A Transformation

IT HAS BEEN NEARLY A YEAR!
SINCE I HAVE POSTED A NEW BLOG WITH APOLOGIES, I HERE SHARE A BRIEF BUT POIGNENT ESSAY A TRANSFORMATION In one week, Mim was transformed from a semi-functional older woman with mobility issues to an older woman evidently no longer capable of autonomy. She did have significant mobility issues. Acknowledging this, she brokered weekly visits by a physical therapist, ordered a rollator -- the heretofore unknown name for a walker with wheels—and signed up for a medical alert device. But then she learned that a nurse would visit once a week. And people began calling her ‘sweetie’. She was not a ‘sweetie’. Then she learned that her brother needed to undergo a tortuous treatment for bladder cancer. And her gas fireplace stopped working. And the urgently needed refund from an aborted tour did not arrive. The funds were needed for urgently needed house repairs. It was enough to generate irresponsible drinking ... or at least one glass of good wine

Being 80

I am 80 years and 4 months old. Like Poet Mary Oliver – I believe that prayer is paying attention. Every morning when I go out to pick up my newspapers, I stop and consciously acknowledge the beauty in which I live. The dew or frost on leaves and branches. How new-fallen snow reminds us of the sculptural beauty of the leaf-less trees. Bird song. The tilt of a mom holding the hand of her toddler. So many of the teachers I have learned from cite the importance of gratitude. Gratitude not just for the present amazements but also for all the people and critters who have been here before me, who have enabled this beauty to permeate my existence. I have serius mobility issues. Please don’t ask me to be careful. I have to be careful. For a time, I allowed these issues (combined with pandemic restrictions) to circumscribe my life. It felt like I was organizing my life around weekly trash pick-ups and Netflix offerings. It was an inadequate existence. I have been on several Road Scholar trips. I receive all their catalogs. One of them contained text describing alternative, and encouraging, ways to participate. You could hike off vigorously with the stalwarts or stay behind and stroll leisurely with other less stalwarts. So, Wednesday morning January 5, 2022, I called them. I explained my physical limitations and the places I wanted to go. It was a long and reassuring phone call. I looked at one of their brochures and asked about trip to the eastern side of the Mediterranean. And I signed up for an “Odyssey at Sea – visiting ancient sites in Greece, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt” I will join the tour on Dec. 1, 2022 and return Dec. 17. Of course, I do not know what my physical condition will be then. Or what the state of the world will be. More pandemic?? More wars?? But I bought ‘trip insurance’ so I will either go or stay home (if indeed I am still alive). Until then, I have a luminous opportunity on my personal horizon. I intend for it to motivate me to get out more, to do more. I need to find a travel buddy to go with me to places like Steamboat Springs and Breckenridge. In July I plan to attend the Indiana wedding of my friend’s daughter. And I will arrange as many encounters with my grandson (and sons and daughter-in-law) as possible. I’d like to go back to Taos and Santa Fe. Get an entry permit for Rocky Mountain National Park and visit other Colorado wonders. And go to concerts and plays. And show up for this congregation which has been such a magnificent resource for my mind and soul. I believe that I am not only connected to everything (and everyone) that exists now, but also to everything (and everyone) that existed before (and maybe, but I haven’t figured out how, to everything that ever will exist).
These connections comprise my obligations. I am obliged to honor all components of this vast and infinitely complex universe, to protect individuals and elements that are in jeopardy, and to celebrate the ineffable beauty that permeates existence.

 

ABOUT TIME

Each week, my little local newspaper prints ‘How they voted’ – a record of action in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. [It always kinds of surprises me that there was actually ‘action’ to record.] Last week, the House passed the Lumbee Recognition Act to federally recognize the Lumbee Indian tribe in North Carolina … AND the Pala Band of Mission Indians Land Transfer Act … AND the Old Pascua Community Acquisition Act … AND the Eastern Band of Cherokee Historic Lands Reacquisition Act. All of these restored and certified once purloined territory to its original inhabitants.

The Fall edition of Sierra, the Sierra Club magazine, had a portrait of US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on its cover. And, on pages 18-27, an article headlined “A Living Testament” by Jenni Monet (also denizen of the Laguna Pueblo) gave a comprehensive portrait of the first Native member of our national Cabinet. Prior to her new post, Haaland served as a member of Congress from 2019 -2021. Her congressional district included most of Albuquerque and its suburbs. She was one of the first two Native American women elected to the U.S. Congress. She is a political progressive who supports the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. Respected and respectful, Secretary Haaland has made a pledge: “We must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be.” 

An op ed in the Oct. 25 NY Times revealed that Frank Herbert, author of Dune, had close contacts among the Quileute and Hoh peoples of the Olympic Peninsula. One of them, Henry Martin, was a mentor, teaching him how white people had stolen Hoh lands and logged their forests. Another, Howard Hansen, wrote a memoir called “Twilight on the Thunderbird” in which he described the environmental devastation of the peninsula. Herbert incorporated these teachings into “Dune.” That book (and now movie) helped readers/viewers think about the environment not just on the level of lakes or forests but whole planets.

 Go Glasgow!!

 

Two Digit Prayer

I am a two digit person…someone who can tolerate only two digit weather. In summer, the temperature should never reach three digits. [It did yesterday –102!!] In winter, the temperature should never fall below two digits…ever. But it does. And it will again. In both seasons -- too hot in summer, two cold in winter. Too dry. Too wet. Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention must surely be aware of the wildfires, the floods, the hurricanes, and droughts. [And perhaps the epidemics.] 

This is what they said would happen because of climate change aka global warming. It’s happening. 

All those in authority – locally, nationally, internationally must act to reduce those activities/practices that exacerbate those changes which threaten the viability of this planet. They may. I hope they do. But all of us must alter our own lifestyles and practices. Slow things down. Consume less. Make more careful choices. I don’t know that we will. We’ve never been very good at ‘being good’. 

But I am not sure we have much choice. I believe (because I want to believe) that we can. I at least will try. I would love to see blue skies again instead of the haze from wildfires and auto exhaust. I would love my grandson to be able to thrive, run in green meadow, be astounded by majestic elk, perhaps fish or swim in crystalline streams. And breathe deeply the clear fresh air. 

Amen.

 

An Acknowledgement

It may well be Aunt Zoe’s fault.

My little family used to visit her in Laguna Beach, California back when people could still afford to live there. She was my father’s father’s sister… a fervent Protestant Republican school teacher who never married. She scared me because she was loud and opinionated. She had rules and brooked no transgressions, but her affection was as voluminous as her anatomy. Everyone loved her.  Neighbors, students, church members, strangers at the grocery store … all who fell within her orbit stayed within her orbit, smiling.

One day, returning from an afternoon at the beach, I sat at her desk and wrote about the waves marching to the shore in endless synchronicity. 

Aunt Zoe said it was brilliant and that I would obviously become a great writer. And I, who was barely seven at the time, believed her.

Thereafter, I turned to writing whenever I found myself in new or uncomfortable territory. When we moved from southern California to eastern Ohio, I forged a niche in my new world by writing for the junior high paper, then the high school paper, then, later for the college paper. Then, after graduation, for an actual newspaper. 

When my marriage became untenable, I wrote a collection of poems and verse that became a program I presented to women’s groups. That helped. For a while. After divorce, I found a job … writing. When my employer decided to move to its offices from Chicago to Tampa, I found another writing job in the Chicago area– one that eventually gave me the opportunity to travel to other countries [Canada, Guatemala, Japan, Korea, England, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Australia, Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, The People’s Republic of China, Switzerland, and France. When that job fizzled, I quit and got another job … writing… that took me to South Africa (and Zimbabwe and Namibia]. And when that job disappeared, I quit and moved to Colorado to work on writing for myself. So far, two books.

I am working on a modest collection of essays but not with the discipline Aunt Zoe would have preferred. She was a great believer in discipline (and honesty and temperance). Actually, there might be much about my life that would generate her disapproval.

Still, I know that nothing makes me feel more alive than when I am sitting in front of my computer letting the words accumulate in a fashion that makes some kind of sense, or point. Or both. 

Every time my dad pulled up in front of Aunt Zoe’s house, he would comment on the state of the hibiscus plant by her front door. I have my own garden now (in Colorado). Recently, I planted my own hibiscus. The flowers are my private memorial to Aunt Zoe in gratitude for her encouragement in a craft that has sustained me my whole life.  And pulled me around the world.

 

BIRTHSTONES

 When Gertrude was 16 her maternal grandmother gave her a sardonyx ring.  Sardonyx was her ‘birthstone’. Why couldn’t it have been a sapphire or diamond or ruby?  Sardonyx was just a brown stone, usually with little streaks of white (the onyx). Yuck.  Still, she loved her grandmother, and the stone was set in a delicate framework of different shades of gold. So, she kept it and wore it (especially when her grandmother visited). 

That was more than sixty years ago.  Some wisp of memory prompted Gertrude to fish it out of the small bowl where she kept her rings. It felt a little loose when she put it on.  Maybe her finger had shrunk. The rest of her had (at least vertically) . She used to be five feet two inches. Now she was just five feet none.  Twisting it around her finger, she smiled at memories of her grandmother, Olive Jenkins Walker, aka Nana. They were buddies, sharing giggles over stories about Gertrude’s mom and conspiring to have secret adventures. This was easier because she and Nana were about the same height, literally seeing things eye to eye. They shared many stories and sort-of secrets.  She died when Gertrude was twenty-five, a year after her first child was born. Gertrude had a photograph of Nana holding her infant son.  Both of them looked awestruck.

Now that son was grown up and lived a thousand miles away.

Now Gertrude had a computer through which she can follow any train of thought to myriad destinations.

She began by looking up birthstones. It turned out that the concept of birthstones evolved sometime in the 15^th or 16^th  century in Poland or Germany as a sort of derivative of Arabian astrology. Or something. There were even some biblical implications . . . in Revelations! Gertrude did not dwell on these. She was more interested in learning that people born in August could have three ‘birthstones’. She could choose between peridot, spinel, and sardonyx.  Why hadn’t her grandmother known that? And choose one of the others, both of which looked prettier than sardonyx. 

Sixty years later, that point was moot. She had a sardonyx ring. Period. So, Gertrude hopped on another train of thought.

Sardonyx seemed phonically related to sardonic. So, Gertrude looked that up, then wandered around in virtual comparisons between the words sardonic and sarcastic. It turns out that sarcastic is meaner.

Her father was sarcastic. Most people who knew him would never think of him as mean but both Gertrude and her younger brother bore the psychological scars of his scathing remarks. For her dad, stupidity and laziness were cardinal sins. He often pronounced them guilty of these, making them feel inadequate. To this day, Gertrude became inordinately defensive if someone suggested that something she did or said was stupid.

It was an unfortunate heritage. Eventually, she was able to realize when this verbal trigger had been pulled and to reduce her defensiveness. She became a little better at accepting criticism without crumbling … dissolving into  mea culpa.

But remnants of those early harsh judgements clung to her psyche.  When she was overly tired or overwhelmed by a whirlwind of events or an avalanche of bills and obligations, she could slip into her soul dungeon, smothered in dark layers of self-proclaimed inadequacy. 

Salvation, in the form of common sense and memories of her grandmother’s love and laughter could lift her out of despond.

She decided to wear the ring more often.

An Acknowlegement

It may well be Aunt Zoe’s fault. My little family used to visit her in Laguna Beach, California back when people could still afford to live there. She was my father’s father’s sister… a fervent Protestant Republican school teacher who never married. She scared me because she was loud and opinionated. She had rules and brooked no transgressions, but her affection was as voluminous as her anatomy. Everyone loved her. Neighbors, students, church members, strangers at the grocery store … all who fell within her orbit stayed within her orbit, smiling. 

    One day, returning from an afternoon at the beach, I sat at her desk and wrote about the waves marching to the shore in endless synchronicity. Aunt Zoe said it was brilliant and that I would obviously become a great writer. And I, who was barely seven at the time, believed her. Thereafter, I turned to writing whenever I found myself in new or uncomfortable territory. 

    When we moved from southern California to eastern Ohio, I forged a niche in my new world by writing for the junior high paper, then the high school paper, then, later for the college paper. Then, after graduation, for an actual newspaper. 

     When my marriage became untenable, I wrote a collection of poems and verse that became a program I presented to women’s groups. That helped. For a while. After divorce, I found a job … writing. When my employer decided to move to its offices from Chicago to Tampa, I found another writing job in the Chicago area– one that eventually gave me the opportunity to travel to other countries [Canada, Guatemala, Japan, Korea, England, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Australia, Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, The People’s Republic of China, Switzerland, and France. When that job fizzled, I quit and got another job … writing… that took me to South Africa (and Zimbabwe and Namibia]. And when that job disappeared, I quit and moved to Colorado to work on writing for myself. So far, two books.     

    I am working on a modest collection of essays but not with the discipline Aunt Zoe would have preferred. She was a great believer in discipline (and honesty and temperance). Actually, there might be much about my life that would generate her disapproval. Still, I know that nothing makes me feel more alive than when I am sitting in front of my computer letting the words accumulate in a fashion that makes some kind of sense, or point. Or both. Every time my dad pulled up in front of Aunt Zoe’s house, he would comment on the state of the hibiscus plant by her front door. I have my own garden now (in Colorado). Recently, I planted my own hibiscus. The flowers are my private memorial to Aunt Zoe in gratitude for her encouragement in a craft that has sustained me my whole life. And pulled me around the world.