Journey to Simplicity

Before The Bite

2012-02-02T18:19:00.001-05:00

Eating - as essential to our life as breathing and sleeping. Yet, what/when/how to eat has dominated and confused our society with each passing year. The act of eating should be simple, but it has become unfortunately very complex - and in the journey towards simplicity, complex is not a welcome word. After much research, I've concluded that there are many reasons why the whole food thing is so confusing. It's not easy to eat anymore, and here's why:

Misleading information on what is healthy. Uh-huh, we're supposed to believe what the experts tell us, right? Experts like the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, American Dietetic Association, USDA, etc.? There have been more flip-flops in the "guiding wisdom" offered by these and other so-called expert groups than can be found on a California beach. We have a DVD of old TV commercials, and one of the saddest ones is an ad for margarine - good for the heart, more healthy than butter, they said. Years later, we discover margarine with its transfats is one of the worst things you can eat. Eggs are bad for the heart, they said earlier. Now eggs are one of the most nutritious items on the menu! Wonder bread builds bodies....now whole grains are the answer! Wait - even whole grains are not heroes...(more on that later...) Unfortunately, you can't just assume everything you hear, even from the "experts." Do your own research, which will lead you inevitably to the fact that...

We've screwed up our food. Oh yeah, we've really made a mess of things. Antibiotics are given to cows who are force-fed corn when their stomachs aren't made to digest corn. Growth hormones are given to many dairy cows. There are fast food joints on every block. And get this: The wheat you buy and eat today is not the same wheat grown generations ago. It has been genetically modified and tweaked so much that the ol' amber waves of grain are patented by Monsanto, et. al., and their "patented seed" is blowing into the farms of organic farmers, so everything is pretty much contaminated. We've overfished the seas, and what's left is filled with mercury and other pollutants. Pesticides cover everything. Fruits and vegetables are grown to withstand a lot of travel and handling without bruising - not for taste and certainly not for nutrition. Crops and animals are grown by large-scale industries who control the majority of our food supply and who appear to have little in the way of ethics. Which brings us to....

We have become aware of our food sources. At first, this seems like a good thing, right? Recall, however, the story of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were happy and naive in their own little world until "their eyes were opened." In other words, they received the blessing/curse of knowledge, and they had to deal with that knowledge. Anyone who has not heard of "Food, Inc" or "Fast Food Nation" or other books and movies has either been leading a sheltered existence or has deliberately avoided the ugly truth. Our daughter and daughter-in-law are vegans for ethical reasons, but even from a purely health reason, to allow some of the "food" on the market into our bodies is pure insanity. Descriptions and pictures of animals standing in their own waste, calves taken from their mothers and/or killed, chickens whose beaks are cut off so they won't peck each other from the anxiety of being stuffed in a cramped space, turkeys bred to have such big breasts that they can't even walk, - well, it's not a pretty picture and it is certainly not appetizing. I'm not a vegan, not even a vegetarian - but it's getting harder and harder to eat the way I've been eating guilt-free. I, of course, try to find my own way, meaning....

Everybody, literally every body, is different. Whether you're allergic to peanuts or gluten, whether or not you can easily digest milk - you have to find out what works for you - a way of eating that is sustainable, where you can maintain a healthy weight and keep your body at optimal performance. There is no one-size-fits all. There will probably be compromises along the way. Not everybody has the same system, or....

Financial resources. Yep, you knew money has to figure in somewhere, right? Organic food costs more, grass-fed beef costs more, vegan ice cream costs more. Your budget can only go so far so you have to make some hard choices. As our daughter posted on Facebook recently, our government kindly subsidizes the very crops and industries that are harming us - so we can get that cheap "food."

Eating - something that should be simple and instinctive - has become a burden so emotionally draining that it gives me a headache just to think about it. Before the first bite, we have to consider the conventional wisdom versus our own research, the contamination of our food supply, the ethics of how our food is raised, our own body's reaction to what we eat, and how much we are willing to financially invest in our health. It's still an ongoing journey for my husband and me to figure this all out, but if anyone hears of a magic pill I can take once a day so I can quit eating altogether, I'd appreciate a heads up. What a bummer! The next thing you know, we'll have problems with the simple act of breathing....oh dear.

I had it backwards!

2012-01-06T11:06:00.002-05:00

I love to document things. I have fun making all sorts of lists and I especially enjoy journaling. I've been keeping a daily diary for years now; in fact, in 2009 I bought a 10-year journal that allows one small paragraph for each day of each year encompassing the decade from 2009 through 2019. I may record anything - the title of an old movie we watched, or what Ed cooked for dinner, or maybe how things are going at work. (I've got some excellent documentation of how many inches of snow we shoveled...and shoveled...and shoveled last January!) I also have a journal on my iPad where I record my health progress for the day. I also keep a running to-do list where I delete items after I complete the tasks. Mostly, though, I just write about events of my day.

I, of course, do these things at the end of the day. Well, duh, you have to wait until something happens before you can document it, right? At the end of each day, I sit down and write what happened - if I got any exercise done, how much sleep I got, how many lines I transcribed, if I got to post on my blog, if I managed to work on the quilt or pay bills or balance that bank statement. I sit in front of the computer or on the couch with my iPad with my various journals and reflect on my day, frequently chuckling over something funny that happened, or, in contrast, finding that I'm still stewing over a frustration at work. I also intermittently end up chastising myself for not having done the things I thought I would get done that day. I had such great plans, but now as I write the day's events down, they seem lacking. Where did the time go? How did I waste so much of it? How many people had I snapped at? Did I really eat that big piece of cake? How many times was I in such a hurry I didn't pay attention to the important things? So here I write, in the here and now, looking back in my immediate past and evaluating it.

This week I had a revelation when I read a quote from one of my Facebook friends: "The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." Or, as I prefer to look at it, I am the author of my own story.

I realized then that I had it all backwards. I was sitting there with a keyboard or pen trying to write the story of my day, when in fact, my day's story had already been written by me. From the moment I awoke, I had been writing my story as surely as if I had held a pen to paper every second of the day. Every choice I made created another sentence in the story. Every attitude, every reaction, every bite I ate or word I said - it all went into my evolving journal. Alas, by the time I physically sat down to write, the story had been written and it would stay unchanged and forever sealed. There would be no going back, no editing, no deleting the things I regret having said or done, no adding things that I wish I had said or done - it was already written and - yes - published as it really happened. A nonfiction documentary, a self-published autobiography, in real time.

I wish I could describe the feelings of energy and power that enveloped me when I had this epiphany. To take responsibility for my own story? Really? Oh, I'll admit other people contribute to the story. (Yeah, like the nice gentleman who backed into our car last week - he tweaked my story quite a bit.) But how I reacted to his contribution? That was solely up to me.

I want to wake up and think, "What do I want to document in my journal tonight?" Then, as they say, I want to "just do it." The journal is not written after the day is done. The journal is written as soon as the day starts. If I want to laugh during the day, I will find opportunities to do so. If I want to love and feel loved, I will do that too. If I want to be in awe of the wonderful blessings I have, I will find time to pause and feel blessed. If I want to be healthier, I will eat right and find time for exercise. What goes into the story is up to me. I can document my day's story in the evening, but I certainly can't write it. That part has already been done.

Join me in this wonderful journaling as we write our own lives, minute by minute, day by day, choice by choice. It is an awesome power we have been given and just as awesome a power to waste. I never again want to feel the helplessness of looking backward, wishing things were different. I'm my own pilot, my own author, and darn it, I want to fly high with purpose and write my life with love and joy!

Release

2011-12-31T12:34:00.000-05:00

Lily, our border collie puppy, is as energetic as they come. She shares the cute trait many other dogs have - loving to play fetch. We throw her a toy, ball, or frisbee, and she runs like a bat out of hell to get it, then brings it back. Then we usually have a problem. She doesn't drop it. She prances and dances and wants to play tug-of-war with it - anything but drop it. Little does she know that we can't continue playing until she gives the toy back to us. We've tried saying things like "Hand it over!" or "Drop it!" or "Put it Down!" and even "That'll Do!" and nothing works. Trying to snatch it out of her hand just gets her excited and may even get us an accidental laceration.

After reading several books on border collies, the term we finally settled on was "Release." So that's what we're teaching her as an instruction to drop the toy.

I've always liked the word "release." I've heard at funerals that the deceased had suffered terribly from cancer or whatnot and had finally been "released" from his pain. Release is the at the core of the AA mantra, "Let Go and Let God." When I picture the word "release" in my mind, it's always accompanied by a big, deep sigh and a little smile, as if in releasing a heavy burden after walking with it for a long, long time.

But it's not just pain and guilt and heavy burdens we need to release. It can be good memories, too, that we are carrying - memories that are so good, in fact, that we still live in the past, clinging to the good ol' days of when we were young or attractive or talented or popular, tightly gripping in our teeth the perspective that that time was so extraordinary that life ever since has somehow been deficient and will never ever bring us happiness again. Sometimes it's something else - we might have a chokehold on our worldview, our paradigm for what we believe (segregation, anyone?), and no matter how wisdom has shown us otherwise, we refuse to change.

The thing that we can't get Lily to understand is that until she releases the toy, the play comes to a halt. Her fun is in limbo because of her stubbornness. But she will learn eventually. She will come to comprehend that the very thing she is avoiding at all costs - putting the toy down - is the very thing which will bring her more excitement, joy, and companionship with her human family when the play resumes. Once she lets go, she can open her mouth for the next catch - and as we do the same, we can open our hearts for the next blessing just around the corner.

My hope for 2012 is that we can all learn to release what is necessary to let go of - so we can receive again.

Feathers

2011-12-24T06:55:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite Christmas movies is Christmas in Connecticut. In it, Uncle Felix, a rotund Hungarian chef, steals the show. He is part of the plot to make his friend, played by Barbara Stanwyck, appear to be a Martha Stewart type character to keep her job as a magazine columnist when in real life she can't cook or do anything even loosely connected with housekeeping. When her wedding is about to take place, Felix, who is a good friend of the bride, is asked by the judge if he will give the bride away. Felix, who is frequently confused by American/English idioms, replies, "I don't give nobody avay. Alvays I keep my mouth shut."

Sometimes people ask me why I bother blogging. I'm not specialized enough to have a bunch of people interested in what I say (e.g., don't write about sewing or cooking or specialized hobbies), yet I still write every week or two. My answer is that I mainly write for introspection, because it is only when I put things down that I realize what my priorities are and what problems I need to work on. The only other reason is my grandkids. I won't be on this earth forever, and I certainly can't assume I will still be here when my grandchildren are grown with the their own families (a situation my Mom enjoys), so I hope this blog serves as a window for my grandkids into their Grammy's mind and heart. Maybe they can learn some life lessons from my mistakes and successes.

So here's my life lesson for this Christmas Eve: "Don't give nobody avay. Alvays keep your mouth shut."

Knowing when to just keep your mouth shut has to be one of the hardest lessons in life to learn. Kids today grow up with rewind buttons everywhere, and the sooner they realize there is no rewind button for life, the better. You'd think folks my age, born in the '50s without rewind buttons, would have easily assimilated that fact, but no. I can speak from personal experience. I speak, then I think. Unfortunately, that's backwards, but hey, sometimes I'm a stubborn student.

There's an old story about a spiritual teacher who had his students roll all sizes of stones around a big area. Then he asked then to go gather every stone and bring each one back. It took a little time, but they did this with no problem. Then he gave them feathers, and asked them to scatter the feathers and bring them back. As you can imagine, the wind carried those feathers miles and miles all over the place. They came back to the teacher in frustration, saying, "Master - the feathers have dispersed over miles; there is no way we can gather every one of them and bring them back to you." The wise teacher said, "And that is how it is with words. Once you say them, they are scattered forever and you can never take them back."

Throughout my life, I've said hurtful things on purpose. I've said hurtful things by accident. I've talked about people in a negative way to others. I've said things that should have been left unsaid. When I felt accused, I've talked back defensively by reminding others that they're as sloppy/hurtful/inept/forgetful as I am. I've offended, wounded, and distressed both people I am only acquainted with and people I dearly love. It breaks my heart at times and fills me with awful regret.

Of course, my husband Ed has this fault, too. I'm constantly berating him, "Why did you SAY that?!!" and many times he will reply, "I know. As soon as it left my mouth I asked myself the same question." Ed also has taught me that the bad habits/transgressions that irritate us about others are a mirror into what we hate about ourselves. I know when I get upset with him that down deep I am just upset with myself for harboring the same problem.

It only takes a moment to filter words in your brain before they are said out loud. One of my New Year's resolutions is to be careful with words - once they are gone, I can't bring them back.

I wish everyone the blessings of Christmas and the New Year. Live life in 2012 with the assurance that you don't need a rewind button, and watch those feathers. They're light and buoyant and can be gone in an instant.

Pockets of insight

2011-12-11T16:44:00.001-05:00

Due to the generosity of a co-worker who gave me a gift certificate as a belated birthday present, I bought a new purse last month. It looks similar to the photo above.

Now, I've always had a difficult and frustrating time when I buy a purse. I usually only have one purse at a time, so it has to be multifunctional. That day, I stood around Penney's for a good hour examining purses. In the first place, although it didn't have to be gorgeous, I certainly didn't want to wince when I looked at it every day. It had to go with my wardrobe. And as superficial as it sounds, it had to reflect a little bit of my personality, as a visible expression to the world of what kind of person I am (as most wardrobe items tend to do). Most importantly, it had to hold the important things, and it had to have a few pockets that were necessary for me - specific pockets designated for specific things - a pocket for my keys, a pocket for my cell phone, and a pocket for my work ID badge. These pockets had to be secure, because I throw my purse around a lot and don't want anything important falling out. And then to top it off, the whole purse had to fasten securely so nothing could fall out the top. It couldn't be too small or too big, and it couldn't be too heavy. There is only limited room in a purse, so one has to be picky about what goes inside and where everything goes. If I decide to carry a calendar book, I might not have room for my bulky coupon holder. I have to make choices, as I can't carry everything. All this makes purse shopping a very frustrating and time-consuming experience for me.

As the year comes to a close, I thought about this in relation to my life. I only have 24 hours in a day - my time is limited just like my purse space. All the emotions that I carry, some justly, some out of habit, some for no discernible reason, have to be carried by me at once. All the negative things that eat away at my psyche - guilt, shame, regret, anxiety, envy, feelings of revenge, anger - take up space where I could be carrying love, compassion, forgiveness and patience. Every part of my brain that harbors the negative emotions just pushes out the positive emotions. Every minute of the day I spend in worry is a minute I don't spend in contentment.

I've heard in simplicity circles that one of the best ways to embrace simplicity is to limit what you buy: For everything you bring into the house (or closet, etc.), you should get rid of something you currently own. I've also been told that the key to organizational contentment is "a place for everything, and everything in its place."

I think for 2012, my goal is to walk as many negative emotions out the door as I can and usher in the positive ones. Just like how I get picky about choosing a purse, I want to be more selective about the feelings that I choose to carry with me day in and day out. I do believe in a place for everything and everything in its place - and the place for those corrosive, energy-draining feelings is certainly not in my vision of what I want for my life. They are not how I would choose to represent myself to the world, and their presence crowds my mind and heart so that I lose sight of what makes life meaningful.

In the end, my purse is just a red pocketed container - a functional accessory to enable me to carry around other physical items in a convenient way. I can find one I like, and use it until it no longer serves my needs, then I can replace it. But this one life is all I've got, and I want to use it to carry ideals that are important to me, ideals that will sustain me, nourish me, and get me through the hard times. If that means clearing some damaging things out to make room for some new healing ones, then so be it. I think we all deserve no less.

The Way We Were (Are)

2011-11-24T07:14:00.001-05:00

Sometimes life is going so relatively smoothly that I want to take a snapshot of it and keep it unchanged. I guess Thanksgiving has helped me concentrate on the blessings rather than the frustrations, but our lives are going well at this time. Everyone in the family has a job, son Matt is putting the finishing touches on his software creation that will be offered for sale soon, Matt and wife Sarah just ran a 5K for the first time (pushing Joshua in a stroller), the grandkids are all healthy, Mom is doing great (her cholesterol level is actually better than mine....grrr...don’t go there!), Mom’s dog Jenny still hasn’t killed or maimed our new puppy, my older niece was elected president of her sorority, my other niece has been inducted into the National Honor Society, Caroline and Charlotte had an amazing violin recital and are doing well in school, my sister after years of hard work finally got our mom’s house on the market.... and you know, the list goes on and on.

But, of course, change does come. On a description of this blog, I mention that my journey focuses on my response to aging, roadblocks to simplicity, grandparenting, acceptance and celebration of the past, etc., but basically here it is in a nutshell: “....life’s changing roles.” Change is everywhere, from my living situation to my aging body to all my family and friends. Things cannot stay stagnant. Even the seasons remind of that. (Ed told me it is time for our annual call to our local newspaper to ask them to stop delivery until the spring thaw, as the carrier can’t get to the newspaper box because the snow plow drops it all in front, since we got our first real snow of the winter this week.) Holiday commercials are everywhere, and Rachel calls us every day to remind us that her blender is being held together with duct tape and she really, really, REALLY wants a new top-of-the-line blender for Christmas.

But can’t we keep things the same right now? Mom is still with us, my aunt and uncle and Mom’s best friend, all in their 80s, are still with us. I don’t want any more losses, any more deaths. Everyone is healthy and happy and I want it to go on forever.

Change is scary because of the unknown factor, but just when I wish for the power to stop time just as it is now, then I wake to reality: Joshua is a cuter-than-ever 16-month-old toddler, but I am curious to see what it will feel like to have him tell me about what he is doing in kindergarten a few years from now. I wonder how Caroline will be excelling in violin as she grows and fine tunes her already incredible talent. And Charlotte - now there’s a firecracker in training - I can hardly wait to see how she matures and changes! What will the grandkids look like as they grow? What will they be interested in? What things can I help them with and teach them?

The cycle of life is so poignant. Charlotte’s violin is very small, the size that Caroline started with, but awhile back Caroline upgraded to a bigger violin because she had grown. When Joshua comes to visit, we pull out the plastic spoons and bibs that we used for the girls when they were little - and even a toy dog that I used when I was a baby! Each object just shouts “CHANGE!”

Tomorrow our family will celebrate Thanksgiving here (after the kids go to their in-laws today). Since Mom is here, we will have 4 generations together for the first time ever on Thanksgiving, so that will be a blessing. We will gather in the living room to take our annual family Christmas photo, this year having Mom in the picture. That photo freezes us in time, at our current ages, interests, skill levels, physical health - the snapshot of what our family looked like on November 25, 2011. Nanoseconds after the photo is taken, though, things will be changing. Cells in our body dying and replenishing, more life experiences to enter in our brains’ computers, more conversation, more learning - and yes, more pain, more sorrow, more anxiety.

But for today, I close my eyes and picture our family as we are this second - healthy and content - and we all have warm houses, enough food, clothes, and money to live, friends who care about us, but most important, we have what you can’t see in the photo - oodles and oodles of love. And that’s the thing that will support us through all the inevitable changes life will throw at us in the years to come.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I-Witness to History

2011-11-11T14:25:00.001-05:00

Maybe it's partly my career, but I have always been fascinated by medical things in the news. One story that intrigued me the most was that of Jill Bolte Taylor, who wrote the book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey. Amazon's description of her book reads in part:

Jill Taylor was a 37-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist when a blood vessel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of a curious scientist, she watched her mind deteriorate whereby she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Because of her understanding of the brain, her respect for the cells in her body, and an amazing mother, Jill completely recovered. In My Stroke of Insight, she shares her recommendations for recovery and the insight she gained into the unique functions of the two halves of her brain.

Basically, she watched herself have a stroke, and, being the curious brain scientist she was, she remembered details as it was unfolding and during the aftermath, almost as a third person observing an outside incident.

Thankfully, I have never had a stroke, but as I grow older, it still intrigues me to see my body change. It's an eyewitness account of the history of me. Certainly, having my 88-year-old mom living with me has strengthened the observation, because, of course, we don't exist in a vacuum, and as I am watching myself age, I have watched her age as well. I have been in her life 57 of those 88 years and I have watched her deal with changes in life situations as well as changes in her body - now as a daily occurrence.

I've been sick with a bad cold this week which has now congested my chest. I've had three nights of lack of sleep, missed half a day of work, used up two boxes of Puffs, and have sat here berating myself for not having the energy or desire to do things I need to do on my weekend. I recalled the weekends where I still did not accomplish anything, but had no illness excuse, and how I wished I had those weekends back to be productive! You forget to appreciate everyday health until you lose it - either temporarily or permanently.

I asked Mom last night if she remembers what it was like to just jump out of a chair and go on her way without bouncing up and down about 5 times to get some rebound, holding onto a walker, and every so slowly pushing herself up. She has one useless hand now, permanently in a clawed position, and I wonder if she ever thinks about the time when she had two good hands. I know she misses being able to do housework (washing dishes by hand was her favorite activity!). She has told me all my life, "Your health is everything," and now I see what she means. She is an eyewitness to what getting older (as well as sequelae of trauma) means. Every movement, every attempt to do anything, makes her painfully aware of what time has done to her once young body.

As it has on me. I'm not in that bad shape yet, but I look in the mirror with astonishment almost every day. My face and body are records of my life, and I am, as Jill Bolte Taylor was, an ongoing eyewitness - or as I like to say, I-witness, to my life being lived on this physical earth. Some of the changes are just natural changes of aging, some were avoidable but I made poor choices through the years, some are specifically hereditary in my family. It is intriguing to watch this process. One has to try to do it with an open mind, and an objective sense, a sense of watching another person age, because if one carries to the surface all the emotional baggage involved, the journey can be too traumatic.

It all reminds me of the saying, "Don't hate birthdays; consider the alternative," because my mom, even with her arthritis aches and pains and vision loss and neurological deficits and dental problems and everything else that an average 88-year-old woman has on her medical problem list, she has been, in a way, privileged to watch herself get old. As a 30-year-old, maybe she wondered (probably she didn't) what it would be like to be old, to look old, to feel old. Now she knows. And it's still an ongoing process - her doctor said she'd live to be 100, the news of which, I think, made her rather pleased but exhausted just thinking about it.

And so the journey of life continues. I am contained in this physical body for an unknown number of years, and I have been, yes, privileged to watch its changes as I age. These changes sometimes anger me, frustrate me, and make me wish things were different. On the other hand, I'm mostly in awe of the process. The changes are natural, they are expected, and they still are miraculous to watch as they unfold.

I heard once that we start to die the day we are born, and I can understand that. The researchers are learning every day more and more about DNA and cell death and cell turnover and the telomere lengths and all that other technical fascinating stuff about why and how our bodies gradually just fall apart. I enjoy reading all their latest findings. But for me, it all comes down to me, doesn't it? And the things I am honored to watch - to see - to actually experience - makes me kind of lucky in a way. Many of my friends did not make it to the age of 57, so aging needs to be considered a gift as well as a curse.

I'm planning on splurging on an iPad next month. I'm been researching apps I'd like to have, but there is one app I've already got - iWitness. And what a remarkable, exciting, incredible app it is!!

In the Sweet Buy and Buy

2011-11-04T17:20:00.003-05:00

There are many memories of the days following 9/11, for me, but one of the most memorable, oddly, is the president telling everyone to get back to business as usual: "Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." I totally understand what he was trying to do and why, of course - to reassure the American people after fear had suddenly paralyzed everyone. Even his brother, Jeb Bush, said, "We need to respond quickly so people regain confidence and consider it their patriotic duty to go shopping...." The truth, though, sometimes hurts. And what is the truth embedded in these quotes? Our whole economy depends on consumerism.

It's that time of year again - Halloween is over and The Holidays are in full swing, with businesses flooding radio, TV, and other media with the message, "Go shopping!" Of course, it's a catch-22: Companies don't hire workers because there is not much demand for their products because people can't afford to buy; people can't afford to buy because they have lost their jobs because companies aren't hiring workers....and on and on.

Our local Lowe's, for instance, announced its closure last week, with many employees suddenly out of work. It was apparently an "underperforming" store. Now, Ed and I have shopped at Lowe's many times, but still there was the nagging guilt in my head: Should we have shopped there more to save all those jobs? Do I really have to spend beyond my means in order to be patriotic and help the economy?

In the next couple of months, consumerism will be paramount. The messages are all similar: Spending a lot on a gift shows you love someone. Spending more than you can afford helps the economy and saves jobs. Maxing out your credit card will enable you to have happy holidays when you don't have the cash; in fact, with some credit card offers, you even get a percentage of your expenditures back, so the more you spend, the more you "save." It's much better to buy something you really don't need at half price for $50 than for full price at $100. (The option of not buying it at all is never mentioned.)

We have to feel some sadness for the state of the world, our country, our economy, and our addiction to a lifestyle that is not sustainable in the long run. Just as banks should not become too big to fail, an economy totally based on buying (and charging) more and more and more is doomed to falter. Those who cannot afford to buy, or choose not to buy, or limit what they buy, should not be made to feel guilty for their lack of "appropriate participation" in bringing our economy back to life.

I'm so sorry for those folks at Lowe's and every other place whose jobs were lost or cut because I'm buying less than I used to, but for me, to live within my means and to live with personal integrity, that's the way it has to be. We know in our hearts that "buy more stuff" is not the message of Christmas or Thanksgiving or Hanukkah or any of the other religious observances - but it comes through loud and clear anyway. Sigh. Happy Holidays.

Faces of our Lives

2011-10-21T16:59:00.000-05:00

As one of my simplicity priorities, I am always seeking balance. Life is full of joys and sorrows - we can't get by without either one - and somehow we must learn to cope with what we see around us, with us, and in us.

When I was pregnant with Matt in January 1983, my maternal grandfather lay dying. On that very same day, my cousin's wife was having a baby girl. I remember the conversation going on long distance over the phone, with the family at Paw-Paw's bedside encouraging him to hold on, that he was getting a great-granddaughter any minute. Paw-Paw died, and Hope was born into the world. One went out, one came in. Sorrow and Happiness holding hands.

Every time I am grieving, a part of me realizes that others are happy at the same time that I am sad. I may be heading to a funeral while others are going to a wedding. I may be struggling with despair while others just down the street are celebrating remission of cancer. Conversely, I may be enjoying watching my grandson play while others are hearing the news that their son has died overseas.

This yin and yang of life has always fascinated me - and one interpretation of yin and yang is that "their interaction is thought to maintain the harmony of the universe and to influence everything within it." It brings to mind lyrics from that old song "Love and Marriage" - "Try, try, try to separate them, it's an illusion....You can't have one without the other."

We just got a new Border Collie puppy and named her Lily. I took her to work on Tuesday to show her off. She charmed everyone; who doesn't like a puppy? On Wednesday morning, I found out that my supervisor's dog had been accidentally run over and killed the evening of that visit, and another co-worker had to take her beloved terminally ill pet in to be put down that very day. A new pet coming in, two pets going out. And life goes on.

I think my happiness and contentment will forever be a little tempered by the knowledge that others are simultaneously suffering, and too, in my times of tears and sadness, I need to remember that there is still joy and happiness in the world coexisting with my pain. As humans, we are connected in that way. We grieve with each other, and we celebrate with each other. Sometimes that makes life hard. Sometimes, though, it makes life bearable.

Supported by Strangers

2011-10-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

I have always believed in the power of dreams to teach us lessons that we are meant to discover. I had a dream last week that made me think about my life in a new way.

In the dream, Ed was driving Mom and me to the grocery. When we got there, he parked in a place that I thought was too far from the store, even though it was on even ground for Mom to maneuver. So while they went into the store, I decided to re-park the car. The next part, of course, is strange, as most dreams have those moments which don't make sense - but I ended up parking the car in a big crowded room of people sitting in folding chairs. The room was full of these people, leaving only a sliver of an aisle on one side, just enough for me to squeeze the car in and drive it all the way to the front, which put me right smack in front of the grocery building. I was pleased with myself about finding a parking space so close, but it was then that I realized Ed was going to freak out when he saw what I had done. I myself was panicking! On my own poor judgment, I had gotten the car wedged into a tight space, so tight that Ed would never be able to back it out, and besides, I couldn't even open the doors for him and Mom to get in when they came back to the car. I was so upset at what a stupid thing I had done. How could I have been so idiotic?

It was that moment in the dream that I happened to look around, and everyone in those chairs had seen my predicament and had voluntarily gotten up, moved their chairs over, and sat back down again, leaving me ample room for the car. They had done this without my asking. They had done it as strangers. They had supported me in my time of desperation and had done what they could to help. They had done it without fanfare, without demanding my gratitude; indeed, they had done it so quietly, I hadn't even realized I was being helped until it was over.

Looking back on my life, I realize I have been supported hundreds of times by total strangers, as well as friends and family who openly encouraged me, and friends, family and acquaintances who worked anonymously behind the scenes. I was given their gifts, for the most part, without my asking, and many times, when I didn't deserve it - because, after all, I know how to make my own messes, my own poor decisions, and it's my own fault, right? Yet, they were there through it all, without blame, without punishment, without lectures. They got up, moved their chairs, and sat back down again. They inconvenienced themselves for my benefit when they saw the need.

So you can see how coincidental it was that after that dream, another stranger inconvenienced himself to brighten our lives.

Mom listens to WDEA radio in Maine, and her favorite disc jockey is a guy named Rick Foster. She loves his signature sign-off, something about asking his wife to put on the coffee pot, "I'm comin' home." She talked about him enough that I finally decided to find his picture online so she could see what he looked like. I found a photo on the station's web site, but it was too small for her to see clearly, so on the spur of the moment, I e-mailed Mr. Foster, explained the situation, and asked if he could send her a larger picture of himself by e-mail or regular mail. He wrote back, saying he would be happy to do that, but "would she be up for a visit?" Oh, what a surprise was in store for Mom!

So on Wednesday afternoon, Rick and his sweet wife, Becky, drove to Hancock to see my mother. She was shocked and overjoyed. We had a wonderful visit, and Rick did indeed present her with an 8 x 10 autographed photo which I told her I would frame and hang on her wall. Mom has since told the story of that visit to a few family members and friends - and I love to hear her tell it, because she is still shocked and excited that it ever happened. As my sister, Joy, remarked, "We try so hard to find something to buy for Mother that will bring her pleasure, never really succeeding, and here it is - an experience like this, a relationship, a memory, that overshadows anything we could have possibly bought."

Look at it this way: We took Mother away from her close friends and other relatives, her familiar surroundings, her house. We moved her to a place where she doesn't know anybody but family. Her accident took away her easy mobility to walk around or drive a car. Macular degeneration is taking her eyesight, rheumatoid arthritis is taking her fine motor skills, and the radio becomes a constant companion. Rick Foster, who has been entertaining her through the airwaves, was gracious enough to visit her and lift her spirits, in turn giving her a story she is excited to pass on to whoever will listen. Mr. Foster did this of his own initiative, without being asked, once he saw how he could make a difference.

Rick Foster - one of the many people in that room of my life, who got up and moved their chairs, inconvenienced themselves for me and those I love. I am truly blessed.

Potential

2011-09-30T09:37:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite family Christmas stories is something that happened when our daughter, Rachel, was little. It was after Thanksgiving, the world was decorated for the holidays, and as we were driving one day, we passed a produce market with evergreen trees lined up, just like in the picture above, ready to sell. I said, "Rachel, look at all the Christmas trees!" She was dismissive. "Those aren't Christmas trees," she said. "Those are just trees."

Rachel in her limited wisdom of the world at that time couldn't fathom that what she was looking at were Christmas trees. In her mind, Christmas trees weren't Christmas trees until they were illuminated with lights, decorated with tinsel and shiny, colorful ornaments, with angels on top. She was pretty sure she could recognize a Christmas tree, and those didn't qualify.

Adults, however, have had many years' experience seeing the potential in bare evergreen trees. We are aware of the destiny for which they were grown, and we have imagination to see them in their full glory. Picking out a bare tree to adorn for the holidays can be a demanding process. No detail is overlooked. Is the tree fresh? Is the height tall enough for that big room or small enough for those low ceilings? Does it smell good? Is it the type we want - cedar, cypress, fir, pine or spruce? How about the cost - is it an amount we are willing to spend? The perfect tree for one house may not be the perfect tree for next door. The perfect tree when the kids were home may not be the perfect tree for empty-nesters.

We are experts in seeing the potential in bare evergreen trees, but as a society we seem to have a lot of trouble seeing potential in other places. I was at Grandparents' Day yesterday at the school of Caroline and Charlotte, where a relatively small building was inundated with their regular students through 5th grade plus one, two, maybe three or four grandparents in tow for each child. It was quite a scene! As I watched all those kids, I was impressed with what I saw of the teachers. It is always my hope that teachers will be able to see the potential in each individual child and be able to tap that. Rachel, all grown up now, is teaching gifted and talented students this year, and one of her goals is to help teachers realize that gifted/talented kids are not always the stereotypical smart, well-behaved kids. Sometimes they are the daydreamers who can't focus on their work. Sometimes they are those who are problem students, who misbehave because they are bored. Others don't even look like they could succeed anywhere (Charlie Brown tree, anyone?). There is a whole variety of gifted/talented kids who, to reach their full potential, could benefit from extra specialized learning and attention.

The same is true for all kids, whether gifted or not. Just like a bare tree destined for glory, each child is unique. Some can reach their education potential by going to college. Others will fulfill their life's dreams by manning a lobster boat. Others will thrive in trades such as electricians, carpenters, and plumbers. Some will feel called to help society in different ways, such as being social works, ministers, firefighters or police officers. Others will spread beauty and love in the world, through music, art, drama, and literature. To look at an undeveloped child, full of raw unrecognized material that is waiting for someone to help mold it, is to look at a bare tree and trying to figure out exactly where it belongs and where it can develop its potential. However, this is not one person picking out a tree and making the decision on where it should go. This endeavor involves our whole society, and not only school teachers, but parents and other family members, friends, neighbors, medical providers, etc. In real life, everyone is a role model and every person a teacher. Everyone who comes in contact with that child has a beneficial or detrimental effect on encouraging learning, curiosity, discovering his/her passion, and helping the child find direction in life.

It won't be long before many of us will be heading to the market or the farm to pick out, as Rachel said, "just trees." But we will see the potential of what they could look like, what environment will bring out their beauty, and where they could shine the brightest. I hope society gets to a point where it is able to do as much with our precious children.

Letting Down My Hare

2011-09-24T13:29:00.002-05:00

Have you ever been in an Asian restaurant and passed the time by looking at their zodiac signs on a placemat? Ed and I love to do that occasionally. Apparently he's a dog and I'm a horse. I can't remember whether or not we are considered "compatible" or whether a relationship should be avoided at all costs, although I guess after 37 years of marriage, it really doesn't matter. At any rate, I take it all with a grain of salt. In the first place, how could a zodiac chart that only goes by birthday year presume to be correct? It is basically claiming that most of my classmates in our high school graduating class constitute one personality type, which, when you think about it, is really ludicrous.

Aside from the birth year problems, there's one major reason why I don't subscribe to the truth of the Chinese zodiac. It's because I have learned for certain that I'm not a horse and Ed is not a dog. I am a HARE and Ed is a TORTOISE.

Anyone who knows us well is already aware of this. Literally, our walking styles fit this picture. I like to go out, walk fast, get it over with, and come back indoors to resume other activities that I find much more pleasurable. Ed goes out and walks slowly, sometimes covering 6 miles a day. He stops to light his pipe, he stops to blow his nose, he stops to talk to a neighbor. He even (gasp!) tries to commune with nature!

Why am I so accident-prone? Because I'm always in a hurry. Heck, I've got things to do - important things! And, like the famous hare in the fable, I end up underestimating the time involved on a project and end up resting under a tree when I should be gaining some ground in the race.

The funny thing is that I rarely win the race. I end up setting myself on fire, getting head trauma from a cabbage (appropriate for a hare, n'est ce pas?), or suffering some other calamity of going too fast and not paying attention, the injuries of which take me out of the race for a good length of time. Sometimes I'll look at how far the finish line it, and say, "To heck with it," because the whole thing is just too daunting to even start.

Enters Ed, the Tortoise King. He is never in a hurry. He says he has read that slower people who smoke tend toward pipe smoking because it is a slow process (loading, packing, lighting, relighting, cleaning the pipes), or, conversely, people who smoke pipes are automatically slower folks because of these steps. Whether his nicotine habit has anything to do with it or not, I don't know. All I know is it is impossible to get him to hurry up. When I try to, he just gets nasty and upset and blames every subsequent mistake he makes on me.

In my ongoing attempt to improve myself and organize my life, I came upon a book Self Discipline in 10 Days which is short and to the point in breaking through the barriers that prevent us from living the productive, organized lives that we want. In the process of reading the book and taking notes, I decided that I would make a contract with myself to quilt 15 minutes a day. Now, the whole idea sounds pathetic. What can one possibly accomplish in 15 minutes a day? You might as well not do anything! Yeah, that's what I thought. To my surprise, I can get a lot of quilting steps done in only 15 minutes a day. I find the timing of every day helpful, for instance, to remember where I am in the sequence. This avoids the frustrating inner dialogue of "Do I need 80 7 x 7-inch squares of the print, and 80 sets of 2 x 2-inch squares and 2 x 3-1/2-inch square of the cream? ...and where the heck am I, anyway?" It has actually helped me to become more of a tortoise, slow but steady, making progress that is not so evident daily but after a week or so, is all laid out for me to see.

I will never stop trying to get everything done quickly and Ed will never stop ambling along enjoying the scenery. That probably means I'll burn myself out and he'll win the race with energy to spare, smiling all the way. Oh, well. I get him to appointments on time and he makes me slow down enough to see an eagle's nest. Come to think of it, I think it will really be a tie score and we'll hopefully end up crossing the finish line hand in hand - if I can slow up enough to be able to finish the race with all fingers intact!

A cappella

2011-09-10T10:11:00.002-05:00

My dad, as I've noted before, was an awesome choir director for several decades. He didn't wear a robe or hold a baton, but with his smile and facial expressions and his hands always in motion, he managed to extract beautiful music from our relatively small choir. One of his favorite things to do was to direct the choir in an a cappella song (without accompaniment, just voices). Now, this is not an easy thing. It would be hard enough for a soloist to hear a starting note, sing a song without aid of accompaniment, and end on the correct pitch - but a whole choir? Very, very difficult. All it takes is a slide up here, a slide down there, and the ending pitch may be off a whole note or more.

When Dad was ready for the choir to practice a certain song a cappella, he would have the organist play for the choir the starting notes for all parts - soprano, alto, tenor, bass. There would be a general soft humming as voices prepared with their specific notes. Then he would raise his hands, make sure everyone was watching, and he would start to direct. The song would evolve (and believe me, most songs suitable for a cappella were absolutely gorgeous if everyone sang correctly and with emotion), and then came the end. Dad would lower his hands and then give a motion to the organist, who played the chord of what was supposed to be the ending pitch, and Dad would react accordingly - if we were off, with a slight wince and a quick smile and an "Oh well, better next time" attitude - or, if the choir had kept perfect pitch, a wide grin that just radiated a "We did it!!" response.

I thought of that this week, as around this time of year I always enforce upon myself the fearful task of retrieving my New Year's Resolution list and giving my objectives a thorough examination as I evaluate how close I have come to fulfilling my dreams and plans for 2011. Actually, I don't call them resolutions (I hate that word), but I call them goals for the year. They cover all sorts of categories - my health, my hobbies, my work, my relationships - and under each one I list what I consider are priorities to concentrate on during the coming year, and I even have sublist of things that I wouldn't consider a priority but I would love to accomplish if I had the time or other necessary resources.

First, though, I start the page off with a list of accomplishments from the previous year - just to give me a little encouragement that I can be productive and get these things done, at least part of the time. Most of the time, though, I have a long to-do list and never get it done.

Oh, I manage to get birthday cards off in the mail and Christmas card family pictures taken and sent, and I manage to pay all the bills on time and balance the checkbook and all the other things that if they didn't get done, we would be in hot water, but when I look over my goals and objectives, I have fallen so short. The year is over half over, autumn is in the air, Christmas will be here before I know it, and I haven't done any CEUs for my recertification, I never did enter a sewing contest at Pattern Review, I didn't even get close to piecing the top for Matt and Sarah's quilt, I haven't learned any new sewing techniques, I haven't played the harp much at all, etc. We've been in this house now for 5 years and every year I put down "Paint the inside of the house" and we're still living with the white walls that came with the modular home.

It seems very much to me that I start off the year with perfect pitch, but somewhere, somehow, along the way, I always end up on the wrong note. Don't get me wrong - the song of 2011 has been wonderful and adventurous with a lot of surprising twists and turns that have altogether combined to make lovely music, but I fear - no, I know for sure - that I will end up sadly out of pitch.

Of course, there are many reasons for this, chiefly my ever-present tendency towards procrastination and biting off more than I can chew, my propensity for having endless creative ideas but not much follow-through, my paralyzed response to being overwhelmed where I just sit and do nothing, and last but not least, my perfectionism that makes me afraid of doing anything if I can't do it perfectly. But I will admit that this year has been rather unusual and has brought many challenges, with moving my elderly, debilitated mom and her dog up here from Tennessee (constituting two trips and a lot of planning), making a room for her out of my former exercise room (making exercise an even more inconvenient thing to accomplish), and trying to eat healthy when mom likes her starches and sweets.

I realize that I will never have a perfect pitch year. And that's OK. I will still make my obligatory goal list for 2012, if for no other reason than to focus my attention on priorities, and on January 1, 2012, I will start a new a cappella song on the correct note and I will sing my heart out through the year, belting out the highs and the lows and everything in between. Sometimes I'll be sharp, sometimes I'll be flat, sometimes I'll be right on the note, and sometimes I'll take a good rest between the notes. Sometimes I'll be singing along with a group of others, sometimes just by myself. Some of the song will be sad, I'm sure, and some will be gloriously ecstatic. Some parts of it will be so lovely, it will make me cry in pure joy. Some parts of it will make me wince and want a do-over. Sometimes I will follow the music exactly as it is supposed to be sung, and other times I'll just make it up as I go along.

But - in the end, it's my song, and my wish is that it will be authentic, loving, patient, grateful, and full of hope and possibilities - with some self-discipline and flexibility thrown in for good measure. So what if I end a note or two from where I should be? If I concentrate on the beauty of the song and not on its imperfections, I think I'll still make my Daddy proud. All I have to do is what The Carpenters advised:

Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud, sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad

Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song

Turning over a new leaf?

2011-09-03T07:26:00.000-05:00

I saw a cute sign that would be perfect for my 8-year-old granddaughter, Caroline, a voracious reader. It said, "Life is Short. Read Fast." Of course, "Hurry Up" is my mantra. Ed is constantly berating me for doing everything too fast. He says the reason I'm accident-prone does not evolve from some physiological impairment; it is just because I'm trying to move too quickly and I don't pay attention - with which I completely and sadly agree.

Of course, I was reminded of this at my annual physical this week. Alas, I had to enumerate the many ways I had suffered injuries this year, including hitting my head on the corner of the bedside table which necessitated a trip to the doctor for a heavily bleeding scalp laceration; hitting my head on a bathroom drawer that was at hip level (long story); and, the most embarrassing of them all, how my head collided with a giant cabbage. The latter happened when I had returned home from the grocery, was putting things on the counter in the kitchen (including the monstrous cabbage), leaned over to get more items out of a bag on the floor and the huge cabbage rolled right off and smacked me with great force on the back of the head. (Well, at least I have an excuse for my senior moments. My brain has been undoubtedly damaged.) At least the cabbage story was a little funny. We went at it head-to-head.

This is only a small sampling of my accidents through the years, the major one of which was burning my face with fire starter gel and in the process, setting fire to the curtains in the room and having to be taken by ambulance to the burn center in Portland. They also include having a sewing machine needle break and pop in and out of my eye, years after having another sewing machine needle jam into my finger as if it were a piece of fabric, bending inside when it hit a bone.

In my defense, however, I must mention that my job demands speed. I am a medical transcriptionist, sit and type all day transcribing dictation, and I get paid by production. The more I transcribe, the more I get paid. Once I start the work day, I'm at breakneck speed until I leave. Even at lunch, I walk to the cafeteria too fast and eat my food too fast. I'm on a roll.

And the toll all this speed takes on me is evident from all the above mishaps. When I race through my 40 hours of work a week, it's hard to slow down for the rest of my off-work hours. This tendency reveals itself to Ed and me, for instance, in our walking styles. When I go out to walk/exercise, I like to walk at about 4 mph and get it over with. Ed likes to stroll, and, gasp!, try to pay attention and enjoy nature. I'm a hare and I married a turtle.

With all my sticky notes tacked up on every available surface, my to-do lists and calendar appointments, I think the Slow Down sign above should be probably be the top priority reminder for me. My family already winces when they see me with a needle, knife, or scissors, as well they should. They flinch when I'm around an open flame. They even get nervous when I am negotiating around a sharp corner on a piece of furniture or an open drawer. I think, though, I have hit rock bottom in my addiction to speed. You know something has got to give when you have to relate to your doctor the story of a massive cruciferous vegetable inflicting head trauma. I'm already not allowed in the cooking implements aisle, or the office supplies aisle, but I certainly don't want to be banned from the produce section. Sigh. Yeah, it's time to slow down.

Our Time Will Come

2011-08-20T15:12:00.006-05:00

Role models are so important in our lives. I have posted before about my being a grandmother, and what role models I had (or didn’t have) to fulfill the responsibilities of my new title. Now I have a different role - taking care of the needs of my 88-year-old mother, now living with us.

What role model to I have for this position? Who can inspire me and provide me with the perfect attitude to do this - a mix of patience, love, gentleness, forgiveness, sacrifice, and optimism? Oddly enough, it was my mother herself. I thought back to how she interacted with her elderly family members, how she handled decisions, how she coped as a caregiver. Yes, there are my cues. There in her life is the text for the handbook, “All I Ever Learned about Caring for Old People I Learned From My Mother.”

In the first place, when she and Dad moved into their new small house after 11 years of marriage in the early 1950s, they weren’t alone. My dad’s mother (Ma-maw to us) moved in with them, and she lived there until she died. First I came along, and then my sister Joy two years later, and much of our mom’s life consisted of raising her two girls, and dealing with her increasingly debilitated mother-in-law, who eventually just lived in her dark bedroom, having her meals brought to her, arguing about taking her medicine, and needing her potty seat emptied, and all the other demands of infirmity. It was simple back then; family just took care of you when you needed it. My mom was a full-time homemaker, so she was home all day and could do it.

After Ma-Maw died, Mom and Dad’s lives were filled with taking care of my maternal grandparents - my grandmother, who had been diagnosed with anorexia and was living in the state mental hospital a couple of hours away, and my grandfather (Paw-Paw), who was in good health but needed help to go to the grocery, visit his wife, etc. So there were my parents, their weekends already scheduled in, almost all day on Sundays at church, then on Saturdays, chauffeuring my grandfather around town, taking him to lunch, and then every other Saturday, driving to the hospital to visit my grandmother. It was hard on both my parents to have the responsibilities of their growing daughters and their elderly family members. I saw my parents worry, I saw them sad, I saw them frustrated, but I never, ever heard a complaint from either my dad, who would have loved to have kept Saturdays for his hobbies or to catch up on reading, or my mom, who would have loved to have relaxed at home with her husband and kids.

I have to add Aunt Bessie to the mix, of course. She was my mom’s maternal aunt, a widowed, childless, chain-smoking country woman with a brusque personality and heart of gold. She had lived in Missouri, but after her husband died, moved to Memphis to be near her only family, which consisted of my mother in Memphis and my uncle in Arkansas. She was Mom’s responsibility now. It was Mom who had to help her find assisted housing, it was Mom who was called when Aunt Bessie was discovered giving a bunch of money to a scam artist resident of her apartment complex, and it was Mom who made sure she was picked up and brought to our house for Christmas and Thanksgiving.

First my paternal grandmother died, then my maternal grandmother died, then my dad died, then Paw-Paw died, then finally Aunt Bessie died. After Dad died, Paw-Paw and Aunt Bessie were totally dependent on newly-widowed Mother to be there for them until they themselves passed.

All her life Mother has been a caretaker. She has done this with kindness and compassion and patience and, I’m sure, many sleepless and anxious nights. She never complained, never questioned why. She just did it.

And now it’s her turn to be taken care of. My sister and I have now each had Mom living in our respective homes, giving her showers, ordering and picking up prescriptions, taking her to the doctor, making sure she eats well, and the worst part - sitting through Lawrence Welk every week - and the whole thing has necessitated great changes in our lifestyle, privacy, marriages, time, and countless other adjustments. It is not easy sometimes. Thank goodness Mom, even though physically handicapped now, still has her mind and can do some daily self-care on her own. I can’t even begin to imagine trying to care for her if she had dementia or if I still had young children in the house. But I feel blessed that I have had the best caregiver role model I could have. In all the frustration and busyness of my life now, I am also acutely aware that our kids are looking at Ed and me and absorbing how we are handling all this, for we will undoubtedly be in Mom’s position one day, and they will be caring for us. I pray that we demonstrate humor, patience, and, yes, sacrifice, in a way to allow them to say, “We know how to be caretakers of those who need us because we watched our parents do it.” You know the joke - “Be kind to your kids because they’ll choose your nursing home”?

It all reminds me of an old story:

A highly skilled carpenter who had grown old was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his family. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire.
The employer was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter agreed to this proposal but made sure that this will be his last project. Being in a mood to retire, the carpenter was not paying much attention to building this house. His heart was not in his work. He resorted to poor workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career.
When the job was done, the carpenter called his employer and showed him the house. The employer handed over some papers and the front door key to the carpenter and said "This is your house, my gift to you."
The carpenter was in a shock! What a shame! If he had only known that he was building his own house, he would have made it better than any other house that he ever built!
Everything we do, we do unto ourselves before it goes out to the world. Be sure to put love into each of your actions!

We show others how we want to be treated. Someone is always watching and learning. You make the world better with your kindness and gentleness, and hopefully those who are watching will extend to you the same courtesy when you need it. That’s what families are for. We are all role models. We will eventually have to live in the houses we build - for God’s sake, let’s make them sturdy.

What's it worth to you?

2011-08-12T07:03:00.001-05:00

The picture above is of my dad, Ensley Tiffin, in 1931 (about 16 years old) working on his stamp collection. Philately was a hobby he continued to enjoy throughout his whole life. I never could get interested in it, unfortunately, although I did benefit from his collection when he would let me use an appropriate stamp to supplement a school report (e.g., if I were writing a report on a historical figure, he let me attach one of his stamps honoring that person, which would always impress the teacher). After a long day's work and after a good supper, Daddy liked few things better than to clear off the dining room table, set out his albums, hinges, and other accoutrements of his hobby, and pore over his stamps.

I remember one day his saying to Mother, "If I die first, don't just toss all this stuff; there might be some valuable stamps in here." And so it was that after Mother's accident when we were cleaning out her house, my sister and I took Daddy's stamp collection to a local hobby store to get it appraised. We had no idea if it was worth a lot of money or worth nothing, but we wanted to honor the man who had worked so hard on it all his life, whose eyes lit up at the thought of some free time to enjoy it before life's responsibilities claimed his limited hours, as they always did.

As we lifted the heavy albums from the trunk of the car and took them into the store, we reminisced about how precious these were to Daddy, how we can still picture him totally absorbed in using his tweezers to place the stamps in their appropriate places, how he would occasionally pick a stamp up and talk about it. We were proud that we were finally following Daddy's wishes of getting a formal appraisal of his collection. The appraisal visit was disappointing, though - not because the collection was worthless (which it basically was), but because the owner seemed bored, randomly glancing through the books, talking most of the time to another customer while doing it, and never seemed to appreciate the story behind the collection or what it meant to Daddy (who, my sister remembers, had bought a lot of his supplies from that very store through the years). The owner basically told us that the collection only had sentimental value, and that if we didn't want it, we could try to sell it at a yard sale. It was a cursory dismissal of one man's lifetime achievement, a hobby in which he invested countless hours and a good deal of money, and which was filled with memories in the minds of his two daughters. The appraiser did not give enough respect to what we had brought him. We weren't out for money; we were there to honor our Daddy's story.

So my question is - is the collection worthless or is it really priceless?

I was reminded of that day as I watched the stock market this week tumble, recoup, tumble, up and down and sideways after the debt ceiling fiasco. It is amazing to me that one day a stock is worth a lot money, and the next day it isn't. One day you can sell a "collectible" for hundreds of dollars because it is "popular" right now, and the next day you can't even donate it to a charity. Your house is worth a certain amount and in the next minute, it has lost half its value. Yet, it's the same stock, the same figurine, the same house. What gives?

How do we determine what things are truly worth? Value is so fleeting and unpredictable. They say something is only worth what someone would pay for it; therefore, the whims of society, fashion, collectors, investors, determine the worth of anything.

But as with the stamp collection, that is just not true. "Sentimental value" sounds so trite, but sometimes that's the most important value there is. Have you ever watched Antiques Roadshow and seen the reaction of someone who has been told that his family heirloom is worth a fortune? You hardly ever hear anyone yell, "Whoohoo! I'm going to the auction house tomorrow so I can buy that boat I've always wanted!" Most of the time, they give a big grin, eyes wide in surprise, because their "sentimentally valuable" family heirloom has just been validated in a way by society. What they knew in their hearts was precious has been verified to have great financial worth. No matter, they say - it will still remain in the family and passed proudly down from one generation to the next with its accompanying story.

It all makes us want to take the time to figure out what is truly worthy in our lives - not the most expensive thing we own, maybe nothing we can sell or would even want to sell, maybe something nobody else would care about but us. That stamp collection is priceless because of the story that comes with it, the memories it holds in our hearts, a poignant physical reminder of the man who cherished it, and the fact that we cherish that man. Physical things are just symbols of what we truly value. And those values don't change on the whim of the American economy. Thank goodness! In the end, they can take away a lot of our material things in this world, they can reduce the value of our house, they can withhold more from my paycheck, but memories? As the old song goes, "No, they can't take that away from me."

Staying open

2011-08-07T16:54:00.000-05:00

Ed once told me that his late grandmother taught him an valuable lesson and she didn't even realize it. He observed that when she was younger, she held her faith and beliefs in her fists, tightly grasped with no way for them to be altered or released in any way. As she got older, he noticed that she had opened her hands, figuratively speaking, becoming willing to accept new ideas, new ways of thinking, and surprises that life had to offer.

We have been told over and over the great truth that it is better to give. But what we fail to realize is the importance of being able to receive as well. Some folks find receiving demeaning and beneath them, because in their mind, it is humiliating to be needy in any way. Ed used to work for a food bank, and ran across several volunteers who were eager to give but balked at receiving. I was once a member of a church in Memphis (white) that wanted to pair up with a black church of the same denomination for social interaction and mutual enrichment. Our church leaders brought forth the name of a black church that was equal to our church in finances and membership, but some people in our congregation were unhappy with that pairing. They didn't want an equal church to be partnered with; they wanted a poor church, and it was obvious that it was not because of a desire to help as it was a desire to be placed in the the superior side of the relationship. Sometimes it is hard to give and easy to receive; as surprising as it may seem, at other times, it is easy to give and hard to receive. Anyone who has ever been addicted or financially devastated or depressed or in other ways has exhausted all resources realizes it is so hard to admit, "I could use some help." It is so much more satisfying to be on the other end - the one who benevolently looks down and smiles, bestowing riches and blessings and feeling all warm and snuggly about it.

Yet, with a closed fist, we can't receive. With a closed mind, we can't be open to all life has to offer.

I have mentioned before that, as a medical transcriptionist, I was privileged to be in a beta testing last year for some exceptional software called Instant Text. The version was beyond expectation, and I use it every day for wonderful productivity and accuracy. Even after the finished product had been put on the market, the company continued to make improvements and offer new powerful features. Each one I would eagerly embrace and use in various ways. Then along came one called a Pick List. I won't go into detail here, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what good it was for. I assumed other MTs might need it, but I certainly didn't. I was doing fine without Pick List; I was productive before Pick List ever came along, and I would undoubtedly be fine without it.

What I soon learned astounded me. After I asked for examples and some clarification of how Pick List would help me, it became an essential in my daily work and now I use it hundreds of times a day! I thought I knew it all, but I had to open my mind to allow myself to receive - the new feature itself as well as help from other users and suggestions from the software developer. Now I can't imagine transcribing without Pick List.

Not everyone is like Ed's grandmother. As we age, a lot of us become rigid in our ideas and refuse to accept even the possibility that we aren't as smart or clever or omniscient as we imagine ourselves to be. We think we know everything, can't possibly learn anything else, can't possibly need help from anyone, and have put a big fat period at the end of our philosophy of life. We stay closed to serendipity. We stay shut to possibilities and we remain locked to ever changing anything. I get so frustrated with Americans describing politicians who change their minds as "wishy-washy" or "flip-flopping." Sometimes it is true that elected officials will just change positions with every opinion poll that comes along. But others may grow, evolve, examine their beliefs and mindsets, and actually change their position on issues because they understand it a different way today than they did yesterday. It is not an evil thing to change one's mind, as long as one fully admits to doing so and doesn't try to pretend otherwise.

But oh, it can be so hard to be open! An open hand is so much more vulnerable than a clenched fist, the latter which can make a pretty good weapon. An open hand is ready to receive - blessings, ideas, assistance, forgiveness, love, and all other good things that we may not even realize we're missing until we see and feel them in our lives. Sometimes the most surprising exclamation to find yourself saying is, "Wow! I didn't even know I needed that - but I did!" The possibilities are around every corner. Just keep your eyes peeled, and your hands open. You never know what could fall into them at any moment.

"Get Fit with Josh" - The infomercial

2011-08-01T03:42:00.000-05:00

I got to do a new exercise workout Saturday. It's great for the whole body, but especially for the back. When I woke up Sunday, I was sore all over, and my lower back was aching. That's how I knew how extremely effective the new total body workout called "Joshua" was.

The moves are simple but repetitive. All it consists of is taking a 1-year-old toddler and picking him up and putting him down several hundred times. For added conditioning, you can carry him around on one hip (that's an almost 57-year-old hip, thank you very much), while keeping your head turned in that direction to look at him. In addition, you put your body through the paces of the special exercise called "Watch the toddler drop his [insert item here] from the high chair onto the floor and then pick it up for him so he can do it again." The next move is chasing after him as he crawls around at the speed of light. No, honey, that's the dog's water bowl. That's the ash can for the wood stove. Ewww, that's the dog's squeaky ball, wet and yucky. Don't touch! Thanks for finding those dirty places on the floor; I'm sure your parents will love us.

Oh, and I don't want to forget the ultimate back exercise - bending over, taking his little hands in yours, and helping him "walk." That's a really good one. I can tell I am 8 years younger than Ed, because Ed's back hurt after one or two rounds of this exercise, whereas mine didn't hurt until the next morning.

Of course, I have a special move for this workout that involves lying down on the floor, bending my knees, putting Joshua on my shins, and raising my feet up and down, up and down while holding his hands. I was so proud that I am still in shape enough to do this - and even prouder that at the end, I could get up from the floor at all.

Those of you who have baby-sat a toddler or, bless your little soul, are raising one or more, you know what I mean. If you're a grandparent involved in the above fitness regimen, you really know what I mean. In that case, it's the Senior Olympics.

Of course, it goes without saying that it is all worth it. Every second of it! And truly, as soon as can be arranged, we want him back! Did I say back? Ouch!.....you wouldn't happen to have a couple of aspirin on you, would you?

Ghost of the Future

2011-07-24T04:30:00.002-05:00

I try to watch A Christmas Carol every year. It intrigues me to see the possibilities of transformation that exist within Scrooge just as a result of getting to see the past (through present perpection), present (through extra pereception) and future (through present perception). Now that Mother has been here over a week, I feel like Scrooge. I look at her and see the future. For me.

My prism is not Ghost of the Future, of course. My prism is what is hereditary versus environmental, using my mantra, Serenity Prayer, as a regulator. Ed once joked to me that he had read once upon a time a warning to prospective grooms that before you agree to marry a girl, look at her mother, because that is what she will become. There are even current jokes in the catalogues: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all!" My sister and I have both had a few occasions where we discover some new little eccentricity or physical aberration of ours and say, "Oh, no! That's just like Mother!"

I know what I want to inherit from my mom. I want to inherit her sense that there is good in everyone at some level, her generosity, and her sense of humor. I don't want to inherit tremors, arthritis, hypertension, macular degeneration, blepharospasm, dental problems, and having to use a walker. The question I consistently have asked myself this week, using the Serenity Prayer, is how much of this is under my control? Therein lies the necessity of dealing with the thing realistically and honestly, leaving fear at the door.

Everyone probably has ideas of what they want old age to be for them. Our generation is certainly more mobile and fit and active than prior generations were in later life. As Ed says, "My dad would not been able to saw and split wood at 64." True. And yet, I see myself in Mother and wonder what the next 30 or so years will do to me. Will my fingers become misshapen enough that I can't transcribe or play piano or harp anymore? Will I too have to give up driving and reading and all the other things that make life convenient and fulfilling? Will my hand start to tremble when I write my name or lift my fork to my mouth? How long do I have to live fully and completely without having to park in a handicap spot or use a cane or walker, or, God forbid, wheelchair for mobility? And more importantly, what changes can I make in my life today that would ameliorate or even eradicate these concerns?

We are all living longer lives, which, as Ed always says, is both a gift and a curse. At a point, I guess, most of us just give up on the anti-aging creams and potions, dismiss physical appearance in a way, and just concentrate on good health, which is the main thing that will see us through our "golden years." Mother told me ever since I was born, "If you have your health, you have everything." I think she is seeing now the truth of her philosophy, and playing the cards life has dealt her in the best way she can (much of the time with humor).

Sometimes it is good to see the future. Sometimes it is scary to see the future. Of course, I'm not seeing the future at all; I'm just imaging the possibilities. I've heard that 99% of what we worry about won't come true. Yet, I have evidence every day now of many more things to worry about, and it's that 1% that troubles me.

Meanwhile, I have Mama here and I am truly enjoying her presence and laughing with her about old age. We can both only strive to do the best we can. I think attitude is the most precious tool we have to get us through.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Trip lessons

2011-07-15T12:18:00.000-05:00

As I have mentioned earlier, Ed and I drove to Tennessee to pick up my 88-year-old mother and her dog, Jenny, and drove them and their belongings to Maine to live with us. It was quite an adventure! Our requirement of motels with handicap accessibility as well as willingness to let Jenny spend the night with us severely limited our options, but thanks to kindness of strangers and my sister's frantic Internet searches from Memphis, we had excellent accommodations for all three nights on the road.

This was my first experience, however, traveling with a handicapped person and seeing the world from their point of view. Mom's handicap is due to the cumulative effects of her age, her macular degeneration and eyelid spasms inhibiting vision and making her extremely sensitive to light, her arthritis, the effects of her broken ankle and hip injuries and repairs from her car accident a few years ago, her dependence on a walker to stand and ambulate, and her recent apparent allergic reactions to two antibiotics. In other words, it was slow going.

I've never had a broken bone or other injury which forced me to use crutches or to have inability to move around normally, and I rarely gave a thought to those who did. Apparently, neither did a lot of businesses and states when they planned their facilities. There was a gorgeous rest stop in Tennessee, for instance, full of trees and picnic tables and a nice cabin-like structure. Oh yes, it had handicap access. However, there was a long walk required from the handicap parking spaces to reach the building, all uphill, with cracks which tended to catch walker parts, and let me tell you, in near 100-degree weather under a blazing sun, it was unbearable. I tried to maneuver Mom and her walker and at the same time, held an umbrella over her to protect her from the sun's intolerable heat, but then when we arrived at the door, which required manual opening, I had to leave her standing there, manually open the door, throw the umbrella down inside the building, keep the door open, and guide her through the door. Fortunately, one of the state workers was kind enough to pick up the open umbrella, close it up, snap it shut, and hand it back to me.

The handicap stall, of course, was the one which required Mom to walk the farthest. It was not big enough for 2 people, so I had to stand with the door open in order to help her. Then, after having a little trouble getting her and the walker close enough to the soap dispenser and sink to wash up, we started the long walk back to the car in the sun.

There were variations of this along the trip. At one McDonald's, the closest door meant Mom walking directly into a drive-thru lane. The attached gift shop had a handicap ramp that was much too steep and seemed to be built as an afterthought, which required Mom to walk the length of the porch to enter the McDonald's.

On the other hand, there were wonderfully planned motel rooms with rails and shower seats - however, two rooms had beds too high for her to even sit on, much less climb in. She spent one night in a recliner.

I'll bet if it were required for planners and architects and CEOs to maneuver around just one day in a wheelchair or walker, things would be different. I tried to do that in our house here, before Mother's arrival. I took a stool and pretended it was a walker, and "walked" around our house, sitting here, turning there, reaching here, passing there, trying to figure out what we could do to improve things. Would this rug need to be moved? Could she reach this shelf? Would she be able to get out of that chair? It was an eye-opening experience. The trip certainly made me reconsider everything I've ever thought about building and access planning. It's hard enough to be dependent on a walker or wheelchair and feel embarrassed about your shuffling gait or your halting movement; it just makes it worse to have facilities poorly prepared to handle your disability.

And yes, there were also restrictions traveling with a dog, of course. Jenny, a border collie mix, was the perfect traveler, never whined, never barked, never made a mistake. But you can't take a dog in a restaurant. And you can't leave a dog in 98-degree heat parked in the sun. And many motels will not accept dogs at all. We had to continually make alternative plans. Once, Mom and I went in a fast food place and sat in the air condition and ate, while Ed, after having taken Jenny for a short walk, stayed in the car with her and ate his hamburger after we returned to the car. Another time, we all ate sitting in the car. At one point, unable to find a motel to accept dogs, Ed was willing to spend the night in the car with her if it was the only way.

I just don't understand it. More and more people are traveling with pets. Sometimes it's because the pet is a family member and they don't want to leave it at home. Other times it is pure necessity, such as, in our case, a move across several states in the summer. I can understand why restaurants do not allow pets (except service dogs), but why can't there be an area of shade and maybe a water source for dogs somewhere outside the restaurant? How much would it cost to build some roofs for parking in the shade for cars containing animals? How about a few shade trees? What are travelers supposed to do in the heat of summer when it's time to eat and no accommodation for their pet?

It was nice to see rest stops and motels with pet walk areas. It was good to see handicap parking and ramps and handicap stalls in the bathrooms (even though some were not big enough). But I can attest that what has been done by government and private industry is not enough to accommodate the disabled traveler and/or their pets. Any reasonable person, if he/she put himself/herself in the place of someone using a wheelchair or walker or cane, or in the place of someone blind or deaf or missing a limb, or in the place of someone with crippling arthritis who can't turn knobs or switches, could identify areas of improvement.

Listen up, you people who are in charge of these things. Don't assume that you yourselves will always have the capability to move at the speed to which you are accustomed. Don't assume you will always be in good health, have good heart and lungs, and two capable legs and two capable arms and fingers and joints that still work. Don't assume you will always be able to handle the noonday sun, read a menu, open a heavy door, or even be able to travel with a bladder that functions appropriately. As for right now, the Baby Boomers are retiring, we are traveling, many with pets, and we are, yes, getting OLD. Plan accordingly. Next time, it may not be your parent or grandparent. It may be you.

PS - It goes without saying, if you are not handicapped, please do not park in a handicap space...Thank you.

Voices from the Past

2011-07-01T07:12:00.001-05:00

I have been immersed in the past. The cassette tapes you see above are only a fraction of those from years past that I been recently trying to record into the computer for posterity.

I wonder sometimes how archeologists and historians stay focused in the present when so much of their life is dedicated to uncovering the past. I'm having just as hard a time remembering that it's 2011, I'm 56 years old, with a 64-year-old husband, 2 kids, 3 grandchildren, working as a medical transcriptionist, living on a dirt road in the state of Maine. It can't be! Why, I'm really an adolescent talking about our vacation trip to Florida....no, wait, I'm 15 months old being coached in words by my dad....no, sorry, I'm at a family Thanksgiving meal in 1973.... You see my predicament?

My dad, as well as being an ardent creator of home movies, was a fan of the reel-to-reel tapes, and later, cassettes. He would record everything and anything. He consistently recorded his beloved choir that he directed, and we have many, many recordings of church services at Easter and Christmas and everything in between. In addition, after every family vacation trip, sister Joy and I would sit down with Dad in the den, recorder running, and reminisce about the trip from the minute we left Memphis to the minute we got home. (Mom was usually cooking or washing dishes, but occasionally would stick her head in and contribute to the conversation). Dad kept detailed records, noting the time we left home as 6:21 a.m., for instance. Here's a sample conversation from a trip to Florida:

Dad: "Friday morning we left Perry about 7:00 in the morning, had breakfast down at a truck stop on the way to Tallahassee, and we saw this grove of whatever it was, avocados (looked like green lemons), and...."
Joy: "And Mama said 'avocados!'"
Dad: "...It was the color of avocados."
Joy: "And we stopped and we picked up a couple and waved them in the air while we got our pictures taken. Daddy was going to buy sone pecans, but the man said they weren't good..."
Dad: "...Yes, the man was honest and said if they were any good, he wouldn't be selling them!"
[at this point, extended period of hearty laughter from all present.]
Joy: "Well we tried to find the oranges, and Carol asked the man, 'What is that?' and he said, 'That's tung oil! Better not get it in your mouth, it's poison!' so we threw it down and Mama said, 'Look! Pecan trees and peach trees!'"
[again, laughter at the thought of Mama thinking tung oil nut was a pecan or peach]
Dad: "...OK, so Mama doesn't know much about growing things except flowers and grass, maybe..."

Ah, those were good times. We always have the home movies from the trip, but there's nothing like hearing our young excited voices remembering how much fun we had, Dad with his details (he demanded we do this chronologically!) and, especially the sound of uncontrolled laughter at our antics.

The next tape is of me when I was a toddler. Dad thought he'd record my vocabulary progress, and I apparently dutifully consented, in between playing with a doll and getting up and down from a chair.
Dad: "It's Thursday, January 19, 1956, Carol is almost 16 months old, and we'll see if she can go through a little of her repertoire for us. [to me:] "Talk to us. Can you say Mama? Let's hear you say Mama. "
[I sneeze twice, then say Mama.]
"That's good! What else? Can you say Daddy?"
I say Daddy.
"That good! Can you say bird?"
"Bird."
How about...can you say apple?
"Apple."
We went through chair, ball, Paw-Paw, diaper, tea, water, bread. Then:
"Is your name Carol Jeanette Tiffin and do you live at 435 Josephine?"
I replied, "Yes," and he said, "Yes! That's right!"
Dad always used his quiet, encouraging little voice. He didn't believe in baby talk. He always talked to us as if we were older and as if we could understand everything he said.

Joy would later graciously transfer several of these reel-to-reel tapes onto cassette tapes, and now I am transferring them to digital recordings, just as we had taken the reel home movies and transferred them to VHS and then DVD.

Fast forward to 1973. Reel-to-reel was archaic, and technology had changed to cassette tapes, so we would frequently just turn on the tape player while we were having a holiday meal. The first thing you hear is Joy's voice, "Anybody else need anything?" - always the hostess. Then various sounds of silverware on dishes, clanking, general noises of a meal, and then all of a sudden, you hear a xylophone. Well, it sounds like a xylophone, but I'll let you in on a secret - It's Paw-Paw, my grandfather, hitting glasses with a spoon to play a tune. He loved trying out his talent on glasses which were partially filled with liquid to varying levels. Then my mom says to me, "I want you to play something for Paw-Paw. He hasn't heard you play in so long, it's pitiful." Paw-Paw says, "Sure!" so I know right after the meal I would head to the piano to perform for my Paw-Paw, who had mastered piano playing by ear and who was always so proud of Joy and me as we followed in his musical footsteps.

These are just a sample of what I am reliving this week. It's a very cathartic experience, and a deeply satisfying one. I sigh a lot. I had such a wonderful childhood. In a way, it disturbs Ed, though. He thinks I may be trying to escape into the past because I prefer that life to my present one with him. Of course, that's not the case, as I love my present life, but it made me think. What is it about the past that I find so comforting? When we're kids, those days are called "carefree" because they were - CARE-FREE. We didn't worry about bills or income or taxes, we didn't worry about food prices or gas prices or if we had the capability of taking care of the older ones in the family. We didn't worry about our kids or grandkids or how we could afford a new washing machine or any of that stuff. We were young, naive, innocent, in a home filled with love where other people did all the worrying and fretting. It was not a life preferable to my present one - but it was in its own way a time and place that deserves honor and remembering.

We once had a 104-year-old parishioner who couldn't remember what she had for breakfast that day but could recite with clarity and accuracy songs she learned when she was 5. Sometimes it seems that the older we get, the more we tend to live in the past. Well, if our lives were a pie chart, the past would represent most of it at this point, wouldn't it? I listen and try to remember that little toddler learning her words, the adolescent on vacation, the 19-year-old at Thanksgiving (in less than a year I would be married). I close my eyes and try to remember.

As we are getting ready next week to drive to Memphis and bring Mother and her dog up here to Maine to live with us, I am also reminded that these recordings are poignant not only because of who I was back then, but who everyone else was. Dad died in 1980, Paw-Paw died in 1983, and Mother, who used to cook and clean, bustling around the kitchen to make sure everyone ate well, is now dependent on a walker and someone else cooks for her and makes sure she eats well. Life is change, and change eventually comes full circle.

But still I remember.

Guilt Relief

2011-06-25T05:40:00.002-05:00

Like many women, I sometimes feel like the Queen of Guilt. It started in my childhood, as these things usually do. I felt guilty when I made a less-than-perfect grade, because I was a perfectionist. I felt guilty when I dropped out of college after one year, disappointing my parents. I felt guilty wanting to get married at 19 and choosing to marry an active alcoholic. I felt guilty because I had to work and put my kids in day care. Through the years, I have felt guilty for just about anything, from what I choose to eat and not exercising enough, to playing the harp too infrequently and not making enough quilts. I feel guilty when I procrastinate about balancing the bank statement. Oh, brother, do I feel guilty!

But some of the worst guilt feelings I have ever experienced have been in the last three years, and they involve my mother (now 88).

Mom, having lost Dad in 1980, has lived independently all these years until she was involved in an auto accident and broke a hip and ankle. After the hospital gave their exceptionally wonderful trauma care and sorely lacking followup care, she moved to rehab. The next step was up in the air. She clearly couldn't live by herself anymore. Even if she completely healed from her injuries, she was getting macular degeneration and blepharospasm, she had one hand permanently in a claw-like position and arthritis had deformed all her fingers, so going back to her little house was out of the question. My sister Joy, who lived locally around Memphis while I was up here in Maine, visited a few nursing homes but she said the ones that Mother could afford were bad. So there was only one thing left to do.

My sister sold her beautiful dining room furniture and turned her dining room into a hospital room for our mother, as it was the only first-floor room she could use. She installed the hospital bed, potty chair, wheelchair, and all the other accoutrements of postsurgical/elderly care, and moved Mother in with her. Mother has been there ever since.

I can't help but admire the sacrifices Joy has made in these last years. It started with getting up every night multiple times to care for her, and as Mother got more mobile, Joy was in charge of making sure her prescriptions were refilled and picked up, her doctor appointments had to be scheduled and Joy had to take time off work to drive her there. She has had to put up with everything that living as an adult with your elderly mother entails. With her own daughter starting 12th grade, a second daughter in college, and full-time job, and her activity in her church, Joy has had her hands full. On top of that, Joy has had to take care of Mother's house, making sure the grass was cut and beer cans from the neighbors were out of the yard, that it was not broken into, that repairs were made, and gradually Joy has cleaned out the house so that she can finish repairs and put it up for sale.

Oh yeah, and Mother's dog? Joy had to adopt it, too. (For a few months, Joy had her own old dog, her late father-in-law's dog, and Mother's dog all at the same time.) Add vet visits and dog-hair cleanup to Joy's overflowing schedule.

You can see where the guilt comes in. Joy is sacrificing her family life, her social life, her personal mental and emotional sanity, privacy, and any hope of being able to just relax and do something for pleasure and recharging. Meanwhile, except for a short yearly visit to stay with Joy and help with Mother (which brings it own set of problems, having to host out-of-town relatives, of course), I have been sitting here in Maine with a predominantly non-stressed life. I like my job, my kids are all grown with their families and doing great, my husband is retired so he stays home and cooks wonderful meals every evening, my house is quiet, we live in the country, I have time to do my hobbies. Just because of the fact that we moved to Maine 15 years ago, my sister is having to handle this life stress all by herself. Hence, the guilt. Powerful guilt.

A few months ago, Joy and I started mentioning in passing how nice it would be if Mom would come stay with us for a while. When I even mentioned the idea, Mom scoffed and changed the subject. She has never flown and won't start now and refused a car trip. So the conversations progressed to more pressing suggestion, that she really needed to take a break and come up here for a while. Nothing worked. It finally was clear that only an order would be accepted, so we just flat out told her she was coming.

So in a couple of weeks, my 88-year-old mother with her walker and her prescriptions and her topical lotions and potions and her walker and clothes and, yes, her dog, will be living here with us. I didn't have a dining room to turn into her bedroom, but I do have a very small third bedroom I've been exercising in, so that's what she will have. We've been cleaning and organizing and buying things and hanging curtains, and trying to arrange furniture to be walker-friendly and getting ready for another dog to be living here, as it's been over a year since our Babe died.

It will be a stressful trip bringing her and the dog back. She has bad anxiety and tremors anyway, and this will be hard on her. But I think once she gets here, she will relax and settle down and get into a new routine. After all, we told her, Ed and I already live like old people. We have no social life, we eat at 5 p.m., we watch old movies from the '30s and '40s on the weekend, our house is elder-friendly (wide doors, push handles, etc.), and we have put cable TV in her new room just for her. Add that the fact that she can see her grandchildren and her 3 great-grandchildren on a regular basis, and it sounds very good, doesn't it? Mother has never liked change, but I think she has finally adjusted to the idea of living with us.

I am really looking forward to it, also. Sure, it will assuage some of my guilt for Joy having to have borne the burden ever since Mother's accident, but here's something surprising: Along with my guilt has been some jealousy, too. Joy has gotten to interact and take care of Mother for quite a while now, and now, it doesn't just have to be my turn, I want it to be my turn. I talk to her every night but I really miss her, and I look forward to touching her old gnarly hands and kissing her good night on a regular basis. Oh, I'm sure the stress and irritation will wear on me - it'll be like having a little kid at home again that you have to worry and watch out for, except this kid will query me every time I leave "shouldn't you wear a hat?" - being the stereotypical "once a mother, always a mother." We will have to make sure her prescriptions are refilled, that she gets to the doctor, the dog to the vet, that she gets to watch her favorite TV shows. We will have to figure out what to do about holidays since she will probably be homebound when the snow and ice starts this winter. I'll have to get comfortable exercising in a more crowded part of the house somewhere, and poor Ed, who thankfully genuinely likes my mother, will not have much privacy anymore and won't even be able to cuss loudly at the weatherman. It will be a major change in our lives.

But I will have a little less guilt and a little less jealously, and I am grateful for the opportunity. My sister has been a saint. I will never be able to be as conscientious and organized as she has been, but we have one thing the same in Tennessee and Maine - and that's lots of love to offer. Wish us luck!

The "Challenge" of Life

2011-06-17T06:12:00.000-05:00

A short version of how we ended up in Maine goes like this: We were living in middle Tennessee, preparing to take a family vacation. Neither Ed nor I had ever been to New England, so we thought the family would enjoy a trip there - and as I am a quilter, the main impetus for my suggesting this was Keepsake Quilting, a quilter's dream store in New Hampshire (pictured above). Ed, of course, had to say if we were going to New Hampshire, he wanted to go to LL Bean in Maine. We managed to hit both shopping highlights on that trip, but once we got to Maine, we fell in love with the state and decided one day we would relocate here. So in a way, Keepsake Quilting is responsible for our being in Maine today.

Every quilter loves Keepsake Quilting. Just to go into the store will take your breath away. It has over 12,000 bolts of fabric - that alone is enough to make a quilter lightheaded. The folks at KQ have several quilt challenges a year. I've never entered, but the ones who have won are extremely gifted and creative quilters. Each challenge has a theme. The latest challenge was "Create a Log Cabin Keepsake Challenge." Here, for your amazement, is the first place winner:

Now, can you imagine creating this? This lady is unbelievably talented and could probably teach geometry too! So what's the challenge? Well, besides the requirement of sticking with the theme, each entrant received six fabrics. She could choose up to two additional fabrics of her own choice to supplement what she was given by KQ. This is the truly astonishing part of the whole challenge, in my opinion. Look at the six challenge fabrics below and see if you could come up with that winning quilt of Sandra Smart's.

It doesn't look possible, does it? Yet those six fabrics are used in that winning quilt!

Quite a challenge, huh? First you get a packet of six fabrics - not of your choosing - some you might love, some you might think are downright hideous, some you are sure could never be featured successfully in a quilt - that part is hard enough. But then, you have to make the difficult choice of what two fabrics to add to the mix so that the final picture is the one you imagine. Remember, you can choose any fabric in the world - KQ alone has over 12,000 bolts - so narrowing your choice to two must be a task of unfathomable struggle. After imagining your quilt, dealing with the Challenge fabrics, picking your other two fabrics, assembling the quilt and finally quilting and embellishing the quilt, you are done. You are judged on:

Creativity
Color, fabrics and patterns used in an unusual way.
Design reflects something unique about your personality or style.
Use of Color
Color values (lights and darks) arranged in an interesting way.
Color accents lend spark, design interest or movement.
Workmanship
Piecing fits together smoothly and lies flat. Applique stitches are invisible or add to the design.
Binding is neat and square.
Embellishments are tasteful.
Design Balance
Design has a focal point.
Size of the design elements are in scale with the overall design, and the sashes and borders are well proportioned.
Uniform amount of quilting over the entire quilt top.

To see all the winners, click here. When you look at these amazing creations, remember they started out with the same 6 fabrics - fabrics that were thrust upon them without their choice or approval.

I love to read the quotes from the winners. They say things like "I had no idea how to use that odd-looking floral fabric!" and "Yuck, I've always hated orange," and "The theme was so frustrating for me" and other initially negative reactions. Then they get to work. They use all sort of tricks to expand their options within the rules - using both sides of the fabric, for instance, or maybe using some fabric paint for details. Maybe they tweak their original design after they see what the Challenge fabrics look like to make better use of what they received. This winner said it all: "It all goes to prove that, no matter what fabric you start with, you can create a successful quilt." (She also mentioned that the Log Cabin has never been one of her favorite patterns because she can't sew a straight line. So what does she do? She uses curves!)

So what does this all have to each us? Last week when I read about the winning quilts, I had an epiphany. This is not just about fabric and thread - this is about LIFE. We are each granted our 24-hour days. We are each given a genetic and environmental packet of fabric. We did not choose our parents or the place of our birth. We did not choose or economic status or race. We did not choose how we were raised. We did not choose the teachers we ended up with at school. Some of what we have been given in our packet freaks us out. Some of it delights us and makes us feel blessed. Some of it is indeed hideous and evil and no one should have to put up with it. But there it is, in our life challenge packet, and we are stuck with it. The good news is we do have some extra choices to put in the mix. And we do have creative ways to tweak what we have. And the final result - our LIFE - is totally from our choice - given the rules, the genetic and environmental packet with which we have been allotted, and using the additional gifts of choice, imagination, passion, talent, education, mentors, and all the other wonderful things we have available to us - and the end result can be a thing of wonder. We can't all win first place. A lot of us will wind up with a truly beautiful quilt, every detail almost perfect. Some will end up with a whimsical, lighthearted quilt. Many of us will put that last stitch in a scrap quilt - using all sorts of fabrics that don't seem to go together but actually do. Others will finish their years with a crazy quilt, everything jumbled and tossed around and my, oh, my, a little of everything! Each quilt - each LIFE - will be different, unique. It will reflect our true personalities and spirits. It will hopefully make the best of what we started with. What you end up with might pleasantly surprise you, and may not even be close to your original design. Maybe you highlighted the challenge fabrics in your packet and thanked your lucky stars, or maybe you hid them away in the quilt and highlighted the fabric you chose to add to the mix. It's the Challenge of Life. Everyone is already an entrant. The deadline for finishing your quilts is unknown, however. So keep working, and good luck!

Cloth Tales

2011-06-06T08:28:00.001-05:00

After spending much time with my sister cleaning out our mom's attic in upper 90-degree heat, I have learned a few things. One is that no one should ever try to clean out an attic in upper 90-degree heat with a mask, gloves, hat, and a disposable coverall from Home Depot originally made for a 7-foot man with legs that are 4 feet long. The second is that some of the most precious memories have involved clothes.

Nothing brings your memory back to past times as holding a piece of clothing. A lot of the clothing we found in the attic was not preserved correctly, so it had to be thrown out, unfortunately. But on the other hand, we found some things in good condition.

We found my bridal veil, for instance. This was not an expensive designer veil. It was a very simple, short veil that my pastor's wife gave me for our wedding day in 1974. (She had worn it in her own wedding.) My gown had been made by a gracious lady who attended our church, and as I had no veil, my pastor's wife let me use hers. I am definitely taking that back to Maine.

We also found a delicate pink baby dress made out of the sheerest cotton. I am almost certain I have a picture of me in this dress, so it's going too. Do you remember back when all girls wore dresses for years and years? My kids can't believe I never had a pair of jeans until I had to buy a pair for camp one year, and they find it hard to believe that blue jeans, that ubiquitous school uniform of today, were banned at our high school. Even simple pants on girls were banned at East High until we had an exceptionally cold winter, and the principal or school board or whoever was in charge of fashion rules relented on the pants ban (you might remember that short skirts were the style then....brrr!). When I stroked the baby dress, it brought back memories of a time when not only girls wore dresses, but women wore gloves and hats. It's hard today to imagine what used to be considered minimal appropriate attire with which to be seen in public.

We found the famous dark blue Mr. John's hat. From Wikipedia:

According to the New York Times, "in the 1940s and 1950s, the name Mr. John was as famous in the world of hats as Christian Dior was in the realm of haute couture." Mr. John's most famous work was his millinery for Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind ^[2]. With a long association with Hollywood and Broadway, his hats were much in demand. ^[3]

A famous anecdote about Mr. John goes that a woman came into his shop in urgent need of a hat. He built one up right on her head, but she balked when he named his price. He then disassembled the pieces and handed them to her. "That's $3.59," he said, "You make it."

Joy and I grew up with the story of the Mr. John hat. Apparently Mother had won it in a contest and it was the first thing she had ever won. She adored that hat. It was revered and worn with a bit of pride and lots of awe. I think she always stood up a little straighter when she wore that hat. Well, last week, Joy and I found the Mr. John hat in a plastic bag in the attic along with some other hats. It was the Velveteen Rabbit of hats, left to its untimely demise, incognizant, I hope, of its former glory and status. At first, Joy said, "No, the Mr. John hat is in its original hatbox in a closet downstairs." But I peered inside that blue hat in the attic, I could see the "Mr. John" label, and I knew an impostor was hiding in that precious hatbox in the closet, which sadly proved to be true. The Mr. John hat, the original symbol of Mother's unbelievable luck and the item which made Mother a fashion icon in her social circle, was indeed the one in the plastic bag. With great regret, the Mr. John hat was trashed. It still lives in family home movies, adorning one of the most precious heads in the world. You can't miss it - it's the head of the lady with the wide smile, preening for the camera.

We also found The Wedding Dress. Despite its name, this was not a gown for a bride; this was a dress Mother wore to all the family weddings since 1989. I had made it for her to wear to my sister's wedding in May of that year. It was pale turquoise with satin base and lace overlay, and Mom looked lovely in it. So when Ed and I got "remarried" in a 20th-anniversary ceremony in 1994, Mom wore it again. Then she wore it for our daughter Rachel's wedding in 2002. That is why we call it The Wedding Dress. It holds special significance for Rachel, since it was made by me and worn by her grandmother at her wedding, and after a call to Rachel confirmed she wanted to keep it, I packed it for a trip to Maine.

The last thing we had to decide was what suit jackets of Daddy's we wanted to keep. Mom gave away most of Dad's clothes after he died, but there were a few suit jackets in the attic in remarkably good condition. Dad practically lived in suits, as he worked in a bank and was a choir director and leader at church. Ed jokes that even when Dad mowed the lawn in a short-sleeve cotton shirt, Ed still pictured him out there in the yard in a suit, because he so rarely saw him in anything else; Ed's eyes could not resolve the apparent dichotomy. I chose one jacket for Rachel and one for Matt. We miss our Dad so much, and it was good to touch his suit jackets and reminisce.

You can't clean out an attic without memories washing over you, and you can't touch a piece of special clothing without honoring the wearer. In the end, it is just pieces of cottons, laces, netting, wool, interfacing - but their significance goes beyond their fiber contents. They are pieces of history - our history. And there is a reason why "story" is a part of that word.

Poignancy

2011-05-27T23:07:00.001-05:00

As Ed and I stepped into Bangor Airport this morning to prepare for our trip, we were met with quite a sight. Service men and women in camouflage uniforms were everywhere - in the gift shop, in the snack shop, some sleeping on the floor, some sleeping on chairs, and some sitting around engrossed in their laptops.

Bangor is known for its Troop Greeters, a large group of volunteers who at any hour of the day or night, show up at the airport when a military flight is scheduled to leave or arrive. Some of these are veterans from other wars, like Vietnam, where the same young boys who were spat upon return to the USA after their deployment have grown up into old men, and want to volunteer their time to make sure all soldiers get treated with hearty handshakes, hugs, and respect they deserve. So there were several Troop Greeters there today as well, but Ed and I still weren't sure if the troops were coming or going.

So finally when the announcement came for the troops to board, a tired young man who had been trying to sleep on the floor beside my seat, head on a knapsack, got up to prepare to leave, I asked him, "Are y'all coming or going?" He said, "Going." I asked where, and he said, "Afghanistan." Even though I knew it was a possibility, even probability, my heart still sank when I heard it. Then came the frustrating moment for me because I had no idea what to say! My first impulse was to say, "I'm so sorry!" but that didn't sound very encouraging. My second impulse was to say, "I hope you make it back." That, too, was too sad. I ended up blurting out, "Good luck!" and he said thanks, and that was that. I didn't know his name, but from now on every time the news reports another soldier death in Afghanistan, I will think of this man, a stranger whom I was privileged to briefly encounter right before he went off to fight a dangerous war in a dangerous country. If I had had an hour to formulate an appropriate response, it still would have not been adequate. What do you say at a time like that? I didn't know if the young man was for the war or against the war, I didn't know if this was his 1st or maybe his 3rd tour of duty, didn't know if he was worried about the future or concerned about leaving his family, or even anxious to put to use the skills he had been trained for. I didn't know if he was just apprehensive or scared stiff. I only know he had signed up to be of service, had been called, and was going as he had promised. "Good luck" just didn't cover it, but it was all I could muster on the spur of the moment.

When I realized it was Memorial Day weekend, the whole event took on a more poignant note for me. This brought the face of war right to my own face, and I could hardly speak in words that made sense. How could I ever be satisfied with a terse "Good luck" when all I wanted to do was throw my arms around him and cry like a baby?

Ewww...Science?

2011-05-21T15:49:00.002-05:00

Ed and I spend a lot of time reading aloud - actually, I do the reading aloud and he does the listening. Ed has a mild form of dyslexia which required me to read aloud to him many of his textbooks in college and seminary, and we have found in the years since that it is a wonderful mutually enriching arrangement for all kinds of interesting books, mostly nonfiction. We take our time, sometimes stopping after a paragraph or even a sentence to discuss what we have just learned. After reading At Home by Bill Bryson, we enjoyed his writing style so much that we bought three other books by him, and we are now reading A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is basically a history of science, from the atoms through the entire universe, chemistry, geology, biology, botany, astronomy, microbiology, and everything in between. We have read about scientists and philosophers and inventors and physicists and all other types of scientific achievers (and bumblers) who have influenced our perspective of our world. Some were pure geniuses, some were funny, some were off-the-wall personalities who discovered things by sheer accident, and others were mildly to severely eccentric. While Bryson gives details about the people, he also writes about the fascinating details of science - the incredible vastness of the universe, energy, cells, what make up our bodies and what make up our Earth. The whole thing is mind-boggling - the mystery, the curiosity, the awe. And it’s science.

We were only a third of the way through with the book when I just had to laugh at the absurdity of it all - my being fascinated with science at 55 years old! If you had told my adolescent self that I would be reading about science - of my own volition - later on in life, I would have choked in amusement. Science? No way! I’m into music and the arts! I’m into French and Abe Lincoln! I used avoid science and its sister subject, math, like the plague. The only math class I ever had any interest in was that of algebra, and that is because I had a very good teacher who made the subject intriguing.

Of course, in high school, science was a requirement. I spent hours trying to figure out which would be the least offensive branch - chemistry? biology? physics? I think those were my three choices, and they all basically sucked. I was not just disinterested in the curricula - I was horrified by the thought of the time I would have to waste, along with having a dread that I would not be able to maintain the good grades to which I had become accustomed. I absolutely HATED science.

After hearing about dissecting frogs and the like, I discounted biology. Physics was totally incomprehensible to me. So it was chemistry by default.

That is how I ended up in East High chemistry class in my senior year of high school. I had successfully avoided science until I could not officially avoid it any longer. After all, I had to graduate, didn’t I? This was the hell I would have to endure.

Unfortunately, as I had feared, it was a wasted year. My teacher, whose name my subconscious self has purposefully buried for all eternity, was new to our school. On the first day of class, he admitted that he was not trained in chemistry; he was supposed to be a biology teacher, but he was stuck with us as we were stuck with him. I admired him for his honesty, but he was indeed a horrible, ill-prepared teacher, partly because he didn’t really know the subject, and partly because he didn’t have any passion for the subject. I only remember two things about the class: Melting glass beakers into funny shapes over a Bunsen burner, and the final exam. The week before the final exam, again the teacher apologized for not being able to teach chemistry properly, and he said as a sign of recompense, he was going to give us an actual copy of the final exam ahead of time, because, he admitted, it wasn’t our fault that he couldn’t teach chemistry. The rest of the class, with a sigh of relief, memorized the answers and that was that.

For some odd reason, the whole situation was unacceptable to me. I had never “cheated” for a final exam, and I wasn’t going to start now, even if it was teacher-approved. So I threw the exam away and threw myself into studying.

Studying, of course, was just memorization and not learning. I never learned chemistry. But I remember trying to look at some kind of element table or chart where I had to memorize the layout, and I thought to myself, “This looks like a train...this looks like a boat...this looks like a flower...” and tried to memorize the layout accordingly. Total waste of time, of course, but I made an A on the exam without the cheat sheets.

Today in 2011, I’m reading about chemistry and loving it. I’m devouring information on the planets and galaxies and theory of relativity and neutrons and protons and the rest and I’m in heaven. On top of that, I’m a medical transcriptionist and work with information on anatomy, pharmaceuticals, and lab values all day every day. It’s a mighty big leap from that hopeless chemistry class with Mr. What’s His Name. Who would have dreamed? Not even Einstein, I would suspect, could have come up with such an unlikely scenario!

I’ve spent the past month in introspection, trying to figure out why all this fascinating stuff we are reading now didn’t interest me back then, and my conclusion is this: I never had a great science teacher. To be a great teacher, you need three elements, in my opinion. 1) Knowledge of the subject, 2) A personal passion for the subject, and 3) The ability to pass that passion onto your students. I never had a science teacher in my 12 years of schooling who had those three qualifications. My interest was never nudged, my curiosity never piqued, and that passion was certainly never ignited. My goodness! What we could accomplish with our kids if all our teachers possessed this sort of energy and talent! Young minds, already curious, are ready to soak up education like sponges, if only it is done with passion instead of boredom. How would my life have been different had I been able to read this book in high school? Who wouldn’t want to hear about the scientist who was so paranoid about human interaction that he would flee if anyone tried to engage him in conversation? About the brilliant astronomer who, even in the midst of genius thoughts, still believed the canals on Mars were made by Martians? About the intellectual chemist whose unfortunately eccentricity was tasting every substance he discovered - including cyanide? About how Albert Einstein applied for a high school teacher position and was rejected (wonder if anyone was eventually called on the carpet for that one? “You wouldn’t hire WHO?”)? Would you rather read true stories about real human beings with their problems and personality traits or would you rather just memorize a date in history when uranium was discovered? These are the kinds of things that make history of anything - and therefore the present - come alive. Passion is what makes students want to take study to the next level, whether it’s to develop exceptional skills in gymnastics or to discover the next great theory of the universe or the next promising treatment for cancer. That passion - unfortunately - is not something that one can assume will appear. But if the time is right - and the student is ready - and the teacher is passionate - what miracles can occur!

This is why I'm so excited that our oldest granddaughter who just turned 8, Caroline, is fascinated with science in all its forms. She's young enough to form lasting relationships with insatiable curiosity, ideas, awe, and discovery. She has people in her life who are fueling this curiosity and stimulating this drive for knowledge. She is lucky.

Now - do you have any idea, any idea, of how small a molecule is? Did you know that a molecule is so small that the number of molecules found in 2.016 grams of hydrogen gas is 6.0221367 x 10 to the 23rd? It’s a meaningless number to most of us, but think of it this way: that number is “equivalent to the number of popcorn kernels needed to cover the United States to a depth of nine miles, or cupfuls of water in the Pacific Ocean, or soft drink cans that would, evenly stacked, cover the Earth to a depth of 200 miles.” With amazing facts like that, who needs science “fiction”? The truth is enough to engage even the most lazy of minds. I have managed to turn science the enemy into science the friend. And my life is richer for it.

The House

2011-05-13T12:46:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the last in my series of blog posts on buildings that have been important to me in my life that are now gone. Today’s building doesn’t quite fit that description. It’s still here, but a shell of its former self, a reminder every time I see it that the adage is true - you can never really go home again.

It’s the brick house in Memphis where my sister Joy and I grew up. Since Mama’s car wreck and subsequent broken hip and ankle, she moved in with Joy, and her house stands empty. I mean really empty - a token bed and table and not much else. Joy is working herself to the bone trying to get it ready to sell, but, as one can imagine, a house with over 50 years of history has a lot of fixing up to go through. Alas, with me in Maine, the burdensome task falls mostly to Joy, in addition to her full-time job, full-time family including two teenagers, full-time house and yard maintenance of her own, church work, and taking care of Mama.

So the house is in a state of limbo. It is here, yet not here. It is gone from our lives, yet not gone. It is a standing reminder of what our lives used to be, and a vivid reminder of how things are not the same and never will be.

Mama and Daddy on the front porch:

Joy and I were born into that house and lived there until we went off to college. Other friends and relatives had moved at least once during their childhood, but not us. In fact, we are the only family to have ever lived in that house to this very day. The thought that maybe one day another person might live there fills me with hope and nausea simultaneously. Hey, that’s our house! Since we got married, Ed and I have lived in a townhouse, a Memphis bungalow, parsonages in New Bethel, Ripley, Algood, and Murfreesboro, and then our Victorian in Ellsworth, Maine and now our little ranch. We’ve had our share of moving around. It’s kind of ironic that the first house I lived in was new, and the last house (I vow it’s the last!) is new. The ones in between made us feel like temporary tenants, sharing the house with people past and present as it were, taking our place as residents for a few years, replacing those who came before, and after a while turning the keys over to the next families. My childhood home is not like that. We are its only family. Joy and I are the only kids to have lived there.

Boy, did we live, though! How does one do justice to recording memories of a happy childhood in a happy place? They are endless. Each room can be checked off as another piece of my life.

Mom and Dad bought the little house new in the 1950s as Memphis was expanding with post WWII boom. At the housewarming party with their friends, they delightedly announced that they were expecting me (after 12 years of marriage). Joy's birth followed two years later. During those first few years, Daddy’s mother lived with us. Frail, elderly, diabetic, half blind, she lived in one of the two real bedrooms (the other was used as a bedroom for years out of necessity, but it was really supposed to be a little den). Joy and I grew up with our old grandmother, Ma-Maw, staying in the dark room at the end of the hall. I remember that every Sunday after church, we would eat out at the Jefferson Cafe, and Dad would always have to bring a lunch home to Ma-Maw. By the time we were old enough to interact with her in any meaningful way, Ma-Maw was too far demented and sick, living in a dark room of her own. I remember after she died, how surprised I was to see that the back room was a pleasant room when it was bathed in sunlight, revealing the light floral wallpaper. I had never actually seen it before.

So Joy and I shared a bedroom all our growing-up years. This meant sharing a closet, a small one. We only had one bathroom in the house, too. It makes me feel old to say it, but most kids today don’t have any idea what it’s like to share limited space with the whole family. It’s as unthinkable to them as realizing a world existed without the ability to talk on the phone while your riding in a car and the ability to see movies on demand on your TV and the ubiquitous presence of computers. But share we did and it was the only way of life we knew. Fortunately, Joy and I enjoyed each other’s company the great majority of the time.

Out of the 3 bedrooms, we lived in each one for a period of time, starting with the den above, then after Ma-Maw died, alternating bedrooms with our parents. There we would hang our respective posters (hers of the Monkees or Bobby Sherman and mine of Abe Lincoln), go over our extensive lists on what to pack for the annual vacation trip, wake up to dimes under the pillow from the tooth fairy, lie in bed at night in the dark and recite the whole play of Oklahoma! aloud (our high school production), and listen to our transistor radios when we were supposed to be going to sleep. In the summer, we slept with the windows open, and the attic fan would whoosh the cool night air in to help us survive those Memphis summers. Open windows have their problems, though. For a long time we heard the couple next door arguing all night, as their windows were open as well, until one day the husband came home and the wife shot him dead while he was standing on the porch. That was the end of the arguments.

Mama and Daddy’s bedroom was the place I would go when I had a nightmare in the middle of the night. I walked in there and crawled into bed with them. We’re talking double bed, not queen bed, of course. It must have been awfully crowded in there. But it helped me get back to sleep easily. Their bedroom also held Mama’s old black Singer sewing machine. Mama made a lot of our simple clothes when we were little and when we were old enough to learn to sew, we made our own on that old machine. I remember when I took Home Economics in high school, I was astonished at the relatively modern sewing machines we were using.

Early on my parents' bed:

It was in the dining room that always shared a family dinner together. The only exceptions were when Daddy had a meeting at church or somewhere and the three of us would eat something different like pot pies. But most of the time, the four of us would sit down to delicious meals such as spaghetti, beans and cornbread, homemade beef vegetable soup, or, on other less exciting days, liver or salmon croquettes, always with a saucer of sliced white bread stacked for our starchy enjoyment. There we gathered at Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter with our grandfather and his friend, Mr. Gordon, and Great Aunt Bessie. Somehow in the little room at the modest table, there was always room for another chair. On Saturdays, after eating all week on a half-gallon carton of ice cream for our family of four, Daddy would cut open the carton until it was one flat piece of cardboard, set it on the table, everyone grabbed a spoon, and we would share the last few bites, scraping as we went. After supper, the table would turn into a hobby table. In the evenings when he could, Daddy would bring out his splicer and other home movie equipment and organize the most recent home movies. Alternatively, he would bring out his beloved stamp collection and work on it. Sometimes we would use it to do homework. The house itself was so small, we were usually doing whatever we were doing in the company of at least one other person.

Early dining room picture (I'm in Mama's lap)

A holiday dinner:

Mother and me in the dining room:

Do you know how you can vividly remember certain moments as if it were yesterday? I remember standing at that table the day after Daddy died, staring at a lemon pie. Friends had bought over casseroles and desserts and other food after they heard the tragic news, and at the time I had been giving up sugar for quite a while, and I remember in my raw grief staring at that lemon pie, thinking, well, I might as well have some, nothing much matters any more, certainly not mundane details of what I was eating or not eating. We had had an emotional earthquake, and the priorities had shifted.

The den was a busy room for years. After Ma-Maw died, Joy and I moved into that back bedroom and the den became a regular office type room, with Daddy’s desk, files full of reel-to-reel audio tapes and choir music, and our big old upright piano. Joy and I both learned to play, because, as Mama said, she had always wanted to learn and never did, so we would fulfill her childhood dream. So Joy and I spent hours at the piano separately and together. We loved to sing duets, some pretty silly ones, some really nice ones, and invariably our black cat would saunter into the little room and jump up onto the keys and walk around while we were in the midst of our duets. We never could figure out if he didn’t like our singing or just wanted to participate. It was usually when we were trying to record ourselves, so on the recording, you’d hear the random keys being stepped on as we tried to continue singing in vain and we broke out into the inevitable uncontrollable laughter and the attempt to shoo the cat out and start over. It was also in the den where Joy and I, church veterans to the end, had our own family Thanksgiving service for our parents, with bulletins, scripture reading, hymn singing, and the works. We also used that room for our Tiffin Spy Agency meetings (so we could use the piano to accompany our TSA theme song). That den had the window facing the porch that was usually unlocked, and I remember many times when we had locked ourselves out of the house, Joy or I would have to climb in that small window, over the desk, around to the living room to go unlock the front door.

Cousin Tim at our old piano in the den:

The living room, of course, is special if for no other reason that it was the favored room for visits from Santa and the Easter Bunny. It was the also the room where Joy and I acted in our most famous comedic play, The Odd Couple. It’s not the one by Neil Simon; it’s the one written by us, and it was a parody of Aunt Bessie and another relative, Aunt Maude. We got in old-lady garb and had our parents sit down for an audience, as we acted our little hearts out. The living room was also the location for Mama’s Bunco gathering, when a group of her high school female friends gathered, clucking like chickens, smoking like chimneys, eating mints and nuts, to play a game none of them really understood but which involved, from our perspective, a lot of noise, laughter, dice rolling, and bell ringing. Whatever it was, Mama seemed to look forward to (and dread) her month to host the gathering. Joy and I always had to help her clean the house, wax the wood floors, open up the card tables and chairs, and set out the mints and nuts. Then, if we were lucky, Daddy would get us out of the house and take us to the library and maybe by the time we got back, they’d all be gone. It was in the living room we watched shows like What’s My Line? and the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite. It was in there that we awaited with anticipation a visit from our aunt, uncle, and 3 boy cousins from Little Rock. It was there that we set up the screen and projector to watch slides and home movies.

Sisters on the couch:

The 4 of us on the couch:

Santa came!

On the couch with our amazing cousins:

Come to think of it, the couch was always the one constant in the living room. In May 1980, Ed and I stopped by to visit because Daddy was feeling poorly. He had had a couple of small heart attacks in the preceding years, but he was a man who would always be there, robust, energetic man with a million things he wanted to do. That day he was lying on the couch in the living room, pale, tired, and as I went over to give him a hug, he whispered, “Pray for me.” (The next time I saw him, the following week, he was being wheeled past me on a gurney in the ER, and that was the last time I would see him alive.)

Our kitchen was the tiniest kitchen you ever did see, but still managed to hold a washing machine when my parents finally could afford to buy one. Back then, we didn’t have a dishwasher or microwave or even a dryer. I can remember, though, having to defrost the freezer. (Gee, I am old!) Unfortunately, I never learned to be a cook. Fortunately, I married one.

Little helpers: Me

Joy

We had an attic, unfloored except for a strip down the middle to walk on. Daddy used to pull down the stairs, climb up there and sit at the top, perusing old papers and files and things from his past. I remember once being up there with him when he showed me a picture of a bearded man in some kind of magazine. Being a kid, I wasn’t paying that much attention, but I thought he said that was the only picture he had of his father. Recently, as Joy and I were cleaning out the attic, we desperately tried to find that magazine. I couldn’t remember the details - was it a Sunday school publication? Life magazine? There were tons of magazines up there! We finally found it - a trade magazine for the printing profession, and it was not a picture of his father, it was a picture of his grandfather, an esteemed printer. What a find!

Outside was the second part of our own little world. There on Mother's Day, we would go out and pick rosebuds to wear to church. Mother wasn't really an avid gardener, but those rose bushes were her pride and joy. (When Daddy died, we put 3 roses on his casket to represent the three of us left.) The front porch was small but adequate enough for me as a child to build an intricate complex of cat hotels called Catland Caverns out of cardboard boxes. I’m sure that increased the property values in the neighborhood, LOL! Our parents let us do pretty much whatever creative activity we fancied. We chalked up the sidewalks in front, made a tent on the clothesline out back, bounced balls off the roof, set up a “club house” by the garage, played badminton in the front yard, and in general made nuisances of ourselves but hey, that’s what kids do. I guess we redeemed ourselves by helping in the yard work. During the summer, we would all get out there and pull weeds, edge, mow, trim hedges, sweep, and make our yard look presentable. When painting time came for the house, inside and out, we helped with that too.

Daddy, Joy and me on the front porch

On the back porch with a neighbor:

In the front yard:

In the back yard:

As we grew, still pictures gave way to home movies, but the memories are as clear as ever. Well, all that was long ago, ages ago. As with my church Harris Memorial, those scenes exist only in our heads and hearts now. I feel good to have gotten some of the down on virtual paper here, for we are the last of the Tiffins to live in that house. I know it's just a bunch of bricks and mortar and a yard and some trees, and I know the building is not the home, any more than the church building was the church. But still it is all so intertwined. I have no idea what the future is for what was once my precious home. I know that this month I will fly down there to do what little I can to help my sister get it ready to sell. It just breaks my heart.

Farewell, my Memphis home. Thanks for the memories.

Ushering in some culture

2011-05-06T07:16:00.002-05:00

Third in a series of posts about special buildings in my life that are no more:

As Joy and I were growing up, we had fairly normal lives - maybe spent more time at church than the average kid - but on the whole, for those of our financial status and environment, we were like everybody else. That changed the minute we became ushers.

Memphis had a grand auditorium, Ellis Auditorium, a downtown facility which hosted countless shows, visiting artists, everything from opera to Bobby Sherman, plays and symphonies. Our school chorus teacher, Miss Gillespie, had a good friend named Rosemary Hammond (who, it turns out, was a family friend of our parents as well), and Rosemary was in charge of staffing a volunteer usher group of junior high/high school students to make sure all those audience members could find their seats. So that's how it started. Yes, the job was strictly volunteer, but the benefits - ah, that's what made us the culturally rich women we are today! After standing and walking non-stop for an hour or so, taking tickets and trudging up and down stairs, gently urging folks to move to the correct seat in some cases, we ushers got our rewards - we found some empty seats, or in the case of a sold-out performance, stood somewhere, and got to see all the shows for free.

Of course, we were dependent on our dad to drive us there and pick us up. Many times he had to get up early the next morning and go to work as a bank teller; nevertheless, at midnight he could be seen driving downtown, parking, riding the escalator up to the second floor, and gathering his two girls for the ride home. Occasionally he was early enough to catch a little of the show's ending himself, which he relished. Years later, I asked him what on earth led him to sacrifice so much of his time and sleep to make sure we could see those shows. He replied that, being financially unable to buy us tickets for such performances himself, he wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to widen our cultural horizons and would do anything to see that dream realized. What a dad!

So there we were, living the lives of the "theater." Note: The plays and musicals were for the most part tours from Broadway - real Broadway casts and real Broadway stars. Here are some programs - just a small sample - of some of the shows we attended. (Excuse the tape and other signs of age - these are old pieces of paper that I unfortunately stuck in those self-adherence scrapbooks that I can never remove!)

(That couple above: Robert Preston and Mary Martin - the only actors in the whole musical - to this day I can sing almost every song from memory.)

(Backstage, I spoke to Duke in French, and he wrote me a charmingly complimentary few sentences in French in my autograph book)

As a budding pianist, I got to see the incredible Van Cliburn and he even autographed my copy of Moonlight Sonata (which has sadly disappeared in the ensuing years), but I remember gushing around his tall frame with a bunch of other piano students backstage and saying to him, "Do you realize you are 1/2 inch taller than Abraham Lincoln?" (He didn't.)

I was never into dance, but I knew ballet superstars when I saw them, and so was enchanted with the incomparable Nureyev and Fonteyn:

Elvis even made an appearance - not as a performer, but as a participant in the Jaycees Prayer breakfast, which was held in the Auditorium (I believe he was winning an award).

The Metropolitan Opera came to town every year, and that was one of the highlights of the well-to-do and society leaders in Memphis. I remember the first time I ushered for the Met. Rosemary had asked the usherettes to wear "tea length dresses," something I, of course, did not own and had to borrow from a teenager at church. The whole thing was very formal, and very exciting. My dad took home movies of my friend Audrey and me all gussied up on our way to usher for the Met performance.

Here is a program from the Orchestra of Paris concert. I had found an empty seat directly beside a member of that symphony (I can't remember why he was in the audience at the time). He autographed my program and taught me the word "ouvreuse" was the French word for "usherette."

The shows and concerts were endless - many more than I could talk about here. The Memphis Symphony had monthly concerts, and often had a guest soloist - one time it was Pablo Casals, the great cellist. I was interested in pianists, but cellists? Not so much. My dad made me usher and stay for that one - he said I would always regret the opportunity to hear Pablo Casals in person. Funny, but to this day, I am proud to say I did indeed see Mr. Casals in person, the cello intrigues me and I would love to learn how to play one.

Some of the shows, like "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," Joy and I watched so many performances that we knew all the lines by heart ourselves. It was always fun to see the various audiences and their different reactions to the same lines.

Of course, I wasn't always in the audience. I was in the chorus of the operas Aida and Faust:

I vividly remember the opening night of Aida. We had to look like Egyptians, so they had this horrible dark mud-like pancake makeup they were going to smear all over our faces. Now, I have always had an aversion to caked mud and dirt anywhere on my body. It just makes me want to scream. I remember going into the makeup room, where the makeup attendant got a big handful of gross mud-like putty and as it came near my face, I had the fleeting thought of "It's not too late; I can just walk out of here and be done with it." But I flinched and allowed it to be smeared on. So yucky! But it was a lot of fun to be on stage for a change. My second opera was Faust, I was a year older, and I absolutely adored the music, so I had a ball. Who wouldn't want to be dressed as a peasant, sitting around a table with a tankard of "beer" in your hand, lustily singing lyrics like, if I remember correctly: "Wine or beer, beer or wine, for we drink any kind...when the wine glass goes around, we can always be found...only water we disdain, drinking keeps us sound and sane!"?

Then finally:

My high school graduation was held in the Auditorium.

Joy and I got to haunt the halls of the Auditorium back in the days before security was a big issue. The security guards actually got used to seeing us; rarely were we forbidden from entering an area or questioned. (Even so, we tried to avoid calling attention to ourselves just in case.) I spent countless performances just sitting backstage, right in the wings, drinking in the excitement of seeing the performances. I was so close I could have walked on stage before anyone could have stopped me. I was very quiet and unobtrusive, but it was never anything like it would be today. I can't believe we got away with it so many times like we did.

Alas, all those memories were left without a tangible presence, as in 1997 Ellis Auditorium underwent demolition. When I think of all the music, laughter, and excitement that filled that building for years and years, I tear up. But I also smile a little, remembering Daddy's great wish to give us something he could never have afforded to give us - an appreciation of music, drama, and culture that is with us to this day. I laud the greats like Van Cliburn, Duke Ellington, Pablo Casals and the rest - but the real hero was our dad, every sacrificing, ever dreaming, ever trying to give his little girls two wonder-filled magical lives.

RIP, Ellis Auditorium, Memphis.

This is the church, this is the steeple

2011-04-30T10:04:00.002-05:00

The tornadoes down South have claimed many lives and loss of property this week. One of my MT friends mentioned that her home church had been destroyed. I know well the gut feeling of loss folks have when they hear such news about a piece of property that has made a difference in their lives. As I mentioned last week, I am blogging for 4 weeks on losses of places - the places that have meant so much to me that it is hard to imagine this earth without their presence. Last week, it was my alma mater, Lambuth. This week, it is my home church, Harris Memorial Methodist (later United Methodist) Church.

Above is a bulletin cover, the one I grew up with for so many years. Harris Memorial was located in inner city Memphis. It was our home away from home. With our dad being choir director and mom a Sunday School teacher for years, we were there at every service, Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesdays for choir practice. With our dad also on the Board, we were there for church meetings. We were there for Vacation Bible school for a week every summer. And if that were not enough, we usually stopped by every Saturday with our parents to clean up the pews and replace hymnals in their little holders. We helped Daddy retrieve choir anthems from the file, take out the anthems from the past few Sundays, and put new ones in their folios. Harris Memorial was really our home away from home.

Here is a picture of Daddy holding me in front of the church when I was 3 months old:

And a later picture with both my parents:

I have vivid memories of growing up in that church, because back in the '50s, everyone dressed to the nines for services. Women wore gloves and hats. At Easter the fashion was intensified, of course, and everything seemed to have a special sparkle and energy. Every Easter my sister and I got new clothes - I mean ALL new clothes, including underwear and socks and shoes. New clothes for us was a rare enough occasion that going all out on Easter just made it even more exciting. When we got to church, we knew that an incredible view awaited us. Mrs. Grogan, a family friend, took it upon herself to personally decorate the front of the church for Easter morning, with satin drapes, flowers, and tons of Easter lilies. It was beautiful, and every year it was different. The whole atmosphere was glorious. We got to sing the great Easter hymns, and then in the afternoon, we returned to church for a special choir concert (which took the place of the usual evening service). Sometimes it was a cantata (one long piece of music). Other times, it was what Daddy called "a mixed-up program" - various anthems he selected to trace the Lent/Easter story, always ending with, of course, the Hallelujah Chorus, where the entire congregation would join the choir in standing. Those were extraordinary moments that were made possible by extraordinary planning and hard work by our small choir, the one called "the best little choir in Memphis." Of course, we had the best director!

As my sister Joy and I got older, we made close friendships with the other children in church, many friendships which we maintain to this day. We especially had a lot of fun on Wednesday night during choir practice, before we were old enough to join the choir ourselves. We stayed in the Fellowship Hall, supervised by another Mrs. Grogan (the mother-in-law of the Easter decorator), an elderly lady who, I'm sure, was exceedingly bored with having to watch over and reprimand a bunch of boisterous kids who wanted to get into all sorts of trouble, kids who really wanted to play with volleyballs, which made her distraught and anxious because she was always worried we would knock the ceiling lights out.

When Joy and I became of age, we joined the choir, under Daddy's directorship. The choir room was a small room at the back of the church on the right side as you faced the altar. I can remember all the ladies taking their hats off and putting them on the shelf, where there was a long mirror so they would fix their hair and make sure their robes were properly positioned. The sanctuary sloped towards the front, and therefore the choir room had to slope too, so when I ventured forth to the tiny dark bathroom at the end of the choir room, I felt I probably could have gone faster by sitting down and sliding. Women even left their purses in the choir room - ah, those were the days one didn't worry about people coming in and stealing anything. There was a red light near the door, and when that light flashed, that meant the organist, Sam, had finished his prelude and was ready for the processional. Show time!

Before church, of course, there was Sunday School, which involved annual promotions, a certificate, sometimes a new Bible, and then maybe a move to a new room and new teacher.

We met so many interesting people at church, and most of them in my eyes were the old people. I've always been fascinated with old people, and many times in my life, I have been much more comfortable in the presence of the elderly than in the presence of my peers. We had one old man who gave away Wrigley gum to the kids. We had one old lady who always kept a cushion in "her pew." (Most congregants sat in the same place every Sunday, and we could tell at a glance who was absent by noting the empty places.) Our favorite old lady was Mrs. Perry. She was a feisty widow who sat on the second row, gave us nickels to put in the offering, and every once in a while would let me wear her fox stole - yes, with the head and other parts still on it - which at the time I thought was kind of exotic, but now would make me nauseated. We picked her up for church and took her home. She lived in one of those big old houses in a poor neighborhood. It was dark and dank and smelled horrible - for she was the quintessential "cat lady," with cats and kittens running amock, and to this day I wonder if she even had a litter box. But she was the nicest person. She always gave us a birthday card, and sometimes made us a cake. Her only request was that when we sent her a birthday card or get-well card, that we sign it in pencil, so she could erase our name and reuse the card for someone else; her heart was big, but her budget was small.

All our ministers were old as well. Brother Fletcher was an older man who at one point was trying desperately to increase attendance at the Sunday night service. He decided to issue a challenge. If the congregation managed to get a certain number of attendees at a Sunday night service, Brother Fletcher said he would stand at the pulpit and sing - yes, sing - the new hit Beatles song "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Of course, we met the challenge, as that was too good to miss. He obliged, too, swaying and singing right up there at the pulpit. It was such an incongruous sight that I probably would be thinking I had dreamt it, were it not for its presence in Daddy's home movies.

One year, the church celebrated its 100th anniversary with a huge celebration and return of former members and music and special guests, and we started wondering who our next minister would be. (The United Methodist Church has an itinerant ministry, appointed every June, and a church may have a minister for a minimum of a year up to several years, then be appointed a new one.) The neighborhood surrounding the church had deteriorated, some public housing had sprung up, we were surrounded by poor people, and it was obvious Harris Memorial was turning into a real urban inner city church with a mission of outreach. It was time for a younger pastor, someone with vision and energy and along came Joe. The youth, by this time adolescents and teenagers, were mesmerized. He was the first minister we had ever seen in shorts. He was the first minister we had ever seen who played volleyball. He had a young wife and babies. He even dressed up for a costume party! Harris Memorial would never be the same. Joe Pennel left after a few years. He eventually became a bishop.

The church declined further. Congregants died or moved away or decided to go to churches nearer their homes. Crime increased in the area. The church building became used for mission work during the week and became a neighborhood center Monday through Friday. The congregants tried their best to invite the area residents to attend the church, but not much became of it, and after a while, it was painfully obvious the church had to close its doors. As sad as it was, it called for another celebration, and that had to include food, for, as Daddy used to say, Methodists never gather without eating, and so we had a huge service and meal, inviting back all former members, pastors, and guests. So many former choir members came that the choir loft was bursting at the seams. It was a bittersweet day. One piece of trivia that was mentioned was the fact that Ed and I were the last couple to be married in the church.

Here is a scene from our wedding in 1974 when the sun burst through the beautiful stained glass window in the front of the sanctuary:

Our parents were also married in that church in 1942.

The building closed as a site of a worshipping congregation and was taken over by the United Methodist Neighborhood Centers, continuing the mission of outreach in that needy area. But at least we still had the building there at the corner, the one we remembered from all those years, with its big stained glass windows and towering steeple and precious memories.

Then one day came the horrible news. During renovation/painting work, a paint can apparently caught fire overnight and the church had burned down. When I saw it, it looked like a bombed-out building from WWII. Before the remains were totally demolished, some people salvaged some smoky-smelling bricks for posterity, and one woman salvaged some stained glass and made wind chimes to sell with proceeds going to the Neighborhood Center. Even in death, Harris Memorial was giving back.

The congregation (who, as we all know, is the real church, not the building) is still close and keeps in touch. There was, in fact, a reunion just a few years ago, where people could come share their memories. But more congregants are dying every year, and so many first-witness accounts are dying with them. The babies baptized in that church became little kids who slept on towels during Vacation Bible School, became bigger kids who played during choir practice and went to Lakeshore camp for a couple of weeks every summer, became adolescents who were wowed by a preacher who was younger than 70, became teenagers who became lifelong friends - and they are now in their 50s, and time, as it is prone to do, marches on.

It's been decades, yet I still can't get over the fact that that building is not there anymore. I find it sad that our generation will be the last generation to remember what that church was like - the Easters, the Christmases, the potluck suppers, the music, the weddings and funerals and everything that made growing up there such a remarkable time in our lives. After we are gone, the stories will be relegated to obscure history books, maybe some tales being passed down within families, and some randomly written down as I have done today. I realize this post is exceptionally long, and I'm not really recording these words for anyone but me and the others who want to remember what it was like to be at the corner of Seventh Street and Looney in Memphis, Tennessee, on any given Sunday morning years and years ago.

RIP, Harris Memorial United Methodist Church.

The losses build

2011-04-22T05:23:00.003-05:00

When one thinks about aging, one has to consider loss in all its forms. You just can't escape that inevitable fact of life. The physical losses alone would fill a library: Loss of balance and coordination, loss of hearing, loss of vision, loss of hair, loss of skin elasticity, loss of height, loss of memory, loss of bone density....you know the list. But forget the physical representations of aging for a moment. There are the devastating "people" losses - those times when loved ones leave. Death is the major reason, of course, but there are others: Divorce, kids growing up and moving out, family moving far away, loved ones who have developed dementia, friends who seemingly have dropped off the face of the earth, to name a few. In each case, the status quo has had an earthquake, and things will never be the same again.

Relationship change, either through death or other means, is probably the most traumatic of the losses in stability, but changes/destruction/closing of important places in our lives can contribute to our overwhelming sense of loss as well.

I had an incredibly satisfying and happy childhood. I have lots of places in my mind that bring back fond memories, from the corner neighborhood grocery store to the Main Public Library in Memphis, both of which are either gone or so transformed and rebuilt that my memories of "the way things used to be" remain frozen in time but not in present reality.

We like same; we like familiar; we like routine; we like stability. Yes, I've heard of (even known) some folks who thrive on change and that adrenaline rush, who can't stay in one place because boredom sets in so quickly, who if they had to live my life would develop cobwebs within one week. But I still think the majority of us are comforted by sameness up to a point. We want people, places, and things, if they are comforting to us and hold treasured memories, to always be the same. Unwelcome changes bring confusion and frustration. But....life evolves, as its DNA demands.

I had some news last week that upset me. Some of you may remember that I only went to college for one year, as I learned quickly that at that time in my life, college just wasn't a good fit for me. I have always loved learning, but I was ready for something other than formal education, and wanted to stretch my learning in the music part of the equation and forget the math and science part for a while, which you just can't do if want to earn a college degree. But that one year, my total higher education career, was spent at Lambuth College in Jackson, Tennessee. It was a small private liberal arts college, almost like an overgrown high school (one of its nicknames was Lambuth High). Its campus was a lovely Georgian architecture style and its dorm curfews were strict. Most people outside of Tennessee had never heard of its existence. Sometimes by word of mouth or by its affiliation with the Methodist Church, a non-Tennessee student would show up (my roommate was from Shelter Island, New York, lured to Lambuth by a close friend from her hometown, God only knows how her friend ever got there in the first place!), but on the whole, we were all fairly Southern kids, at least in my time.

At one point years later, Lambuth decided to become a University, which kind of diluted its specialness and strength, I think, and down the road, got into financial troubles, may have overextended in areas, ran out of money, was denied accreditation, and last week the Board of Directors voted to close the school. Its beautiful campus may be continued as a seat of higher learning, maybe under the auspices of University of Memphis, maybe not. Nobody knows. The only sure thing is there will not be a Lambuth College or Lambuth University in a few weeks. A place I always assumed would be there will be gone forever.

This has happened to me before, of course. There are three other important places in my life that have disappeared or are about to, and each one deserves it own blog post which it will receive in the coming weeks, but this week, my mind has been consumed with Lambuth. It is a wonder it bothers me at all, since I only was there one year, but bother me it does. For one thing, I met two lifelong friends there, one who maintained the relationship until last year when she had a traumatic experience and has disappeared, and the other, with whom I had lost contact for decades until I tracked her down a few years ago and renewed our wonderful, close friendship. It was at Lambuth I learned so much about music. My amazing teacher, Dr. Jo Fleming, introduced me to the pipe organ, and I was hooked. My voice teacher, Mr. Coulter, taught me arias, including my favorite to this day, Un Bel Di. My theory teacher, Mr. Brown, showed me how hymns and chorales were built, how the transitions between chords occurred, all the technical things about music I had never realized. My speech teacher, Mrs. Whetstone, showed me how much fun it could be to give speeches in front of an audience. My English teacher, Dr. Mayo, instilled in me a lifelong fear of the word "nice" - saying it should never be used because it doesn't really convey anything. (Of course, I made sure that year to find a birthday card for him that said "Have a Nice Birthday.")

Lambuth was also my first introduction to a Yankee, Ginny Jernick, from Shelter Island, New York, my roommate. She taught me the word "soda" for Coke. The only other words for carbonated beverages I had ever heard were "soft drink" from my dad, and my Aunt Bessie from Missouri said, "Pop." I remember one of the first days of college, Ginny said something about a soda machine in one of the buildings. The only sodas I had ever heard of were ice cream sodas, and I was confused but understandably overjoyed at the news. I was suddenly seeing the South from the eyes of a Northerner and got another kind of education in that way. Ginny didn't like Lambuth, was homesick, and left after the first semester, so I roomed alone for the remainder of the year.

That one year was the first time I had ever lived away from home, a learning experience in itself. I had only lived in one house, gone to one school from 1st grade through 12th, had only attended one church my whole life up to that point, always sharing a bedroom with my sister. This was a major adjustment.

Finally, Lambuth introduced me to Ed, my future husband. There was only a small window of opportunity for us to meet. He was in and out of college between farming and serving in Vietnam. I was only there for one year. But he had a car, and my friends and I didn't, so he agreed to drive us to the ice cream joint one night and before long, despite the concerns of my friends who worried about the dubious wisdom of a relationship between a smoking, divorced drunk and a sheltered, church-going, nonsmoking teetotaler 8 years his junior, things evolved, we went through years of hell intermixed with happiness, and now in August we will have been married for 37 years. I owe my marriage to Lambuth, and my children and grandchildren owe their very existence to Lambuth.

So my one year at Lambuth had a profound effect on my life. I was there in a pivotal point in my personal growth, and Lambuth changed me forever. Since I heard the news, I have been thinking over the other places in my past I have lost or am losing, and it is taking a great deal of effort to come to terms with it all.

RIP, Lambuth.

The Glory Days

2011-04-16T05:55:00.001-05:00

When I was having high school angst in the late '60s and early '70s, to cheer me up my mom would occasionally say, "These are the best years of your life!" Of course, I had such a horrible time in high school (not at home) in many ways that that saying only depressed me. I thought, These are the best days and things will go downhill from here??!! I hated the way I looked, hated to be told what to read and write, hated my shyness, and wished I could sing better, play piano better, write better, look better, and interact better with my peers.

Here I am in 2011 to again refute my mom's premise. I still look back on high school with distaste. However, it tempted me to ask myself this week, What are the best years of my life? Are they in the past, or are they yet to come, or are they both?

This is one of the perils of growing older and having completed over half one's life. Nostalgia mixed with regret mixed with disappointment mixed with elation mixed with fear - the latter being mainly that I fear The Glory Days are over.

In my one year of college, I learned how to play the pipe organ. I was fortunate enough to attend a church in Memphis that had a beautiful pipe organ and I got to play it many times, even substituting for services. What an experience on a magnificent machine! Both hands, both feet going different directions, changing stops and volume, sometimes having to direct a choir at the same time - man, that was exhilarating! I haven't touched a pipe organ in over a decade. Many churches nowadays are moving away from pipe organs, as they are expensive to buy and maintain. I also have been working on Sundays for years now, so I haven't even heard a pipe organ in a long time. I fear my pipe organ Glory Days are gone.

The picture above was taken at a dinner theater at that church when I was playing Fanny Brice. This was probably the time I was more comfortable in my own skin. I was certainly brave enough to go on stage and sing in front of audiences. It's one thing to be comfortable growing up singing in church, straightforward music with which I was familiar in an equally familiar setting, but wearing that flapper dress, singing a torch song like "My Man" was a different story. One of the hardest things in life is to put oneself out there to be watched and judged - but to try it and be successful is euphoric.

I don't sing much anymore, certainly not publicly. I'll sing for family funerals, but that's about it. I miss it. My singing Glory Days appear to be gone.

I have other hobbies - quilting and sewing, for instance - in which I used to be prolific and now it seems I have the will and desire, but just don't have the energy I used to have in order to create the countless number of items I want and need to make. Are my quilting and sewing Glory Days over?

Of course, needless to say, age and gravity takes it toll on the appearance in every way possible. I'm pretty much assured my appearance Glory Days are over! I've never known women to look better in their 50s than in their 30s, LOL, but hey, that's just the natural way of things.

I constantly reassure myself that I have grown since that picture was taken. I may not be playing organ and singing in shows, but I have made a few beautiful quilts and a few pieces of clothing. I have written many off-the-wall poems and some pretty serious blogs. I overcame a paralyzing fear of flying and I learned medical transcription and even passed the certification test. In the process of my living my life since 1954, I have also helped raise two compassionate, intelligent, talented, productive, mannerly children who are now raising their own kids. They are adults now and on their own, though. I still wonder, Are my Glory Days as mother over?

This introspection has taken over my life this week. I guess at a certain age, one looks backwards more than forwards. One sees the hourglass with more sand on the bottom than the top, and can't help but wonder if any Glory Days lie ahead, or if instead, the Glory Days fell to the bottom with the sand and now just serve as warm memories.

Oh, I've read that list of how so many famous people "came into their own" at an older age - and that can be quite inspirational - but still the doubt is there. As I think about my almost 88-year-old mom, who, having lived a good life raising her family with love and care, now spends all her time sitting watching TV, so bored, surviving on hearing about the grandkids/greatgrandkids, talking about the weather and what's for supper - I question my own existence and future. My mission is not just to survive, but to thrive until my very last breath. I want to always have a vision, a purpose, a guiding drive to make the years to come ones of satisfaction, joy, creation, learning, and teaching. I refuse to accept the fact that my Glory Days are behind me. Glory Days are part luck, part work, part talent, part vision, and just part of the evolution of life. They have no time limit and no expiration date. There is still, I hope, plenty of sand in the top of the hourglass, and I vow to make the best of it. Rejoicing in the blessings of the past, delighting in the blessings of the present, and looking forward to the blessings of the future - that's my vision for the old Glory Days and the Glory Days yet to come.

Be vicarious with me!

2011-04-08T17:23:00.002-05:00

Need to relax? Smile? Ponder? Or just sit and stare in awe? Have I got the sites for you!

I know time it precious to us all, and my major problem with time is the myriad of blogs and sites on the Internet that I follow. Words are important to me, and I love reading what other people have written, but alas, that takes time and time is what I seem to lack these days. I try, but I'll never read everything on the Internet that I would like to read.

Enter.....photographs. Ah, yes, now photos don't take much time to enjoy. They are just placed before me in all their splendor and glory. No arguments, no typos, no speed-reading - just pictures. There is a gracious lady who lives on Prince Edward Island in Canada who takes the most unusual and beautiful photographs of her environment and posts them on the net for all to see. Almost every photo is worthy of its own calendar or postcard. I've never been to PEI, but I'd like to go one day, and until then, I visit vicariously through her. Her eye for detail, light and shadow, and her ability to catch nature at just the right moments is incredible.

So this week, I thought I'd share these favorite sites with you. It will only take a moment of your time to view some of her photos, and if you are like me, you will feel honored to share in her amazing world - a world of nature, color, beauty, humor, and contrasts.

An Island Walk

Photos and Pursuits

Pictures and Pursuits

The Ultimate Control

2011-04-01T04:46:00.000-05:00

Those who read my blog are well aware that I have a guiding prayer for my life - the Serenity Prayer. "Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (control) , the courage to change (control) the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." I add the word control because I think that is the essence of the prayer, and I'm speaking from one who has a problem with control, or specifically, inability to deal with being out of it.

Take the weather, for instance. Today we are expecting a spring snowstorm with wind gusts to 50 mph to dump 6-12 inches of snow on us. Can I control that? Nope. I just think it's lucky we haven't put away the shovels yet. The reason I was successful in calming my fear of flying a few years ago is that I was able to realize and accept the fact that when I am up there in that plane, I am totally out of control, and whatever happens happens, and I can do nothing to change it. I'm always trying to identify and tame my desire to control. (Hmm...trying to control the desire to control...is there something weird about that?)

My blog readers are also probably aware that I am mildly obsessed with death and greatly obsessed with correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Add those things to the word control and that's a powerful combination, as I discovered this week.

An acquaintance of ours died a few days ago. We did not know this woman well, but I was aware she had passed away and I made sure to read her obituary. To give you some background, this woman had spent her whole career as a high school and university English teacher. She also taught poetry and writing and had contributed to literary journals. Her obituary was long (as most are up here in Maine) and detailed. Here is the sentence that took my breath away: "She was baptized in 1941 in the United Methodist Church and maintained the church's values and principals her whole life."

Major ouch! To have this distinguished English teacher stuck with "principals" instead of "principles" in her obituary for the ages? How I feel for her!

You see, what happens to you after you die is the ultimate out-of-control situation. You may record what you want on your tombstone, you may write your own obituary, you may hope that your life will be perceived as worthwhile and your journey on Earth a generous one, but in the end, all that is out of your reach. Presidents, for example, are always wondering what their "legacies" will be. You can't even control what people think of you while you're alive, much less dead. You can make plans, but it is at the discretion of the survivors whether or not to carry them out. Even Elizabeth Taylor, bless her soul, made arrangements to arrive fashionably later at her own funeral as one final act of control. The family fulfilled her request. Your funeral service (for those who choose to have one; many in Maine don't) is an area where you can make plans for favorite hymns and that sort of thing, but there is something unique about the importance of the obituary as the final written testament to one's life. Now I'm paranoid about having a typo or similar error in my obituary.

I wrote my own obituary before my first plane ride a few years ago (I said I'm more relaxed, not unprepared!), but I am wise enough to know that what is done with that, added or subtracted, revised, or otherwise changed is out of my control once I'm gone. And I'm OK with that. All I ask is PLEASE, have someone proof the thing before it's printed in the newspaper. There are several astute people up to the task - my friend Sally in California, or Audrey in Memphis, or Dr. Annie, my friend in Michigan, or Joy, my amazing sister - better yet, have the teachers in the family look it over too - the more the better. That's what e-mail is for, folks - for fast communication. It can be done.

Today is April Fool's Day and we are getting a snowstorm joke played on us by Mother Nature herself. She will have the last laugh while we patiently (or not so patiently) await the arrival of the Spring that the calendars assure us is here already. My husband, with his wacky sense of humor, may think a spelling error in my obituary would be a funny joke, too. Don't let it happen! My self-written obituary as of this date has been scoured for possible errors, and I find none. Please keep it that way. Thank you.

The Disconnect

2011-03-26T06:48:00.003-05:00

I'm sure we all have had experiences where our thinking was disconnected from, say, common sense and reality. Much of this involves risks and consequences. When you're young and want a tan, you have a disconnect about melanoma and wrinkles. When you avoid brushing and flossing your teeth, you have a disconnect about how unappealing it is to see the dentist. People who smoke and drink excessively have temporary memory loss of what it means to get lung cancer, liver disease, or a ticket for OUI. You know that eating junk is going to lead to ill health and will eventually show up on the scale, but you focus on the immediate pleasure. For some reason, human logic and calculation is undermined when the temptation of the moment is strong.

Some of this, I think, ironically is just self preservation and protection. If you really and truly realized the risks and consequences of what you were doing, your emotions would probably explode with the horrible understanding. It is also human nature to want to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, concentrating on the here-and-now pleasure as opposed to future pain.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when we talk about death - or don't talk about it. I was listening to a financial show on public radio a few weeks ago in which some experts were debating the necessity of buying long-term health care insurance, e.g., nursing home insurance. After much discussion, basically the recommendation came down to this: How long do you think you will live and how healthy do you think you will be?

I don't know a whole lot of people who like to sit around and wonder at what age they will die. It's not something high on the "feel good" list of things to daydream about. We don't like to think about our own deaths and we certainly don't like to think about deaths of those we love. And there's the disconnect. Our brains tell us that these things will happen, but if we seriously thought about the reality of it, our emotions would overpower us and we would end up angry, depressed, anxious, or even emotionally paralyzed.

I remember when Ed was at the bed of a dying AIDS patient in Tennessee. They had several discussions about what was to come, what to expect, fear, loss, pain, disappointment - the works. I remember Ed telling the young man, "You know, I'm going to die too. The only difference is, you know when it's coming for you."

It seems in the last few years, I've had some female friends die who I thought would be here forever. You know the kind - independent, sassy, overcoming-all-odds people. You can't imagine the world without their presence. These were strong women, all involved in music and highly talented, who would, I thought, would just each shake their fist at Death and say, "Not for me, buddy!" But it didn't happen. They lived long, productive lives (in one case, however, cut short), made so much a difference in their world, but Death finally took them and never once asked me for my opinion about the matter.

This week, my daughter-in-law's Gram died, and also my sister's dog Abbey died. Both were old, both had long, energetic, fruitful lives surrounded by people who loved them, and both were such presences that their families can't fathom a world without them. I remember I felt that way when my best friend, Bernie, died at age 49. I remember thinking several times that I needed to call her to tell her something, then it crushed me to remember she had passed on. Same thing with my wonderful dad - your parents gave you life and love - they will always be here....won't they? People (and pets) like these are so much a part of us that you just know they will be here forever. You've never known life without their love and care, and you can't imagine how empty and useless life will seem without their physical being here to hug and touch and talk to.

Death has been called The Great Equalizer, but it can also be called The Great Disconnect - and not because it disconnects us from our loved ones, but because when viewing death, we have a habit of disconnecting our brains from reality. But in my heart, I believe there is another reality. I believe that the souls of these people and pets live on, that Death is not the final answer, and that that love cannot die, even when the physical body has left us. Sure, it hurts to love when things like this happen, but this is the way life works. Memories are precious and healing. I think that is one of the cruelties of Alzheimer's and other dementias: They take away the victim's ability to recognize loved ones, and they erase all their beautiful memories that make her/him a human being.

I wish somehow as a society we could look upon Death as something natural, not necessarily welcome (but in some cases, it is), but inevitable. Death gives us a great gift. Knowing it will come, it makes life all the more precious, gives us realization that life itself is a fragile commodity, gives us the desire to define our legacy, and give us an opportunity to form and cherish the belief that it doesn't have the last word.

South Meets North

2011-03-16T08:23:00.005-05:00

This June will mark our transplant anniversary - we moved to Maine from Tennessee 15 years ago this June. I can remember when we first told friends and family that we were moving. Half the people thought we were crazy and the other half said it sounded like a marvelous adventure for us. So what has it turned out to be?

A little bit of both, I think! The move definitely changed the course of our lives, as both our children married native Mainers and are raising their kids here. Rachel still has somewhat of a southern accent, as she was 18 when we moved, but Matt has lost his southern accent, as he was only 13 and his developing teenage years were spent up north. (He doesn’t sound like a Mainer; he just doesn’t have much of an accent at all.) Rachel’s husband Chris swears that when they fly to Memphis, the minute the pilot makes the “Welcome to Memphis” announcement, her southern drawl gets significantly more pronounced.

I’ve had to field a lot of questions in these last 15 years. What are the differences in Maine and Tennessee, and how much of a culture shock was it? What do I miss about the South and what have I been relieved to abandon?

Well, of course, my family first and foremost was the treasure I left behind, and I miss them every single minute. On top of that, after Mom’s car accident, she moved in with my sister, Joy, and I have had to watch Joy maneuver through that major change in her life without being able to help as I would like. Distance is a quite a barrier. Thank God for the telephone and Internet.

What differences have I encountered? Most men don’t wear suits and most women don’t wear dresses. In Tennessee cities, even small towns where we lived at various times, I would see men in suits every day. Doctors, lawyers, businessmen, salesman, church attendees - I do love a man in a suit. Here, I think I think I’ve seen two suits - one on a drug representative at the hospital where I work, and the other on a lawyer in court when I was on jury duty. Casual is the dress code of the Maine lifestyle. In most offices elsewhere, “casual Friday” is too dressed up for where we live now. Part of this is, of course, due to the lack of big cities, and another part is due to the weather conditions. In winter, the whole idea is to stay warm, and one dresses to accommodate that need, regardless of how unkempt it appears. The roads are a mess all winter with salt and sand, and in the spring, it all turns to mud. I get dirty just getting in and out of the car. Then, you have to realize that air conditioning is not ubiquitous up here. Most homes and some businesses lack it (including our house), and so when it gets hot (and it does for a few weeks every summer), you again dress just to stay cool, not for fashion.

It’s normal to see pickups with plows attached all winter. It’s normal to see seagulls in parking lots. It’s normal to hear the “tides” times given in the weather forecast. It’s normal to read in the local newspaper long, fascinating obituaries for every single deceased person, most of the time accompanied by a photograph. It’s normal to have snow piled up in yards and driveways that won’t be gone entirely until late April or May. It’s normal to read newspaper summaries of annual town meetings for every town, no matter how small, detailing every discussion and every debate and every vote. It’s normal to have schools open with 2 feet of snow in the school yard (that’s because the municipalities clear the highways and roads quickly). It’s normal to read the police log not for murders or armed robberies but for cows loose in the road and neighbor disputes. In Tennessee, it makes you tired to think of traveling the state from west to east, but in Maine, it makes you tired thinking of traveling north to south.

We don’t miss the tornadoes or the endless thunderstorms. We miss the moderate spring temps (it is still freezing here at night) and miss the early spring flowers. We certainly do get used to single digit temperatures in the winter, and, of course, the snow is lovely, but hard work as well. But in the summer, when Memphis has days and days of 100-degree-plus temperatures, we are basking in the 70s and low 80s, so there are advantages! The beauty of both Tennessee and Maine are legendary, and well deserved. We live within a short walk to one of the many Maine bays. It’s hard not to enjoy that! You appreciate spring more after a hard winter, and, of course, the fall foliage is incredible.

A lot of people are very reserved in Maine. Most people like to keep to themselves. You’re not a real Mainer, we’ve been told, until your mother’s mother was born in Maine. They call people who move here “from away,” and no matter how long you’ve been here, you’ll always have that moniker.

And, of course, there’s the language. We say tennis shoes, they say sneakers. We say housecoats, they say robes. We say houseshoes, they say slippers. We say washrags, they say washcloths. They have unusual words like “wicked” (very) and “cunnin’” (cute) and phrases like “right out straight” (stressed to the max). They put R’s in words that don’t have them (“warsh” for “wash”) and take R’s out that are supposed to be there (“lobstah”). Caroline and Charlotte know that my sister in Memphis is “Ant” Joy, and their northern dad’s sisters are “Awnts.” Coke is soda, of course. You have to order “iced” tea or they bring you hot tea. In most restaurants that have sweet tea, it is “sweetened” with some fruit flavor, not sugar. You have to ask for the whole phrase “cole slaw” because we have ordered plain “slaw” and they weren’t sure what we wanted.

You feel out of the loop if you’re not a big fan of the New England Patriots or the Boston Red Sox.

So, yes, it has been an adventure, scary in some parts, but on the whole, quite an exciting transition. We’ve met some wonderful people, I found a wonderful job, the kids found exceptional spouses, we love our little house on the dirt road, and we feel very blessed. We can all laugh together about our eccentricities and differences, and any conversation is likely to end with “See ya!” with a response of “Y’all be careful!” Being a transplant can be fun.

I leave you with a limerick I wrote recently for a limerick contest (but entered a couple of others instead):

We moved here to Maine where we’ll stay.

We've weathered each hardy Maine day.

Alas, it's our fate:

To the rest of the state,

We'll always be folks "from away."

Snow Job

2011-03-04T08:25:00.002-05:00

It has been the winter of snow in our part of Maine, that’s for sure. Without a snowblower or plow at our disposal, Ed and I have used muscle-power to shovel our entire driveway and turnaround space after every storm, sometimes lifting as much as a foot of heavy, wet snow. Most of the time we do this at 4 a.m. in the dark, so I can leave for work by 5 a.m.

Scenarios like this give one a lot of time to think. The world is quiet and peaceful, with the only sounds being the hypnotic crunch of the shovel and the occasional grunt of exertion. On one such morning, gloved fingers still frozen to the bone, I had a revelation. I had been under the illusion that we were getting rid of the snow, when in fact, we were just moving it around. It would have nice to have had some kind of machine that would have melted the snow and thrown the water off somewhere, or even just evaporated the stuff, but we were only taking snow from one place and putting it in a different place. (This is why we fear any more storms this season; we have run out of places to put it.) On the surface, this seems idiotic. We have an irritant (snow) and instead of disposing of it, we just move it out of one place and into another. The obvious reason is, of course, that we have priorities, and one of those is getting me to work, and to do that, we have to clear the driveway. So we move the snow from the driveway to the side of the driveway and the adjacent yard.

I wonder how many times I have done that with other things. In a journey to simplicity, one of the first tasks is figuring out what to do with a lot of “stuff.” From my experience, these were (and still are) hard decisions - (If I get rid of it, what if I need it again one day? What if I’ll regret it?”) and the tendency is to avoid making hard decisions, so I ended up just transferring “stuff” from one place to another - maybe distributing in more boxes, taking some things to storage, getting it out of sight. I wasn’t getting rid of much; I was just moving it around. My accumulation was still weighing me down; it just wasn’t in my face so I could avoid thinking about it.

I also think humans tend to do that psychologically. If we encounter a problem that we just don’t want to have to deal with, we “transfer” it to another part of our brain and put it on hold. We’re not getting rid of the problem; we’re just moving it around like snow to convince ourselves we have done something. Of course, we have only done some rearranging and the problem has certainly not gone away (and may have gotten even bigger in the meantime).

Avoidance of the tough decisions in life is human nature. So is doing things to try to trick yourself. Next time I hear the phrase “snow job” meaning to fool someone, I’ll smile. Sometimes we have no bigger fools than ourselves.

Grammy School

2011-02-19T06:55:00.010-05:00

My friend Sally in California announced she is expecting her second grandbaby this year. How exciting! My friend Audrey in Memphis welcomed her first grandbaby last month. I have certainly enjoyed my three grandchildren tremendously. Not only have I enjoyed them, I have been taught by them. Taught by a baby? A toddler? A kid? Yes! "Grammy School" doesn't just mean Grammy is teaching the little ones. It means Grammy becomes the student! Here's what I have learned from being a grandmother:

1. Sharing. Not between the kids - I mean my sharing with other adults - the other set of grandparents. Here's a major difference in having kids and having grandkids. Grandkids automatically come with another set of one or two grandparents. All of a sudden, I am not the one of two parents; in my case, Ed and I are two of five grandparents! Time to share, certainly. Time to recognize that as these children grow up, these other adults will hold just as special relationship with them as we do. What is it that they say about joys and sorrows? With love, sorrows are halved and joys are doubled? More grandparents means more joy for the children! Each grandparent brings his/her unique qualities to the child's life we're all adding to their cache of memories.

2. Patience. Oh, this lesson starts while the grandbaby is still in the womb. Patience to find out the gender, patience to be reassured of good health, patience to let other grandparents have their time, and patience to wait between visits. And patience leads to...

3. The necessity of butting out. I have to remember these are my grandkids, not my kids. I am not their Mama, Ed is not their Daddy, and their parents set the rules and have the last word in everything. This is the proper way to raise children.

4. Priorities. As my grandbabies grew, they began helping me with priorities, starting with my first grandchild, Caroline. Every interaction reminded me of people over things. Then when we started downsizing and simplifying, I had to reexamine my priorities, as I was bringing a toy or book to the girls on each visit. What was I showing them about consumerism and "stuff"? Could my presence actually be the more important thing than the presents? Now I concentrate more on making memories. The toys will be lost and forgotten, but their memory of Grammy playing hide-and-seek will last forever. And that brings me to....

5. The importance of playing. With your own kids, you are too busy sometimes raising them, keeping house, earning a living, etc., to spend a lot of time just playing. When you're visiting grandkids, though, that's the whole point. You're free to be a kid again. You get to smell and use those crayons and Play-Doh, try to assemble buildings out of blocks, get in a small tent and pretend a bear is outside, make a puppet show, read fairy tales, make things with glue, glitter, construction paper, stickers, and pipe cleaners, sing silly songs, look for bugs under a log, chase each other around the yard! It's easy to forget I'm 56 years old (until the next day when the more physical aspects of play wreak havoc on my old body!).

6. The legacy of pictures. Rachel and Matt grew up in the film age, and we really don't have as many photos as I would like because film and developing it was expensive, and we were having trouble making ends meet sometimes. But my grandchildren are growing up in the digital age - and that means digital pictures! Thousands of digital pictures! And yes, I am taking advantage of that. I have 26,864 digital pictures in iPhoto - how many do you think are of the grandkids? Hee hee!

7. Awe. Every moment is awe-inspiring, from the first time I cuddled with them to the times I watch them soak up the world like sponges. Watching them develop into their own personalities has been fascinating. And, of course...

8. Anticipation. What does the future hold for my little ones? My youngest, Joshua (7 months), has already won me over with his smile and laugh. I just know he has much to teach me in the future and will develop into a wonderful young man before we know it! My Charlotte (5) will spend the night with us next Friday for the very first time and I know will keep us entertained. My Caroline (7) is always surprising me with her knowledge; so much of what I try to teach her, she already knows! What's next with her? What's next with all three of them? So much to look forward to! (Not to mention sometime in the next few years, I may be calling Sally in California to tell her Matt and Sarah will be having their second baby too!)

Grammy is always a student as well as teacher. As a tribute to Grammy School, here are a few past blog posts where lessons were learned. (Most of these are from Caroline, as she has been here the longest and I had been able to document more visits with her, especially as she and her family lived with us for a couple of months when they were between houses. I expect great lessons to be learned from Charlotte and Joshua in the years to come!)

http://simplicityexperiment.blogspot.com/2005/05/precious-dandelions.html

http://simplicityexperiment.blogspot.com/2005/06/its-perfect.html

http://simplicityexperiment.blogspot.com/2005/07/toenails.html

http://simplicityexperiment.blogspot.com/2007/08/guest-blogger-today.html

http://simplicityexperiment.blogspot.com/2008/05/poor-people-project.html

http://simplicityexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/06/room-upstairs.html

Abe, of course!

2011-02-12T07:37:00.006-05:00

I don't know if I ever took the time to blog about my hero, but since today is you-know-who's birthday, I'm going for it.

Those who know me well, even some who have known me briefly in passing, have had to deal with my obsession for our 16th President. Now, I probably know more details about the Civil War than the average person, but my interest in Lincoln was not really politics or war-related. I was always fascinated with him as a person.

It started, I think, when on a family vacation, our parents took my sister and me to Lincoln's birthplace in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Family vacations created the foundation of some of my best memories. Dad would use profit-sharing from the bank where he worked, and every summer, off the 4 of us would go, taking in as many parks and historical sites as we could in two weeks. To be able to afford these vacations, we took along a cooler full of ice and shopped local grocery stores along the way, where we would buy things like Vienna sausages, bread, baloney, milk, pork and beans, cheese, chips, fruit, juice, and Cokes for the next leg of the trip. We went everywhere, and each new place fascinated us.

Those trips instilled in me a love of history, and especially a love of Abe Lincoln, starting with his birthplace. Years later, Ed and I took our kids to the exact same monument. I assumed they would be just as passionate and excited as I had been, but, of course, the picture above says it all - if you look at Rachel. Matt, bless his heart, would have been excited to watch paint dry. Even Ed was barely tolerant. As we walked up the steps to the cabin, I was doing my usual thing of spouting trivia. "Did you know there are 56 steps here? One step for each year of his life." And what did Ed say as he huffed and puffed his way up? "I wish John Wilkes Booth had gotten to him sooner!"

Back to my childhood. We at various times visited Ford's Theatre, the Petersen House (where Lincoln died), the Lincoln Memorial, all in Washington, DC; boyhood homes in Indiana; New Salem where Lincoln lived as a young man in Illinois; Springfield, his home as an adult; Gettysburg; and, of course, Dearborn, Michigan, at the Henry Ford Museum, where you can see rocking chair in which Lincoln sat when he was assassinated. So you see, Lincoln is all over the place, and we did our best to cover the territory.

At East Elementary School in Memphis, every time we had a vocabulary lesson and had to use the assigned words in sample sentences, I made sure Mr. Lincoln was mentioned in every sentence I created. It probably drove my teachers crazy. In study hall at East High, I rarely did homework or read novels. Instead, I gravitated to the Carl Sandburg collection - 6 volumes of Lincoln's biography, and devoured every word. (One day, thanks to some generous friends, I finally owned the hardback collection myself.) I had a greater-than-lifesize poster of Abe on my wall at home, complementing my sister's pictures of Davy Jones and Bobby Sherman. I read every book about Lincoln I could find, and would occasionally even write the authors (and a few times received replies). When we had to memorize a poem in English class, I picked Lincoln's favorite ("Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"). When I worked at a hospital in Memphis, my sister baked a stovepipe-hat shaped cake for me and my coworkers on February 12 one year. Basically, everyone knew I was addicted and seemed happy to be enablers.

Every once in a while I tried to pull the kids into my world of Lincoln, but it was rarely successful. For instance, when Matt was about 7, he was in a historical costume contest at school. Of course, I wanted him to be Lincoln, and I bought an Abe Lincoln costume pattern, cardboard stovepipe hat included, and sewed it up. We had no extra money for a fake beard, so I painted one on him with a marker. He was so cute. Unfortunately, Lincoln was a famous, popular figure, and Matt was just one of many Lincolns that day. Another boy Abe won the contest. He had bought the fake beard, darn it. I then knew what to do if that situation happened again. I would make the same suit, ditch the hat, ditch the beard, add a mustache and pistol and he'd go as John Wilkes Booth. I bet he'd be the only JWB. (This was before school security when one could take a toy pistol to school.) This incident just illuminated the frustration of having a popular hero. He's everybody's hero. Sigh. Why couldn't I have been more like my Dad, who formed a club in honor of a more obscure president, Chester A. Arthur?

Back to my past. As years went by, my fascination with all things Lincoln just increased. When we bought a house in Maine, we landed on Lincoln Street. (Coincidence, I promise!) My sister gave me a baby oak tree descended from the big oak at Lincoln's birthplace. It had a plaque and everything. Unfortunately, we had to leave it in the yard at the old Victorian house when we moved out.

I also had a cardboard standup of Lincoln that I enjoyed displaying at Halloween. And a fantastic rubber Abe mask. I think my family might have reached the limits of tolerance, though, with the salt and pepper shakers that were miniature replicas of Lincoln's tombstone. What's not to like about that?

There are many other stories about my love of Lincoln, but there's not enough time or space to write about them. Through the years, friends and family have made special efforts to present me with Lincoln-related gifts, and I have appreciated every one. Abraham Lincoln now is a part of me and I guess always will be.

I leave you with a Valentine card that I have on my desk. I have no idea where I bought it, but I loved it so much I couldn't bear to use it, so here it sits. It comes with a red envelope, and has a cartoon picture of a woman holding a white envelope, a smile on her face, hearts hovering around her head, and says, "I cannot let this season pass by without expressing my love and admiration for a wonderful, wonderful man." On the inside, it says, "HAPPY LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY!"

Missing flaps

2011-02-04T14:11:00.002-05:00

Some of my most precious memories involve reading books to my granddaughter Caroline. She learned to read at any early age, and now 7 years old, she is still in love with books and reads voraciously. But back when she was little, it greatly pleased her to sit with Grammy and share in the reading experience together. Like most children, she never got tired of reading the same books over and over. That drove me crazy, though I always obliged.

One of her favorites is pictured above - "Where's Nicky's Valentine?" It's a board book about a cat named Nicky who delivers valentines to his friends around the neighborhood. Each page shows another friend receiving the heart-shaped card, and on each page there is a flap for the child to lift to see what is behind it. "Who's there?" one page reads. Then Caroline would open the door flap to reveal an elderly woman, who takes the Valentine, smiles, and pets Nicky.

As with all children's books, time and tiny hands had taken a toll on its appearance. The pages, being board, had held up pretty well, but one of the flaps had been torn off on the page that says, "Who's hiding?" and you were supposed to open the flap to reveal two happy kids in bed clutching their Valentine. Except there was no flap. You could see where the flap was glued originally, but the flap itself was gone.

Now, as Caroline loved this book, we read it a lot. Each occasion presented us with the same scenario. I would read the book, and when I got to the page of "Who's hiding?" Caroline would emit a small gasp, look up at me with grave concern, point to the missing flap, and say, "Uh oh!" Then we would turn the page and finish the book without missing a beat.

I have often thought how wonderful it would be if we had the gift of acceptance that Caroline had with this book! Each time, she saw the problem, acknowledged the problem with an appropriate response, then she let it go and moved on. She didn't pretend that the defect was not there. She didn't throw the book across the room in disgust because the missing flap ruined her reading experience. She didn't even try to figure out a way to fix it. She just responded with "Uh oh!" and then proceeded to enjoy the rest of the story.

Dieting experts tell us, for instance, that people with an "all or nothing" attitude may start out well on diets, then the first mistake or dietary indiscretion throws them into a tizzy and they throw up their hands and figure they have blown it and might as well eat everything in sight. Or someone misses a few days of exercise, then, despite their previous commitment to better health, gives up on even trying. The same can be said for any attempt to change bad habits and build new ones. It can be true for MTs who get a bad line count for a day or even a week and fall into depression because they think they'll never be good enough. It can be true when life hands us any unexpected challenge, when we fail to live up to expectations, especially our own - whenever a rough patch appears and our instinctive response is to say, "What's the use?"

What if we used Caroline's example? What if we acknowledged our disappointment, allowed ourselves a moment of frustration or sadness, and then moved on to enjoy the rest of the book...the week...the trip...the holiday...the semester...the story - our story?

Sometimes all it takes is a toddler to teach us how to really enjoy life.

The Menu

2011-01-28T06:50:00.004-05:00

Now that Rachel’s vegan-bound,

We’re looking for some common ground.

In browsing through our family tree,

Here is what pops out at me.

Veggies are a vegan “yes,”

Which sounds OK, nevertheless

They can’t be touching Rachel’s fork

If they are cooked with ham or pork.

My son-in-law enjoys the sweets

Hard to live without his treats.

Not so fond of tofu dishes;

Tasty food is what he wishes.

My son’s disgust with greens is true,

Lettuce trauma through and through.

Black-eyed peas at New Year’s fling?

Nope - brings his lunch from Burger King!

The veggies he can do without,

The meat is what he’s all about.

Sarah’s got her diet plans,

I’m not sure what she eats or bans.

Her regimen's not so off-beat,

Except she doesn’t like thick meat.

Ed and I are different, too.

We have some things that we eschew.

Avoiding carbs is our big goal,

Omit the pasta from our bowl.

Each of us is on a plan

Of which the other’s not a fan.

What will thus our menu be

The next meal for our family?

This is so hard! This is so new!

What will we cook? What will we do?

On second thought, there’s never been

A time, to my bemused chagrin,

When our illustrious varied brood

Ate every dish and every food.

We’ve always had our little quirks,

And compromised to learn what works.

I can’t predict at this point whether

Our next big meal we eat together

Will appease our every taste,

Or look to some like toxic waste.

But then, who cares? To each his own!

We eat together, not alone.

We may have more from which to choose,

Finding out whose dish is whose.

But what’s the thing we ne’er debate?

Love is served with every plate!

A vegan? In our family?

2011-01-21T09:31:00.003-05:00

I never majored in sociology (almost did, but chose music). However, I am always interested in reading about what's going on in our culture. I can't help but notice that more and more people are shying away from marriage, even to the point of having children in an unwed/nonlegal relationship, and the divorce rate is still about 50%. Now some folks will immediately delve into the morality of all this, but that's not what I'm interested in. I'm intrigued about why marriage is so difficult. I will have been married for 37 years this August, so I have a little experience on my side here.

Two people have a mutual attraction, and decide to commit the rest of their lives to each other. When you think about it, that's one of the most major decisions you can make, except for becoming a parent. Why is this hard? Because both partners grow. They change. They become in some cases totally different people. The hope and expectation is, of course, they will both grow together in the same direction. The hard part is when they don't.

For instance, I got married at age 19. I am now 56. I can honestly say I am 80% a totally different person than when I got married. My beliefs have changed, new wisdom has (I hope!) influenced me, I have a different level of patience and priorities, I have adopted several hobbies/interests that I did not previously have, I have developed new fears and anxieties, and habits, and I eat differently. My taste in clothes, living environment, and a host of other things has changed. I certainly do look different.

Meanwhile, my husband Ed has changed also. He was 27 when we married; now he is 64. He used to drink excessively until he got sober in 1984. He used to smoke cigarettes when we met; now he smokes pipes and is trying to cut down on that. He too has changed his way of eating, the kind of clothes he prefers, and how he chooses to spend his time. And, yes, he does look different too!

I am not the woman he married, and he is not the man I married. Things never stay the same. How can a 19-year-old girl know enough to commit the entire rest of her life to one person?

This is why they say marriage is hard work. The work comes, I think, not just because two people living together are bound to get on each other's nerves, but because the two people grow. They grow as a couple, true, but they grow as individuals. Some couples grow apart; others grow closer. Some partners are excited to watch the changes in their chosen mate; others are apprehensive or even aghast to watch their life partner morph into a stranger. The key is to give your loved one the freedom to grow and change and the hard part is honoring your commitment to be there for a lifetime.

No wonder 50% of marriages end in divorce. This is a hard pill to swallow. And I can totally understand the fact that so many marriages don't work out, because sometimes people do grow apart, so far apart that they have nothing in common anymore. I am not here to preach morality - just to try to understand reality. Lord knows I would never be able to hold my marriage history up for moral inspection and I'm not about to do that to anyone else!

What started me thinking about individuals in a marriage changing this week is that our daughter has progressed from omnivore to vegetarian to vegan. She is married to a meat-eater and she is the family cook. Her poor husband - he didn't marry a vegan! But he's married to one now! He's probably frantically going through their marriage vows, trying to find out where he promised to "love and cherish in tofu and tempeh."

I didn't marry a preacher (but he became one), I didn't marry a pipe smoker (but he became one), and I certainly didn't marry a man with gray hair and beard whose body shows as much signs of aging as my own. I married a cigarette-smoking drunk. I was fortunate that he changed. I hope as well he thinks that most of the changes I have gone through have been for the better.

It's not just our spouses who are changing. Our kids change and grow before our very eyes. As they do, each one becomes an individual, unique, and whatever that is, we deal with it because that is the commitment we have made. We may not have made it knowing that autism or cerebral palsy or drug addiction or leukemia or even vegan versus omnivore would become part of the bargain, but we made the commitment all the same.

Change is not always good, not always bad, but it will happen as assuredly as there will be over 20 inches of snow on our ground by tonight. Today I am praying that we are all equipped to cope with changes - in ourselves and our loved ones both - and that sometimes means being more observer than reactant, with both sides willing to compromise and see another point of view - because it is almost always the case that both sides have something worth teaching, and staying open-minded is imperative.

Happy veganism, Rachel, and good luck, Chris! You are only reaffirming the adage that life is always an adventure and you never know what's around the corner!

Enriching

2011-01-15T17:01:00.003-05:00

My sister in her job receives queries from authors who are writing articles for magazines or books, and if one looks particularly applicable, she passes it on to me. This week, an author is looking for women to write about a woman who had an impact on their lives. As I tried to put my specific story in writing about my late best friend, I thought of all the women and men who have impacted my life. People who think of themselves "self-made" might be wise to consider the probability, no, the certainty, that that particular feat is impossible. We are obligated to acknowledge the help of known and unknown people who have made it possible to live our present lives and be the person each one of us has become.

Even millionaires and billionaires could not have been financially successful in business were it not for the person who had enough confidence to give them their first job, the banks willing to loan them money for an idea, the employees willing to work for many times low wages, the customers who bought their products, the companies who advertised for them and developed slogans and images, the lawyers who dealt with copyrights and trademarks, etc. Yes, maybe they worked long and hard to achieve their success, but that wasn't enough without help. (And if you earned your beginning wealth through inheritance, I don't need to say anything more about having help, now do I?) To say anything different would be arrogance.

From the very first teacher who taught you to read to the mentors who guided you through your career - everywhere in your past, you find those to whom you owe gratitude. Parents, siblings, and other relatives who taught you ethics and patience and faith and commitment - friends who encouraged and supported you and helped you along the way - all these were ingredients to the final product of you.

One of the author's suggestions was to write about someone who has "changed" your life. That can be hard to quantify, sometimes, but I prefer to use the word "enriched." Enrich has gotten a bad rap in recent years because of enriched bread - yes, the old Wonder Bread was one of the originals - taking the whole grain out and then putting back vitamins and calling it "enriched" which does the word no justice. The definition of enrich is to "improve or enhance the quality or value of...add to the cultural, intellectual, or spiritual wealth of..." Ah, now that is a different story!

There is not enough paper or web space to talk about all those who have enriched my life. Starting with my wonderful family - my parents, sister, husband, children, grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins and nieces and now grandchildren - then moving on to teachers who taught me to read and write, teachers who taught me to think in an expansive and creative way, teachers who introduced me to the beauty of French, teachers (not necessarily at school) who taught me skills such as sewing and quilting and cross-stitch, authors who got me interested in Abraham Lincoln, my spiritual guides, the woman who taught me how to play piano, the man who taught me how to play the organ, the woman who hired me for a transcription position basically on faith, the wonderful people who married my children - these are all people who enriched my life. Even people in short-lived situations have to be added to the list - such as the kind young man who brought back my PC computer when it crashed a few years ago, the woman at church who let me borrow her Celtic harp which resulted in my falling in love with the instrument, the folks with the Instant Text software who allowed me to participate in the beta program and taught me so much - they too enriched my life.

I have to add to the list people whom I have never met: The anonymous donor who paid my fee for a church youth group trip to NYC and DC when I was a teenager, the doctor who took care of my pregnant mom and then delivered me surgically 56 years ago, the physicians who invented the vaccines that kept me healthy and well all my life, the inventors who made strides with photography that allow me to watch home movies of my dad holding me decades ago, the scientists who harnessed electricity and invented computers and programmed software to allow me to video conference with my son so I can see my little grandbaby Joshua - all these strangers have enriched my life by their contributions in their chosen fields.

No, no one can be arrogant enough to claim he/she is self-made. You can be the most talented musician in the world, but someone nurtured you in music. You can be the greatest thinker that ever lived, but those before you wrote and published books and essays that fired up your mind. You may have talent, God-given abilities, knowledge, strength, courage, and a whole slew of attributes that have guided you through life - but it hasn't happened on your own and it hasn't happened in a vacuum. It has been interaction all the way.

Of course, with me as with everyone, it is a work in progress. People are continually enriching my life. There are those who have enriched my existence for years and are still involved, and there are those who will remain strangers, but they are adding to my life all the same, from the man who held the door for me, to the cashier who flashed a genuine friendly smile, to the mighty fine folks who let me publish my little musings free on this blog site - there's a lot of enriching going on. As well, I hope that I have been and continue to be an enricher as well as enrichee. I can't ask for more than to be in awe that so many have positively affected my life, while at the same time trying to remember that I too can be part of the process that makes the world a better place. It ain't Wonder Bread - but it is certainly Wonder.

Blue Skies Smiling at Me

2011-01-07T15:09:00.005-05:00

I didn't take this picture, but it reminds me of an experience I had last week. While I was driving home under gathering storm clouds, I noticed a peek of blue in an otherwise gray blanketed sky. I remember thinking how strange that looked - and unexpected. The more I considered it, the more I became aware that it is never a case of gray cloudy sky versus bright blue sky - that at the same exact moment we are seeing the gray cloudy sky, the blue sky is there all the time! I always pictured the weather changing forms in a linear-time fashion - one minute clouds, then the sun comes out and you have blue sky - except that's not reality. The sun doesn't stop shining just because I am seeing gray rain clouds up above; it is just hidden, as the blue sky in this picture peeked out from its hiding place - just as the moon is hidden by the brightness of the sun, even while it still exists simultaneously in the atmosphere.

This whole epiphany reminded me of Dorothy's shoes in The Wizard of Oz. She was amazed to hear that all along in her adventures, she had the power to return home - and didn't take advantage of it because she didn't realize it. Simultaneously existed the troubled journey and the power to heal the fear and trauma. Simultaneously the blue sunny sky and the dark gray clouds. It's not either/or - it's both.

We tend to think of Time as linear - past, present, future in what we consider chronological order. But apparently many physicists believe that many timelines are happening simultaneously on different levels, in different dimensions, and our way of thinking limits us when we try to understand this. Ed used to preach that Time for God is nonexistent, that it is always Now. You are simultaneously to God a newborn, a 4-year-old, whatever age you are now and whatever age you will become, and all the ages in between. When we focus on one aspect (especially a negative such as a cloudy dreary sky), we fail to see that simultaneously happening is the blue sky behind it, temporarily hidden.

The purpose of great affirmations is to convince ourselves that we do indeed have the power within us, at all moments, whether we see it or now. When we look up and see only gray clouds, we can't picture the blue sky behind it - but it's there. All we can focus on is looking forward to the day when it's a sunny, beautiful day again, and not entertain the thought that it's already a bright sunny day here and now, this very moment, if we allow ourselves to see it.

And that's where we need the Second Sight - the Internal Sight - the Eyes of the Heart, to give us the ability to focus on things beyond our immediate troubles or situation. The light is not at the end of the proverbial tunnel - that is the linear way of thinking - but it is in the tunnel itself, temporarily invisible to us. My goal this year is to be able to see beyond what is evident, to be constantly aware that whatever I need is already here, not far off and unobtainable, and certainly not something relegated to some vague future date. The realization of power within, available for the taking, is what drives people to great things, to empty their spirits to the world in compassion and love and incredible sacrifice, to attain lofty goals and to do the "impossible." One of the saddest remarks I ever made was, "Wow! I didn't know I had it in me!" - when I had those Ruby Slippers on all the time....

New Year Thoughts

2010-12-30T08:45:00.003-05:00

If you ever want to feel useless and unworthy, have I got a plan for you! All you do is take one of your hobbies or talents and compare yourself to those who have mastered those skills and can do everything better than you can. Look at how much time you waste, then compare that to folks who are organized and productive. Consider your present situation, then see how much other people get done despite having many more stresses and adversity to overcome. Check your appearance out against others your age who look younger than you, notice people with better figures than you, better cell phones, better brains, better temperaments. Don't reflect on your accomplishments; just stew over the great things others have done and focus on your own failures. Don't rejoice at how far you've come; just agonize over how far you have left to go. Be obsessed with how fast the clock is ticking and be paralyzed with the impossibility of doing everything you want to do in this short life.

I guarantee that the above will bring you unhappiness, discontent, and disillusionment. I know at one time or another, I have fallen in the trap of doing those exact things.

For instance, I read a lot of sewing-related blogs. One lady reviewed her past year of sewing and here is what she made: 24 dresses, 7 cardigans/jackets, 3 pair of pants, 3 tops, 3 skirts, 1 twinset, 1 vest, and 8 pieces of doll clothes. What clothes have I made this year? Two blouses that I had to give to Goodwill because I didn't realize I had to make a major fitting adjustment before I cut them out. Two simple skirts. One blouse correctly fitted but not put together yet, and one jumper for 7-yo Caroline that I absolutely have to finish before I see her on New Year's Day. Yes, I do work outside the home full-time, but I have no children living with me and my husband does all the cooking. I have a good sewing machine and serger, a cutting table, some lovely pieces of fabric and many patterns, and several reference books. So why am I so lousy at getting my sewing done? Compared to that blogger, my efforts are ridiculously ineffective. It makes me feel quite worthless.

Now, if I took that information about her productivity, and instead of using it to beat myself up, use it to provide creative inspiration, yes, that's where things change. There's a major difference in "If she can do that, what's wrong with me?" and "If she can do it, I can at least do more than I'm doing!" One paralyzes; the other energizes. Even better, I take the inspiration from her report, file it away in a corner of my mind, then only concentrate on myself. The word "inspire" means to breathe in, so I breathe in their accomplishments, and then the only step left is to breathe out my own accomplishments. In the end, it's all me - my plans, my joys, my life the way I want to live it - because others can provide inspiration, instruction, advice, and help - but it's ultimately my decision and commitment to create my own unique experience.

You can't compare yourself to others because every decision in life is a trade-off. Very few people are what we can Renaissance people who are geniuses at everything. If you want to be a concert pianist, you have to devote hours a day to practicing the piano - and therefore have to give up other things you might have used those hours for. Those trade-off decisions make life tough. As I've heard, you can have anything you want - just not everything you want.

I find at this time every year when I get introspective and reflective about what I have done in the last 12 months and what I want to accomplish in the next 12 months, I find it tempting to focus on everybody and everything except myself. True introspection is a nasty business, as it can lead to clarity, and clarity can be mighty upsetting. I get disappointed in myself, and I get frustrated when my specific weaknesses make themselves too apparent to ignore, and I ultimately know in my heart something needs to be done about them, and it's all up to me.

Yet, I persevere. I can see that I indeed did accomplish more than I thought this year - I made a baby quilt for Joshua, I renewed my Certified Medical Transcriptionist certification by completing the CEU requirements, I finally learned the pattern adjustments for my body type that will enable me to sew perfectly fitting clothes, I've learned how to eat for health and energy and have reached and maintained my goal weight, I've participated in my first software beta program and had a ball working with it, I've been more productive at my job, and I'm sure I have other things to my credit that I have momentarily forgotten. Once I satisfy myself that I am indeed getting things done and learning new skills, I am finally ready for the new year ahead and more goals and challenges.

One of the hardest things in life is to find that balance - of feeling good about yourself, yet realizing your past mistakes and the never-ending attempt to improve, learn, and prioritize, because the hopeful part about life is that we have indeed been given more time, even if it's only today. So, my advice to myself and my friends on the journey:

1. Don't compare yourself to others - it can be intimidating. Whether you pour all your efforts into many resolutions for self-improvement, or you just want to survive 2011 emotionally and physically intact, focus inward, not outward.

2. Prioritize. (Right now, we have a very sick baby Joshua and everything else pales in importance.)

3. As I said last week, this too shall pass.

4. Fly the Serenity Prayer as a banner above your head: Accept the things you cannot change, change the things you can, and have the wisdom to know the difference.

5. "Waste" is an evil word - whether you're wasting money, time, talent, or some other precious gift. Less waste in 2011 would be a worthy goal for all of us.

Welcome to the Great Adventure of 2011! We are travelers on the road together. I wish you safe journey.

This Too Shall Pass

2010-12-21T03:46:00.003-05:00

Our inheritance from our mom (who is still going at 87 years old) consists of many intangible things - her faith in human nature, her insistence that milk of magnesia cures all ailments, and her many aphorisms. Among the latter is "This too shall pass."

I must interject here that my immediate and extended family is coming off of a bad week: Unexpected financial difficulties, a lovely dinner not ready in time, being late for the kindergarten Christmas program, strep throat, broken glasses, excruciating tooth pain which necessitated two dentist visits and will result in an expensive out-of-pocket root canal, a Christmas present backordered, a fall down the steps, and a flat tire right before leaving to take the kids to school - just to name a few of the setbacks. This is one of those weeks that I have to keep repeating to myself and others: This too shall pass. It will get better. As my dad used to say, "Things will lighten up after Christmas."

Throughout my life, I've depended on "This too shall pass" to get me through the hard times. Today, though, just a few days before Christmas, I am reminding myself that the role of "This too shall pass" is not solely applicable to the stormy days. It's also good to remember during the happy, carefree times.

Yes, a lot of us are in financial straits. Yes, a lot of us have had bad news. Yes, things have happened that we would love to turn around and change. And we can be comforted by saying "This too shall pass." That's true.

But do you know what? Other, happier moments are fleeting as well. This is little Joshua's first Christmas. Soon it will be a memory. The years will go by quickly, and we will look at pictures of Joshua at 4 months of age and say, "It's hard to remember when he was that little!" Charlotte and Caroline will be teenagers one year, going on dates, getting their first jobs, and we will say, "How time flies! Remember when Charlotte was intrigued with her first personalized video from Santa? Remember when Caroline used to love to play in the attic?"

The key to life is remembering "This too shall pass" - the difficult times, and, yes, the wonderful, amazing times you want to last forever. That is what being in the present moment is about. The smiles and cries of a baby? That toothless grin of a first grader? The wide-eyed wonder in the face of a kid listening to Santa? Hold them closely to your heart and savor them. This too shall pass.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Goodbye soon, 2010

2010-12-10T16:36:00.002-05:00

We are fast approaching the end of 2010, and I have just opened my new calendar for 2011. This annual task fills me both with apprehension and excitement. As I turn the empty pages, I can't help but wonder what is to come. What new experiences are waiting for me? What adventures and accomplishments will be filling these days? How much of it will I have control over, and how much of it will be beyond my ability to direct? Of course, with the good must come the bad - the sorrows, pain, and regrets. They will come as surely as winter follows fall. The whole next year of my life is a blank canvas for me and those I love.

I, of course, have my expectations. I make a resolution list like most people. I have hopes of making some clothes, finishing Matt and Sarah's quilt, learning some new sewing techniques. I'm looking forward to spending more time with my family, watching Caroline and Charlotte develop and grow, and enjoying my first wonderful year with my new grandson, Joshua. I have goals at my job, too - speed, accuracy, and furthering my medical knowledge. As is always the case, I want to remember my priorities, my desire to simplify, finding meaning in life, choosing love over intolerance, hope over pessimism, and staying healthy to make the most of my time here.

That's a lot to ask from 2011. The pages are still blank, and Father Time is still silent on what is to come. I don't have a guarantee that I, or any of my loved ones, will still be here this time next year. But this I do know from my 56 years of living: I am blessed, and 2011, regardless of what it holds, will hold more love that I ever could imagine, more adventures than I ever could plan for, and more amazement at the beauty of this earth, the beauty of life itself, the gift of family and friends, and the ability to weather any disappointments. I want to go into this new year as a child at Christmas - with wonder, expecting miracles around every corner.

Thank you, God, for giving me the chance at writing another year's story in my existence. I'm looking forward to it with great anticipation!

Privilege

2010-11-29T18:11:00.003-05:00

What do you think of when you think of a life of privilege? Being wealthy? Being famous? Being born with a silver spoon in your mouth? Being high up in society? Having the best of everything?

Sometimes I don't consider my life a life of privilege, but when I think about it, it truly is. Of course, I lead a middle-class existence, but in this country, middle class can be called privileged, because, after all, I have a roof over my head, all the food I want, warmth in the winter, and a car to get me to work. Plus extras, like cable TV, a computer, a sewing machine, and many other things add niceties to my existence.

Today, however, I'm thinking of privilege in a different way. While we had our 7-year-old precocious granddaughter Caroline over this past weekend, I marveled that I have been privileged to have the opportunity to know my grandchildren, privileged to see my children get married, privileged to have lived long enough so far to watch my nieces grow up. You see, many of my high school classmates did not make it this far, even to my relatively young age of 56. Kathleen Capon White, Mark Williamson, Debbie Henrich, Debra Boone, Woody Phillips, Debbie Kaplan, James Galey...they died too young. My dear cousin Mike McDonald, a few years younger than me, died just a couple of years ago. Cancer, murder, heart disease, hepatitis, auto accidents - for whatever reason, they are not here and I am. Mark never got to see his only child reach adulthood. Kathleen, who adored babies, never saw her kids marry and never got to cuddle a newborn grandbaby in her arms. All of them were kind, smart, talented people - yet they are gone, and I am still here, enjoying life with those I love. There is no reason for this set of circumstances, and it is beyond my power to control. Yet I can't get over the fact that they are gone, and I am still here.

My wish is that I never take for granted the precious time given me on this earth. I live for those whose lives were cut short. I live for all the experiences they missed, all the grandchildren without their kisses, all the sunrises and sunsets and snows they didn't see, and all the Thanksgivings and Christmases, weddings and births and graduations that they didn't have a chance to participate in. I pray that I live my life as I know they would have lived theirs - with dignity, compassion, and joy.

There are no guarantees. Death comes unannounced and it comes for everyone. While I still breathe the air of this good earth, though, I realize I am indeed living a life of grand privilege, a life of wealth that has nothing to do with money, and a life of remembrance of friends and family who left us too soon.

The In-Between

2010-11-19T14:50:00.004-05:00

Most of the time I don't enjoy being out in nature (bugs, heat, cold, wind, sunburn, etc.) but I love taking photographs of nature - especially Nature at her finest. The blue ocean bay at the height of summer with the sun glistening off the tide; the amazing fall foliage; the snowstorm that brought 2 feet of snow, with the evergreens hanging onto what snow didn't make it to the ground. I appreciate beauty, and I love to document it. At various times, I have been know to stop the car so I could take a picture of a scene that took my breath away.

I don't do that much in November, though. November is not a beautiful month. The trees, who a month ago sported their incredible fall colors, are bare and lifeless. The grass is dead with no pure white snow to cover the landscape. On top of that, it gets dark so early that I wouldn't have much time after work to take a picture anyway. November is the in-between season. Nature in-between her beauty, intermission between acts, while she's changing clothes to get ready for the next scene. Mother Earth can be extraordinary at times, but in November, you can just drop the "extra" out of that word. That leaves ordinary.

I think it takes a little extra effort to see the beauty in ordinary, but it's there if we are open to it. I look back on my photo-taking life. There are the usual photos - the Christmas pictures, the birthday pictures, the graduation pictures, the new baby pictures, the vacations, the zoo visits. I have found, though, that some of my most treasured pictures are ordinary, taken in the in-between times. On the surface, they aren't special. The ones above are examples. They were taken after I had gotten married and moved out of my parents' house, the only home I'd ever lived in. I had an extraordinary emotional push one day to capture the scenes of my everyday life, that one day I would not have my beloved parents anymore, and I wanted to remember them, not just in posed pictures on important occasions but in the in-between times, the un-special times, the non-holiday times. Here are two of the photos - Mama holding Mike the cat in her lap, as was her habit, and a picture of Daddy just coming in the door from work. These pictures derive their beauty from their sheer ordinariness. They're Mama and Daddy, as I remember them, in familiar surroundings, doing familiar things, in the familiar house in Memphis.

If I really think about it, some of my most joyous times have been the in-between times - giving or receiving an unexpected gift "for no reason," seeing a deer on our street on my way to work at dawn, laughing at my DVD "Lancelot Link Secret Chimp" when I'm feeling blue, or hanging out with my adult children and watching them interact with their own kids. Sometimes the love in my heart just explodes at the beauty of life. Yes, even in the in-between times. Maybe especially in the in-between times.

So before we know it, the snow will fall and Mother Nature will put on her usual spectacular show. In the meantime, though, it's November - and it's beautiful.

It's a gamble

2010-11-13T06:27:00.002-05:00

I like doctors; I really do. I just think they spend a lot of time guessing.

My journey to simplicity encompasses all facets of my life, and that includes my health. I enjoy keeping things simple. I've gotten my eating down to an art form, for instance. I eat the same delicious low-carb breakfast every day of the week that I go to work, and those days I enjoy the same big delicious salad for lunch. Yummy.... I've been repeating this routine since February this year, and I'm still not bored with it, and I still look forward to my breakfasts and lunches. I try to make healthy decisions and I'm at my ideal body weight.

But part of my health still lies in the thoughts and advice of the established medical community. Of course, I can clearly state I'm glad it does. With two C-sections under my belt, if the medical professionals hadn't discovered how to do those eons ago, I would be dead. Heck, I wouldn't even be here at all because I was born by C-section myself 56 years ago. And last year when my thyroid formed a growing nodule, a skilled surgeon excised it and now I'm on medicine to suppress my thyroid activity because pathology showed the nodule was the type that could have advanced to cancer. Thank God for medical science.

There are parts of medical science, though, that are just statistics, and stats are fickle. Researchers do their thing, have these studies, try to do them right, publish their findings, and regular family doctors read the interpretation and make their decisions accordingly. Of course, studies are always flawed in some way, because there is no perfect study. Maybe most of them have been done on men, and you're a woman. Maybe most have been done on folks in their 40s, and you're in your 50s. Maybe the starting assumptions were flawed. Maybe even the study was backwards - in other words, are the findings there because of some other reason and therefore correlate as a result of the problem and not the cause?

By now you are probably aware of the calcium study, which is making a lot of physicians tell their female patients to quit taking calcium supplements and only get calcium from their food. This is quite surprising, of course, since for years the same docs have been telling us to take calcium supplements for our bones. It turns out it is not getting in our bones; it is getting in our hearts instead, and the calcium from food doesn't have the same heart risk result. So I've quit taking calcium pills.

I don't fault the medical community for that turnaround. New studies, new data, and WHAM - new advice. I like progress. I'm glad we aren't subject of "blood letting" for every disease under the sun. I'm glad they grew out of that, I'm happy that they acquired more knowledge.

But in the end, it's just a guess, isn't it? "Right now, today, November 13, 2010, at 6:30 a.m., we think ________ is the right thing to do. Tomorrow it may be different." This is the message from the medical community. It's not their fault; it is just the way life is.

Everything in life is a gamble. Forget the casino, the lottery, and the stock market - those are just gambling's poster boys. Every decision we make, we weigh the options and decide whether to take the risk. Should I marry this person? Should I sell this house and buy another one? Should I have kids? Should I take this job? If I invest money in buying this dress pattern, fabric, and notions, will I have the skill to make it? Should I follow my doctor's advice or listen to my gut instinct? Place your bets, folks!

I once read a definition of insurance - life insurance, house insurance, car insurance, medical insurance - you name it. Paraphrased, it said insurance is something you hope you never have to use. By buying it, you are betting you'll need it. The insurance company is betting you won't. You hope they win and are paying them to think that way!

This is why all the studies in the world can't explain why a smoking, drinking man lives to be 100, while another man who follows the medical straight and narrow dies in his 60s. The stats just don't add up. Then you have to crunch more numbers, decide on how much genetics is worth, how important attitude and psychology are to longevity, accidents, and just fate. We can't explain everything, and neither can doctors and researchers. It's all a best guess and that can change on a moment's notice.

The gist of all this is that I've been asked to go on two statins because my LDL is too high, although advanced lipid testing shows that the LDLs are type A and are the good, fluffy, benign particles, and my triglycerides are low, low, low, HDL is high, high, high, all of which is great, great, great. The doc is looking at the studies mainly done on men about what causes heart disease and the current thinking on what all those numbers mean and the current advice on what to do about it. He has years of experience, many studies with acronym names, and he has crunched a multitude of numbers. In the end, though, he admits reluctantly that it is still a best guess. Worse, it's unprovable in the end. If I do take statins and live a long, healthy life, is there any proof that without the statins I would have died early? No. You can't prove it one way or the other. I would just be another uninterpretable statistic.

My lipid specialist doctor is intelligent and trying to do the right thing. I, however, am ultimately responsible for my own body and health decisions. I am choosing at this time, I think, to wait on any kind of medication. It's a gamble to think I don't really need it and that the side effects would be worse than the benefit, but it's just another example of the gambling we each do on a regular basis. It's just a little scarier.

Questions to Ponder

2010-11-04T16:30:00.002-05:00

I don't have anything deep or insightful to blog about this week, but I do want to throw out some puzzling questions that I have never been able to quite figure out.

1. If the normal body temperature is 98.6, how come when it's 98 degrees outside it feels extraordinarily hot? Wouldn't it be neutral if the outside temperature matched the inside temperature?

2. How come a "career politician," i.e., a politician with years of experience, is automatically considered undesirable, yet when we need a surgeon, we demand one with years of experience, the more the better? Why is knowledge of how things work and experience derided in the first instance and acclaimed in the second?

3. How is it that in school you can get more than half a test correct, i.e., 69%, and fail, yet you can be elected governor with only 38% of the vote?

4. The final question that Ed and I have been pondering, in honor of Daylight Saving Time "Fall Back" this Sunday: With DST, you lose an hour in the spring, and gain it back in the fall. If you die sometime between spring and fall, you would lose that hour forever, never having lived to recoup it. Is there someone your heirs can sue for that on your behalf?

Ah, logic!

Defect

2010-10-24T04:01:00.004-05:00

Ed and I had a most enjoyable day with Caroline. We took her to her violin lesson, and in turn she accompanied us on our many errands in Bangor, since when we have to travel and hour and a half to get somewhere, we only make it every 2 weeks or so and tend to cram as much on our "to do" list there as we possibly can. After a pleasant lunch, the violin lesson, some boring (for her) shopping, we ended up at my favorite store, Jo-Ann Fabrics. I knew she would enjoy the store because it has a large craft section which included scrapbooking necessities, markers, art supplies, etc., and she loves that sort of thing. I told her to pick out a few inexpensive items and I would buy them for her.

She's always drawn to the paper. In rows of shelving, they have single squares of all kinds of scrapbooking paper - shiny, glitter paper of metallic colors - smooth, satiny papers in rich jewel tones - whimsical printed paper using all colors of the spectrum. Her first choice was satiny silver paper. When she showed it to me, I could immediately see the defect in it - a place where the coating had scratched off. I said, "Honey, pick another one. This has a defect." Caroline, who will always ask what a word means if she doesn't know it, looked up at me and said, "What's a defect?" My quick answer was, "It's something that's messed up, not right, and keeps something from being perfect." She chose another one without a blemish and we checked out.

Caroline was content, but I was not. I realized I had been uncomfortable teaching her that word. One reason was that defect is a very powerful word. It comes with a lot of baggage, and if you invite it in, it can end up staying with you your whole life and generally making a mess of things. Secondly, I don't like to teach Caroline new words of which I personally cannot explain the meaning adequately. What exactly is a defect? Why do we always want things (situations, appearances, things we create, relationships, public servants) to be perfect without flaw? And when we find one, is it a real flaw or just a defect in our eyes?

As my dad was a philatelist, I always love stamp stories in the news, and my favorite stories are the ones where the stamp with the defect ends up being worth lots of money. From this week's news:

A rare sheet of 10 stamps depicting Audrey Hepburn fetched euro430,000 ($606,000) at a charity auction in Berlin on Saturday, two-thirds of which will go to help educate children in sub-Saharan Africa.
The mint-condition sheet of 10 stamps featuring Hepburn, a coy smile on her face and a long, black cigarette holder dangling from her lips, brought a profitable outcome to a botched stamp series that should have been destroyed years ago — and evokes Hepburn's starring role in the 1963 thriller "Charade," in which the characters chase a set of rare stamps.

Some stamps have defects because a plane was printed upside down or some other such printing error. In this case, as her son said, "In the original photo, she's got sunglasses hanging from her mouth, but they had flipped the negative and replaced the glasses with the cigarette holder." In any case, there was an objection and the stamps were supposed to be destroyed with one sheet saved for the archives and another for a museum.

Nevertheless, some got away and were circulated. Now those few stamps are worth much, much more, because there's "something wrong, something unusual, something messed up, something rare."

My wish for society is that we take the lesson of the flawed stamps and apply it to our lives. I'm talking especially to perfectionists like me, whose eye focuses more on the flaw in the quilt (or my body or my husband or my job) than on what's right with it. In the end, the flaw might be what makes it priceless - but at least it makes it of this world, not perfect without blemish, but human. And human is not an insult, as in "I'm only human!" It is a compliment. It is what we are meant to be. It is a child of God. It is possibility. It is perfect in the sense that it is "whole." And our very existence is worth much, much more than we seem to think.

The Case for the Human

2010-10-16T05:19:00.004-05:00

Don't expect anything original from an echo. ~Author Unknown
Anyone who can be replaced by a machine deserves to be. ~Dennis Gunton

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau
"Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow" so they [the Shakers] used to say. Work was an intrinsic part of their spiritual lives, thus its integrity was part of its appeal.

What is it like to think your job could be replaced by a machine? That scenario has become a reality to millions of people through the ages, starting as soon as the first machine was invented. After all, think of the many chores that have been eased for us as a society for which we used to have to labor with great difficulty. I can tell you with deep sincerity that I'm thankful I don't have to sew a dress completely by hand, that I don't have to wash dishes by hand or wash clothes by hand. But even in machines there are human brains behind them.

Let's take a washing machine, for instance. In the first place, a human had to imagine the existence of such a machine when there were none to see, and then the inventor would have to try over and over, with succession and failure, creating various prototypes and learning from them what works and what doesn't. Human brains even had to build the machines in the factories which helped produce the washing machines in great quantities. After all this human work, the washing machine lands in my house. I still have work to do. Sure, I only have to push a few buttons, but decisions are made by my human brain every step of the way. What items are going in? How are they separated? Considering the fabric, what cycles should be used? Hot or cold? Long or short? Heavy or delicate? What kind of detergent? Are there stains that need special attention? Should I take an item out to line dry or put it in the dryer? So far, at least, a washing machine has not reached my house that, when I dump a basket of dirty clothes on the floor in front it it, the machine sorts the items, makes all these decisions, opens its own door, sucks the laundry in, and cleans everything according to directions. My brain is still involved.

....As it is with medical transcription. It tickles me when non-MTs, upon questioning what I do all day, say, "What's the big deal? You just type what you hear." Oh my, if that were the case, there would be some very strange and incomprehensible medical records! Frequently the dictator will misspeak, and just as frequently my ears will hear something erroneously that the dictator did not say. The focus one must have for this job is incredible. The MT is driving along, sometimes down a familiar road, sometimes a totally new and unfamiliar one, and every second the MT is looking ahead to envision what is around the corner, at the same time looking in the rearview mirror to make sure everything was OK on that end, simultaneously trying to block out visual and auditory distractions as well as brain waves that would rather think about her personal grocery list or what to get her nephew for his birthday. And believe me, for most MTs, this car is speeding crazily down the interstate, not ambling down some lazy country back road.

If a machine can truly duplicate my job in a perfect way, then I'm not doing something right, because my human brain is my greatest asset in this job. As long as I never fall under the rule of "verbatim," a ridiculous (in my opinion) instruction to send the brain on vacation and type exactly and only what you hear, no matter how wrong you realize it to be, I am happy in this job. (Fortunately, I've always been allowed to use my gifts and my brain is always an active participant.)

I've heard that the Shakers had a philosophy of doing their work with integrity and to the glory of God. No matter if they were washing a plate, making a chair, or cooking a meal - they knew the integrity of what they were doing, and the importance of what they were doing, no matter how simple or how mundane it appeared to be. They used the same heart and soul and intent when they weeded the garden as they did when they designed a beautiful cabinet. The brain was engaged, the heart was engaged, their whole beings were engaged. What a beautiful attitude!

Changing the Thoreau quote above for my career, "It's not what you hear that matters; it's what you interpret." It's logic, it's experience, it's ear training, it's brain training. The letters, words, and sentences flow out of my fingers through my brain, through all my life experiences, every book I've read (even non-medical ones), every person's voice I've heard in my lifetime, nuances of speech, my education in French - and it all adds up to much more than a machine throwing back echoes. Through my complex brain storing my life experiences and learning, through my dependable quick fingers which follow the flow, through my heart which aches for the dying, celebrates with the newly born, and follows the courses of patients with their personal challenges and fears, through my very being, my job unfolds. I would like to think, yes, I do think, that that cannot be totally and in true essence replaced by a machine. I only hope the medical world realizes that and makes its decisions accordingly.

Pinned down about sewing

2010-10-09T07:18:00.006-05:00

I only know one person who sews clothes - and she lives across the country in California. My sister owns a sewing machine, but the only thing she sews anymore are curtain-type things or cushion covers. Nobody I work with sews. Every time I used to shop at a fabric store in Bangor, I wondered how they could stay afloat. People just don't sew anymore, I thought. One of these days all the fabric stores will close after the sewers like me die, and sewing clothes will become a quaint craft found only in history books.

I really felt in the minority until I discovered a web site where sewers review patterns and teach techniques and share photos of their current projects. From there, I linked into sewing blogs and other sites and all of a sudden I felt less an anachronism and more a person on the cutting edge (no pun intended). I think that's one great thing about the Internet - it has connected people who think erroneously that they are isolated in their interests or hobbies.

Of course, we all can find fellowship for our specific passions on the Internet. Apparently there are groups for people who can't get sexually aroused unless the blowing and popping of a latex balloon is involved. If I felt disconnected, just think how they feel. What are the odds of finding someone with the same emotional requirement in your own neighborhood?

But I digress, of course. When I discovered the sewing community online, I finally regained hope for home seamstresses (and the future of my local fabric store). There were actually young people who were excited by the idea of creating their own clothes, possibly energized by TV shows such as Project Runway.

I don't think they teach sewing in the schools anymore, at least not that I know of. When I was in school, every girl took at least one year of what was called Home Economics, which supposedly encompassed sewing, cooking, and learning things like what to look for in a really good piece of furniture. I enjoyed the sewing, learned nothing about cooking, and the only thing I remember about buying furniture is to look for dovetail joints. When I started Home Ec, I had already learned some basics of sewing from my mother, but not much. It took my teacher, Mrs. Ray, a tall, lanky woman who made all her own clothes, to lead me into the world of sewing. (Sorry, Mrs. Ray, I never became a good cook, but luckily, I compensated by marrying one.)

Back then, patterns were 25 or 50 cents (now they can be priced as much as $16 and more), fabric was cheap, and the clothing style in fashion was minimal, so sewing was the obvious way to go. When I got my first job, my supervisor was sewing all her own clothes, and she was such an inspiration to me. Decades later, when I asked her why she quit sewing, she said she had only sewn to save money, not for the pleasure of it, and when she could start buying clothes cheaper at Walmart than she could make them, she put away her sewing machine. That made me question my motives for sewing.

They are, I have decided, manifold. Certainly, part of it is saving money. Clothes can be outrageously priced these days, and it doesn't take much money to sew a short lined plaid wool skirt as compared to buying one for $80 (LL Bean's current catalog).

But it's more than that. It is fit. Very little read-to-wear fits me. I have a weird body, and I know I'm not alone. For one thing, I'm short, so have to have a petite sizing, and that's not always an available option in ready-to-wear. I'm studying hard these days, with the help of my online communities and some books, to master the art of adjusting patterns to fit me. It's an ongoing process.

But it's more than that. It is control. I don't have to go to Eddie Bauer's catalog and be restricted to 3 colors for a skirt I admire. I have the whole JoAnn fabric store (and online retailers as well) to choose from. I choose the pattern, I choose the fabric color and feel, and I choose everything from buttons to whether it has a shallow or deep hem. It's one of the few things I can control in this world!

And finally, it's even more than that. It is creativity. It is the pleasure of making something with my own hands, something unique, something useful yet lovely. This is the reason that outweighs the others, the reason there seems to be a growing community of (mainly) women who feel the need to express themselves in a new way. We may not be in the majority, but we are a dedicated bunch.

So today I am thankful for my friend, Sally, who inspired me to get back into sewing clothes after years of only making quilts (I'm still quilting, too - have two in the works). I'm thankful for the ordinary working women, housewives, mothers, and grandmothers who blog about sewing, who provide pictures of their creations for inspiration, who share their frustrations and, yes, their failures, and who take time to answer questions and teach new techniques. I may spend the rest of my life without someone locally who can sew with me, but a whole other world is as close as my computer, and I am still eager to learn. I like to think Mrs. Ray would be proud.

The Reuben Philosophy

2010-10-01T14:26:00.003-05:00

I enjoy most foods, although I draw limits at things like escargot, eel, oysters, squid, and octopus. Then there are things that I could eat if I had to, but I just don't like. For instance, I detest rye bread, swiss cheese, and corned beef, and sauerkraut isn't my favorite either. A few years ago, however, I tasted a Reuben sandwich for the first time, and I immediately fell in love with it. Now tell me, how can I hate these four main Reuben ingredients individually, yet when you put them all together, my taste buds rejoice?! It just doesn't make sense, but I swear, it's true. Who knows why? Is it the addition of the thousand island dressing? Is it the grilled bread? Is it the chemical reaction of the various components? Who knows?

As I ate my half a Reuben sandwich last week in our hospital cafeteria, I again questioned how it could be possible that I can't stand the ingredients on their own, but could find so much pleasure in their combination. In reflecting, I started wondering if my Reuben paradox could be applied to life.

Would it be possible to take days where so much goes wrong and end up with a day that is saved in some way? Is it possible to endure the miserable things of life and come out with something to make you smile? To take experiences that, individually make you shudder and nevertheless combine them into days, weeks, months, and years that bring contentment?

My daughter believes that everything happens for a reason. I don't personally believe that, as my life experience runs more in the line of "crap happens for no reason," but I can compromise with her in this way: Regardless of why the crap happens, something good can always come out of it - whether it's a lesson learned, a new direction or calling in life, a new empathy for others who are suffering, a determination to improve, or even an opportunity for humility to take effect. It starts with the attitude that, although I might wish to change the circumstance, I will use it to my benefit in some way, and by gum, I'm not going to be beaten down and I refuse to surrender my power in the situation. I'm not willing just to tolerate the crap; it's actually going to make my life better!

Dealing with crap is one of the very definitions of life as a human. One thing is bad enough, but two, three, four things you hate descend upon you? Don't automatically give up. Start with a good attitude, embrace what you can't change, add some more ideas, try something new, and what you end up with might surprise you!

The 4th movement

2010-09-24T14:20:00.002-05:00

Something remarkable happened to me this week. As I was driving to work (before sunrise), I was taken aback by the beauty of the bright gold harvest moon in the sky straight in front of me. A few seconds later, I turned on the radio to our local classical music station, and within a few notes I recognized the piece being played - the lovely Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. That song holds precious memories for me, for its first movement was one of my favorite piano recital pieces as a teenager. Listening to the Moonlight Sonata while watching the gorgeous moon just seemed serendipitous.

For those of you who are non-musicians, the Moonlight Sonata is a piece played solely on the piano and consists of 3 movements, or parts. The first movement has always been relaxing to me, even though, in its minor key, some folks find it a bit sad. It has a wonderfully soothing rhythm that is steady, varies little in volume or style - almost like a lullaby. As I kept driving, watching the moon, and listening to the first movement, the moon was stable in the sky and stayed in front of me, bright and clear.

Then the second movement started, and immediately the moon became playful with me, following the cues of the music. It appeared on the left, then it appeared on the right, then just around the bend, it was on the left again. The music of the second part of Moonlight Sonata picks up the tempo, frolicking a bit and bringing in some changes. You're aware you've turned a page, something is different, and the quiet lullaby is over.

Then came the third movement. I remember that I tried valiantly several times to learn to play that third movement, but it was just too difficult. It starts at 90 miles an hour and never lets up, fingers flying everywhere on the keys, and oh, my, is it loud! Banging, clanging, pulsating, and just when you think it's over, it starts up again, going every which way. It makes your heart race just to listen to it. By this time in my commute, I had turned a different direction on a rural road thick with trees, and most of the time I lost sight of the moon totally.

Then all of a sudden, with a few loud chords, it was over. Silence. Beethoven chose not to balance his sonata with a nice quiet fourth movement after the noisy third movement. The frantic race is over, and there is no cool-down time.

Then it hit me: I'm living the Moonlight Sonata. My life started out as a lullaby, a familiar, secure feeling of love and acceptance, my wonderful childhood. The second movement started when I became an adolescent/teenager. Life became a little more complicated, still fun, but insecurities and changes made their debut, and the ubiquitous teenage worries about appearance, grades, and other self-esteem issues made that time a bit more stressful. The third movement, my adult years, came in with a bang, as I got married at 19 to an active alcoholic, started working, had two children, and tried to pay bills. Even when Ed got sober, things didn't magically calm down, as he entered the ministry and it was another round of stress and changes which threw me for a loop. For the whole third movement of my life, I never was sure if I was banging on the low keys or slapping the high keys - life was everywhere at once, providing me with incredibly uplifting moments and other times hitting me in the face with anxiety and worry. Even after we moved to Maine, as the saying goes, "good" stress can be just as hard on you as "bad" stress. Both kids got married, grandchildren started coming, and we had a very difficult time selling our house, financially and emotionally. The third movement was the roller coaster of movements!

Then it occurred to me that I am now in the fourth movement of my life. My sonata didn't end with those loud chords when we finally downsized and moved to our little house in the country. It just started a new part, a quieter, more peaceful part, and I am composing it every day by the choices I make. I am realizing that the more I choose to honor my priorities and fill my hours with meaning, the more harmonious the music becomes. If I react to situations with anger and frustration, the more dissonant the music becomes.

I've heard people talk about the idea that we write our own stories, the books of our lives. I think I prefer to say I'm writing my own sonata. It's got a lot of sad music, happy music, and everything in between. I'm in the fourth movement, and I'm not finished yet!

Just a few seconds

2010-09-17T16:25:00.004-05:00

Every night I call my mom in Memphis and have a little chat. Our talk always includes a short summary of our police report. She enjoys this because usually, with our lower crime rate, our police reports are filled with various and sundry items of curiosities instead of murders. People in Maine will call the police for the most unusual reasons. For instance, there was a man a few years ago who called the police to report he was seeing holographic pictures of his nude wife on the side of his garage. (You have to wonder what he was smoking.) Recently there was a couple having sex on the dock, and in the same report, some condoms had been shoplifted. Wonder if there was a connection there. There are also reports of cows, chickens, pigs loose, and the town of Bucksport always has a "suspicious" person or two every week.

Today, however, the newspaper was full of depressing, not funny, news. There were 3 car accidents involving fatalities, one even wiping out a family (dad, mother, 4-year-old daughter). Sometimes the results of excessive speed, sometimes with DUI, but ultimately most of the accidents we read about (including the tragic one this week of the family above) happen because a driver crossed the centerline. All it takes is a few seconds, and your whole life is changed (or even eliminated). It might not even be the person who makes the mistake who is killed; many times innocent people are victims.

I have been grieving for that family (the mother worked at our hospital, although I did not know her). A few seconds of distraction, whether it's texting or turning the head to look at something or trying to kill a wasp in the car or answering the cell phone or changing the radio station or being blinded by the sun - and lives are gone, just like that, in an instant.

I immediately talked to my adult kids and reminded them to stay away from that centerline and to watch oncoming traffic that appears close to the centerline.

But it doesn't have to a life and death situation for a few seconds to alter your life. It only takes a few seconds to say something hurtful that immediately you wish you never said, or to press "send" on that insulting e-mail before you have a chance to think it over, or even to put up that "funny" photo of yourself on Facebook that your future employer will see. Some decisions in life just don't get the rewind opportunity. You may have the ability to handle troubles, financial and otherwise, and you may be able to handle hurt and disappointment and fear, but regret burns itself into your soul and haunts you forever.

It only takes a few seconds.

The Fair (and Wayne)

2010-09-11T09:42:00.002-05:00

This time of year always makes me nostalgic for the Mid-South Fair. I lived all my childhood in Memphis, just blocks from the fair site, and going to the fair in September was one of the highlights of the year for my sister Joy and me. School would usually give us a holiday for the fair with reduced or free tickets, and we could hardly wait to start the walk to the fairgrounds.

Of course, in Memphis, even towards the end of September, it was usually very hot, but that didn't matter to us. As we got nearer the site, we could hear the sounds of the fair - and the smells. The first chore was walking past the farm animals, who were stationed in an arena with a roof but no walls and you had to pass them to get to the good stuff. You'd think, growing up city girls, we would have been fascinated with the animals, but that was not the case. The stink of mature and straw was just a minor inconvenience that we had to endure before we could get to the main attraction - the rides, of course!

Our funds were limited and our fear was infinite, so we stuck to our preferred time-tested relatively low-key favorite rides - ones that were cheap and not too scary - in other words, rides that stayed pretty close to the ground, like the bumper cars and scrambler. Dad took many home movies that showed how much fun we were having laughing and screaming. As a child, I was always fascinated by the Fun House, but that was more expensive to ride, scary in its own way, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I finally was brave enough to try it.

You can't have a fair without the food, though, and I was a sugar addict, so I bypassed the gyros and corn dogs and headed straight for the cotton candy. Our dad absolutely hated to pay for spun sugar. He knew it was bad for the teeth and considered it a total waste of money. But every year at the fair, he relented. Add to that an occasional snow cone, ice cream cone, and Coke, and I was in sugar heaven.

Forget those mysterious trailers with loudspeakers urging us to "see the Gorilla Man" or "feast your eyes upon the Half Human/Half Alligator Boy." We never got to partake of those opportunities. I did enjoy, though, seeing all the pictures of what was inside. Likewise, we didn't have the money to participate in the "win a stuffed animal" booths and other "games of skill," but it was fun walking by and seeing all the various ways you could empty your wallet quickly.

After we were exhausted from rides, or just wanted a break in some air conditioning, we would walk through the crafts building. This I could only appreciate when I was older, in high school. I was a seamstress by then, and I was really interested in the clothes and items that were sewn for all the fair contests. They all made me feel good - the ones with exquisite workmanship gave me inspiration, and the ones with shoddier workmanship made me feel better about my own skills in comparison.

The Mid-South Fair always had a star attraction giving concerts in the Coliseum. As these tickets were extra, of course, from fair admission, our family budget rarely allowed us to add this to the itinerary, but one memorable year, Joy and I got to see the Cowsills! Another year, though, was a real dud. The fair always fell around my birthday, and that year, for some reason, part of my birthday present was our parents giving us both tickets to the star of that year's fair - none other than Mr. Wayne Newton. Now Wayne back then was not the megastar he is today. He was not popular, not cool, and we didn't even like his music. There we were, two teenage girls, sitting in the audience watching Wayne's performance, wishing we were anywhere else. The audience was small, so Wayne didn't exactly have the biggest fan base at the time. To this day, I hope we kept our disappointment hidden from our parents, because it was a very sweet thing for them to do. Now I laugh when I read a ticket to go see Wayne Newton starts at $80 because he is in such demand.

As I grew up and became an adult, the rides no longer interested me. I still enjoyed the food and the fun of just walking around, but my child-like excitement had been replaced with being able to take our own small children to the fair, with the joy of watching them react to the sounds, smells, tastes, and atmosphere of one of my fondest childhood memories.

The children are grown with kids of their own now. I don't go to the fair anymore; Ed and I don't like to get in big crowds these days. But a whiff of cotton candy, a shot of a ferris wheel in a Monk TV episode, an odor of a hay-eating cow, or a picture of Wayne Newton as "The King of Las Vegas," and I am right back there in Memphis, Tennessee, enjoying the glorious, exhilarating, irreplaceable Mid-South Fair.

Markers

2010-09-03T12:56:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned in July, we recently downsized and traded two cars for one (a Subaru). After about a week of driving the new car, I realized a major difference in it and my old Toyota: On the Toyota, the number right up top center on the speedometer was 60, and in the Subaru, the number in that same position in 80. As I drive mostly highway miles on my commute, I have always been used to seeing the arrow point straight up to 60; now if I go only by the arrow, I would be speeding at 80. I can't just look at the arrow for guidance anymore; I will have to watch the numbers until I get used to the new setup.

I have to continually remind myself the same lesson as I age. For many years, I have gotten relatively comfortable in my own skin. I have understood my limits and my capabilities. I knew how much weight I could lift, how flexible I could be, how fast and far I could walk. After a few years have gone by, though, as I've aged, the speedometer has changed. I'm so used to seeing the arrow at one point, and forget that a few more years on the calendar means trading in for a new, different speedometer, and the same rules no longer apply.

I think that's one of the hardest parts of aging. You get used to your body behaving and responding in a certain way, then one day it fails you. A joint will crunch painfully or your digestive system won't cooperate or your eyes aren't as sharp; even your hair won't behave like it used to. Yet, somehow we assume things will never change, and then when they inevitably do, we prefer to avoid reality and pretend everything is the same. After all, that arrow has been pointing straight up for a long time now; if it's still straight up, everything must be normal and familiar - in other words, nothing has changed. We may even panic. It can't have changed! How can we act/look so old when we still feel so young at heart? I've heard ER tales of baby boomers who were sedentary all week and then on the weekend, participated in a few too many basketball games or tennis matches, because, after all, that's what they used to be able to do, right? Well, their muscles or bones or heart or some other body part didn't think so. It can be disheartening when you realize your body and stamina have deteriorated. My husband Ed said he was totally deflated a few months ago when he caught a glimpse of his 63-year-old thin lower limbs in the mirror and thought, "Oh no! When did I get my Daddy's legs?!"

Alas, with aging, we know that change is inevitable. Just ask the billions of dollars we consumers spend on products which promise to turn back time. Experts tell us to embrace the change. I don't go that far; I think, however, realizing that change has occurred is paramount. You can't be driving 80 mph when you can only handle 60, and you need to be aware that the speedometer you have been used to seeing has shifted its landmarks. You can't assume things based on the past. Every day is a new day with new challenges, every birthday has more to teach us, and every year our bodies remind us that things, they are a'changin'.