In the Same Vein

January Thaw

2012-01-26T20:11:00.006-05:00

When I lived in New England, the winter temperatures froze the soil, making it as rigid as cement. Ice crusted the sidewalks, stairs and streets. The most dangerous ice, however, was the wafer-thin sheets you could not see. You knew it was there only after you found yourself slipping and sliding in a frantic attempt to maintain some balance. Layers of old snow would pile up and shrink back, solidifying into granular piles of dirty gray. It had no resemblance to the white fluffy flakes that had fallen from the sky days or weeks before.

What was fun as a child became a drudgery as an adult. At the end of the driveway where the snowplows had scraped the street clean, the snow was packed hard and formed into angular chunks. My shoulders ached from shoveling; piling the mounds higher than my head I was hot under my winter coat while my nose was red from the cold.

“There’s always a thaw in January,” Mum would say with reverence. “The snow and ice will melt. We’ll have a short break from winter before it returns again in force.” Sure enough, usually in the last week of January, the temperatures would rise above freezing for several days in a row. The fog from the warm air against the cold ground would form drops of dew on windows. The snow piles along the paths would shrink and some would disappear. The top layer of ice covering the pond would turn into puddles. I could almost smell the earth softening.

Winter in North Florida is not cold; I don’t miss snow or ice. This week, it was warm enough for me to go outdoors without a sweater. Inside, I opened the windows and listened to the birds chirping. The old timers here say it is one of the warmest winters they can remember. The same is true, say my friends up North. Although we are glad, it also makes us feel uneasy. Thirteen of the warmest years since record-keeping began have occurred in the last fifteen years. It is hard to miss the photos of icebergs melting and breaking away. The number of extreme weather catastrophes around the globe are increasing year by year; droughts, massive fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes make it hard not to notice that the climate is changing.

Is it more than an ordinary January thaw?

Plum Pudding

2011-12-22T11:04:00.003-05:00

Mom was grateful for many things; Christmas was not one of them. It was nearly impossible to give her a gift that she liked. My father had given up years before I was born. It was a lose/lose proposition. Mom did not like surprises and she did not like routine, she considered gifts that were not practical to be frivolous while presents that were ordinary she considered mundane. Dad purchased her a dozen nylon stockings each Christmas from the most expensive department store in the city. Mom silently tucked them in her dresser drawer and wore them only for special occasions, but at least she did wear them. She would feign pleasure when neighbors or relatives sent her a gift and then grumble about the waste or inappropriateness when they were out of sight. Over the years, I gave her wallets and scarves and gloves that she stuffed in the very back of the closet and called “too good to use.”

When at last I asked her why she didn’t like Christmas, she told me that when she was a little girl, she received a lump of coal in her stocking. “No!” I said truly shocked.

“Yes,” she replied. She never quite recovered from that disappointment. Silly as she knew that sounded, she looked embarrassed and changed the subject. I thought that lump of coal had settled in my mother’s heart as a reminder that she was not good enough.

Mom also did not like shopping for gifts. Each December just before Christmas, she would purchase the supplies for making steamed pudding. She would put the suet through the meat grinder and make a pot of strong tea. While the tea cooled, she mixed the eggs, sugar, and molasses, then added the chopped dried fruit. It was such a gooey dough that it required a strong arm to stir. I watched my mother through her weight into the wooden spoon. Even on the coldest day, there would be sweat on her forehead as her shoulder rotated. Throwing the weight of her whole body, she would thrust the reluctant batter into one mixture.

The aroma of cinnamon and allspice from the steaming pudding drifted through our house. While the puddings were cooking, Mom would mix the powdered sugar and butter for the hard sauce. It was my job to roll the stiff icing into balls, forming little snowmen with current eyes.

Mom would sit beside me at the kitchen table, writing out the instructions for re-heating the pudding in three by five cards. “They won’t take the time to warm it properly,” she mumbled, “they will ruin the pudding and people will think it is my fault.”

Its hard to give or receive a gift if you do not believe you are worthy.

If a tree falls on the wood pile, what does it mean?

2011-11-07T21:55:00.002-05:00

The November chill has pierced through the walls of the house for several nights. I go out the front door to fetch some of the stacked wood piled high on the porch. Ever since it was delivered a few weeks ago, I have been eager to begin using it up.

I crumple a few pieces of newspaper, lay the kindling, tinder and a single log into the wood stove, and then strike the match to the paper. I wait until I see the flame catch hold. The flames lick the wood like a cat pruning its fur. When I see the flame shrink I open the stove door a crack, letting in more oxygen. Poof, the sparks sprinkle in many directions and the wood begins to glow.

They belong together, the wood, the flame and the air. When they meet at last, however, they will release their energy and die. Fires need watching and tending as they die, I muse, much like people.

As a child I watched a pine tree in the yard of a neighbor. I could see it clearly from my bedroom window. When I first noticed it, it was the height of a Christmas tree, perhaps 6 or 7 feet tall. It grew so slowly that I was surprised one day too see that it had surpassed the height of the houses on our street. It terrified me to watch it during a storm. The tall trunk would sway and tip from side to side. I wondered if it fell, would the top hit the roof of my house?

The loblolly pines in Tallahassee often fall when there is a heavy rain or wind, bringing down other trees, crushing cars, crashing through homes, destroying lives and transforming the landscape. Many homeowners have had all of the beautiful tall pines removed from their yards.

I love the giant trees covered in crusty bark. Their branches stretch towards the clouds and their roots extend deep and wide under the earth. Last summer, we had three trees cut down from our yard because the tops had died and the chances were that they would come crashing down in the next big storm. It pained me to watch the guide ropes being attached and hear the power saws buzz, and smell the wood being ground into pulp. Not more than a month later one of the many remaining trees in our yard fell and landed directly on the woodpile. It seemed an act of suicide. It also reminded me that as much as we might try to predict the greatest threats to life and safety, we can not control what will topple next or where it will land.

Living the High Life

2011-10-24T19:28:00.025-04:00

Living the High Life: A nebula with active star formation about 6,500 light years from Earth., a photo by Smithsonian Institution on Flickr.

After Mrs. Gilbert’s husband died, the house that had once been full of conversation, music and laughter seemed hollow. Her two daughters were both married adults with busy and active lives. They were worried about her, she knew that, but there was little they could do except to call her on the telephone once a week.

Before he died, Mrs. Gilbert’s husband had spent his days and nights in a hospital bed. The bed was still in the spot where once there had been a dining room table. Each time she passed that empty bed she felt the stark reality that Howard had died. Oddly she also felt his presence and so she refused to have the bed removed.

Just up the hill from her house was a seminary. “Mom, why don’t you inquire if there are any students who need housing in the area?” one of her daughters suggested. She rather liked that idea; it would give her joy to share her home with someone studying for the ministry.

What Mrs. G. did not expect was that two women, one studying for a master’s degree in Divinity and one studying for a master’s degree in Library Science, would ask if she might rent them both rooms. “Why not?” she said, “One of you can sleep on the third floor and one on the second. That still leaves me two spare bedrooms.”

I was the woman studying to be a librarian. We moved in, relieved to be out of the basement studio apartment in the city that a friend had generously invited us to share temporarily. We felt incredibly lucky to have found such a charming and inexpensive place to live.

In early November, Mrs. G. informed us that she would be visiting her daughter for several weeks in December. She was glad that we would be keeping an eye on things in her home.

The first night after she left for D.C., I awoke. I could hear distinct footsteps coming up the stairs from the first floor. Gripped by fear I lay as still as I could, hoping the intruder wouldn’t notice that I was there. The footsteps went past my door and directly to Mrs. G.’s empty bedroom, then down the stairs again. I never heard the door to the outside open or shut. I decided it was best not to investigate until sunrise.

In the morning when I got up for breakfast there was no evidence that anything was disturbed, no broken windows, no unlocked doors, nothing seemed to be missing. When it happened the second night I began to question my hearing.

“Did you hear anything last night?” I said tentatively to Robin.

“You mean the footsteps?” she replied.

After several nights of interrupted sleep, I decided to take action.

When I heard the first creek on the staircase, I said loudly, “Howard, she is in D.C. visiting your daughter, Madeline. She’ll be back soon.”

I never heard those footsteps again.

I Did It My Way

2011-08-22T21:33:00.037-04:00

Church Hill Cemetery, a photo by NatalieMaynor on Flickr.

I’ve been working to update my “When File.” It’s a list of things to do when I die, like what places my beneficiary should notify in order to collect whatever life insurance or retirement funds remain. It also has information about who might want to receive a call, email or letter explaining that I have died. There are instructions on how to remove my email from the many listservs I belong to and passwords to close out my blogs, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. I don’t want to be one of those back-from-the-dead faces that pop up on a computer screen saying, “You and Elsie have five mutual friends, don’t you want to be Elsie’s friend too?” I happen to know that Elsie died four months ago. That means it is now too late to be her Facebook friend.

What my When File does not contain is instructions for any funeral or memorial service in my memory. Let the living plan whatever comforts them, I’m the one person who will not be there. I also haven’t made arrangements for disposal of my bodily remains. “Do whatever is the least expensive and least time-consuming,” I tell my spouse.

I know I will leave behind clothing, photographs and unfinished writing projects, but these I believe can be easily given away or tossed in the trash.

Of course one thing I do not know is when the When File will be used.

“She probably won’t live to be ten years old,” one doctor told my mother when I was eight. I wasn’t aware of the prognosis at the time, but I was aware that my parents treated time as precious. Relationships with people and with the earth were of the utmost value; acquiring objects were the lowest. They didn’t stop planning for the future, but the present took priority.

When one of my friends learned that she had liver cancer and would probably not live for more than a year she went on a search to complete her glass frog collection. Her friends all over the world began to look for the red frog she desired, focusing their love and concern for her on the task.

Another friend made her “bucket list” shortly after her fiftieth birthday, writing down all the countries she wanted to visit and all the adventures she wanted to try. The first items on her list included divorcing her husband, giving her daughter a dream wedding and purchasing a little house by the ocean. For years I received postcards from her and notes about completed items from the list. One note said, “I got my ride on a tug boat this summer.” Lately her email messages say more about the friends she has made in her new community, her grandchildren and how she has started dating again.

One of my cousins wrote instructions to her husband on how to cook meals, do laundry and take care of things on their own. In the last week of her life she stuck the notes on doorways, walls, the refrigerator and the washing machine.

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.

—Greg Anderson

Con Artist

2011-08-05T22:56:00.002-04:00

Photo by oneeyeddogblues on Flickr.

Every morning Patrick put the spoon down in the cereal bowl and slid off the chair until his feet touched the floor. He wiped the milk away from his face with his shirtsleeve. When he got to the door he stood on tiptoes to turn the knob. Holding on the railing he climbed up the one flight of stairs and knocked on the second floor door.

“My mudda didn’t give me anythin’ to eat.”

“Well that’s too bad,” Gram said noticing the milk mustache on his face. “I’ll scramble you an egg.”

Patrick put down the fork and burped when he had finished the last bite. He slid off the chair until his feet touched the floor.

“Bye,” he said shutting the door.

Holding onto the stair railing he walked up to the third floor apartment and knocked on the door.

“Daisy, my mudda didn’t feed me any breakfast.”

“What a shame,” she said noticing the yellow egg yolk stain on his shirt.

“Got any toast?”

“Sure come on in.”

Patrick finished the toast and slid off the chair. When he closed the door he said, “See ya tomorrow.”

You Say Tomato

2011-07-06T15:33:00.000-04:00

Uncle Bill picked a ripe tomato from the garden and rinsed the dust off under the garden hose. Then he sat down at the picnic table and surveyed our backyard. From the look of satisfaction on his face, Uncle Bill was getting great enjoyment from that fresh tomato. To my surprise, he took a large bite out of it, the way I would have bitten into an apple. I shivered, thinking about the acidity.

“Do you want some salt?” I asked.

“Nope, I like it just the way it is.”

I slid into the bench across from him and watched him closely, waiting for the tomato juice to dribble down his chin. It was so hot that afternoon, neither of us felt like talking anyway. We listened to the cicadas announcing the temperature with their clicking.

Languidly Uncle Bill took a second bite of the tomato, and then he took another. His short-sleeved shirt was spotlessly clean. By the time he finished that tomato, not one drop of juice had escaped his lips or stained his clothes. It seemed like a magic trick to me.

I was sure that my mother would have preferred to be outdoors like her brother Bill and me, but instead she was brewing tea for Auntie Anne. Two bone china cups and saucers would be on the table with a sugar bowl and a pitcher of milk. Auntie Anne would be chattering away like the cicadas while my mother listened and nodded politely.

Uncle Bill and his wife, Anne, were visiting us for a week. They lived in Toronto. Auntie Anne had grown up in England. She pronounced her words differently than we did. Mom said she was a “war bride.” I didn’t know what that meant.

“I can’t imagine what he sees in Anne,” my mother said after they had left. To my mother, Anne was an annoyance. When Auntie Anne unpacked her suitcase it contained several dresses, pointy-toed shoes and a hat decorated with artificial flowers. Mother thought Anne was superficial and vain. Anne’s appearance, religious beliefs and values were different from ours. “She’s not like us,” mother would say. For her brother’s sake, my mother kept this opinion to herself.

In February of 1964, Uncle Bill went out to shovel snow after dinner and died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 52 years old.

Five months later, Anne traveled alone to our house for a visit. Anne unpacked the hats and sundresses from her suitcase as usual. After supper she asked my father to bring out a deck of cards so we could play Bridge. Anne had met Bill, playing Bridge at the USO. Mom found it hard to imagine that her brother would have enjoyed such a pastime. It seemed foreign.

We were used to card games that were less complicated. We were in the habit of laughing and joking during a card game, not keeping track of what had been dealt and played.

None of us played Bridge; Anne said that didn’t matter. Patiently she instructed us in how to rotate shuffling the deck, passing it to another person to deal. She explained how to bid, name trumps, and lay out the dummy hand. Auntie Anne took Bridge seriously and in spite of our lack of interest, she insisted that we play each night together.

After that visit on her own, she would come and stay with us once each year. Since we only played Bridge when she was visiting, we needed a refresher each time. She tolerated our lackadaisical attitudes the way my mother had kept silent about her vanity. It seemed to me that Uncle Bill still had a hand to play and hearts were trump.

Levees and the Illusion of Flood Control

2011-06-04T12:58:00.001-04:00

At the prompt of a friend I am writing to the same title as a recent guest blog in Scientific American. If you click on the title of this blog, you will find the article.

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As I drove around the curve of the winding country road, I saw in the distance that the long stretch of pavement ahead seemed to be flooded. There had been no other cars pass me on the road that afternoon. That didn’t seem unusual this far away from the city. I was exploring new territory with no particular destination in mind. I continued to drive along the narrow road, wondering if the spot that appeared to be wet was a mirage created by the heat. It was a steamy afternoon, and I was enjoying the ride, besides there seemed to be no easy way for me to turn the car around, so I kept driving forward. As I got closer, I could see a body of water on either side of the road; closer still I could see that the water had overflowed its banks and was covering the road. The water appeared to be calm, a mirror of the sky above. Now when I looked ahead I could not see a point where the road reemerged. It was as if the road had disappeared beneath the water. Had I missed a sign that said, “boat ramp?” Irrationally I kept driving, wondering if my car would hydroplane, float or sink.

As I awoke from the dream, I sobbed uncontrollably.

I was raised to believe that anger and sadness were out of place. Anger was more than inappropriate; it was dangerous for me and for those around me. It had the power to displace me. “Go to your room and stay there until you calm down,” my mother would say.

I remember an illustration in one of my children’s books of a child kicking a tree and longed to do the same, but I knew that I would begin a hematoma in my foot that would require ice and perhaps even a trip to the Emergency Room of the hospital. Eventually I constructed a wall to hold the anger in and channel it away. When I went into therapy as an adult, the therapist asked, “Aren’t you angry?”

I could only reply, “What good would that do?”

The anger didn’t all flow down stream; some came out in short spurts of sniping sarcasm. The tears I shed were mostly in movie theaters. The barrier walls were strong enough to contain my emotions even though the levees made them run faster and rise higher. I could see the evidence as the blood pressure cuff squeezed tight and then released around my wrist.

I reinforced the embankment of defenses to control my anger and my sadness. I reasoned that displaying either would only make the ones I loved fearful and sad too and I certainly did not want that. “Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone,” was the refrain. It didn’t make me feel any happier or any less alone.

Being in control is an illusion, I learned. The climate around me was changing and the old ways of coping were inappropriate for the conditions of my life now.

In the same way that the levee works well when the water volume is moderately increased, and not so well when there is a torrential flood, I started having recurring dreams about water after four of my cousins and both of my parents died within the space of two years. I was living on an internal flood plain and I didn’t know it consciously. If I remove the containment walls and let the water spread wide, will I find myself on fertile ground?

A Few More Words About Mother

2011-05-07T22:32:00.000-04:00

On a prompt from the New York Times, I took the challenge of writing six words that described my mother. It wasn’t easy; she was a complex woman. The words I selected were: problem solver, determined and compassionate caregiver. These were all qualities of my mother and the ones that predominate in my memory now that she is no longer alive.

I could have just as accurately chosen other words to paint a picture of her: stubbornly opinionated and judgmental; sharp-tongued and intolerant especially of those she loved the most, or adults who did not care for their children; parsimonious; and an obsessive worrier.

She was also a gardener who never purchased a plant, fertilizer or insecticide; a self-taught botanist and ornithologist, who wanted to know about her friends… the birds and flowers; a humanist who learned to speak a few words of Portuguese when she was 90 years old so that she could converse with the Brazilian-born care givers in the nursing home; an unapologetic freethinker who llived her life a reflection of her moral convictions; a confidant for many because she approached people with openness and love; a Canadian who considered herself a citizen of the world and a defender of the planet; a controlling woman who took charge of the health and welfare of her husband and daughter; a defender of children and people who were oppressed because of their race, ethnicity, gender, and physical or mental health problems; and a woman who felt intimidated by others who had more formal education than she.

Sentient Beings

2011-04-17T20:13:00.001-04:00

Last week I grabbed the railing beside the incline up to our doorway and then noticed that I had squished a dozen or more little red mites. The tiny mites do me no harm, they don’t hurt my dog or cat either, or even the rose bush that is now in full bloom. If they didn’t like to travel in groups, people would probably never notice them. True, it is annoying that they are so small they can slip between the screening in the windows and the cracks around the doors. The rusty red stain on the palm of my hand made me feel like Lady Macbeth. “This is a sorry sight,” I muttered.

There are insects for all seasons in Florida. Soon the fireflies will be lighting up the backyard after dark and dragonflies will be spreading their luminescent wings; in early autumn the love bugs will go a courtin’ two by two. They are silly looking creatures with bulging red eyes; oblivious to cars or pedestrians they cling awkwardly to each other as they fly through the air.

For as long as I can remember insects and spiders have fascinated me. When I was young, I would squat for hours watching ants tumble down the sandy funnel into the mouths of ant lions at the bottom. I collected spiders and studied the differences in web designs in different classes. Holding a spoon of water in front of a praying mantis, I watched it lower it’s head like a horse drinking from a trough. I collected caterpillars and watched the moths emerge from the cocoons I had placed in jars. Gently I held the squash beetles close to my ears and listened as they sang.

One of my earliest memories is of watching my mother vacuuming up the termites that were crawling across the living room floor of our new home. My three-year-old eyes widened as I watched the delicate-winged insects disappear into the roaring machine. My parents had purchased the home the previous autumn. My medical expenses had already stretched the household budget. So when the miniature army began marching through the cracks in the floor, scouting for fresh wood in the interior of the house, my mother knew there was no available cash to pay for a professional exterminator. She captured one specimen in a jar to identify with the help of a library book. Then, after obtaining estimates from exterminators, purchased the toxic pesticide, and instructed my father on how far apart to drill the holes in our new home’s concrete foundation. It was a sobering experience for me. Why was my mother so horrified by the little lace-winged fairies that captured my attention?

Here in Florida we have a pest control service that comes quarterly to spray around the exterior of our house so that the insects don’t come in. Sometimes we eliminate insects because they are a threat to our health or safety. Being human, however, we also, without malice or intent, take a toll on the small lives around us.

How can I keep from singing!

2011-03-06T16:47:00.000-05:00

The piano came crashing down onto the cement floor of the basement. One of the movers had let go of the rope when the piano was halfway between the hatchway and the cellar. Nonetheless the piano survived. The movers picked it up and set it against a concrete wall where it sat comfortably for many years.

The piano had belonged to my grandmother; the grandmother I never met. She died when my father was still a young boy and he remembered how she used to sit at the piano and play in the evening. Deep within the belly of that piano, I believed, was the soul of my grandmother, gentle, compassionate and harmonious.

Mellow and rich sounds responded to the touch of my fingers and I spun the round piano bench until it was the right height for my eight-year-old legs, stretching to reach the keys. I ached to learn how to make music on it.

When my father played the piano, he only used the black keys, the flats and sharps between the whole notes. It was fun to watch like a magic trick and it amused my friends, but I knew it wasn’t the way one was supposed to play a piano.

Piano lessons were expensive and my mother threatened me that if I did not practice faithfully the lessons would end. I played the scales over and over again, learning to read the notes on the printed book propped up and resting on the tilted music stand. Plunk, plunk, plunk, I hit note after note; my fingers held in the stiff posture, parallel to the key board and flexing only at the knuckle. It was not joyful, or rewarding, and it seemed to have little to do with making music.

I was ashamed that the four-year old girl, who lived next door, could pick out any tune she had heard with accuracy, using impeccable chords and rhythms. Day after day she proved that my problem was my own, not a flaw in the piano.

It was harsh to compare my piano ability to another’s, and it eroded my self-confidence. Eventually it led me to give up on the piano lessons. I thought of myself as unmusical. I carried this image into adulthood. At church when I could hear my voice bleat a missed note, I sang with less and less confidence.

So, a few months ago when a friend told me that she was taking singing lessons, I thought I might give myself another chance. If my grandmother’s piano could survive a plunge I mused, perhaps I can too. I’ve only had two lessons so far, and I am expanding my range, both in my voice and in my spirit.

Symphony

2011-02-07T12:56:00.000-05:00

Two tickets to the performance of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra at the Ruby Diamond auditorium in Tallahassee last weekend was a gift. Otherwise, I confess I probably would not have gone. The newly refurbished auditorium now glitters with ornate trim. It is what people see, and what they talk about. Appearances don't impress me.

The season ticket holders are given parking spaces in a lot across the street, while the rest park in the lot at the foot of the hill. It was raining hard when we arrived and my arthritic knees and ankles cried out with every step. By the time we reached the front door I glanced at the steep granite steps and began to grumble under my breath. No sign signified an accessible entrance. One step at a time I climbed, grasping onto the railing and muttering under my breath. The crowd of soggy music aficionados behind me was growing impatient with my slow progress. Reaching the top and inside at last I faced another set of stairs, this one leading down to the lobby. These were marble stairs that had become slippery from wet shoes. I turned to see a woman sitting in a wheelchair shaking her head. I wondered how she had managed to get this far. She seemed frozen by the choices. There must have been an accessible entrance, I thought, just no way to figure out in the dark and pouring rain how to locate it.

My post-menopausal testosterone load got the better of me. I felt enraged and indignant. I wanted to shout at who ever would listen that music should always be accessible.

It has been years since I attended a symphony concert. It is hard to compete with the experience of the symphony I had as a child. Mom would pack a picnic basket, Dad would drive a car-load of children from the neighborhood and off we would go to Tanglewood for the Saturday rehearsal. The woodwinds harmonized with the notes of the thrushes and sparrows. If we children tired of sitting on the blanket we could wander the lawn while listening to Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, or Mahler. People, who found the sunlight too strong or the grass too difficult to navigate, took shelter under the umbrella roof. It was magical and it felt to me that the trees were singing to the clouds.

The music of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra had a magic of its own too. As the musicians simultaneously hit each note with precision and passion, I was overcome. In the third section of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 I was actually sniffling back tears as the piano and the cello entered into a tender dialog.

If only we humans could be as good at listening to each other and responding.

Holiday Retail

2010-12-22T18:29:00.001-05:00

Golden pearl necklace
Originally uploaded by tanakawho

“Sure, just bring them over,” I heard Mom say.

It was two days before Christmas. I knew what the person on the other end had said because the same conversation happened each year before the holidays. Soon the doorbell rang and one of the city jewelers handed my mother a package bulging with several manila folders of pearls.

“I’ll be back to pick them up tomorrow,” he said and then he hurried off to his car.
During other weeks of the year, Mom took the bus downtown, filling her purse with the cultured pearls she picked up. She did this at least once each week. Each envelope also contained the selected clasp of silver or gold, and the specifications for the necklace. Each packet had a date indicating when the customer could pick up the completed necklace. Most were promised in a week and rush jobs cost the customer extra. Mom kept a tally sheet describing each job and the price she charged the jewelry store for her work. At the end of each month she would write out an invoice and drop it off for payment.

Before the holidays, and especially two days before Christmas, “rush jobs” were predictable. Mom would return from her trip to downtown and within a few hours the telephone would ring asking if she had the time to do just a few more.

Before I was born, my mother had worked in department stores. She still made fun of the desperate husbands who would come into the store on the afternoon of December 24th with no idea of what to purchase for their wife or lover.

Working from home, my Mom didn’t see the faces of the customers anymore. She would unload the satchel delivered to our door and begin work immediately at the jewelry table. The table faced one of the windows in my parents’ room. My father had constructed it of plywood to meet my mother’s specifications. There was a rim along each of the four sides to protect beads from rolling off and onto the floor. One at a time she would empty a packet, placing the beads in a row on the grooved hardwood sorting-board she used to organize the beads before stringing them. My Mom’s fingers and thumb would glide the thin wire-needle deftly through the hole in each pearl. Between each cultured gem, she formed a knot in the thread and slid it into place tightly. If the necklace broke no pearls would roll free and be lost.

Most days before Christmas, my mother sat at the jewelry table for five to seven hours each day. She would often be there when I got up in the morning and I would hear her return after she had tucked me into bed at night.

The jeweler would be back early the next morning, probably before his store would open for the day. Mom would hand him the pearls strung to the specified lengths and adorned with bejeweled clasps. He would graciously wish her a Merry Christmas and hand her a bottle of liqueur decorated with a bow.

It was Christmas Eve and too late for any more jobs except to bake cookies for Santa.

Decorating the tree

2010-12-06T12:07:00.004-05:00

Decorating the tree
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

Friday we invited a tree into our house. It is a Fraser Fir, a bit asymmetrical, but then who isn’t? Standing upright by the glass doors that lead to our back yard, it looks as if it is glancing at its relatives the loblolly pines. The loblolly branches are high about the roof of our house. They are reaching for sky and the bark on their trunks look like scabs.

We filled the tin bowl at the base of our tree guest with water. We were busy with our human tasks, so it had a full day to get used to the space where it will spend the next month. The branches form a tight tangle around the trunk. We can smell the aroma of its sticky sap through the house. I wonder why we feel the need to decorate it. It looks so lovely unadorned, plump, and green.

Saturday we emptied the storage closet of the boxes containing strings of lights and ornaments. Putting on the lights is the hardest part: crawling on the floor around the tree to attach the lights to the lower branches, untwisting the curled cord that connects each light then walking around and around the tree, slowly and carefully spacing each bulb before it is attached to a branch until one of us is standing on the ladder to set the last lights in their place. We complain to each other about our aching knees and back. The older we get the more we wonder why we bother with this ritual.

“This might be the last year we will attempt to do this,” we say to each other. “I always forget how much work it is!”

Sunday we pulled the ornaments out of their storage containers. Many we made ourselves over the years. There are ones of felt, ribbon, lace trim and painted wood. I can still smell the cinnamon hearts we made by mixing the spice with glue years ago.

“This is one your mother gave us.”

“Here are the miniature birdhouses your father made one year.”

“We must put up these needle point snow flakes. You finished making them when you were in the hospital one year.”

“Susanne made the felt mouse that appears to be sleeping in a walnut shell bed!”

“Didn’t we buy the partridges in the pear tree in a gift store in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia?”

Decorating the tree is not something we can do quickly; there are too many memories to be touched before putting each in its proper place. Together the jumble of joy and sparkle of peace tells a story about our lives.

Cheese Soufflé

2010-11-09T20:33:00.000-05:00

photo by Su-Lin

In my recipe file there is a recipe I have not made in many years. It’s is handwritten in my own script and labeled, “Mrs. Snyder’s Cheese Soufflé.” I never met Mrs. Snyder; the recipe was given to me by one of my college roommates.

In September of 1968, after heeding the advice of friends who had gone to college before me, I packed my bags and headed for Boston University.

I had been assigned to a dormitory room in a three-tower 18-story building that housed 1500 students, 1000 young women and 500 young men. All of the women were upper classmen except for me. I had a letter from my doctor saying that I needed accessible housing.

My first roommate's name was Nancy. She appeared impatient and angry much of the time. I was, after all, probably like a pesky younger sister, an enthusiastic freshman. Nan had already made the transition to smoking dope and doing as little studying as possible.

Nan and I only lasted a short time as roommates. She wanted to use my closet as well as hers and habitually searched the contents of my drawers. I requested a new roommate when I discovered she was opening my mail.

When Eileen’s roommate agreed to trade rooms with me, I shifted my bags across the hall. Eileen had developed a reputation in the dorm as a gloomy woman. She had just returned from a year in France. Eileen was rarely seen talking to anyone; in the cafeteria she sat alone reading. She had covered the lights in her room with scarves, which made it appear cave-like. The voice of Edith Piaf crooned from her stereo system. She dressed mostly in black, her curly light brown hair crammed into a felt beret.

Eileen smoked unfiltered cigarettes, drawing a mystical puff into her mouth and then parting her lips while inhaling through her nose. I was very impressed by the curls of smoke that circled over her upper lip and then disappeared in front of her face as she inhaled through her nose.

It did not take me long to realize, however, that Eileen worked at looking moody and mysterious. It was not easy for a small town girl to appear sophisticated.

Mrs. Snyder was not from Paris, but from Vermont, like Eileen. I cannot recall why Eileen gave me a copy of the recipe, but it gave me great pleasure to make it for my parents when I went home on college breaks.

That Cheese Soufflé recipe reminds me of Eileen. It appears to be foreign and complex, but the ingredients are as simple as a Vermont kitchen larder: butter, flour, milk, eggs and some shredded cheese. When combined properly and seasoned to taste, then left alone to bake slowly in the low heat of the oven, it creates a puff of intrigue.

Mercury in Retrograde

2010-10-23T13:04:00.001-04:00

Mercury from Mariner 10 (NASA)

It started slowly, as usual. The airplane I was supposed to board was taken out of service for repairs and it took several hours before a replacement was put into service. By then, the connecting flights had to be rescheduled. I arrived at my destination, not at noontime, but during rush hour traffic on Friday evening. Tired, stiff, and cranky from sitting in airports most of my day, I had just enough time to drop my suitcase at the hotel before leaving for the scheduled dinner meeting.

The return flight on Monday was delayed by weather conditions. Arriving home I discovered that the cable television was out of order, the Internet connections were sporadic and my car had a strange rattling sound coming from somewhere behind the front tires. One night the refrigerator spontaneously began a loud grinding sound. The dog began to whimper and limp. The vet could determine no visible reason and prescribe a pain killer. The cat intensified her compulsive tail-nibbling disorder (We call it CT-BD.) A spider bite on my leg became infected. The prescribed antibiotics left me fatigued and more irritable than I was already. Spending hours day after day with the network technical support personnel did not help my mood.

Was it Murphy’s Law or Mercury in retrograde? Or are those just two ways that we humans use to make sense out of these reversals. It’s now been four weeks and I believe that the minor catastrophes have begun to abate... for now.

It is a little early to tell. As of this moment, I have grown accustomed to the car rattling and the television not working. When life begins to spin backwards, I find it an opportunity to re-evaluate my priorities. Have I once again become too comfortable with things moving in a forward direction?

The cat and the dog, like me, are experiencing aches and pains of aging. Their symptoms remind me of their mortality and of my own. Mercury, I have been told, is only visible at sunset I believe there is a personal retrograde that comes with age. I am reminded that the best advice is to use back-up systems, find alternative solutions, and pay more attention to the details. At times that is difficult enough.

Wild berries

2010-10-02T20:38:00.002-04:00

When someone asks me how I became a librarian, I say that I was recruited. In part, this is a diversionary tactic. People seem to either have strong positive or negative reactions to librarians. By stalling, I can wait for the person to begin to share how he or she “always wanted to be a librarian.” This is usually followed by how nice it must be to sit and read all day in a quiet place. Conversely, the person sometimes explains that libraries are old fashioned now that the Internet is available. Printed books are yesterday’s technology, they tell me. Since I never worked in a quiet library or read all day on the job and I believe that many people still do need libraries, both of these responses make me wince.

But, I was recruited to be a librarian. My four years of under graduate study had been to achieve another goal. During spring break of my senior year, I went to the City Library with a ten-year-old child.

Wanda, the Children’s Librarian, asked me what my plans were after graduation. I explained that I had applied for teaching jobs. “You should be a librarian,” she said firmly to me. I was doubtful. Still, she insisted that I go directly up to the administration office and complete a job application while she checked out the books. I didn’t give it much thought at the time.

Following graduation, I moved back to my parents’ home. Only a few days later I received a telephone call from the Assistant Director in charge of personnel at the library. There was an opening for a Children’s Librarian at one of the branches. Did I want it? Even if I had doubts, I quickly responded in the affirmative. Teachers were plentiful at that time and I had been warned that jobs were hard to get.

On my first day at the Branch Library I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Summer Reading Club was beginning. When I reached the granite steps, several children were already waiting for me to unlock the doors and let them inside. Among the children on the stairs was a toddler still holding a bottle to her lips. She would occasionally remove the bottle to curse obscenities. The other children ignored her epithets. When I reached the top step, she stopped long enough to look up and smile. “Hey, the Liberry Lady!” she announced to everyone. My key unlocked the door and the older children moved to form a queue in front of my new desk.

Soon I discovered that my job was to listen to the seemingly endless row of children who stood patiently in line. Each child was to report on the books he or she had read while I recorded them in the tally sheet. Some of the children were gregarious, some were shy, some had families that spoke English, and others had families that spoke only Portuguese or Spanish.

The school-aged children were members of the Summer Reading Club and they would go back to school classrooms in September with much improved reading skills.

The youngest children were two to four years old. They could not yet read. They came because their older siblings were caring for them while their parents were at work all day. They would go outdoors to the front steps at noontime to munch on their peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches.

They came to ask what to feed the stray kittens that lived behind their housing complex. They came to ask whether lightning bolts shoot down from the sky or up from under the ground. They came to trade postage stamps that arrived from relatives in other parts of the world. They came to talk about books and stories with the "liberry lady."

Dropped Stitches

2010-09-07T21:08:00.003-04:00

Horizontal Strip Sweater
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

I arrived early for the Wednesday Knitting Circle, which gathers at a local coffee café. Pulling out my bag of yarn, I began work on the three-colored sweater. The balls of brown, peach and ivory yarn form bands of different widths and textures. Around and around I looped the colors through my fingers then between the points of the needles. The control of tension created by my fingers keeps the stitches looking even. As with life, too little tension creates slack and a sloppy appearance. Too much tension leads to a stiff tight finish.

At other tables in the café, I notice that the people sitting with their laptop computers are left to their solitary pursuits. However, like walking a puppy, knitting in public often invites conversations with strangers. A man doing a crossword puzzle at the next table looks my way and asks what I am making; he explains that he used to crochet. We chat briefly about the focus and relaxation one gets from handwork. The man speculates that if he had been allowed to crochet in school he would have been able to pay better attention to the lessons.

One by one the other members of the Wednesday Knitting Circle arrive. We squeeze in closer around the table, ordering cups of coffee and tasty snacks. Some members pull out yarn to give or trade with others. We offer suggestions to the knitter who intended to create a baby blanket; she is now considering transforming it into a sling for carrying the infant instead. Appreciative cooing rises as each member unpacks the current work in progress and begins to knit.

My mother told me that she learned to knit at the age of three. Her nine siblings needed a steady supply of socks, mittens, hats and sweaters to endure the Canadian winters. The youngest of the children, the ones who could not do the heavier chores, had the task of knitting. Mom taught me how to knit, but I never had to knit in order to have warm clothes.

After the hemorrhagic stroke I had a few years ago, I took up knitting again with a new purpose. Connecting the stitches from right to left between the needles as I mended the connections between my left-brain and my right. Now, knitting has also become a form of relaxation for me. Most of all, it has helped me to release the bonds of my desire for perfection.

In knitting, you can correct the mistakes. I have learned the term “frog,” meaning rip it, rip it, rip it, unraveling row upon row. I have learned that to “tink” (knitting spelled backwards) I must undo the stitches one by one.

There is another option though, and that is to let the mistake remain uncorrected. I have learned that others will not see these mistakes, but I will always see them. It is liberating and humbling. It is so human.

End of Time

2010-08-10T11:50:00.003-04:00

Washed ashore
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

Mother told me that she had seen people standing on the roofs of barns waiting for the rapture. It seemed irrational to me. Did they think they could thumb a ride from God?

I have seen billboards posted beside highways that read, repent the end is near. Some predicted the exact date when the world, as we know it, would end. I wondered if the believers went back to their sinful ways when the end did not occur. Why did people continue to believe even when life continued after the prophecy? One such group claimed credit for avoiding the cataclysm by the power of their prayers.

By 1998, I began hearing the phrase Y2K. The year 2000 was coming and the world was about to stop. This time, instead of the religious fanatics predicting Armageddon, it was the computer scientists.

Computer systems that operated things like lighting and power and food distribution warehouses were only set to accept two digit years; at the end of 99 the numbers would roll over to zero. People with no foresight and no ability to plan for the future had apparently been unable to comprehend anything beyond the 20th century.

As the ball dropped from Time Square at midnight the lights around the world would go out. There would be no electrical grid, no power to heat or cool or cook food. Transportation would come to a halt. Mail delivery would be impossible. Funds in banks would be unavailable.

By 1999 the doom and gloom predictions became more frantic. Most people would be unemployed. There would be increasing crime and mayhem as those who were not prepared would turn towards stealing the supplies others had stored.

The world was about to come to an end. The news was carried by “official sources” in the government: stock up on all your prescription medications; fill your cabinets with canned food and bottled water; lay in a supply of wood if you have a fireplace. The Y2K bug is coming!

I had a friend who assembled a supply of food that she believed would last three months. That was the time she thought it would take for the systems to be restored. She learned how to grind raw wheat into flour. She filled her basement and every available space in her house with medical supplies and canned goods.

Meanwhile, instructions for checking and fixing the Y2K bug were disseminated. The mass media networks proclaimed the need for personal and corporate disaster planning; government commissions were formed. In a rampage of buying, businesses and organizations worldwide replaced computers with older operating systems.

On January 1, 2000, we awoke to a New Year’s Day that looked much like the day before. The stove in the kitchen worked, the electric lights came on with the usual flip of a switch and the telephone rang. Even the computer worked when I turned it on to check email.

There were no momentous computer failures when the clocks rolled over into 2000. Much like the religious fanatics, the fact that the predictions did not come true only inspired the computer experts to claim that they deserved the credit for avoiding catastrophe. There were also cynics who thought the predictions had been grossly exaggerated… perhaps for monetary gain? A little fire and brimstone increases the flow of cash into the collection basket just as Y2K stimulated the purchasing of computer hardware and software.

Most breathed a sigh of relief, crisis avoided, and went back to indulging their addiction for the newest digital tool.

Full Speed Ahead!

2010-07-09T17:30:00.002-04:00

Full Speed Ahead!
Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

The older I get, the longer it takes me to get ready for vacation. No matter how far in advance I start making lists of things to put in the suitcase, I forget something. My great uncle Eustace said he could stick a toothbrush in his shirt pocket and be packed, ready to travel. He claimed that he did this routinely when he flew to visit his daughter, Connie. I was envious and somewhat dubious that he was telling me the truth.

This year I put together a grab-it-and-go bag for our family, including our cat and our dog. It is for emergency preparedness, hurricanes, floods, and other disasters that could force us to leave our home quickly. This bag contains just the essentials: a change of clothes, underwear, toothbrush, comb, pet food and a week’s supply of medications. What is challenging is determining the basics. Can we survive without a cell phone charger? What toiletry supplies are most critical? Do we really need duct tape?

It took me two weeks to get that bag packed and I am still thinking of things I have forgotten to include. The decision making process slowed me down. Planning for disaster feels like making out an advance health care directive or buying car insurance. I don’t like thinking about the worst case. I have discovered over the years that what I think might go wrong, often does not happen.

I carry some metaphorical baggage in my head. When I was a young adult I kept a weekender bag packed in case I was hospitalized. Pregnant women were the only other people I knew who did this, but their suitcases were emptied after the baby was born. I went to the hospital each time I required a transfusion. My hospitalizations were unpredictable and sporadic. The overnight bag included things like deodorant, toothbrush and a pair of special pajamas, which I designed and made myself so that I would not have to wear a johnny gown. When I was released from the hospital, I packed the luggage again for the next time.

Because of my bleeding disorder, I have done a lot of thinking ahead. I keep my vision focused a few steps in front of where I walk; my thoughts are directed towards problem solving. The Girl Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” echoes within me. Even so, something completely unexpected is likely to make my plans meaningless. No amount of preparedness will give me control over my future. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said it well, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

In my heart though, I am a person who wants to live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself. I would like to be as free as Uncle Eustace, able to get away with nothing but a toothbrush stuck in my pocket.

Born Again American

2010-07-03T21:24:00.000-04:00

I ran all the way home for lunch, burst in the back door and confronted my mother, "What am I?" My mother stopped stirring the tomato soup that was simmering in the pan. It took her several minutes to unravel the story and answer my question.

That day, before releasing the first grade class for lunch, the teacher announced it was a holy day. If we went home and our mother had prepared meat for lunch, the teacher said, we were to refuse it. My six-year-old morality was genuinely shocked. To refuse food my mother had prepared would be ungrateful. The teacher asked if we had any questions.

Uncomfortably I twisted in the hard wooden school bench then raised my hand. “I could never do that to my mother,” I said softly. I wanted to be honest. The teacher hovered over my desk and asked in an intimidating voice "You're not a Protestant are you?" I said I didn’t know. She made it sound so wrong, how could I be? "Well," she said, "You're not Jewish are you?" I said I wasn't sure. I felt it was important to know, but I didn't. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wasn’t Catholic.

“You know,” my friend Paula had told me one day, “Every time we go down stairs for catechism class, the Nun points out the poster of the flames of hell. Sister says that is where people who are not Catholic will go when they die.”

Our first grade teacher was pregnant and within a few weeks left her job. A series of substitute teachers came and went after that. It was a disjointed educational experience. The one thing that remained constant was the morning ritual of pledging allegiance to the flag and saying the Lord’s Prayer. Before reading and arithmetic, teachers were required to lead us in religion and patriotism.

I doubt that any of the children understood the meaning of the words repeated at the start of each school day. Nor could many of the children have repeated the words without the leadership of the teacher. Even the teacher stumbled over the Pledge of Allegiance. It was 1955 and it had been only a year since the words "under God" were inserted between “one nation indivisible” and “with liberty and justice for all.”

Every morning, when the class said the Lord's Prayer in unison, one child abstained and two continued after the others had stopped speaking aloud. Eyes darted around the room to see who among them was revealed as Jew, Protestant or Catholic. When the teacher’s voice stopped, those few children left speaking stood out the most. It was clear that we had been put into categories against our wishes. It was also obvious that by labeling us we would not receive equal justice in the classroom or on the playground.

Much later, I understood that the United States had been founded on independence from tyranny and the assertion that each person has inalienable rights. I learned that freedom and justice need to be protected. I became a born again American.

Motherless Child

2010-06-15T20:33:00.003-04:00

Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

When Daisy and her husband moved into their new house, Evelyn was one of the first neighbors to befriend Daisy. Evelyn had a four-year-old daughter, Susan. She was a flirtatious child whose blonde hair hung in shiny ringlets. Evelyn herself had a vivacious personality; she laughed easily and talked incessantly. Often Evelyn and Susan were dressed in identical mother-daughter outfits, doubling the smiles they received when they entered a room together. Their matching red polka dot dresses got the most attention.
In a few years, Evelyn had a son, Albert. He was an attractive child with large brown eyes and sandy brown hair. He looked just like his father, Albert senior. Now the mother of two, Evelyn’s behavior set people to talking. The neighborhood gossiped about how the city bus driver visited her on his lunch break leaving with a broad smile and liquor on his breath an hour later. The next son Evelyn gave birth had no resemblance to Evelyn’s husband. The child had an olive complexion and course dark brown hair. A fourth pregnancy ended abruptly when Evelyn’s husband shoved her down the stairs. Ruth was born prematurely, her retinas damaged by the oxygen in the incubator.
One morning, a few weeks after Ruth was released from the neonatal intensive care ward of the maternity hospital, there was a knock on Daisy’s back door. The staccato knock was hard and it sounded frantic. When Daisy opened the door, Evelyn handed her the baby, “I’ve got to take Susan to the doctor. Will you care for Ruth while I am gone?”
“Of course,” Daisy said, cradling the infant in her arms. She was easy to ignore because she rarely cried. Blind and passive to the world around her, she appeared like a fledgling with her eye lids closed. She clung to the body that supported her and would feed her.
“She looks a little like her Daddy,” Daisy thought as she uncurled the tiny pale fingers. It was distressing to see her tiny fists pressed deeply into the sockets of her sightless eyes. Daisy wouldn’t ignore her though; she would hold her and coo soothing sounds, feed her the warmed bottled milk and change the soiled diapers.
Later that afternoon there was another knock on the back door. This one was soft and tentative. If Daisy hadn’t been in the kitchen at the time, she might not have heard it. The Glenwood Elementary school bell had rung several minutes earlier. Daisy’s daughter was already home and looking for an after-school snack.
The soft little knock on the back door in the middle of the afternoon was Albert, Ruth’s older brother. “Are you here to pick up your sister?” Daisy asked. The seven-year-old shook his head as tears began to dribble down his cheeks.
“Something’s very wrong in my house,” Albert said trying to hold back his sobs. “There is stuff everywhere.” Then he added, “There is a piece of paper hanging from the light over the kitchen table but I can’t read what it says.”
“Wait here with us until your father gets home from work,” Daisy instructed him.
An hour later it was Albert’s senior who knocked on the back door. He had come home to find the house torn apart. Chairs were turned upside down and books thrown across the living room floor. The note said, “Ruth is at Daisy’s house.”
Evelyn must have been planning her escape for weeks. She had fled with the two children who did not resemble her husband. She had sold what she could: china, silverware, and antiques. What she could not sell she destroyed. Broken glass and slashed cushions were thrown or tossed at random. Her second-grade son could not read the note; yet he knew what the message must say. His mother had left him.

Dream a Little Dream of Me

2010-05-28T23:12:00.012-04:00

When my father celebrated his 90th birthday, someone asked him the secret to a long life. After a short pause, he replied with a cliché, “Don’t worry about the small stuff.” He stopped a minute and winked, finishing the punch line, “And, you know, it’s all small stuff.”

In my opinion, my father was fascinated by anything small. Small things captured his curiosity. One summer he collected little bits of lichen, identifying each species. He constructed shadow boxes for each sample and handwrote the labels with the common name as well as the Latin name. Cladonia rangiferina, also known as Reindeer Moss, was like the manna from heaven, Dad told me. It could turn air, light and moisture into food.

Far from worrying about small stuff, he was intrigued by it. He constructed a dollhouse for me. For each room he meticulously crafted wooden furniture: stoves and refrigerators in the kitchen, bunk beds and swinging cribs for the children’s bedrooms, cabinets and bookcases for the living room. For the bookcase he made and hand painted books out of slivers, scribbling titles on the tiny spines. Dad had as much fun designing and building that little house as the children who played with it.

My friends and I played with that dollhouse for years, imagining the dwarfs who lived inside. We made small rugs, bedspreads and curtains for the windows. The boys insisted that they were not playing but simply rearranging the furniture. However, they were as transfixed by the house as the girls.

In the past few weeks I have watched as the fireflies wink and sparkle between the trees after sundown. It seems to me that by paying homage to the small stuff in life I can let go of worrying about it.

My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)

2009-12-31T20:32:00.007-05:00

INTERSECTION
Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

There are ghosts on New Years Eve and hobgoblins too. I am sure of it. Like All Hallows Eve and Mardi Gras, it is a night to celebrate chaos, drunkenness and the seven deadly sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. My personal favorites are sloth and gluttony, However, I wonder if righteous indignation can be counted as wrath. If so, it would be at the top of my list.

My father used to say that one can only appreciate joy to the extent that one has known sorrow. I say that one can only be thankful for health to the degree that one has experienced disease and injury. Perhaps we can only value the potential for creation in our future after we have fallen into the abyss of chaos.

When I was a child, in bed and in pain from a bruised knee or swollen ankle, my father would say, “Things will be better in the morning.” They often were. Tomorrow will be the beginning of a new calendar year. Tonight the end of the old year is calling darkness and fear. Tomorrow, I will lean towards the future, but tonight I must embrace the past.

Deck the Halls

2009-12-09T20:49:00.004-05:00

Tree Decorations
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

When I was a child, my grandmother sent me a freshly cut evergreen tree from her farm in Nova Scotia, Canada each December. It would come wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It was very small and by the time I was eight years old, I was taller than the tree. The tree smelled wonderful and we decorated it with ornaments that we made ourselves. My friends and I would string popcorn and make chains of paper loops.

By the time I was a teenager, I was having a lot of injuries to my ankles. During those years I was at home most days. Repeated bleeds into my ankle joints made it impossible for me to climb the steep steps in my high school. While my peers were going to dances and sports events, I spent a lot of my free time doing craft projects. Each autumn, I designed and constructed holiday decorations with a new color scheme for our tree. It gave me great joy to create them. There was the Christmas of the red silk and gold felt, the year of sugarplum purple with white sparkles, and the royal blue metallic silver combination.

I carried the tradition of making tree decorations into my adult life. The freshly cut evergreen tree that is in my living room this year came from a local nursery. It is covered with decorations made by my family, friends, and me. Each decoration holds a special memory.

Home Before Dark

2009-05-22T10:59:00.004-04:00

Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

It was late in the afternoon when the phone rang. I could hear the concern in my mother’s voice as she talked. Estelle, one of my second grade classmates, was missing. She was seven-years-old, leaner and more petite than I was. She left school that day as usual, but did not arrive home. Estelle’s mother began calling the neighbors as the evening shadows were darkening the city streets. No one had seen her. The police were called.

Much to everyone’s surprise, a confused Estelle returned home a short time later. A man who said he was a friend of her father’s had offered her a ride. When the man headed into unknown territory, Estelle became suspicious. She began a temper tantrum of admirable strength. Screaming, kicking, and biting the man, she ignored all of his protests. At last, the man wanted only to be rid of her. He let her out of his car and drove away. Estelle, then only a few blocks away from home, was totally lost. It took her hours to find her way back.

While her family, neighbors and friends sat awaiting news of her, Estelle was alone and disoriented. When she stepped inside her house at last, her father’s terror turned to rage. First, he spanked her for daring to trust a stranger. Then he took her to the Police Department to file a report. Back home again, she was sent to bed without her supper.

After that, the children of Mrs. Baxter’s second grade class were a little less naive. Our parents lectured about never accepting a ride from anyone: no matter what. We rehearsed marching directly from home to school and school to home. We became afraid of strangers.

Those of us who did not already know, learned that fear could turn to anger, blame and mistrust. We learned that victims could be punished. Life can turn quickly from fun to danger. None of us can prevent missteps. All we can do some times is to scream, kick or claw our way out.

To everything there is a season

2009-04-02T11:16:00.003-04:00

Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

My father waited impatiently each winter for spring to come. On the day of the Winter Solstice in December, Dad would announce, “The days are getting longer. Spring is on the way!” On that day, he would begin his ritual of helping the snow to melt. On sunny days, he would go out to scoop shovel’s full of snow and ice onto the asphalt driveway. Then contented he would watch as the sun transformed the crystals into liquid.

Like my father I enjoy the green and growing plants sprouting up from the earth when spring arrives. It is like a magic trick. Unobserved tree buds stretch out and spread into delicate leaves. “Nothing up my sleeve,” nature says. Each year I am a bit chagrined by how this season takes me by surprise again and again.

The tender blossoms uncurl, risking damage from frenzied winds, weighty downpours of rain and drastic changes in temperatures. I watch the naïve fledgling birds as they fend for themselves, pecking for juicy larvae. An alert kitten crouches watching these vulnerable chicks. The prey and predators are hard to separate one from the other.

The older ones are at risk during this season too. With each new generation, I know my days are shortened. The dampness from the earth below my feet awakens the pain in my arthritic ankles. I am reminded that I will return to that soil one day myself. I will dissolve as the melting snow.

Election Day

2008-11-04T21:47:00.004-05:00

"Swing That Vote"
Originally uploaded by NatalieMaynor

As long as I can remember, my father never missed casting his vote on Election Day. It was Dad’s habit to sit in his armchair reading the daily newspaper after he came home from work. On Election Day, however, my Dad would first walk to the elementary school that was the polling place, before he settled comfortably into his chair.

It was the same elementary school that I attended for six years as a child. For me, the school basement was the place where we went when the air raid siren blasted the warning signal during the Cold War years of the 1950’s. We didn’t have to practice for World War III on Election Day. The basement rooms were filled with voting machines.

My mother couldn’t vote. She wanted to vote, but she was a resident alien, a citizen of Canada. She had married my father just a few years before the United States entered World War II. When Mom applied for citizenship, she was told that she would have to swear allegiance to only the United States of America. She could not bring herself to sign the form. It seemed ridiculous. But, still she could not bring herself to sign the oath that she would take up arms against Canada.

Mom, however, felt as much of a personal obligation to be informed about politics and government as my father. She was a woman with strong opinions. While politics was a subject avoided by other mothers, my Mom would introduce the topic with gusto. Our kitchen table was frequently a place for lively debates. In hindsight, I wonder if she tried to counter her frustration at not being able to cast her own vote by persuading as many people as possible to vote the way that she would if only she could.

Each of my parents taught me about the responsibility that comes with a democracy. Voting was not some thing to be done without being informed and knowledgeable. It is something that requires time and commitment.

Silly Goose

2008-10-13T17:58:00.005-04:00

a gaggle and a goofus
Originally uploaded by palmea

Stopped at a traffic light, I watched two small clusters of geese meandering their way through the divided city street. They strolled leisurely, appearing to be completely unaware of the cars facing them in all directions. Taking a rather diagonal approach to their destination, they plodded step by web-footed step. The cars were streaming off the highway at the start of rush hour. The southbound vehicles were temporarily stopped, waiting at the light. With some concern for their safety and a bit of amusement at their single-minded determination I observed the progress of the gaggle.

Perhaps the construction that was widening the highway blocked them from a remembered watering hole. My human brain was struggling to find a rational reason for this late afternoon promenade that was compelling my attention. Why would they choose to walk rather than fly? Of course, they are hefty birds, bottom-heavy creatures. Still I knew they were capable of great flight in their magnificent V shape formations. Each autumn in New England I had heard these birds honking their way southward for the winter.

Now I have migrated south to Florida. It was a hot and humid July afternoon. The first cluster of geese reached the grassy median strip just as I realized the red traffic light in front of me was about to switch to green. I held my breath in anticipation, wondering what would happen if the geese made it to the asphalt street just at the moment the drivers stepped on the gas.

Each webbed foot continued t march forward. The geese clearly expected the right of way.

But just before the first goose was about to step into the road, the light turned to green. There was a slight flutter of wings, but no injuries or fatalities. Like the other drivers, I accelerated and continued home.

Still I was curious to know the end of the story. What happened after the light turned to red again? Would the second cluster of geese make it to the grass strip before the traffic facing them moved forward? Did the geese find what they were looking for on that hot afternoon?

Watching the saga reminded me of how small and vulnerable I can feel against the larger world. Like the geese, I can slip into the assumption that nothing else around me is as important as where I am going. The questions that compel me are similar to the ones that come to my mind as I observed the geese crossing the road. How did something that seemed so simple turn out to be troublesome? Do the rewards still outnumber the risks?

On a larger scale, I wonder what might have happened if I had taken another path along my life journey? What would have been the consequences if I had made different choices? Where would that have led me? But when I stop brooding on my own silly goose questions, I simply pick up one foot and put it in front of the other.

Independence Day

2008-07-04T12:40:00.012-04:00

Day trip to Huntsville
Originally uploaded by mlsnp

Parades with banners, stars and stripes flags, and marching bands; barbeque grills, potato salad and watermelon; open air concerts and firework displays all send the messages of victory from oppression and the “unalienable Rights” that include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Liberty brings thoughts of a man I correspond with in Texas. He has been incarcerated now for about 15 years for a crime that he says he did not commit. Perhaps he is guilty. Maybe he is innocent.

I have never been incarcerated myself. For several years I worked as a consultant to librarians in State residential facilities. The libraries were for people with severe developmental disabilities, mental illness, and those awaiting trial in county jails or convicted felons in state prisons.

As part of my job preparation, I attended the Department of Correction Orientation program. The tour guide informed us that the people doing time are most likely to have had access only to a court appointed lawyer. The people I would see on the inside, he explained, are those without financial resources or the ability to read. I was amazed by the candor of the orientation. The purpose of the prison system is not to punish or reform, but to separate those who have been convicted from the general public.

I thought about how few “free” people have witnessed what I did when I walked through cellblocks where the decibel level of noise alone makes it difficult to control confusion and anger. The smell of human bodies not allowed to shower while confined in lock down for weeks at a time lingers in my memory even now. I recall the voices of many women and men explaining to me that when they were incarcerated they had not been taught to read. In prison they had the time to teach themselves. They were not stupid, just uneducated. I wondered if I could contain my resentment and rage if none of the rules that governed my day-to-day activities made any sense to me. Would I be able to stay calm if I were myself in this situation? Would my heart yearn for contact with friends or family separated by the walls?

I watched men released directly to the street from isolation in a space 12 feet 8 inches by 7 feet 6 inches stumble through the door because they no longer had any peripheral vision.

It is not the nature of the crime that determines where a convicted person will be housed. People who do not display anger at being incarcerated are placed in minimum security. Those who resist the confinement in an overcrowded environment, lack of privacy, limited time outside of a cramped cell; these people are placed in medium security. And those people who display aggressive behavior are confined to maximum security or solitary.

As I write to this man I have never met and probably never will, I remember what I saw and heard in person. It is not easy. I think about liberty and I suspend judgment to simply read his letters and respond.

Let There Be Life On Mars

2008-07-03T21:39:00.012-04:00

By the last day of General Assembly 2008, the annual conference for Unitarian Universalist congregations, my body was tired from lack of regular sleep, too many up and down climbs onto and off of the shuttle bus and the unhealthy food choices at the conference center. My mind was full of thoughts from the information received at workshops and in meetings. My emotions were jumbled by varied worship services, connecting with old friends, meeting new people and attending the Interfaith Community Witness Valuing All Families.

I slumped into a seat for one more ride on the shuttle bus that would return me to my hotel when behind me I heard a woman singing this song. It put things back into perspective for me, may it do the same for you.

When Kitty Eyes Are Smiling

2008-06-10T12:00:00.003-04:00

Calliope leans over and takes a l_a_z_y stretch, attempting to snatch my leg as I pass by the sofa where she has been napping. The gentle-clawed tug is meant to remind me that when she awakes from a snooze, she would like a snack. She has trained me well with her smiling kitty eyes.

The first kitten that entered my life’s path was a flea-bitten stray that a childhood friend gave to me. My mother took one glance at it and dunked it in the bathroom sink, trying to rid it of the parasites that had infested its fur. I watched with my 4-year-old eyes as the bugs hopped and skipped off the kitten, trying to escape the bath water. Most were flushed away down the drain. Sadly, that was when we discovered I was allergic to cats. I sneezed and sneezed. My eyes turned a scratchy red. “Ready to give up the cat?” my mother would say each day. At last I gave up and said, yes. The kitten was delivered it to the A.S.P.C.A.

After that, whenever I visited a home where cats lived my allergy overwhelmed me. In these houses, I would wheeze, gasp for air and then dash for the nearest tissue box. Antihistamine was no help.

Years passed before I would let another kitty’s eyes enter my heart. Then one morning after church, the minister asked me if I had seen the kittens. There, huddled in a corner of a closet, was a Tuxedo cat. The young cat stared out at me. Behind her was an even more skittish kitten. The four eyes were wide with fear. I was at a loss, having never been closely acquainted with cats. My spouse took charge of the rescue and we began depositing bowls of milk, water and cat food on a daily basis. Gradually they began to greet our arrival.

Another member of the congregation bonded with the kitten and took him home. We took the Mom cat, just long enough to be safely spayed by the vet, I thought. It seemed appropriate to give her a Unitarian Universalist name, since she had sought sanctuary in the church. I gave her the name of Dix, after Dorothea Dix. It wasn’t long. though, before we began calling her Dixie.

For some unidentified reason, my allergic reaction vanished. Inside a comfortable home, Dixie decided that she had never liked the out-of-doors anyway. She made the decision that four, sometimes five, square meals per day was more important than the roaming life. Her favorite snack was little bites from a freshly baked blueberry muffin. I told her all of my secrets and my fears. She comforted me in times of despair, taught me yoga and how to nap well. With time, she learned to curl up on a 2-legged lap, but only when invited. If I scratched her chin, she would close her smiling kitty eyes and grin from ear to ear.

Grandma's Hands

2008-05-11T20:03:00.009-04:00

By the time I was born, only my maternal grandmother, Ruby was still living. From children’s books and the experience of some of my friends, I had an idealistic picture of what a grandmother was like. Unlike my grandmother, she usually lived nearby and came to visit often.

My grandmother lived in a country farmhouse, far away from where I was raised as a child. She had given birth to one child every two years until she had five sons and five daughters. About seven years after the last of her ten babies was born, Ruby’s husband, my grandfather, died. The year was 1927. If the genealogy records are accurate, she was 52 years old by that time.

The household was already organized with economy, precision and determination. A few of the eldest sons had gone off to earn money that could then be sent back home. The eldest daughters had long been taking care of the very youngest children and the ones in-between were used to tending to the farm chores and household duties.

Ruby’s children reaped the health benefits of her ability to prevent the spread of disease by meticulous attention to hygiene. She learned her native nursing-care skills from her mother. Grandma’s attentive watchfulness and analytical problem solving enhanced her reputation as one who could cure the sick.

My grandmother was a strong and demanding woman. Observation of my aunts, her daughters, has given me a taste of what this must have been like. She may have felt that the family’s very survival depended upon her ability to make decisions quickly and enforce them with a critical tongue. The precision cutting of her words sometimes left jagged scars that required healing over time. Yet, there was enough comfort, compassion and caring for the mending of wounds within the family and beyond. Those who were ill, or in need, could count on my grandmother for comfort and aid.

Despite the Great Depression and outward poverty of the little farmhouse, there was enough healthy food to eat and enough to generously share with others in my Grandma’s house. Guests were always welcome, whether they were friends or strangers. And, when the workday ended, there was music, books to read, lively conversation, jokes and laughter.

Even though I only got to see my Grandma in person once, each time we visited the old farmhouse its seemed that Ruby’s powerful spirit was still there. It was revealed in more than just the chipped Blue Willow dinner wear in the China cabinet, or the rocking chair by the kitchen window. It could be observed in the qualities of her children, my aunts and uncles. It emanated whenever a guest, whether child or adult, entered the back door. And, it is still reflected in the values and actions of her grandchildren.

When I curl a loop of yarn around my fingers to knit I think of my Grandma’s hands knitting warm socks and mittens. When I cook, I imagine Grandma’s hands kneading the many loaves of bread, baking the pies and churning the butter. When I help care for someone who is sick or in pain, I reflect on Grandma’s care that lives on long past her lifetime.

Perhaps the ideal Grandma that I imagined as a child visits me more now than she did when I was a child.

The Marathon

2008-04-21T17:08:00.007-04:00

long_distance_race
Originally uploaded by maxsmith

All human beings should try to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
—James Thurber

It is Marathon Day in Boston. This year, I am not there to watch the crowds of people arrive from places around the planet. Even so, I know that there are people speaking many languages in the small town of Hopkinton, Massachusetts. They are filling up their bellies with high carbohydrate breakfasts, then getting in lines for their numbers. The media are taking up whatever space they can find with their cameras and video equipment. Enthusiastic fans are competing with the local residents for a space where they will be able to see the race begin.

For many years, I would position myself at the top of Heartbreak Hill, not far from where the runners would finally reach the city limits of Boston. As each runner came up that stretch of pavement, looking tired and defeated, I would clap and shout encouragement. It was Jeff who had taught me to show up at the most difficult stretch of the route to cheer.

Jeff moved into my parent's attic one spring. His father had beaten him up for the last time. When my mother opened the back door that afternoon, she saw Jeff standing there with a bloodied face and a satchel full of clothing slung over his shoulder. It was not the first time my mother had harbored one of the children from that family. A little first aid, a home cooked meal and Jeff recovered enough to explain that his Dad was drunk again. Jeff had come home for spring break in his freshman year of college. His father had announced that he would not pay for any more school. It was time, his father screamed, for his son to go off to the war that was in Vietnam. No more would he have a son who shirked his duty and hid behind books to evade the draft.

When I arrived home from college a few weeks later, I could hear John Lennon's music filling the space that previously had only held empty suitcases and dusty photographs. Jeff said very little to anyone. Some evenings, after we had dinner together, he would linger long enough for a game of cards after the kitchen table had been cleared of dishes. Most nights he would go directly to his private space with the unpainted plywood floor and bare rafters stuffed with insulation. He would read, play music and only occasionally go out to meet one of his friends.

In a few weeks, Jeff had a job as an orderly in the city hospital. He applied for nursing school and was accepted. Whether he was truly a pacifist or whether he did it to spite his father, he received an exemption from the draft. His war was a private one. His spirit seemed full of inward battles fought in solitude. He ran, it appeared, not just from his abusive father, not just from the war he opposed, but to save his own life.

Each morning, before he dressed in his scrubs and walked down the hill to the city hospital, he ran. He arose earlier than any of us and left the comfort of his loft to run. He ran in the heat and the cold, in the rain and even in the snow. His goal was to run the marathon; not to win the race, but to finish. The first few times that he entered a race, it took him so long to finish that the race officially ended before he triumphantly reached the point where the finish line had been.

During the next two years, while he lived with my parents, I drove him to and from the site of several marathons. Even though Jeff’s race for life was directly opposite to my own, I understood the importance of a cheering section and a friend to reach out with some fresh water along the way. So, at several points along the route, I would stand until I saw him come into view. Then, I would begin calling out his name and enthusiastic encouragement until I saw his dazed eyes acknowledge me.

The physical demands of long distance running were foreign to me. I could not quite understand why someone would voluntarily put himself through such an arduous and punishing experience. Having a bleeding disorder, I had chosen a life that was structured to minimize injuries. By that time, I had already spent years listening for the early warning signs in the twinge of a sore muscle. The smallest of body aches could indicate the need for medical intervention for me. To win my race for life, no pain was a gain. It horrified me to see him limp in at the end of the race, doubled over in agony and exhaustion. His muscles would be cramped and his body contorted. The heat and dehydration left him depleted that he collapsed into the car seat for the return ride. Even more baffling to me was the way in which he recovered within hours. He would be up the next morning running as usual before going to work. It was a lesson to me to observe how his body could endure this amount of pain without fear or mental suffering. How different from the sense of defeat, self-blame and guilt that I felt when my body was hurting. How unlike the days it would take me to heal an injured joint or muscle if there was internal bleeding.

In spite of our different strategies for survival, Jeff and I had each experienced our own wounds. And although our reactions were so dissimilar, I understood his resolve and resilience. It is a winning combination and it deserves applause.

Healing Stories

2008-02-19T10:29:00.011-05:00

Memories take up more bandwidth in my brain the older I get. Perhaps this is true because I am acutely aware of having passed mid-life. For me, there is now more to recall from the past than there is left to plan for in the future. It seems that memories drift into my consciousness at the slightest trigger: a landscape; an odor in the air; a remark made by an acquaintance; a photograph; a tune. Some recollections are activated without any apparent cause. Most come in small tidbit-sized pieces, rather than long detailed illustrated narratives. In addition, I have no doubt that all of my memories have been altered by the passing of time until they represent a symbol rather than a truth.

I have heard it said that our first memory reveals traits and values that we carry for the rest of our lives it echoed the concept of a personal mythology. I tried to sift through my earliest memories and determine which one was my first. My youngest childhood experiences had become so intertwined in the storytelling of my family that I had come to believe that I remembered them.

There was the story my father liked to repeat about my ability to outsmart his attempts to keep me from upsetting my dinner plate from the high chair onto the floor. One could think that would be a memory he would have preferred to forget. For me, the story seems a bit unsettling. I am sure I would not be nearly so cheerful with any child who exhibited this skill. However, when my Dad told the tale of purchasing one guaranteed-to-be-spill-proof baby dish after another, only to watch me overcome the newest foil within minutes, he seemed pleased by his daughter’s ability to solve problems. This was a part of my father’s personal mythology. I have no memory of ever sitting in a highchair spilling pureed vegetables onto the floor for entertainment.

My mother liked to tell the story of leaving me at school for the first day of Kindergarten. I entered the schoolyard and didn’t even glance back towards her to wave good-bye. When my Mom recounted this memory, it was usually with a tone of feigned disappointment that I had shed no tears when we parted. However, it was also evident that she was more than a little proud of raising an independent and confident daughter. This was a part of my mother’s personal mythology. I have recollection of this day, although it does seem like a story that is more in keeping with my true nature.

Both of these memories do, however, qualify as healing stories for my parents and for me. Still, I had a desire to identify my own earliest memory. Quite accidentally one day, I happened to see old news footage of Queen Elizabeth II in her coronation ceremony on June 2, 1953. Suddenly, I remembered that day. I would have been four at that time and I can think of no personal memory that pre-dates it.

My mother had a friend, Ruth, who had been a schoolteacher. Ruth and my mother had grown up not far from each other in Nova Scotia, Canada. Yet, they had not become friends until they both married and moved to the U.S. Ruth seemed much older to me than my own mother and much more serious. When in Ruth’s presence, I was instructed to watch my manners carefully. It was Ruth who had suggested that I must witness the Queen’s coronation on television that day in early June.

Uncle Byron

2008-01-26T20:11:00.003-05:00

Uncle Byron sat in his rocking chair watching the sun set. The supper dishes were removed from the big dining table that in his childhood was used to spread out the meals for his nine siblings and whatever guests happened to come for a visit at mealtime. I piled the dishes in the sink and heated the water over the wood stove to wash and rinse them clean again, I watched as Byron gazed out over the front pasture that sloped down to the road. The road had not yet been paved and an occasional automobile passing by would raise a sandy dust as it rumbled over the gravel. The kitchen window faced the maple sugar camp that Byron had operated since he was a young man. But, Byron did not look in that direction; instead his eyes were fixed on the display of color in the sky from the setting sun.

Slowly, Byron pulled out a cigarette paper and his pouch of tobacco. With the mindfulness of a Buddhist monk, he curved the paper with his fingers and filled the ridge with a small portion of dried tobacco. Then with care and gracefulness, that revealed how often he had practiced this ritual in the past, Uncle Byron rolled the paper around, licking it on the edge to hold the two ends together. The match he struck against the wood stove and as he exhaled he filled the room with the aroma of smoke.

He sat and rocked and watched the setting sun, seemingly unaware of the clatter of pots and pans. The women who were washing, drying and putting away seemed equally absorbed in their task. Byron had spent all of his life in that house, with the exception of his tour of duty in WWII. He had cared for his mother until her death and tended to the farm chores by himself when his five sisters and four brothers moved away one at time. He seemed during these times very comfortable in his solitude.

However, on the evenings when family and friends were in the house, Byron’s face displayed contentment. When the day was coming to a close, after each platter and plate, cup and saucer was set back in it’s spot in the china cabinet, people drifted back to the dinning room table. The deck of cards was shuffled and dealt to each player. The stories of neighbors and family were told and re-told. There was usually at least one joke about Byron’s elder sister whose Baptist faith scorned card playing as much as alcohol consumption. What would she think if she could see them shuffling and dealing for hours on end, or if she new that her own husband made beer in the basement?

Even Byron’s humor was tempered with compassion. He was a quiet man and when he spoke his words often revealed his empathy for those who were small or weak or ill. The night his youngest sister was killed in an automobile accident, it was Byron who received the telephone call. He sat by himself until dawn, not conveying the news to other family members. When asked, he said he did not want to upset their sleep.

When we arrived at the farmhouse for a visit or left to return home, Uncle Byron gave a hug that was so tight it seemed he did not want to let go. Had he suffered enough loss in his life already that his heart could bear no more?

Green at Last

2007-11-03T15:12:00.004-04:00

Free at Last
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

Yesterday, we noticed a Green Anole trapped behind the glass door on our wood stove. We imagine that it climbed down the chimney, perhaps nibbling insects along the way, and then could not figure out how to climb back up.

When it was still there today, we became more concerned. We gathered the necessary critter rescue kit and freed the Anole to its outdoor habitat. After it was safely outside again, we watched as it gradually turned from the drab brownish color it had become inside the wood stove back to a brilliant green again.

In my childhood I gained a lot of experience capturing backyard critters of many sizes and shapes. Grasshoppers, toads, garter snakes, turtles and spiders were often placed in temporary habitats constructed in jars or terrariums with screened lids. One day, I entered the kitchen just in time to hear my mother calmly talking on the telephone. Her last sentence was, “I’m sorry, Jane, I have to hang up know. My daughter’s snake just crawled out from behind the stove.” As she lowered the phone, I could hear Jane screaming, “Did you say snake?” I learned by that experience that a snake could easily escape if an old hosiery stocking was used to cover a jar motel.

Eventually, my father created a special guest room for viewing spider webs. It had a wooden frame with twigs inserted along the inner side edges and moveable Plexiglas panels on the front and back. There was a corked hole at the top for dropping in a spider. Each spider created it’s own special web stretching the threads between the twigs. Hours of amusement were spent feeding the spiders before they were set free again. The web remained in the box. By removing the Plexiglas, it could then be spray-painted, placed on a piece of black construction paper, and labeled with the species of spider that had created it.

All the critter visitors were fed and given fresh water for a day or two, then released back to freedom where they had been found. My mother, who enjoyed it as much as the neighborhood children, usually taught the backyard nature study. The children arrived several times a day to assist and observe. Together we watched as toads shed their skins by sweating and larvae transformed into butterflies. We learned that a preying mantis would drink water from a spoon held in front of it, tilting its head in a horse-like pose. Mom would bring out the identification books that we owned or walk us to the local branch library to find information about our current guests.

However, I learned more than how to identify these backyard critters. I grew to respect each of them as individuals and to value their companionship. By caring for them, I came to care about their safety and the survival of the planet we share together. It seems natural to me to reduce, reuse and recycle; not to waste limited resources; to tread softly upon this earth.

As I watched the Anole transform from the dusty color it had taken on inside the wood stove back into a green, melded with the leaves, I reflected that it’s not easy to get green. But, when the survival of all our relations is at risk, it becomes urgent.

Open Window

2007-10-21T09:52:00.003-04:00

"You're taking ANOTHER picture???"
Originally uploaded by jimfrazier

It’s a rite of spring and fall for me to clean the windows. I can think of no other household task that I actually get pleasure from. Dusting out the cobwebs and soot that has accumulated between the screen and the glass during the previous season, I wipe clean the blinds, windowsill and wire mesh screening; then polish the windowpanes. Clarity is my reward. Autumn in New England was the time when I would also remove the screens and add storm windows to keep out the cold winds to come.

Now, as I experience autumn in the Southeast for the first time, I am not closing and securing the windows in anticipation of colder temperatures, but the reverse. The hot summer of the South is gently shifting to cooler weather bit by bit, but here it is time to open windows to circulate fresh breezes.

Open windows offer my senses with not just the visual awareness of the out of doors, but the smells and most particularly the sounds. Even indoors I can now hear the sounds of my new neighborhood alerting me to information and triggering emotional responses. The indoor cat is startled, yet fascinated. She looks at me quizzically. We both hear the scratching of squirrels as they scamper up tall trees and peek in the window. We listen for feeding birds landing with a swish on the shrubs. The acorns and pinecones drop from great heights and land with a plop, covering the ground below. The bird songs increase in the early morning hours and late afternoon. Mixed among these gentle sounds are the city noises of traffic, children in a schoolyard at recess, church bells, and an occasional dog bark or ambulance siren. I am aware for the first time of a neighbor who practices an electronic guitar before leaving home in the morning. I can hear another neighbor’s loud bass music booming a beat as he turns his car into his driveway after midnight. And often I can hear the pine needles swish in the wind.

Truly listening is a rare experience. Homes, restaurants, businesses, automobiles, doctor’s offices and libraries are not quiet zones in this time. They are filled with the background noise of televisions, ringing telephones, electronic equipment beeping, radios playing and talk, talk, talk. It seems to me that there is very little space left for listening. My senses are impaired when the rhythm of living energy turns to a cacophony of noise. I feel as if my awareness has become diminished. I am no longer able to fully hear my own energy and my own internal music.

If I listen carefully enough I can hear this music clearly when I awake each morning. It will whisper to me from my body and my mind and integrate the two as one. It will chant that we are all dying while asserting that we are all living. It is not one or the other, but both, that create the harmony.

Bidens

2007-09-23T18:47:00.002-04:00

Bidens
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

Outside my bedroom window, some of the weeds around the side of our house are now tall enough to bob and tilt in the wind. The flower that looks like a white daisy is Bidens. Its common names are Beggar Tick or Stickseed because it has sharp seeds that cling to clothing, fur, or feathers. From my window I can see the flowers dance and swing, teasing the butterflies to catch them. I risk passing through the clump of Poison Ivy to view the daisies closer.

What makes a plant a weed? I wonder as I admire this thriving plant that has a system for transporting its offspring to faraway lands. Some would call it invasive for these very qualities of adaptability and endurance. Thorns are considered a nuisance by humans, not a survival technique. Perhaps I take the criticisms about weeds a bit too personally. I have a rather prickly disposition at times myself, or at least so I am told. My imagination tells me that our new neighbors are less than pleased by the weeds allowed to grow wild in our yard. I simply admire the way in which they invite butterflies to my window.

What makes a weed a weed is, in my view, not the audacity it displays by growing wherever. It is not even the persistence that it displays in returning again and again after it has been pulled out by its roots. It is the value it is given by humans. A weed is simply a plant that is not wanted.

What puzzles me the most is the great lengths that humans will go to in order to control and organize the natural world. Weeding, mowing and watering grassy lawns seems a waste of energy and resources to me. Some landscape designers plan gardens so they will mimic the natural forests. It seems presumptuous to me that the natural beauty of a forest could be improved by human intervention. I have a similar reaction to the planned burning in the National Forests. If there are not enough wildfires from lightening strikes, controlled fires are set to clean out the dead wood, unhealthy trees and help other plants to germinate. In my view, this reveals a lack of faith in nature.

It reminds me of the way in which religious beliefs are ranked by some as either true or false. Recently, I have started attending a Zen Buddhist group to practice meditation and chanting. A friend of mine told me that she would be afraid to practice meditation. She had been told in church that people who meditate are members of a cult. It seems extreme to define this religious practice, which has been in existence since at least the 7th Century CE, a cult. But, by calling any religion a cult, it labels it as negative and even dangerous. Like the weeds in my yard, it is considered undesirable. Some certainly believe that cults need to be weeded out, to protect the "true believers" and save all of our souls. I wonder, is it simply a belief that is not our own?

When I take a good look at the world around me, it gives me more faith in diversity, not less.

Slow Food

2007-09-12T16:31:00.002-04:00

Muscatine Grapes
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

Because I moved to the Southeastern part of the U.S. this summer, I am often asked, “How y’all doin’ with the hot weather?” When people learn I am a new comer to this part of the country, many try to assure me with, “It’ll get cooler in October.” In truth, I expected the hot climate and the intense humidity. This was no surprise and I take heed to follow the natural inclination and slow down.

There have been many pleasant surprises about living in the South. I am eager to learn the names for the native plants, insects, birds, reptiles and amphibians in this environment; the Carolina Wren, the Green Anole, the Zebra Butterflies and the Crape Myrtle that all reside around my new home.

The biggest challenge of this transition has been adapting my inner clock to the differences in the harvest season. In the first few weeks after our arrival, we found turnip greens, okra and black-eyed peas at the growers’ market. Friends dropped off gifts of Tupelo honey, local sausage and goat cheese. I found some herb plants for the patio and watched in amazement at how quickly the bay laurel grew. As the weeks went by, however, there was less and less produce to be found that had not been trucked or shipped from other parts of the country. I sampled the thick-skinned Muscatine grapes and hard pears. But, “Where are the tomatoes?” I kept thinking. Remembering the overflowing baskets full of tomatoes, corn, squash and early apples that are available at this time in the Northeast. I felt oddly out of sync with my new surroundings.

Food tastes better to me when it is grown locally, picked fresh and prepared at home. No carrots have ever tasted as sweet to me as the ones I picked as a child from the backyard garden patch. I washed these slender carrots under the outdoor spigot and ate them unpeeled. My Uncle Bill would do the same with a tomato from his garden; eating it like one might eat an apple or pear. The only asparagus that I have ever truly enjoyed eating came from the little row that was planted along the back fence of my childhood home. The asparagus that was not picked early enough turned to fern, leaving a feathery background for the beans and yellow squash that would spring from the earth later in the summer. When we visited the farm where my mother grew up in Nova Scotia, there was a hearty supply of food from the garden. The fisherman’s truck pulled up the driveway once a week with that morning’s catch of the day. My motivation for helping my Uncle Byron milk the cows was getting a taste of warm whole milk, still laced with cream before it was put through the separator and stored in the refrigerator. Most of the food that was not produced by the farm was purchased from the Coop.

In the early 1970’s, I was fortunate enough to discover a local dairy that would deliver the milk to our door in reusable glass bottles. A few years after that, I started purchasing eggs from a farmer whose wife worked with me. Each Tuesday, she would carry home the egg order from all the staff members and, on Wednesday, her husband would deliver the cardboard cartons of eggs to all of us. I liked knowing the people who provided the ingredients for my food by name. It was fun to watch the cows in the pasture and chickens wandering freely around the barnyard. Most of all, I liked the way the fresh milk and eggs tasted.

Is it any wonder then, that we have joined the local food coop? We also started shopping regularly at the growers markets. And, now we are participating in Community Supported Agriculture. We joined by paying a fee to the farm to guarantee us a share of the produce harvested each week. In a few weeks, we will start picking up our share of the freshly picked vegetables. When my subliminal clock says that it is almost time for this year’s crop to end, it will just be beginning.

Cooking with Dad

2007-09-08T15:16:00.005-04:00

As my father-in-law and I prepare supper together, I joke that we should have our own television cooking program. He is an avid fan of Rachel Ray, the speed queen of cooking, and Paula Dean, the maven of butter and sugar. As he chops the celery, he asks, "What should we call our show?" I say, "Cooking with Dad." He smiles. I can tell that he gets satisfaction from helping to cook. Even more than that, he likes to being called "Dad."

After he was 70 years old and had retired as a mechanical engineer, my father-in-law worked at a fast food restaurant. For more than 10 years, he would get up each morning at 4:00 a.m. to open the restaurant and prepare the grills for the breakfast crowd. The franchised restaurant chain hired all part-time employees, with the exception of the store manager. Most of these employees were teenagers struggling with the adjustment of becoming adults. They relied on this grandfatherly person for his advice and his good humor. And, they called him "Dad."

It has been difficult for me to call my father-in-law "Dad." It somehow does not feel fair to my biological father. My Dad established a relationship with me even before I was born, and continues that bond even after his death.

My father-in-law is now in his late 80's and I feel the increasing weight of becoming responsible for his well-being. He can walk only a few yards before he becomes short of breath. He insists this is from allergy, not the heart disease the doctor mentioned. As he pitches his body forward in an unbalanced stride, I find myself playing a more "Mother Hen" role than acting like a daughter to him. "Don't forget your cane!" I say as we leave the house together. "Watch out for that bump on the sidewalk." He makes a sour face because he does not want to admit he is vulnerable to broken bones. He is struggling with the adjustment to old age. He still wants to be the protective one, not the protected.

But when we cook together at the end of each day, the relationship is transformed. Mimicking my own mother's voice, I lay out the jobs that need to be accomplished and divide the tasks between the two of us. "You chop the celery and I'll peel the potatoes," I say. He can enjoy re-experiencing the roll of protector. "Don't forget to put on the oven mitts. The pan is hot, you know," he warns. Together we work to prepare the family meal. It is not just the food that will sustain us and comfort us; it is the sharing of the care giving.

Return

2007-07-24T11:27:00.002-04:00

Christmas in Waveland, 2005
Originally uploaded by NatalieMaynor

The sound of thunder alerts us to a sudden change in the weather. Soon the hail mixed with rain, falling tree twigs and pinecones create a percussion band. The rooftop becomes a drum. It’s a sound that sends the cat into hiding under the bed and brings me to the glass sliding doors to watch.

The squirrels that were jumping between tree limbs only minutes ago have all disappeared now. The hummingbirds and butterflies have all gone for shelter as well. The herbs and flowers, newly purchased at a local nursery, are tested for their durability and stamina by the wind and falling debris.

Only a short distance down the street, large tree trunks crack. It is humbling to watch as the micro burst prunes the wooded neighborhood.

By morning, television cameras are documenting the damage to homes. Landscaping crews are cleaning up the yards and lawns. The fallen branches are picked up and piled for removal later; like picking up a child’s toys after playtime. The human inhabitants desire that a sense of order be restored from the chaos.

The rain soaked earth rejuvenates the plants and the squirrels, butterflies, birds and humans seem refreshed as well. The air is cooler and dryer after the storm. The storm was brief, the damage will all be repaired quickly; not like the devastation of a major hurricane, forest fire, earthquake or Tsunami. Even so, I am reminded that ultimately the cycle of chaos and creation repeats and repeats and repeats; perhaps, as the myths tell us, from the beginning of time.

In spite of our human efforts to control or avoid the chaos and destruction, the wind and rain will return. The seas will rise, sinking boats and sucking in those on the shore. The earth will quake, volcanoes will send fire from deep below our planet and lightening will ignite wildfires. And, when the chaos has abated, those that remain will build again.

Change of Place

2007-07-11T22:44:00.003-04:00

Green Anole
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

The move has been completed. We are settling ourselves into a new place called “home.”

I prefer to think of myself as a person who enjoys change, not one that resists it. Flexible people bend and do not break, I remind myself. But, as I awoke this morning in a place 1,300 miles away from where I was born, grew up, went to school and lived for more than 50 years of my life, I had to admit how difficult change can be.

It took months to prepare for this particular change; our family’s move to a new home. The transition prompted a volatile mixture of emotions in me. The process often felt as if I was unraveling the threads that had held my former life together in order to reweave a new fabric and texture for the remainder of my life. It was understood that when we left the place we had called “home,” we would not return even for a visit. We would take ourselves to another place and we would call that place “home.”

Early in the process, as part of planning for the move, I pulled the shoeboxes stuffed with letters out from the back of my closet shelves. I began opening correspondence that I had saved and reading it piece by piece. Mementoes of my past, carefully sorted and filed by date, stuffed each box. Preserved and saved for another time. Now the time had come.

Sifting through years of personal correspondence, I rediscovered letters written to me by friends and family members. There were also journals, which I had kept as a child. For years, my Aunt Ola had sent me a diary as a Christmas gift. I had faithfully filled the blank pages starting on January 1 of each year, recording my passage from childhood through adolescence.

Mixed among the diaries and personal letters were report cards from schoolteachers, many noting the excessive absent days due to illness and my eagerness to catch up with the rest of my grade once I returned to the classroom.

In addition to the correspondence, which I had saved, I came across the letters my parents had kept during their lifetimes. I had saved their keepsakes without reading them since their deaths a few years ago. Now it seemed like it was time to read these too. Here I found journals that my father had written almost 100 years earlier when he was a young man; letters my parents wrote to each other; and also letters written by me to my parents after I had moved away.

Classification tables copied in my father’s hand writing for identifying minerals, mingled oddly with his genealogical research. My mother, who kept so little, had managed to preserve lists of bird names, wildflowers and mushrooms that she had identified on her regular walks in the woods. My mother had also saved correspondence from the physician who had diagnosed my bleeding disorder. These letters from the doctor included advice and reassurance in response to her anxious questions.

Why had I and others in my family been driven to write so much? And, why did we keep so much of what was written to us? I wonder. What were we trying to document? What had we intended with these archives from our lives? Had we hoped to pass our experiences on to others? Or was the purpose simply to aid our own memories at a later time? For myself, I wondered if my intention was some attempt at immortality.

As I sifted through and reviewed the pages of writing it seemed almost as if it was new information. Time had changed my attitudes and my perceptions of what was true. My memories had been altered and were different than what my journals had documented in a previous time.

For whatever reason, I made the decision to let the past go. One piece at a time, the destination for these written words was the paper shredder. Grinding out thin strips of paper to be recycled and reused, I watched in amazement at the impermanence of life.

Mountains from Molehills

2007-04-07T17:11:00.001-04:00

Coffee
Originally uploaded by lewis foad.

For the past few weeks, I have been sorting through my belongings in preparation for moving later this year. Among the papers, I found a piece that my father wrote. I could not bring myself to shred the pages without first sharing it with others. Thanks to Lewis Foad for permission to use his photo.

Note from the author: All characters in this article are imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is strictly accidental.

It has been reported in a magazine advertisement that the battle of Waterloo was lost to Napoleon because he had eaten a green peach and suffered from a stomachache at the time. Possibly, it was a plum, but it doesn’t matter too much. Fruit was cheap in those days, and the point is, it just wasn’t worth it. If this proves anything at all, it is that Napoleon was as easily influenced by trivia as the rest of us.

Back in the sixteenth century, the English used to send ships to North America to bring back sassafras bark. The survival ration of the sailors was considerably less than that for a modern astronaut, but England was short of sassafras bark so there were always plenty of volunteers. Of course, the voyage of Christopher Columbus was just as urgent. He was looking for spice. A more cautious man might have spent the money on research to develop a tin can. Columbus liked excitement. Even though he missed his goal by a hundred and eighty degrees of longitude, we must admire his spirit. He tried.

Most of us are broad minded about the right of others to have little idiosyncrasies. If someone wants to spoil a good cup of tea by adding milk to it, let them do it, as long as they drink it. We don’t mind at all, if someone insists on having sugar in their coffee. We realize that everyone can’t be a connoisseur. We value our right to disagree on matters of importance. We inherit this trait from our nation's forefathers. Taxation without representation was discussed calmly enough. The first open act of violence in the American Revolution, quite naturally was prompted by the tax on tea.

One of our most important assets is coffee. The history of the coffee house is long and honorable. Without the aid of a single folk singer, they were doing a good business in the days of Shakespeare and [Ben] Jonson. That highly respected institution Lloyd’s of London, as anyone knows, started as a coffee house. Here, the men who underwrote marine insurance gathered to transact their business. It solved the problem of their overhead cost. It also solved the problem of the coffee break.

Sometime in the seventeenth century, we find a Londoner complaining to his diary about the difficulty of getting a good cup of coffee. He charges the coffee merchant with diluting his product with chicory. Now there is nothing wrong with chicory as a drink of course but a basic must for mixed drinks is that they be alcoholic. We all know that coffee is to be real coffee, must be pure coffee. We can expect the worst of a man who would mix chicory and coffee. It will then come as no surprise to you to hear that the chicory he bought was colored with Venetian red to make it nearer the color of coffee. The man who sold him the Venetian red was also dishonest. He was adding brick dust to his product.

One chilly fall evening in the colonial days of our country, a weary traveler stopped at a wayside inn for a night’s rest. When he was seated comfortably in front of the fireplace, his host came in to see if anything further could be done for his comfort. The traveler said, "Yes, do you have any chicory?" the landlord admitted he had. "Good," said his guest, "would you bring it here please?" His host dutifully went to the kitchen and returned with the box in which he kept his chicory supply. "Set it there please," said the traveler, nodding toward the table. When the landlord had done as he asked, he continued, "Now, go brew me a cup of coffee."

It was not everyone who had the wit to get a good cup of coffee in this manner. There were those people who felt the best method was to carry a portable coffee grinder about with them and demand coffee beans. They could then grind and brew their own the more imaginative, however, felt that the legal approach was the only civilized way to handle the problem.

"No vendor of coffee may adulterate his product with any substance whatsoever unless he declare to the purchaser of said coffee the nature of the adulterating substance and the percentage of such adulteration."

There were, of course, suitably severe penalties for any infractions. Only a person who lives close to the land of the wooden nutmeg would be cynical of the results. Sad to relate the sneer was justified. The coffee merchant kept up his trade with the seller of chicory who continued to color it with Venetian red diluted with brick dust. This mixture was then ground very fine, moistened slightly, and pressed into a mold just the shape of a coffee bean. This took care of the character who was lugging around a coffee mill. As for the legal angle he could feel quite righteous. He was not selling adulterated coffee. Coffee was the one thing he had left out.

Soaring

2007-03-19T20:07:00.003-04:00

Soaring
Originally uploaded by limekilnwhalewat cher.

In the past month, I have flown several times. This is quite unusual for me, unlike those who travel by air for business or pleasure on a frequent basis. I am usually quite earth bound.

When I find myself in the seat of an airplane, my first reaction is to wonder why no one else looks as happy to be there as I feel. Sometimes, I struggle to hold back my enthusiasm for finding a window seat. It helps me to feel less foolish if there is at least one child on board who is experiencing a similar excitement to my own.

As the plane begins to taxi on the runway, I look out the nearest window with wonder. How can this be? Here we sit, luggage stored, tons of cargo packed below us. We are about to lift off the ground to fly! Why does no one else look as amazed as I do? Aerodynamics has been explained to me; still I find it difficult to comprehend.

The engines begin to whine and the flight attendants give the standard instructions and make their routine safety inspections. Often they seem bored. I watch as the airline terminal gates whiz by the window more rapidly. Sometimes, I close my eyes just to feel more strongly the sensations of the gravity pulling, the power of the plane and the energy that comes as we lift off the ground. If we are rising through a thick bank of clouds, all that is outside the window is the uncertainty of white fluff. Suddenly, we are traveling above the clouds. The world opens up again. The experience prompts me to appreciate the belief, held by many, that when we die we ascend to a heaven above.

An Ojibwe Elder once explained that the eagle feather has two sides. If the feather had only one side then the eagle could not fly, this wise elder stated. Once these sides are balanced, all is balanced. When the two sides of the feather are balanced then we have proper behavior. This said, the Ojibwe Elder added, "Funny thing is...Eagle doesn't care if its feathers have two sides...It just opens its wings and flies up to the Creator."

One of the meditations that I have found most healing is a visualization based on the book by Eligio Stephen Gallegos, Animals of the Four Windows: Integrating Thinking, Sensing, Feeling and Imagery. Each one of the four animals in the meditation is asked to sit in a council circle and all work together on a question or a problem. One animal guides thinking or the intellect; one assists with feeling or emotions; one is called upon for sensing such as taste, touch, or hearing; and one brings the influence of imagery. When these ways of knowing are in balance, so is my spirit. My faith, like the soaring eagle, lifts up and flies.

Thanks to Paul who posted the question on his blog Original Faith, "How does evidence apply to holding religious beliefs?"

Sugar on Snow

2007-03-14T10:55:00.001-04:00

This morning at breakfast, I drizzled some maple syrup on my porridge. This time of year, as the frost begins to loosen in the ground and the ice on the pond is covered with a thin film of pooled water, I can feel the sap running in the woodlands of North America. So too, in my soul.

When the sap runs, the earth is approaching the vernal equinox. Daylight is becoming longer, yet the nights are still below freezing temperatures. The earth is softening and it becomes mud season.

Drip, drip, drip, the sweet water flows down through the trees. I sense it within me too. Somewhere, maple trees have been tapped with sap spouts. The tin buckets used for centuries to carry the sweet water to the tanks may have been replaced with plastic tubing; the wood stoves used to heat the evaporators may have been modernized as well; I do not know. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the steam rising from boiling sap will infuse the winter breeze with the aroma of maple syrup. The tree sap is best when the hillsides are still covered in a thick blanket of wet snow. The bird songs have changed to establish territory for new homes. I listen for the chickadee outside my window, as it now sings the tune of "Sweet spring."

One of my favorite possessions is a slice of a maple tree, cut from my uncle’s sugar orchard in Nova Scotia. It was a horizontal cut. One side is still rough from the saw that was used to sever the tree. The other side, my father sanded and then shellacked to enhance the rings within the outer bark. As a child, I often sat and counted each concentric circle that recorded the number of years of life for this particular tree. The innermost rings are smaller and difficult to count. Then as the rings expand out, the first scar marks show where the holes were drilled to extract the sap. The scars reach deep inward through several years of growth in my slice of maple tree, but they never enter the core.

My uncle felled many trees to light the fires in his sugar camp. He began setting aside wood in the summertime so that it would dry and be right for keeping the fires burning long and hot.

It takes a lot of tree sap to make syrup, about four times the amount of sap for each bottle of syrup. The trees will have held onto more sap following a winter that has been consistently cold. And the sap will be sweeter in the years when there has been a hard winter.

Like the sweetness in life, the sap supply is dependent on several factors. The age of the trees; the hardship of a cold weather; a thick blanket of snow covering on the ground; nights below freezing with warm sunny days; and, hard labor all produce more sweetness to be collected.

As I ate my breakfast cereal this morning, I mused about all of this. And, I remembered the taste of sugar on snow. Spring is on the way.

Thank you to Allie in Wonderland and Scott Simpson for permission to use their photos.

It’s Never Too Late for Love

2007-03-11T19:22:00.002-04:00

My Uncle Guy was my mother’s youngest brother. Guy had charm and good looks and a devilish twinkle in his eyes. His sisters and brothers all seemed to understand that Guy was their mother’s favorite. Amazingly, no one seemed to resent that. He was also able to sweet-talk all five of his sisters. As a young man, he developed a reputation for being able to attract any woman he wanted. His family speculated that because it came so easily, he chose to marry the woman who was the least smitten by his allure.

Although my Uncle Guy lived closer geographically to my family, we saw less of him and his family than any of my mother’s other siblings. His wife made it know that we were not welcome in her home. Several of Guy’s brothers chose to ignore the lack of an invitation, but most of his sisters chose to stay away. His three children were ones I did not meet until they we were all young adults. Nonetheless, my uncle could always be counted on when anyone in his family needed him.

When I moved away from my parent’s home and into a college dormitory, my uncle took it upon himself to routinely arrange special dinner "dates" that included his daughter and me. Most of the time, two of our friends who were also living in college dormitories away from home, were invited along as his guests. Those evenings were a night on the town. My uncle would treat us all to dinner in a restaurant that we could not have otherwise afforded. Guy‘s attentiveness and generosity left a deep impression upon me.

Although it was no secret in our family that Uncle Guy was in an unhappy marriage, as far as I know, he never talked openly about it to his own siblings. As the years wore on in his life, my Uncle seemed to grow sadder and more resigned each time I saw him.

There was a hint of sorrow behind his eyes that was deeper than the Funeral Home business he had managed for decades. The grief was also more profound than the role he assumed making telephone calls to notify family members each time one of our kin died. It seemed to me that death had come and taken up residence in his heart.

A year after his wife died, my Uncle Guy surprised me with a phone call just before Christmas. I had not seen him or heard from him in several months. Much to my surprise and delight, I thought I could hear a bit of excitement in his voice. He said he wanted to see me and could be at my house in an hour. I hurried to clean up the clutter in my kitchen, set the table and prepare a fish chowder to serve him for lunch.

When he arrived, he had not chatted long when he announced that he had made a trip to his birthplace in Nova Scotia the summer before. He had just received a videotape of a party he attended there and he wanted to show it to me. I popped it in and as the tape rolled, my 71 year-old uncle exclaimed, "My heart just skipped a beat! That's her!" I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. But, it was clear that the twinkle in his eye was back. He was in love. She was a woman, he explained, that he had romanced when he was young. She had never married in the intervening years.

Life had returned to his heart and he was not about to let this love get away. Within a year, he was happily married to a woman he loved and who loved him.

Lightning

2007-02-17T22:28:00.002-05:00

Thank you to Prescott Pym for permission to use this photo.

When my father would hear the first rumble of thunder, he would often gather us all into the car and drive to the highest point of land where we could get the best view. If it weren’t possible to chase the storm, Dad would position himself on the covered patio on the side of our garage. He would stand there, smoking his pipe, watching and listening attentively. The display of electricity as the sparks shot down from the sky and met the ground below never disappointed him.

It was with the deepest reverence and respect that I learned to watch the bursts of light cutting through the clouds. Even today, I find myself counted the seconds off between the audible jolts of sound that precede and follow the long, jagged, tentacles of sparks. It is hot meeting cold, positive crashing against negative. It is energy and brilliance being discharged so that it can be seen and heard. All the elements of wind, rain, sky and earth are present. Atmospheric scientists explain that the push of two sea breezes, one from the east and one from the west, force air upward. This is a common cause of lightning. The pressures of wind and gravity produce an enormous electrical potential.

It feels so much safer to surround myself with other people who share my values. I search for news reports that reflect opinions I already hold. I protect myself from the explosive power of opposites.

Not too long ago, I looked out the window to see two women walking towards the front door of my house. It was a cold, rainy morning. The two women were carrying a pamphlets and I had a moment of panic as the doorbell rang. Should I just pretend that there is no one home and let them leave their religious tracts by my door? They looked almost as surprised as I did when instead I opened the door wide and invited them to step inside. For a moment, I felt their surprise and indecision, as I had when I saw them come walking down my path. When I risk conflict, I can feel the pressure rise. Often, I can see it rising from the other side too.

The two women chose not to be tempted by the warmth of my home. Returning to their preset agenda, they stood outside in the drizzle and offered me a pamphlet. I declined to accept their gift. We all missed the energy of the opposite forces pushing against each other. We all missed the possibility of conflict and the potential of transformation.

Red Robin

2007-01-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

Thanks to AJ Franklin for permission to use his photograph

My childhood home had a backyard surrounded by a wire link fence. It wasn’t a fence intended to keep things out, but rather a safety parameter for children and small animals. Many a neighborhood child entered the gate of that fence to a zone where they could depend upon attentive listening, honest answers and respect that was extended to people, animals, plants and rocks.

Behind our house, there was a family with four children. The youngest child was born prematurely. The infant weighed two pounds at birth. After spending the first few months of her fragile life in an incubator, she emerged to meet the world totally and permanently blinded by the oxygen. Her name was Robin and it was a fitting name for her since as a child she greeted life with all the enthusiasm a bird displays bobbing for worms on a lawn.

When Robin was still an infant, her mother left. Shortly after that, Robin’s father began dropping her off at our house each morning before he went to work. Robin's three older siblings would go to school. During school vacations, our house was normally filled with children anyway, but Robin spent most of her week days with us until her father remarried several years later. It was the late 1950’s. No thought was given to paying for childcare. My parents both took on the challenge willingly and embraced the lessons that Robin taught us about the world as she experienced it.

Robin was a child not like any we had known before. Children learn many things by watching others. Until we knew Robin, we were unaware that children who cannot see need special training to learn to eat their food. Sucking is instinctual and when left untrained, blind children may never learn to bite or chew their food. When my mother first said, "Chew your food," we watched in utter surprise as she slapped one of her tiny hands on the top of her head and the other under her chin and squeezed as hard as she could while trying to push her own jaw.

Over the first several years of her life, my parents made sure she had many opportunities to explore the world around her. They took her to local farms where she could pet sheep, goats and calves. They included time on their walks in a forest for her to touch the textures of moss, pine needles and sand. She went with our family on picnics where she would revel in the smell of wood smoke and the taste of a dinner cooked in tinfoil. As soon as she entered our house, she would dash through the kitchen and throw open the door to our basement, practically running down the narrow wooden steps to the old upright piano that had once belonged to my grandmother. She had more than a little musical talent. She would sit for long spells playing loudly and then softly. Quite consistently, she would strike perfect chords and invariably play tunes she had only heard on the radio.

The more time we spent with her, the more we came to respect her self-taught survival techniques. When Robin went somewhere new or met people for the first time, her conversation often seemed very repetitive and monotonous. She would ask questions constantly trying to discern, by the answers, who was nearby. She probably also learned a lot just by noticing the different perceptions of the each individual. Interspersed with her words were numerous sharp clicks made with her tongue.

We once took her on a trip to a bird sanctuary to listen to the sounds of the woods and fields. We left the car by the side of a dirt road and went off to explore. On our way back, Robin stopped about thirty feet away from the car and announced with confidence, "There’s the car over there." We puzzled over this statement for some time until she had repeatedly demonstrated her ability to tell when she was close to a car or house. We finally connected the habit of her tongue clicking and the echo that helped Robin to locate large objects in her path.

Few things frustrated Robin. As a child, she never learned the gambits of feeling sorry for herself or being grumpy or petulant. Yet, one day as she was in our back yard, playing a game of toss with other neighborhood children, she came running to my father with a quizzical look and a troubling question. "Which one," she demanded to know, "is the red ball?"

The Book of Changes

2007-01-11T21:27:00.001-05:00

Tree tops
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

When I was 12 years old, I had a doctor tell me that if I didn’t have surgery on my ankles, I would be in a wheelchair soon. I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t feel as confident as I looked. After all, how could I be sure, when I was only 12 and he was a doctor, that he was wrong and I was right? Even so, I didn’t have the surgery. He wasn’t the last doctor to tell me that I would soon be unable to walk and each time I got more and more confident and I made the same decision over and over again. Still walking has does not come easily to me, especially now that I am 57 years old. And, who knows what the future will bring.

Today was the first day when I really noticed that the sunlight is getting longer. I took a walk in the bitter cold and wind. We have had a lot of rain this winter and practically no snow. It’s been unusually warm and I’m not complaining. However, this year I’ve noticed the light and darkness much more than in the past, perhaps because I haven’t been focusing on navigating over icy sidewalks and snowdrifts. The winter solstice was December 22nd and since then it seems like only a short sliver of time between the sunrise in the morning and the sunset in the evening. During that short time, there are long shadows because the sun’s rays are slanted from the south. The increased darkness has made me think more about the darkness of uncertainty. There is so much I don’t know about my future. Most of the time that seems all right to me. Yet sometimes, like on these darkest days of the year, I just want to run ahead and see what the future is going to bring. I imagine a fortune cookie that will tell me the truth or a psychic who will read my cards. But, I probably wouldn’t believe it anyway.

Instead, I toss three coins and read the hexagram for Chien in the "I Ching or Book of Changes." The interpretation is: "Those who persevere make continuous progress." Outside my second floor window, I notice the tall sycamore tree. It is more visible to me without its leaves of summer. Only the round buttonball seeds dangle from the branches in the wind. It’s not a fast growing tree. I wonder how long it took that tree to grow from the seeds inside one of those buttonballs. In the years that I have lived in this house, however, I have seen it grown and change and age. The progress it makes is like the progress I myself have made in life. The tree must have a strong root system I think. It seems to withstand the winds and lightening that has struck down other trees at the top of our little hill. It lets the buttonballs from its branches drop and roll wherever they may. Like me, I think it is well grounded and protected. The tree and I will persevere.

Out of Season

2007-01-09T18:13:00.002-05:00

Out of season
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

It’s been an unusual winter this year. Today, the air feels more as it would in March. Many days this winter have well above normal temperatures. And, there has been no snow that needed shoveling or that lingered on the ground for longer than 24 hours. The pond near our home has not frozen solid enough for the usual skating and ice fishing.

The unseasonable weather has left many on edge and nervous. Conversations turn to anxious discussions about global climate changes out of control. Other parts of the world, we hear in the news reports, are having quite the reverse turn of weather. Yet, despite the concern, many have admitted that the lack of snow and ice has been enjoyable. Of course, there has been just enough bitter cold and chilling wind to remind us all that it is still winter here. The weather could turn at any time. Those of us who have seen it snow in May mutter under our breath that winter is not over yet.

Despite that, I can now here the cheeping birds changing their tunes as they take on the challenges of finding a mate. Walking back to the parking lot from the Botanical Garden a bare pussy willow displayed its spring buds. Left within the branches of the small tree, clearly visible now that the leaves are gone, was a nest. It was carefully constructed and looked as if it had been placed there as an object for winter interest by the gardeners. Yet, I believe only a bird could have crafted this tangled weaving of grass and twigs. The pussy willow buds and nest spoke of spring. Is it false or true? I would guess that some teasing mocking bird pair made us stop and question our senses.

It was a perfect environment for a mocking bird nest, close to the garden with Dogwood blossoms, Holly berries, Sassafras, and Virginia Creeper, not to mention a tempting supply of caterpillars, beetles and earthworms. What better eating for hungry Mockingbird chicks and their parents?

Yes, just as I stop when I hear a mockingbird’s song bringing messages from other species and other places it has traveled, I stopped to observe this nest as if it were a banner. As I walked away, I thought that spring should be appreciated in the moment whether it is season or not. Otherwise, we might just miss it.

Library Mouse

2006-12-13T12:05:00.001-05:00

Photo Copyright © Tom Killick
It was a bitter cold December afternoon. The Children’s Room at the library where I worked was unusually empty, perhaps because of the early darkness and the bitter cold. A few children who were in the room, were amusing themselves by the puppet stage while they patiently waited for their mother to come and take them home. Judy, one of the part-time librarians in the Children’s Room and I were straightening up the collection of books and toys that had been left higgledy-piggledy by children earlier that day. Then, without warning, there was a shriek from one of the children. Judy reached the child first and turned to me with the report, "It’s a mouse!"

As the supervisor of the department, I had already irritated the cataloger at the library with my habit of keeping what he called, "vermin in the library." Up until then, the only rodents that had been kept in the Children’s Room were two guinea pigs. One guinea pig was loaned out on a weekly basis. Using library terminology, it was called our "circulating" guinea pig. Just like best selling books and videos there was a long reserve list for this guinea pig. The other guinea pig was not loaned out and it was therefore delegated as the "reference" guinea pig.

So when Judy reported the mouse sighting, I quickly ordered her not to capture the mouse. As I explained to her, I knew that if we caught the field mouse I would only have two choices: take it outside or give it shelter. I doubted that returning it to the freezing cold outdoors would work, since it clearly had found one of the many cracks and crevices in the foundation of the library.

Nevertheless, when the child continued to scream and then began jumping up on the tables as the mouse darted from wall to a wall, it became obvious to me that Judy was right. We had to catch it. With an empty coffee can and swift teamwork, we had the mouse in a matter of minutes. From the bottom of the can it looked so small, so frightened and oh, so hungry. It took us the rest of the afternoon to construct a secure habitat in an empty fish tank. During my supper break, I made a trip to the local pet supply store for mouse food and comfortable bedding. Within a few days, the mouse had a brand new condominium. Constructed just for it, with zigzagged ramps for climbing and sliding walls that allowed for easy maintenance and cleaning. Each morning one of the librarians would take a turn at cleaning out the soiled bedding and providing fresh water with the mouse’s breakfast. Countless children’s eyes peered through the glass at the field mouse. Before long, the mouse became quite relaxed with being the center of attention for so many curious onlookers.

Weeks passed and the library cataloger even gave up writing pompous memos and making extended monologues at staff meetings about the dangers of "vermin in the library." Then, one morning when I arrived at work, a small cluster of staff members met me at the door. They were looking as if a tragedy had just occurred. "We have some sad news," Judy said. Apologetically she explained, "When I opened the mouse cage to put in the breakfast this morning, the mouse dashed out and disappeared." The mouse had darted away without as much as a "thanks for the accommodations." In my opinion, it was a blessing. Spring was in the air and the mouse was thinking only about returning to its real home, finding a mate and perhaps raising a family. In my imagination, it would soon be telling its own offspring stories about the odd two-legged children that live just behind the stone walls of the library.

Knitting Reincarnation

2006-11-29T20:29:00.001-05:00

There is no need to check the calendar; it is late autumn. Each night begins earlier and earlier and the daylight time is decreasing in noticeable increments. As the winds blow, rubbing bare tree branch against bare branch outside, the chillier temperatures leak into the house through unseen cracks. It is clear that winter is coming. It's time for me to start a knitting project.

I usually knit only in the colder weather. I'm not an expert knitter, but, I find it very soothing and almost trancelike. The strands of yarn loop and curl around my fingers cross over the needles to transform into a new shape. Stitch by stitch the connections are made by my hands, my heart and my soul. The winding yarn wraps family, friends, people who knit and places both known and unknown to me all in one re-embodiment.

As I pick up the knitting needles, I remember the time when my great-uncle Eustace asked me with a solemn tone, "Do you know what 'dyed in the wool' means?" I was a young child at the time and I had no idea. We were visiting in Nova Scotia. My grandmother’s spinning wheel was still prominent in the front room of the house. It was a working farm where cattle, poultry and sheep had been raised for years to feed and support the family. So, I was sure that my great-uncle would know the answer. "Well," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "It means that the sheep were left out in the rain and their wooly coats shrank around their necks strangling them." My father began to chuckle at this point, assuring me that it was a joke.

Knitting not only connects me with people it also connects me to places I have been. A finished knitted garment will remind me each time I wear it of the place I sat as it was created with my fingers. The ones I keep to wear myself all have stories. Some of the ones I give away have stories too, like the 'comfort caps' a group of us from church made last year for the local Cancer Treatment Center.

In my storage bin there are skeins each packed in tightly wrapped plastic bags. One bag holds sand-colored soft medium weight wool, purchased in Blacks Harbour. Handling this yarn, I remember the journey we made to Grand Manan Island. By the time I discovered that I did not have enough yarn to finish the project, I was a long way from New Brunswick. Another choice in my collection is a bulky green wool that still smells of lanolin even after several years. This yarn I purchased from Peace Fleece. With it, I had attempted to knit a "Coup d'etat Cardigan" only to discover that I had gotten hopelessly confused about the cables. A third bag holds remnants from a finished project. Selected in the Wilde & Wooly Yarn Shop, it is a brilliant blue shot through with white strands reminding me of the mist rising over the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The last bag I pull out is a half-finished vest in black tweed. In the cold of the November afternoon, I can see that the project is flawed beyond repair. So, as I have done many times before, I unravel it row by row. Time for it to return to a ball, until my creativity is rejuvenated and I am inspired to begin again.

There is a satisfaction in turning my past failures into a success. What better time than now?

Happy Birthday, Mom

2006-11-16T08:17:00.002-05:00

If my mother were still living, we would celebrate her 94th birthday today. When she died, her body’s ashes were placed in a wildlife sanctuary, among the wild flowers, mushrooms, birds and chipmunks. It is a place that she had walked and enjoyed in her lifetime, not far from the Atlantic Ocean and a salt river.

She had made arrangements, many years before her death, to have her body donated to a medical university. She wanted to be of use even after her death. She wanted to give one last part of herself to others. But most of all, she didn‘t want any money to be spent for a burial or funeral service. She didn’t want any fuss made over her.

Receiving a gift was not a pleasant experience for my mother. For years, my Dad and I gave her presents only to see her face wrinkle with disapproval. Sometimes she would unwrap a gift and criticize what was inside: "Whatever possessed you to get this for me?" The item was either labeled as "too expensive," or "too frivolous." Her words were sometimes angry, indicating her disappointment at the way we had misjudged her wishes.

My mother was indeed a frugal woman, better at saving than spending. She rarely purchased clothes for herself. For years, she made many of her own dresses and knitted most of the scarf’s, mittens and socks. Non-handmade items of clothing that she wore were mostly hand-me-downs. As I grew to be taller than she by the time I was in my early teens, she took possession of the blouses, skirts, slacks and jackets that I had purchased for myself when they became too small for me.

When someone would give her a new pair of gloves or stockings as a gift, she would simply be silent and later we would see that the item had been hidden in the bottom drawer of the dresser that she and my father shared. It baffled me, and sometimes left me feeling helpless at holidays. Over the years, my father and I spent hours selecting presents that we thought might just be the one thing that would make her smile and say sincerely, "thank you, just what I wanted!" It didn’t happen and I never quite understood why.

Now I believe that in addition to modesty and thrift, she valued time more than money. The birthday cake that she made especially for me each spring required not just fresh ingredients but, skill, care and time to prepare.

Eventually, I got the message. I started knitting her vests and sweaters or making her a loaf of special bread when I visited her. In between holidays, I often purchased clothing, books, even jewelry with my mother in mind. I would use an item and then tell her I no longer needed or wanted it. When she was in her 70’s and 80’s she had a much more youthful wardrobe than most of her peers because of these hand-me-down gifts. And these humble presents seemed to respect her values more than any gift tied up with a bow of ribbon.

Veterans Memorial

2006-11-10T20:42:00.004-05:00

Remembered
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

In the town of Holliston, Massachusetts, there is a veteran who has a mission. Each year he hand letters white signs in bold clear black letters with the name, rank, place of birth, and age of each soldier who died in the past year. He has been doing this each November since 2003. With the help of some of his friends, he posts the signs with the names facing the oncoming traffic in both directions on telephone poles that run through streets in town. Each sign has the flag of the country where the soldier was a citizen above the name. They are not all from the United States. They are not all men.

There are so many signs, that they extend into the bordering towns. And, even though the town is small, it takes several minutes just to drive through the long and winding road from one side of the town to the other. The main street is heavily traveled, used by many people from neighboring communities who drive through on their way to work, or shop, or get to some other destination. Many people who do not live in this town probably miss the signs that are posted on the side streets.

When I first noticed the signs, I had already driven past several of them unaware. My thoughts were on where I was going. As one by one the signs and their messages began to enter my consciousness, I realized what they meant. Their simple message began to insert itself into my soul. My breath became shallow and my heart began to beat harder. I slowed down my driving to notice each sign. I tried to read as many names as I could while continuing to drive.

When the traffic speed would pick up, I might get only the first name of a person: Eric, Jose, Chris, Jared, Shawn, James, Terry, and Scot. Then, the ages began to have meaning for me: 18, 25, 32, 50. Each was a person; some may have had children of their own, and even grandchildren. They all had families and friends who missed them now. And each person had a place he or she had hoped to return to some day: Arizona, New Hampshire, Arkansas, or Ohio.

This year someone complained to the telephone company because the "names kept coming at me and coming at me until I was shaking." Shaking in the presence of so much loss, so much sacrifice, seems the least we can do.

Election Day

2006-11-07T22:14:00.001-05:00

I voted today. Change is in the news, as it is every Election Day. Hopes are raised for a better tomorrow as the democratic process is put into action at the voting booths. This year there has been much talk about changing the balance of power in government. There are those who vote in an attempt to keep change from happening. There are those who hope that change will occur after the ballots are counted.

My father was born in 1912. When he wrote his autobiography at my request, he ended with these lines:

"There were a few social changes during the twenties. Boys could get a job delivering telegrams at fourteen, so many still left school as soon as they could work. As these jobs slowly disappeared and education was seen as increasingly important, a law was passed making it mandatory that you stay in school until you were sixteen. The fast approaching depression was partly responsible for this law, as was the passing of the Social Security laws whose main purpose was to remove the elderly from the job market so that recently graduated students could find work. During the depression, it was a common sight to see college graduates selling apples on the street or traveling about with a bucket and mop looking for floors to scrub. Others would stop at factories as the workers arrived and offer to simonize their cars for a dollar while they were at work. It was the breaking out of the war in Europe that opened up the job market. It seems sad indeed that the only way we can keep people working is by war or the threat of war. Another result of the arms buildup was that for the first time we had to pay an income tax and, moreover, have it taken out of our pay. Before this, only the more affluent paid this tax. The bulk of federal revenue came from other sources.

…If you remember those who died for lack of the medical care we take for granted today; if you remember that many women died young, exhausted from having large families and that men worked long and faithfully (as my father did) and when no more physically able to keep it up, were summarily let go with no compensation (as my father was); if you remember that he died, worn out at the age of 77 while I passed that age in relative good health; and if you remember, as I do, that many of the elderly died of worry when faced with the unthinkable alternative of being a burden on their children or going to the "poor farm," then you can weigh what we have lost against what we have gained."

As I read my Dad’s words, I notice how many of those worries that he saw disappear in his lifetime have returned today. What he saw as change and improved living conditions are more fragile than he may have guessed. The rising cost of adequate health care, shrinking funds for education, Social Security, the job ratio and war are all in the news during this election season.

It seems more like a cycle than progress to me. Even so, I voted today.

Election Day 2006, photo by paulhitz.
Paul Hitz writes:
November 1988 I voted for the first time, I turned 18 about 2 weeks before election day and couldn’t wait.
I’ve always thought that these stickers were great conversation pieces to talk to co-workers and strangers about the elections. Some got washed some I didn’t get, the rest ended up here on my mirror as a reminder.
I don’t take my Right to vote for granted.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

2006-10-22T21:19:00.003-04:00

After a day of autumn rain and wind, the late afternoon skylight seemed to glow from the clouds above with a warm yellow. The world outside our windows was golden from the wet autumn leaves covering the ground or clinging to a few trees. It changed the light inside so dramatically that we stopped what we had been doing and went outside to get a clear view. As the rain diminished to a drizzle, the sun appeared for the first time all day, low in the West. As we watched, the winds blew away the remaining clouds and there was the rainbow at sunset. Cupped inside the rainbow, the sky was rosy pink and beyond the rim, it was blue.

The rainbow, symbol for hope, with the blue sky lying just outside of it… just the way the song from the Wizard of Oz describes. Happiness, just outside of our grasp.

My father taught me to hope. In my memories of him, I see him as he sometimes stood with his eyes on the horizon. He often commented that for him, "anticipation is better than reality." Frequently, if I had experienced some pain or sorrow that day, my Dad would say, "tomorrow will be a better day." As a child, it was reassuring to hear as I was tucked me into bed for sleep.

Most children have things to look forward to. When we are very young, it seems that much must be delayed until we have gained enough age, education or abilities. I spent years waiting to be old enough to apply for a driver’s license. When I was 9 years old I thought, if I only had a dog I would be happy. My mother told me that before I could get a dog I had to have enough money to buy it, feed it for at least one year, pay for all its required vaccinations and veterinary costs and incidental care.

Calculating this cost, I realized it would take years to save on the allowance I received. So, I took on my first fundraising campaign. I started by writing each aunt and uncle who had been known to give me a present in the past. My Aunt Ivy made the most frequent and generous donations to the "doggie fund." Often she would write a little note with her check made out in my name about the dog she knew I desired.

Of course, when I finally did get the puppy of my dreams, it didn’t take long before I was dreaming of something else that would make me happy. The habit of hope was firmly fixed in my brain by then. It has the benefit of being an incentive to keep trying.

Delaying happiness has serious drawbacks though. Seeking perfection can be very isolating and disappointing. Chasing the elusive rainbow for the pot of gold, can distract me from what is happening this moment. Wanting to be something I am not, to be better, stronger, healthier, or more attractive to others leaves me feeling lonely. Perfection is in fact impossible to achieve.

The awareness of now brought me outdoors to see the rainbow at sunset. It had not been a perfect day. Yet, joy did not need to be postponed until tomorrow.

Both Sides

2006-10-19T20:32:00.003-04:00

In the final months of my mother’s 91st year of life, she became fascinated watching the clouds in the sky. She called them "European clouds." When I asked her why, she said they had been described in a book she had read. It was important to my mother to have a name for things she liked. She once said that the reason she learned to identify wild flowers was because she wanted to be able to call her friends by their names.

Mom herself had been named for a flower, Daisy, and perhaps this contributed to her personal relationship with nature. She kept a small collection of field guide identification books in case she should discover some plant or animal that she did not already know. For years, she wrote little journals that had the names of each fern, tree, bird, flower and mushroom that she had encountered that day.

After years of living with Parkinson’s Disease, osteoporosis, she experienced a series of stokes that left her unable to use her identification skills in the last two years of her life. Even then she did not stop cherishing the world she encountered. My mother cherished being alive. In fact, she clung to life tenaciously for almost 92 years and seemed genuinely surprised by the gravity of her final illness. The illusion of living endlessly had become a part of her spirit.

As a child, I repeatedly asked my mother, "What happens when you die?" Her response was always the same, "I don’t know because I haven’t died yet." She knew enough about nature to know that life and death are necessary to each other. She had experienced grief many times after a loved one died. Yet, she had only experienced living. She only knew one side.

In explaining death to me, she would also say that she had seen enough births to know that newborns appear unwilling to enter the gateway to the living; witnessed by their screaming and crying and struggle to breathe on their own. “We forget that we didn’t want to be born,” she would explain. My mother believed the same was true about dying. As I watched my mother in her final days, it was unmistakable that she too was struggling. She didn’t want to go to the other side.

Life appears so ephemeral at times, like drifting clouds in the sky. On the other hand, like clouds, life seems to be endless. One cloud transforms, moves out on, and another comes into view.

My "to do" list is like a cloud filled sky. Items pop up, get accomplished, and more tasks are added. Sometimes it seems my list tempts me into believing that my life will last until all the things on my "to do" list have been checked off. Like the clouds, however, things are accomplished on my list and disappear from the list, as others come into view and are written down. I know that whether my list is completed or still in progress, I will die.

The clouds drifting across the sky are a visual reminder to me of the passing of time and the illusion of the endless flow of life. For me, it is best to simply observe the clouds, and the changes in the weather that they can signal.

Thank you to S. Dunn Perry for permission to use her photo.

Maturity

2006-10-17T18:18:00.001-04:00

At the time when the cerebral fibers in the frontal lobe of my brain began to mature, I became aware of my mortality and my desire to make plans for the future. It’s intriguing to me that bodily changes so profoundly influence states of mind and spirit. Some time in our late teen years or early adulthood most humans, but not all, experience a physiological change in their brain that allows for better impulse control, improved long-term memory and therefore a stronger ability for judging when and where to take risks.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to fully grasp what my parents meant when they said, "be careful crossing the street." I had, except for rare occasions, taken care crossing the street as a child, but not because I understood what would happen to me if I was hit by an oncoming car. When I was a teenager, I began to comprehend that my life would end one day. And, it could end sooner, if I was not careful or did not think ahead.

With this enhanced understanding that my brain could now handle, I began making plans. I had as a child noticed how my father had longed for a higher education. My parents had set aside money into a college fund for me and it had been clearly part of their planning for many years. Yet, when I reached high school the barriers to bringing this plan into reality became apparent.

The High School that I attended was a granite structure with steep exterior and interior staircases. During those years of my life, I experienced repeated injuries to joints, particularly my ankles that made climbing stairs dangerous and even impossible. The only accommodation for my education was a home tutor.

Nonetheless, I graduated from high school with sufficient grades and test scores to show that I could be accepted to a college. The first three colleges I applied to returned my applications with the explanation that their campus was not accessible. When I sent my application off to a University listed as having accessible classroom and dormitory facilities, I chose not to provide any information that would indicate my "special needs." The University accepted my application, much to my joy and requested an intake interview. At the interview, the admissions staff person could not keep her eyes off the rather bulky orthopedic shoes I was wearing or the aluminum brace that extended up to my knee. It wasn’t long into our conversation when the admissions person released a heavy sigh and said, "Well, you can come to this school, but I doubt we will find anyone who wants to be your roommate."

As I left the building, I chose to make my statement by skipping, like a small child, down Commonwealth Avenue. As I shook off the stinging words, I could feel the joy bubbling in my heart. I was in whether they wanted me or not. And, it made me smile to see heads turn as the "cripple with the leg brace" danced down the city street in defiance.

Marking Time

2006-10-09T12:16:00.001-04:00

This week I sent my friend Marie a birthday message. I am so grateful for the years that we worked together, and for the many lessons she taught me about never giving up on people. We don’t see each other often any more, yet we remember each other by sending postcards from our travels, holiday greetings, notes of sympathy and birthday wishes.

She responded to my birthday message and wrote, "I am in the middle of redoing my house ... Now walls and woodwork have been painted and though I'm delighted with the changes, I have much to sort out and am ready to have the house back to myself. So much for progress. I love the 'Lily Lavender' color of my living room. Maybe I’ll finally get through the boxes from my folks' house."

When she wrote that the oxymoron "now then" had tickled her into laughter, it set me to wondering.

Now the apples, squashes, pumpkins, cabbages piled high in farm stands signal that the harvest is in. The work of planting, fertilizing, weeding and picking is ending for another year. There are fewer flowers in bloom from the seeds planting last spring in gardens. I have shifted my potted perennials indoors again as the nights are becoming chilly. Now then.

"To everything there is a season" from the Book of Ecclesiastes, 3:1-8, in the Jewish Bible, was a reading in the funeral service I attended last week. The rite of passage honored the 82 years of a woman’s life. Her children, in-laws, nieces, nephews, grandchildren and friends came to remember and observe the harvest of that life. It was a time for honoring the differences that one life had made in the lives of so many others. It was a time to notice that this woman’s grandchildren are now adults themselves and some of them will undoubtedly have children and grandchildren of their own some day. Now then.

As the fruits from the season before are spread out, I observe the harvest today and turn towards setting in provisions for the season ahead. Today I will cook applesauce from the apples picked off the trees yesterday. I will freeze most of that applesauce to use this winter. Now then.

Balance

2006-09-23T12:52:00.001-04:00

OH, TO BE YOUNG AGAIN
Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

Summer is turning slowly into autumn here. The daylight time has gradually been decreasing, while the night darkness becomes longer bit-by-bit. Today is the autumn Equinox. The Equinox is the moment when the Sun is located right over Earth’s equator. It happens only twice a year, once in mid-March and once in mid-September. Today, for a short time, while the Earth is rotating around the Sun, the rays will not be pointed towards the northern hemisphere or the southern, but directly at the middle. It will seem for those of us on Earth, that the daylight and the night darkness are balanced equally.

Where I live, it is not just the light that seems balanced. Temperatures seem more moderate, neither the higher temperatures and humidity of summer nor the piercing cold and dry winds of winter. The green leaves on the deciduous trees around me are gently turning from green to yellow, soft orange and red, before dropping to the ground below. The world around me seems between young and old, between birth and death.

It’s not easy to maintain balance. Perhaps that is why there are only two days in each year when this planet has an Equinox. And, because it is not easy, it deserves a celebration and appreciation.

Almost 20 years ago, on this date I was driving home when my car rolled over on the interstate highway, toppling upside down, and landing only a short distance from a small tree in the strip of grass between the entrance and exit ramps at the exchange. It was about 10:00 at night and I was on my way home after having worked more than 12 hours that day. It happened so quickly.

It surprised me how easy it was for a simple chain of events to unbalance my usually stable car. First, my eyes spotted a skunk meandering in front of my path. Without thinking about the high speed of my travel, I titled the steering wheel to the left in an attempt to avoid crushing the critter that seemed out for an evening stroll. As I realized my car was now heading directly toward the median strip and across to the vehicles speeding in the opposite direction, I jerked the wheel of the car to the right, slammed my foot on the brake and said a quick "It’s been a good life." In a few brief seconds, it was over.

The car tumbled over, then landed right side up on the grassy strip. I unbuckled my seat belt and stepped out to see a beautiful clear night sky filled with stars. My eyes averted the crumpled car beside me. In only minutes a police officer came to investigate. He asked, "Did you fall asleep at the wheel?" and I responded, "No, I was awake for the whole thing."

So today, on the Equinox, I celebrate the mystery of those rare occasions when life is in balance and respect those times when it is not.

Shoe Laces

2006-09-15T17:24:00.003-04:00

COOL SHOES
Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

A long time ago, I was born with a very rare bleeding disorder. Actually, I bleed just fine. My clotting is disabled. To be more specific, my blood does not clot at all without a transfusion of the clotting factor that my body does not produce on it's own. It seems appropriate to me to use the term "disorder." Living with a bleeding disorder can topple my to-do plans into chaotic debris at the most unexpected times.

It’s not like the fairly tale "The Princess and the Pea" or the phrase that has been spoken to me so many times in an anxious tone, "does that mean you could bleed to death from a small cut?" No, it does not and no, it is not about a softer mattress. It means that shoelaces can be hazards to my health.

Recently, I spent the better part of one day in a hospital being infused with clotting factor to stop a bruise that was swelling at the top of my foot. "How did this happen?" the doctor asked. As I feel my shoulders droop and my eyes focus on my own knees, it seems I have taken on the body language of the three-year old still inside me. I mutter, "I laced my shoes too tightly."

More often than not, it is the kind of accident that would have no noticeable impact for someone with the ability to clot. Like the accident that happened to me in a parking lot, on my way to my annual mammogram appointment. On that occasion, my right arm met the side-view mirror of a parked car. On the side-view mirror it says, "Objects in mirror appear closer than they really are," and this mirror itself was closer to me than I expected.

Because of my bleeding disorder, this type of accident can transform my plans for several days and even weeks. This one refocused my attention almost immediately. The bruise, between my wrist and elbow, was noticeable within minutes. It swelled and grew as I fretted about my options. The technician in radiology could provide no ice pack for temporary relief. Even after all these years, it’s hard to switch plans, like the ones I had made for the remainder of that weekend.

I’ve learned not to listen to the mother‘s voice that I internalized long ago. I still hear her voice saying, "What did you do?" Those words sound accusatory to me, as if I had inflicted the pain on myself through my carelessness or stupidity. Mom meant well, though, and her training about how to be attentive has minimized my injuries. It still crosses my mind that if I hadn't been in a hurry to get to the appointment on time... if I just hadn't been so preoccupied with having a mammogram, it would not have happened. After all, I did not get a bruise from the mammogram itself, which sometimes happens. So, why can’t I just listen to Bobby McFerrin's voice singing in my head? "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

"What happened to you?" I imagine people asking me in the next three to four weeks as the bruise enlarges, spreads and then fades away slowly. "Oh, I got into a fender bender with a parked vehicle and my arm was damaged, but the car is fine."

It's About Love

2006-09-05T19:29:00.002-04:00

Today is our Anniversary. My spouse and I have been together 32 years now and more and more people ask us, "What is your secret to a long marriage?" The truth is, it’s not a secret. It’s love. We don’t hide it; we are not ashamed of love.

What makes a love last? Who knows! Love terrifies and endangers some people. It can be abused, but not forced. It can grow stronger with attention and caring over the years or it can atrophy. It can be a powerful force for change. It can transform the impossible into the possible. It’s love that gives me the strength to look beyond my ego in order to live up to the promises I made in our wedding ceremony.

My spouse and I have kept our marriage vow to offer one another love as an unchanging constant in our lives. In times of joy and sorrow, abundance and want, comfort and affliction we have continued to love each other. And, yes, after 32 years we still expect to do so as long as we both shall live.

The other part of the truth is that for the first 30 years we were together it was not legal for us to marry. Friends and family see that today we do not celebrate two years, but 32 years, of loving one another. I pray that those who feel threatened by our commitment to our marriage will someday experience a love that is great enough not to be diminished by fear.

Beginning of Life Decisions

2006-09-04T21:11:00.004-04:00

My maternal grandmother gave birth to one child every two years until she had five sons and five daughters. It was said that Grandmother was appalled that any woman would have a child any more frequently that that. Grandmother expressed her scorn by saying, "She must not know how to use a thimble." That meant they didn’t practice appropriate birth control. Her children, including my mother, saw the irony in where she drew her moral line.

Of my grandmother’s ten children, six did not have any biological children. My mother had several miscarriages prior to conceiving me. In what she believed to be a last attempt, Mom opted to take a prescribed medication that was thought to prevent unwanted miscarriages. Later it was determined that the medication was not only ineffective, but that it created serious health problems. I was her first and last-born child.

When I was still a youth myself, my doctor told me that I would never be able to withstand a pregnancy, because of my particular type of bleeding disorder. This was true. I’ve watched in my lifetime as many women now carry a child with the help of medical technology that did not exist ten or twenty years ago. Women who have past their fertile years, women who are not in sexual relationships with a man, or women who love a man who is unable to provide the Y-chromosomes for the child they want may all give birth to children now. It also seems that more and more I hear of newborns who survive only because of medical interventions that would not have been possible a few years ago. Some people question how this moral line has stretched.

This expanded potential for childbearing with the help of technology is mirrored by the way in which it has become medically safer for potential parents to make decisions about when and how often to give birth. It seems that many question this capacity for increased human decision-making on when a life begins. During my grandmother’s, and my mother’s and my own lifetimes, we all knew some women who chose to use birth control and made decisions to terminate a pregnancy. We also knew of women who, against their will, had a pregnancy aborted by the brutality of the child‘s father.

We each draw the moral line for this pregnancy and against that one where we are able. Others may see irony or even sinfulness in our decisions. Yet, it seems to me, that they are the best decisions people can make under the circumstances of their lives at that moment in that era.

Communion

2006-08-28T14:24:00.003-04:00

Sunday was chilly and the rain clouds were moving in as I set my pot of vegetarian chili onto the grill at the Church picnic. Even though my mother died two years ago, when I cook, I still cook with her guiding my hands.

When I was a child, every Sunday evening in the cold weather, we had waffles and ice cream for supper. Friends and neighbors would drop by our house on Sunday evenings even when the winter snow was falling fast and thick. Moreover, despite the weather outdoors, they would all arrive in enough time to join in the tradition my parents had created. However, it wasn’t just the waffles and the ice cream that brought them to our back door. Mom’s homemade canned peaches created the magic. At the end of every summer, my mother took bushel baskets of fresh peaches, peeled and pitted them, cooked them in sugar syrup and stored the sealed jars in our basement. There were enough jars of canned peaches to put on top of the ice cream covered waffles for each Sunday during the chilly days of late autumn and winter.

When the weather turns cold and dampness works it’s way into my aging bones, as it did today, I still think about cooking with my mother. I started "helping" her cook when I was so young I wasn’t tall enough to reach the counter top in our kitchen. My childhood friends and I learned how to measure and sift ingredients following my mother’s instructions. We kneaded bread dough and tasted cake batter by licking out the large wooden spoons we had used to stir it all together.

There was more than food processed in my mother’s kitchen. The conversations that happened as we prepared food and ate together were part of the plentiful feast, part of the communion.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of the day that my friend Sherry was tossing the bread dough in the air and it went so high that it stuck to the kitchen ceiling. Slowly, as everyone in the room held their inhaled breath, the gooey and slightly gray colored substance oozed back down into my friend’s waiting hands. Sherry had an abusive alcoholic father. None of us was aware of the secrets she held inside herself then. Reshaping the sticky, soiled mess back into form, Sherry said with a satisfied tone, "That’s ok; I'll bake this loaf for my Dad." There was something about the way she said it that sounded important. No one, even my mother, questioned her decision. Sherry carefully carved "Dad" onto her loaf and baked it in the oven with the rest.

Witness

2006-08-22T13:20:00.001-04:00

Joshua T (by Michael Reagan)
Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

I believe we all need witnesses in our lives. We desire the kind of empathetic bystanders that care for us. We want other people with the willingness to observe and be present even though they are at some distance or have never met us face to face.

At a distance, it's often the images and the written words that give the ability for others to witness events. Storytellers, songwriters, reporters and photographers can be very skilled at being the eyewitness to events that happen too far away for us to personally behold. Perhaps that is why so many of us have started blogging. It is certainly one of the reasons why I sometimes randomly look at other blogs. I assume that the people who created them wish for others to see what they see or read what they have to say.

To bear witness is a burden to take on. It can be hard to be fully present for a wedding ceremony or a funeral service. To bear witness is not just to be in attendance, but also to fully observe, despite the personal anxiety or conflict it can create. Some people cannot tolerate sitting by a hospital bed even with a loved one. Some carry gifts in the hope that the giving of an object will bring joy or convey sympathy without the need for more personal interaction. Egos get in the way, harsh words can be spoken easily in argument or defense of opinions. But, what has the most meaning for me when I am ill or facing a difficulty is the witness of a loving presence. I had a reminder of this during the past week.

Those times in my life when I have been able to let go of my own fears and conflicts to listen deeply to someone who is in need of such a witness, have widened my world. So, I strive to do this more.

The power of having a witness has shown me a light at many times in my life. And, I am particularly grateful when someone is willing to bear witness for me and give testimony to the events that shape who I am.

The reservoir

2006-08-16T15:23:00.002-04:00

Swirling pool
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

When I was growing up, my family often drove to Quabbin Reservoir. We liked to check to see how high the water was in the spring and picnic there in the summer. In the autumn, the hues of gold and crimson leaves were doubled by the reflections on the water. My mother would pack a picnic lunch for everyone, including any neighborhood children who wanted to join us. In less than an hour, we would escape the city and drive into what seemed to me to be a magical place.

Quabbin Reservoir was constructed when Winsor Dam and Quabbin Dike were built in the 1930’s to hold the water back in the Swift River Valley. Water flows in from several rivers. It also trickles down from the surrounding hillsides when the snow melts in each spring. Then the water is carried off for millions of people to use every day. The project took more than 10 years to complete and in the process, many small towns were altered forever. Entire towns were displaced, homes destroyed and cemeteries relocated. But, as a child, little of that meant much to me. What mattered was seeing the vast expanse of collective waters.

Climbing to the top of the observation tower, we could get a clear look at the vastness of the water that was dotted by pointed islands, which were once hilltops. My father would drive us across the Dam and then down the backside. We often set up our picnics at the bottom where there was a grove of trees. Once the car doors were open, all the children would begin by climbing to the top of the Dam. When we reached the top, we would all lie down on our sides and roll like sausages down the grassy steps that held the water back. At each of the step’s landing, we would walk to the next stage of the slop until we reached the bottom safely.

Sometimes, we would explore the woods and discover what had previously been a farm or pasture. Old stonewalls that had surrounded private property at one time remained, yet the houses and barns had all been removed. At the base of an old apple tree, we often found morel mushrooms with their shriveled caps. However, we harvested nothing except memories. Usually, I felt stronger when we left a visit to Quabbin, than I had when we arrived.

There were times when there wasn’t as much melting snow and falling rain. Water usage in the city and suburbs continued to increase and the water became noticeably lower and lower at the reservoir. I don’t live as near to the reservoir as I did when I was young, and at least 25 years had passed since I was last there. During those years, I have gone through periods of my life when my inner reservoir has been drained by serious illness, care and concern for loved ones and grief.

This year, I heard someone say that the water level at Quabbin was higher than it had been in years and I knew I wanted see it again.

The reservoir was as holy as I remembered it on the hot and humid summer day. It surprised me to see that cars are no longer allowed to drive across the dam and many roads had been blocked from traffic. The spillway that I had often seen empty had water cascading over the top. The water was so clear that I could see the ivory veins of granite stone at the bottom of the swirling pool.

I made a promise to myself to pay more attention to the things that fill me up and strengthen my ability to spill over for those who are in need.

The Two Wolves in My Heart

2006-08-13T18:57:00.005-04:00

An American Indian story tells of a grandfather who was talking to his grandson. The grandfather says, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one." The grandson asks, "Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?" And, the grandfather replies, "The one I feed."

Most of the time, I prefer to see myself as willing to get involved to help others. I don’t perceive myself as vengeful, angry or hostile. Yet when I come across aggressive people, like some of the drivers I encounter when I venture into the city, I realize that I also refuse to be bullied.

The other day, I was driving through a city that, many years ago, was quite familiar to me. A lot of the landmarks I formerly used to help me navigate are gone now. There are empty lots where I remember buildings and construction has changed the look of the area enough so that I slowed down in an attempt to read street signs. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do. An impatient driver with a very large red truck pulled up closer to the rear bumper of my car than seemed safe to me.

Sensing by his hand motions and reading his lips in my rear view mirror it was clear he was angry at my driving speed. Yet, on the narrow streets he was also unable to pass and I was unwilling to pull over. Instead of speeding up, as the man in the red truck seemed to want, I slowed down. Much to my companion’s horror I said, "You think this is slow, now try this!"

Now the truth is, I value slowness more and more as I age. It has wonderful benefits to my health as well as my spirit. The cliché about stopping to smell roses is indeed true for me. Several years ago, the story about the two wolves fighting inside of the grandfather inspired me to maintain a regular meditation practice. For meditation one must slow down to be aware of just one moment at a time. I believe that practice feeds the part of me that is loving and compassionate, making it stronger. The vengeful side of me is still there, although less and less these days. And, when it arises, I do not let it win my heart.

Blending the Old and the New

2006-08-05T17:45:00.003-04:00

Shirley, my oldest friend, and I went to a Quilt Festival this week. It’s not that she is older than any of my other friends, I tease her. We remember when together we used to climb the apple tree outside my grandmother’s farmhouse. The tree seemed very large to us then, but the branches were low to the ground and easy to reach with our 5-year-old arms. It was more like sitting on a swing than climbing a tree, but the peanut butter, honey and graham cracker snacks we ate there always tasted better than they did in the kitchen.

At the Quilt Festival we saw an exhibit, "Blending the Old with the New." The quilts displayed were designed by Paul D. Pilgrim. He had used heirloom quilt blocks, abandoned by the person who created them perhaps because of death or old age. The artist then created something different from what was originally intended. The finished design honored the past while also moving in a new direction.

Shirley told me about the energy she senses from an antique quilt top that she recently purchased at an Indian Trading Post outside of Oklahoma City. She describes it as having "amazing colors and the vintage fabrics give you a glimpse into the past" She is eager to add her own energy as she works with it.

Images of quilts blending the old with the new reminded me of the power I sense from the spirits of my ancestors. It brought to mind stories from my family and my experience and the wisdom I draw from them. Lately, I am noticing that when another person describes a place or a time we shared, it usually is quite different from what I remember. What we saw, felt, thought, heard and tasted are altered by our senses and our interpretations. I marvel that what we each observe and notice can be similar yet changed.

When I read my cousin B's descriptions of our shared grandmother’s home in Nova Scotia, the contrast from how I would tell the tale is striking to me. There is only one year of difference in our ages and we grew up in homes less than 100 miles apart. Yet, because of differences between our mothers, we met for the first time as adults.

We now live more than 1,500 miles apart and in the past year we have become closer through our stories than we were ever before. By reading B's stories, I connect in a way that is beyond kinship. I honor her journey and the way she has traveled it. Her stories sometimes bring tears to my eyes and her cryptic email messages often make me laugh. Still we see the world very differently. When I told her I was going to a Quilt Festival, she shot back, "So how’s life in the fast lane?"

As a quilt may be stitched together by many hands around a circle or completed generations later, my belief is that we can all transcend the differences that divide us in space and time with our stories.

Burden or Blessing

2006-07-28T16:09:00.005-04:00

Penny
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

On Tuesday evening when we came back home after having dinner with friends, there was a voice mail message from my father in-law saying, "I fell again today." He is 87 years old and this was the second time he fell this month. His voice sounded weak and his breath shallow. After we called him back, he was gently persuaded to go to the Emergency Room and get an x-ray. We drove him from his senior housing apartment to the hospital. It was clear that he was having a lot of trouble walking just to get from his doorway to the car. It was almost midnight when the doctor informed him that he had two cracks in his pelvis. They admitted him to the hospital and told him that he would need to learn to use a walker. He would have to keep all weight off his leg for the next six weeks. With a barely audible voice, he responded, "I just don’t want to be a burden."

Loosing independence is hard. I have experience at that. And, this will indeed cramp both his independence as well as ours. The sadness that comes from thinking you are a burden, is a familiar feeling for me. My earliest childhood memories are mingled with my repeated medical issues. Since I was born with a severe bleeding disorder, I learned at a very young age how suddenly a joyful day’s walk in the park could change into a medical emergency. As a result, family plans can be altered for days and even weeks. Before I was 6 years old, I had convinced myself that I was a burden on my parents and nothing that my parents said really changed my mind.

In fact, because my parents had rarely been ill themselves, I now think they didn’t understand why I would feel this way. They didn’t seem to notice that most of our family defined their worth by what they did, not their medical diagnosis. I could see my parent’s worries about money, even when they tried to hide them. I knew money in our home was short because of the bills that were received after each trip I made to a doctor or to the hospital. I knew why vacation plans had to be cut short or holiday celebrations ended abruptly for every member of my family. It was because of a crisis that required me to get immediate medical attention.

Now, however, I can see the other side. Part of that I learned from taking care of our dog, Penny. We adopted Penny from a local humane shelter eleven years ago. She hadn’t lived with us for a full year when she began having seizures, not unlike epilepsy. Being part Beagle, she also loves her independence. She doesn’t follow commands easily and seems to believe she knows best what is right. Yet, she wants to be as close as possible to her family, which she considers to be her pack. Penny demands the center of attention when the human family members try to have a conversation, and wedges her body between my spouse and myself when we attempt to sit side by side. She is a needy and willful dog that often stretches my compassion and generosity to the limit. The veterinary bills for her care have shrunk our budget just as her medical needs have limited our independence. She has triggered my anger and made me feel ashamed at my emotions.

Finally, I came to understand that Penny is my shadow self. Her traits remind me of the parts of myself that I would rather not see or recognize. When I opened my heart to Penny, I healed something deep inside of me. When I understood why I chose to care for her, protect her; provide for her needs I could finally see the full value in myself.

Penny has given me the gift of knowing that it is not what you do for yourself, or for others, that make you a being of value. Burdens can also be a blessing.

Life Lessons

2006-07-24T23:06:00.006-04:00

Turtles basking on a tank
Originally uploaded by Jim Frazier

When I first saw this photo, I was so drawn to it. The critter companions that I carried home when I was a child were often turtles. I considered them all temporary guests and would make sure to see them well placed back in their original homes after they had a brief visit with me. The turtle that taught me to do this, I carried to a reservoir not far from my home, so that it could get a drink. I believed it was thirsty. I held the turtle's shell tight, thinking that I would just allow it to drink and then carry it back to my home. As soon as it touched the water, however, it gave one strong push with it's legs and off it swam with great joy... free from the clasping hands of a friendly, but silly, two-legged child.

My father dug a hole in the center of our vegetable garden and covered the bottom of the hole with a plastic liner to make a wading pool for a box turtle that I carried home from the park. Dad also constructed "guest rooms" out of clear plastic and wooden frames for toads, caterpillars and spiders. When a tiny bed-and-breakfast guest arrived for a stay, the children of the neighborhood helped to deliver an ample supply of fresh water and meals that suited the guest’s individual taste. In return, we got to observe toads beginning to sweat profusely then shedding their skins by pulling the old tight skin up over their back and finally over their head, then pushing it into their mouth and eating it. Nothing wasted. Before our eyes, caterpillars transformed into cocoons and spiders caught their dinners on their webs. Each type of spider had a different web pattern and used only that pattern over and over again if the web was torn or destroyed.

The first snake I captured lived for a short time in a glass jar in our kitchen. I covered the jar with stocking hosiery that my mother had discarded. As the snake warmed up in the house, it found the run in the stocking and crawled out, surprised my mother when it popped its head out from behind the refrigerator. At the time, Mom was talking on the telephone to one of her friends and she calmly said, "Sorry I have to hang up now, my daughter’s snake is loose." Mom’s friend let out a horrified scream, but my mother simply picked up the snake, and suggested that it was time for me to set it free once again.

Each one of the backyard guests had lessons to teach. The lessons I liked the best were about transformation, survival and the mystery of life in it’s many forms.

Reflection

2006-07-09T13:12:00.005-04:00

REFLECTION
Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

When my parents were 86 years old, they moved out of their home and into ours. One of the few things that my mother insisted on bringing with her was a 2-year supply of Ivory Soap. Mom had carefully un-wrapped each bar from the paper covering it. Then, she placed the soaps in a used shopping bag, so that they would harden and last longer. Reduce, reuse, recycle that was what she believed and how she lived. That soap was as practical as my Mom, no fancy fragrances or additives, no sentimentality. My Mom believed in tangible things that you could touch, see, hear, smell or experience. When I was a child, I asked her what happens when a person dies? She said, "I don’t know. I haven’t done that yet." When my mother died, one of my friends told me to expect a big wind. Apparently, a Buddhist monk had told my friend that when someone very spiritual dies, there would be a big wind. At the time, I laughed inside thinking of a literal big wind, like a hurricane or a tornado. I don’t know if my mother would have laughed or frowned at the thought of being described as a "very spiritual person." But I do know that she defined herself an atheist.

I cannot see the wind itself, but I can feel it. In a strong breeze, I can see the effects of the wind as leaves flutter or branches swing. That does seem to me very like the spirit of a loved one who continues to move others after death.

My cousin B tells me that several years ago one of her friends died. She says, "He was not quite 48 and he left behind a wife and three beautiful daughters and an entire community in mourning. He was a very good man and his death was incomprehensible to those who had known him." People said the usual clichés: "God works in mysterious ways;" "it’s a blessing for his pain to be over;" and, "we're not meant to understand God's ways." But B could see that "underneath all that noise was rage and resentment that God had seen fit to take such a good man in such a cruel way and leave us all trying to make sense of a senseless death."

Not long after this man died, my cousin began thinking about life and how precious and short it is. In B's words, "all I seemed to have were memories and snapshots. So, I picked up my camera - something my friend would've liked - and began taking pictures again. I shoot people, animals, things and places that I love."

Each life starts ripples that extend in ways we cannot predict or fully know.

Paradox

2006-07-02T11:26:00.003-04:00

Calliope
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

Calliope, the calico cat, woke me up at 5:00 a.m., as she energetically chased her elusive tail around at the foot of our bed. Some mornings, it appears to be a tail out of her control. She whirls, spins, and then catches the tail with her own front paws. She looks surprised when it escapes her grasp. Sometimes, I wonder if she understands the tail is a part of her. It has been a year since we welcomed Calliope into our home. She is a muse in her own right and inspires many a good tale. She likes to spoon the back or belly of a sleeping 2-legged or four-legged family member, melding herself into another body. I view these as contradictions in her nature. She is able to be detached from her own physical self and also to merge with another being almost as if it was a part of her.

Calliope came to live with us several months after Dixie, a tuxedo cat who was part of our household for16 years, died. She was a lesson in contrasts as well: the seeming opposites of black and white in her coat that defined her. Dixie never learned to fully retract her claws and often inflicted injury on others. At times, she seemed gleeful in the way she could tease and torment Penny, a mixed-breed of part Beagle and part Brittany spaniel family member. At these times, we described her as the evil stepsister. She also had a keen intuitive sense about where my aches or pains of the day were located -- choosing to sit right where it would hurt the most. The irony was, she would leave her usual solitude to be present with any family member who was experiencing grief or loneliness. At one time or another, all the other family members told her their sorrows and fears. At these times, she would settle not on a lap, but by the person’s feet appearing to watch and listen with attention.

My thoughts drift to observations about aspects of my life that seem incompatible. There are things that are difficult for me to admit, even to myself. There are parts of my life that bring up sadness. I would prefer not to experience these or to move away and beyond quickly to happier times or thoughts.

Now, I work to see my life more as I view Dixie and Calliope. The pleasant and the unpleasant are simply a part of the whole. Furthermore, it is the contrast, which gives meaning and forms the holy in my life.

For me it is doubt that allows me to have true faith.

It is the awareness of death that allows me to fully understand the value of life.

It is the sorrow in my life that enhances my joy.

The suffering has helped me to understand that healing can occur in many ways.

It’s not easy being alien

2006-06-24T17:25:00.006-04:00

tayloralien
Originally uploaded by BSmaurer.

One of my recurring fantasies as a teenager was being rescued by an alien space ship and taken to another planet where all of the inhabitants were like me, in that they had blood that would not clot. Bacteria that were killing anyone who had blood that would clot had infected Earth, in this fantasy. And so, there were only a few of us who had survived.

It was a mean-spirited fantasy, because the virus struck all the members of my family as well as my friends. The imaginary story, I believe, grew out of responding to too many people asking me if I would die from a cut on my finger, too many relatives giving me hugs and then exclaiming that they were overjoyed to see me still alive, and too many medical professionals telling me (or my parents) that I would not live long enough to become an adult. These reactions to my bleeding disorder didn’t make me timid or afraid; they made me angry.

The unwanted pity I received for not being allowed to ride a bicycle like others my age; the senseless praise I received for being brave, when it did not appear I had a choice, left me feeling set apart. The reality was that I was often lonely even when surrounded by friends and family. My most comfortable friendships were formed with children who either were hospitalized themselves or had gone through a long rehabilitation period for a major illness or injury. Those children understood the humor and the absurdity that I experienced. None of us seemed to feel sorry for one another or afraid of the judgments made upon our expected life spans.

When I was 12 years old, I had an internal bleeding episode that resulted in exploratory surgery requiring multiple transfusions and a lengthy hospitalization. In the children’s ward of the small city hospital, I met a boy who had deep tissue burns over much of his face and body. He had thrown an aerosol can into a campfire just to see what would happen. Patrick had already undergone many reconstructive surgeries and had been in the hospital for many weeks when I arrived. I wasn’t horrified, as so many others were, by the look of Patrick’s scarred and disfigured face. Neither did he back away from the I.V. pole that was my dancing partner. In the next few weeks to come, we formed an alliance. We raced wheelchairs down the hall to see how many nurses we could enrage and played countless practical jokes on unsuspecting doctors. I believe now, we were daring them to see us only as children -- not to alienate us by calling us suffering, wounded, or courageous.

Lift Every Voice and Sing!

2006-06-17T14:58:00.014-04:00

SASH BLUES
Originally uploaded by oneeyeddogblues

This morning I could hear a voice outside my window. At first, I thought it was one of our young neighbors singing and happily unaware that the tune was drifting on the wind to my ears. Then, the voice became louder and more powerful. I realized that it was not a child, but an adult singing. How rare, I thought to hear a solitary and spontaneous song coming in my window. The voice came from a woman who was gardening. When I looked out the window, I could see that she was listening to tunes with a headset, unaware of the musical energy that she was creating for others to hear. Absorbed in the music as she dug into and pounded the earth, she seemed as if propelled by it. She was rejoicing in the moment and unaware of any outer or inner censor that might have told her to hush.

In my life, I have met two people who told me that they actually thought in music. One of these was a woman who often whistled or hummed songs aloud. In this way, clever listeners could actually read her mind by listening to what tunes came from her lips.

Most of the time the thoughts that drift through my head are in the form of words. Yet, often in the morning as I awaken it is with a song in my head. Music is often in harmony with my mood rather than my thoughts. When my mother was in the last weeks of her life, I heard music in my head that I had not heard for many years. The tunes were the lullabies that she had sung to me as a child and the music that had given me spiritual solace in times of pain.

When I was undergoing a strenuous medical regime a few years ago, I asked a friend to mail me a CD of healing songs. She had intended to use her own voice, yet she invited a child who was visiting her that day to participate. My friend’s songs were lovely and soft. The little girl spontaneously composed several tracks and these were tender even mournful at times. The refrain of the child’s song was, "Pretty blue sky, why are you blue?" The child, who was just reaching an age where she was becoming self-conscious, began to laugh with a mix of embarrassment and joy at her singing. The laughter was a clear note in the chords of the blues she sang.

My cousin B tells me that she believes the blues have the most meaning for her. One of her photos is inserted with this post. When I look at it, I can almost hear the music and it lifts my spirit.

One in a million

2006-06-09T10:36:00.019-04:00

I often ponder the unique quality of my single life. The mixture of genes that makes us each unique and special and the experiences of birth, living and dying that bring us all together or separate us even more.

My stories are jumbled with the folklore of my family and my interpretations of the events that I have experienced. Stories get re-shaped from telling and re-telling. Nevertheless, there is truth in all stories. Truth to be told and truth to be heard.

When I was a few months old, my parents recognized that there was something amiss with their first born-child. I had unexplainable black and blue marks after routine immunizations. As I began to toddle around, it became even more apparent that I was particularly susceptible to bruising. At two years old, I was diagnosed as having congenital afibrinogenemia. For a medical explanation I recommend Medline Plus Medical Encyclopedia.

It was not until I was two years old that my condition was properly diagnosed as congenital afibrinogenemia. That would have been about 1951, and at that time there were only two or three other cases of afibrinogenemia that had been identified. Dr. William Dameshek, a hematologist in Boston, was the doctor who correctly identified my bleeding disorder. I was very lucky to have been under his care until he 1966 when he retired from Tufts New England Medical School.

Among other things, this is a blog about my experience as a person with a severe bleeding disorder. This is not unique, but it is rare. I am, as my friend Amy puts it, "one in a million."