (it was better), though in honesty, meeting my friends for the first time, face-to-face, was exactly as I imagined, and that’s more rare, finding no slippage between the virtual and the real.

The regret of earlier has since faded away. I can email Renee and ask her about the challenges of being Evangelical Christian and tolerant of difference at the same time. Did I really need to engage Jason in a conversation about Warren Zevon, likely to prove my superiority in knowledge of the man and his music? And I did want to talk with Joel, ask where he grew up, tell him I’m very self-aware and know I’m often a mess, though a happy mess. Yes, a happy mess. I think I like that.

Till later…

Backyard Buddhism

2010-04-22T12:25:00.005-04:00

I was at a weekend conference recently, and on Friday evening, a group of us went to a nearby Thai restaurant. The food and company were great, but settling the bill was a nightmare (the computer was down, the waitress paired some of us who should not have been paired, and "reimbursement accounting" is obviously not a concept taught in basic conversational English). Somewhere in the midst of the comings and goings of the waitress, the owner (I presumed) visited our table and commented on my jewelry, a turquoise-beaded necklace with a silver Ohm charm.

He said, "Buddhist, yes?" My response: "Backyard Buddhist." Which is about what I am. I know enough of Buddhism to recognize it as a good guide for the way I choose to live, though it's been many years since I picked up a book and studied any of the teachings of Buddhism. Guided only by the Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold Path has been enough. Using the path as a lens through which to interpret my own experience is something Buddha would have appreciated, I think, rather than me spending the time trying to learn from other teachers. Experience is the teacher.

But I'm ready to return to the reading, and I will monitor my level of Resolution (adhitthana)) -- or not *grin*. I picked up a couple of books -- a primer by Desmond Biddulph and Darcy Flynn called Teachings of the Buddha: The Wisdom of The Dharma, from the Pali Canon to the Sutras -- and I admit I bought it as much because I liked the binding, the heavy, coated pages and the ribbon page marker as much as the comprehensive conveyance of The Teachings.

So, I've begun. Again. Let's see where it leads?

Till later...

Sail on, Silver Girl

2010-03-24T23:36:00.002-04:00

Rest in peace, Danielle.

Sitting Still or Getting Moving

2010-03-08T14:00:00.003-05:00

I think I have equal difficulty with both. When I'm still (even when I'm supposed to be still), I'm usually thinking that I should be moving, and when I'm moving (especially when I should be moving), I'm trying to figure out ways to slow down.

Maybe I need a reboot. A "hard reboot" would be good. Old techies would remember those...

Till later...

I can't change the weather, but I can change me

2010-02-18T11:08:00.003-05:00

I wonder sometimes about my weather obsessiveness. My father was had it, too. Nothing could bring out his ire quicker than my mother falling asleep before twenty-five past the hour when the weather report was given on our local news channel (he was afraid he'd miss something and needed her recollection to check his own).

In the days before twenty-four-hour news and weather broadcasts, that's all he had - two minutes at the bottom of the noon, six and eleven o'clock hours. And then networks expanded to five p.m. broadcasts, ten p.m. broadcasts, then CNN, then The Weather Channel. If he'd been just a little younger or lived just a little longer and had his internet indoctrination, the fact that a current (local!) radar map was his at the click of a mouse might very well have had the same effect on him as it's had on me. I forget that I can look out the window, or (gasp!) walk outside. Instead, I make my rounds, attempt to synch the various and sometimes contradictory reports -- will it be 2-5 inches of snow? 3-6? or should I brace myself for the very confident amateur report of 4-8?

It's been a challenge not to use the weather to small-talk with everyone I meet (or pass in the street, stand next to in the elevator, or hand money to in the coffee shop). It's boring. It's the repertoire of the bore. When living in a city that's been very literally crippled by the month's record snow fall, everyone is talking about it, and it's hard to avoid. It feeds a weather junkie's habit, and my big, fat weather habit needs not one more snack.

But I know I can't blame my problem on others, not even the sky which, as I write, is once again emptying the contents of its maw down upon us (this time in the form of freezing drizzle). It's the end of February, or near enough. Ten days left, and I can continue my binge, wasting untold hours clicking "refresh" in my browser, developing imaginary friendships with the meteorologists on my television screen (example: I'm a little concerned that TWC's Betty Davis is losing her voice), and fretting because the hour-by-hour forecast has shifted forward or back (What?? It's not supposed to snow for another fifteen minutes!!) -- or I can make a decision to swear off now.

So, from this moment forward, I will limit myself to twice-daily viewing. Just so I know the travel conditions. Maybe a little more if I'm concerned about my kids. I mean, they're all over the place and I have to know their weather, too, right? If I call and tell them to be careful, I'm only exercising a mother's duty. And if I have my work done, then making my rounds of wunderground and accuweather is a hobby, not anything that's interfering with responsibilities. Everyone needs a hobby. It's also useful to know if there's a low front moving in. Explains a lot about the pain in my joints. So, for health reasons, I can check here and there. Yeah, I can control this thing. I've got it. I don't need to give it up altogether. Just reign it in. I can manage it, right?

Till later...

This is too good not to share

2010-02-10T22:26:00.006-05:00

And maybe it violates the less-whining pact I just made with myself, but what the hell. It's not my picture. I'm just passing it along.

Snow-bound Whine

2010-02-10T21:55:00.004-05:00

I'm on my third snow day, which means that for the third day in a row, an official institution has validated my staying at home. But, technically, I'm on my fifth snow day -- five days since I've been more than two feet from my front door. The one time I tried to go out, bundled and with snow shovel in hand, my husband shot me a look (clearly stating without saying a word, "Are you nuts? What do you think you're going to accomplish out here??") and I went back inside. I was productive the first four days, reading, writing, preparing for classes. That all went to hell today as I compulsively followed #snOMGpgh, #howsmystreet and various other hash tags that kept me current on what I missed this week in the city. I realized something when I sent my occasional tweet cyberward: I whine. I'm not happy about it, but I'm happy I'm now aware of it.

So, I'm making a resolution to, if not to cease then to greatly decrease the frequency of my whining -- or, if it's a prolific day, lower the ratio of whine-to-upbeat expressions. That fair, I ask myself? Sure, I answer.

Till later...

Vulnerabilities

2010-01-20T23:12:00.002-05:00

I realized this evening, walking from class to the parking garage two and a half blocks away, that I still don't have a strong sense of safety. I'm not saying I was afraid of others on the streets, though that may have been the case when I was younger (and don't think I'd ever let you know about it). I felt unsafe because of the street itself, the cracks in the sidewalk, the lip of the curve, the flashing amber hand telling me the light would soon be changing, so I'd better hurry--and hurry, I can't.

For the first three quarters of my life so far, I was afraid, not of people on the street, but of men on the street, of what I knew they could do and feared they would do. I dealt with it by overcompensating, acting tough. I put myself in the position of choosing before being chosen, attacking before being attacked. It didn't always work so well, but short of withdrawing completely, it's all I knew how to do.

And then my youth faded. My body skipped the middle-aged phase, donned only the disguise of middle age, while on the inside, just below the surface, the crone took the place of the maiden. Bones brittle, tendons taut, muscles fissured, joints swollen and slowly deforming. And I still won't let you know it, not if I can help it. I put a smile on the face others tell me doesn't look forty-ish (kind souls). I make a joke. I walk faster than my aches and fears and pains want me to, wait until I'm behind my own door so that I can strip off the costume, let the crone breathe and sigh and cry.

I think I understand now why distance is necessary.

Till later...

The End of Another Year -- Beginning of a New One

2009-12-31T11:13:00.002-05:00

I took the Shack offline for a few months. I thought I had kept this blog more or less anonymous, just the stories of one life among many, nothing here really to garner notoriety or excessive attention. But, I found, I dropped a few crumbs in other places and it is possible to back track and find my real identity. Those crumbs are still out there, though my conclusion is this -- who really cares? Very few who will ever read this, and in the interim, I've done what I can to explain my purpose for taking up space out here, apologized for unintended hard feelings--stopping short, of course, from apologizing for facts.

But, while I contemplated "who cares," I felt it was prudent to lock the door and let it sit. A short time ago and without any fanfare, I opened it back up. I did learn a few things, though, that I'll do my best to employ in the future.

One is that crisis makes better reading. Turn on the television and try to move through all the channels without finding some crisis-oriented "reality t.v." Betcha can't do it. What isn't as exciting is the resolution to crisis. Like when I go on a rant about something that's bugging me, but I don't write about how I make peace with it. I don't apologize for having strong feelings, and I surely don't apologize for finding serenity--I just rarely post about the latter here. I guess I see the IOCC as a place to do that, but it paints a very incomplete picture. So, if I feel the need to go on a rant, I'm going to try my best to follow it through. I have yet to experience darkness that wasn't followed by dawn. Though obvious, perhaps it needs to be spoken.

**

This past year has been filled to the brim, both with challenges and with blessings. I used to keep track of them here, and maybe, in this upcoming year, I can resume that practice. I'll try. God knows, that's all any of us can do.

Till later...

Scattered Far And Wide

2009-06-13T14:07:00.002-04:00

I've been busy. Writing? Yes, mostly correspondence, though an occasional essay or two. In the interest of posting something here, I'm offering a link to the latest two, published on the IOCC blog--both of a spiritual nature:

Following the Signs

Meditation on Being

Comments and constructive criticism welcome.

Till later...

Two Days Off...

2009-04-25T15:37:00.002-04:00

This is an odd sort of April Day. Yesterday began cold and rainy, giving way later to warm air and sunshine. Today began in that way, and by the time I tossed on some clothes to head to the post office, it was already 74F. At 10:30am. Warm, sunshiny, nice breeze. Tomorrow is expected to be more of the same.

The trip to the post office capped my academic work for the semester, overnighting a paper to one of my professors in lieu of traveling back to campus to get the job done. I still have to return on Monday, pick up my students' portfolios to grade, but by Wednesday at the latest, I'm free and clear for four whole months. It's nice being back in the country, not feeling rushed to do anything or go anywhere. I wore a pair of plaid pajama pants belonging to one of the boys out in public this morning--Mary or Tiffany had accidentally sorted them into my clothes, and I had no plans to give them back until I had a chance to wear them at least once--and my toilet consisted of no more than brushing my teeth, tying my hair into a quick ponytail, and finding my sunglasses. A younger woman could get away with this sort of thing in the city, but I'm too old now. Only in the country do I feel that I can be at home wherever I go.

The original plan would have had me in the city early in the week to write, to pick up my students' work, to turn in my own paper, then to wait for Christopher to take his last final so that I could load him up and bring him home, too, for the summer. My husband has taken over that task, so Chris will make it home as planned tomorrow. Me? "Life on life's terms" intervened. Monday evening, after dinner, while I sat, much like I am now, except upstairs in bed rather than on my front porch, laptop open, intent on my favorite mah jong game, my legs began to ache more than normal, my lower back tightened, keeping on, on, on up until...I sighed. George coated me down with Capzacin, I crawled into bed and prayed for relief by morning.

No go. From Tuesday until Thursday evening, the pain was acute, settling in on that right hip, the one I pulled the first time when Sage was three weeks old which left me, for weeks afterward, caring for an infant while my sciatic nerve shot pain the full length of my leg; the one I later pulled again two? three? days after Sage learned to ride a bike for the first time, the day he crashed, driving his eyetooth through the corner of his upper lip--though of course it wasn't his accident that destroyed my hip that day. I'd felt it pop out of the socket while I dragged the washtub full of clay from the side of the bank, dragging it rather than heaving shovels full of it because clay is heavy, and I am strong--I was strong. I needed a trench to transplant what I then thought were prairie roses and now am not so sure. They were so beautiful, pink, single blooms, with delicate thorns, found in the clearing in the woods on top of Hoover Hill. I couldn't lift the entire tub, so I grabbed one of its handles and gave a good, hard yank, feeling my pelvis move independent of my right leg, and *pop!* There it went.

So it was only moments after I'd replaced the brown bottle of muscle relaxers, of which I'd taken three? four? (memories muddy like the clay), swallowed down with a cold Rolling Rock, back on the shelf that Denny came in and said, in his trade-mark sarcastic way, "Whelp, I don't think he lost any teeth, but he'll probably need a stitch or two." And of course, Denny, being three or four Rolling Rock's ahead of me on such a beautiful summer's day, wasn't going to risk his driver's license to take Sage to the emergency room. That would be his response, had I the mind to tell him what I'd just done. Not, "I can't drive him. I'm intoxicated," but, "Don't think I'm going to get pulled over for DUI."

Sage was about eight seconds (nine? twelve? twenty?) behind Denny's entrance, one hand in Aaron's, one covering his mouth, blood seeping through his fingers, wailing at the top of his three-year-old lungs.

Sage had asked me, while I was digging, if he could go jump ramps with the other kids. "Mom, I'll wear my helmet. I'll be careful. I'm a good bike rider, huh? Right? I'll be careful, honest, I will." Sage, Little Man, Midget Magumba. He was the darling of the neighborhood. He spoke better than many kids years older than him, always asked funny questions, rarely ever threw tantrums. The boys had built little dirt mounds in the back yards behind the apartments. What could happen? He'd fall off the bike into the soft grass?

But it wasn't those little ramps he wanted to jump. The landscapers had dumped several loads of dirt near the entrance to the complex to build up the back yards nearest the creek. The "ramps" were taller than a good-sized man. When I realized he had come from the wrong direction, my first instinct was to check his arms, his legs for broken bones. Denny stopped me. "He didn't make it any further than the first speed bump."

Determining that Sage would not need anything larger than a dish towel to catch the blood (a tissue would likely have worked at this point--the blood had nearly stopped), I scooped him up in one arm, grabbed my purse and keys with the other, and tossed him into the front seat of the Caravan. I was no longer thinking about my hip. There's one chemical that is more effective than any pain killer known to humankind, and that is a mother's adrenaline. I didn't remember my hip until we were about four miles from the apartment, still three miles from the hospital. That's when the muscle relaxers, chased with cold beer, kicked in.

Just as a mother's adrenaline will kill pain in a heart beat, a mother's fear that she may do harm to her child causes a converse response. Whereas before, I'd sprung to action, now, all I wanted to do was slam my feet down on the breaks, not move another inch, lest I might, now high as a kite, hit another vehicle head on, side-swipe a mailbox (of course, on the passenger's side, where Sage sat), ram the tailgate of the truck in front of me. My foot off the gas but only hovering over the brake pedal, I inhaled deeply, tried to coral my thoughts into one place long enough to calculate the distance, the ease of travel, and the probability that I could make it the next three miles without killing us both--though I might think I deserved to die for such an idiotic move.

We made it there just fine, and though Sage required two stitches, his tooth was in good shape. The doctor praised the mandatory helmet laws and impressed upon me how much worse Sage's injuries could have been. Sage had given up the tears by the time we reached the hospital, and though I was oblivious to it, his inspection of them in the hand-held mirror the doctor offered began his fascination with having himself put back together. The years would hold many more such adventures. I was oblivious because it's difficult paying attention to doctor's instructions, mother's guilt, and a curiously quiet three-year-old all at the same time.

The doctor slowed, then stopped his speech to ask, "Ma'am, are you alright?" I could feel my lower lip quiver. As fuzzy as some of the details are of the day, as fuzzy as my head was at the time, I remember that quite clearly. It wasn't a good sign. My eyes filled, then overflowed, and the sobs began. While old doc was attempting to calm me, thinking, of course, that I was concerned for my son's safety, I threw my hand up, grabbing his shoulder, and cried, "I'm STONED."

Maybe it's not all that unusual for zonked parents to bring injured children to the ER. Doc called for a nurse, asked her to walk us both to the waiting room and to fetch me some black coffee, and there we sat. I know it was a couple of hours before I felt sober enough to drive. Sage, with his new stitches and a stack of story books, didn't seem to mind.

His birthday is in three weeks. He'll be nineteen. He lives about twenty minutes from here, and doesn't, at this time, have a working car or even a bicycle to come visit. We haven't seen Denny in quite some time, though the last time I spoke to him on the telephone, he's as sarcastic as ever.

I'm here, thirty-five miles from those apartments and six and a half years from any concerns over my mental ability to drive. Physically? That's another story. The seven mile round-trip to the post office nagged at my hip quite a bit, and the gardening I'd like to begin will have to wait. I've got two days off, to spend any way I like. I found an Anne Rice book on the shelves that I never got around to reading--Servant of the Bones--and it seems like a good guilt-free read about now. My house should fill up over the coming days and weeks with children home from adventures, people over for barbecues, music piped out onto the porch--life.

Till later...

Finding Your Way Home

2009-03-22T23:36:00.005-04:00

Seek and ye shall find.

I’ve been looking for ways and means to expand my spiritual life for awhile now, knowing that my daily reprieve and daily bread depend upon regular spiritual renewal. Along comes a book that amazes me with its simplicity and knocks my socks off with its depth of Love. That book is Finding Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart by the Women of Magdalene.

“Magdalene is a two-year residential and support community for women coming out of correctional facilities or off the street who have survived lives of abuse, prostitution, and drug addiction” (111).

Magdalene was founded in 1996 by Reverend Becca Stevens, an Episcopal minister in Nashville, Tennessee who had the simple goal to “create a safe place for the women, a home where they could find love as well as space, and time to work seriously on recovery” (112). Magdalene is guided by twenty-four spiritual principles which are, Stevens says, “practical ways we can love one another without prejudice or judgment” (10). The ministry has grown from one house with room for five women to five houses—several of which have been donated by the community, outright or through fundraising events.

One of the principles, Proclaim Original Grace, states, “Our journeys all start and end with God, and everything we do is a step toward our return to wholeness. Because grace is our beginning, we are worthy of all good things” (19). Each of the twenty-four principles are described in several ways, facet-like, and then followed by the written testament of the residents, staff and volunteers of Magdalene.

The ministry is supported in part by Thistle Farms, a non-profit business producing and marketing bath products. It is operated by the Women of Magdalene, teaching them job skills, responsibility and a sense of unity and cooperation. Found on the website, thistlefarms.org, is this explanation to the question, “Why the Thistle?”

Considered a weed, thistles grow on the streets and alleys where the women of Magdalene walked. But, thistles have a deep tap root that can shoot through thick concrete and survive drought. And in spite of their prickly appearance, their royal and soft purple center makes the thistle a mysterious and gorgeous flower.

And now, three years in the making, they also have a book to help support their community, a book written by the women of Magdalene. The book is small in size—it could probably be read in one sitting—but don’t let that fool you. Like good literature, it inspires one to action. The principles that guide and heal the women of Magdalene are ones that can be used to guide and heal any life. As a person who already does her best to follow a spiritual program for living, Find Your Way Home is a wonderful resource for daily spiritual renewal.

To promote the release of their book, the women of Magdalene and Thistle Farms are launching a blog this week, The Voices of Thistle Farms. Please visit & visit often!

Birthday Wishes

2009-03-10T22:51:00.004-04:00

Today is my mother’s 83^rd birthday. I made her dinner this evening: turkey breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, buttered corn, and my husband made a fruit salad (amazingly tasty for this time of the year).

I picked Sage up, and we went shopping. I finally got to see where he has been living—his first real residence away from home—and it wasn’t nearly as nasty as I’d made it out to be in my imagination. It wasn’t clean by the most generous standards, but I didn’t have to wade through the living area, and I could actually see the floor in his room.

We went to Lowe’s to get a few things on my list, then to K-Mart because it was right next door. Jade had her warm sweats stolen during indoor track season, and now that outdoor has begun, K-Mart was as good a place as any to find replacements. Joe Boxer’s were on clearance. What we didn’t find was a gift appropriate for an 83-year-old woman who doesn’t need anything else. I considered and rejected several books. She already has a “devotions” library. An abuse memoir would depress her. Anything that might have a sex scene for some reason I can’t fathom embarrasses her.

When we were near the end of our errands, at Martin’s to pick up a cake, we finally chose several plants for her garden. Green chrysanthemums. White tulips. Purple hyacinths. The ghost of the hyacinths still lingered in my car when I took Sage home many hours later.

Lately, I’ve been regretting not asking my mother more about her life. She has dementia, precursor to the Alzheimer’s that reduced both my grandmother and my aunt to children late in their lives. Ma’s memory is affected, and she’s losing her words, but she hasn’t yet lost her faces. Sometimes she’ll refer to my brother as my uncle, or my children as my siblings, but most of the time, she’ll merely lose our names, or forget who did what for her.

Last weekend, when I took her shopping, I had to admit that it hurt when she could only recall (and recount, over and over) what my brother and his wife have done for her, and then today—she seemed to have no recollection that it was me who took her to pick out and buy her new bed. It hurts, even though the truth of the matter is that I slip in and out, doing only what I need to do, whether it be taking her shopping, arranging her financial matters (usually without her direct involvement, so how can I expect her to acknowledge that?), or, like tonight, busy myself in the kitchen while she tries to engage one of my children in a discussion about the wonders of Depends.

Then I heard her tell me about my brother’s role in the purchase of her new porch furniture. She said something. She said, “I didn’t ask him. He just brought me what he thought I should have.” Then she told me that his wife picked the cushions for the chairs. And I wondered—when did she ever get what she wanted? When I took her to buy the new bed, who made the decision? I led her to the best mattress and box springs set in the store. I directed her to lay down on it. I chose the headboard, based, of course, on where the bed would have to be placed, assuring that the window would not be blocked. If I took a seat and let her roam the store, would the outcome have been different? I suspect we would have left empty-handed.

It seems it’s always been this way. My father named me. My mother wanted to call me Susan, but my father felt differently. Somewhere, she has notes that he’d leave for her before going to work with suggestions. What he wanted. Of all the notes she put in his dinner bucket, there aren’t any that say more than “I love you.” He made the decisions. My uncle and aunt named my brothers. I strain to think of one decision (other than demanding she not go to an “assisted living” home) that my mother has made for herself.

I want to ask her questions about this, but her eyes are shallow. They twinkle only when her birthday cake is placed in front of her, one solitary candle lit in the middle, and we remind her, “Make a wish!” She hesitates. She begins to say, “I wish I’m alive another…” Then her voice trails off, and she begins to blow. It takes three tries before she gets it right and the candle is extinguished. Another what, Ma? Another how many years? Does she get her wish? Just this one?

George asked me if I enjoyed the evening, and I said yes. I don’t know if it's the truth.

Till later...

Pen Pals

2009-03-05T17:57:00.004-05:00

So, I've been thinking about cyber relationships. Over the years, I've developed quite a few close friendships with people I've never met. I'm not talking about MySpace random adds from folks who occasionally "hit" my page with comments. Most of the time, I've met folks through special interest groups, or by (as they say in sales) "making a cold call" on someone's blog. Some of these folks I've met face-to-face. I went to a beautiful wedding a year and a half ago for a couple I met through a message board. Even my husband, the supreme pooh-pooher of internet culture, had a great time, loved these folks who've become my close friends.

And in thinking about it, of course I'm writing about it, too, trying to get at the roots of what attracts me to it. Then I find the prison letters.

It seems that between September 1983-January 1985, I was quite the prolific letter writer--mostly to men in prison, but to some military men as well. I say "seems" because the whole period is rather foggy. I do remember that my sister gave me the picture of one of the guys (rather, his mug shot--no idea how she got that) and asked me to write to him when her new husband expressed jealousy. She would never tell me why he was in Pennsylvania's roughest state prison. He told me it was for simple assault, the first time he'd ever had trouble with the law. Personal experience ten years later taught me that you don't get four years for that. I later found out he was a rapist.

And another, one I knew from the neighborhood. Last summer, he was arrested for raping a four-year-old girl. I wrote to him for over a year, and other than being overly obsessed with Ozzy Osbourne and being a horrible speller, he was just like any of the other guys.

There are two names on the envelopes of letters I have yet to read that I don't even recognize. I put them all in chronological order and have been reading through them off and on all day. Those should be interesting. Maybe I have an honest-to-goodness murderer in there?

Most of the folks I correspond with today are doing what they can to make their lives better. The guys (always guys) I wrote to when I was fifteen, sixteen years old (and why, I wonder, did my mother allow it??), at least the first two, never seemed to do anything with their lives. The first one--I googled his name and found an article from last year. He'd been arrested after leading the cops on a high-speed chase. Back in prison again. Wow.

I'm just thinking about this. I have a lot of friends today, but outside of my immediate family (husband, grown or nearly grown children), I can't say I have a "best" friend. Not a face-to-face friend. I'm wondering, then and now, if I've used these epistolary relationships to fill some sort of lack. Hmm...

Till later...

The Winter That Never Ends

2009-02-19T13:33:00.004-05:00

So, I'm researching time. It's for an assignment: pick your most favorite line from anything you've written this semester, then choose one word from that line and research it. You must find facts about this word that you did not know when you wrote the line--three facts from science, three from history and three from literature.

My word is "time." I feel like like it's cheating a bit. After all, time is scientific, time is historical (all the hubbub of time in relation to the birth of Christ), and literature, oh, literature!--always obsessed with capturing time, the ultimate act of ego.

And as I do my research, I look out my window, see the snow not falling but blowing sideways, trying to plan my trek back to the city, trying to nail down my schedule for the optimum driving conditions. Do I go tonight in the dark when it will be colder, but less windy? Do I drive back in the morning, when the weather forecast predicts a higher chance of precipitation, adding the pressure of arriving on time, regardless of the potential for hazardous driving?

Ah, hubris. What does it matter? If that line I chose holds any truth at all, I'm only fooling myself. The winter never really ends, and every moment is the only moment.

Till later...

My Odd Life

2009-01-13T22:11:00.005-05:00

I can't say I have a topic to write about, though I'm feeling pressured (by myself) to update, let any casual reader know that turning 40 did not push me over the edge. I've been referred to as a "middle-aged woman" several times in recent days--in a matter-of-fact sort of way by one of my younger friends, and it felt okay. No, really, it did.

I've slipped into a level of acceptance about my age that feels almost like my old Harley boots--molded to my particular quirks, though still with an odd bump here and there. Comfortable, but not something I want to wear for days on end--which is okay, because I keep the ten-year-old me around to inject me with a good dose of silliness and novelty. My Ace brings her out in me with little trouble. The years roll off of me at the end of the week when I go home to him.

Which brings me to the odd part of my life. It hit me when I was wandering around this quiet apartment today. I'm a married woman, a mother, and yet I spend all this time alone, and when I'm not alone, I'm with folks that none of the most important people in my life have even met except through my anecdotes. I imagined this life a long time ago. I visualized, even, this life, but it was before children, before cleaving to a man I adore. We're all okay with it (I believe), even though it wasn't really part of the plan. It's just... weird.

Life sure is full of surprises.

Till later...

On Turning Forty

2008-07-03T20:13:00.002-04:00

I don't want to grow old gracefully
I don't want to go 'til it's too late
I'll be some old [wo]man in the road somewhere
Kneeling down in the dust by the side of the interstate
~Warren Zevon, Renegade

The clock is ticking. I’ve heard it, growing louder each day. I remind myself that time is a human invention, but the lines I see when I look in the mirror, growing deeper, transforming my face from who I think I am into who I have become, tell me otherwise.

Perhaps wrinkles are a human invention, too.

Till later...

All over the macaroni salad? Naw...

2008-06-10T13:35:00.003-04:00

So, I'm sitting here, wishing that the wind would stop blowing my cigarette ashes all over, the dog would stop nosing up on my chair and ruining the coat of polish I just put on my nails, and my stomach would stop growling because I'm too stubborn to go inside and make myself something else for lunch. I wanted the macaroni salad I made yesterday, but Mary threw it away when she cleaned out the 'fridge. Christopher told her he thought it was old - Christopher, who hasn't been home for dinner in a number of days and wouldn't know what was new and what was old in the 'fridge if it jumped out and bit him. The only thing that's old is down in the basement, in G.K.'s subterranean cave, and I have no doubt that some of those unrecognizable dishes are at the biting stage by now. I've only been nagging him to clean for a month.

I've got a million and one pet peeves that I try not to let ruin my day. When they come up, I've trained myself to ask, "How important is it, really?" (Well, the situation in G.K.'s bedroom is border-line important - he may have grown the cure for the common cold down there by now, or a deadly biological weapon) But, today, after going 'round with Mary umpteen times and asking her to please not clean the 'fridge when I'm not here, it ticked me off. George was the one who told me, in his best Grapes of Wrath meets the Beverly Hillbillies voice - "Please, Ma, don't be turrible mean when I give ya this gawd-awful news that's a-weighing heavy on m'heart!" I laughed and laughed, then got more and more impatient for him to get to the point. He wanted to play. I just wanted to know what the hell was going on.

My macaroni salad, that tasted so good when I made it yesterday and that was on my mind the whole drive back from my Ma's, forty miles over the mountain, is now, I hope, in a covered garbage can, or my cats will have what I could only think about today. Grrr!

It's not that, though - not really. Sure, there was a good buck's worth of mayonnaise in it and the last of the Vidalia onions. But it wasn't enough to set me off. Neither was the five separate instances of road construction on a forty-mile (one-way) trip. I managed through that just fine. I just turned American Beauty up loud and sang along with Jerry and the boys - at least on the way over.

It's been awhile since my hometown has had this profound an effect on me. Maybe it's because an old friend is back in town. She related to me last week that she had to move in with her mother because she found herself homeless. Here I am, dressed well for a routine trip to take my mother to for some tests, driving my almost-new Toyota mini-van, have almost a full tank of gas at today's prices, and I see her. I'm reminded that most of the folks I grew up with - poor, white trash like me - are not doing so well. I see the buildings and landmarks of my youth in rubble, razed to make room for a parking lot - or nothing at all. Even the lot where the house I grew up in and my mother lived until a few years ago is covered in weeds and road trash.

When we dropped my mother off last Friday evening after the boys' graduation, my husband asked, "What month is this?" when we drove through the downtown, all lit up. Each lampost sported a shooting star in red, white and blue. Some sort of downtown pride campaign. But it's almost all gone, and nothing new seems to be taking the place of what once was. Back in the seventies, my hometown won some sort of small-town America title. Today, there are new facades on a street with vacant buildings, the interiors falling into decay.

And my mother is falling into decay with the rest of the town. Most of her friends are gone, but she still manages to find someone in the waiting room to talk to. I listen to her talking, realizing that she's not hearing anything that's said to her. All she's doing is waiting for an opportunity to recount one more physical ailment, no matter how personal. And she'll interrupt if the subject of hemorrhoids or amputated breasts comes up.

We ran into that old friend of mine at the hospital. She came in as we were leaving. Said, "I saw you drive by. If I knew you were coming here, I would have asked for a ride." Her old mother was driving her. Standing in the hall between radiology and the E.R., she showed me why she was there. She lifted her shirt and exposed a pregnant-looking abdomen. "I have to have a CT scan. Some kind of growth." She flashed a smile full of decaying teeth. I felt something unnameable then.

But I think I know what it was: shame. I'm ashamed of where I came from, and I feel, somehow, I shrugged my responsiblity, denied them my loyalty - refused to rot with all the rest. Like my macaroni salad (Damn it, Mary) will now.

Till later...

A meme by any other name...

2008-06-03T16:55:00.002-04:00

Meme: A meme consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another (Wikipedia).

Found this on Exile on Mainstreet, who’s author found it somewhere else.

The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users.
Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. (I used pink for bold - bold doesn't show well, and I'm not changing my template for one post! I also underlined and bolded those I read first, then read for a class.)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses (not once, not twice, but three times)
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion is this
There is Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Wow. I’ve abandoned a lot of things, haven’t I?

Graduation - An Ending, a Beginning

2008-05-18T12:00:00.010-04:00

With the reputation I've developed over the last four years, the cynic in me questioned why "they" didn't rig it so that someone else gave the baccalaureate address. I've embraced the idea that the personal is the political, and I've missed no opportunity to put in a word for peace, or a call for the end of domestic violence, or to raise awareness that drug addicts and alcoholics are sick people, not bad people. But yesterday, when the podium was mine for three to five minutes, the concept of unity seemed to me more important than any other I might talk about.

I told a friend I would blog my speech, and I'll try to do it in such a way that the reception as well as the delivery is present. Let's see how I do:

(The Director of Academic Affairs calls me up as recipient of the Baccalaureate Academic Achievement Award - something given in lieu of valedictory status when graduate, four-year and two-year degrees are conferred at the same time.)

Thank you, Dr. Mino. And thank you, my family - my husband, my incredible four teenage children, my mother, and the dear, dear friends who are with me here and in spirit today. And thank you, Class of 2008. You are my family, too.
We have come to this common place today in many different ways.

Some of you have come in the traditional way, straight from high school, from families where it was assumed that you would get an education that would form the foundation of your career.

Some of you have come because your children are growing or grown, or you seek an education so that you might be better able to provide for your family, or you’ve maybe wanted to enrich your own lives and expand your experience. Even when you’ve known that you’ve had your family’s best interest at heart, you may have felt selfish about the time you have had to devote to your studies.

Some of you have come because you’ve been downsized out of a job, or, like me, have disabilities which makes it hard to do the jobs you were trained to do. You may have felt frustration at having to take algebra all over again, or to write an essay for freshman comp.
(Exclamation: "Yeah!")
If you’re a non-traditional student, you may have felt uncomfortable and out of place around so many young people. If you’re a younger student, you may have felt at times that you were sitting next to your mothers and fathers in class.
(Titters of laughter)
Sooner or later, hopefully, we’ve all discovered that we are peers, regardless of our differences. We share a commonality, and today, we all wear the same caps and gowns, and we’ve all taken classes together and learned a new language that includes such terms as “gen eds” and “OPRs” and “drop credits.”
(A guffaw or two!)
We’ve had opportunities to study together, to join clubs and organizations together, to play laser tag together, and to sit and talk about our lives outside these halls together. We have participated, and it is my hope that we will continue to participate, to become part of in our jobs, our communities, and in our families. What we’ve learned from books and in lectures is only a portion of our education. That we are part of a larger world, and that we have a place and a purpose in that world is something I hope we will never forget.

Though our majors might be in the helping professions, in business or in wildlife, in information technology or a mixture of these and others, we have all shared the experience of being part of a small, intimate college campus where we are privileged to be more than just a name on the rolls. We are truly blessed to be leaving not a college today, but a family.

(This is the point, I believe, where I’m supposed to offer some encouraging words for our futures!)

I encourage us to think of the days and weeks and semesters culminating in this day as a starting point for our education, not as the end result.
I encourage us to think about our experiences and remember that the people who teach us are at least as important as the things they have to teach us.
I encourage us to remain teachable, even though we may be breathing a sigh of relief that this time is now behind us.
I encourage us to look at this very brief period of time as something that has shown us just how much more we have to learn.
Lastly, I encourage you all, as Henry David Thoreau would have, to “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” The best way I have found to do that, the only way I have found to do that, is to put one foot in front of the other, and to keep on keepin’ on!

Congratulations, Class of 2008. Thank you for being part of my family!

(My apologies for not properly citing Dylan in the above!)

Till later...

Letter to my friend

2008-05-14T11:14:00.002-04:00

Morning, Jackie,

I'm a little stir crazy not having anything to do. Oh, I have plenty of places to go - and "stuff" to take care of - but, well, maybe you know what I mean. The classes are all finished, the papers turned in, the grades have been recorded. I even have my speech written for Saturday. I hope you're not too disappointed. I used a Thoreau quote. I considered writing a feminist manifesto, but I found it difficult to draw together 80 other people in 3-5 minutes.

As soon as my last bio of aging assignment was finished Friday afternoon, I started digging around the Pitt site and found the library. They have a lot of the same database accesses that we do, and I downloaded and printed 3 articles on pedagogy. I'm mid-way through the second, and the third (saving the best for last), "'Feminist' Teaching/Teaching "Feminism"', is one you might like. I found it through Project Muse, but I can go back & save a PDF copy & e-mail it to you if you like.

I checked my degree audit, and my minor hasn't yet shown up on it. You told me that it would, so I'm not worried about it - just an F.Y.I.

I've only cried a few times, and I have managed not to sink into a deep depression. I know all sorts of good things are ahead, but - maybe you've felt this - it all went so fast, I feel like I didn't have an opportunity to savor any of it. I'd just like it to slow down a little.

My baby boy is 18 and is off visiting friends on his own in the evenings, playing music and doing car repairs. My baby girl is asking questions about politics and religion and trying to make up her mind in regards to what she believes, not adopting what we believe as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I'm watching my oldest re-join the family, camping out in the t.v. room doing math and contemplating his future, comparing it to his peers and struggling to figure out where he belongs in the world. The next one in line - the roller coaster kid - he's psyched that he's got an honor cord, even though he's been kicked out of the National Honors Society (did I tell you about that? over a bottle of Sprite?), and he's weighing the short-term worth of traveling as a starving musician against the long-term worth of a college education. My husband sits back, watches it all and smiles.

I don't know that I'm ready to be where I am, Jackie, but ready or not, here I come. Thanks for listening this morning. May the clouds part and the sun shine on you today.

Peace & Love,
Jody

“I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.”
~Frances Hodgson Burnett

Some stuff...

2008-05-13T20:46:00.000-04:00

Find more photos like this on SoberMoms

Calling Together

2008-04-18T14:40:00.004-04:00

Tonight is a very special night for me, and I hope for others, and though I’m sure that my little corner of cyberspace is obscure enough that no one I’ll mention, by name or by virtues, will stumble across it, in the interest of keeping the surprise, I will file this away once complete. By the time I retrieve my saved draft, the information will be yesterday’s news.

Tonight is the campus Honors Convocation. This year, as chair of the honors society, I have a fairly large role. In the past, I’ve been mindful to remain humble as I was handed award after award. Great, but this year, I get to do something even greater. I get to welcome everyone and then, in the course of the ceremony, present three awards.

I stayed home today, though there were things I could have done on campus. There is another event I feel is important, for which I could have volunteered time, but I chose to stay home. I have my speeches prepared, my clothes chosen, and in looking back at four years of campus and community service, I felt I could hold back, not dip my greedy little fingers into another pie, stay at home to reflect and maybe even paint my nails.

Nails finished after a sloppy fashion, toes dry enough, I pulled out my old, dog-chewed sandals to take a trip around the back yard – my first of the springtime so far. It’s been plenty warm enough to make that trip sooner, but life and the job of living it have kept me from it.

I used my new walking stick, carved by the brother of a friend. I told myself that part of the reason I turned back so soon was that it will take some getting used to, carrying a big stick like that. I told myself that I needed to build up to it, take short jaunts, and soon I will be traveling the back five acres with ease as I did last summer.

Then I considered other reasons. That maybe I’m a year older, and though still young by most estimates, a little slower, a little softer. That maybe the progression of certain conditions that began last fall, not long after porch sitting was done for the year, are taking more of a toll on me than I’d like to admit. I did feel popping and grinding in my knees and ankles out there. I did have trouble maintaining a grip on the long length of – Ash? Maple? Something heavy.

And it got me back to thinking about why I didn’t go in, put in a few volunteer hours at the event on campus – “Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Pennsylvania.” It’s a worthy event, one I’d be proud to help with. But I didn’t go. Am I losing steam?

I realize I’ve spent four years building a resume of accomplishments that will give me credibility when speaking out on those things that matter to me. I may not have realized that when I first started, but as much as I abhor politics, politics are hard to avoid if one wants to make any impact. I admittedly have trouble working behind the scenes, keeping the faith that my small contributions, when combined with others, make an impact. It’s an ego thing, perhaps. I know that I have a big mouth, and I lean towards big gestures, and in accepting who I am and how I can best serve, I try to gear my efforts in that direction.

There is a woman I’ll be helping to honor this evening who is not like me. She’s been content, in all the time that I have known her, to be the now-proverbial wind beneath the wings of others. All total, she’s receiving three honors, including having one award renamed in her honor. I have written the speeches, and I’m having a little trouble getting through them in my practice without crying. Maybe that’s just the way it’s supposed to be, and I should give up the practice and just let it all hang out. I think that’s what she might advise me to do, if I could ask her without spoiling the surprise.

I also have to wonder, in relation to my short, lone journey to the backyard, if it is possible that, in the contemplation of this woman, in her compassion and humility in her dealings with others, I have learned more than I thought I had. This weekend, if I choose to tear myself away from that last paper and go for a walk, I can ask one or more of my multitude of children, or my husband, to accompany me. When I visited Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago, I tramped all over creation, but I didn’t notice the distance because I was in good company, talking all the while. Had I been a loner there, which is my bent, I’m sure I would have viewed those same distances as torturous. Maybe, in the spirit of the Burns Award, a mentorship award I received last year and one I will be presenting to my dear friend, Susanne tonight, I should be focusing on others more—rather than the resume-building, trail-blazing path I’ve been on for quite some time now.

I’ll have students of my own this fall. I just ordered two books on teaching composition. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from those books, as well as from the promised week of intense training before classes begin. I do hope that I take the lesson learned from Susanne, that “the individual time one spends with students will in the end matter more than any particular piece of knowledge I could impart in a classroom lecture.”

I now think it’s perfectly acceptable, prudent and wise to change directions once in awhile, especially when one is presented with a superior path to walk.

Till later….

Outbursts

2008-03-08T20:41:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to get at what's beneath the outburst. My last post was part whine-fest, part tantrum, and, the larger part, an exercise in ego. Kind of like taping an affirmation on the bathroom mirror and repeating it over and over, believing, but being afraid to believe. It feels silly and uncomfortable and still, kind of good at the same time.

I spent an interesting afternoon yesterday with a couple of other women from campus. We were meeting to choose from nominees for a mentorship award. I won the award last year, an unusual accomplishment for a student. On the off-chance that I alert the wrong person before April 18th, when I will stand at the podium and honor this woman, I won't say who we picked. Geeze - that means I can't even allude to our choice in any significant way! Well, part of some forms of creative writing is finding a way to say what one needs to say inside a certain structure, or under certain limitations. So, I'll give it a shot.

These two women sitting with me - both staff, one from the IT department, the other, director of admissions, were sharing their stories with me. Both are working mothers, as is our recipient (See? That doesn't drastically narrow it. There are lots of working moms - both students, faculty, staff on campus.). Both have affected me by the way they carry themselves, as has our recipient. And both admitted to me certain difficulties in their jobs that they believe are woman-specific. Strangely enough, those difficulties have arisen from dealing with other women, or one woman in particular, who demands of them that they show no emotion that might point to a weakness. In other words, no emotion that's thought of as "feminine."

I think that's why this certain, hyper-critical woman seems to like me -- most of the time. She likes me because she knows a bit of my history, and she knows I minimize pain and other challenges. I don't think that she likes that I express my opinions and never flinch. And though I tend to respond rather evenly to criticism and have a pragmatic, solution-oriented approach to others who bring a problem to me, I'd like to reserve my right to express myself in any way that I see fit.

I suppose the conversation yesterday combined with my discomfort at being the center of attention on campus lately has me thinking, and in large measure, I was expressing ego that I feel is inappropriate or impolite and not in line with the view I wish others to have of me. And therein lies the rub. I am trying to spin a situation that requires no spin. Saying thank you is a very appropriate response. Answering questions honestly is not so hard. What's honest? I'm just putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to create too much friction in the Universe, just follow where it leads me.

It's led me to a place that I love. I love my life, with all its challenges. Maybe because of all of its challenges. It's a lot easier to live in a state of gratitude knowing that faith and hard work pay off, that people are essentially good and supportive of each other and will help you when you need it, that you can make time to help another person along the way, and it doesn't take from you but rather adds to you.

I just don't get why I feel the need to whine in order to say it. Perhaps I'm saying, "Yes, I have ego, but I have something else, too, something that makes me appreciate even the smallest things, like the chickadees that empty my feeder at a rate that defies their small size, and I'd like others to know that." Or appreciate a woman taking me by the hand and showing empathy, excitement, sharing joy and sorrow, and saying to hell with how someone else expects her to act.

I need to have an outburst every once in awhile. I reserve that right.

Till later...

Okay, so I'm somewhere else...

2008-03-07T20:19:00.003-05:00

I read something about denial earlier.

"If God was tapping on your shoulder, trying to get your undivided attention, what would she want you to see? What situation or feeling are you not willing to acknowledge? Is there an area of your life where you're not succeeding? If so, you're probably in denial."

I'm not succeeding at embracing my own success. Here's how it goes: I see someone coming towards me wearing that certain smile. You know the one. They've heard some news about you, and now they want to comment on it, make small talk, offer (if appropriate) congratulations.

On a campus of about eight hundred, with at least a good three hundred of those attending satellite programs in local high schools and community centers, and another chunk taking only night classes, which I don't take, it's not hard to get to know most everyone. I graduated high school in a class of 310, and I knew plenty kids in the lower grades. I've worked places that had hundreds on the payroll and knew most if not all of them. I'm also in my last year of undergrad studies, so I know all the faculty, all the staff. And, I've been prominent in several different campus organizations. So, I've seen the look, the smile, a lot in the past week.

"Congratulations! I heard your news! That's wonderful. Oh, you have worked so hard, and you deserve it!!" Immediately, the hitch inside gets me. I start lining up all the reasons why they're not my accomplishments, but those of my environment. I self-deprecate. I can't say a simple thank you, but must go on & on about how I could never have done anything alone. I make it sound like I have support to brush my teeth in the morning. It's embarrassing, and I'm sure, after having repeated it so many times, it sounds like false humility.

I do believe that I've been given certain opportunities, and I also believe that if others hadn't seen it in me, they wouldn't have been made available to me. Or, I'd have quit and decided it was too much work.

Who takes every single English course with honors when, really, there's no perk other than getting a better education and a certificate once a year to prove that I've done it? No Schreyer Honors College. No designation on my diploma. Just writing a lot of annotated bibliographies, doing extra research, giving presentations, and learning how to write decent appendices. Who studies hard even those subjects that are required, but not especially interesting or applicable to future career goals?

Who raises four kids, nurtures a new marriage, works with a bunch of recovering women on & off campus, chairs the honors society, raises awareness in regards to woman-specific issues, protests war, finds time to meditate rather than medicate, does physical therapy, writes a 900 page book on the art of internet communication, works as a tutor, speaks at community events and rallies, finds time to raise and preserve her own vegetables and sauces, and learns to identify most Western Pennsylvania backyard bird species (which is a damned good thing, because it was that essay, about the birds, that got me acceptances into three, possibly four MFA programs, as well as that extra fellowship award). Not many people.

Okay, there's my boast for the day, my self-centered musing on all my good works. I didn't even play the 82 yr old mother card, or the not-long-dead father card.

I believe I've hit on the real reason, though, that I can't take credit for all I know that I do, all I know I can do. I want others to think of me as an intelligent, capable woman, a good writer and a caring human being, and at the same time, I fear so much that others will consider me an egomaniac. Will saying thank you, without giving an speech appropriate for an Academy Award winner make me less humble in the eyes of others?

On this side, I am a middle-aged, disabled (I no longer think crippled) woman with multiple conditions and mobility issues, alcoholic/drug addict in recovery, with a poor and abusive upbringing.

On that side, I'm a writer; sometime-poet; avid blogger; gardener; mother of four teenagers; beloved of a most loving, intelligent, funny man; community servant; honors student, dean's list every semester; tutor/mentor; have a 3 1/2 page CV with very modest publishing credits, but incredible awards, scholastic honors, and presentation experience; and last, but not least, I'm liked and respected by most people I have come to know.

Why can't I own it all, even if it's joint ownership? It's mine, isn't it?

Till later...

Why not?

2008-03-04T18:58:00.002-05:00

Well, maybe it's the pain in my body today. I could have gone out, could have gone to class, could have gone to work, could have gone in for a meeting tonight. But I didn't. I weighed the costs & benefits and made the decision to stay home.

But it has me concerned. If not for the induction ceremony tomorrow, the last I will preside over, I probably would have practiced pushing my limits today. I've done a lot of that in the last five years, and, though more painful than I'd like for it to be at times, it's been worth it. I can do things now that I wouldn't have dreamed possible five years ago.

My son brought me pizza. He even removed the pepperoni from it, and he'll check in on me in awhile. I'm resting up. I want to get out of here tomorrow, and to do that and not screw it up, I have to rest today. I'm surrounded by love and support.

Will it be that way this time next year? How will George react if he hears the pain in my voice when we wish each other goodnight on the phone, knowing I am alone with my transient misery? Because I know it doesn't last long, and I know I can push through it. Today, I just choose not to. I know that I can do it, because I've done it over and over, each time I allowed new growth to break through to the surface. It's been almost three months since my last "bad spell." That's not too shabby, considering every day was more of the same "bad spell" for a very long time.

I will be living in the city of Pittsburgh this time next year, living there during the week, and traveling home, to my real home, on the weekends. I will be alone. If I live close enough to the campus, Christopher can stop by, and I'm sure, be there if I need him to be. But he'll have his own life, and I don't want to be overly intrusive. I also don't want to become dependent. I am, after all, the parent. I do depend on them now, don't I? We'll see.

I just signed my letter of intent today, and it's now in the mail, along with Christopher's tuition deposit. Next step: appointment with my favorite therapist.

Till later...

Right on Time

2008-02-26T20:30:00.003-05:00

First came the letter from Chatham. I need to call them, as I was so excited that someone, somewhere, wanted me, I immediately put down the letter, picked up my checkbook, filled in the amount for the tuition deposit, and had my daughter take it out to the mailbox. Stamp? Check. Sealed? Check. Send that puppy off! They should offer my spot to someone else.

Then came the call from Carlow. It was unofficial, I was told, but with a little pressure, I got a yes. An unofficial yes, but a yes. That was two weeks ago, and the official letter arrived Saturday.

Neither program offered money. That's a problem, as I'm already in debt to the point that I can only sign checks in red ink. It's not insurmountable, but it's a problem.

Every day, I've been sorting through the mail, slowly, and while praying, because the last two schools are ones who do have a bit of money to spread around. Today, there was a letter from Pitt. Five of the six of us were milling about, and I held the envelope in my hand, thinking--I really should send the kids out of the room. This is a windowed envelope. They wouldn't send an acceptance in a windowed envelope, would they? So, perhaps its a letter saying that decisions were coming soon. Or possibly an alert telling me that part of my application was missing. Or a rejection.

I looked across the table at my husband. He smiled. I said, "Don't." I didn't want him smiling when I started to cry. Sage walked behind my chair, and I hoped that he would keep on going. One less for George to shoo up the stairs when I fell apart. One less to try to console me.

I stuck my finger in the corner of the envelope. I opened it just enough to see the salutation. Anything else was under the fold, and I'd have to attempt reading it upside down or take it out of the envelope. There was a reply envelope. That didn't register. I didn't think, "This means a response is required." And there was more than just the one sheet. There was something besides the letter. That didn't register, either.

"It is a pleasure to inform you..." I got that far, then squealed. No, no--I don't think the first sound was a squeal. More like a hoot. Christopher said later that he was sure I was having a heart attack. A few minutes of guttural noise and yelping, and Sage started to dig around in the cupboard for a paper bag so that I wouldn't hyperventilate. The kids started to hug me in turn. Chris first, because he's going to Pitt, too, and he was hoping for my acceptance so that we could help each other some with rides. Sage next. Then Jade. George sat across from me smiling. Still smiling. I heard him say, for the first but not the last time of the evening, "I told you so!" Finally, I found my legs again, got up and rounded the table to hug him. Tight.

Oh, the second sheet. I couldn't read it. I had to hand it across the table to George so that he could tell me that not only did I get a tuition waiver, but a TAship as well. A TAship. They want me to teach. They're going to let me teach. Teach!

Wow.

My mentor's response--well, that's for another post, perhaps. Let's just say that he, too, yelled, hooted, something, in my ear, while I sat there, barely able to get the words out, repeating something to him, though in this moment, I could not tell you what. I know I said thank you. Many times.

There's one app left out there. I'm not so much worried about that now. As a matter of fact, if I get a letter in the mail, I might not want to open that one. I told my husband, "I'm starting to feel like I live a charmed life. It's a little scary." And it is. I have to remember to balance that with an equal portion of gratitude, and I think that should take care of the humility issue.

One last thing: I keep thinking that I'm coming to the game late, but when I think about the writing sample that was the basis of all this, I know I came just when I was supposed to, probably not a moment too soon.

Till later...

Links

2008-02-24T20:01:00.003-05:00

I have two folks in my life right now, my oldest (step)son and a very good friend, and though on the surface, it might look as though they have nothing in common, I have found a thread between them that makes my heart so very heavy, my eyes burn in trying to delve into them, speak from my soul to theirs silent words their ears will not hear.

They have so much potential, but they don't believe in it. Both of them.

I have found another, too. They have both lost a mother in a senseless way, and I'm all they have to stand in that place, to be there for them in the flesh and blood. They have their respective fathers, true. But I, of all people, know the importance of being mothered, no matter how adult one might be. My own "mother" is still breathing, still eating and shitting and sharing her woes with the world, but mothering me? I am a motherless child.

These two souls, my own tossed into the mix. How could I ever doubt the existence of a god, of the Great Spirit, of the Universal Creator, when I am always -- it never fails -- right where I am supposed to be, right where I might meet my co-adventurers.

So, what's my job now, Great Spirit? Are we to mother each other in absence of any better substitute? Will we flounder? Will we prevail? I've no doubt that we will learn.

Till later...

Creativity Can Be Messy

2008-02-22T19:53:00.005-05:00

My New Year cleaning binge came to an end soon after it started. Five days of purging papers and old shoe boxes and dried up pens and pencils with no erasers has left no discernible mark on my surroundings. Things are as messy, if not messier, than they were before. The stack of folders with multiple copies of submitted MFA applications and fellowship hopes and yearnings still sits on the floor beside my bed. I'm sure I could reduce that six-inch stack to a couple of thin manila files that I could slip into the file cabinet.

I've often thought about writing fiction instead of non-fiction. I think it's a much more lucrative proposition, if one is in it for the lucre. The only time I really think about having a financially fulfilling career is in those times I start contemplating my messiness, and my fancy takes over, tells me life would be so much easier with a personal assistant.

I had a "what would you do if you hit the lottery" discussion with a friend not long ago. She had what sounded like a well thought-out list of all the vacations she'd take, the palace she'd buy, the sports car she'd drive. Me? I wouldn't move. I like our house and its location. I can take a vacation anytime I want. In the summer, I do so every morning when I pour my coffee and walk out onto the porch. I'd probably buy a lot more books, maybe even try to find a first edition Walden. I think we'd probably like to have another truck, since last summer I saw what hauling potting soil did to the carpet in the back of the van. Clothes? I have enough clothes. But if I'm flipping channels on the t.v. and hit on one of those organizing shows where a team comes in and completely reorganizes your house -- that, yes, definitely that, would be something I'd spend money on.

I'm already fortunate to have a part-time housekeeper, but she does heavy cleaning. She wouldn't know where to start with the messes I make. I would love to interview folks who are like-minded, find the perfect person who would set up the perfect filing system, clear out all my cob-web clutter and make those hard decisions, find the perfect places for all my muse-pleasing artifacts (like my broken monkey who's cymbals no longer crash together, who's lips no longer peel back to reveal creepy monkey teeth -- why my dad thought that nightmare-inducing toy was appropriate for a little girl who needed nothing extra to induce nightmares, I don't know) ... I've dreamed of her (or his) services long before I needed them so desperately. Full-time. Not just a breeze through and go.

I want to create, but I don't want to tie up the loose ends. I hate to edit, and I hate to organize. I like to cook, but I hate to do dishes. I love to garden, but drag my tools back to the shed? Maybe that's why I like Monk so much. I'd take all his idiosyncrasies if they came equipped with a personal assistant.

Till later...

Everybody wants to be loved...

2008-02-21T21:14:00.003-05:00

Don't they? It seems like a universal truth to me. Maybe there are some who can take it or leave it, and there are those odd-ball in-your-face shock jock commentators who seem to live to piss other people off, but in general, don't people want to be loved? Or at least liked?

I do.

Thing is--and I'm sure my perception is a bit skewed here--I'm a tough cookie to chew. Sometimes even beyond the dunking stage. In the last week, I've been told that I have Utopian dreams and communistic ideals. I thought I was being complemented at first, but then I got the drift.

I was pretty much okay with things until I learned in this personality psychology course that we rarely have an accurate view of ourselves. I should have known that instinctively, I guess. I'm not stupid. But this presents some issues for me. I'm a writer. I write non-fiction, much of it from the first-person point of view. The issue for me is this: which is the real me? The one other people see or the person I know myself to be?

And more importantly, I ask another question in this particular moment. If others love me, do they love the me I am or the me they see? If they don't love me (or like me), would that change if I could invite them inside?

I don't know.

Till later...

What's Next?

2008-02-18T06:50:00.002-05:00

It took me ten minutes to choose a mood on MySpace. I mean, what is a mood but how we feel about something. There are just too many somethings to choose one mood. I eventually settled for "indescribable," as there were no more adequate choices.

Life is so busy right now. I feel like the Martin Sheen character in West Wing, shifting gears so fast, you'd think I had a pack of state troopers behind me. And this situation I must attend to is so very different from that one waiting in the wings, I don't have time to develop a "mood" around it.

I'd love to keep whining for another paragraph or so, but it's time now for something else.

Till later...

Remembering Sue

2008-02-11T14:21:00.000-05:00

I’ve had some old memories come back to visit today, and as for that sort of thing, one seems to give birth to another.

Some of the most vivid things I remember are times when I knew I was encountering some sophisticated act—something foreign to my hillbilly upbringing. Some I learned from Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt—such as what to do with your knife after you’ve ickied it all up cutting something or spreading something and you don’t want to put it down on a white tablecloth (not that I saw many white tablecloths). Other things, I learned from my friends.

Here’s one: Sue sitting in the bathtub while I tried on her mother’s make-up, telling me the order in which body parts should be washed, “or you’ll spread germs.” I didn’t get that. Why would it matter if I used the washcloth on my thighs after I swooshed it between my legs? But that’s what her mother taught her, and her mother was a sophisticate, a divorcee, head cashier at the local Riverside Market. It was 1978, maybe ’79, and Sue was still in Catholic school, damned to wear those green plaid uniforms but secretly envied by the rest of us girls. Sue had a weird nose but good cheekbones, and though she tried a little too hard to fit in with the rest of us public school kids, her bleach blonde mother (still wearing it in a beehive that late in the decade) was exotic, and we all wanted to hang in her immaculate fourteen by eighty.

Though we got away with a lot at her house when her mother was at work, we didn’t hang around much when she was home. She was incredibly strict, and, we learned, not afraid to use a backhand to enforce her rules. Sue still did her best to fit in with the lawless crowd, though. We all got an education the night she opened her mother’s secret cabinet. It didn’t take long for us to bait in the young, cute guys and feed them Pepsi with a few drops of Spanish Fly. A promise of unlimited Atari play did the trick, but Ms. PacMan was getting more action than we were—and besides, what would we have done with them had the aphrodisiac worked?

One of the last times I saw Sue was at Amy’s wedding. I didn’t recognize her. She was always slim, like her mother—whom we learned restricted her diet, as obesity was a sign of sloth. Standing outside the church, babe in arms, she had to have been two hundred pounds, maybe more. Her eyes were sunken in her the fat of her face, and even her quirky nose had lost it’s sharp upturn in the extra padding. I tried not to look shocked and I’m sure I failed miserably. We made small talk, avoiding the subject of the elephant she’d become. But, I saw her again late that summer—or was it the following year?—and she was back to her fighting weight. There was a mention of her mother’s nagging, how many sit-ups she started with and how many she still did every day and the stress of motherhood and the roll that she just could not get rid of, no matter how hard she tried. Sage hadn’t come along yet, so I listened, haughty and superior, knowing I was still bikini material. Though I’m not a pound over my weight at graduation, maybe even a pound or two lighter, I have come to know the ravages of motherhood. But that day, I just looked at her as though she were old. She was twenty-one.

Sue died twelve years later. I heard about it a few months after the fact, while I was firmly in my own state of inertia. Cancer. I don’t know what kind, or if she suffered, or what happened to her husband, her two children or her mother. So far as I was concerned, she was just plucked from the face of the Earth, and all I have of her are memories of our fist fights, her mother’s sex toys and a sense that she never quite fit in—which made a maladjusted girl like me feel a little better about myself.

Till later...

More of the Same

2008-02-10T17:14:00.000-05:00

Still very firmly February.

Several snow squalls have moved over the mountain today, most of which I've watched with my feet quite comfortably propped atop pillows on my bed. I spend a lot of time in my bed in the winter.

At one point, we were under heavy cloud cover, so much that I had to turn the table lamp on in the late morning. The sun must have muscled its way through because it became so bright, so quickly that my husband remarked on it, from his post at the desk, at the same time I snapped my head around to the window. The snow was still coming down steadily, but it was as if someone turned bright overhead lights on, hundred watters, and lots of them. Wow doesn't easily slip from his tongue; he is not one to be impressed by mere gentle shifts in circumstance.

Then later, my daughter came to visit to use my computer, though I don't know why. She has a new one, not three months old. No matter, I was glad for the company, even if it was the wordless kind. Clack-clack-clack from the keys. Then the clack-clack stopped, and she was standing at the foot of my bed. "What is that?" I looked outside, or tried to. There could have been crisp, white sheets on all the windows. The wind had picked up, and the snow had continued, and all we could see was white. Not even swirling white, though I'm sure that it was. Just solid walls of white: no grass line, no outlines of trees, no horizon. White.

For all the snow, the wind has taken most of it from the fields opposite my current perspective. I'm back in the sitting room with yet another roast in the oven (this time, beef, not pork, and I'm doing my best with it, even though I won't let a smidge past my lips). A moment ago, the air could have been laced with gold, but now, another gust has blown through, and with it came more clouds, like old gray leather.

I desperately want, need springtime. Everything around me, even my roast, is in the waiting place. I am in the waiting place. I'm very weary.

Till later...

The dreaded "Where I'm at today" post

2008-02-06T14:17:00.001-05:00

It's raining, coming straight down outside my windows. In February. That reminds me that I have yet to begin my global warming paper. Each thought or observation seems to lead me back to something else I'm neglecting. Things that make me feel responsible when I give them their due.

It is raining, and it is February, and I am home today, sick and miserable. I could use the time to plod through those many things I know I need to do in coming days and weeks, or I could sit here, lumpish, half watch cop shows and cruise my internet haunts, all the while feeling off kilter and less than serene. I could point to friends in crisis and my powerlessness to give them any real help, or the fact that my bones have been registering aches well above the acceptable level for weeks now, probably longer, and that my ego's taken an illogical hit since I have come down with the cold that the other five members of my family have mostly gotten over, same cold I thought I had slyly evaded (big joke on me) and tell myself -- no wonder you feel like crap today.

Or I could go deeper and say, "Well, Sug, you're one more day closer to forty and you still haven't had that talk with yourself you've been promising," or "You do know that your future is no more uncertain now than it's ever been, but you're sure making it out to be a big deal." I could dive deep into contemplation, and about the time I feel like I'm getting somewhere, feeling the pressure pushing things into place, it'll be time to put a roast in the oven for dinner, and it's just not worth a case of the bends to have to surface that quickly.

I think I need a vacation.

Till later...

Our National Drug - A Rant

2008-02-04T06:11:00.002-05:00

"Our national drug is alcohol.
We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. "
William S. Burrows

(Thanks, SoberMusicians for the quote of the day)

I'm speaking at another town hall meeting in April. I fell asleep thinking about it, if only because it was the thing least likely to cause stress or cause me to jump up out of bed, full of inspiration begging to be captured. No, I just turned things over in my head, thought back to the last two town hall meetings, and tried to approach it from a different angle. I think I'll actually use notes this year.

The topic, by the way, is underage drinking. It's always the topic. This is rural Pennsylvania. One graduates very quickly from Pin the Tail on the Donkey (do kids still play that?) to Find the Keg in the Woods. Or, as I hear these days, Find the Right Road to Camp. With all we know about underage drinking, parents are still offering "safe places" to drink as an alternative to their kids so that maybe they'll avoid a serious drug problem in said kids.

The local police logs are full of reports detailing minors charged with "disorderly conduct." I understand, as one of my colleagues informed me, that this is code for underage drinking. Charging a drunken teenager with disorderly conduct serves two purposes: 1) it let's the cop play good guy (or girl, as the case may be), as a disorderly conduct charge does not bring with it loss of driving privileges, and 2) fines from disorderly conduct remain in the municipality, while underage drinking fines are dispersed between county and municipality, or something like that. I understand the concept, so I didn't take notes.

As a sober alcoholic whose past "special treatment" helped me to avoid some unpleasant consequences that, by virtue of their absence, damned near killed me, I'm opposed to anything that allows someone consuming the drug alcohol from avoiding those consequences. Were my kids to be caught drinking, I would expect that they be charged, even if that means money out of my pocket. I have ways of getting it back.

But! you say, Kids will be kids! And alcoholism is a disease! Of course, and what better teaching aid than discomfort? And no alcoholic I have ever met has sought help without the aid of pain to convince that alcoholic that help was necessary.

In an ideal world, there wouldn't be such things that can be substituted for the experience of authentic existence. I'm pretty radical on that point, and I'll reign it in for the moment and just say that -- if we are not at the point where we are ready to educate our society, aid the enlightenment of our society, if we must have these substances available for the pseudo-sophisticates who claim consumption as their right, then let's not forget that alcohol is every bit the drug that heroin or cocaine is. We wouldn't scold a house full of I.V. drug users and send them home to mom and dad. Kegger or a crack pipe, there's no difference.

Till later...

For Rebecca...

2008-02-01T09:23:00.000-05:00

...because she was so kind to leave a comment and well-wishes. And also because my head and my heart seem to be in two different places right now, and I'd very much like to see a synthesis between the two.

I should be ecstatic, and I'll admit to ecstatic moments, but as Emerson lamented, they don't last. Mentally, I know that I'm headed in a positive, forward direction, and emotionally, I'm scared to death. My inner child is convinced that the play-date can't last, that some grumpy old grownup is going to come along and take away all the toys, scold, and end all the fun.

I've heard from Chatham, but I haven't heard from any other schools, and I haven't received any offers of funding. The money thing scares me. I'm having trouble working up any sort of optimism for the many fellowships applications I put in the mail. As an undergrad, I've been a star, ol' big fish in a small pond. Now, out in the ocean -- I'm imagining I'm nothing more than a minnow, and a minnow with warts on my fins--not good enough for bait let alone the foundation of a gourmet meal.

But then, the moments of ecstasy return. All fears aside, I'm doing it. I'm presenting at another conference, speaking at another town hall meeting, slowly filling the spring schedule so that I won't have time for excessive belly button gazing. Besides, it's NOT all about me!! My two seniors are at the precipice of their future as well. Christopher received his letter of acceptance to Pitt, which I had no doubt about (but he seemed to), and Sage is more than likely going to end up at PSU. I can understand women who devote their lives to motherhood without a lot of outside involvement. In thinking about their future, I can only go so far before I try to start planning it for them. I need something to return to when that realization comes home that this is their lives, and my part is growing smaller and smaller. So, right now, having my own thing to obsess about keeps me from falling to pieces, and having them to support and encourage keeps me from overly obsessing. It works out. The scales are in balance.

I'm grateful for the decision to take a few demanding classes my final undergrad semester. That, too, helps divert the fear and obsession. I can always pick up a book to read for a term paper, or study the endocrine system or work on that tricky introduction for my as-yet-in-pieces manuscript.

I'm in the waiting place, knowing one way or another I have a place to go, but still not knowing if I have choices. I suppose it doesn't much matter, so long as I don't have to make a choice today, right? So, I'll plug along, watch the rain and sleet coming down outside my window, pray that my husband makes it home safely since my efforts to get him to reschedule his day came to naught, and enjoy this day spent in my flannel nightgown, as I've a feeling my life this time next year will little resemble what it does today.

Till later...

Turning Points

2008-01-24T19:06:00.000-05:00

I came home today, cold and miserable. It didn't make it to twenty today, and the sparse flakes of the morning and early afternoon must have supped early. They were considerably fatter as I pulled into the driveway. All I could think about was stripping out of my many layers of clothes, pulling on some sweats and propping my puppies up on a pillow. I spent a carefree hour hour cruising my e-mail and favorite message boards, and as my husband was starting dinner, reading the remainder of Nature by Emerson was the most pressing demand upon my mind and time.

Then I wandered downstairs for a cup of coffee, and I noticed that someone had brought the mail in. There were two letters for me: One from the vet with Cassidy's rabies tags enclosed, and another from Chatham University. I tossed the first aside, as Cassidy's outgrowing her puppy collar and I have yet to buy her a new one. It could wait. I picked up the letter from Chatham and looked at it. My name and address was printed on a clear label and affixed to the front. I held the letter up to the light and could see a reply envelope enclosed. I looked at my husband sitting at the dining room table with his crossword puzzle book open in front of him. He had put his pen down. He was grinning.

"No, it's too soon."

"Alright. If you say so."

"Can't be. Not yet." He raised his eyebrows at me. "I mean, I've been getting stuff from them since last fall." I already had my finger in the corner of the envelope and was starting to tear, not too quickly. Just in case.

"Congratulations!" The first word. That didn't sound like a sales pitch.

"I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to Chatham University's Master of Fine Arts in Writing program beginning in the Fall Semester of 2008."

I do believe I am now bona fide.

Till later...

Holidays at the Half-Way Mark

2007-11-20T06:23:00.000-05:00

There was a time that I could not have imagined myself saying this, but I'm a holiday person. I have a love-hate relationship with it, but as I get on in years, I seem to focus more on the things I love about holidays than those I don't like so much.

It's two days until Thanksgiving, and we're having my mother whom I will enjoy when she's here, but anticipating the logistics of putting her up--my mother, who is past eighty now and can't climb stairs to the bedroom and will need to have a bed made up on the sofa at an hour when most of my household is still romping and running about--is something I just don't think I'll dwell on this morning. I won't worry about the six month old border collie puppy who might trip her on the way to the bathroom or think about the way she belches at the table and laughs or wonder if she'll remember to pack her Depends or if she'll be washing her underthings in the common bathroom downstairs (yes, I have limited patience with the challenges and trappings of old age--perhaps in protest to the ones that have visited me early--and I'm not very proud of it). I'm thinking instead of the meal I'll cook and the joy it will bring to the single friend we have every year (this will be the fourth he's sat at our board). I'm thinking of the lazy way we'll all linger at the table, unlike how our weeknight dinners have evolved into a mad stuff and dash, kids clearing condiments while someone else is still chewing so that they can get on with their important teenage pursuits. I miss that which was a nightly occurrence for such a long time, and the holidays give me back those little pleasures.

But something will have changed this year, and I have yet to embrace it. My hands aren't working as well as I'd like them to, and I'm going to need help. I don't know if this is a temporary condition, whether it will go back into remission as it had for more than ten years, or if, at nearly forty, I'm right on schedule for a more normal and gradual arthritic decline. Someone will have to help peel the five or six pounds of potatoes. Someone will have to stand by to lift the heavy pans. I can't put my hands into anything cold--last week, my oldest helped mix a meatloaf. Just those little things. As much as I love the togetherness of the meal itself, I treasure the solitude of the time I spend in the kitchen. Is it a thing of the past?

I say this, and every time I've reached a level of pain or limitation I felt was impermeable, I've found the one chink, the magic formula for pushing through. I have no doubt it will happen this time. Life is an evolutionary process, and I've managed to roll with it fairly well. I'm sure it's all this mid-life musing I've been doing, contemplating my gradual demise. Do I have another forty years in me? If so, I'm sure I could spend this small sliver of it focusing more on those pleasurable parts and less on what I give up to age, less on what I give up to my intolerance.

It's soon Thanksgiving. I've made it this far. My children are healthy and, for the most part and in all the ways that really matter, happy. They are safe. My husband loves me and I love him. I have a warm bed to sleep in at night and plenty to eat. I have friends and colleagues and interests and sobriety and a true feeling of purpose. I have a hot cup of coffee and a little bit of time to sit and think about these things rather than barreling through life or hiding from it.

Life is good. Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Till later...

Perspectives

2007-11-14T22:24:00.000-05:00

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I was running a Chinese auction (is that politically incorrect? I really don't know) yesterday at a local restaurant for my campus honors society, a young woman came to help who wasn't on the list of volunteers. She just showed up, dressed in her "business" finery (that's what she called it -- "business dress"), donned after working her shift in the weight room at school. She was wearing makeup, and she sat next to me, legs primly crossed. I was used to seeing her barefaced in jeans and hoodies. I had crossed path's with this girl a few times, noticing that something was not quite right with her, but I had attributed it to shyness. She had a very halting manner about her, both in her physical movements and in the way her eyes moved when she spoke.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. I was to do the four p.m. to seven p.m. shift alone, and I really didn't expect a mad rush. I had homework to catch up on, but as the chair of said honors society, I couldn't put my nose in my book and ignore my volunteers. So, I tried making conversation with her, tentatively. It took some doing! Her answers were monotone, and seldom did she look in my eyes when she spoke. Finally, and I don't quite remember how, the conversation came around to her condition. That's what she called it. I felt if she brought it up, I could ask some gentle questions. She very candidly told me that she was autistic. High functioning, obviously, but autistic. With this news, I admit, I began to study her as well as converse with her. Autism is so much in the news these days with statistics putting the rate at anywhere from 1 in 500 to 1 in 150 births, and I had not knowingly spent any significant time with someone afflicted. Now, I had my chance.

I noticed several things, and as my laptop battery winds down, I'll try to describe them the best I can.

First, she seemed to be not at all shy. As a matter of fact, I noticed that she was sitting with a group of students today on campus. Guys, as a matter of fact. She seemed quiet, but quite comfortable. As well, she showed up to help with the charity event, and in our talk together, she told me about other events where she just dove right in.

Another thing that struck me was her recall of names, first and last. I'm terrible with names, and it impresses me when anyone, especially in a large student population, can keep people straight. I have six other students serving with me on the honors society board, and I still have to pause to think of their last names. This young woman seemed to know everyone! (I suspected she'd done some research, too -- she knew their majors, their academic advisors, the towns in which they lived! All information available through the campus directory and the postings in the advising center, but still!) She could tell me what our vice-chair was wearing that day and which building he was exiting at what time and in what direction he was heading -- and I don't know that she'd ever had a conversation or a class with him.

She also seemed to have a very strong sense of "sides." She told me that she does deal with a fair amount of teasing in her weight room job. She's dealing with jocks, mainly guys, and anyone, especially someone with a disability, would probably get a hard time from them. She could tell me who was on her side and who was against her. This theme, over and over, came up, when she was talking about faculty, playmates, her little sister. There were very sharp divides. I wondered -- was I on her side? Perhaps I should have asked. I found it curious, especially after recently going through a mediation with two students and not affording to or interested in taking sides, only in helping them to make peace. This young woman shared with me that she wants to be a psychologist. I'll muse on that some more later.

We talked about a lot of different things in the five hours we were together. She had something to say about most everything that came up, but the odd thing was that in her responses on general topics, I felt as though she were reciting memorized facts and anecdotes. She spoke a lot about wine -- as she'd just turned twenty-one and she was very firmly on the side of sweet red wine! I had to add my cautionary mom remarks. I just couldn't help myself, though she didn't seem to be a lush in the making, so I let it drop. Her opinions aside, she would sit straighter and almost recite what seemed to be the inventory of the local wine shop, and she could quote by-the-glass prices at restaurants I'd never heard of in neighboring states I was surprised to learn she visited.

During the course of the evening, she more or less maintained this detached, unemotional state, though there were times when I cracked subtle jokes and laughed, amused with myself (I'm very easily amused). Once I began laughing, she did, too. And in doing so, her eyes crinkled, her face took on a rosy glow, and she laughed with me. For a few minutes after, in speech and in mannerisms, she was like any other twenty-one year old girl. She came out of herself. She seemed normal in every way. My heart swelled, as if I'd done something. As if I'd reached her.

And then, sometimes slowly, sometimes very abruptly, she slipped back into the monotone voice and the herky jerky motions, little girl in the business dress and the unfamiliar make-up. I have to say, I endeavored, once I saw the effect, to make her laugh. I think, in those few minutes scattered throughout the evening, I felt normal along with her.

Till later...

This Post is for You, PhotoGuide

2007-11-11T18:56:00.001-05:00

I spent the afternoon cooking for my family. It was a simple roast chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy dinner with buttered corn good bread. No desert, but they acted like it was a dry-run for Thanksgiving. Since giving up meat, it's getting stranger and stranger cooking meat for them, stranger still to watch them eat it, but so far, I haven't lost the ability to do it. I hope I don't, either, though if they all announced tomorrow they would like to eat vegetarian, too, I wouldn't be upset.

In looking at PhotoGuide's pictures, I thought I'd try a "worth a thousand words" post. Although I love the holidays, love making holiday meals, I do miss the really good fresh produce of summer. We still have some peppers in the refrigerator that are well on their way to a sad, sad state, and I must admit, I was too lazy to make the trip to the mudroom to snip fresh parsley for the potatoes. But, I made good use of my camera this summer, so when I get too awfully wistful, I can always flip through my virtual album.

The rocking chairs came off the front porch, landing on the back sun porch where they'll no doubt have a coat of dust by the time spring rolls around again. The bird feeders in the far off trees came in a couple of weeks ago, and just a couple of them, what's a manageable number to fill on a cold, snowy day, are now rehung from nails on the porch. Already, the black capped chickadees have chosen the Audubon feeder the kids gave me on Mother's Day. I haven't yet found a place indoors to daydream, though. Transitions...

We're at that in-between time now, no longer the glory of fall and not yet the deep sleep of winter. It makes the daily commute a little melancholy. Music helps. Joni Mitchell has been serenading me, telling me that it's all part of the up and down, in and out, here and there of things, and just like me at this mid-life place, the world will get on with things soon.

So, there you go, PhotoGuide, my new friend. I'm not much of a photographer, but I'll give it a shot once in awhile. I like how the pictures say things for which I have not yet found words.

Till later...

Autobiography

2007-11-11T14:37:00.000-05:00

I'm taking this course, a 400 level "biography/autobiography" independent study. Of course, I'm going to write autobiography. With five other classes, a job, a family, and other commitments, research is not very high on my list. I know me, right? With a little fact checking, I should be able to crank out fifty or seventy five pages of fairly accurate and quite possibly entertaining -- maybe even literary! -- autobiography.

But it's two-thirds of the way through the semester, and I haven't. I've got a few short essays, mostly about the final bask in the pre-forty rays of youth. I am in the middle. How does one write about the beginning when it's coming to an end and the last half stretches out in all it's uncertainty?

I am in the biological Buddhist ideal. That, quite possibly, is the story.

Till later...

My Art Assignment - Feminist Themes

2007-11-09T23:42:00.001-05:00

"Pinned Under"

And Accepting

2007-11-08T13:15:00.000-05:00

Because I knew that I couldn't just let my last post hang out there, as my final (or latest) word on the state of Things. I knew at the same time I was feeling it, fighting against it and wrestling it around, trying to see something that I was certain wasn't there, that it is (ugh!) just as it is supposed to be, in all its -- what? Howling hopeless horror. I love "h" alliteration.

So, I dug this up as an affirmation to myself, a soothing comfort that it's okay, I should keep going, and at the same time, accept that these observations are nothing new. They've been here in different configurations for time immemorial.

MOYERS: What about this idea of good and evil in mythology, of life as a conflict between the forces of darkness and the forces of light?

CAMPBELL: That is a Zoroastrian idea, which has come over into Judaism and Christianity. In other traditions, good and evil are relative to the position in which you are standing. What is good for one is evil for the other. And you play your part, not withdrawing from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but seeing that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder: a mysterium tremendum et fascinans [a mystery frightening and fascinating].

“All life is sorrowful” is the first Buddhist saying, and so it is. It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved, which is sorrow – loss, loss, loss. You’ve got to say “yes” to life and see it as magnificent this way, for this is surely the way God intended.
~ from The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers

Say "yes" to life, with all its sorrows and troubles and seemingly unsolvable problems? Was there ever any other choice?

Till later...

Becoming

2007-11-04T08:01:00.000-05:00

What? It's difficult for one to aim towards something when all around, everything else seems to be slipping away.

Forgive me, dear reader. I am musing on my most recent fatalistic visions. I am contemplating, as is my way, too many of the world's problems, biting off far more than a mouthful at a time, and I am coming to no good conclusion as to their resolution. Why? There are too many people. There are too many different sides. There are too many different gods. There are too many different special interests groups, and like the barrier islands, one force pulls one way, the other force pulls the other way, and eventually - *poof* - there is nothing left to pull upon.

Perhaps it's the time change. Perhaps it's my Jungian mid-life crisis, and, despite all cautions, I am falling into his predicted schizophrenic crackup. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

What a nice way to revive this blog! We're all doomed.

Till later.

Rhythm

2007-07-13T19:37:00.001-04:00

I think I wrote about this somewhere else--this idea that everything, perceived good and bad, has a certain rhythm to it, or should, if one is in line with the universe. I know I've thought about it, talked about it...it would only follow that I'd have written about it by now. Lots of other people have (lighting up your chakras lately? have your aura adjusted? seek the services of a chiropractor?), and though I don't know that I can bring anything new to it, I'm sure feeling it tonight.

I was having a crisis a couple of weeks ago because, well...all my friends seemed to be in crisis, and damn it, I thought it was my turn. Had I been a bit patient, I would have remembered that there are always reasons, so sooner or later, I'd know why I couldn't have fallen to pieces.

I think this harmony and rhythm is all about not fighting the tide: "being there" when one is supposed to be there, breaking down when one is supposed to break down, and waiting when one is supposed to wait. Most of the time, externals take care of those things. One lives in the moment, and the moment dictates what one is to do with the moment. My son reminded me earlier that if I want to fight the pain of a stubbed toe by stomping my feet, I'd more than likely break something -- specifically, my swiss cheese bones. But if I breathe, the pain dissipates much quicker, and lo & behold, unless I've really boogered it up, I can move on to the next moment.

This rant is just that. I have to be up at 5am to drive to Pittsburgh, which is only a couple of hours away. I've been tired for the past two days. Bone tired. And rather than soaking in a hot tub or laying out my clothes for morning, I'm spending my current moment trying to figure out why I'm tired. I'm looking backwards for causes and looking forward with almost a trepidation -- two hours is not much behind the wheel, I have to remember. I live in the country, and everything is more than a five or ten minute jaunt away. And if I do figure out why I'm tired, what are the chances I'll be able to take corrective measures? I'm eating well, sleeping more than I have been lately...and there I go again. I'm tired because I don't know why I'm tired...as crazy as that sounds. My lack of acceptance of the current moment is exhausting!

Back to why I didn't fall apart, try as I might, a couple of weeks ago: had I done that, there are several folks who would have hesitated or completely refrained from asking for my help. And by the time I was through my fits, distracted quite a bit by doing what was necessary to help them, I no longer felt like falling apart.

Looking above, not much of this makes sense, so I'll just chalk it up to a "just for me" post. Matter of fact, I'll give it that label. Save some other poor soul from suffering confusion along with me...

Till later...

The End of the Year of Firsts

2007-06-30T11:52:00.001-04:00

One Year Ago

Just wanted to share this, a kind of "where I'm at today" post. I knew in the back of my mind that it was coming: an end to the year of firsts, and now onto the anniversaries. Yesterday was the first anniversary of the last day that I thought but was not sure that the grains of sand in my father's timepiece were in very limited supply. My blog post above sounds much more sure than I really could have been at that time. I found out for certain the next day, one year ago today.

I'm wearing the scrub shirt he wore home from the hospital.

I'm hearing his voice in my head.

And I'm still afraid of everything, but now, it's all running together, and I couldn't, if I tried--and I have been trying--put my finger on any one thing and talk about that. It's lining the insides of my head and gut like moss, and I think the only thing for me to do right now is to roll around in it.

I'm praying a lot.

Thanks for putting up with me.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

When I'm busy doing other things...

2007-06-28T21:16:00.000-04:00

Sonofabitch if I won't do anything to avoid writing.

Thing is, once I have the printed pages in front of me, once I'm able to recognize a good line, sometimes the perfect line, I'm satisfied, not sated, but urged on by my own productivity to produce more, throw the dice and pray for another good roll.

It's just getting started. Oh, I've produced here and there, but it hasn't seemed to really amount to anything. Then, tonight, I printed the last month's output.

Wow. Fifty-two pages of work with sprinklings of very fine lines, some cutesy spinnings on mundane words...but fifty-two pages in a month. Whilst I rued each passing busy-work day, filling feeders and plucking faded petunias, I was writing more than I thought.

And the really cool thing? Though there are six separate essays, they're all related. "Heat" is a continuation of "Belling the Cats" and "Why I Think I'm a Vegetarian," which both build on the epic I wrote last summer, and "Porch Sittin', Part Four" fills the holes that naturally happened as I shifted gears. The other, unnamed essays provide jumping off points for more.

They all have threads that will lend themselves to a weaving together to become what I'm now calling First Half. Neal Cassidy, sidekick of Jack Kerouac and muse of both Tom Wolfe and the Grateful Dead, called his autobiography First Third. I don't know how old he was when he penned the most recent of the inclusions, but as I expect to have things pulled together by next summer, the expected milestone summer when I turn forty, and because I figure I've got, if I live right, eighty years in me, I'd like to steal (Tony says, "Don't Borrow. Steal. The great ones steal") the idea and call mine First Half. So there it is, unknown reader. You already know the why of it, even before the book is written.

Till later...

And yes, I was wrong

2007-05-20T11:55:00.000-04:00

about what I'd read last night. Wrong on several counts, and if it requires forgiveness, I'll beg the lateness of the hour and my own tired head spent cataloging birds and herbs and children's busy summer schedules (come early this year, it seems) and the effort of holding off, for one more day, the start of summer semester.

My new friend is female, is still like me, and the post, the short narrative for which I made such flippant remarks was the second, not the first in line. And it is good. It's not nearly so oblique as I first thought. Which is where the fatigue comes in. And in it, I see, I feel what my own daughter must feel. She still talks about the restaurant on the beach that's no longer there after the last hurricane, the aunt and uncle who would be shocked to see her emo-like locks hanging in her eyes (though she'll resist that label, though I'm wont to put it on her, forgive me, forgive me...my little girl just seems so sad), the fried chicken she will often say she didn't like but that was a regular part of Sunday dinner at her other grandmother's house. The one she doesn't see anymore, even though she's only thirty miles away and eighty-two years old because I set a rule that daddy can't pick her up unless he abstains from alcohol and anything else that might affect his judgement while she's there. So he just stopped seeing her rather than learning how to white-knuckle it.

My coffee is cold and the sun is trying to make an entrance. It's time to dip my toes out onto the porch and see if it's habitable yet. Perhaps I'll find something interesting there to report.

Till later...

Buddhist Confirmation

2007-05-20T10:44:00.001-04:00

It’s a little after ten a.m., and I’ve been awake a mere hour. It rained all night, and with Jade’s window open at the end of the hall and the small side window open in here, my bedroom door thumped and bumped with each gust of wind. If there had been some underlying rhythm, I may have been able to fall asleep, but it seemed totally random, as though it were backing up a half step here and three there, deciding which way to blow.

So I got out of bed and sat down at the computer to find a response to a message I’d sent earlier. A young man on a message board who had something, not sure what yet, but something I recognized and it was familiar to me. I think most people have those things, or enough people have them with each other that eventually, we all hook up like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Or a lace doily table cloth, all our edges overlapping. Sounds good and fits with my unity in the universe, all of us flowing into each other, no real boundaries between human souls idea. Very Buddhist.

So the kid (and I hope that he would not be offended by me calling him a kid…he’s not much older than my own boys and it’s a hazard of age that everyone under a certain age becomes a kid. Like Amy, who’s twenty-nine now, but whom I still call a kid because she was…twenty-six when we met? So I guess thirty is my reference threshold for adulthood)........oh, yes, the kid. He sends me a link to a blog where he’s posted some stories and story fragments. And the first, it’s very vogue and vague. Much like I read in the current literary journals. Unnamed main character, a melting shift in action, a blend which doesn’t lend itself easily to understanding and definitely isn’t straight line narrative. Which is great, if it works, but what makes it work is a reader who wants to work. I haven’t reread it yet, though if I’m going to offer advice to him (I’m nearly twice his age and feel compelled to give advice…why is that?) is either define her (he’s brave enough to make his main character female—I’m impressed) or be damned sure that if I work hard enough to come away with a real understanding beyond the ephemeral first impression, make damned sure there’s no holes in it, because if I have to work that hard and I find flaws, I’m going to be pissed. The reader doesn’t want to be cheated. So art for arts sake is great. Just don’t make bad art. Probably why Tony urges me to aim for clarity.

So anyway, I first read a bit of this blog and make note to self to re-read them this morning when I’m not thinking about the ache in my knees (morning has come with achy knees still tagging along) and I surf around a bit more, playing a little online mah jong, checking the ten-day weather forecast, then back to the message board to see if the kid’s been around. Turns out, he has been. I have another message. And with this one, he sends me some more work, but not his own. He sends me a poem from The New Yorker which just came in the mail yesterday, though I was too busy with gardening chores to pick it up even to look at the table of contents. That’s my routine: flip through till I find the masthead, look down at the bottom of the page, and read the names of the poets and the page numbers where I might find them. Read the titles, look at the form. Read the poems if they look interesting. Sit them aside if the italicized translated from appears at the bottom (poems written in a language other than English need to be heard with a different kind of ear, I think). But always the poems first. I didn’t do that today. The kid did, and he’s sending me one. One about an alcoholic, dead father. Oh, it’s about more than that, I’m sure, and I only read it once at two a.m. Did he read my blog? Did he know? And what is a twenty-year-old doing reading The New Yorker? That is was the kicker. So, I found my overlap.

Outside my bedroom window is a rolling field, maybe harvested for hay to feed Bari’s horses and cows, maybe left to grow and give nesting ground to the red-winged blackbirds. Visible at the horizon, beyond the field is the tree line of the next mountain. And beyond that? More mountains. If it weren’t so foggy this morning after all the rain of last night, I’d surely see another tree line. I know it’s there. And beyond that? Somewhere, in that direction (east) or from my computer desk (west) or downstairs from my writing desk (north east) or from my side window that let the wind bang on my door last night (south)…somewhere is this young man half my age who holds inside him some tiny essence of what I see, what I feel and what I think. When I was younger, I mistook those things for signals that I’d found my soul mate, and in that way, I fucked a lot of guys and found lots of other things inside them that weren’t so harmonious. Now, I know…we’re all soul mates. Sometimes, we’re soul mates twice or thrice removed, but the connection is there. It has to be. Because we’re all connected. It’s not fate or chemistry. It’s compassion.

The ache seems to have settled in my toes, and getting rid of it isn’t as easy as it used to be. Alcoholic neuropathy or arthritis or my RSD or my FMS. I don’t even want to think about it. So I’ll enjoy my morning surf around my usual haunts, reread the kid's blog, reread the New Yorker poem, respond if I can. The rain today, or the remnants of the rain, are useful now. It’s totally appropriate that I sit in bed, laptop open and fingers limbered over the keys. No one expects much from achy old me on a day like today.

Till later….

** It has come to my attention that the "kid" discussed above in masculine terms may in fact be female. Very interesting. I'll have to tuck that one away for my next feminist theory rant......

Spring Chores, and the Birds

2007-05-19T15:58:00.000-04:00

What a day, what a day… beautiful, mid-sixties, sunny. There’s a bit of a breeze, but even with the temperatures below seventy, it feels good.

All plans for today have seen fruition, except, of course, for the scrubbing and washing of the van. It’s a new addition to the tools of this family; the black Toyota pick-up that had been my traveling friend for the past three years has been retired. In it’s place is another Toyota, a more practical seven-seater “mini-van” in pristine white which has provided proof positive that the bugs are much worse this spring than last. Many have met their death on the front bumper and windshield, their blood the glue that has held them fast. The automatic car wash would not budge them, and my goal today involved scrubbing them off and convincing the children that, yes, it is warm enough to have an impromptu car wash in the front yard. If I was really good, I may have convinced them that a Karate Kid workout was fun, too, and get it waxed, though as George pointed out, Christopher wasn’t doing very well at whitewashing the fence (raking the clumps from the freshly tilled soil) for Jade, and after planting my herb box, I wasn’t sure if I had enough in me to pull it off, either.

I have two rows of basil, two rows of parsley, one row of oregano and a row of lavender planted. I’m hoping that last year’s dill crop dropped enough seed to return for another showing, and though I read on the pack of coriander that it was “winter hardy,” I saw no signs of it. I’m already dreaming of sauces and salsas, finding a better recipe this year that’s not so vinegary (the salsa), or not quite so salty (the off batch of sauce).

The sage returned with a vengeance, and it’s now thinned, all the woody growth and that which had already gone to flower (and pretty flowers they are!) cut back. Instead of trying to harvest some of that growth, it’s been added to the compost pile…

…which is growing by leaps and bounds! We didn’t let up on the composting all winter, though at times, most of our kitchen scraps were unbleached coffee filters full of grounds. With so little snow, many days it looked from the mudroom window that we were growing a winter crop of mushrooms or some other wide, white fungus. Sage cleared up around the trees and the other tight spots that George couldn’t reach with the tractor, filling the push mower bag many times, so now it looks like one of the Mayan pyramids I saw on the History Channel, before it was reclaimed from the jungle. Only of course a little smaller.

The lilacs are on the wane, my Mother’s Day rhododendrons are reaching full bloom and I found, in the weeds, my bee balm from last year, as well as some violets that have sprung up from my flowerpot deadheading last year. I even let the sunflowers, dropped by birds at my feeders, live there among the other stragglers, although if they do anything, I might have to sacrifice them so that I can still see the feeders in the pines.

Speaking of feeders, a Baltimore oriole (now officially known as a “Northern Oriole”) tried sipping from the hummingbird feeders on the porch yesterday. I had just moved the oriole feeder out onto a shepherd’s hook I bought at the feed store. It’s in residence beside another Mother’s Day gift, an Audubon-endorsed cedar feeder with suet cages on either end—one, a bluebird mix for the songbirds and another, a citrus mix for the orioles. I’m holding hope that they find it. I watched two of them, both males, dive-bombing each other by the pines at the side of the yard, then disappearing into the woods. I’m hoping they come back.

Also yesterday, I filled the little aluminum house-shaped feeder with black oil sunflower seeds, noticing that the bigger birds seemed stay further away from the house in the willow. GK made the feeder, I’m told, when he took a stab at normal Western Pennsylvanian boy stuff and took a shop class. It scares me to think of that young man wielding sharp tools. But he made a good feeder, and after filling it, I sat down, perhaps eight or ten feet away, to watch a robin in the unnamed wild tree-like bush beside the willow. While I sat there, amused that the robin’s call sounded like a small dog’s yips, two tufted titmice landed in the willow. I watched while they pecked seeds out of the feeder, took them to a nearby branch, and then held them between their claws and pecked at the seed to open it. They both danced around, taking turns at the feeder, calling to each other in a Rod Stewart-like call. I wrote it down in my bird journal. I’ll have to look to see what nonsense words I assigned to their calls. It wasn’t anything like what the Sibley’s guide suggested. But it’s what I heard.

This morning, or this afternoon, rather (I pointedly recorded “12:32pm” in my bird journal), Sage spotted a rose breasted grosbeak in the pine below the feeder. I have no idea how common they are in these parts, though the Audubon guide shows this as the southernmost reach of their territory. It was a beautiful bird, the red patch on its breast brilliant and the black of its feathers nearly blue.

I wondered if the bird obsession would continue, having begun last year? Two years ago? I can’t remember now, only that for my birthday, George gifted me with a beautiful black leather-bound journal to record them and the Sibley’s guide. Anyway, these things don’t often hold my attention (e.g. rose breeding), but the bird fascination has, if anything, increased. George commended me a few days ago on my efforts bringing such a variety of birds into the yard, where before, they had been merely passers by, resting on their way to other, more suitable habitats. Daybreak comes now as I might imagine it in an aviary. There’s a lull mid-morning and again early evening. Perhaps that’s naptime, or nest sitting time, or hatchling tending time in the bird world. Otherwise, I very often find that if it’s quiet when I take up my station on the porch, I need only sit and wait, and they begin moving about, almost as though they’re performing for my benefit. Singing for their supper? Who knows.

I seem to have developed so many new phobias lately, but the old Alfred Hitchcock inspired bird phobia (I’m sure there’s a name for it) is gone. Now, it’s a game to see how close they’ll allow me to get to them before reminding me of the boundaries between them and me.

Till later...

"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead"

2007-05-16T13:56:00.000-04:00

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon is the unapologetic biography of the fairly recently (September 2003) departed Warren Zevon. I got the book for Mother's Day from my husband, who knows of my almost cosmic connection with the man and his music.

I learned something in the opening pages that broke my heart. Then it made me angry. Then, once I backed up from it and thought about it, helped me recover from my first reaction and feel ashamed of my second.

See, Warren Zevon was a hard-living, cynical bastard of a drunk most of his adult life. Then, in 1986, while I was still two months from high school graduation, he got sober. I didn't know this until I got sober myself, and that endeared him all the more to me. He lived like I did and he lived like I hoped to live.

In August of 2002, two months before I would take my last ride on the party bus (gee, maybe there's something to this "two months" thing), he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

I always forgave him for his morphine consumption (after all, cancer causes the kind of pain that requires strong shit), and I held onto his more than seventeen years of sobriety as a symbol of hope for me. I had health issues. He had health issues, big ones. He stayed sober.

But he didn't. There was a period in there, between diagnosis and death, when he withdrew back into the bottle. Months of it. Locked everyone out and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it doesn't get any better. And that broke my heart. Then pissed me off.

Then...well, I reminded myself, he got sober again before the end. While he could have drank himself to death, cheating the old hooded one, he chose instead to put the bottle down and spend his last days finishing his work and making things right with his family.

I'm not nearly through the book. I've just begun it. I got through the beginning, which started at the end, read about his relapse and return to recovery, and put it down.

I think I can go back and finish it now, trying my best to reserve my anger for the disease and not the man.

Till later...

Is it S.A.D.?

2007-02-14T22:16:00.000-05:00

(Seasonal Affective Disorder)

Another day of school cancelled for tomorrow. It’s not even snowing, but ours being a commuter campus, the powers that be must have taken into consideration the difficulty of those “A” types who would risk bodily harm (theirs and others) in order not to miss class. I’m happy about it. I’ve been tired, emotionally and physically, and it’ll give me another day to be somewhat domestic. Somewhat. I’m never truly domestic. It’s just not my thing.

Circumstances ‘round here have been challenging lately. I’ve had some kind of stomach flu, and my cat, the One-Eyed Wizard, is on his way out. We can’t get him to eat and the prescribed treatment from the vet doesn’t seem to be helping. And though he’s hanging on, he’s not eating, so a decision needs to be made soon. I don’t want him to suffer, but I don’t want the “what ifs” to haunt me. What if we have him put down when a day or two later he finds his will to live?

My mother’s neighbor, a woman who lived next door during my traditional growing-up years, was found dead in her yard. Ma is broken up about it. I can’t get out of my mind what it must have felt like to lay there in the snow and slowly fade away. Ma said she spoke just a week ago about wanting to go quickly when it was her time. I hope she got her wish.

I’m behind on school work. I have so many ideas, and they all seem to be stuck. I can get them to rise so close to the surface, but they just won’t break through. Working on that…where it will go, I don’t know. It will be what it will be.

My middle son is making huge strides in music, and I get to live a little vicariously through him. No, I never had the passion for guitar, but I have to admit to wishing I was good enough and he was cool enough with me to ask me to sing along. After all, he’s been practicing Beatles songs all day. Teachers are on strike, so he’s got time on his hands. Dreams, dreams, dreams…..where do they go? Into our children?

I probably should force myself back into something that will help me “reach my goals.” Truth is, the primary goals tonight are taking a shower and snuggling down into the blankets. I think I may be able to reach them tonight.

Till later…

Semester Break

2007-01-05T13:06:00.000-05:00

I always begin the break with thoughts of all the leisurely time I will have to do the things that make me feel....creative, whole, purposeful, thoughtful. Somewhere, about ten days before the next semester begins, I feel a momentary panic while I take stock of what I've actually done. This time, I've done a little in all areas, but I've moved no mountains.

*sigh*

Perhaps it's not up to me to be moving mountains, anyway. I can always dream about the day that I can make and keep a regular writing/reading/dreaming schedule?

One thing I have found time for, though by accident (my laptop adapter went, so I could either pick up a book or trudge over to the desk and try to avoid a backache while I wrote....or...egad! do it longhand!) was reading a book an instructor lent to me called "Women's Studies in Religion." I was in the process of putting a paper together on the topic, well, a topic (which kept getting twisted and sidetracked) and I had to reschedule my spring semester, leaving out a class on the subject, so she thought it might help me clarify some of my thoughts. It has, sort of. It's a collection of essays on many different feminist interpretations of several different religions. I found a lot in it, and hopefully, I'll have some exerpts from said paper to soon post here.

Bottom line is that I have two choices, re: this break. I can go back into it kicking myself for not being more economical with my time, for not doling it out to cover more of the areas I consider "nurturing" to myself, or I can recognize that many of the things I've done are nurturing -- and if nurturing others is important to me, they can nurture me as well.

God, that sounds so new-agey. Maybe that's not so bad.

Till later....

Drawing to a Close

2006-12-14T21:55:00.000-05:00

I heard a comedian a few nights ago (I think it was Lewis Black) talking about how there's no such thing as a "New Year" -- that it's the same thing, probably not any better and possibly a whole lot worse. But we continue to hope. We dream. I like to be a little more optimistic than the funny guy (now I'm sure it was Lewis Black), and as much as he makes me laugh, I know that in some lives, things do get better. I think the world can, as well.

So as this year is drawing to a close, rather than think about what I intend to make better in the coming year, I think I'd like to muse awhile on what has improved, moved forward, even (*ah!*) transcended.

Till later....

"I am leaving, I am leaving"--but the fighter still remains

2006-12-03T15:24:00.000-05:00

We know something for a very long time. It's ingrained, reactive, not anything we have to think about. It's just there. Then something comes along and shakes the words from the textbook of our learning, scatters them and when we stoop to reassemble our precious lessons, the words have rearranged and now teach a different lesson. A contrary lesson. We remember the earlier, but words in our case are very powerful. They represent truth. We trust them. And now they say something different.

There's a term for it, I've found. "Cognitive dissonance" is when "the feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time." (from changingminds.org) I don't necessarily feel discomfort, but once in awhile, that earlier lesson asserts itself, reminds me that it was accepted as truth at one point in my existence, perhaps in the greater part of my physical existence, and I want to act/react accordingly. This new lesson -- this departure from the past -- cries out, "NO!" Then comes the dissonance.

Does that mean that no matter how much "better" we become, no matter how much we "evolve," there's still that chance that prior conditioning (thinking the ITA system of reading that totally screwed up my grandmother's lessons in teaching me to read...) may surface, and we must forever be on guard against it? Oh, my....is there any time when the earlier, more primitive lesson is more valid than the later, more progressive lesson?

Now I've totally confused myself. That makes this a very productive day indeed.

Till later...

Aesthetics & the Purpose of Writing

2006-11-05T20:56:00.000-05:00

I've been absent from this blog, though by no means absent from writing, for some months now. Below is my most recent musing on the plight of the writer, the meaning of our existence, our urge and desire to be.

******************************************************************************

I’m thinking about the concept of the aesthetic. Is a thing with aesthetic value always beautiful? Joseph Campbell describes aesthetics as something that one does not want to covet (that is pornography, he says) and that lacks irony. He says the sublime is also of the aesthetic realm. The sublime can be monstrous, but it still can be aesthetically appealing. Transcendent. Awe-inspiring.

And art—what is that? Does it lack completely the political, the socially significant? In the introduction to Tony Morrison’s Sula, she talks of the challenge African-American writers face in creating an aesthetic work. Because of their race, critics want to tear apart their output and ask what it means to the black experience, what politics it contains.

I wonder about my own writing. Am I writing a testimonial to the sick and twisted effects of ignorance on the psyche of a young mind/spirit/soul/body? Is my work woven through with irony? (most of the time, yes) Does it mean anything, and is there anything lasting in it?

That’s what we do, we writers. We write hoping that what we write lasts. Hoping it means something in the whole sphere of human existence. I’ve heard it say that writers write because they are making a bid for immortality. Maybe it was Schopenhauer. I don’t know. Anyway, I have this recurring vision of scraps of paper, notes for stories and lines that are too good to toss away but that don’t quite fit into any work in progress, just floating on the wind, drifting away to some niche in the forest, awaiting discovery by another pair of human eyes who will read them and as a result, experience some sort of transcendence. They lay there, exposed to the elements, each rain or snow, each wafting breeze carrying grinding dirt and sand across the ink on the page, wearing away those thoughts, those words. It’s a conflict with what I think I believe – that it all exists, all thoughts, all epiphanies, somewhere in a collective consciousness, that nothing can be lost and that all that is, is and can’t be destroyed. Somewhere I read that the mark of intellect is the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in ones mind at the same time. Perhaps I’m not so confused as I am growing intellectually? Nice thought. Nice rationalization.

Getting back to that foreword from Sula (First Vintage International Edition, 2004), Toni Morrison says, “Conventional wisdom agrees that political fiction is not art; that such work is less likely to have aesthetic value because of politics—all politics—is agenda and therefore its presence taints aesthetic production.” She goes on to say, “That wisdom…seems to have been unavailable to Chaucer, or Dante, or Catullus, or Sophocles, or Shakespeare, or Dickens” (xi). Thank God. So, if I can, in my ignorance, write what I know, what I think and what I believe, is there any chance in hell (perhaps somewhere amid Dante’s layers) that I might accidentally create something that falls in that very narrow niche of the political and the aesthetic? Is it wrong to just do it, pull a Nike, and not care about whether or not something qualifies as literature, aesthetic and artful? Does Stephen King lay awake at night fretting over the possibility that his work only appeals to a generation, that it may fade away into nothingness, a footnote in the annals of pop culture of the mid 20th and early 21st centuries?

Aesthetics be damned, I have to follow Audre Lorde’s challenge of transforming silences (mine, nearly forty years’ worth) into language, and hope, pray, encourage that action will be a result. She asks, in her essay The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, “What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” She asks the question, she issues the challenge. She tells us, “…primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.”

What is a writer? What is the goal of a writer? An architect designs a building hoping that it will survive the trials of time and fashion, become a lasting part of history. A teacher teaches hoping to pass along knowledge to a bright, young mind who will then take it and use it for good, for lasting good. A doctor saves lives believing that every life has a value, contributes. Perhaps I’m not the artist variety of writer. Perhaps there are different kinds, and I can take my abilities to construct a sentence that carries the reader along, share my life experiences and convey, in that sense, the message of survival, of moving beyond, of transcendence of life on life’s terms.

Perhaps.

2006-08-30T21:26:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, I think it's easier to just not go to a doctor. They order tests, they tell you things, make suggestions.....complicate things.

My white count is high.

The space between L5 & S1 has significantly narrowed, making each step an adventure (the sciatic (sp?) nerves peek through those bones).

My bones are still too brittle and I have to start a medication that's almost a hundred bucks a pill.

And my cholesteral is high.

I came home, rested up a bit, then had a quick dinner of fries dipped in mayo, potato salad (leftovers) with extra mayo added, and hot dogs.

I'm a gonner.

Coulda stayed home.

Till later....

2006-08-15T18:08:00.000-04:00

I finished the first draft of the story Saturday night. I wasn't feeling up to going to a meeting, so instead of flipping back and forth between re-runs of crime shows, I wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

Thirty-seven pages later, I felt the story had been told. It's essentially a good story, I think. Maybe not a new one, but a good one. Monday? I think, I re-read most of it. I guess that was just yesterday. It's full of .... errors? Characters misnamed, few loose ends tied in slippery knots, that kind of thing. But it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A complete short story. Perhaps, if I rework it a bit, even a novella. And I can be happy with that.

I hate editing, and it'll take me a few more days, I suppose, to do what's necessary to turn it in. That brings my "page count" for this course to fifty-five pages -- I've exceeded the requirements by thirty pages. That may not go over well with the instructor. I don't know. We'll see. Gee, it's an independent study, so perhaps he'll give me credit for an additional course. It would be a nice bonus, though I don't know what I'd do with the credits -- where I'd put them. Again, we'll see.

The days are cooler now. I know that the hot weather isn't over, but the daily "eighty-five again" weather seems to be past. The pumpkins are turning orange already. We've eaten one slighty underripe watermelon from the garden. Tonight's dinner, except for the rice and the chicken, was all homegrown. Salad, vegetables for the chicken, tomatoes for the Spanish rice, all the herbs, and the side of hot peppers (a pan-fried hotter than hell relish)....and it was wonderful. I ate like a horse. My hands burn from chopping Hungarian hot wax, jalapeno, & cayenne peppers with no gloves.

I'm reading Alice Walker The Color Purple and feeling a little inadequate. How does she do it?? Trying to think of a concept for an epistolary story. Something that hasn't been done. I like the "Dear God" concept. Maybe I need to quit thinking & just let it come. Or not.

Enough rambling. Haven't been to a Tuesday night speaker meeting in awhile. Think I'll go get dressed in something appropriate (and not just for the kitchen & garden) and go.

Till later....

2006-08-10T21:53:00.000-04:00

I wrote all afternoon. Good stuff, I think. It's far from finished, but I produced eight pages in a couple of hours. It came fairly easy, just letting the story carry me. I knew who my characters were, or would become, but I let them create themselves. And it happened. I think I can write fiction.

Now, when I had to stop, when George awoke from his nap and it was time to make dinner, I had to leave two characters, mother & daughter, sitting at the kitchen table. I had to leave a boy in a tree. I had to leave the fate of a corpse up in the air....well, perhaps not in the air, but you get the idea, right?

I left them there, yet they have not left me. I've been thinking about them, all the while I was making Buffalo wings and a pan of fried peppers and onions in olive oil. They hovered about me, suggesting this turn or this dip or this spontaneous flight. I always thought of fiction writers as some sort of god, creating a world out of thin air, but it doesn't work that way. Or it's not working that way for me. They are giving me options, and I'm merely checking the box next to the ones that make the most literary sense. Fiction is multiple choice? Well, of course it is!

Now, I've asked my characters to let me rest. I've been flitting around on the internet, looking at this and that, nursing a growing headache. I've taken Tylenol symbolically, as I know that the headache is muscular rather than....what is the alternative? What particular cause of headache is vulnerable to acetaminophen's particular pain-defeating properties? I don't know. Lots of things I don't know.

I'm watching "Almost Famous." Used to be one of my favorite movies. TNT is running it, and I have to say, it's not the same with all the bad words voiced over. Penny Lane has just od'd on 'ludes and champaigne. Strangest love scene in modern cinema. Stevie Wonder singing My Cherie Amor. Once she is out of danger, walking in the park with young William, he finally learns her name: Lady. Lady Goodman. So sweet.

Hyper. That's what I am. Hyper, hungry for a story of my own making, but those characters...they need rest, too. They can sit, the old woman and the not-so-old woman (I've made her my age) and have their tea. The young boy can sleep in his tree house, if I choose to give him a tree house, tonight. He won't mind. He's eleven. It will be an adventure.

Till later....

2006-08-09T10:59:00.000-04:00

I realize I've changed. I have a cell phone that has some bells and whistles, and I have no idea how to use them. For my birthday, I got the re-released CSN first cd, and in the jewel case was this card for free CSN ringtones. I thought, "Cool!" I had Layla on my last cell phone, downloaded by my son & paid for by me, but these were free. I texted the appropriate message to the number given, and it tells me I have to go to some kind of media center to retrieve them. I can't find the media center. Oh, well. Midi files of classical music will work just fine, and they come with the phone. Besides, I've located them. I know how to change them.

I had an opportunity to help start a blog site, and in the past, I would have jumped on the chance to "be in on it." It requires that I learn an awful lot of coding, some of which I used to know and have since forgotten, and a bunch that's well beyond where I left off in the coding world. It's daunting, and I've given up. I just can't focus on anything but the writing part. Blogspot, free host of my mental outpourings, is slow as hell -- took me almost ten minutes to get to the composing screen, and I'm on a pretty fast connection (not a lot of Amish gamers/ftp hosts/bloggers on my leg of the cable internet in these here parts) -- so you would think that I would jump at the chance to blog on a site that has few users and a fast connection. *sigh* Tis too much work to get to the end product. I want someone else to do that stuff, someone who enjoys knowing how things work and exterminating all the bugs. Me? I just want it to function.

It was in the low 50s last night, and today, the temp isn't predicted to be above 79. I'm in a denim miniskirt, and the air is a bit cool on my legs. Sure sign that fall is around the corner, waiting to pounce, and that school will come with it. I have a meeting on campus today and then, three of the four children have physicals for fall sports after. I smelled leaves burning last night, and they haven't even begun to turn on the trees. Seasons change, roses die. Roses...next year? Too late this year. My clematis has only had one blossom. There are two more buds, and I pray I remember to "put it to bed" so that it has a chance to shine next spring.

I'm writing now for the sake of writing. It's time to return the Virginia Woolf diaries to the library. The computer is telling me I ran out of renewals. Perhaps they'll check it in & then back out for me? I'm feeling a bit like Virginia today. Noticing things. Reporting on them. Observing, feeling a bit, and then....letting go. More things to see tomorrow.

It's time to go.

Till later....

2006-08-05T12:50:00.000-04:00

I missed my high school reunion Saturday night. There's a part of me that wishes I would have made it. I saw a few pictures that someone posted, and I know that the desire to have been there is, at this point, ego. I'm pretty well preserved after twenty years, and some of the other folks haven't fared as well. I was where I needed to be, in my home group, at an AA meeting, instead of in a bar banquet room with a bunch of (what appears to be) heavy drinkers. Even the woman who organized the event, whom I remember as a completely straight arrow, admitted to getting trashed. Perhaps by the twenty-fifth reunion, more of them will have "come over to my side." A few probably won't make it that far, and others, for whom the indulging isn't compulsive, will have eased off. At least that's what one of the women in the program tells me. She's helping to organize her fiftieth reunion.

George is off collecting ingredients to make pickles. I'm excited, especially since I awoke without the spasms in my shoulder that plagued me yesterday. I'm supposed to be working on a pain journal, but I've never been good at that kind of consistency. I'd rather think about the format, describe, in hindsight, the pain in metaphorical terms, than say, "spasms over left shoulder blade, throbbing pain radiating down left arm, no chest pain," or "Lyrica has mild sedating effect, no discernable change in the burning pain in my legs yet. Not sure if I want to continue with it, but I'll give it a shot." There's no art in that, it draws my attention constantly to the pain, and if anything, makes me hurt worse.

I had a man approach me last night at a meeting. He talked to me the day before Dad's funeral, from the heart, about losing his own father. He was nearly in tears when he embraced me and told me that it would take time. I was okay, other than physical pain, last night. I come to it, at odd times during the day or night, but last night, I was okay. It's disconcerting to me to be thrust into it like that, and it's difficult to tell someone who's being supportive that his expressions are not all that helpful. Today, I decided to wear Dad's stolen scrub top (he didn't steal it....it just seemed okay to put his sweatshirt on overtop of the hospital issue top he was wearing before he came home). I feel...good in it. I know that it was over his whithered body, and though I'm feeling a little on the thin side today, I feel pretty healthy. Like I'm infusing it with better mojo. Healing the cloth. Charging it, like I'm reading about crystals.

Speaking of crystals and charging them with good energy, I read that if there is negative energy trapped in them, they can continue to release it, even after the event/feelings that caused the negativity in the first place is over. Wonder if there's anything to that. I know that a pair of amethyst earrings I wear have been with me through some tough times. (Oh, look! A flock of geese!) As a matter of fact, I bought them during one of the most stressful and dark times of my life. I'll have to make note of how I feel when I wear them, which has been quite often lately, as I'm in a purple mood, and they go with many of my purple dresses.

I still have to finish this fiction class I had deferred in the spring. There's that girl I left on her knees in the mud, in the rain, in that side yard with a gun pressed to the back of her head. (An oriole just flue through my yard, but damnit! they won't stop) I don't know who's wants to kill her (or scare her), I don't know where this run-down industrial area is or why there's still a house there or if anyone actually lives in the house. I don't know if there are any other casualties lying about. I don't know if she'll get out of it alive, or if the story is just that...what happens in her mind as she's facing the bullet that will rip through the back of her head, maybe even come out on the other side, making her unfit for her mother or anyone who may have loved her to identify her. I don't know if she'll make peace with death or if she will regret. Oh, God, I don't want her to regret. Perhaps she needs to regret. Perhaps that's what she requires in order to welcome the bullet. Know her life was for naught. God, that's depressing.

I also have the woman with the matchpack. Her story, or the outline of it, is described somewhere in this blog. I guess I should spend a bit of time organizing them. If nothing else, maybe my purpose for keeping a blog is to feed ideas to other writers, better writers. My husband said the other day, when I told him that I had sent a meditation primer to a couple of folks who requested it (I offered on a forum to send, rather than post, as it's about five pages long) that maybe I would see it published a few years from now with someone else's name on it. Maybe so. I didn't write it for publication, and besides, I sent a really rough draft. They'd have to spit shine it to present it to a publisher, anyway. I know he has an issue with taking what he does for a living and giving it away. That's what feeds us. He said it in order to validate my talents, not always showcased in this particular forum very well, and let me know that I should be careful with something I consider my craft. If I want to make a go of it, I should nurture it, feed it, and protect the intellectual property rights attached to it. Of course, I married a lawyer, so what should I expect? He both touched me and irritated me at the same time with his comment. Oh, how I love that man.

Wheat's being harvested up on the hill. I like to watch it. It's not nearly as loud and distracting as the hay-bailing across the road. The machine has a nice, almost wind-like rhythm. I could nap to it, but instead, I think I should go wash cucumbers. Today is pickle-making day, after all. I've been looking forward to the smell of brine for a while, since the cucumbers first promised to through up their bounty for us. I could get to like pickles again, the way I did when I was a kid. All those things, those childhood pleasures, seem a bit more acute when harvest time rolls around. Trick is to keep them alive all year round.

Butterflies, kitty cats, hummingbirds, orioles, geese, combines, hoses stretched across the lawn, horses and goats grazing, nibbling. The day is calm, the day has promise, the day has been, so far with nothing indicating otherwise, a good one. I need a GSR report for tonight's meeting, and I need a shower sometime before seven p.m. I chaired last month, so that means this month, I get to be greeter. I get to be. I get to shake hands and offer hugs and welcomes. Cool job. I lost my father ten days ago, and I am okay. Not fine, but okay.

Life is good.

Till later....

2006-08-03T21:05:00.000-04:00

The starlings have hatched and have taken to the power lines en masse. They swoop down into the yard, into the trees, into the nearby pastures. On some unseen signal, they take flight, making loud swooshing noises as they hold formation, great graceful arcs into the sky or towards their next landing pad. They're beautiful, and yet, they're one of the "nuisance birds."

We have many jays here, too. Those are considered by some "nuisance birds." My father once woke me early in the morning -- or rather he summoned me, as the noise had awakened me -- and instructed me to pick up the feathers that had blown free from the carcasses of all the jays he'd slaughtered with a shotgun. They begin calling out to each other at daybreak. He had a late night drinking and raising hell, and he was none too tolerant of their annoying morning song. So he shot them -- about half a dozen or so. I picked up the feathers, grateful that he'd removed most of the bodies. The neighbor, a "do-gooder" whom my father swore lived to fence him in, called the humane society or some such agency, along with the local police. The police came, gave my father a warning about the discharge of a firearm within a residential area, and my father was satisfied. The birds were gone. What was left of them found a new nesting area.

I don't shoot the birds. I don't mourn the ones lost to my cats, as it's the natural order of things, but I don't shoot them. I feed them, and I watch them. Even the starlings.

Till later....

2006-08-02T14:45:00.000-04:00

I just spent twenty minutes or so lounging in the hammock, meditating. It sits right at the edge of the woods, adjacent to the old, abandoned dog kennel. The breeze there is wonderful, with just a bit of sunshine peeking through the cool shade of the trees. The birds are amplified there, and the cares of the world slip away. Almost.

I was praying, and I realized that today, my god is my goddess. I prayed and personified my higher power as that of a Mother who carries me within Her womb when I need safety, in Her arms when I still require safety but choose to look out at the world, and allows me to wander away when I want to prove that I am the Mistress of my own destiny. I always have a safe place to return, and knowing that She will not impinge upon the freedom I need to be who I am. So, as I said, I was praying.

I prayed for peace within the storm raging inside me. Just like the sound of trains or highway traffic when one lives nearby, I don't often hear it, but it's there. I choose to lean into the wind and continue going forward.

In the last month, I have watched my father die, I have learned of my primary abuser's death, I have faced down another abuser, not giving him the satisfaction of a reaction but got to watch him squirm, I have quelled, or think I have quelled, problems regarding my absence and preoccupation inside my home, and I have reconnected with my neice, whom I haven't seen in twenty years. Her mother was one of my abusers. I found out that my primary abuser (another family member) harmed many others, and I have had to question myself -- should I have persisted, told someone else other than my mother (who did nothing)?

I've also had to face some health issues that have existed all along, but they're getting worse, and they now have a name. They have an image. I think of other people with these problems (the discs in my back), and I see that they have become limited in ways that I don't consider myself limited, even though my own limitations are considerable. My freedoms are much more considerable, all things considered. Ah....what a mess. What a mental, emotional, and physical mess.

I'm happy. I believe that. I don't think I'm in denial. I'm grieving for my father. I'm processing this new knowledge about and experience with my abusers. I'm working my program like my life depends on it, because it does. I'm okay. School starts in less than a month and I have a garden brimming with product that will need to be processed in some fashion. I want to do all of that myself, but I know it's a bit unrealistic. Oh, George will do it with me, but this year, this year! I'd like to be the one who initiates at least some of it. I did that with the freezing on Sunday -- eight quarts of green beans and seven quarts of zucchini.

I got my father's scrub shirt, the one he wore home from the hospital. Wow, I'm jumping around. The garden reminded me of him. He has this -- had this -- pitifully small little plot, and his sweet peppers just aren't producing. I'll need to make sure my mother gets some. He has tomatoes....oh, I'm digressing again. I got his scrub shirt, and when I picked it up, pressed it to me, I lost it. I cried. I cried, and I was comforted by my daughter and my mother. Three generations of women standing there, one who lost her husband, one who lost her remaining pappy, and me, the one who never got along well with the old man, but that old man was my daddy. And I miss him. I really miss him.

Till later...

2006-08-01T20:52:00.000-04:00

So he said to me, "Life is suffering. Isn't that what (Joseph) Campbell says? (Peter) Gomes talks about it, too." And I wanted to argue with him.

Then my doctor appointment came the next day, and with it, a sheaf of papers for tests: bone density, blood work, and new x-rays of my back. She suspects bulging and possibly herniated disks in my lower back. She found "six distinct areas of concern" in my neck. She's a good doctor. I've had glowing reports from all around, from other medical professionals, patients, and my husband, the attorney who's deposed her. I knew there was a problem in my back. Always has been, but I've switched my focus to my legs and my overall muscular issues, and I've tried to forget about the geographical area of my body that I can't see.

I'm thirty-eight years old, and one of the first things Dr. Lisa says to me, after introductions, was, "You have quite a list of ailments for a woman your age."

Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS)

Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD)

Osteoporosis

Mitral Valve Prolapse

Rheumatoid Arthritis (in remission, so it seems)

Migraine headaches

Scoliosis (the one I like to forget)

And lest we forget....recovering alcoholic/addict

And I'm a happy person. That puzzled her a little.

Life is suffering. I'm suffering. I'm happy. Very, very happy. Grateful to be alive, joyful to participate in this mystical dance.

Life is suffering. There are some faiths which profess that only a very old soul can withstand extreme suffering. Those souls are closer to god because they are nearing the end of their cycle of reincarnation.

Gibran says:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
~Khalil Gibran from The Prophet

I do so feel my joy! I do not remember a day without pain. If I ever had one, I was very, very young. I do remember many days without joy, but once I embraced my pain as part of my path (though I often look longingly at the paths of others, I know that to cut through the briars in order to reach their paths, I would be wounded, scarred and still not be able to fit my feet into the footprints made just for them), I saw that the flowers and the birds and the cool, cool shade of the trees were meant for me and only me.

"There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow.
That path is for your steps alone."
~Grateful Dead from "Ripple"

I wonder. About this suffering. Maybe, just maybe, it's not such a bad thing. I don't mean just physical suffering. I mean all of it. The greatest lessons I've learned have been from my pain, and those lessons have only enhanced my joy. Perhaps I'm merely being whimsical and will feel completely different in the morning, when I'm attempting to stretch out sleep-frozen joints. Perhaps.

Till later...

2006-08-01T20:26:00.000-04:00

"I gotta get the fuck out of here!"

Those were my father's last words. Apropos.

I intended to sit and purge, but three teenage boys joined me on the porch. One day soon, this will be my porch again. One day soon. Probably too soon.

Till later....

2006-07-30T19:22:00.000-04:00

I'm really too tired, mentally, physically, emotionally, to be doing this, but I want to "make some notes."

Friday, we met with a pastor I don't much care for, though I was respectful and polite out of respect for my mother. He conducted the service for my father the following day.

Friday evening, I went to a meeting because I needed to go to a meeting. For the third night in a row, I fell asleep exhausted, wanting closeness with my husband but unable to muster the energy to initiate. He left it in my court, considerately. I couldn't speak my heart.

Saturday, the funeral....Christian service my father would have hated. Two readings, one by my oldest sister, one by me, to honor my father. Both native American prayers. Beautiful. I felt very good about it. Think Dad would have liked them a lot.

Fell Saturday evening. Good news: no broken bones or apparent bruises. Bad news: jarred my whole boday. Got up Sunday morning and dug into freezing zucchini & green beans regardless. Hurting like hell right now.

Dad is gone, I think my husband is overloaded with it, partly because I didn't rely on him as much as he would have liked, I would have liked, and possibly as much as I should have. I feel a little trapped in my grief at times, and I don't know how to get out of it. Probably write about it, and I can't do that now.

Just notes. Just something to jog my mind when I sit down here, refreshed, I hope, and pour it all out.

Till later....

2006-07-27T20:48:00.000-04:00

Written last night:

Where do I start? There’s so much.

He’s gone. 5:05pm, Wednesday, July 26, 2006. My father died today. Every so often, it hits me again. He’s not here. He’s drawn his last breath. I was there with him, my hand on his emaciated leg, smaller than mine were at the depth of my own wasted state, when his breaths became farther and farther apart. Then, nothing. Sage was holding his hand, one finger on his pulse that was…just…no…more. He was gone.

I looked at my mother and at Jade when I realized his breathing had changed. I smiled at them. I told them, “It’s happening.” I smiled. It was a good thing. It was a long road, and the end was in sight. Dad went on and we stood, waving.

Tonight:

Today was a good day with few tears. Laughter, even. The arrangements are made. My mother has chosen to have them "lay him out" for a viewing. The pastor who tried so hard to guide him in order to save his soul will be speaking. I have a difficult time with the rigid way they looked at my father in the end, the trouble they had seeing that he was, in his own way, the best person he could offer to God.

I want to write. I want to get it all down. There is still much, much that I can't seem to communicate to others. Those little details. Nobody seems to see their significance but me. Maybe there is none, outside of me. But I'll get it all down. Get it down...all of it.

Till later...

2006-07-23T19:49:00.000-04:00

My focus is supposed to be on fiction this summer. With so many different life experiences unfolding at the present time (and contrary to the recent focus on this blog, the experiences are many and varied), it's difficult to diverge, find a place where the characters are unfamiliar, ready to be created from scratch. Then again, I have read much of other writers and their inspiration, and none, as yet, have claimed such imagination that they've pulled characters newly conceived and born from the air.

So whom in my life would make for a good fictional character? And in what situation should I place them?

Fiction. Hrm.

Till later...

2006-07-23T15:07:00.000-04:00

My day off is flying by quickly. It's already three p.m. Got me thinking about last night.

I went to my home group meeting and got a good dose of "happy, joyous and free" medicine. I was amazed. I chaired, and as there were several new folks in the room, I bagged my intended topic (3rd step -- something I needed to hear about) for "our common bond and our common solution." There was a great mix of folks, as there usually is, in the room. One common element I heard coming from most of the folks with a little time and solid sobriety was that of laughter. A couple of relative newcomers remarked on it, that they could not understand the happiness they felt coming from others who swore they were like their kind, yet didn't exhibit the misery they felt pervading their own lives.

And I looked at those folks laughing. They weren't without problems. I saw one with very serious medical issues who was laughing. I saw another laughing who was going through a very messy, albeit well-considered divorce. I saw another who had some significant financial problems, and he was laughing. Another had just broken up with a girl whom he thought, a short time ago, might be "the one." I was laughing, even though forty miles away, my father was lying, further succumbing to cancer with my sixteen year old son caring for him. I could name another half-dozen people whose life circumstances might prevent them from enjoying a Saturday evening, but that wasn't the case for them.

Lay it down, sword and shield.

I was watching the third step in action. The topic I had intended to bring up, "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him," was demonstrated in front of me. I heard what I needed to hear, saw what I needed to see, and came away with my own hunger sated. It works. It really does.

So the day might be flying by, but it's still only 3:15. There's lots of it left, and imagine, I just heard a bird I do not recall ever hearing near my front yard. Don't know what it is, but it was a surprise, and maybe it was a sign. I could complain about the precious few hours left in this day, and I would be wasting those minutes used complaining for discovering what is here to be found. I soon gave up last night my need to be nurtured last night in favor of someone who may not yet possess the right tool for the right job in their spiritual bag. I found mine. Acceptance and faith.

The hummers' nectar should be cool enough to refill their feeders, and if I clean the lenses on my field glasses, I might just catch sight of that new bird. Or something else that I need to see and just don't know it yet.

Till later....

2006-07-22T18:42:00.000-04:00

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

- Carl Jung

2006-07-22T09:52:00.001-04:00

The nurse was late meeting us when we got him home. We were sitting outside their house, a 1969 model mobile home, with the small garden plot he'd planted jutting out in front, three of his vehicles lined up in a row parallel with the trailer, and a myriad of tractors, snow blowers, and other garden and yard implements in various states of rust and decay -- though that decay lovingly halted by a covering of blue plastic tarps over some -- and a small deck of a front porch and five steps separating us from the front door.

And the nurse was late. She was to help us get him inside. Sage insisted that the best way to get him out of the back seat was to follow him out of the car with the portable oxygen tank. Trying to tell him that the line was long enough for him to stand up and step aside, then grab the tank out of the back seat, was not successful. He was being stubborn, and it was apparent I had to either completely embrace him or deny that he was my son. That's a joke. About stubbornness being in the blood. Not a very funny joke. I tried.

So Sage asked him to stay put while he ran up, unlocked the door and retrieved the new walker that had been delivered early in the day. Mother had one that she never used, but this one had wheels....and will probably have a motor if Dad lives long enough. There was still the issue of the steps on the porch, but I thought I could get him to pause long enough to sanely and rationally explain to him the best way I thought we should go inside. He had other ideas.

We wound around the first of the tarped tractors, between the Olds Bravada that he bought for Sage (who still doesn't have a driver's license -- a result of my ennui, if you ask Dad), beside the garden, which Dad had to stop and inspect and demand that a head of cabbage be cut as it had turned black and why the hell wasn't anyone keeping an eye on these things, anyway? The whole place goes to hell when he's not there, he'll tell you, if you just stand still long enough. Then, up over the paving stones he set when they moved out of the old house (the old house, still sitting there, not many windows left, and words like "WALL" and "CLEAR" spray-painted on the exterior from the volunteer fire company using it for fire school), stones that had better not shift this summer, as he's no longer in any shape to bend over and reset them. One stone, two, three, steps.....

I told him, "You need to stand straight, let Sage hold your arm. I'll get rid of this walker and we'll steady you up over the steps. Just be careful, and hold still." As I swung the walker out of his way, he wavered for a moment in front of those steps, and I could feel the fabric of his sweatshirt slipping through my fingers as he dropped to all fours and crawled, one step at a time, up onto the porch. Sage stood behind him, tank in hand, looking helpless.

I was fighting an urge to force a rewind, back him up, dive in and help him. He was on his own, proving he could do this. He didn't need all this damned help, and if we would just be quiet and let him be, he'd do what needed to be done. Up on the plywood platform of the porch, he stopped, denim ball cap askew on his head, military-style glasses slipping off the end of his nose, suspenders holding his sweatshirt snug to him, saying, "I just need to get some air on my face. Goddamnit, if I don't get some air, I'm going to pass out." I stood there, helpless, blowing on his face. Blowing on his face! It was mid-eighties outside, and here's a terminal cancer patient, colostomy bag wiggling out of the top of his unbuttoned blue jeans, held in only by the suspenders that are hugging the heat to him, and I'm blowing on his face, thinking....how am I going to explain this to the ambulance crew? I thought he could come home, thought he could do it, stand it, survive at least the fucking trip through the door!

He made it. Couple of minutes, and he caught his breath and crawled the last few feet through the door. It took some more doing to get the door shut behind him, with my mother standing there, watching her domineering husband crawling like a scolded dog on the floor. He finally got to his feet, got to the chair I brought him, a recliner that had been in my basement for a couple of years, smelling of mildew but which I knew would soon be overtaken by the smell of sickness.

He got settled into it, and immediately began giving orders. He wanted everything done at once. I sat down and watched my son dart one way and my mother dart another and thought....how did I become convinced this could work? Later, the hospice nurse told me, "If he was controlling before, it will get worse before it's over." I could see that already. Anything, any quarter he gave in the hospital, was perhaps because he knew his fate was in the balance. If my mother said, "No, I can't take care of him," there would be no choice left but a nursing home. He played his cards right. Well, here he is! What do we do now?

To be continued....

Till later...

2006-07-22T09:52:00.000-04:00

2006-07-21T23:48:00.000-04:00

Twenty-two days, and now he's home. I was there for nineteen of those twenty-two days. I was there today for his homecoming.

There's so much to tell, and I will tell it, but for now, it's enough to say that we lived through it, both of us, he and I. My mother, too, though she didn't think she could. Now, I'm home in my own bed, thinking it over, rolling it around in my mind. I will let it spill over and out...tomorrow.

Till later...

2006-07-20T21:55:00.000-04:00

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Virginia Woolf

2006-07-20T19:57:00.000-04:00

Lalalala...

That's my attempt at nonchalance. How'd I do?

Long afternoon at the hospital today. I didn't go yesterday. I was getting ready this morning, and my mother called. Jade answered, told me that Nan started to cry, and she couldn't really understand what she was saying. I called back.

"They said they're going to send your dad home tomorrow. I just don't know what I'm going to do. I just don't know."

I told her, very directly, that if she didn't want my father coming home, she had to speak up, and not just to me. I suggested she call the home care coordinator. Yes, she had Beth's business card. She would call and talk to her.

My stomach did flip-flops. It wasn't because things weren't going as I expected them, or as I wanted them. There hasn't been enough time to develop expectations. And even with elderly parents, even with signs that things weren't going so well, I still didn't expect this. How do I want them to go? Peacefully. That's all. Funny, I just told someone the other day, "Things like this (her situation) are rarely ever easy, but most people you know who've gone through them have survived, have been okay once they made it to the other side."

One foot in front of the other. I was talking to my friend about a divorce. Now, I'm applying it to a parent's fast-approaching death -- and the possibility that my mother wants a symbolic divorce.

Not enough details, I know. She's afraid of his colostomy. She's afraid of him yelling at her. She's afraid she can't cope. None of us are coping well, but we're coping. Do I feel sorry for her? Well, she's eighty. She's the older one. Maybe she thinks she should have gone first. I've heard her talk about the possibility of him going first -- he has never taken care of himself -- so that she could enjoy her last few years in peace. She's said that. I just get the feeling she wants it now, possibly because she's said as much.

My husband is seventeen years older than I am. It's highly possible that I might be in my mother's position some day. My husband doesn't take very good care of himself, physically. He doesn't see any need for doctors or routine health screenings. I've thought about this, and as much as I want to think there would never be anything between us that would make me want to leave him, I sure as hell hope I wouldn't wait until his life was winding down in order to do it.

I told her, "I don't want to influence you in any way, but since you asked what I thought, here's the way I see it. Yes, Dad can be grumpy. You've lived with it all your married life. You've had plenty of opportunities to tell him things need to change or do something else with your life. You do what you can live with, because if you think back and feel you left him when he most needed you, you may not be able to get over that."

She faced the colostomy bag. She didn't change it, just practiced with the clip. She was clumsy, but she did it. She didn't get sick or pass out. The nurse felt she'd do fine. The doctor required, before he would sign the release, that my mother try. The nurse reported to him that she had, and that she'd be okay.

The doctor came and went. Signed the papers, talked cross country running with my son for ten or fifteen minutes (actually, longer than he spent with my father), then left to call the hospice nurse. She was wonderful. Janey. What a beautiful name. Great smile, loved my father's sense of humor, said the other nurses would love a pistol like him. Told my mother they would take care of everything. All Ma had to do was be there for Dad. I asked Ma, "Do you feel any better now?" I could see that she'd relaxed.

She's still nervous, but she's going to be okay.

The other surprise of the afternoon was my son's reaction. He, too, was present for the colostomy lesson. He wanted to be because he wants to go and stay with my parents. I told him I would not forbid it, but I did want him to think about it before he spoke up. I also told him I would not let him move in, but I would let him stay a couple of days at a time, if that's what he wanted. He's sixteen, and he's always been Pappy's buddy. Sage. Dad finally calls him by his first name, but he slips a lot, calls him Bubby.

Bubby is going to sleep on Pap and Nan's sofa, keep them company. I can't protect him from death, seeing death. I just pray...I remember, but I was six. I was six when my Nanny died. I was there for all of it. I don't want him to be there for all of it. I want him to be a kid. At sixteen, there's not much time left for him to do that.

Oh, what a long day. There's no art in the telling, no grace in the words. Death is death, not artful or graceful, but today, death hasn't appeared. You can smell him, you can see his shadow, but he has not stepped through the door.

Not yet.

Till later...

2006-07-19T17:03:00.000-04:00

They like to ask, “Where did the pain start?” They usually don’t like the answer I give.

I don’t know where it started. It didn’t start. It’s always been there. At least, that’s what my memory tells me. It didn’t start. It intensified. I can take pain. I can take a lot of pain. If I woke up one morning and had no pain, I would probably think I died during the night.

But it’s okay. The physical pain reminds me that things are better than they ever have been. I can feel. I can experience. I can live. I am feeling, experiencing and living….I just don’t always get to choose what.

Two weeks. Less than. Doctor appointment, new doc, new treatment, maybe. Something that can ease the discomfort without taking away my ability to be me. Something – else – that I can live with. That would be okay.

Till later….

2006-07-18T08:41:00.000-04:00

Two of the children are awake already, one since five-thirty. My housekeeper is off to look for pods underneath their beds. These are the two late-sleepers, often still abed in the mid-afternoon or later. They are awake and aware, full of and ready for conversation. They were given a talk about sleeping to avoid responsibilities and life. This morning, they are ready for it, and though I know their ebbs and flows, know this could be a novel idea they are toying with -- getting up for no reason other than it pleases their parents -- I'm hoping they find something in the mornings that they can use, call their own, claim as reason to roll out of bed before the heat of the afternoon.

The urge is there to become irritated that I've been asked for the third time, "Are you sure you don't want me to make you an egg?" when what I really want is to be left alone with my coffee to wake up. Then the thought hits me. One is leaving in the fall. Off to college. Two more are close on his heels, both sixteen, with only two more years of high school left. My husband and I have offered them a deal: college, and they still have a room here for summers and school breaks for four years, or jobs upon graduation and rent to pay. My husband sees child-rearing as a finite proposition. I see this "deal" as another duty to them, a stepped-up lesson in responsibility. So it occurs to me that in two years time, only my daughter, still six years away from graduation, will be left, and busy mornings such as this might be very scarce indeed.

I'm often reeled back to the moment, and for that, I'm grateful. It avoids having to say, "When did that happen?" When I'm aware of the moment, there's a much better chance of remembering, and I can say, "That was yesterday." And that sometimes takes a reminder of tomorrow.

Wow. Trippy.

Till later...

2006-07-17T21:42:00.000-04:00

The last of the light fades slowly, taking with it the day’s color. First, the robin loses his red breast, the trees slowly become silhouettes, and the field of wheat, in daylight golden, becomes tan and then grey, for night has its own color. The bees bed down and blinking golden lights signal the fireflies and the beginning of the nightshift. The blue of the sky slowly gives way to pale slate and then gun metal. The stars are not yet out.

The music changes as the sparrow is replaced by the peepers and crickets. The occasional dog barks at shadows.

My house is quiet. I am alone on the porch, and I am watching a flock of geese in the last bit of illumination, huge black birds flapping homeward, wherever that might be. I hear my husband upstairs, moving about the bedroom, checking to be sure windows are open and the breeze is invited in. The day has been hot and humid, and the bedclothes will feel damp. The fans will sweep over us, drying our skin, and we will contemplate and then reject showering, knowing we are at home in each others’ essence. Showers would only need to be repeated come morning, anyway.

I am smoking the last Newport in my pack, wishing it wasn’t the last, knowing that the urge for nicotine will pull me inside, and that will be my signal to say goodbye to the night. I’m an interloper here. I do not belong among the fireflies and the peepers and the cats on their nightly prowl. I belong upstairs, beside my husband, for we have our own nighttime ritual, one I do not want to give up to the other creatures of the night.

Till later....

2006-07-16T10:07:00.000-04:00

There was a slight tinge of smoke in the air this morning. Leftover smell of the fire the boys set last night in the back yard. The humidity is quickly rising, pocketing that smell, keeping it contained at its source, and....yes, it's gone. There is no smell of fire reaching the front porch where I sit.

They were permitted to start a fire. They were also permitted to light it and enjoy it with their friends while we were not at home. They're big enough for that now, and it just occurred to me that they didn't ask for something with which to ignite it.

They are resourceful as well.

Till later....

2006-07-15T09:33:00.000-04:00

The rain is falling so lightly, in such a fine mist, that it looks like snow. A milky curtain hangs across the hillside, muting the many shades of green in the trees to a dark grey. The sparrow's song is carried across the air as if riding on a satin pillow: muffled, disembodied.

My front porch is showing neglect. It enjoyed the status of haven, escape, cathedral even just a few short weeks ago. Now, the acolytes are left to do the necessary housekeeping while the priestess is busy on a mission.

I miss spending large parts of my day here. I miss hearing the victory cry of the peacocks when their preening and strutting have won them the best of the ladies. I miss this rosy-golden light about the front yard when the fog begins to burn off and the sun peeks through. I miss hearing the house wake up behind me, slowly.

Alas, my time here is almost at an end. Second cup of coffee, no time for a quick sweep, no time to water the fuschia, but maybe time to tuck a finger in the pot, add watering to the children's list of chores.

Change. Change. The unexpected! Two things I have prized in the past as the makings of an interesting life, though I thought, somehow, that I could mark certain areas off-limits. The joke is on me.

Till later....

2006-07-13T21:26:00.000-04:00

I love song lyrics. Songs, like poetry, evoke emotions, but the added element of music amps them up (no pun intended), eliciting those emotions, often from the first note.

"I was staying at the Marriott
With Jesus and John Wayne
I was waiting for a chariot
They were waiting for a train
The sky was full of carrion
"I'll take the mazuma"
Said Jesus to Marion
"That's the 3:10 to Yuma
My ride's here..."

Helpful to know the terminology. Mazuma? What the hell is mazuma?

ma·zu·ma (m-zm)
n. Slang
Money; cash.
[Yiddish mazume, mezumen, cash, from Medieval Hebrew mzummn, fixed currency, from Mishnaic Hebrew, fixed, passive participle of zimmn, to arrange, invite, from Hebrew zmn, appointed time, from Aramaic zmn, zman, from Akkadian simnu, season, time, from wasmu, asmu, to be fitting; see wsm in Semitic roots.]

Those are Warren Zevon lyrics. Warren died almost three years ago, from mesothelioma. Hope I spelled that right. Serious stuff -- lung cancer which typically can be traced to asbestos exposure. Warren wrote the song, along with others such as "Life'll Kill Ya," before he knew he was dying. Possibly before he was dying, if we put aside the idea that we're born with the hours ticking away. Let's say that when he wrote it, the ticking wasn't quite so loud as it was a few years later. "Life'll Kill Ya" was on an album of the same name in 2000, "My Ride's Here" came along in 2002, and he died, after learning of his illness in late 2002, in September of 2003.

The man spent his life contemplating the end. Oh, this fixation on mortality was nothing new. Every album he recorded from the mid-seventies on dealt with death in some manner or another. And what did he do when he learned of the end? He feverishly, sometimes literally, began recording his final album, The Wind. Beautiful music. Only Warren Zevon could have the brass cojones, the intestinal fortitude, and the nerve to record Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" when he was truly knocking on heaven's door.

Dear God, I hope, when my time comes, when I can hear the music of the spheres growing louder -- I hope I have the balls to go out like that.

Till later....

2006-07-13T10:14:00.000-04:00

I realized something last night.

A few things, actually.

The first thing is that my focus for the last two weeks has been almost solely on my father. I guess that's natural enough. He's dying. I took a day off from the hospital yesterday, didn't even call, though the staff has my phone number and instructions to call if there's any change at all, and though I feel some guilt for all that, I couldn't walk yesterday, let alone drive over the mountain and tend to Dad. Today is some better. But that's not the point. The point is that I spent the day, more or less, diverting my focus. Watched a movie with my husband last night, watched a PBS documentary on Woody Guthrie after (the t.v. has to be on channel three for the DVD player, and when we turned it off, there it was), then even the Bruce Springsteen, Seeger Sessions after that. I ate peanut m&m's & put electronic jigsaw puzzles together. I thought only here and there about my father, maybe because I did feel guilty for not going. There's a day I can cross off the calendar as one of his last, and I wasn't there for it. He didn't have me there for it. Alas, it's gone. Nothing to be done about it now.

Beyond that, I also realized that I said to my husband, weeks ago -- three or more -- what had been on my mind for a couple of weeks previous to even that. I told him my father was dying. This was before the acute situation that landed him in the hospital. This was before any confirmation of cancer, though we have suspected it for a long time. This was before Father's Day, when I saw that he was thinner, more wasted than he had been a month before on Mother's Day. It was without any daily contact, in person or on the phone with him, just the sound of my mother's voice when she would relate his latest tirade. There was a difference in the quality of her story-telling. There was an undercurrent of relief, as though she could see the finish line and just had to kick it in and make it there. Then she could rest.

Another clutch (or whatever the term is) of swallows hatched and have become ready to fly. I know it's a different one. The last were more than a week ago, and these are a little smaller, I think. About the same number -- seven or so. I can see them instructing each other. One will take off, make a loop-de-loop, and land again on the wire, facing the opposite direction from the others, and chatter away. It's as though they're instructing each other, bolstering each other's confidence, passing along secrets revealed in their very tentative flights. It's as though they are the first swallows, and they're discovering flight for the whole species. They're so frantic in their chatter. The secrets could be lost if their next flight is not successful. They must pass it on while they still can. They don't realize that so many have gone before, so many will follow.

Sunrise and sundown.

Till later....

2006-07-11T19:42:00.000-04:00

This is...Tuesday? Yeah, because I'm at home in lieu of my regular Tuesday night speaker meeting. My husband had a board meeting, and I though my head would have liked to be in a meeting, my legs aren't quite cooperating. So, I'm here. Here and jigzone. I'm getting really good at those puzzles.

The oncologist met with us today. The surgeon who first dealt with my father told us Sunday that he had up to three months. The oncologist, after looking at the results of all the x-rays and tests revised that to "weeks." I still can't say the word "cancer" in front of my father. Just can't do it. We say "tumors" and "illness," but not "cancer."

Dad wanted some sweats or p.j.'s with a fly in them. Hospital pants don't have them. I got him a pair of flannels with the Superman shield all over them. He loved them. His roommate, a guy I went to high school with, chuckled when he saw them. I also had to buy deoderant while I was at the store. Mine quite working. The bank thermometers were reading mid-nineties today. I had to keep covering dad with blankets. He can't stay warm.

Dad still likes the nurses -- the longest he's ever been able to tolerate anyone in the medical profession. It's been twelve days. He may now need to tolerate them for "weeks." The oncologist does not think we need to deal with arranging help at home. He doesn't think my dad is going to make it home.

He has "weeks."

He's still here. Today, he's still here, and I've put in as many hours as I physically can at the hospital. I have no reason to doubt that my HP is going to give me what I need to get started again in the morning. Or every morning for "weeks." I want to be there if and when he wants to talk. Right now, his focus is still on those things --mowing grass, making sure that some of his vehicles get started once in awhile, keeping his garden watered -- that he would do or see to if he were home. I wonder how I would feel if I knew that I had something for which there is no cure. The oncologist used the phrase "seeing to his comfort" as the only viable treatment.

Hey...my HP gave me the strength to get through the couple of crazy months in the spring, when all kinds of good stuff -- English conferences, AA weekend retreats, town hall meetings, presentations and rallies at school, and PI work at another local college -- so why wouldn't She give me what I need now, when this is happening?

Dad asked me to rub his back today. It was hard to do it and not cry. He's got nothing but skin over bones, and I swear, he seems to be smaller, more fragile, than even twelve days ago when he was critical. Gee...I guess he's still critical, but as much as they can make him "comfortable."

I'd still like to tear something up, but I'm too tired. For now, it's enough not to cry when I'm with him, listen to his stories, and rub his back and feet. If anyone were to tell me two weeks ago that I would want to be by his side this much, I would have told them they were crazy. No way. Not me. I wish I were there right now.

Till later....

2006-07-08T09:48:00.000-04:00

I announced yesterday that I was taking a day off.

I'm not going over the mountain today to the hospital. I'm not carting my mother around on errands. My brother is there to do that, and if he's not available, his wife is all about donning a halo and working her way to the top of my mother's esteem--and that's fine. I quit playing that game years ago.

So, I envision sleeping till ten. I think about lazing away in bed, watching cop shows. I figure I'll finish my book, the last Anne Rice installment of the Mayfair Witch trilogy, a book in which the marker hasn't moved for weeks. What do I do? Sit up in bed at five a.m. and listen to the birds waking up with me.

You know, hearing those birds that early reminded me a little of living in the projects. There was a certain time of the morning that was busy, busy, busy there, and in a way, I miss that. Stepping outside my door with my coffee cup, hung over from the night before (I don't miss that), I'd see certain souls shaking rugs on their stoop, little kids in various form of dress or undress playing on the sidewalk, a few headed off to work, and others, stumbling out the door to return to their other lives on the more civilized side of town.

Those were crazy days, for sure, but there was a purity to those mornings that's hard to explain. Those were my last clear mornings before I fell into the abyss, and though I was wrenched back out of it, years later, I think part of my youth remained back there. I was in my twenties then. I could do anything then. If I wanted to get up in the morning and repaint my entire apartment or grab a shovel and start digging a new flower bed, I could do it then.

These days, some old woman has come to possess my hips and knees, has squeezed herself into the spaces between my toes, and I have to walk at her pace. The pace around me, with the birds and the Amish buggies clip-clopping along, is slower, too. A reflection. I'm at peace here, but there is that occassional longing for the zip and zing that I used to have.

Oh, who am I kidding? That longing for zip and zing is ever-present, but not enough to fool me into thinking that it's still there, still recoverable. It's a Polaroid picture in my mind. It is bordered by a thick white frame, frozen, and the young woman living within those boundaries exists only there, with her coffee cup, watching the welfare mothers shake their rugs, breathing the scent of well-tended roses in a housing project and dreaming of being me.

Till later....

Proud man...

2006-07-07T17:21:00.000-04:00

He signed a Living Will today, my father did. Didn't want any part of life-sustaining measures except antibiotics, and only those if they think he's going to get better. It was hard to read it to him, reading as loud as I had to in order for him to hear it, then explaining certain terms, such as "permanent unconsciousness" and "terminal condition." He has a roommate, a man who seems even further gone than my father, and for whom I've seen no visitors. Every once in awhile, he'd give a holler, but I doubt if he was much aware of our presence on the other side of the curtain. A nurse came in and out to check on the other man a couple of times, and I hesitated, then kept reading. We had to get through it, but I felt we were so...exposed.

Should have been whispered, should have been private, should have been more dignified. But my father lay there, picking at the IV scabs on his hands, interrupting my reading every once in awhile to say, "No, no, I don't want any of that. Don't let them do that to me. Just let me go." Lay there in a diaper. Proud man in a diaper.

What was even harder than reading it to him, talking to him about it, was watching him sign it. He's signing a document telling the doctor he does not want to be kept alive by artificial means, wants no cardiac resuscitation, wants no artificial respiration, wants no blood or blood products, and he was concerned about his penmanship, which ended up looking like it was signed by a third-grader.

That hurt the most. Man in a diaper, unable to sign his name to his satisfaction, trying his best to die with dignity. That hurt. God, that hurt.

Till...later...

2006-07-06T20:44:00.000-04:00

Seven baby birds—barn swallows?—with buff colored breasts and dark, mottled feathers, dark and shiny as though flight had not yet dulled their sheen. Five on the top wire, two below. The three on the right flap their wings simultaneously. Flight practice. Remembering their lessons. They are ready, yet hesitant. A couple of the more adventuresome ones leave the wire, dart about in erratic circles, and land successfully again. I didn’t see them travel up there, to the wires outside my window, but now there’s an adult—yes, it is a barn swallow—diving in circles around them, chasing them away from the safety of their perch. Baby steps, baby flights. It’s all the same. Soon, they’ll be dive-bombing the bugs that George kicks up with the tractor.

I looked at my daughter this evening at dinner. Her milk moustache was gone.

Till later….

2006-07-06T10:58:00.000-04:00

It's been a long week. Dad is out of ICU, healing incredibly well from the surgery, so says the surgeon. He's very confused about a lot of things, but I'm sure that a good part of that is the pain medication. He says he doesn't want anymore of it in one moment, and in the next, pushes the button on the pump. I slept in this morning till past nine. My mother called, and prior to coffee, I don't make much sense on the telephone, so I guess I'd better call her back. I need a day, few hours at least, to rest.

My body is not doing so well at this pace, and it's getting exhausting trying to hide my discomfort from both of them. Dad noticed it last night and started to worry about me driving home over the mountain. I just praying for the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I'm struggling to stay in the moment myself. Worried about what future days are going to bring. They're talking nursing home. To me, of course - not to him. My husband drew up powers of attorney for each of them and living wills. I've been trying to ease him into the truth of his condition, finally using the word "tumor" a couple of days ago, but not yet the word "cancer." The doctor has only once used the word with me, and then again with my husband on the telephone last night. Is it natural to avoid giving someone this news? And...how cruel is it that we've thought it better to let him heal from the acute situation before slamming home the truth about -- I almost said the long-term. Doesn't look like there's going to be much of a long-term. I've envisioned him refusing nursing home care, going home with my mother who can't take care of him, turning my own home and health further upside down bringing him here where we have no room for him....projecting beyond this moment, this day, and envisioning a big rod and reel, with my mind out there on a barbed hook where I have to keep reeling it back in.

There hasn't been a whole lot more of struggling with how I feel about him. I know that when I see his eyes, scared and full of tears, anything that happened more than twenty years ago just doesn't matter. I do find the sustained effort to be the grown-up pretty tiring. I have a child-like mode that I slip into to release stress, to laugh and be silly -- a sort of playdate with my inner child. Well, I feel my inner child is pretty neglected right now. I haven't had the energy to play with her since this all started. She's in the corner pouting, and by day's end, I can't even put my arm around her to comfort her.

Time's a-tickin' here. My second cup of coffee is down the hatch, and though my legs don't feel like they'll cooperate, I'm going to point them towards the shower.

Till later...

2006-06-29T20:43:00.000-04:00

So my father is dying. It happens once in everyone's life, dying does. And in most people's lives, they have to deal with one or both parents dying. He's worn out, worn down and worn through, and it's probably time for him to die, but he's only seventy years old. Tracy Chapman singing in my head..."Body's too old for working...body's too young to look like his. Somebody's got to take care of him..." and that's as far as I get. It can't be me. It has to be him, and he's not willing, so I guess I just step back and let him die?

I considered having him declared incompetent, force him into a hospital. My husband says it can be done. What would happen if my will intervened? If I forced him to prolong his life? I don't even know what could be forced upon him. I know he's killing my mother, who's ten years older and twenty years healthier than he is. We used to say that meanness kept him alive. It was a joke. I wonder now if it didn't hold a grain of truth. Alive by stubbornness.

I have all this rolling around in my brain, trying to be tough and detached about it, but the fact is, my daddy is dying and he doesn't seem to care. I can't make him care. My son, whom my mother thinks should be stepping in, my sixteen year old, to force my father's hand, and he can't make him care, regardless of what Ma thinks. And I won't try to make him. Wrong place for him to be. I've lived with that guilt. I've been told that what I do and say can make a difference, and when it turned out bad, I carried it. When it turned out good, I carried that, too, and thought I had something that wasn't mine. Sixteen years old...he doesn't know yet that he can channel it, but he can't create it, and he doesn't know what belongs to him and what is just not his to carry. So, he's out of it.

I just needed to rant awhile.

Till later...

2006-06-28T17:20:00.001-04:00

I've been writing like crazy -- at least, in my head, I have. I realized that I've been blocking out any conscious thought. Seriously. Most of the time, my head is as empty as...as what?

I know why. Guilt. Guilt that I'm wasting time, though it surely doesn't feel like it when I do. It feels like relief, as physical sensations have been jockeying for first position in my conscious thought processes. And I don't want to think about them. Today, for the first time in days, I can think and they don't nudge out all thought of beauty, of children, even of husband. I feel guilt when he asks me, "What are you thinking about?" and I respond, "Oh, me again."

Another thing...we're leaving for dinner soon to meet with a couple of friends. The one friend is my professor/advisor/mentor, and he's going to ask that question. You know -- the one that goes, "So, what are you writing?"

And I have to tell the truth. Maybe I'll give him my blog address?

Till later....

2006-06-28T14:40:00.000-04:00

Part of the frustration in all this peace and serenity is that I can't cut loose, work harder than humanly sensible, and otherwise let it all hang out. I am limited by my broken body. Peacefulness and serenity is not just my chosen state of being; it is the only state in which I'm safe from myself.

I don't know what that means.

Till later....

2006-06-28T13:04:00.000-04:00

There was this summer in my long lost past that keeps returning to me as the perfect summer, and I've spent a lot of time lately pondering the reason why.

I guess the year doesn't matter, but if I try hard, I can pin it down to 1995 or 1996. My son was about five years old and my daughter was about a year and a half. How that came to be the ideal summer, I don't know, but it has.

There was a lot going on then, though when I think of it, I feel calm. I remember a calmness.

I was one year away from severing my relationship with my daughter's father. I lived for a very short time, just a few days, away from him that summer after a drunken brawl. We had both beaten on each other, his injuries appearing the worst, and he gave in to the impulse to call the police. They took me away in handcuffs and ordered me to stay away from him until after the hearing. Very odd thing...I "moved" next door for the week or so that it took for my case to be heard. While he worked during the day, I went on with my life as usual, then I returned to the neighbor's house before he got home.

The neighbor I was staying with was a big country girl I'll call...Betty. Betty was a single mother raising a teenage girl and a near-teenage boy who was notorious for his bad behavior, though with me, he was very docile, willing and eager to please, albeit quite manipulative. His story came out a few years later, and it was tragic having to do with his biological father and some pretty twisted tales of what went on when Betty wasn't around, but for now, it's enough to say that I was pulled into their world in a huge way. I listened to classic rock and Betty was country and western. I did PTA meetings and Betty made frequent withdrawals at the food bank. I learned the thrill of sitting in the backyard playing cut the can with bb guns at Betty's, and together, we took our little corner of the housing project and turned it into a nature retreat. I think at one count we had in excess of twenty flower beds. Betty knew how to save a buck, and each one she saved, she spent in the gardening department of the local K-Mart.

She took me that summer to meet a woman named Charlotte. Charlotte was in her seventies. Her home smelled of fresh baked goods and was filled with wood shop treasure and needlepoint. She had gardens galore, both flower and vegetable. We never went home empty handed from Charlotte's, and following a visit, the canning supplies came out at Betty's to put up our gifted bounty. We made spaghetti sauce and salsa that summer. The sauce, Betty helped me put on the stove on a Friday, then she went camping with her boyfriend, leaving me there to sleep in catnaps so that I could get up and stir once an hour. We cooked it for three days before it went into jars. It was the next best sauce I ever tasted. The best was put up in my kitchen last summer.

I remember a lot of country music that magical summer, but I also remember a lot of quiet. After I went to court (a hundred, thirty-six dollar fine and an eighteen-month suspended sentence) and was able to move back in with my daughter's father and "our" other two boys (his by a previous marriage), I let it be known that I was not going to give up all of my freedom. I had a taste, and I planned on keeping it. I would get up at five-thirty, take him to work so that could have possession of our single vehicle to go where I needed or wanted to go, and three nights a week, I would hike through the woods behind our house. It was about a three-hour round trip, up and over the hill and back again, and there, I found the same smells and sounds that I experienced while with Betty. Betty was nature to me. Betty was the earth. Betty could really get under my skin with the shameless way she worked the system, but she knew how to surround herself with a pretty awesome kind of reality. Worries were seldom more than passing inconveniences with her, and I learned that there. It didn't last long. By the time the flowers bedded down for the winter, I was back in turmoil, but the season stayed with me on some level. And these days, I remember it because so much of that feeling is back again.

My son just called and needs a ride home, so I'll have to finish this later. Or not. I could very easily sit on this porch, listen to the wind rustle the leaves on the trees, the chimes blow in the breeze, the birds sing. I could watch the dog napping and dreaming beside me, or I could walk around the house and take a nap on the hammock. Time moves slowly now, almost stands still, and I'm grateful I have another summer to compare it to.

Till later....

2006-06-28T11:11:00.000-04:00

Julia Cameron suggests long-hand writing because in word processing, the finality of the delete key and the convenience of the backspace sends too much good writing into a black hole where they can never be retrieved. There's a scene in Wonderboys (Wonder Boys?) where the Michael Douglas character loses a manuscript he'd been working on for years, this epic thing that looks as though several trees had to lay down their lives for his art, and there's a conversation after regarding the fact that he had made no copies. An example of Hemingway (I think) who lost a collection of short stories at one point, and Douglas laments, "He was never able to recreate them." That fear has turned me into a pack rat, saving every scrap of paper I've used to jot a phrase or a line, knowing that someday, those words and the way they blend together will be the hook line for a song, the perfect ending for a story, the introduction that will pull a reader in.

So, Cameron suggests a "slush file," a place where all words slated for deletion be kept. I cannot imagine what mine might look like were I to attempt to keep one. Perhaps I can: a swirling, dark vortex of phrases such as "twittered 'neath the pines" and "hung like the pregnant blossoms of fuschia." Perhaps a slush file isn't such a good idea. Good luck, Ms. Cameron.

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Today marks the first day of real sunshine in almost a week. The barometric pressure has risen above thirty inches, and my body no longer feels as though it's encased in latex. I can breathe. Those random, shooting pains are still present, but I can almost make a game out of their presence, trying to guess which limb they'll torment next.

We're having dinner, George and I, with a couple of friends this evening. I nearly called to reschedule it, as I didn't know if (a) I'd be physically capable of going or (b) if I'd be much good company if I managed to muddle through. But, today, with that weight lifted, I'm glad I didn't call it off. Aside from the fact that I love these two dearly, I'm looking forward to spending time with grown-ups. Oh, we have lots of grown-up friends, though most of them, like us, are in odd stages of growing up. I guess that requires some explanation. Program folks don't take for granted that they react to things in an adult manner. Part of 'program' is to examine actions, reactions, and motives in a (hopefully) humble way. It's interesting and almost novel to see people who just are. They're different. Not better, not worse, just different.

Anyway, we're going back to a place we took the kids for dinner last week, Mary's Place. It's an old converted house that has these amazing murals on the walls. The closet is painted to look like a wine cellar, and the appearance of depth is really very good. All of the door frames are incorporated into the murals in novel ways. One is used to represent an arbor, and the wall sconces appear to be street lights. The claw-footed bathtub in the upstairs restroom is filled with green plants. It's awesome. Other than a waitress who couldn't tell the difference between tea and coffee last week, we had a wonderful dinner. I'm hoping for the same this evening, and I have no reason to feel it might be otherwise.

I have forced myself to write today: something, anything, but get my fingers on the keys and record a moment in life, or just a few thoughts. With the pain lately, all I've wanted to do is put online jigsaw puzzles together. They require no thought, no words, and I'm able to stop thinking in terms of hurt and discomfort. It's time to break out of that, but heck, it's not even noon. I can do just one puzzle, right?

Oh, look....a hummingbird, drinking nectar from the impatiens.

Till later.....