On the Trajectory to Christmas and Beyond....

It is the nineteenth of December. Again I am sitting in my husband's office, what we call the library, enjoying the sun rise with my coffee. Having been on antibiotics for a persistent sinus "thing" I have not enjoyed coffee much this past week so I find myself unusually content this morning. Perhaps my writing will reflect that.

Today is a rest day in our celebration of Christmas. To be honest we have bowed out of a number of parties that just felt too much like "going just to go" kind of events rather than real celebrations with friends. So I don't think we are overextended at the moment but of course there is almost two weeks until NewYear's Day and the holiday season officially ends. Unless you are talking about Epiphany.

When we first receive invitations to parties I mark them on the calendar and look forward to the comradery and the opportunity to catch up with some old friends. But then as the dates came closer, and we become engaged in Christmas plannings of our own I realized that we were heading into overkill, and by the time we see the last of our children on the thirtieth of the month we might be beyond exhausted. So time to step back and make some choices.

Staying home is an easier choice for me than for my husband. Al is more of an extrovert and really enjoys parties. While I do enjoy parties my pull is to small gatherings and quiet time with friends more than big cocktail type events. From my side of the equation we get invited to smaller gatherings, his friends and acquaintances are more likely to be found at a large extravaganza. So at times we struggle. And in the midst of all of this Al's birthday comes. Yesterday to be precise. All of which means there is a lot of juggling going on between Thanksgiving and January second.

This year my children decided to stay home; thus we are going to visit them after Christmas. Al's children opted to come the two weekends before Christmas and also stay at their own homes for Christmas Day. At this moment Al's son and daughter-in-law have come and gone with their two children and we have celebrated one Christmas, had one Christmas dinner. Tomorrow Al's daughter and son-in-law will come home with their son and we will have our second Christmas and our second Christmas dinner. Still some presents to wrap and a dinner to plan, grocery shopping to do. I must confess here; his children are staying with their mother this year which does change the dynamic somewhat.

And I need to backtrack a little; two days ago we had our "family of choice" Christmas gathering and dinner. Over the last almost twenty-five years I have gathered with a group of women to celebrate our lives. We do birthdays, we do spring, we do Christmas. And sometimes we do trips together. The Christmas gathering is special and easy and I begin planning my gift theme sometime in early September. A few years ago we added men which hasn't really changed it as much as you might think. So really we're up to three now.

On Saturday we will go to a belated Thanksgiving dinner that my friend Jayne gives for all friends. It is also her birthday, coinciding with the winter solstice, so there is much cause for celebration. This year Jayne has reduced her household from seven to three ( her story to tell) and taken a new job. I expect there will be much joy as those four young men return and gather with us mostly women friends to celebrate this new turn in her life. Not really Christmas but still.

Two days later Al's younger brother and sister-in-law will join us for another family dinner and gift exchange on their way to her family's big gathering. They are our only overnight guests this year; kind of strange in and of itself. It will be quieter, because she is quieter and I don't share the family history that gets reviewed every year, but we are looking at inviting some others to fill in chairs at the table. Smiley face should go here.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will find us alone. This year an old friend who recently moved to Virginia has returned for a visit; we will spend some time with her. Another dear friend is suffering from kidney cancer and is having a difficult time at the moment. I hope to spend some time visiting with her; she is one of my soul sisters and I really miss her. And of course there is my real sister and my brother's family; that family gathering kind of fell apart a couple of years ago as the grandchildren came and came. Perhaps we will journey to see them; it is nearby.

Two days after Christmas we will load the sled and head to visit my children. First to Atlanta and then to Montgomery. We will try to do something special and memorable with them; but mostly just enjoy some together time. Usually we are all here in Augusta after Christmas and there is lots of chaos and time to sit and drink coffee together. It will be different and it will be fun but by then we will all be tired; maybe we will watch movies and eat popcorn.

And as we come to the end of this year we will leave Montgomery and drive across Alabama and Georgia to Edisto Beach in South Carolina, where we will gather with some of Al's oldest and dearest friends to welcome in 2014. It is a small house party, eight or ten people, and a larger oyster roast on the actual eve of the new year. It should be fun. It will be fun.

So here I am on a down day, drinking my coffee. The sun is up; so is my husband. The sky is blue, the air is cold. A perfect day. Tonight I am gathering with two of my oldest soul friends to watch White Christmas, something I usually do alone. We will eat a simple supper and laugh at our old stories and maybe drink a little too much but probably not. It is the real meaning of Christmas I think; taking time to spend with those we love and who love us. To hold and be held. To give and receive.

I am glad for a down day but more importantly I rejoice in Christmas and the opportunity to create new memories. As we head into the winter and the anticipatory atmosphere of introversion it provides, I welcome this extreme extroversion. It is the parties that are the celebration of life; it is in the winters we do the work.

Now I need to go finish some doll clothes I am making for gifts for some special little girls; the coffee pot's empty.

Home Alone....

Having coffee this morning I find myself alone. Al has gone to the mountains to tend to some business and I am at home nursing a cold. At times in my life I have become aware of how bad I am at being alone. Oh, I do it well for a day or two, glory in my alone time in fact whenever Al goes home for business and I stay by myself in the mountains. After a day or two, however, I need company. Conversation. Another human voice.

A number of years ago I began an effort to become more conscious. It was not a choice so much as the forces of nature pushing me in that direction, but nonetheless I began the steps necessary to the process of self awareness. One of the first assessment tools I utilized was the Myers-Briggs personality test. The one where we determine if we are introverts or extraverts among other preferred modes of being and operating in the world. There are four pairs of preferences that are evaluated and on three out of the four I tested dominantly in one camp or the other. On the attitude of extraversion vs introversion I tested smack in the middle. And so while I have many of the characteristics of an introvert, like a need for  in-depth conversation and fewer, more meaningful relationships, I also love a party, especially when I get to be in charge. So on days like today the extrovert gets antsy. I need to talk to people; but guarding my alone time I dare not leave the house and seek out companionship. Horns of a dilemma.

My husband is certainly an extrovert; extreme extrovert in fact. He never tires of entertaining, whether at home or in the mountains. I am more divided in that need so have come to prize my time in the mountains as my alone time and my time in Augusta to meet my social needs. The time in Augusta is spent catching up; arranging dates with friends and meeting for coffee, drinks or dinner more than entertaining in our home. It is more of how our friends live nowadays. For me, the time in the mountains is to kick back and read copious numbers of books, take long walks and even hikes, and cook interesting meals. But here's the catch; when you have a retreat away from the extreme summer heat it feels somewhat selfish not to share it.

Entertaining in the mountains takes it up a notch though. It means having house guests, 24/7 or more likely two or three or even sometimes four days at a time. And often the sheets are washed and put back on the bed only moments before the next guests pull up in the driveway. It is extreme extroversion. Al loves it; I not so much, however much I enjoy the in-depth time spent with close friends. Horns of a dilemma.

We became the proud owners of our little mountain cabin, aptly named "Pickett's Retreat" a little over four years ago. At the time we had been married three years and while we have four children between us there were only three grandchildren. Life had become a little busier, but much more stimulating and interesting. Entertaining in a way that only required us to grab our car keys and head to Savannah, or Montgomery or Atlanta. Now, four years later with a total of ten grandchildren, grabbing our car keys has become second nature.

As a grandmother of seven of the children, unfettered by a need to work outside the home, I spend more time on the road than my husband. Being a retired judge Al is able to work part time, engaging his love of people and the law. He spends about a week and a half a month in Augusta working; I spend some of that time with him tending to the needs of our hundred year old home, but some of that time I take advantage of his busyness to visit my children. Or just recently, to take grandchildren to the mountains with me for some one on one time.

This fall I have become aware that all of my relationships are suffering from my nomadic life. Some friends in Augusta have fallen by the wayside; others have become less of a priority as the grandmother call has gained prominence. Due to my need for some introversion I haven't really made any friends in the mountains which means it is almost essential to import house guests to meet Al's need for extroversion. And my relationship with myself, my call to be more conscious in an active way, has taken a back seat. Not to mention my art.

So as I sit here, early this December morning watching the sun rise, I am aware of a need for balance. How precarious balance is; without realizing it I find myself alone on the edge of the diving board. New life in the water, old life staring at us from the pool surround. Who will jump in the water with us we cannot control. But the need to jump is apparent because there comes a time that running back and forth, climbing up and down the ladder, just doesn't work anymore.

So as we move into a new year I find myself once more needing to stop and listen to my life and my heart. To set some limits and decide what, and who, is important. Some things will go, some will be reclaimed and some movement will be necessary to incorporate the new life that beckons from the depths. It is exciting, a little anxiety producing, and just a tad exhausting, to contemplate. But I have been rolling along for the last seven years mostly reacting to things outside my control; okay not completely reacting but more than I would like, more than is healthy for a sense of well being.

Expectations. Changes. Work. Balance. All beckoning as this year comes to a close. A new home to become an outward and visible sign of inner change. That's the plan anyway. Catch me this time next year and see how I am doing. For now, enjoy and give the extrovert a little fun. Winter is a great time for inner work.

Power, Intimacy and Equality...too much?

Recently my thoughts have been consumed with equality and intimacy, and personal power. Volumes have been written about these concepts and I don't think I have much to add; that is not why I write however. It is the thoughts that consume me, that grab my attention in the middle of the night, that drive me to pick up a pencil and try and make a visual picture of a concept, it is these thoughts that must be explored in writing. And re-explored. And some record makes it easier to see ideas evolve and change over time. My need to reread them however is not the issue; it is the need to get them out of my head that is the driver.

My husband is a judge. He has a lot of power in his world; whenever he goes to work his every need is tended to, if not divined by his subordinates. It makes it difficult at home, in our relationship, to have equality because his idea of that concept is cerebral, not experiencial. Al was raised in a southern home in the fifties. In the time of Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed. My Three Sons also comes to mind. Both his parents worked, both were educators. Homemaker was not a word one applied to Al's mother but keeping a home was important; for that they had Irene.

Irene referred to Al as "Mister Albert." From that experience his world was divided between women who met his needs and women who had authority. His mother was the authority in his young life, but Irene was his caregiver. The imprint of his relationship to women, and subordinates, was early and complete. One takes care of you and the other is the one you push against to gain your own authority. No equality in either relationship.

But when I started thinking about equality and power I realized we are all born into a place where first we are the center of our own universe, only to realize at some point early on that we are at least ONE DOWN in power as we measure ourselves against our parents. And that is if we are lucky; for many children one down would be a dream.

So for men like my husband, who was one down in relationship to his parents, he nonetheless was ONE UP with Irene. Within limits he could make his needs known to her and she would do what he wanted. He might have to manipulate her outside the confines of his parents domain, but for a child manipulation is second nature. And reinforced, in the case of a young man who not only gets his basic needs met but every bath drawn, every meal made, every dirty shirt picked up from the floor and returned clean to his closet. Which model would you choose if you were young Al? It is no accident he became a judge; he was born to play that role.

My place in the world was more than one down from my earliest memory. I had a father who was abusive, a mother who was emotionally absent, an older brother (the key being older) and a younger brother (the key being brother). In case I was confused about my place my mother frequently reminded me; I was the sneaky one, the liar, the cheater despite being a high achiever and not the least bit of a troublemaker, unlike my brothers. The last words she spoke on the subject, before I no longer listened, was that while I got better grades than my older brother " your brother is smarter, you just work harder." And later "There is no money for you to go to college; if there were it would be for your brothers." This after being told at a nursing school interview that I should be going to college, not entering a diploma nursing program. And despite the fact that neither of my brothers desired a college education.

Education was my escape route from a family where I felt so devalued. I realized it at the age of thirteen, a particularly difficult time in most girls lives, true, but in mine it was horrific; I was called a whore by my mother while my father looked the other way and my brothers quietly observed. I became a feminist that day; I put my head down and studied, soaking up all the awards and accolades the world outside my home had to offer. My attitude took its toll in that my decision regarding nursing school was driven by how quickly I could be out on my own, independent of my parents, not by the education I really desired. The school offered a full scholarship and I would graduate in three years; winning hands down over four years and student loans.

A nurse is one down from the truly educated; doctors. A registered nurse from a diploma school is one down from a college educated nurse, this despite thousands of hours of training that resulted in more hands on experience. And eventually I realized that my diploma put me one down from my college graduated husband, whom I would go on to put through law school; never would I be equal in his eyes. "You don't really mean that; You don't really think that; You don't really want that" were his frequent refrains throughout the course of our thirty plus year marriage.

I fought for equality in that marriage. I became more educated. Gaining awards for devotion to my family, my education, my community, I felt empowered and vital. But inside that marriage I was always one down, sometimes more in the patriarchal system that governed our lives. So I divorced. And remarried. This time not just a lawyer, interpreter of laws but a judge, dispensor of laws.  As one relative, a court reporter, told me "I can't believe you went from being married to a lawyer to being married to a judge."  This only two weeks into the second marriage. I didn't realize what she meant then; I do now.

My struggle for equality is synonymous with my struggle for power. As I have gained power I have fought for equality; the more personal power I gained the more equal I would be or so I thought. But each marriage was to a more powerful person than myself, and my father. So hasn't my struggle for power, and equality been against my father all this time, a man who is long dead?

My father was a sergeant in the army, high ranking in the enlisted ranks. My first husband graduated from West Point and was a lieutenant in the army, low ranking among the officer ranks but outranking any enlisted soldier. I myself joined the army and became an officer but that was not enough, I was not respected for that by my father. Respect for my husband came with the patriarchal system; for me no system was powerful enough to override my father's attitude towards me and women in general.

My second husband outranks my first husband in the world of law. My first husband, when he goes to court, must behave in a reverential manner to the judge and abide by his judgments. He can appeal them to a higher court but he cannot argue, or disagree openly, with the judge. I have watched the dance when my judge husband is in court, I have seen him exercise his power and I have seen the dance that lawyers do to befriend judges. It is all about power. So haven't I won in the power play?

Haven't I defeated my father despite the fact he is dead and cannot jump across the net and shake my hand. If my sense of personal power is coming from within then I would say yes but as long as I am engaged in the struggle for equality with my husband, waiting for him to say and do that which shows I am equal to him, then I have lost. Or at the very least I am still in the game. I am still trying to wrest power from my father and that is the shame. Because it was never his to give.

My own father came into the world ONE DOWN. He left home, joined the army the day he turned eighteen, to achieve his independence; to gain power and equality in his own personal struggle. Did he achieve that goal? Based on his life long drinking habits, his abusive behavior towards his wife and children, I would have to say no. He never felt secure in his own power; his sense of self was only achieved by keeping others down.

That is the problem with power and equality. We are all born at least one down and we all begin our struggle for power and equality when at the age of two we utter the first "no". Some of us are helped along the way by our parents, our teachers and our employers. But most are kept down by the need of the more powerful to feel secure. Sharing power is not easy.

Equality is a wholly different thing; power is sought by everyone but equality is sought by the one down segment. Personally I have never heard a white man talk about the need for equality. Power and equality are inexplicably intertwined yet different. Equality comes with a state of mind as much as it is granted by society through laws and judgments. Power is measured by jobs and income and accrual of wealth. I can have power and not have equality and I can have equality and not have power. It is time to define the two anew. Because I think with equality, the kind of equality we get when we know who we are, comes a different kind of power. This is surprising to me as I write because it has not come into any of my thoughts or discussions of the past week. And it is taking me dangerously close to the beatitudes, not a place I am comfortable going.

'Amen sister' I can hear some of my friends saying.

Oh...and there is intimacy. That's a real kettle of fish.

Party Girl

I am a party girl. There is no specific memory attached to the fact that I love parties, love to give parties and love to go to parties; but it is recognized universally by all who know me. I have given kitten showers, croning ceremonies, birthday dinners while house sitting in fabulous homes, and many, many birthday parties of my own. With themes. And yet this year as my birthday comes and goes I am partaking of a number of small celebrations over the course of the week; no party for me.

This Monday morning I awoke at nine, a late start normally but becoming more common as my marriage to Al lengthens. Al is a late night guy; he cannot force himself into the bedroom before midnight and even then it will be at least an hour before he succumbs to his biorhythms and climbs into bed. In the beginning I matched him hour for hour; then we would easily stay up until two or three. However as I am not good at sleeping late or taking daytime naps I began to dial it back. Now I mostly get into bed by eleven and turn out my light around midnight after reading or watching old Frazier shows; and yep that is the time that Al starts bumping around in the dark, turning on lights, desirous of reading in bed.

We have been married seven years now and I am finally able to sleep through (most of ) his comings and goings but also to sleep until nine if that person going bump in the night is too obnoxious. So this past Monday morning, my birthday day, I slept until nine. Surprisingly because I was in the mountains and Al was in Augusta. I cannot blame my late night on him.

When we are in the mountains together, which is much of the time, I usually stay a day after Al leaves to straighten and clean up. Sometimes I complete a chore, like painting the bathroom. I have to paint when Al is gone because our cabin is pine paneled, which I am realizing almost all men prefer to painted walls of any color. So if I want to paint something I have to do it after he leaves. Not before because you can smell the lingering paint smell for days, which is a dead giveaway. It is what I have learned to do, not because Al really hates painted walls but because he thinks he does. Mostly when we next return to the house he will not notice the paint; if and when he does it will usually be weeks or even months later and how can one seriously take an objection that takes that long to file?

But this past Monday I stayed over to finish washing sheets and towels, cleaning up the kitchen and baths, routine stuff that usually gets done while we are packing up and does not necessitate a whole day. Our plan had been to go home together on Sunday, but this particular Sunday instead of packing up together we were busily buying a house.

Al and I bought our mountain house four years ago. We had looked now and again over the course of three years, more out of wishful thinking than any serious intent to buy a second home. But this particular year was after the markets crashed and I decided I was tired of worrying about stock investments and would rather have my money invested in land. So our visit in June of '09 was with every intention of buying a second home.

In previous years we would get together with a real estate agent, a low key guy who loves Highlands and showing houses, always without pressure to buy. Dan showed us numerous houses each spring or summer, or sometimes spring and summer, and we would at times think we had found THE place. However by the time we returned home, many objections would arise and all interest would be lost. Often Al would love a house and I would hate it or vice verse. And because we had friends who had a lovely home that they generously shared with us we never felt we were overindulging what was becoming a hobby of sorts. But this particular year was different.

The housing market had taken a hit which was good for a first time buyer. I was seriously looking for an investment. And I think we were wearing out our welcome with our friends; it is one thing to extend hospitality when you think your friends are going to join you in your dream it is another when they begin infringing on your dream. So there was a shift in our thinking. And still we were surprised by the instant knowledge that this was our house that morning in June; I getting out of the car and heading up the path, and Al when he saw the pine paneled walls and stone fireplace. We continued looking at the other houses but by close of the day we knew we wanted to make an offer.

In retrospect it was good that we had looked at many houses over the course of years. Our desires were refined but also we knew a good house when we saw it. Many of the homes in a vacation community, particularly in our price range, are old and have been altered over time; most are not aesthetically pleasing. Some don't even make sense; like walking through one bedroom to get to another. But our little cabin, while having been updated over time had not been added onto; in other words the house retained a simplicity original to its construction.

We closed on the house, found a contractor and then waited a year before doing anything major. At that point we added a bedroom and a bath; updated plumbing and electrical, added new appliances, a laundry closet and pantry, and most importantly built a screen porch and wrap around deck. The house functions better for two people and looks like it was meant to be. We love it.

In the three years since we have renovated and refurbished, bringing the yard back from construction destruction, our children have been having babies. Where there were three, there are now ten grandchildren. And where we could have one family at a time stay with us we now have to rent additional houses to have a family gathering of any kind. So this past spring we put our house on the market and began looking at bigger, more accessible homes. Our real estate friend told us in the beginning that there are two kinds of people who buy homes in Highlands, those who buy and sell and leave and those who buy and sell and buy something bigger. Clearly we are the second kind.

In the intervening months Al and I have begun looking again at houses, a dozen or more, and narrowed it down to three that would meet our needs. But every time we return to our little cabin, sit on the deck and watch the sun retire there is no doubt that this is the place we love the most. Within our means that is; because if you have ever been to Highlands NC you know there are some truly exceptional homes on all kinds of magnificent land. We restrict our looking to only those we can reasonably afford. And within those parameters our little cabin is head over heels above the competition.

So after six months of trying to sell, I woke up one day and decided to finish my cabin. Remodel the old bathroom, build in some bunk beds for the children, put new counter tops in the kitchen and a hand rail on the path up from the parking pad. My sister had suggested that maybe I wasn't ready to leave, hadn't finished with this house, and that was why it wasn't speaking to a new owner. That made some sense to me, and my decision to invest more didn't necessarily mean I was going to take it off the market, just that I was going to finish what I had started while waiting to see if I was meant to leave. I made that decision one week, even had my contractor come and look at what I wanted to do, and the next week our neighbors called to tell us they were going to sell their house.

Our neighbors have over an acre of land that is contiguous with our third of an acre. Their house is two bedrooms like ours but has about half again as much square footage. It also has a level driveway. As we get older that is becoming more important. And there is enough property to add the third bedroom we need so desperately. But most importantly it is the land we look out over as we sit sipping wine on our deck on the long summer evenings. It is the place that makes us feel like we are in the woods.

After hanging up from that call and telling my husband, we both instantly recognized that this was it; this was our chance to have the place we wanted in Highlands, the place we were eagerly searching for over the last few months. We immediately called back and told them to exclude us from their real estate contract.

Things have moved swiftly since that call. We have looked at the house with an eye towards living there, different than a social visit. We have had our contractor look at it. We have made an offer and it was accepted. And we have arranged for the financing. All has gone smoothly affirming that this is a good choice, and in a few weeks we will close on this house making it ours.

Several things come to mind as I write this. First our good fortune is the result of someone else's bad fortune. As our neighbors sell and move to a smaller, less desirable place we may find it difficult to remain friends. We have tried to be sensitive to their feelings, and their situation, but for now I cannot imagine that it will turn out any other way and for that I am sorry.

The other thing that comes to mind is that shortly after we moved into our cabin four years ago I discovered a secret garden on their property. It is an old driveway, no longer used, that has mossed over; with our neighbors permission, my grandchildren and I visit it as some point during every stay. Last summer we began calling it the fairy garden. Now it will be part of our property. I cannot wait to claim it, to own it, inasmuch as we can own any land, but most importantly to honor it. I cannot wait to have ceremonies and celebrations there and to have my grandchildren grow up knowing that Gramma's fairy garden is also their special place.

And as for me, the party girl, I am already thinking ahead to the first party.

Reflections on healthcare in the land of the free....

Writing is an ego thing. I have very few friends who aren't either aspiring writers or who wish they were. I don't know if it is a cohort thing; it could be age related or the result of those things that bind us together in the first place. Many of my friends were, or are, in the health care industry and/or have an interest in human psychology, which would lend one to making observations. And to being in your head much of the time. Which I think can easily lead to writing; getting things out of one's head yet keeping them accessible.  I make brilliant observations in the middle of the night or when working in the yard but find that if I don't write them down they are lost; until the next time I make that observation, which may be days or even years later.

So here I am in the place of not having written for over a week with so many passed up opportunities to make brilliant observations that I feel rusty and out of tune again. Nonetheless here I go.

Like many people in this country I am disgusted by our congress; their inability or unwillingness to govern. It is as if they are playing a football game with all that matters is who wins and who loses. If not for referees football would be a brutal game; where in politics are the referees? The rules? This game is about power; who has it, who lost it and how to keep it or get it back. For the last five years our governing body has had little interest in anything except the power. Using their power for the good of the country, for what the majority of the people desire, want or need, has not been in their scope of work.

At issue right now is healthcare. All of us need it but only some of us can afford it. In reading about healthcare reform I was overwhelmed with the history of attempts to develop some system of health care in this country. As early as 1845 citizens organized to pressure the government to develop some system of health care for the indigent and insane. As other countries bowed to the pressure to provide care for its citizens, notably the United Kingdom in 1911, the United States fought against that kind of "socialism".

In The Nation I came across an article titled "This Week in 'Nation' History: Eighty Years of Opposition to Universal and Affordable Healthcare" dated October 5th this year. Here the author, Katrina vander Heugel states that "corporate and conservative opposition to universal coverage has existed since the 1930s, when many supported including national health care insurance in the Social Security Act and Senator Robert F Wagner of New York proposed what we would now call Medicare-for-all. Campaigns to defeat what Nation contributor Leonard Robins called the last great piece of legislation since Roosevelt's New Deal have always involved race baiting and scare tactics."

The history of the fight over some form of national healthcare in this country is mind boggling. If one thinks the push for universal coverage is the sole creation of this 'demon president', Barack Obama, one need only read this article to be disabused of that fact. Or google the history of healthcare reform, or the debate over healthcare reform. It is enough to turn ones stomach.

My journey with healthcare is personal and has informed my politics. My earliest memories of doctors and hospitals are from the age of six as a military dependent. I was frequently sick as a child necessitating numerous trips to the hospital over the course of a decade when, after having my tonsils removed at the age of eleven, I became the model of health. However by that time I was hooked; I loved hospitals and the care I received and those feelings would lead me to become a healthcare professional.

As I look back on those visits, and the treatments and hospitalizations that resulted, I realize that they occurred under socialized medicine. Military healthcare is universal healthcare, conducted on a first come, first seen and as need basis. I rarely saw the same doctor, often in fact was treated in a different hospital due to our many moves, but I never felt a lack of concern or care. When I became an adult and joined the Army Nurse Corps, then became a military wife, I never thought of the care as inferior or wanting. It was all I knew. How can anyone object to that kind of care?

Last week when I mentioned this to a retired navy captain he agreed that the care was basically socialized medicine, he even agreed that it was excellent, what he didn't agree with was the idea that everyone deserved the same level of access to care. " Yes," he said, "You are right. But I don't want everyone having that kind of healthcare." I was so shocked by this response I had no rejoinder. What does one say to someone who thinks they deserve more and better healthcare because of some position they hold in society?

I grew up as an enlisted man's child; the army was segregated by rank and as a result there were many social restrictions we experienced. I saw those restraints from a different perspective when I became an army officer and then married a career army officer. But I never experienced them when receiving or administering healthcare. Administering preferential healthcare was against the oath we all took as medical deliverers. So why does the AMA fight so hard against universal healthcare?

As a nurse I worked both in military and civilian hospitals. In military hospitals care was delivered regardless of rank or position. In civilian hospitals, particularly in the neonatal intensive care units in which I worked, care delivery seemed to be ubiquitous, no matter what the parents could afford. However much of what we were doing with the very sick and immature infants was supplemented by not for profit organizations. The delivery of care, and the level of care, never included discussions about what insurance a patient had. Later as doctor owned hospitals became big business and healthcare costs began to skyrocket, private insurance took charge of delivery; who got it, when and how much. In care conferences the question of what the insurance company would allow became the new standard.

That was my experience when in the 1990s I worked as a child psych nurse in a hospital setting with emotionally disturbed children. Whereas previous to my tenure children were admitted for treatment that lasted as long as six months, with multiple caregivers and in depth family involvement, I saw in-patient treatment dwindle from a month when I began to four days when I quit. At the time I left, the length of patient treatment was dictated totally by insurance companies, not doctors. Supportive modalities such as play therapy, family therapy, art therapy were all eliminated and replaced with drug treatment. The idea that a child was part of a unit, a family, and could only be as healthy as the unit was abandoned in favor of short, inexpensive hospitalizations and follow-up with fifteen minute drug management appointments.

As an aside I cannot help but wonder how many of these children, whose mental health depends solely on drug compliance, are the mentally ill adults we see today walking into the naval yard, post office, theater of your choice with a loaded rifle.

Healthcare did not become less expensive as a result of insurance company managing the delivery; different people got rich. Doctors, who at one time were the wealthiest citizens in any community, are more likely to be members of the upper middle class today. Unless they have managed, as some I know, to build their own private care centers, delivering care that ranges from radiology to day surgery to primary medicine. For instance one physician in this town owns at least five primary care centers, along with a diagnostic center and a surgery center. Medicine as big business.

Another doc friend, who is a diagnostician, talks about how little he gets paid for his skills; all the money is in procedures he says. MRIs, CTs, colonoscopies, etc. You get the idea. So painful has practicing medicine become for those who worked prior to the insurance takeover, that we are seeing some family medicine and internal medicine docs, where procedures are mostly referred out to specialists, abandoning private practice to work for the Veteran's Administration where they are paid a salary. Socialized medicine.

As I think about this I wish the debate would move on to the delivery of healthcare to our citizens and away from overturning Obamacare. As I contemplate the size of this country, and the immense wealth of some of its citizens, I wonder why we continue to have this debate. Providing the means for every person to have healthcare insurance is only the first step; but it is a necessary step in controlling healthcare costs and making it affordable for both  employers to provide insurance and recipients to utilize the healthcare system.

I am not a proponent of big government. But it seems that when the healthcare providers, physicians, insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations are unable to control costs, unable to limit their greed, it is time for the government to step in and protect its citizens. To me it is one of the reasons to have government; to deal with corruptness and greed and equalize access to power. Access to healthcare is a necessity if one is to become a contributing member of society and not just used up and thrown on the trash heap of history.

Interesting isn't it, how those who object to big government and want to lower costs never talk about the defense budget.

The Battlefields of Marriage

I am on vacation. Vacation from what would be the question. Not being retired like my husband, who is retired but still works part time, I am not really working in the traditional sense of the word, yet I am always working. Being an artist and a migrant worker all of my life I didn't really have a job from which to retire, so I guess I will never really be retired unless I enter a home or until I die. So it is difficult for me to call what I am doing a vacation.

Certainly we have taken a vacation from our homes and the daily upkeep inherent in those dwellings.  And we are taking a vacation from our dogs; although I don't think Al would ever want our dogs to hear those words. Also we have taken a vacation from grandparenting, although that is not really work and something from which I would need a vacation as some grandparents might.  What we have done is stepped outside of our normal, everyday life in an attempt to gain a different perspective. My definition.

We are currently in Richmond, Virginia.  Not exactly the vacation capitol of the United States. Al and I are here because of his desire to tour confederate battlegrounds with two of his cousins. Several years ago, having been invited to a wedding on Long Island, we decided to take a road trip and visit battlegrounds along the way. As I had never visited any sites of the Civil War in my trips up and down the east coast, being more of a yankee than a southerner, I was all in.

Beginning in Georgia we popped the book Killer Angels into the cd player and began our trek towards Pennsylvania and Gettysburg, the main subject of our interest.  I cannot remember the exact chronology  of the trip now, but the first battlefield we stopped at was Antietam. It was the second day; we were fresh from a night's sleep and a day of Killer Angels, and we were eager to bond through this experience.

Quickly I learned, however, whatever I had expected from this trip, it would not be about bonding. Antietam, also called the Battle of Sharpsburg, was the bloodiest, single day battle in American history. Sobering to think about, beyond sobering to walk the small fields where over twenty thousand men died, were wounded, or just went missing.

Getting back in the car, continuing to listen to the events at Gettysburg in great detail, we stopped at another battlefield along the way. Even as I look at maps I cannot remember the name of that battle, nor the details of the fighting that occurred there. I can remember talking to a park ranger who described how the soldiers would move from ditch to ditch and ridge to ridge in the pursuit of their ideals. But what I most remember is the feeling of shutting down.

Late in the afternoon we pulled into Gettysburg and checked into our hotel. Two days of driving, two days of listening to The Killer Angels, and two battlefields into our vacation I felt what I can only describe as shell shocked. My husband was eager to go out and get the lay of the town so we did a quick car tour planning our assault the following day. Returning to the hotel we passed a theater wherein a movie about Gettysburg was ongoing; a must see. After some discussion and disbelief on my husband's part, Al went to the movie I went to a nearby restaurant and had a glass of wine.

Bright and early the next day we began at the park center which included a marvelous museum, a diorama and a film to provide background to the driving tour we would embark on after lunch. Lots and lots of information for the historian we carry within, if we are to be well educated.

I am, if not well educated, interestingly educated. With both nursing and fine arts degrees, my childhood included living in the very disparate cultures of France and Japan.  And like many children I had a love of reading, particularly biographies and historic novels; but I did not enjoy history. It was in my first art history class, as an adult, that I developed a real interest in, and genuine love of, history. Nothing in any of my myriad art history courses, however, prepared  me for Gettysburg.

Driving around the town and the surrounding battlefields, where somewhere between forty-six and fifty-one thousand soldiers were wounded or killed in a three day battle, I completely lost my enthusiasm for both the trip and my husband. His curiosity, while normally very attractive to me, nearly resulted in him being abandoned along Cemetery Ridge. And while I very aware of my propensity to shift into overload in times of stress and places of over stimulation, I had never, at any time, experienced such complete disdain for another human being. Fortunately for him, when pressed, he climbed into the car and we continued on our way to Long Island in silence.

I think we did finish Killer Angels on that trip. Maybe on our return home after some lovely visits to other cultural attractions and family gatherings. I honestly don't remember. But as I sit here today my husband is out with his cousins visiting yet another battlefield and I am getting ready to spend the day with my friend Rosie. Perhaps we'll poke around Richmond and enjoy another incredible fall day. Whatever we do I will be remembering what vacations are all about; compromise arising out of understanding and negotiation. No battles in this marriage this trip. The vacation is not over, however; tomorrow we head to Washington DC.

Gardening or Yardwork?

Today Ace Hardware sends me a message reminding me that it is time for fall clean-up. This morning it feels like fall. Cool breezes accompany us on our walk about town and the dogs have a spring in their step. Yesterday I began cleaning out the flowerbed and, overcome with heat, dreaded the mountains of tree trimming and weed pulling that waited in the wings. Then unexpectedly there is this gift of cool air and suddenly this morning feels like a good time to work.

Saturday we are leaving for a ten day trip. Garbage pick-up is tomorrow, which here in Augusta includes yard waste. So whatever I do after tomorrow will sit in a pile, out front, until next week. Anything I don't get done will be waiting when we get back. For me that is the greatest motivator of all; I will have a much better time knowing that I am not coming home to this jungle.

Like most of the southeast, Augusta has been inundated with rain this summer. Many of our drought tolerant plantings of the past few years have been drowned by the incessant rain; they need to be pulled up. The more tropical plants have grown unlike anything I have seen in the near thirty years I have lived here. However now that the daily torrent has stopped many of those plants are dying for lack of water. It is not feasible to continue watering to the degree that they have become accustomed. So more dead things to pull up or cut down, prune or just pray over.

The first order of business, after getting tools out of the garage, is to clean up dog poop. With two dogs, that can take thirty minutes, invariably piles will be missed and I will step in them. My husband doesn't believe in cleaning up after our dogs, he thinks the nutrients are good for the soil. I think it is just an excuse not to do it.

This morning, like any time we walk the dogs, Snook immediately has to poop. Snook is Al's dog and being under good voice control, she walks without a tether. My dog is Ginger; she is more rambunctious so on city streets I keep her leashed. I also carry clean-up bags. Usually Al ignores the dog's business and walks on, but this morning an owner pulls out of his driveway just as Snook is doing her thing and confronts Al with the clean-up question. It is the first time that I have seen Al pick up after the dog, with my bag.  Today I decide to forego the clean-up process and ignore the well fertilized yard. I am on poop patrol strike. If he can pick it at the request of a stranger Al should be able to pick up poop in his own yard. Enough on that subject.

It is my understanding that years ago, upon completing construction, the backyard was pretty much laid bare with the exception of some trees that ringed the small property. In the intervening years Al has added an assortment of trees and shrubs, and a small lawn with little design in mind. In the time since we have been married I have had a couple of different gardeners draw designs which will give shape to the area but they all tell us to remove the very old, dying wax myrtles. This is where my husband draws a line in the sand. No tree will be cut down unless it falls first.

This is my second marriage and although I don't have a lot of experience with men and yards, I find it unusual that both men I married have an inordinate attachment to anything growing in the ground; volunteer or otherwise. For example we have two vitex that Al planted in the corner of the yard. They are essentially trashy trees. There is nothing attractive about them, they are scrubby and awkward looking with limbs growing at odd angles; for some reason Al loves them. The wax myrtles, while also somewhat trashy, have very sculptural trunks that add depth and interest as well as shade. I could make a case for saving them if they weren't already dying and loosing limbs on a regular basis.

So, like my ex-husband, Al never wants to get rid of anything. But unlike my first husband who loved yard work and really could not bear to pull even the most pitiful volunteer tree or shrub out of the ground, I surmise Al's reluctance may stem from his dislike of yard work. Al does not believe in yard work, or at least any that requires his participation. He is a gentleman gardener.

Every year Al turns the earth and amends the soil to make ready for the planting of tomatoes. And peppers. And eggplant. He spends days getting ready, sometimes getting the soil analyzed to determine the necessary ingredients to nurture the little seedlings. And every year we have a bumper crop of peppers, nobody could eat the amount of peppers we harvest, and very few tomatoes. And by this time of year, as the plants are dying, he eyes them longingly, hopefully, refusing to pull them up..

It is important to explain why the tomatoes need to go. When you walk in the front door of our house there is a view straight through the living room and dining room to the kitchen, wherein the ceiling is vaulted two stories with eight foot long windows framing the view. Through those windows one can see three old, graceful ligustrum behind which grows lush, very dense, bamboo. In front of the ligustrum, in a brick raised bed are tomato plants. Old, gnarly, yellowing tomato plants. And they will stay there through the first freeze, which comes sometimes in late October, or late November or even into December. This means we will be looking at those nasty plants unless I sneak around and pull them out one at a time. Which should be easy, because at some point Al starts avoiding the garden and I am the only one out there working; however our driveway is off an alley behind the house. Every day we enter through a gate and walk past the vegetable garden to get in the house.

Lest I sound ungrateful or complaining I must say that Al hires yard workers who tend the grass and edge occasionally and even blow the leaves away. Today as I write someone is outside blowing the first layer of leaves that have fallen from the tulip poplars that tower over the front of our house. However, despite the fact that my husband is willing, it is almost impossible to find someone to prune trees, pull weeds, trim shrubs; in other words to garden. If you do find this mythical worker the cost will either be exorbitant or you will have to direct their every move because your worker will have less knowledge of gardening than you do. So, I am by default the gardener and it is with this authority that I called in yet one more landscaper to discuss our back yard.

The plan was drawn up this spring but it needs some tweaking. I think it may be too formal but at least it has good bones design-wise. There is variation in shape, color and form; repetition in species and size. There is movement, drawing the eye around the landscape, inviting investigation. There is attention to detail in every bed and walkway. And finally, there is a husband willing to concede the loss of the wax myrtle and the vitex.

So as I sit here writing the vitex is no longer. The two trees were cut down limb by limb and the remains dragged to the street for tomorrow's trash run. The bamboo is thinned and offerings made to friends in need of water loving plants. The oak leaf hydrangea, that has been clinging creepily to the windows on the west side of the house, has been pruned letting in light once more. There is still work to do but there is space in the yard that wasn't there yesterday and I can breathe a little easily just knowing that. Now to clean my shoes.

The Road to Home

Home is a word which historically sparks little emotion for me. Growing up in the military, as an "army brat" we had no home. We lived in a lot of places, and in a lot of houses, but none that ever felt like home.

The closest I ever came to having those feelings was returning 'home' to visit my in-laws after I was married. They lived in New Jersey in the same town where I went to high school and held every intention of making home someday, so I allowed myself an attachment I had never experienced before. But even my in-laws sold that house and moved to Florida.

Growing up without grandparents, my parents had no home base. Of course we would go 'home' to West Virginia where my uncles lived, and to Illinois at times where other family lived, when we were stationed somewhere close by. Never did those houses feel like home to me. Never was there one house where whenever I crossed the threshold I knew this was it, home.

More than a few years back I went to Italy with a group of friends. We rented a house outside of Florence for two weeks and used that as home base. After traveling around the countryside, to both small towns and large, we finished our trip with four days in Rome. Walking the streets of that city, along the banks of the Arno I had a sense of belonging. But the feeling that was most striking to me, that I remember very clearly all these years later, is getting off the plane in Rome when we first arrived. The plane was parked on the tarmac and it was necessary to walk to a trolley that would take us to the terminal. The moment my foot hit the ground, early in the morning after an all night flight, I had the strangest sensation. Home. I felt as if I had come home. I have held that as evidence of the longing for, and recognition of, what I am missing.

My husband bought this house twelve years ago, before I knew him. Stumbling upon it after graduating from law school and moving to Augusta, before he was married, before he had children, he told me how, when he first drove past this house he thought 'I'd like to live there someday.' It was an unusual aspiration for a young lawyer; a small bungalow on a nondescript street, with none of the glamour one might expect would engender that kind of yearning.

Almost thirty years, and two marriages later, my again single husband drove by this same house. Finding it sporting a 'For Sale by Owner' sign he jumped from the car, knocked on the door, and began the process of ownership and renovation. A small two bedroom bungalow is now a three bedroom stunner, with three fireplaces, a 'cook's kitchen', a library and a garage-bungalow out back. The garden is a work in progress but holding its own in the neighborhood. And yet from the street it still has an understated, hundred year old, curb appeal. Still it is not home.

I wish it was because it so home for my husband. So much so that he never plans on moving again. After a lifetime of moving, first with my father's career and then with my first husband, I cannot imagine that kind of loyalty. Although I do believe houses deserve loving ownership and think they respond to it. How that relationship, between home and owner is measured I do not know, but I believe it is a fact. And while I do love this house, an outer manifestation of my husband's creative self, and I do take care of it, it is not home. Not yet.

I don't really expect to feel at home, I realize. Two of my favorite childhood books were Black Beauty and Heidi. Reading them both repeatedly, I lingered over every word. The theme they have in common is constant displacement and uprooting. Only late in life does Black Beauty come home; Heidi is luckier and returns home to her grandfather when she is still young. I identified with both; hopefully, with longing, finding comfort in the idea that one could survive such upheaval.

Four years ago, after looking at houses for three summers, we purchased a small cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. It is technically my house; my name is on the mortgage and I pay the bills. But we found it together, chose it together and love it together. And suddenly, surprisingly, I feel like I have come home at last.

I am not sure I would have found it by myself. I am not sure I would have bought it by myself. I don't even know if I would have been looking for it by myself. But for my husband I might not even have come to the realization that I could have a home. But I have, and I do, and it has started me down the path of finding the mountain woman in me. The roots of my tree revealing themselves perhaps. Time will tell, but it is a good beginning as beginnings go.

Roots and Trees

Years ago I kept a journal. Writing almost daily I kept track of my dreams and thoughts filling on the average three books a year.  I am not sure when I quit that practice, I could go back and look, but at some point it fell by the wayside. Today those journals sit on a shelf in my mountain home, rarely read, never shared.

Journaling became a way of life after my mother died; returning from her funeral I sought therapy to deal with the panic attacks that began the summer before and again at the funeral. Writing was not the suggestion of the therapist, but a natural outflow of having kept sketchbooks while getting my fine arts degree. Very quickly, upon entering therapy, the sketching turned to the recording of dreams which followed the panic attacks. And the recording of dreams led to a recording of thoughts.

I have always been a thinker. For the longest time I assumed everyone had an interior life like mine, just like as I kid I assumed everyone could draw. Growing older I have developed close friendships, people with whom I share my private thoughts; at times I am met with blank stares and the changing of subjects but occasionally the response is just a straight forward "I don't think about things like you do." And occasionally there are the kindred spirits who welcome the exchange.

As I begin writing again I am not sure of my motivation; I do wonder if it is egotistical. But I think there is some obligation to pass on observations and experiences we find meaningful. A blog is easier than keeping a journal for sure, but wanting to share my thoughts, it is a vehicle providing access to those who desire to read them both now and in the future. I have been wanting to have a ceremony to burn my journals but have been reluctant because they seem so much a part of me, my process, and what I have to leave my children. And now grandchildren. With a new writing tool I find it easier to imagine that bonfire.

I don't know those who preceded me. I know where my father was born and lived until he joined the military in WWII, but I know very little about the people who raised him. My father was a fifth generation member of a family hailing from Raleigh County Virginia, now West Virginia. Thanks to a distant cousin I learned that my great, great, great, grandfather Thomas Dickens was born in 1785 in Montgomery County Virginia. He had one brother, Ephraim, two years older who was also born in Virginia. No one has yet determined the names and birth places of the parents. There isa book listing every known descendant of those two men, but very little detail of their lives or interests. No stories.

My mother was Hungarian, also born in West Virginia. Her father, my grandfather, Stephen Gyovai came from Csongrad, Hungary sometime in the early 1900's seeking a new life after his wife died. Leaving a family of children behind he brought his new wife, my grandmother Ethel Papai, to live with him in America. Together they had thirteen children, eight of whom survived childhood. The reason he left Hungary or what happened to the children he left behind, is a mystery to me. I don't know if they were grown or just left with relatives. Thanks to the internet I know the name Gyovai is popular in and around Budapest.

The circumstances surrounding our family history never mattered to me until I had a family of my own, and even then I was too busy to seek answers to the questions. It was when my grandchildren began to be born that I wanted to know about their family, to share those stories and facts with them when the time came.

As a child, like many children I imagine, I did not like my parents. More than that I had a deep dislike of them and the choices they made. At some point I remember making the decision to not be like them, to not need them, in fact to not need anyone. It was the way I propelled myself out of the bog in which they seemed mired; education, marriage to an educated person, was the vehicle I used to move away from my family. Interest in where they came from seemed like so many tethers keeping me down.

Over time my perspective of family has changed. I better understand my parents' dreams and the obstacles they encountered. I know that my family will always be part of me. And I have forgiven them, and myself, for that shameful fact. Currently I am reading the book Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi. My son offered it to me thinking it might lend some perspective on my father, but also on the men I married. It is certainly interesting in that regard but at one point the author discusses a conversation with the leader of Promise Keepers wherein he, the leader, is talking about his son:

" I didn't understand that then." Referring to his relationship to his own father. "I do now as a father. There's something of me in that boy, a mystery beyond all mysteries. As a father, I am the root, the trunk, upon which my boy is the branch. My history is his history.Who I have been is who he is. My heart is the boy's heart."

Reading it, the passage burned in my brain. Because isn't it something that we all feel as parents, and again as grandparents? And don't our children, and grandchildren, deserve the opportunity to know the tree, or trees, from which they spring? We can deny them, as I did, or we can embrace parts and deny others, which is also tempting, but the truth is that we come from all of it. And it is a mystery, and mystical. And while we are all different there are times when children are so different from their birth parents, or even grandparents, that knowing something about those who came before might be enlightening and comforting to the little oddball that seems to come out of nowhere.

I am a bit of an oddball. Taking hold of myself as a child I determined my own path with little assistance from my parents. Making mistakes along the way I was still able to move into a world unrecognizable by the family left behind in West Virginia. I have become an educated person, vital and interested in the world with great empathy for the people who reside in it. Some of that curiosity comes from the way I was raised, as a child tagging along as my parents moved around the world, and some of it probably comes from ancestors of which I have no knowledge. I know it did not reside in my parents. For them I am deeply saddened at times, but no longer angry or hurt. They did the best they could.

So I too endeavor to do the best I can. At every stage along the way I have struggled with my fears and desires to be someone worthy of being called mother, wife, teacher, but most importantly human. I have hoped to create an imprint that inspires and energizes those who know me, or who will know of me in the future. But most importantly I want to find meaning and joy in the daily comings and goings of my life. Writing is, and always has been, part of that endeavor. More now than ever.

Communion

Writing is a chore; truly. It is like counting calories. You make a pledge to do it every day, and very quickly you fall off the wagon and find yourself in the dust and dirt of some road you didn't even know existed. Straying onto random roads seems to be my life right now.

Yesterday we drove to Birmingham to have lunch with Al's cousin, his wife and daughter.  The very same daughter who lost her husband to cancer last Saturday. A week ago today. Which would all be fine if I knew the daughter, but other than saying "Hi" when we met at one family reunion or another in the last seven years, I am not sure we have ever spoken.

It is a strange feeling sharing a meal with someone you barely know, but it is particularly strange when the other person is in obvious emotional distress. In the southern way she was polite and made us comfortable but I could tell it was not easy. And because I did not know her husband it should have felt even more awkward. Except it didn't.

The daughter was incredibly gracious, asking questions throughout the meal, questions that helped her get to know me, giving me permission to do the same.  In the midst of three other people we focused to this task and a couple of hours later when we got in our car to leave I felt a kinship that was, and is, not really explainable.

I meet people in all kinds of circumstances. Rarely these days do I feel a connection. It is an odd thing but it seems to me that as people get older they close in the walls surrounding their psyche and admit fewer and fewer new players. So meeting this woman and finding her wide open, maybe because of her recent loss, her new grief or her gentle nature, I was surprised. I was even more surprised at my willingness to step in. Because I too am more closed off than I used to be.

I read a book recently by a Canadian author entitled The Impostor Bride. Late in the book two tangential characters, older women who share a grandchild, meet for the first time. They fall into polite talk but at one point one says to the other "What were you like when you were a girl?" and a dialogue opens. Later, in thinking back over the exchange, one of the two muses about how surprised she was by the connection. She knows she is loved, but very few people really care who she is or what she thinks anymore, and certainly she didn't expect to meet someone new who would care.  But here it was; a surprise. That is how I felt yesterday. Not only by the other's genuine interest, but by my genuine response.

I wonder if in the presence of grief, or any raw emotion, it is easier to cut through the societal boundaries to real discourse. If at those times we recognize, or admit, the unseen in the form of a stranger who genuinely cares. Because my caring was genuine; that my caring was welcome was what I found surprising.

I believe I am someone who is comfortable with death, and perhaps that is unusual. My grandparents were all dead and buried before I was born; I wasn't around older people until I went to nursing school and was confronted with elderly patients. That was short lived because my subsequent work as a nurse, and as an art teacher, centered around women and children and families. It was where my wounding occurred and thus it would be where my healing would commence. I did not recognize that at the time but certainly at some unconscious level I was seeking a safe, somewhat remote, place to nurture myself.

Not many people die in the areas I chose to work but occasionally, as a NICU nurse, I would deal with the death of an infant and thus the emotions of the bereft parents. Those instances were few and brief however; the deaths were often expected and the parents were often absent. The process of saving some and loosing other sick infants awakened me to the randomness of life and death. It was this awareness that helped me cope when I was confronted with my mother's death at the age of thirty-eight, a year older than the current age of my eldest son, and the passing of my father a year and a half later.

It was in the presence of my father that I had my first experience of not just death, but dying.  He was an alcoholic, a veteran of three wars, and courted death throughout his life. But it wasn't until my mother unexpectedly passed away that my father seriously begin moving toward his own demise, as only an alcoholic can do. It took him a year and a half. We had moved to West Point the summer before the winter of my mother's passing so I wasn't present for much of that time, nor was I aware of how lost he had become; the short visits home after my mother died did not allow much of a window into his intent.

A year and some months after we lost my mother, as we were on the road moving back to Augusta, I was tracked down by a sibling asking for my consent to a DNR for my just hospitalized father. Do not resuscitate. The joy of moving back 'home', which was Augusta, where not only had I lived for five years but where my parents and two of my siblings resided, was quickly extinguished.

My father did not die immediately, the call came in July and he died on September tenth, twenty-three years ago this past week.  That summer was horrendous; moving into a new house, transferring children into new schools once again, daily visits to the VA hospital, all contributed to a sense of displacement. There were times when he recognized me and times when he didn't. Times when he was kind and times when he was incredibly cruel. There were moments of hope that he would recover enough to return home and the moment when we knew that was no longer possible. And then there was the movement to a nursing home and, one week later, the call informing us that he was on his way back to the hospital in an ambulance.

Three of his four children gathered at the hospital that morning and stood by his bedside as he struggled to breathe. My father was a son of a bitch, a brutal abusive alcoholic much of our growing up years, but he was still my father and I had to play this out.  I had been at many births in my years as a nurse, and I am now aware how that work formed my thinking about death. We do not come into the world alone and I was determined my father would not go out alone. I stayed by his side as he drew his last breath.

Later I would have the honor of helping my father-in-law, a kinder man, as he lay dying. I was able to use my nursing to ease his pain and open the passage to his death.  My mother-in-law died seven years later and I was with her almost to the end, singing hymns as we waited for her son, by then my ex-husband, to return from out of town. But it was my older brother who taught me the most about dying.

Three years ago my brother Michael died shortly after his sixty-second birthday. He was only two and a half years older but he was my big brother in every sense of the word and deserves a whole post to do justice to the relationship we shared. But it was in his last few months that he was most excellent. Having recovered from throat cancer only two years earlier, his thoughts about living and dying were greatly formed by the time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he was generous in sharing them with anyone who cared to hear.

A month before Michael died I was able to visit him in Texas where he lived. Unlike previous visits we didn't do much, although at that time he was still trying to live so we walked a little and even went to a movie; but he was coming to terms with his death and he shared a lot of his thoughts. It was a mystical time for me and returning home I felt a sense of peace. Still, when I got the call telling me the end was near, I hopped a plane and returned to Texas.

Michael, thinking he had more time, had asked me to return after giving my other brother and sister a chance to visit. He asked it in person as I departed from my previous visit and on the phone a week before he died. When I arrived at his home at three in the morning I was not sure what to expect but was certain it was the right place to be.

My brother died that evening after a pain filled day. Hospice failed him. We were all very distressed by that failure. But when the help finally came, and he was at last able to rest, he died within moments. And I was able to be there with him and for him. And for me.

Being in the presence of death, of a human dying to this physical reality, is an experience of sadness but also of wonder and awe. And because I have been able to do that I think I was able to be with this new widow, a relative stranger, in her fresh, raw, grief. I don't know what that means for any future relationship but I know we connected on the physical plane we found ourselves yesterday, and that we held each other in love and regard. It was a wonder-filled experience and one for which I will always be thankful.

Life is a miracle. Death is something onto itself. I am sure it is part of the life experience and that if we shy away from it, remain afraid of death, we are missing out on some aspect of living that makes us fully human. After all, life may be about many things but most importantly shouldn't it be about becoming human? Within the human community? Communion is what I think about when I think about death; a communion of saints, a communion of angels, a communion of brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren. Communion in its purest form.  And if we fail to enter into communion with death I am not sure we are ever fully alive.

Life is a gift we are often told. It was in the presence of my brother as he died three years ago and, again yesterday, with my husband's cousin's daughter and her grief, that I was reminded of that truth.

A Longing for Wide Open Spaces

This morning's coffee has come and gone in a flurry of unforeseen activity.

It is Thursday.  We returned home yesterday from spending the previous night in Atlanta babysitting three of our grandchildren while their parents went to a Mumford and Sons concert.  Racing home, my husband packed up to go hunting and I got ready for my bridge group (I am only in the loosest sense of the word a member of this group) to play at my house for a change.  Later, after the break-up of the bridge game, I totally collapsed. Luckily dinner was leftover eggplant parmigiana, better for being leftover, and my husband contributed bounty from his afternoon hunt for an appetizer. The remainder of the evening was a blur.

After a hard night's sleep I was looking forward this morning to my leisurely coffee. Al was off to work and my intention was to head to my studio to sew. But in life plans often go askew. Expect the unexpected has become my recent mantra.  "What are you doing tomorrow?" queries my husband as he dresses for work.  "Nothing specific. What did you have in mind?" I reply, imagining an outdoor cafe and lunch for just the two of us.

"Well, I thought we might head over to Birmingham to visit my cousin Calvin and his wife Shirley."  he responds casually while tying his tie.  "Could you call Calvin and work that out? I wish I had more time but I gotta run to this mediation, And maybe you could check and see if we can get tickets to Carole's new play for tomorrow night."  Carole is another cousin's wife, and well worth whatever effort it takes to watch her in a performance. But this truly ends my leisurely morning.

My husband is a retired judge who still sits on the bench from time to time and also has a solo mediation practice. With the same secretary for over thirty years, one who did everything for him in the way of secretaries of the past, Al is very spoiled.  When he retired eight years ago he lost his secretary and with our marriage coming a year later he quietly began trying to shoehorn me into that vacant seat.  I chafe at playing that role; sometimes quite violently.  But today is not one of those days.

In the way of our rather nomadic life we are going to Montgomery this weekend to visit my son and his family, and admire the latest addition, four week old Andrew. Originally we had planned on spending two nights but knowing how exhausting a new baby can be, not to mention the three other children who make up the family, I had changed the plans to just one night.  Changed the house sitter. Opened my mind to another day and night at home, in my own bed.

It seems like lately we sleep in a lot of hotels. With four children in four different cities and ten fairly new grandchildren we stay on the road. And who ever sleeps well in hotels?  Strange sounds, smells, and lights all interrupt sleep patterns. And then there are the beds. Too soft, too hard, too scratchy, too, too. For the last four years there have been the additional transitions between our Augusta house and our mountain house. The change between the two totally different sleep experiences always causes at least one bad night, if not more. It seems I am always catching up on my sleep. I sigh in response to my husband's request, suggestion, inquiry. But today it is an inward sigh.

One of the many things that attracted me to my husband is his love of family. Being raised in the military, always in transit, never close to family, it is something I sorely missed growing up; even though I didn't identify that longing until I met people who had those close connections. And it was something I wanted for my children. My first marriage was to another army brat who never really felt the emptiness that seemed to define my life. Al is my second husband and his love of place and people has helped me to understand that deep void in myself and how to begin to fill it. So how could I say no.

Several of the relations that define Al are cousins; a handful of cousins who live, or have lived until recently, in Birmingham. Initially, with my son living in Montgomery, we delighted in the convenience and thought we would spend a lot of time visiting them; that was before the nomadic lifestyle set in. Even though Birmingham is only ninety miles from Montgomery it still requires another day to spend any quality time visiting there. Another day in a different bed.

This past week we got news that one of Al's cousins lost his son-in-law to cancer. It was unexpected.  The memorial service is planned for the end of September, a time when we are going to Virginia and Washington DC, with two other cousins, on a history tour. The son-in-law is not someone to whom my husband was close, a cousin's child's husband stretches even his familial bonds, but there is a need in him to attend the memorial service, to share in their sorrow. Hence the solution of this visit. And also the loosening of my restraints in tending to my husband's seemingly ever constant requests.

As I sit here writing I am not sure quite what I want to say. It is necessary to have boundaries. Mine are formed in reaction to childhood experiences, as are most peoples I think, and they got stronger as I got older. But it is also important to know when to let down those walls and fences that keep us from joining others in their experience. My husband's attempts to mold me into the void left by his secretary are annoying. At times I cannot separate what a secretary would do from what a wife and partner can and should do. I am getting better but it is still a struggle. But I do love this marriage for providing me with the opportunity to grow beyond my boundaries, to open myself to the wide open spaces of a partnership where boundaries are not necessary. Even if only for an instant.

Now I need to text the house sitter; like many people of his generation he does not answer his phone.

Quilting in a storm....

Sitting in the library my husband built I drink my coffee and ponder my day. Having returned from the mountains a few days ago I have visited friends by phone and in person, gone to several movies, and caught up with the laundry. I have picked out fabrics to begin a new quilt, cut and laid out the pieces. Today is the day I start sewing.

My first experience with quilts was through a gift my father gave me when I graduated from high school. I think it was to make up for his not coming to my graduation. It was a small quilt made by his Aunt Nancy, my great aunt. I don't remember her, I am sure I met her at some point, but she was my dad's favorite. With his mother dying when he was seventeen, my father spent much time at Nancy's house and always visited her when he went home to West Virginia. So on one of those visits he returned with two quilts and I got my pick. A black and white twin size blanket that I would take to nursing school and around which I decorated my room.

I don't know what happened to that quilt. I did not value its worth, I am sorry to say. Having no idea of the labor that went into making that simple covering, it passed out of my hands. I am the opposite of a hoarder, so it is not surprising, but that is a discussion for another time.

Many years later while working on my art degree I was invited to attend a sewing group. They met once a week and many of the women had children my sons ages so I went whenever I could. I did not sew at that time, although I had sewn since I was a child, so I would take my sketch book and work to fulfill the requirements of whatever class I was taking at the time. Sometimes it was painting, sometimes figure drawing, sometimes wood carving or metalwork; all required keeping a sketchbook.

Periodically the group would halt whatever individual work they were doing and gather to create a quilt. It was usually a going away present, as many of the attendees were temporary residents; the military and the medical college brought many transients to town. At those times I would stop drawing and join in sewing. The quilt would be framed at my across the street neighbor's and we would come and go throughout the weeks adding our stitches to the project. It was through this effort that I was introduced to the art of quilt making and understood what I had so lightly let pass through my hands many years before.

That sewing group was almost thirty years ago.  All the children we shared stories and concerns about are now adults with children of their own.  My oldest is thirty-seven with three of his own, my younger son and his wife just had their fourth child. From that time I remembered the desire to make quilts of my own and began when our first grandchild was born.  Now there are ten and while I have not made ten quilts, as some were made by other grandmothers, I have made six. The last stitch was put in place in a hotel room not so many weeks ago. Now I endeavor to explore my own art of quilt making.

Quilts are significant on so many levels but to me they speak to process. The process of selecting the fabics new and old; the process of selecting the pattern, traditional or free form or some variation in between; the process of cutting the fabric, laying out the top and slowing piecing it together. Then there is the making of the 'sandwich' which consists of the top, some filling and the backing. It is at that point that one begins the long hours of sewing that sandwich together.

I am somewhat of a traditionalist. I piece by machine but I sew the quilt together by hand. I don't have a frame; I want my work to be portable to take it back and forth to the mountains so I use a hoop. I gather old fabrics and new and try a different design with each quilt I make. I am a process person. I love the process involved in art and have always engaged in forms that require a lot of process over time. Sometimes I forgo the product in favor of the process; once the process is achieved, mastered, I may move on to the next endeavor. It drives others crazy at times.

What I love about quilt making, and functional art in general, is the rich history behind the various forms. All art was initially functional; whether it served in the function of daily living or for ceremonial purposes it had a specific purpose. Rugs, blankets, dinnerware, clothing, over time all became more and more decorated as we had time to pursue that ideal. With the industrial age many handicrafts have been lost, replaced by machine work, their value minimized. For me, the problem with machines is that they are cold, coming between the creator and the creation; they tell no story.

Handmade artworks, whether they be functional or purely decorative, carry the energy of the maker.  The many hours that went into creating the object required love, attention, concern and care.  Laughter accompanied the groups that came together, whether to fire clay or create a quilt, laughter was woven into the fabric. And oftentimes tears accompanied the laughter.

Life is a process. We are conceived and carried to fruition in the bodies of our mothers wherein her laughter, tears, joy and fears are woven into our very being. We are born, live and die in a process laden culture. And we often fail to notice it is the process, not the product, that makes life worthwhile. If we valued the process, we would value the product so much more, that life that we let pass through our fingers as easily as the quilt my great aunt made for me, if not with me in mind, so many years ago.

Writing in the Shifting Sands

I write all the time.  I write weeding the garden.  I write while washing dishes.  I write while walking the dogs. Where I fail to write is here at my computer.  I am not sure why, but no matter how I express my determination to sit down daily and write I cannot  follow through. What is this failure of follow through about I wonder?

I am an artist.  Years of work, of pursuing a fine arts degree, entitles me to call myself ARTIST.  My determination to get my degree was legion; with two children, a husband, and a house to manage it was not an easy endeavor.  Married to a career army officer I often found myself alone managing the household; despite the obstacles I enrolled in school, no minor feat, and begin furthering my education.

My first effort at becoming educated, after high school, was to enroll in a school of nursing.  Not to be confused with a college education, a school of nursing is a three year program attached to a hospital whereby students are afforded many, many hours of on the job training.  The education was restricted to the sciences and practical aspects of nursing.  At seventeen I recognized the learning would be limited and impoverished compared to what I had come to expect from my high school curriculum, but the attraction of being done in three years, with a full scholarship, was very powerful.  Particularly after my mother told me that there was no money to send me to college, and even if there were it would be reserved for my brothers.  My two, just bordering on being juvenile delinquent, brothers. So it was nursing school for me; being twenty at graduation would allow plenty of time to pursue an art degree.

So, twenty I was when I graduated and, surprisingly, in love with the field of nursing. Joining the army, I married my first love who had just graduated from the military academy at West Point.  Off we went on the great adventure, living in Germany after our respective basic courses.  Fast forward five years and I was no longer in,the army, no longer working as a nurse, but a stay at home mother with my first child.  Again, not so surprising this time, I was in love; being a mother was a world unto itself.  Two years later when my second son was born I couldn't have been happier.  And yet lingering in the shadows was a dream of something different, something more than being someone's wife and someone's mother.

During those intervening years my husband graduated from law school and passed the bar, while continuing his military career. He encouraged my desire to further my education and when I enrolled in my first college classes our children were two and four; the option for night classes seemed perfect.  I thirsted after the education and imagined getting a degree in psychology to further my nursing in the future. As an incoming student my status left me with few choices and the only psychology class available at night was in art therapy. It was good; perhaps I will be an art therapist I reasoned. After sixteen weeks it wasn't the nurse or the budding psychologist who emerged from that first class but the long silent artist.

The next six years involved several career moves for my husband and concurrent school changes for me. My children had to be nurtured through those moves, and as I lost credits I also lost semesters until finally I emerged with a bachelor of fine arts from Augusta College, in my now home town.  I was lauded and feted, winning several awards and engaged as an elementary art teacher. Having been an army brat, five years in one town was the most I had ever lived anywhere; I felt like I was home for the first time in my life. And then the army made its move, and giving up my teaching job we made ours.

Many things have happened in the intervening years since that relocation; perhaps the most significant has been my inability to pursue excellence in my field. Not true, I pursue excellence, endeavor to practice my work diligently, receiving numerous awards and recognition along the way, but the failure is in staying focused on one thing to the exclusion of all else. I am like the grasshopper surprisingly enough; nothing could shock me more as I write these words.

So today as I find myself divorced and remarried, grandmother to ten grandchildren the oldest of whom is six, homeowner of a marvelous mountain house, I am pulled in many directions. Daily. My art has changed from sculpture to painting to functional art to craft. My nursing has changed from obstetrical, to neonatal, to child psych services to none. My teaching has changed from elementary ed, to public service projects, to private instruction to none. All that has ever remained even a little constant is my writing; I have always written. But that does not explain why I write in my head and not on paper or keyboard. Fear of failure? More like fear of accomplishment.

My mother's words come back to me at times like this. "Who do you think you are?" she would ask.
"You are too big for your britches."
"You are not as smart as you think you are."
"You may get good grades but you are not as smart as your brother, you just work hard."
She has been dead now for over twenty years and yet those messages live on in my head; all those old 'tapes' that play and replay paralyzing one to to their worth.

My friend Jayne came to visit me in the mountains recently, where I now live part time, and she told me to write. "You have something the world needs to hear," she told me. "Even if it is a small audience, there is an audience out there who is waiting to hear what you have to say."

I don't know if that is true but I do know that writing in my head is making me a little crazy; all those loose words rolling around like so many marbles.  So for now I write. Again. No promises; just promise beckoning from the shadows.