The NY Times today published an article about a multi-generational family living together due to the recession’s financial impact and outlining the struggles that family faces.
I always wanted to have everyone live together. My mother used to accuse me of wanting to have my entire family living in little houses in my back yard. And she was right. And so that article really hit me hard this morning. People losing their jobs and not being able to find another. People resorting to essentially living in their bedrooms. People holding on to that last step before homelessness.
I’m touched again by how incredibly lucky I am. I have a job I love. A family that’s dysfunctional just enough to be interesting and not quite enough to have turned us all into sociopaths. Loving children whom I get to see whenever I like. A wonderful mom-in-law. A true friend who just happens to be my husband. A good marriage.
And the opportunity to love them all. I have the privilege of being able to help people occasionally. I have a home in a safe place, all the stuff I could ever want or need, too much to eat and good health.
And as I am thoughtful regarding those without, I am thankful for all that I have as I turn my face towards the new year.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Happy Father's Day
Thank you to all the Dads who make their daughters feel like they’re the most beautiful, smartest and best little girls in the world.
And since I’m not a guy, I can only hope that father’s make their sons feel competent and confident in being a man.
Happy Father’s day to my brothers and brothers in law, who do that very thing every day.
Happy Father’s day to David, who takes care of everyone in his life. I don’t think our father taught him that. I think our mother taught him that trick. By the time my sister was 11 and my brothers were in their late teens, our father had died. My brothers are smart men and somehow they’ve figured it out without Daddy to guide them directly.
My brother in law Bob didn’t have a sister. He had to learn to parent a girl. And Allison is confident and smart and gorgeous and I think she knows it yet doesn’t flaunt it. My nephew Kegan is confident and smart and handsome and an individualist. They’re well-adjusted kids thanks to the parenting both my sister and Bob have done. Kudos to Bob on Father’s Day.
Happy Father’s Day to my children’s father, Jeff. Our daughter is comfortable in her skin because Jeff treated her like a princess. Patrick is the McGyver of James Island…because his father taught him in a million little ways how to rely on himself and how to figure out ANYTHING. Katie is a wonderful woman and Patrick a wonderful man because Jeff was their father.
And a huge Happy Father’s Day to Michael. Marrying into a family of grown children and being patient and strong and steadfast for them always. Thank you, Mike, for always being there for them and for me.
Daddy, I hope you can see how well we all turned out. So Happy Daddy Day to all the great men in my life.
And since I’m not a guy, I can only hope that father’s make their sons feel competent and confident in being a man.
Happy Father’s day to my brothers and brothers in law, who do that very thing every day.
Happy Father’s day to David, who takes care of everyone in his life. I don’t think our father taught him that. I think our mother taught him that trick. By the time my sister was 11 and my brothers were in their late teens, our father had died. My brothers are smart men and somehow they’ve figured it out without Daddy to guide them directly.
My brother in law Bob didn’t have a sister. He had to learn to parent a girl. And Allison is confident and smart and gorgeous and I think she knows it yet doesn’t flaunt it. My nephew Kegan is confident and smart and handsome and an individualist. They’re well-adjusted kids thanks to the parenting both my sister and Bob have done. Kudos to Bob on Father’s Day.
Happy Father’s Day to my children’s father, Jeff. Our daughter is comfortable in her skin because Jeff treated her like a princess. Patrick is the McGyver of James Island…because his father taught him in a million little ways how to rely on himself and how to figure out ANYTHING. Katie is a wonderful woman and Patrick a wonderful man because Jeff was their father.
And a huge Happy Father’s Day to Michael. Marrying into a family of grown children and being patient and strong and steadfast for them always. Thank you, Mike, for always being there for them and for me.
Daddy, I hope you can see how well we all turned out. So Happy Daddy Day to all the great men in my life.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Granny Panties
When did you start wearing underwear?
And stop wearing panties?
For most of us I suspect it’s a gradual thing. We’re 3 year olds wearing easy-to-wash cotton panties. Then about middle school or high school we start off wearing bikini bottoms, or even thongs. After college, we might advance to low slung, high cut legs. We probably move on to a slightly higher waisted model, perhaps after having children and sporting a little muffin top. Next we move one size up. We hang out with these panties for several years. But we buy pretty lacy one.. Black ones. Silky ones. And maybe matching bras.
At this stage we’re still going to Victoria’s Secret. Our significant other is still buying lacy things for us.
When we’re not nude we’re sleeping in teddies on our anniversaries and maybe our Sig O’s birthday. A little sumthin sumthin. But children come along, and they’re climbing into bed with us. They’re puking and peeing and generally being little people. We put clothes on to sleep. A big tee shirt. A cotton nightgown.
And some time between 40 and 50, we find ourselves at Wal Mart, in the cotton underwear aisle, buying 6/pk Hanes for Her. Two sizes larger than when we were 18, if we’re lucky.
We’re buying granny panties. The kind you can hoist up a make shift mast on your home made raft when you need a sail to get you off the deserted island Gilligan landed you on.
Maybe we’ve left a husband and THANK the GODDESS we can wear something comfortable again! He might be out there with a thong-clad 24 year old, but at least we can be comfortable in our great big undies while we eat Turtle Tracks right out of the carton, over the sink.
Maybe we’ve reached that absolute time in our lives when we give up uncomfortable clothes that ride up on us and lodge in the very places we’re trying to cover.
For me, it was when my aunt died, and I flew home without packing undies. My sister and I went to the mall and I went to Belk’s and I bought white cotton underwear. The kind my aunt used to wear. The kind I caught my grandmother in. Comfortable, dependable, breatheable cotton underwear. No one to impress. No one to worry about whether they thought I was getting old. Just comforting. Comfort-ing. Simple times. Simple underwear.
We come full circle. Cotton to cotton. Comfort to comfort.
Kiddie. To Granny.
Panties to…underwear.
And stop wearing panties?
For most of us I suspect it’s a gradual thing. We’re 3 year olds wearing easy-to-wash cotton panties. Then about middle school or high school we start off wearing bikini bottoms, or even thongs. After college, we might advance to low slung, high cut legs. We probably move on to a slightly higher waisted model, perhaps after having children and sporting a little muffin top. Next we move one size up. We hang out with these panties for several years. But we buy pretty lacy one.. Black ones. Silky ones. And maybe matching bras.
At this stage we’re still going to Victoria’s Secret. Our significant other is still buying lacy things for us.
When we’re not nude we’re sleeping in teddies on our anniversaries and maybe our Sig O’s birthday. A little sumthin sumthin. But children come along, and they’re climbing into bed with us. They’re puking and peeing and generally being little people. We put clothes on to sleep. A big tee shirt. A cotton nightgown.
And some time between 40 and 50, we find ourselves at Wal Mart, in the cotton underwear aisle, buying 6/pk Hanes for Her. Two sizes larger than when we were 18, if we’re lucky.
We’re buying granny panties. The kind you can hoist up a make shift mast on your home made raft when you need a sail to get you off the deserted island Gilligan landed you on.
Maybe we’ve left a husband and THANK the GODDESS we can wear something comfortable again! He might be out there with a thong-clad 24 year old, but at least we can be comfortable in our great big undies while we eat Turtle Tracks right out of the carton, over the sink.
Maybe we’ve reached that absolute time in our lives when we give up uncomfortable clothes that ride up on us and lodge in the very places we’re trying to cover.
For me, it was when my aunt died, and I flew home without packing undies. My sister and I went to the mall and I went to Belk’s and I bought white cotton underwear. The kind my aunt used to wear. The kind I caught my grandmother in. Comfortable, dependable, breatheable cotton underwear. No one to impress. No one to worry about whether they thought I was getting old. Just comforting. Comfort-ing. Simple times. Simple underwear.
We come full circle. Cotton to cotton. Comfort to comfort.
Kiddie. To Granny.
Panties to…underwear.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
A Neighborhood
I grew up in a poor family. Until I was thirteen I shared a room with my two little brothers in a 4 room apartment in Norfolk, Va. Naturally, like everyone else in a poor childhood, we didn’t know we were poor. No one in our apartment complex had money. But we had free run of our apartments which faced the Lafayette River. Woods ran down to the inlets of that river and we played there and in the large open fields throughout the apartments until our parents yelled for us to come home for dinner. After dinner we ran out again. “You all better be here when the street lights come on!” our mothers would warn us.
We went to a high achieving school with the richer children whose homes surrounded the complex. We walked to school like everyone else. We brought our lunches like everyone did. I was so sheltered that I didn’t know until junior high school that my clothes were ten years out of date, hand-me-downs from my older cousin Lois.
When I was 13 we moved to a small town in North Carolina. Once again, we rented but this time it was a house in an old section of town, across the street from an even poorer neighborhood. While still poor ourselves, we lived on the fringes of another world. Yet my brothers and I were never afraid to walk through that section of town. We went to school with kids from there. We went to the same little neighborhood credit grocery stores they did. We played softball and baseball and basketball with these kids. And we were never afraid to be in that neighborhood. The worse thing we saw was old men in the alley behind “RB’s Independent Grocer”, drinking out of brown paper bag covered bottles and hooting and hollering occasionally. Or the old crazy woman who took her reclaimed Piggly Wiggly shopping cart around the neighborhood to pick up bottles to turn in for the deposit.
Drugs. Drug users. Drug dealers. Drug buyers. That’s the major difference I see in the poor neighborhoods now from the poor neighborhoods of my youth.
When I was a little girl, we could live in a poor neighborhood and not be afraid. If you were poor, you could raise your children there and not be afraid they would end up in a morgue. You worked to get your kids out of there. Like my mother, you expected your children to work so they would have it better than you did. You sacrificed for your kids and over and over and over again let them know that there was another way out of poverty….education and hard work. Now, I’m not sure hard working poor parents in poor neighborhoods can get that message to their children.
Today I read that the murderers of a bright 15 year old teenager were sentenced to life in prison. The child, a twin, was killed as a substitute for his brother, who owed drug dealers $200. And because “You can’t be seen as sweet,” one of the killers said. So when they couldn’t find the brother who owed them money, they took the next best thing.
Would you live in this neighborhood? Where no one would come forward to the police, even though they see a murder? Where many people know who shot a 15-year old but won’t tell? A neighborhood where you’re not sure you could let your children play with someone else’s child because you wouldn’t know who would be hanging out at that house? Where you were afraid to stay in your own living room if it faced the street because of stray bullets? Or you worry every time your child walked to the school bus stop that they would see someone getting robbed or accidentally shot in a shower of drive by retaliation?
You would if you were poor.
We went to a high achieving school with the richer children whose homes surrounded the complex. We walked to school like everyone else. We brought our lunches like everyone did. I was so sheltered that I didn’t know until junior high school that my clothes were ten years out of date, hand-me-downs from my older cousin Lois.
When I was 13 we moved to a small town in North Carolina. Once again, we rented but this time it was a house in an old section of town, across the street from an even poorer neighborhood. While still poor ourselves, we lived on the fringes of another world. Yet my brothers and I were never afraid to walk through that section of town. We went to school with kids from there. We went to the same little neighborhood credit grocery stores they did. We played softball and baseball and basketball with these kids. And we were never afraid to be in that neighborhood. The worse thing we saw was old men in the alley behind “RB’s Independent Grocer”, drinking out of brown paper bag covered bottles and hooting and hollering occasionally. Or the old crazy woman who took her reclaimed Piggly Wiggly shopping cart around the neighborhood to pick up bottles to turn in for the deposit.
Drugs. Drug users. Drug dealers. Drug buyers. That’s the major difference I see in the poor neighborhoods now from the poor neighborhoods of my youth.
When I was a little girl, we could live in a poor neighborhood and not be afraid. If you were poor, you could raise your children there and not be afraid they would end up in a morgue. You worked to get your kids out of there. Like my mother, you expected your children to work so they would have it better than you did. You sacrificed for your kids and over and over and over again let them know that there was another way out of poverty….education and hard work. Now, I’m not sure hard working poor parents in poor neighborhoods can get that message to their children.
Today I read that the murderers of a bright 15 year old teenager were sentenced to life in prison. The child, a twin, was killed as a substitute for his brother, who owed drug dealers $200. And because “You can’t be seen as sweet,” one of the killers said. So when they couldn’t find the brother who owed them money, they took the next best thing.
Would you live in this neighborhood? Where no one would come forward to the police, even though they see a murder? Where many people know who shot a 15-year old but won’t tell? A neighborhood where you’re not sure you could let your children play with someone else’s child because you wouldn’t know who would be hanging out at that house? Where you were afraid to stay in your own living room if it faced the street because of stray bullets? Or you worry every time your child walked to the school bus stop that they would see someone getting robbed or accidentally shot in a shower of drive by retaliation?
You would if you were poor.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Truth and Facts
Is a fact truth? I’ve been pondering that a lot for the past several weeks.
Our minister seeded that thought in my mind on Easter Sunday. Unitarian Easter services often revolve around re-birth, the coming of spring and renewal. He chose to talk about Wanda the Fish, who’d died but came back to life as she was about to be buried. He told the children the story of Jesus, who’d not been a popular person with the authorities, had been tried and sentenced to death by them, and then born again. Each, an allegory about being born again.
Every culture has stories of rebirth. But was the story of Jesus’ resurrection just that, a story? Or was it a fact?
A few weeks ago I posted a message on my Facebook account about a Christian church group picketing outside a high school with signs that read, “God hates fags.” That sparked a lot of debate from friends and family weighing in on the issue. Many quoted the Bible and that popular phrase about men lying down with men. A few sent me messages about the inconsistencies within the Bible and “how can people believe in a faith where one minute you should take an eye for an eye and in the next, commit a mortal sin if you murder someone?”. Some wrote that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. Others wrote that the church doing the picketing isn’t really a Christian church despite those members’ claims. Quite a few of my Unitarian friends just nod their heads and tell me it’s hard for them to be tolerant of such intolerance of others. Communion is flesh transmogrified, but no, it’s just symbolic
So what is the truth here? How can so many people have such different views about this and so many other volatile subjects? And why would anyone rely upon a book written 2000 years ago to justify wars and killing and hate towards others? How can people I know be so unremittingly sure of themselves about something that’s contrary to what millions of other people believe?
I think, like the allegory of Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection, it’s a matter of truth versus fact. For some reason known only to them, the religions they’ve chosen meet their needs. If it didn’t, they search for something else to meet those needs. That search might or might not lead them to their own or another religion. They may have to re-think the way they think about beliefs.
Burt Keller, a Congregational minister, once told me that people have their beliefs and they swim along quite happily until something comes along to jostle that belief. It could be a war, or someone’s death, an illness or a natural disaster. And once shaken, they’re never quite the same again. Their faith may be stronger, or it may weaken. They may look around at the diverse world we live in and wonder how so many faiths others than theirs can be wrong. And once they’ve thought about that, perhaps they will be able to see their beliefs as not a literal fact, with only one person’s interpretation, but perhaps, just for a moment, they may be able to see a message. Not a fact. But a truth.
Our minister seeded that thought in my mind on Easter Sunday. Unitarian Easter services often revolve around re-birth, the coming of spring and renewal. He chose to talk about Wanda the Fish, who’d died but came back to life as she was about to be buried. He told the children the story of Jesus, who’d not been a popular person with the authorities, had been tried and sentenced to death by them, and then born again. Each, an allegory about being born again.
Every culture has stories of rebirth. But was the story of Jesus’ resurrection just that, a story? Or was it a fact?
A few weeks ago I posted a message on my Facebook account about a Christian church group picketing outside a high school with signs that read, “God hates fags.” That sparked a lot of debate from friends and family weighing in on the issue. Many quoted the Bible and that popular phrase about men lying down with men. A few sent me messages about the inconsistencies within the Bible and “how can people believe in a faith where one minute you should take an eye for an eye and in the next, commit a mortal sin if you murder someone?”. Some wrote that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. Others wrote that the church doing the picketing isn’t really a Christian church despite those members’ claims. Quite a few of my Unitarian friends just nod their heads and tell me it’s hard for them to be tolerant of such intolerance of others. Communion is flesh transmogrified, but no, it’s just symbolic
So what is the truth here? How can so many people have such different views about this and so many other volatile subjects? And why would anyone rely upon a book written 2000 years ago to justify wars and killing and hate towards others? How can people I know be so unremittingly sure of themselves about something that’s contrary to what millions of other people believe?
I think, like the allegory of Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection, it’s a matter of truth versus fact. For some reason known only to them, the religions they’ve chosen meet their needs. If it didn’t, they search for something else to meet those needs. That search might or might not lead them to their own or another religion. They may have to re-think the way they think about beliefs.
Burt Keller, a Congregational minister, once told me that people have their beliefs and they swim along quite happily until something comes along to jostle that belief. It could be a war, or someone’s death, an illness or a natural disaster. And once shaken, they’re never quite the same again. Their faith may be stronger, or it may weaken. They may look around at the diverse world we live in and wonder how so many faiths others than theirs can be wrong. And once they’ve thought about that, perhaps they will be able to see their beliefs as not a literal fact, with only one person’s interpretation, but perhaps, just for a moment, they may be able to see a message. Not a fact. But a truth.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Vanity
Isn’t it ironic that the things you’re the most vain about are often the very things you lose? Ironic? Or justice? And if justice… from whom or what?
When we lived in Florida my ex husband used to remark that the only group of people of whom he was prejudiced was the group of people he’d be a member of --if he was lucky…old people. How ironic.
No one could ever have been as vain of her legs as was I. They were my best feature. But now… now they have those teeny tiny red road map lines travelling from my knees across to my inner thighs. And a strange sort of knot has arisen from my shin… the result of too many track meets when I was in high school and not enough warm ups. The cellulite on my thighs laughs out at me when I try on bathing suits. Why can’t they make those pantaloon suits, so popular in the roaring ’20’s, popular again? I have bursitis in my hip which wakes me every night as I lie on my right side, facing away from my husband so he doesn’t have to listen to me snore in his ear. At least one of us should get some sleep. Yes. My legs are gone. I can camouflage them in the winter in black tights and still look stylish. But come summer, its long skirts for me- eccentric is beginning to look good.
As my legs have deserted me, however, a stranger vanity has replaced them. I have never been proud of my hair. Its’ limp curly strands never behaved like the shampoo ads promised. Now, however, just when it’s definitely time to start thinking about abandoning the hair color aisle, my hair starts to do exactly what I always wanted it to do. It’s become straighter. And a bonus! Thicker. And even better… it’s gotten long. OK, I agree that the long thing has something to do with me. A few years before my mother died she commented on my hair, “You can’t be letting it grow out. Old women don’t look good with long hair.” Some part of me believed her because after that conversation I chopped it all off and up until now have never let it get longer than my chin.
But a few months ago I decided to let it grow. Defiant of my mother I thought, “Mom, I’m letting it grow to my ass.” I like that vision- my long half-gray hair swinging down my back in one long braid. Or wound, grandmother style, around my head.
Ironic? Now that my hair is graying and probably getting finer and definitely falling out a little… to decide to shake my fist at my mother and all other naysayers… and, yes, to my knees too… and let it be what it wants to be. Is it vain to enjoy something about yourself that you know will leave you? Does it make one a little shallower to be proud of something which you surely don’t have any control over… be it knees or hair or skin or eye color? And if you’re proud of it, will you grieve when it waves goodbye?
I’m sad that my good looking legs aren’t what they were when I was 20. But they’ve taken me places that I never could have envisioned. They’re worn and the knees sag a little. But they’re me. And the hair? That’s me, too. A wiser me that knows not to kick a gift horse in the mouth. And not to get too attached to something that can detach with a few snips.
I hope my Mom can see me. And I hope my Grandmother is standing beside her somewhere… her own hair, which I would brush for her, wound in braids around her head. And I hope they’re both smiling.
When we lived in Florida my ex husband used to remark that the only group of people of whom he was prejudiced was the group of people he’d be a member of --if he was lucky…old people. How ironic.
No one could ever have been as vain of her legs as was I. They were my best feature. But now… now they have those teeny tiny red road map lines travelling from my knees across to my inner thighs. And a strange sort of knot has arisen from my shin… the result of too many track meets when I was in high school and not enough warm ups. The cellulite on my thighs laughs out at me when I try on bathing suits. Why can’t they make those pantaloon suits, so popular in the roaring ’20’s, popular again? I have bursitis in my hip which wakes me every night as I lie on my right side, facing away from my husband so he doesn’t have to listen to me snore in his ear. At least one of us should get some sleep. Yes. My legs are gone. I can camouflage them in the winter in black tights and still look stylish. But come summer, its long skirts for me- eccentric is beginning to look good.
As my legs have deserted me, however, a stranger vanity has replaced them. I have never been proud of my hair. Its’ limp curly strands never behaved like the shampoo ads promised. Now, however, just when it’s definitely time to start thinking about abandoning the hair color aisle, my hair starts to do exactly what I always wanted it to do. It’s become straighter. And a bonus! Thicker. And even better… it’s gotten long. OK, I agree that the long thing has something to do with me. A few years before my mother died she commented on my hair, “You can’t be letting it grow out. Old women don’t look good with long hair.” Some part of me believed her because after that conversation I chopped it all off and up until now have never let it get longer than my chin.
But a few months ago I decided to let it grow. Defiant of my mother I thought, “Mom, I’m letting it grow to my ass.” I like that vision- my long half-gray hair swinging down my back in one long braid. Or wound, grandmother style, around my head.
Ironic? Now that my hair is graying and probably getting finer and definitely falling out a little… to decide to shake my fist at my mother and all other naysayers… and, yes, to my knees too… and let it be what it wants to be. Is it vain to enjoy something about yourself that you know will leave you? Does it make one a little shallower to be proud of something which you surely don’t have any control over… be it knees or hair or skin or eye color? And if you’re proud of it, will you grieve when it waves goodbye?
I’m sad that my good looking legs aren’t what they were when I was 20. But they’ve taken me places that I never could have envisioned. They’re worn and the knees sag a little. But they’re me. And the hair? That’s me, too. A wiser me that knows not to kick a gift horse in the mouth. And not to get too attached to something that can detach with a few snips.
I hope my Mom can see me. And I hope my Grandmother is standing beside her somewhere… her own hair, which I would brush for her, wound in braids around her head. And I hope they’re both smiling.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Take a breath and let it go
Not only have I turned that corner of Fifty and Forty Street but now I’m flying down Highway 53. And it’s dawned on me that I am loving this ride. I love the wind in my face and my grayish hair blowing wildly about the car. I am comfortable in this seat and the steering wheel feels at home in my hands. I have learned, not completely but better, how to take a deep breath and to let go.
It started in my 40’s, I think when I took a drawing class. I have no natural art talent yet I love art and museums. So when I saw an ad in our local paper for a community drawing class, I thought I’d give it a try. It was cheap. It was in our local high school at night. I could walk there. No reason not to go. And I loved it. I loved it because I let myself love it. No expectations. No Picasso wannabe or even a Grandma Moses. No requirements for a grade. Just me, drawing a circle over and over and over again. It was the first thing I remember attempting, in my life, where I allowed myself to not even try to be the best. Just to enjoy. It took a long time to get to this one point. Like 3 years of weekly classes.
And the lesson I learned there has bubbled over into other areas of my life. I can see it in my relationships with people.
A young woman came into my office today slightly tearful. She is deeply in debt and desperate for a solution. She asked my opinion about making a dramatic move in her life. She needed to act.
I listened to her and then asked her to take a deep breath. And to imagine the very worst thing which could happen. And what would her life be like if that thing she dreaded happened. To take a breath and to let go.
Lately I’ve noticed I’ve become better at listening to the other side of an argument. I think I’ve gotten more patient. And I’m smarter about knowing which battles to fight and which ones won’t matter. It’s a lot less stressful to little things go.
Lydia was one of my dearest friends. She was at least 50 years older than me when we met. She lived across the street from me when I was a young mother and I idolized her. A sort-of-family member distantly related to my husband’s mother, Lydia took an interest in me. Eccentric and independent, a staunch liberal and highly educated, she was and is what I would like to be. “Never get in a battle of wills with a two-year old,” she told me. “Dishes don’t have to match,” she said on another occasion. And my favorite advice was this: “Don’t worry about something unless it will matter when you’re Eighty.”
Dearest Lydia, thank goodness it only took me thirty years to absorb this.
It started in my 40’s, I think when I took a drawing class. I have no natural art talent yet I love art and museums. So when I saw an ad in our local paper for a community drawing class, I thought I’d give it a try. It was cheap. It was in our local high school at night. I could walk there. No reason not to go. And I loved it. I loved it because I let myself love it. No expectations. No Picasso wannabe or even a Grandma Moses. No requirements for a grade. Just me, drawing a circle over and over and over again. It was the first thing I remember attempting, in my life, where I allowed myself to not even try to be the best. Just to enjoy. It took a long time to get to this one point. Like 3 years of weekly classes.
And the lesson I learned there has bubbled over into other areas of my life. I can see it in my relationships with people.
A young woman came into my office today slightly tearful. She is deeply in debt and desperate for a solution. She asked my opinion about making a dramatic move in her life. She needed to act.
I listened to her and then asked her to take a deep breath. And to imagine the very worst thing which could happen. And what would her life be like if that thing she dreaded happened. To take a breath and to let go.
Lately I’ve noticed I’ve become better at listening to the other side of an argument. I think I’ve gotten more patient. And I’m smarter about knowing which battles to fight and which ones won’t matter. It’s a lot less stressful to little things go.
Lydia was one of my dearest friends. She was at least 50 years older than me when we met. She lived across the street from me when I was a young mother and I idolized her. A sort-of-family member distantly related to my husband’s mother, Lydia took an interest in me. Eccentric and independent, a staunch liberal and highly educated, she was and is what I would like to be. “Never get in a battle of wills with a two-year old,” she told me. “Dishes don’t have to match,” she said on another occasion. And my favorite advice was this: “Don’t worry about something unless it will matter when you’re Eighty.”
Dearest Lydia, thank goodness it only took me thirty years to absorb this.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Publisher's Clearinghouse
From the time we were able to watch TV and understand the commercials, my sister and brothers and I were convinced that we would win Ed McMahon’s Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes. Our mother assured us that this would happen. It was a given.
We sat in her cozy kitchen, drawing endless designs of the houses we would build once we cashed the check. Our houses were always set on compounds not unlike what we envisioned the Kennedys owned. THE Kennedys. As in Jacqueline and John F’s family home. A compound where we would each have our own little house and my mother would rule supreme in a matriarchal style. When we heard a knock at our door- very uncommon since my mother didn’t encourage drop by guests- our hearts would pound and we’d push each other down to get to the door first. We knew as soon as we opened the door we would have to battle balloons and reporters while the Sweepstake van idled at the curb, spilling Ed out with that giant cardboard poster of a million dollar check made out to Us.
But usually the only person knocking at our door was someone to read the electric meter, little old women trying to save our souls or Aunt Julia Mae with her yipping dog who never failed to bite us. The dog. Not Aunt Julia Mae (who, if she could have gotten away with biting us, would have I am sure).
So we waited. And Waited. Filled out multiple subscription and entry forms. Spent uncounted hours arranging the furniture in our imaginary houses. Imagining the cars we would drive…. The horses we would raise on our huge estate…. The parties we would hold! The optimism and hope we stirred up among ourselves.
So we Waited. And Waited. And we lived in limbo for years, always expecting that we would win and be transported from our modest poverty into “A Comfortable Life.” And yet, we did not win.
There was a time when we each realized that this money was not likely to come our way. We set about going to school or joining the Air Force. Having babies and making homes. We moved on. But we could see no plans our Mom was making to take care of herself after our father died. She never lost the conviction that she would win it big. After we grew up and moved away she traveled, gypsy style, between our houses, living with first one and then another of us for several years before moving on to the next child’s home, the next grandchildren to spoil and pamper.
She sat at our kitchen tables drawing diagrams of extensive family compounds and pulled her grandchildren into her spell of expectation. Soon it was the grandchildren running to answer the door, imagining a giant cardboard check.
And while none of us ever did win that million dollar sweepstake, Mom did achieve her fondest wishes as if she’d won. She had her family around her. She lived A Comfortable Life, out of poverty and fear of where the next dollar would come. And she reigned her own little kingdom, Matriarch Supreme.
We sat in her cozy kitchen, drawing endless designs of the houses we would build once we cashed the check. Our houses were always set on compounds not unlike what we envisioned the Kennedys owned. THE Kennedys. As in Jacqueline and John F’s family home. A compound where we would each have our own little house and my mother would rule supreme in a matriarchal style. When we heard a knock at our door- very uncommon since my mother didn’t encourage drop by guests- our hearts would pound and we’d push each other down to get to the door first. We knew as soon as we opened the door we would have to battle balloons and reporters while the Sweepstake van idled at the curb, spilling Ed out with that giant cardboard poster of a million dollar check made out to Us.
But usually the only person knocking at our door was someone to read the electric meter, little old women trying to save our souls or Aunt Julia Mae with her yipping dog who never failed to bite us. The dog. Not Aunt Julia Mae (who, if she could have gotten away with biting us, would have I am sure).
So we waited. And Waited. Filled out multiple subscription and entry forms. Spent uncounted hours arranging the furniture in our imaginary houses. Imagining the cars we would drive…. The horses we would raise on our huge estate…. The parties we would hold! The optimism and hope we stirred up among ourselves.
So we Waited. And Waited. And we lived in limbo for years, always expecting that we would win and be transported from our modest poverty into “A Comfortable Life.” And yet, we did not win.
There was a time when we each realized that this money was not likely to come our way. We set about going to school or joining the Air Force. Having babies and making homes. We moved on. But we could see no plans our Mom was making to take care of herself after our father died. She never lost the conviction that she would win it big. After we grew up and moved away she traveled, gypsy style, between our houses, living with first one and then another of us for several years before moving on to the next child’s home, the next grandchildren to spoil and pamper.
She sat at our kitchen tables drawing diagrams of extensive family compounds and pulled her grandchildren into her spell of expectation. Soon it was the grandchildren running to answer the door, imagining a giant cardboard check.
And while none of us ever did win that million dollar sweepstake, Mom did achieve her fondest wishes as if she’d won. She had her family around her. She lived A Comfortable Life, out of poverty and fear of where the next dollar would come. And she reigned her own little kingdom, Matriarch Supreme.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving
Yesterday I went into a natural food store. I love going into this store. I buy milk there, in the glass bottles which remind me of when I was younger and the milkman twice a week left our order by the front door. I buy yogurt there and cheese. I can always find vegetable broth in the big cartons. The produce is organic and the meat is free range and hormone-free, the breads whole-wheat and natural, boasting no preservatives. I know this food must be good for you. And yesterday it was brought home to me- only the well to do can afford to eat these healthy foods.
The woman in line in front of me was buying a fresh 12 pound turkey. The cash register: $51.53.
Fifty dollars for a turkey.
My frozen turkey, bought at Piggly Wiggly, was $7.87. Full of hormones, I’m sure, and probably raised on a turkey-mill farm. But affordable to many.
I was stunned, to be sure. Then I looked at the people around me, buying last minute Thanksgiving goodies. WASPs, all of them. White Anglo Saxon Princes and Princesses. Well-dressed- and I know this because they wore very expensive shoes….Danskos and Naots and Keens and Merrells….( I’d just been in the shoe store next door which, once upon a time, used to carry shoes which were much less than $259 and $112 on sale). The women carried expensive handbags in their manicured hands. No one was overweight. Everyone looked well-cared for.
They carried their purchases, in environmentally friendly reusable bags, out to Mercedes and Volvos. Not one car in the parking lots showed rust. None of the cars looked older than 5 years. None were held together with baling wire and pop rivets. Only the well-to- do can afford to visit this store.
But even in the chain grocery stores the more healthy foods are expensive. Whole-wheat bread is more expensive than the white type. Hormone-free eggs are more expensive than the Piggly Wiggly brand. Vegetables marked “organic” cost almost twice as much as the ones without that designation. Brown rice is pricey.
So you’re poor and you have a limited budget. You have a family to feed and you must take a bus or walk to the grocery store. The “health food” grocery stores in my region are not located in poor neighborhoods. Neither are the farmer’s markets. Neither are the truck farm stands, set up by local farmers, on little vacant lots or in church parking lots, offering fresh, locally grown produce.
Fifty dollars for a turkey. At least that store collects donations to our local food bank.
This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for my health and that of my family and friends. I’m grateful my family has steady jobs. I’m glad I have a church community where my liberal ideas are not only welcomed, but encouraged. That I’ve found friends with whom I laugh and cry. And that I do not have to battle poverty in order to make sure my family lives in a safe and healthful place. Even if we will be eating a seven dollar turkey chock full of hormones.
The woman in line in front of me was buying a fresh 12 pound turkey. The cash register: $51.53.
Fifty dollars for a turkey.
My frozen turkey, bought at Piggly Wiggly, was $7.87. Full of hormones, I’m sure, and probably raised on a turkey-mill farm. But affordable to many.
I was stunned, to be sure. Then I looked at the people around me, buying last minute Thanksgiving goodies. WASPs, all of them. White Anglo Saxon Princes and Princesses. Well-dressed- and I know this because they wore very expensive shoes….Danskos and Naots and Keens and Merrells….( I’d just been in the shoe store next door which, once upon a time, used to carry shoes which were much less than $259 and $112 on sale). The women carried expensive handbags in their manicured hands. No one was overweight. Everyone looked well-cared for.
They carried their purchases, in environmentally friendly reusable bags, out to Mercedes and Volvos. Not one car in the parking lots showed rust. None of the cars looked older than 5 years. None were held together with baling wire and pop rivets. Only the well-to- do can afford to visit this store.
But even in the chain grocery stores the more healthy foods are expensive. Whole-wheat bread is more expensive than the white type. Hormone-free eggs are more expensive than the Piggly Wiggly brand. Vegetables marked “organic” cost almost twice as much as the ones without that designation. Brown rice is pricey.
So you’re poor and you have a limited budget. You have a family to feed and you must take a bus or walk to the grocery store. The “health food” grocery stores in my region are not located in poor neighborhoods. Neither are the farmer’s markets. Neither are the truck farm stands, set up by local farmers, on little vacant lots or in church parking lots, offering fresh, locally grown produce.
Fifty dollars for a turkey. At least that store collects donations to our local food bank.
This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for my health and that of my family and friends. I’m grateful my family has steady jobs. I’m glad I have a church community where my liberal ideas are not only welcomed, but encouraged. That I’ve found friends with whom I laugh and cry. And that I do not have to battle poverty in order to make sure my family lives in a safe and healthful place. Even if we will be eating a seven dollar turkey chock full of hormones.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Lifting Up Your Face
OK. I’m jealous. Not normally the jealous type, but I have to admit that deep down, I’m jealous. Of the type of woman who Takes Very Good Care of Herself. Perhaps you know the type. Perhaps you’re one of the types.
This woman can wear very short skirts at any age and extremely high heels and not look ridiculous. She pays A LOT of money for high and low lights at the salon and she does that very frequently. If she works, it’s at a job that encourages her to have weekly acrylic nail things done. Her makeup is flawless. She drives expensive sports cars and looks good doing it. She is thin and petite and her clothes come from an upscale store in downtown Charleston. Probably that Pulitzer woman's place and I’m not talking about the writing prize.
She plays tennis fairly well, not competitively well, but socially well, once or twice a week. She does not golf. She has a sprayed on tan so that she looks good while lying by the pool at the club and still protecting herself from damaging UV rays.
And she has had work done. Every woman I know understands what that term means. None of my friends have had any work, but we all know women who have.
And today I realized some part of me envied those women.
It hit me pretty unexpectedly while my daughter and I were in a crafts store. We were in line at the checkout. I was scrounging in my beat up leather handbag to find a coupon so I could save a few pennies. And my daughter mentioned that the mother of a friend of hers looked really good at 50-something then offhandedly remarked, “She’s had some work done, though.”
BAM! A ton of bricks landed on my head. I wanted to be that woman who looked great at 53 and wore cute little dresses and didn’t have to hunt in the bottom of my bag to save a buck. The woman who doesn’t work but who has Married Well and has time and money for expensive personal pursuits.
“Where in the hell did THAT come from, " I wondered to myself because I’m usually pretty happy in my skin, sags and all. I can only imagine that it was a leftover ghostly desire from my weekend. I spend this past weekend at a conference in Hilton Head. I enjoyed it and the company I was in: nurse educators from all over NC and SC. Most of us at the peak of our careers. Most of us definitely over 45 years old. Very similar in backgrounds and careers, we all spoke the same language. Yet in the ballroom next door to ours, I think the women spoke a very different language.
It was a conference of cosmetic saleswomen.
They women were young and wore beautiful blue suits and 3 inch heels and their makeup, well, all I can say is, they DO sell makeup…. We could hear them clapping and laughing and music blaring. Our lectures were "How to give presentations when money is tight," and "what are the new NNSDO standards for career specialists." Not the sexiests subjects.
During one of our breaks these women were also on a break. A colleague turned to me as we walked down the hall behind a group of these women. “Ever wonder if we did something really wrong?” she asked. “I have torn discs in my back so that it’s hard to get out of bed. I must have gained weight but since I wear scrubs to work I didn’t realize it and when I was packing, and couldn’t find anything to wear, I had to run out to the only store open, Wal Mart, and buy an outfit that actually fits. I’m too tired after work to try to work out and I eat crap because that’s all the cafeteria sells.”
“I hear you, sister,” I told her. And I did. But today it really hit home. I could spend $44,000 on a brand new gas guzzling SUV if I wanted to, I guess. I could spend $180 every 6 wks at the salon if I really wanted that. Or I could have bought a book on how to land a millionaire husband.
Yet somewhere on earth a child starves to death every 7 seconds. Every Friday my Unitarian Universalist church provides 40 students with back packs filled with food to tie their families over until the next Monday when school, and free meals, is available to them again. Instead of knitting blankets for cancer patients or driving elderly people to social events or building Habitat Houses or providing a safe haven for a woman fleeing her home, my friends and I could be engaged in weekly "all about me" days and save our money for $7000 boob jobs and $15,000 face lifts and tummy tucks. But somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps I operate from a warped sense of guilt over my own life's good fortune or maybe I suffer from a wacked desire to feel good by helping someone else.
So I haven’t pampered myself and the real reason is probably that I really haven’t thought about it. I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth and hair in the morning and don’t look in the mirror again that day. I am too busy with life to even wonder if I have crow’s feet.
“I can’t imagine you getting any work done, “my good daughter nonchalantly told me in that checkout line. Had she seen the brief look of longing on my face? “Because you know that kind of stuff isn’t important. Besides,” she went on, “How would we know if you were smiling?” Then she gave me her own megawatt grin.
My daughter has an impeccable sense of how to bring me back to reality.
This woman can wear very short skirts at any age and extremely high heels and not look ridiculous. She pays A LOT of money for high and low lights at the salon and she does that very frequently. If she works, it’s at a job that encourages her to have weekly acrylic nail things done. Her makeup is flawless. She drives expensive sports cars and looks good doing it. She is thin and petite and her clothes come from an upscale store in downtown Charleston. Probably that Pulitzer woman's place and I’m not talking about the writing prize.
She plays tennis fairly well, not competitively well, but socially well, once or twice a week. She does not golf. She has a sprayed on tan so that she looks good while lying by the pool at the club and still protecting herself from damaging UV rays.
And she has had work done. Every woman I know understands what that term means. None of my friends have had any work, but we all know women who have.
And today I realized some part of me envied those women.
It hit me pretty unexpectedly while my daughter and I were in a crafts store. We were in line at the checkout. I was scrounging in my beat up leather handbag to find a coupon so I could save a few pennies. And my daughter mentioned that the mother of a friend of hers looked really good at 50-something then offhandedly remarked, “She’s had some work done, though.”
BAM! A ton of bricks landed on my head. I wanted to be that woman who looked great at 53 and wore cute little dresses and didn’t have to hunt in the bottom of my bag to save a buck. The woman who doesn’t work but who has Married Well and has time and money for expensive personal pursuits.
“Where in the hell did THAT come from, " I wondered to myself because I’m usually pretty happy in my skin, sags and all. I can only imagine that it was a leftover ghostly desire from my weekend. I spend this past weekend at a conference in Hilton Head. I enjoyed it and the company I was in: nurse educators from all over NC and SC. Most of us at the peak of our careers. Most of us definitely over 45 years old. Very similar in backgrounds and careers, we all spoke the same language. Yet in the ballroom next door to ours, I think the women spoke a very different language.
It was a conference of cosmetic saleswomen.
They women were young and wore beautiful blue suits and 3 inch heels and their makeup, well, all I can say is, they DO sell makeup…. We could hear them clapping and laughing and music blaring. Our lectures were "How to give presentations when money is tight," and "what are the new NNSDO standards for career specialists." Not the sexiests subjects.
During one of our breaks these women were also on a break. A colleague turned to me as we walked down the hall behind a group of these women. “Ever wonder if we did something really wrong?” she asked. “I have torn discs in my back so that it’s hard to get out of bed. I must have gained weight but since I wear scrubs to work I didn’t realize it and when I was packing, and couldn’t find anything to wear, I had to run out to the only store open, Wal Mart, and buy an outfit that actually fits. I’m too tired after work to try to work out and I eat crap because that’s all the cafeteria sells.”
“I hear you, sister,” I told her. And I did. But today it really hit home. I could spend $44,000 on a brand new gas guzzling SUV if I wanted to, I guess. I could spend $180 every 6 wks at the salon if I really wanted that. Or I could have bought a book on how to land a millionaire husband.
Yet somewhere on earth a child starves to death every 7 seconds. Every Friday my Unitarian Universalist church provides 40 students with back packs filled with food to tie their families over until the next Monday when school, and free meals, is available to them again. Instead of knitting blankets for cancer patients or driving elderly people to social events or building Habitat Houses or providing a safe haven for a woman fleeing her home, my friends and I could be engaged in weekly "all about me" days and save our money for $7000 boob jobs and $15,000 face lifts and tummy tucks. But somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps I operate from a warped sense of guilt over my own life's good fortune or maybe I suffer from a wacked desire to feel good by helping someone else.
So I haven’t pampered myself and the real reason is probably that I really haven’t thought about it. I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth and hair in the morning and don’t look in the mirror again that day. I am too busy with life to even wonder if I have crow’s feet.
“I can’t imagine you getting any work done, “my good daughter nonchalantly told me in that checkout line. Had she seen the brief look of longing on my face? “Because you know that kind of stuff isn’t important. Besides,” she went on, “How would we know if you were smiling?” Then she gave me her own megawatt grin.
My daughter has an impeccable sense of how to bring me back to reality.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Miracles
Miracles. They glide by us every day but when we became teen agers we stopped seeing them. And now that we're adults, we don't even remember that miracles were ever a part of our lives.
Today I drove under a rainbow. One end started in downtown Charleston and the other end reached across the harbor to James Island, bouncing it's prismatic colors across the sky. In fact, it's pale twin glistened above it, a double rainbow. I've only seen a handful of those in my life. And what surprised me today, other than rounding the bend by Ellis Creek to come face to face with this small miracle, was how many people in cars around me didn't bother to look up. For the most part, their cell phones seemed to hold more attraction than did this vision.
I am still thrilled by the sight of a rainbow, always unexpected. And excited when a dragonfly visits me. Blue wings drumming the air. My mother once tied a string to a dragonfly and threaded the string through my grandmother's kitchen screen door so I could sit safely inside, holding the end of that string, while my pet dragonfly buzzed on the otherside of the door.
I've watched moonflowers slowly open when the night sky sparkles above. The flowers glow white- a white that glow-in-the-dark colors can never mimic.
Venus flytraps enthrall me. I cannot bear to watch a naive fly succomb to the flytrap's allure. Man eating plants. Science Fiction in my back yard.
I hold crystals to the sunlight and watch prisms dance across the floor. I gather precious Southern snowflakes on my tongue. I gasp when I see a harvest moon hung low in the sky, peeking betwen pine boughs.
I contemplate how the universe could ever have begun. And watch stars twinkle and blink at me.
And I wink back.
Today I drove under a rainbow. One end started in downtown Charleston and the other end reached across the harbor to James Island, bouncing it's prismatic colors across the sky. In fact, it's pale twin glistened above it, a double rainbow. I've only seen a handful of those in my life. And what surprised me today, other than rounding the bend by Ellis Creek to come face to face with this small miracle, was how many people in cars around me didn't bother to look up. For the most part, their cell phones seemed to hold more attraction than did this vision.
I am still thrilled by the sight of a rainbow, always unexpected. And excited when a dragonfly visits me. Blue wings drumming the air. My mother once tied a string to a dragonfly and threaded the string through my grandmother's kitchen screen door so I could sit safely inside, holding the end of that string, while my pet dragonfly buzzed on the otherside of the door.
I've watched moonflowers slowly open when the night sky sparkles above. The flowers glow white- a white that glow-in-the-dark colors can never mimic.
Venus flytraps enthrall me. I cannot bear to watch a naive fly succomb to the flytrap's allure. Man eating plants. Science Fiction in my back yard.
I hold crystals to the sunlight and watch prisms dance across the floor. I gather precious Southern snowflakes on my tongue. I gasp when I see a harvest moon hung low in the sky, peeking betwen pine boughs.
I contemplate how the universe could ever have begun. And watch stars twinkle and blink at me.
And I wink back.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Story Tellers
I'm convinced there are two types of people in the world: Those That Tell Stories and Those That Listen to Story-Tellers.
This fact became clear to me when my sister and I visited our brothers in New Mexico. I was struck at how quickly we settled into our familiar story-telling selves. As if we'd never left childhood to travel the world of adults.
My husband's family are not a tribe of story-tellers. In fact, they don't talk very loudly, they don't like to bring attention to themselves, and they use an abbreviated form of conversation that, after 5 years, I still haven't learned. "You go on up that street to that corner and turn." How far, up which street, to exactly which corner and is that a left or a right turn? Their shorthand is familiar to them and among themselves they don't have to ask, "What the HELL are you talking about?" I'm sure they're perplexed by my need to know why we're going up that street and what chain of events prompted the journey.
My family, on the other hand, have no need for shorthand. We will tell you, in greater detail than you ever knew you wanted, why the street is named for the person it's named for, exactly how many blocks/feet/miles we're travelling before we turn at the exact name of the corner and any interesting landmarks we'll be passing on the way.
We want you to understand the circumstances of the travel. How the decision came to be made. The precipitating events. We'll want you to know a brief history of everyone in the car. And the relationship those people have to us. We'll tell you what time we're leaving and when we'll be back. And it will be FUNNY! Now, occasionally, we find ourselves taking poetic license with our memories. But this, too, is never planned.
My family is hilarious. And my sister is the Queen. Won't someone offer her a daytime talk show? Not content with a mere recitation of events, we'll give you all the side-splitting anecdotes you can stand. My family's perceptions are just a little off center- not enough to be truely bizarre- but certainly not average. It's like being in a Cohen movie. And our stories go on and on ... and on and on.... and on some more. My husband's niece, also not of the Storytelling genre of humans, calls my ramblings, "side bars." I love it. She succinctly describes us. She may not have been giving me a compliment, but that fact flew right over my head when she told me.
Some people do not want to call attention to themselves. My sibs and I don't purposely do that, but sometimes it just happens. We're often so wrapped up in telling a funny story to one another that we don't realize that people have gathered to listen. Wrapped up in our yarns, they nod and smile and laugh when we do.
And if you look closely, the people listening are... Those That Listen to Story Tellers.
This fact became clear to me when my sister and I visited our brothers in New Mexico. I was struck at how quickly we settled into our familiar story-telling selves. As if we'd never left childhood to travel the world of adults.
My husband's family are not a tribe of story-tellers. In fact, they don't talk very loudly, they don't like to bring attention to themselves, and they use an abbreviated form of conversation that, after 5 years, I still haven't learned. "You go on up that street to that corner and turn." How far, up which street, to exactly which corner and is that a left or a right turn? Their shorthand is familiar to them and among themselves they don't have to ask, "What the HELL are you talking about?" I'm sure they're perplexed by my need to know why we're going up that street and what chain of events prompted the journey.
My family, on the other hand, have no need for shorthand. We will tell you, in greater detail than you ever knew you wanted, why the street is named for the person it's named for, exactly how many blocks/feet/miles we're travelling before we turn at the exact name of the corner and any interesting landmarks we'll be passing on the way.
We want you to understand the circumstances of the travel. How the decision came to be made. The precipitating events. We'll want you to know a brief history of everyone in the car. And the relationship those people have to us. We'll tell you what time we're leaving and when we'll be back. And it will be FUNNY! Now, occasionally, we find ourselves taking poetic license with our memories. But this, too, is never planned.
My family is hilarious. And my sister is the Queen. Won't someone offer her a daytime talk show? Not content with a mere recitation of events, we'll give you all the side-splitting anecdotes you can stand. My family's perceptions are just a little off center- not enough to be truely bizarre- but certainly not average. It's like being in a Cohen movie. And our stories go on and on ... and on and on.... and on some more. My husband's niece, also not of the Storytelling genre of humans, calls my ramblings, "side bars." I love it. She succinctly describes us. She may not have been giving me a compliment, but that fact flew right over my head when she told me.
Some people do not want to call attention to themselves. My sibs and I don't purposely do that, but sometimes it just happens. We're often so wrapped up in telling a funny story to one another that we don't realize that people have gathered to listen. Wrapped up in our yarns, they nod and smile and laugh when we do.
And if you look closely, the people listening are... Those That Listen to Story Tellers.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Spooning My Patients
One of my patients this past week was a 19 year old young man, a victim of poor judgment and an ATV. Broken in several places and now sporting a tracheostomy tube, this young man also has a slight head injury. For him this means he'll do what you ask...for about 30 seconds...then he forgets and has to be re-directed. During my time with him he was focused on getting out of bed but, being unable to stand on his own, he wasn't allowed to. So someone had to sit with him constantly to keep reminding him to stay put.
He was a squirmer, too. He pulled things and tried to take his equipment apart. He sat up, then lied dow. He turned on his stomach. He lied at the foot of the bed. He hung his legs off the bed and then his head. We tried everything to keep him comfortable. He wasn't hurting, he told us. He wanted to drink water- but he can't because he chokes on even ice chips and would breathe liquids into his lungs if we let him drink. He was getting feedings through a tube- at least for a while until he pulled that tube out of his nose. When asked, he told me he didn't know what was wrong.
He had several episodes of diarrhea and had to be cleaned up. I know he was embarassed but he put up with 3 people in his room moving him from side to side while we cleaned his privates.
Several times he just grabbed my hand and rubbed it. He's the age of my nieces and younger than my son. I found myself rubbing his head and talking to him like I would one of my sick children.
He was tugging on my arm. I was sitting on the side of his bed. Before I realized it, I was holding this child in my arms, rubbing his head. I stopped being his nurse for a while, and became a mom. The young man settled down and went to sleep. I sat there with him for a long time, speaking softly to him, telling him he was safe and that he could go to sleep.
I went out with some friends afterwards and one of them, when he heard a colleague joke with me about 'spooning my patients' told me, "What if you had been a male nurse and that patient a female?"
WOW. He's 100% right. A male nurse probably wouldn't have done this if his patient had been a woman. Not if they're savy. Is it sexism? I do know it's the reality of the world we live in right now.
And the most common word used to describe a nurse is the word, "caring". Can a male nurse care for a patient in the very same way a female nurse can? Could a male nurse be a surrogate dad to a brain-injured young female patient?
Or should I have in a chair at the side of the bed, like they taught us in nursing school....
He was a squirmer, too. He pulled things and tried to take his equipment apart. He sat up, then lied dow. He turned on his stomach. He lied at the foot of the bed. He hung his legs off the bed and then his head. We tried everything to keep him comfortable. He wasn't hurting, he told us. He wanted to drink water- but he can't because he chokes on even ice chips and would breathe liquids into his lungs if we let him drink. He was getting feedings through a tube- at least for a while until he pulled that tube out of his nose. When asked, he told me he didn't know what was wrong.
He had several episodes of diarrhea and had to be cleaned up. I know he was embarassed but he put up with 3 people in his room moving him from side to side while we cleaned his privates.
Several times he just grabbed my hand and rubbed it. He's the age of my nieces and younger than my son. I found myself rubbing his head and talking to him like I would one of my sick children.
He was tugging on my arm. I was sitting on the side of his bed. Before I realized it, I was holding this child in my arms, rubbing his head. I stopped being his nurse for a while, and became a mom. The young man settled down and went to sleep. I sat there with him for a long time, speaking softly to him, telling him he was safe and that he could go to sleep.
I went out with some friends afterwards and one of them, when he heard a colleague joke with me about 'spooning my patients' told me, "What if you had been a male nurse and that patient a female?"
WOW. He's 100% right. A male nurse probably wouldn't have done this if his patient had been a woman. Not if they're savy. Is it sexism? I do know it's the reality of the world we live in right now.
And the most common word used to describe a nurse is the word, "caring". Can a male nurse care for a patient in the very same way a female nurse can? Could a male nurse be a surrogate dad to a brain-injured young female patient?
Or should I have in a chair at the side of the bed, like they taught us in nursing school....
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Books and covers
Let me preface this blog entry with a fact: my daughter is gorgeous. She's not just pretty, she's REALLY pretty. She's the kind of pretty that, when she walks into a room, people stop talking and look at her. Her hair is long, straight and golden blonde. She has enormous ice blue eyes. Her figure is absolute perfection. She's smart as hell and funny, honest and moral, kind-hearted and disarmingly self-confident but not conceited. I look at her and wonder how this creature came from my lowly DNA.
So, I was not surprised when the cashier in front of us at our local drugstore flirted with her. The check out line was long. People stretched behind us to the photo section. And the cashier started flirting. And flirting. And flirting. Every time my daughter tried to take the bag from his hand, the cashier had something else to say to her. He tried to help her with aa gift card she'd bought. He wanted to be sure she knew the number to call for additional information. People behind us coughed and shuffled. Women gave us the evil eye. Slightly uncomfortable, my daughter laughed and thanked him, took her purchase and moved off to the side to wait for me. The besotted young man continued to look at her and try to engage her in conversation. She turned to talk to me.
At this point I suppose the cashier realized his attempts were not working. And so he returned to the task at hand: checking me out. And not in the male/female way. In the "That'll-be -$12.22" kind of way.
He didn't ask if I knew the pros and cons of the eyeliner I was buying. Didn't try to talk to me about the benefits of my gel pen over a ball point. Didn't try to show me the customer care number on the receipt which, if I called, would enter me into a sweepstake for a $1000 shopping spree. I don't remember him even making eye contact. All he said to me was, "You don't need a bag for that, do you?"
Humbly, I acknowledged that I did not need a bag. And my daughter and I left.
Never has my lack of sex-appeal to a younger man been more poignantly pointed out. I did not look like a bag lady for once. I had make up on and my nails were done. I was even sort of dressed up. No matter to this 25+ guy. "Did you see that guy?" my daughter asked when we left? "And he didn't even give you a bag! What a jerk!"
She noticed.
My descent into oblivion from anyone younger than 45 began a few years ago. I was sitting in a park where multiple tourists asked me repeatedly for directions. They were probably from the north, visiting our Holy City in the South Carolina.... but they all, without exception, called me "Ma'am". Even the old guy with a gray beard. Perhaps that was just when I noticed it.
People treat you differently when you're much older than them. Men treat you differently when they're not sexually attracted to you. Women treat you differently if you're younger or prettier than them.
Have I been guilty of sexism? Beautify-ism? Ageism? Probably. This was an eye opener to me. My Autumn Resolution: try to look beyond youth and looks and gender to the person beyond..... after all- it's what I've always preached. Apparently, my daughter listened.
So, I was not surprised when the cashier in front of us at our local drugstore flirted with her. The check out line was long. People stretched behind us to the photo section. And the cashier started flirting. And flirting. And flirting. Every time my daughter tried to take the bag from his hand, the cashier had something else to say to her. He tried to help her with aa gift card she'd bought. He wanted to be sure she knew the number to call for additional information. People behind us coughed and shuffled. Women gave us the evil eye. Slightly uncomfortable, my daughter laughed and thanked him, took her purchase and moved off to the side to wait for me. The besotted young man continued to look at her and try to engage her in conversation. She turned to talk to me.
At this point I suppose the cashier realized his attempts were not working. And so he returned to the task at hand: checking me out. And not in the male/female way. In the "That'll-be -$12.22" kind of way.
He didn't ask if I knew the pros and cons of the eyeliner I was buying. Didn't try to talk to me about the benefits of my gel pen over a ball point. Didn't try to show me the customer care number on the receipt which, if I called, would enter me into a sweepstake for a $1000 shopping spree. I don't remember him even making eye contact. All he said to me was, "You don't need a bag for that, do you?"
Humbly, I acknowledged that I did not need a bag. And my daughter and I left.
Never has my lack of sex-appeal to a younger man been more poignantly pointed out. I did not look like a bag lady for once. I had make up on and my nails were done. I was even sort of dressed up. No matter to this 25+ guy. "Did you see that guy?" my daughter asked when we left? "And he didn't even give you a bag! What a jerk!"
She noticed.
My descent into oblivion from anyone younger than 45 began a few years ago. I was sitting in a park where multiple tourists asked me repeatedly for directions. They were probably from the north, visiting our Holy City in the South Carolina.... but they all, without exception, called me "Ma'am". Even the old guy with a gray beard. Perhaps that was just when I noticed it.
People treat you differently when you're much older than them. Men treat you differently when they're not sexually attracted to you. Women treat you differently if you're younger or prettier than them.
Have I been guilty of sexism? Beautify-ism? Ageism? Probably. This was an eye opener to me. My Autumn Resolution: try to look beyond youth and looks and gender to the person beyond..... after all- it's what I've always preached. Apparently, my daughter listened.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
My side of the Trees
Today I talked with an old friend at work. She's tall and slim, European, driven to succeed. She has her PhD and was in charge of major successful projects at my workplace. I've known her since I was 30. And I've been jealous of her for the past 20 years.
She has always seemed to have it all. An incredibly smart daughter who was in gifted classes for 12 years. A mother who moved from Holland to be near. Independence, both financially and emotionally. Interesting friends and a career she enjoyed. The respect of her colleagues.
But today, my old friend was crying on my shoulder. Literally soaking my sleeve with her bitter tears. Her husband lost his job of 20 years and the small business they started is bankrupt. Her husband found work last week painting cars. Her job where we work has been restructured and she is now doing a job she did not train for. The program she implemented was turned over to someone who accused her of not helping him be successful. Her daughter has run away from home. Her mother has Alzheimer's.
I was overwhelmed suddenly with gratitude. I'm a little overweight, but active and healthy-feeling. I have a job I love. I finished high school and college and graduate school and was the first member of my family to do so. My spiritual life is fulfilling. I am close to my brothers and sister. I'm proud of my children who have not run away and in fact call me almost every day. I have a husband who adores me.
I remembered something my grandmother used to tell me. I had forgotten it until today. I yearned for my grandmother's love yet it always seemed just out of reach. I looked for opportunties to make a connection with her. So each winter from the time I was 16 until I moved away I volunteered to drive 350 miles from my home in North Carolina to my grandmother's home in South Carolina. I would arrive around noon and we would gather her things and lock up and drive right back to North Carolina where she stayed with my family until the spring. We drove back up Interstate 95 and eventually dusk would settle on the little farms and houses which line I-95 in southern North Carolina. Lights from these houses twinkled through the pine trees like enchanged fairy lanterns. Things looked so cozy in those farmhouses, so safe. My grandmother would always say to me, "I wonder what people are doing in those little houses?" She was a sad lady and envied people who had lives different from her own.
Today I was reminded of that story when my friend was crying and I was trying to offer her comfort. All at once, it was gone. The jealousy and the envy. Just 'poof' and it wasn't there anymore. I don't think I worked on this consciously or that the jealousy fairy godmother tapped me with her magic wand to remove the green-eyed serpent.
I think it was experience and contentment and the wisdom which, yes, does come to some of us in dribs and drabs. It was gratitude and relief. It was being able to offer solace to an old friend. However it happened, today I realized someone might be looking through the trees at my own little twinkling lights. I hope it wasn't my friend, wondering if things were better on the other side of the trees.
She has always seemed to have it all. An incredibly smart daughter who was in gifted classes for 12 years. A mother who moved from Holland to be near. Independence, both financially and emotionally. Interesting friends and a career she enjoyed. The respect of her colleagues.
But today, my old friend was crying on my shoulder. Literally soaking my sleeve with her bitter tears. Her husband lost his job of 20 years and the small business they started is bankrupt. Her husband found work last week painting cars. Her job where we work has been restructured and she is now doing a job she did not train for. The program she implemented was turned over to someone who accused her of not helping him be successful. Her daughter has run away from home. Her mother has Alzheimer's.
I was overwhelmed suddenly with gratitude. I'm a little overweight, but active and healthy-feeling. I have a job I love. I finished high school and college and graduate school and was the first member of my family to do so. My spiritual life is fulfilling. I am close to my brothers and sister. I'm proud of my children who have not run away and in fact call me almost every day. I have a husband who adores me.
I remembered something my grandmother used to tell me. I had forgotten it until today. I yearned for my grandmother's love yet it always seemed just out of reach. I looked for opportunties to make a connection with her. So each winter from the time I was 16 until I moved away I volunteered to drive 350 miles from my home in North Carolina to my grandmother's home in South Carolina. I would arrive around noon and we would gather her things and lock up and drive right back to North Carolina where she stayed with my family until the spring. We drove back up Interstate 95 and eventually dusk would settle on the little farms and houses which line I-95 in southern North Carolina. Lights from these houses twinkled through the pine trees like enchanged fairy lanterns. Things looked so cozy in those farmhouses, so safe. My grandmother would always say to me, "I wonder what people are doing in those little houses?" She was a sad lady and envied people who had lives different from her own.
Today I was reminded of that story when my friend was crying and I was trying to offer her comfort. All at once, it was gone. The jealousy and the envy. Just 'poof' and it wasn't there anymore. I don't think I worked on this consciously or that the jealousy fairy godmother tapped me with her magic wand to remove the green-eyed serpent.
I think it was experience and contentment and the wisdom which, yes, does come to some of us in dribs and drabs. It was gratitude and relief. It was being able to offer solace to an old friend. However it happened, today I realized someone might be looking through the trees at my own little twinkling lights. I hope it wasn't my friend, wondering if things were better on the other side of the trees.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
I am not happy with some of my Facebook friends. I'm so unhappy with them that I've performed the ultimate cyber surgery... defriending.
"EGADS!" you cry. "Not Defriending?"
"Yes," I answer.
My friend list just shrunk from 150 to 63. Work friends... all gone.
After the initial 'enter' strike from my keyboard I feel curiously relieved.
Many of the little girls I work with, all younger than 35 and certainly more FB savy than I, had started posting very disparaging work-related comments. Mean-spirited comments about colleagues and work and even anonymous patients. I talked to a few of them about what I thought were inappropriate comments. They told me these posts were private and only their friends could see them. But, I told them, if one of your friends comments on your post, and I'm friends with that person, then I see the post, too..... Nope, they told me. Only their friends could see the comments.
A couple of things wrong with all of this.
1. FB posts are like sex.... when you sleep with someone, you're sleeping with everyone THEY have ever slept with. And, when you post to FB and one of your mutual friends posts a comment... well, kind of like commenting to an extended group of acquaintences and passers by.
2. Isn't this techno-gossip?
3. Don't mothers today teach their kids that gossiping is wrong?
4. While we're on the subject of manners, doesn't anyone send 'thank you' cards anymore?
5. That's a post for another day
Naturally, before doing my excision, I posted to anyone listening that I was removing all work friends from my FB account. My mother at least taught ME that anything you have to say to someone behind their back, you should say to their face.
I was overwhelmed by the responses.
1/4 of my work friends told me that they were doing the same thing! Why read about work, go to work, and then read about more work? they asked. Good point.
Another friend told me she didn't want to hear people she worked with saying ugly things about others.
And still another friend told me that she was pulling out the FB scalpel too.
Technology isn't just about bytes. To some, it's also about cutting remarks and words which fly into outer space but are always retrievable.
Good manners do not end when someone opens up their PC.
Mothers, you should log on to FB. And some of you need to remind your children of what I'm sure you told them when they were 8 years old:
"If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all."
"EGADS!" you cry. "Not Defriending?"
"Yes," I answer.
My friend list just shrunk from 150 to 63. Work friends... all gone.
After the initial 'enter' strike from my keyboard I feel curiously relieved.
Many of the little girls I work with, all younger than 35 and certainly more FB savy than I, had started posting very disparaging work-related comments. Mean-spirited comments about colleagues and work and even anonymous patients. I talked to a few of them about what I thought were inappropriate comments. They told me these posts were private and only their friends could see them. But, I told them, if one of your friends comments on your post, and I'm friends with that person, then I see the post, too..... Nope, they told me. Only their friends could see the comments.
A couple of things wrong with all of this.
1. FB posts are like sex.... when you sleep with someone, you're sleeping with everyone THEY have ever slept with. And, when you post to FB and one of your mutual friends posts a comment... well, kind of like commenting to an extended group of acquaintences and passers by.
2. Isn't this techno-gossip?
3. Don't mothers today teach their kids that gossiping is wrong?
4. While we're on the subject of manners, doesn't anyone send 'thank you' cards anymore?
5. That's a post for another day
Naturally, before doing my excision, I posted to anyone listening that I was removing all work friends from my FB account. My mother at least taught ME that anything you have to say to someone behind their back, you should say to their face.
I was overwhelmed by the responses.
1/4 of my work friends told me that they were doing the same thing! Why read about work, go to work, and then read about more work? they asked. Good point.
Another friend told me she didn't want to hear people she worked with saying ugly things about others.
And still another friend told me that she was pulling out the FB scalpel too.
Technology isn't just about bytes. To some, it's also about cutting remarks and words which fly into outer space but are always retrievable.
Good manners do not end when someone opens up their PC.
Mothers, you should log on to FB. And some of you need to remind your children of what I'm sure you told them when they were 8 years old:
"If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all."
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Am I Gray?
Have I turned gray? Is my hair 1/3, 1/4, 3/4 gray!!??
Gee, I haven't seen my real hair color in about 15 years. I do notice that the hair along my temples is starting to be REALLY gray, though. I used to know when it was time to color my hair when those ash brown roots started to show. Now, however, those ash brown roots look alot like gray roots.
A colleague of mine let herself go gray a few years ago. No one knew how gray, how white, her hair was. She turned gray, she told me, when she was 22. So she'd been coloring even longer than me. It was a pretty dramatic change. She went from brown to absolutely white overnight. And looked fabulous.
This decision I am trying to make was probably prompted by the recession. I recently had to stop visiting my favorite hair salon for color. I was paying, with tips and waxing my eyebrows and upper lip, about $180 each time. That's about $180 every 2 months. My budget just won't support that. Those high lights and low lights were very luxuriant and a treat that until this year I have never been able to afford. And then the economy tanked and I needed to cut back spending and those expensive salon visits went first.
So I'm back to my familiar box colors.
One box every 6 weeks or so, with a touch up 3 weeks after... that's definitely do-able. I cautiously color my eyebrows at the same time. What a deal.
Except.. maybe it's time to go au naturelle. Is it time to let the real me show through? I like looking a little younger than 53... being overweight does have it's benefits... the wrinkles are plumped up. But is it time to stop using that familiar light ash brown shade of semi-permanent hair color, time to go gray? I was talking about this last week to my sister. My husband walked in, overheard, and chuckled. He tells me he wants more gray. People trust lawyers with gray in their hair he tells me.
Just the other day we were out and my husband saw a lovely woman in Costco. He casually remarked to me how he's always had a thing for young women who've gone gray.
"How young?" I ask him.
"Oh, about 50-ish," he replied.
I am married to the most absolutely wonderful man in the world.
Gee, I haven't seen my real hair color in about 15 years. I do notice that the hair along my temples is starting to be REALLY gray, though. I used to know when it was time to color my hair when those ash brown roots started to show. Now, however, those ash brown roots look alot like gray roots.
A colleague of mine let herself go gray a few years ago. No one knew how gray, how white, her hair was. She turned gray, she told me, when she was 22. So she'd been coloring even longer than me. It was a pretty dramatic change. She went from brown to absolutely white overnight. And looked fabulous.
This decision I am trying to make was probably prompted by the recession. I recently had to stop visiting my favorite hair salon for color. I was paying, with tips and waxing my eyebrows and upper lip, about $180 each time. That's about $180 every 2 months. My budget just won't support that. Those high lights and low lights were very luxuriant and a treat that until this year I have never been able to afford. And then the economy tanked and I needed to cut back spending and those expensive salon visits went first.
So I'm back to my familiar box colors.
One box every 6 weeks or so, with a touch up 3 weeks after... that's definitely do-able. I cautiously color my eyebrows at the same time. What a deal.
Except.. maybe it's time to go au naturelle. Is it time to let the real me show through? I like looking a little younger than 53... being overweight does have it's benefits... the wrinkles are plumped up. But is it time to stop using that familiar light ash brown shade of semi-permanent hair color, time to go gray? I was talking about this last week to my sister. My husband walked in, overheard, and chuckled. He tells me he wants more gray. People trust lawyers with gray in their hair he tells me.
Just the other day we were out and my husband saw a lovely woman in Costco. He casually remarked to me how he's always had a thing for young women who've gone gray.
"How young?" I ask him.
"Oh, about 50-ish," he replied.
I am married to the most absolutely wonderful man in the world.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Gordon
I look at my daughter's dog, Gordon, whom she's left with us. He's at least 17 years old. My aunt named him the week we got him, Gordon, because he's likely a Gordon Setter.
Gordon Setters are hunting dogs. They're meant to find birds hidden in brush and point them until the hunter sees the dog and fires. They're large dogs, the size of an Irish setter. My daughter was ten when her father took her to the SPCA to pick out a dog. We already had 2 dogs, but he thought she needed her own. Gordon was on doggie death row. He had less than 24 hours to live. And Katie fell in love with him and so he came home to became another member of our boisterous household. Our vet told us Gordon was at least 2 years old then.
From the beginning, Gordon wanted to leave.He ran away every time some child left the back gate open.He ran away whenever he could sneak his way out of Katie's grasp. He ran away and turned up miles from home over and over again . He loved, though, to hang out in the parking lot of our local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. "Partying at the Pig!" we used to laugh as we drove up to retrieve him. His favorite hang out.
Wikipedia gives us this: "The AKC describes the Gordon Setter temperament as "alert, gay, interested, and confident. He is fearless and willing, intelligent, and capable. He is loyal and affectionate, and strong-minded enough to stand the rigors of training." Gordons are intensely loyal to their owners; thrive in an attentive, loving environment; and are good family dogs."
Maybe Gordon isn't a Gordon Setter after all.
During my divorce, the children and I lived at the beach. We were 3 blocks from the small beachside downtown and the police station. Gordon would sneak out when someone forgot to lock the front porch door and head downtown. The police must have had my number on speed dial. Gordon was always turning up there. After the first few times, they stopped fining me. I'd show up after a phone call and the police officer on duty would take me to the back where Gordon would be resting in a large dog kennel just for the purpose of containing stray dogs.
I told them Gordon's story. How he had lived at the SPCA for a very long time before we got him. The police officer shook her head and smiled. "Incarceration syndrome," she said.
Wow. That explains alot. How, when we would pick him up from his wanderings after a call from a concerned citizen, Gordon would act like he didn't know us. "Are you sure this is your dog?" we were asked repeatedly.
And now he's old. And walking a little stiffly. When I wake up in the morning, I check him to see if he's breathing. He's deaf. He's lost weight. He doesn't grimace or make any noise when he gets up from his bed- where he lies most of the day- so I don't believe he's in pain. But boy, is he ever incontinent. I'm glad we have wooden floors. He doesn't know he's gone to the bathroom and the vet tells me it's because spinal arthritis is affecting important sphincters.
So the question invariably, every day is "Should I put him down?" Is being incontinent enough of a problem for him to warrant the 'blue juice'. I look at this dog whom I never really liked. This dog which I have taken to vets and hunted down after escapes. Which I have to bathe alot now. This dog which is sort of like a piece of furniture to us... just... there... not interacting more or less with us. I had just about talked myself into doing this thing when someone left the gate open.
At first I didn't know it. I came home from work and all of the dogs were home except for him. I convinced myself that Gordon had died under the house. I mentally prepared myself to crawl under there with a flashlight. Then there was a knock at the door. And the manager of our local Piggly Wiggly grocery store stood there. With Gordon on the end of a ribbon used for balloons.
"He's been hanging out in the parking lot," he told me, handing me the ribbon. "His address was on his tag."
Gordon looked happy. His tail was wagging. He was tired but rightfully so. I thanked the nice man and brought Gordon in. He might not have been happy to be home, but I like to think he was happy that he still had it in him.
Gordon Setters are hunting dogs. They're meant to find birds hidden in brush and point them until the hunter sees the dog and fires. They're large dogs, the size of an Irish setter. My daughter was ten when her father took her to the SPCA to pick out a dog. We already had 2 dogs, but he thought she needed her own. Gordon was on doggie death row. He had less than 24 hours to live. And Katie fell in love with him and so he came home to became another member of our boisterous household. Our vet told us Gordon was at least 2 years old then.
From the beginning, Gordon wanted to leave.He ran away every time some child left the back gate open.He ran away whenever he could sneak his way out of Katie's grasp. He ran away and turned up miles from home over and over again . He loved, though, to hang out in the parking lot of our local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. "Partying at the Pig!" we used to laugh as we drove up to retrieve him. His favorite hang out.
Wikipedia gives us this: "The AKC describes the Gordon Setter temperament as "alert, gay, interested, and confident. He is fearless and willing, intelligent, and capable. He is loyal and affectionate, and strong-minded enough to stand the rigors of training." Gordons are intensely loyal to their owners; thrive in an attentive, loving environment; and are good family dogs."
Maybe Gordon isn't a Gordon Setter after all.
During my divorce, the children and I lived at the beach. We were 3 blocks from the small beachside downtown and the police station. Gordon would sneak out when someone forgot to lock the front porch door and head downtown. The police must have had my number on speed dial. Gordon was always turning up there. After the first few times, they stopped fining me. I'd show up after a phone call and the police officer on duty would take me to the back where Gordon would be resting in a large dog kennel just for the purpose of containing stray dogs.
I told them Gordon's story. How he had lived at the SPCA for a very long time before we got him. The police officer shook her head and smiled. "Incarceration syndrome," she said.
Wow. That explains alot. How, when we would pick him up from his wanderings after a call from a concerned citizen, Gordon would act like he didn't know us. "Are you sure this is your dog?" we were asked repeatedly.
And now he's old. And walking a little stiffly. When I wake up in the morning, I check him to see if he's breathing. He's deaf. He's lost weight. He doesn't grimace or make any noise when he gets up from his bed- where he lies most of the day- so I don't believe he's in pain. But boy, is he ever incontinent. I'm glad we have wooden floors. He doesn't know he's gone to the bathroom and the vet tells me it's because spinal arthritis is affecting important sphincters.
So the question invariably, every day is "Should I put him down?" Is being incontinent enough of a problem for him to warrant the 'blue juice'. I look at this dog whom I never really liked. This dog which I have taken to vets and hunted down after escapes. Which I have to bathe alot now. This dog which is sort of like a piece of furniture to us... just... there... not interacting more or less with us. I had just about talked myself into doing this thing when someone left the gate open.
At first I didn't know it. I came home from work and all of the dogs were home except for him. I convinced myself that Gordon had died under the house. I mentally prepared myself to crawl under there with a flashlight. Then there was a knock at the door. And the manager of our local Piggly Wiggly grocery store stood there. With Gordon on the end of a ribbon used for balloons.
"He's been hanging out in the parking lot," he told me, handing me the ribbon. "His address was on his tag."
Gordon looked happy. His tail was wagging. He was tired but rightfully so. I thanked the nice man and brought Gordon in. He might not have been happy to be home, but I like to think he was happy that he still had it in him.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Jess
My friend Jess is dying. She has leukemia and is 84 years old. I look at the web page from the National Institute of Cancer, Leukemia and read the list of symptoms which I realize have been plaguing her for months: shortness of breath, unwanted weight loss, bruising and poorly healing cuts, aching joints. It all makes sense now. Her doctor has told her to take care of all the things that need taking care of. He told her to live for today so now she isn't planning to take that Jamaica trip in March to see her grandson married.
She asked our knitting group tonight if we had a pattern for a baby blanket. Her grandson wants to start a family right away. It's taken her months to complete a small washcloth; her joints are terribly inflamed and she only knits, I think, when she joins us on Mondays for our group. I don't know how she'll get a baby blanket finished. But some of the members (are they oblivious to what's happening, I wonder?) gave her ideas for yarn and needle size.
She has been our dynamic member of the knitting group. With women in the group aged 28-87, she is one of the most active. Jess belongs to hat clubs and charity groups. She lunches regularly with friends. She's adopted a puppy. She bakes thousands of specialty Italian cookies for family and friends every Christmas.
Tonight she was tearful as she told me that the doctors haven't been very optimistic, but they're not telling her a definite prognosis. She knows it isn't good. And she said to me tonight, "I don't know why this has to be so undignified. Why can't this just get done with?" Why indeed?
I threw a few platitudes at her. I'm ashamed of myself for it. "Your children are glad you're here," I said. She leveled a Jess gaze at me. 'That's for them,' I think I read her mind. 'That's just delaying the inevitable. And making what time I have miserable and desperate. Can you see my desperation? How I'm barely holding on here? How I'm dragging myself to this group of women who pretend nothing is wrong so that I can live, for 2 hours, without this demon sitting on top of my chest?' But of course, classy Jess says none of this.
I wanted, though, to hand her a pill. In a gilded pillbox, befitting her elegant nature.
I wanted to be able to tell her, "Jess, this is for you. You know what it's for. Use it as you will." And then she would smile at me and take it in her frail, gnarled hand. I wanted to give her what she wants.
Instead, I'll be looking for a baby blanket pattern. And maybe finishing it for her when March rolls around.
She asked our knitting group tonight if we had a pattern for a baby blanket. Her grandson wants to start a family right away. It's taken her months to complete a small washcloth; her joints are terribly inflamed and she only knits, I think, when she joins us on Mondays for our group. I don't know how she'll get a baby blanket finished. But some of the members (are they oblivious to what's happening, I wonder?) gave her ideas for yarn and needle size.
She has been our dynamic member of the knitting group. With women in the group aged 28-87, she is one of the most active. Jess belongs to hat clubs and charity groups. She lunches regularly with friends. She's adopted a puppy. She bakes thousands of specialty Italian cookies for family and friends every Christmas.
Tonight she was tearful as she told me that the doctors haven't been very optimistic, but they're not telling her a definite prognosis. She knows it isn't good. And she said to me tonight, "I don't know why this has to be so undignified. Why can't this just get done with?" Why indeed?
I threw a few platitudes at her. I'm ashamed of myself for it. "Your children are glad you're here," I said. She leveled a Jess gaze at me. 'That's for them,' I think I read her mind. 'That's just delaying the inevitable. And making what time I have miserable and desperate. Can you see my desperation? How I'm barely holding on here? How I'm dragging myself to this group of women who pretend nothing is wrong so that I can live, for 2 hours, without this demon sitting on top of my chest?' But of course, classy Jess says none of this.
I wanted, though, to hand her a pill. In a gilded pillbox, befitting her elegant nature.
I wanted to be able to tell her, "Jess, this is for you. You know what it's for. Use it as you will." And then she would smile at me and take it in her frail, gnarled hand. I wanted to give her what she wants.
Instead, I'll be looking for a baby blanket pattern. And maybe finishing it for her when March rolls around.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Are You Hungry?
Today on page 5A of our Charleston Post and Courier newspaper reads a headline, “1 billion suffering from hunger”. It lies next to a ¾ color advertisement from one of the 2 most expensive furniture stores in the region announcing “Casual Lifetime Furniture” and a picture of a dining room set selling for $2999. I read this while I sat in my modest but comfortable home in a safe neighborhood enjoying my central air conditioning as I ate my breakfast of cornflakes, juice and cold milk.
I wondered then if I was the only person struck by the irony of the placement of these two items.
Yesterday I talked with Dr. Charlene Pope at the Medical University of SC’s College of Nursing about what direction I should take as I think about trying to enter the PhD program at that school. My interest has evolved into healthcare institution communication among caregivers and I don’t want to focus on America but on a more global scale. Perhaps that’s why my attention went to the headline and I stayed on to read the article.
Are we so calloused to headlines that we don’t take time to read the content? Does anyone give any pause when they are exposed to situations very foreign to our existence? And if we do take a minute, does anyone do something more than ‘cluck’ their tongue and move on? What if we sent one penny to an agency to buy food and distribute it. What if everyone in the world with any disposable income donated one penny to an agency we trusted to feed children and women and men who were dying, DYING, because they couldn’t have a breakfast. Couldn’t have a meal for days and weeks and then…
Would it feed our souls if we fed someone else?
Are you hungry today?
I wondered then if I was the only person struck by the irony of the placement of these two items.
Yesterday I talked with Dr. Charlene Pope at the Medical University of SC’s College of Nursing about what direction I should take as I think about trying to enter the PhD program at that school. My interest has evolved into healthcare institution communication among caregivers and I don’t want to focus on America but on a more global scale. Perhaps that’s why my attention went to the headline and I stayed on to read the article.
Are we so calloused to headlines that we don’t take time to read the content? Does anyone give any pause when they are exposed to situations very foreign to our existence? And if we do take a minute, does anyone do something more than ‘cluck’ their tongue and move on? What if we sent one penny to an agency to buy food and distribute it. What if everyone in the world with any disposable income donated one penny to an agency we trusted to feed children and women and men who were dying, DYING, because they couldn’t have a breakfast. Couldn’t have a meal for days and weeks and then…
Would it feed our souls if we fed someone else?
Are you hungry today?
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