Ping Pong Babies and Touching God

Just the other day I came upon a baby bird on the path to the house next door. I almost stepped on it right as I spied it, in fact it is quite amazing I saw it at all. It was a baby junco, with feathers, about the size of a ping pong ball. It had stormed the night before and apparently the bird had fallen out of its nest.  Looking around however I could not see one. I did see two adult birds, parents, chittering in the rhododendron beside the path. So sorry little bird I said as I went on my way down to the little cabin next door.

I came back about thirty minutes later and checked to see if the baby was still there. It was. Not making a noise. Still with feathers. Still the size of a ping pong ball. Going about my business I went into the house Several minutes later I came back out to study the problem.

We have a feeder in the back of our house. Not something that is easy to do with the squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and even bears that all love bird food. And there are all kinds of birds that frequent the feeder, including juncos. In fact juncos are about the most numerous guests to the box feeder; they entertain us daily as we drink our coffee. So if they are so numerous why worry about one baby bird I thought.

I think it was precisely because they do entertain us that I could not get that ping pong feathered ball of a bird off my mind. Juncos are the first to hop in the feeder in the morning, never waiting until it is actually hung but jumping on board as I swing it out away from the squirrels. They watch us in the bedroom as we let the dogs out and wait patiently for someone to bring out the feeder. They visit all day long.

In addition to birds we have big gray squirrels who manage to jump anywhere I hang the feeder. There is no such thing as out of reach. We have smaller red squirrels who are new to the environs this year who are also miniature acrobats. And we have what I can only think are baby squirrels who seem like they are going to be gray but have a tinge of brown still. I am not sure. But these little squirrels have become our latest entertainment.

I sit on the deck a lot at this time of year. Reading or writing or sometimes just sitting. Last night I was writing as the sky darkened and the thunderstorms rolled in. This morning I am in the kitchen, my usual winter nesting place, because although it is spring it is still raining.  Otherwise I would be out on the deck drinking coffee with the birds. The little squirrels hate that.

These squirrels are new this year. They have found the feeder and have become very territorial. I know this because whenever I am outside they spend an inordinate amount of time barking at me. Yelling I think. Tail twitching, racing up and down the tree next to the deck, and jumping on and off the railing. But unlike the older gray squirrels, they will not jump into the feeder if I am outside. So this has become my new entertainment. Simple pleasures.

We also have new birds this spring.  In April we were inundated with tiny pine siskins. They flocked to the feeders and when there was no available opening they just hovered around the deck waiting for spaces to open up. And they crapped all over the railing, the deck and some of the furniture. For several days I did not put the feeder out as a way to encourage them to move on. It seemed to work. Or maybe I was lucky and it was just time for them to continue their migration.

Just recently a catbird, or several catbirds, have arrived to dine with us. They are pretty birds, with that unusual call that reminds me of my old siamese cat; hence the name. I am not sure how many there are, certainly a lighter colored female and a darker gray male but we only see them one at a time. They are somewhat territorial, so they are trying to work it out with the other bigger birds who have prior claim, specifically the cardinals and the rufous-sided toweys. So far so good. But it is the juncos that are the constant in our backyard, even more than the chickadees, and I feel a certain loyalty to them. So back outside I go.

This time I could see the baby was shaking, cold now that it was on the ground and probably hungry and thirsty. I spoke reassuringly to the parents then came back inside to talk to my husband. "There is a baby junco outside."

"That's too bad" he said, "does it have feathers? There's not much we can do."

"I know, I cannot even see a nest it might have fallen out of, but I cannot just leave it there." My husband closes his reader and looks at me. "What do you want to do?"

"I have an old nest. Maybe we can put him in it and try to put it back in the tree. I have to do something."

The baby was still there when we returned with the nest. I gently scooped it up and it immediately opened its mouth wide hoping to be fed. A parent bird swooped by my head. I plopped it in the nest and handed the whole thing to my husband who put it in a fork of the rhododendron. Being that he is taller than me it was our best hope. Then we went back inside.

A short while later some cousins showed up for a lunch date. The carpark is in front of the house where we had put the nest so as we went out to greet our guests I went over to check on the baby. It was quiet for the first time. No parents chitting or hopping around on the branches. The nest was on the ground upside down. I picked it up. There was no baby.

So maybe we saved the baby. I don't know. It was nowhere to be seen, and even our dogs had no whiff of it when they came out moments later. I am not sure what happened. Maybe the parents were able to move the baby from the nest. Although if that was true why couldn't they have picked it up off the ground? Again I don't know. But I do know that I felt better doing something rather than letting the inevitable happen. And I know a lot of baby birds die every year; in fact it is probably good that a lot of them don't make it. But this year, in this place, perhaps one baby didn't die but made it back to the nest for a second chance.

I will watch the juncos more closely this summer wondering if one of them is little ping pong. Sparing the parent birds their obvious grief lightened my own load that day. But holding that tiny feather-weight baby in my hands for a brief few seconds felt like touching God. It was a transcendent moment. Who knew?

Musings on High School

This year I, along with an old friend, have decided to initiate a high school reunion. Not unusual one might say. People have them all the time. I have gone to two with my husband in the last eight years; the third one I politely declined. But for me there is a feeling that while a high school reunion might be filled with possibilities it also might be fraught with missteps.

Our high school was in New Jersey and the fall of 1964 saw the welcoming of our freshman class which numbered just around three hundred. The school was overcrowded and undergoing an addition. Consequently the freshman went to classes in the afternoons from twelve noon until five pm. Finally, having arrived at high school we were denied access; all the upperclassmen attended in the morning.

The school was fed by two middle schools, called junior highs back then, from two neighboring townships. I had moved to New Jersey the year before and had attended one of the junior highs for my eighth grade year. One year later I found myself with equally as many new people to meet and try to get to know. In retrospect I think we might have gotten closer as a class just because we were alone in the school all those afternoons of that first year.

Our sophomore year the new addition opened and we joined the upperclassmen as well as the incoming freshman. A lot of people to sift through. It was a challenge but also fun as we found ourselves in classes with older boys. And older girls?

I really don't remember much about those first two years; my experience comes more into focus during my junior year when I became an officer of the class, was inducted into the National Honor Society, joined the women's softball team and joined the ranks of the dating. It was during this year that I became aware of leaders in the school and gravitated towards becoming one.

Our class lacked focus and leadership was part of the problem. While there was a class dues structure to raise funds, the school also facilitated fundraising events to accumulate the necessary monies to provide for senior year expenses.

Traditionally, the senior class treasury paid for everyone's yearbook, for their senior prom and for a senior trip. Our class was woefully underfunded halfway through our junior year and it became apparent that we would have to make some tough choices. Being very vocal I got drafted to run for senior class president. Supported by some close friends, we decided to make a run for it, to raise some consciousness and enough dollars to have the kind of senior year every class had had before us.

The system was skewered towards the senior class as most of the fundraising was their prerogative. So while it wasn't as impossible as it seemed we had been lazy in paying our dues, and inspiring people to both pay back dues and work at various fundraising events was a challenge.

And yet it wasn't. We had great fundraising events. A battle of the bands, a dance before school, the traditional Junior-Senior Variety Show, the  refreshment stand at the football games. There are sure to be other events that I am forgetting but those stand out in my mind.

Having completed almost all of my core curriculum, I took two art classes that year. The first period art class became our war council room, and we made posters and banners to spread throughout the school at home football games and every imaginable fundraising opportunity. We became Mighty Great 68 and it was a mighty great year.

We sailed into graduation with money to spare, enough to make a gift to the school, and had a fabulous time spending it. And when that night finally came I felt connected to people in way I never had as an army brat moving, moving all the time. I remember sharing my feelings with a friend as we escaped a graduation party and drove around in his brother's convertible. I was very sad to see high school end. And I was right to be.

It would take me over twenty years to find a group of friends with whom I would forge those kind of connections. And because I was an army brat I walked away from high school without maintaining any of those early friendships. It is now, almost fifty years later, that I realize what an amazing experience high school was for me, what a loss those relationships has been.

High School is the place we come into as children and leave having had our first brush with adulthood. For many of us those years are fraught with pain and not fitting in; for me they became filled with a sense of belonging that I had never experienced before. I was right to be sad that it was over; but it was also right to walk away, to know that I wasn't ready to have those kinds of connections in my life.

I envy those who are ready, and do maintain those feelings of connection. I have several friends who get together with old high school buddies on a regular basis. There is always the danger of being limited by those old friendships, of not being seen for anything other than what you were at eighteen, but there is also the feeling of being known.

When my older brother died five years ago I felt like I was cut loose from my moorings. He was the last person who knew me as a child, and had witnessed me becoming the adult I am today. I still grieve that loss.

And so as I, we, work towards this fall reunion I look forward to seeing people who knew me as a fledgling adult. I look forward to seeing that alien girl/woman again as a part of me. Because those years have informed so much of what I have done with my life and who I am today. At a time when I feel myself to be fully grown, deciding if I have one more grand work left in me, it will be nice to visit with people who shared my first grand work.

The trepidation comes with fear of trying too hard to entertain, to be the center or a group which is no longer, to be something for everyone. The joy will come with being a facilitator for a new group and to stand back and see what happens. No matter what, the stretch will come from being with people who were a witness to my emerging self; and to trust them with who I am today. And to be a witness to their lives. If you are open to it, everything comes full circle.

Eli

Dogs have always been a part of my life from the time I was a child, and although we have two dogs now I have always thought of myself as more of a cat person. It seems that you are one or the other, cat or dog, but being married to Al who is a hunter and has always had dogs, dogs have prevailed in our life together.

As a child we did not really have pets. We had animals that came in and out of our lives mostly as a result of my dad being in the army. We were living in Texas when he brought home a jackrabbit from work one day. I am not sure how it came to be in their possession but since the soldiers were not allowed to have animals often times my father returned from work with some kind of animal that needed a home. That particular rabbit had been found injured and while we tried, it did not survive in captivity,

Another time, when we lived in France, he brought home a large sheepdog. We had no yard to contain it and so soon after he came to live with us the dog escaped.  His name was Blue and we combed the streets for hours looking for him, but because we did not speak the language and could not communicate our need for assistance we had to give up the search as darkness fell. Blue was never seen again.

Later while still in France, after moving into government housing, my father brought home a goose. It was a domesticated goose and was kept in a pen behind the apartment building in which we lived. To this day I have no idea where it came from but find it odd how we small children became attached to it. One day while we were out the neighbors cooked that pet. I was distraught and felt horribly deceived by my father who was complicit in the distraction necessary for the bloody deed to be done. And while my father continued bringing home animals, mostly dogs, wherever we resided I never really attached to any of them again. I was seven years old.

Eventually my mother took to choosing her own dogs and her heart's desire became a series of silver miniature poodles. By this time I was in high school, and while the puppies were cute no one took the time to train them and they were destructive. One after another my mother labelled the untrained dogs as "bad" and gave them away only to replace them a few months later with another tiny version of the previous bad dog. My little sister played with them like dolls and no matter what the name my father called them all Missy, after the first doomed dog. I took to my closed-door room forbidding their presence until I left for nursing school.

In my own marriage we had a series of cats. They were good cats, as cats go, but because of my husband's military career it was difficult to provide a consistent environment. Over the years our housing ranged from apartments, to townhouses, to free standing houses. After a series of moves with our first two cats, who were around for the births of both of our sons, we left them in Texas with a lawyer who had a farm. They had become accustomed to moving freely indoors and out and our housing in Chicago would not accommodate those habits. Shades of my childhood hung over that decision.

Eventually, several years later, we succumbed and got a puppy. My younger son was five, had always been afraid of dogs, but out of the blue one day starting carrying around an imaginary puppy. Paul had a lot of anxiety resulting in many fears, but amazingly found ways to overcome most of them on his own. But the dog fear needed a little help so with the next move, a house with a yard and Paul's involvement, we began the search for the right dog.

My husband wasn't a dog person either so it was purely out of love for our child that we made the leap. Cassie was a Boykin Spaniel puppy, came highly recommended by our family vet, and was the perfect dog. Well almost. She had a digging problem, but also a burying problem. I had been drying clothes outside whenever the climate allowed, and Georgia was where nature and clothes drying collaborate well. However as Cassie grew, into a not very big dog mind you, she developed the habit of pulling clothes off the line and burying them. She was so accomplished that we rarely found the things she buried, up to and including adult sized white shirts. It was the dog or the clothes line and so I left off hanging out clothes. That was almost thirty years ago.

While she was a good size for a house dog what we didn't realize was that Cassie was from a hunting line. She would stay inside with her people in the evening but only sleep outside except in the coldest of weather. So after six years and a move to New York, where once again we would be living in army quarters with no yard, we left Cassie with my sister. The idea was that they would foster her and we would get her back when we moved to a more appropriate place. Two years later we returned to the same post only to realize we could not possibly reclaim our dog from our niece and nephew who has grown to love her as much as we did. I never visited my sister without that dog greeting me happily. It was my first real experience of dog love.

I have had several more dogs since Cassie. Sophie, a black lab who we acquired after I was followed on a run through our neighborhood one evening, and who lived to be sixteen. She stayed with my husband after our divorce just because she was so old. Charlotte, a chocolate lab, who came as a puppy when Sophie was twelve and rejuvenated that old dog to live another four years. Both have gone on to their reward. In my second marriage we have Snook, a nine year old American Water Spaniel who Al brought home while we were dating, and Ginger an English Cocker Spaniel who came as a christmas gift almost seven years ago. They are good dogs.

In our dog family I must include our sons' dogs because they have also been a part of our lives. Abby was my younger son's first dog after he married Anna. She was a spirited Golden Retriever who loved my first grandbaby when she was brought home six years ago. They have had many pets along with and after Abby, but now Finn fills Abby's collar; a foundling Golden he watches dutifully over their four children. I have enjoyed them all but it is Eli who has become a dog of my heart; the dog who finally cracked my resolve to never get attached to another pet.

Eli came to my older son Jay and his wife Millie one Saturday eight years ago. He was an odd mixture but very handsome and full of life. Eli moved with the kind of energy that made me smile from the day I met him until the last day I saw him. He always greeted me enthusiastically. Part beagle, Eli was a talker who would proceed to barking if you encouraged him at all. And my husband Al always encouraged him; me not so much.

Eli was a really good dog, the perfect dog for my son and his wife, but he was an incredible dog when it came to welcoming babies into the family. Five years ago when I stayed with one week old Kira for an hour so her parents could go out for a cup of coffee and feel some sense of normalcy, Eli stayed by my side every minute. Never taking his eyes off me or the baby he moved in tandem with me down the hall or into the kitchen. And that was just the beginning of Eli's call to duty.

For the next year, until Kira was crawling and began pulling on his ears or tail, Eli stayed by her side. He slept under her crib every night until one day, without fanfare, he moved back into the master bedroom where he had slept since he was a pup. When John came home from the hospital two years after Kira he began the vigil all over again. And again when Simon came home seventeen months after John. There wasn't much respite in the intervening months but that didn't matter to Eli. His duty was self-determined and he accepted it without complaint.

I think one of the most interesting things about those years was how little Eli seemed to sleep. If the babies were awake he was awake. If we were holding the babies while they slept he was awake by our side. He only seemed to sleep under their cribs when they were in them. Whenever I came to help he greeted me with his normal enthusiasm and then watched me like a hawk. His protective instincts seemed always on high alert and yet he never appeared threatening to any of us.

By the time I publish this Eli will have gone on to his next life. He has been diagnosed with a cancer so invasive that when the vet saw him last week his life expectancy was only about two weeks. He has probably been sick for a number of months but he has never complained. Declining gradually, it was hard to see that there was anything wrong until the last few weeks. It comes as a shock to all of us, but especially to my son and his wife, who thought they had years to bring a puppy into the home for Eli to train up in the ways of a good dog.

It is so like Eli to leave this way. Always steadfast, always reliably the same, it is hard to imagine a dog that could ever be as good as Eli. He accepted his responsibility quietly and happily. He loved all equally although I always sensed I was special to him. That's just the kind of dog he was, he made everyone feel special. But I think, hope, another dog will come into their life; one who will not be so responsible perhaps but who will teach the children about responsibility and help them remember Eli.

Go in peace Eli, wherever you are I hope you are barking up a storm and playing with old friends. And getting lots of good dog sleep, You have earned it little buddy.

Writing in Relationship

Life sometimes surprises me. No that is not true, life is always surprising, it is me that is only sometimes aware of that fact. And when I am aware these days it mostly makes me laugh. And sometimes cry.

I don't really aspire to be a writer. I more desire to be conscious and aware, so when I am once again caught off guard by life it makes me realize how much I live without really thinking, something I so readily accuse others of doing. It is writing that helps me live more thoughtfully.

For a period of years, ten perhaps, beginning in my late thirties, I kept a journal and wrote almost daily. That practice grew out of keeping a sketchbook while getting my art degree and entering therapy when my mother died, but dwindled over time as I became busier living than observing. At least that is what I thought. And my journals were, are, private; I still have them, dusty and stacked on the highest shelf in a bookcase. I haven't read them in years but I think there is much that is repetitive inside the covers of those unlined books, and probably much that is not worth reading let alone remembering. But this morning I am wondering if they bear rereading, like history that could, if observed, not be repeated.

It is that time of night, morning, that is so early I cannot have coffee. Three o'clock is the time when I have had enough sleep to not be tired but not enough to carry me through the following day. It is the time I used to get up and paint when I was in my painting years, which parenthetically coincided with my journaling years; as often as I would paint at that time of day/night I would write.

I did not only write/paint in the wee small hours of the morning (okay I stole that but isn't it lovely?) in fact that was the exception more than the rule. It was just the time when things felt most urgent. Is that what I am feeling now as I write, a sense of urgency?

I will turn sixty-four soon, in a few weeks actually. Sixty-four is the year of the great Beatles song, whose music defined my coming of age and the beginning of consciousness. Sixty-four is also the age my mother was when she died unexpectedly. Both of those thoughts have occurred to me as I come into this birthday. And yes there is a sense of life speeding up, of things becoming more pressing, of a need to become more thoughtful once again. All of which describe a sense of urgency.

My husband is looking forward to his fifty-fifth high school reunion this coming month. I have another friend who just returned from her same fifty-fifth gathering. I have no such desire to attend a reunion but I can understand the pull. High school, particularly the end of high school and particularly if one had a good experience of high school, is a time when all things are possible. Everything is pregnant with possibility. We are coming into adulthood fresh faced without the scars of age. We have not yet made bad choices or mistakes that will define us. It is a time of Camelot.

Sixty-four, or seventy-three as my husband will be on his next, soon, birthday, is a time when one begins to wonder what is still possible. When choices may have hardened into patterns and lifestyles that we never saw coming. Or for some of us, when looking back, we realize how life is full of wonderful surprises that also never saw coming. And for most of us it is some combination of the two; there are some regrets that cannot be undone but there are people and experiences in our life that have, and continue to, enriched it beyond anything we could have imagined at seventeen or eighteen. And everything that happened between the two can fill volumes.

That is why I write. At first because I wanted to live a conscious life, something that came out of my painting and my therapy, and now because I want to share that process and the result of that desire with others. Not many mind you, mostly close friends and children and hopefully someday grandchildren too, but some. Anyone really who finds their way to my table and wants to share the fare.

My older son and his wife spend an hour every morning sitting and being, reading, writing (for he too journals), and now they have two of their three children join them for that quiet time. It is a lovely way to start the day and a way for a family to be together in their separateness. It is a practice I find enviable and surprising but mostly nourishing. Nourishing for the individuals but also for the group who are together in a way they will not be ten or twenty years from now. It is a practice in mindfulness.

My mindfulness is more haphazard and random. It comes at odd hours and odd days, when I am just waking from a sound sleep or when I am engaged in solitary work which I do so often as an artist. When I am walking or when I am gardening also. It comes more often these days and like my son, (and Winnie-the-Poo), mindfulness will bring me to my thoughtful place which is sometimes to my laptop and this blogspot. It is a practice that seems essential for these chaotic times and these diminishing years when some things are beginning to seem impossible.

And because there is that feeling dwelling around the edges of everything I do these days, the wondering if this is the last time I will have an experience of travel or renovating a house, two things that I dearly love, I want to be conscious in the process of deciding what I will give up and what I will fight to continue doing. I do not want any thing or any person I love to slip away without the awareness that I am letting it or them go. In the busyness of life it is easy to do that, and while they will find others to fill whatever void I leave I may just be left with an emptiness of my own making, becoming the product of my own laziness. The opposite of mindfulness.

So yes, life continues to surprise me, and I am fortunate that those surprises are delightful and fill my being with joy for the most part. And the answer to the question "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" is a resounding yes. Nourishing my soul is my job and my responsibility, writing in relationship is but one tool to accomplish it.

"Amen, sister", as my friend Rosie would say.

In the Mountains

In the mountains
Lungs inspire mo' better air
Toes weave with foldover grasses
Eyes drink morning light
Light changes

In the mountains
Light changes throughout the seasons
Throughout the day if allowed
Daytime sounds arrive from town
on the backs of ridges then recede
Night changes everything

In the mountains
Night changes everything
beckoning spirits of all ages.
Light fires with
modern day torches.
Watch sparks fly returning
mingling with the stars of always.
Urging remembrance
letting time fall away. Sit still.

In the mountains

Parent, Child, Parent

I don't remember exactly when I was orphaned. I know we are all orphaned at some point; recently for some of my friends it has been in the seventh decade of life. The first inkling for me came when I was three or four, standing in front of a picture window in an empty living room wishing someone would come home and take care of me. The second time was the summer I was thirteen, this time sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor crying as I listen to my mother call me a whore. In front of my aunt and uncle while my father stands silently by.

Thirteen year old girls are not easy but mothers of those not quite women can be brutal. The year preceding that summer, my eighth grade year, was especially difficult for both my mother and me. She was turning forty and finding herself back in the work force as a way to steady the income my father had always played fast and loose with. At the same time I stubbornly drew a line and refused to wear the little girl clothes she preferred to buy; twin versions my younger sister, by eight years, was also wearing. I drew the line and she left me out there in no man's land; none of the new income would flow my way for clothing or much else for that matter.

So I began babysitting to earn my own wardrobe, and the sewing I had played at since I was nine was put to use copying skirts other girls bought at the new mall in town. With a new sense of freedom those earnings gave me I took advantage of my mother's absence to range farther afield after school, and along with other girls my age developed an interest in boys. Playing basketball, baseball, meeting at the bowling alley and the occasional movie were new ways to pass the time when not in school. In the summer those activities were augmented by trips to the beach on the army bus provided expressly for that purpose. That bus became a source of independence and we used it to hang out; many fun filled hours were enjoyed as we rode back and forth to the army recreation center. Still in all I was not a bad child.

This particular Saturday I was playing baseball with a group of kids at a field near our house; it was mid morning and we had managed to corral a not too large group and field two teams. It was noteworthy because if there were enough boys the girls would be relegated to the sidelines to watch rather than join in the game. It was 1964 and women's lib was but a phrase in Life magazine; it had no place on the playgrounds of my youth. My Aunt Bobby and Uncle Andy were visiting from Illinois and while in years past I rarely left their side, things had changed over the winter and my uncle had embarrassed me by singing "Peggy Sue" the previous night at a little league game. So I escaped the house bright and early that day.

The game was just getting under way when my parents drove by with my aunt and uncle in tow; my father stopped the car and my mother ordered me home. I was not sure what I had done or why my brother was allowed to stay but I left and, embarrassed once again, returned home. It would be several hours before they came back but before I could say a word my mother tore into me; me and my "little whore friends" and our forays into the nearby woods was the subject of her diatribe. I fiercely defended myself and although in retrospect I know it sounded like sass I didn't care at that point. Horribly embarrassed the damage was done; never again would I derive any pleasure from those family visits. Never again would I feel the same need to please my mother.

As I sat there on that floor, where I am sure I landed partly out of my own drama, all I could think about was how I did not need these people; how I did not need anyone. I knew I was nothing like the people who were raising me and indeed would never, ever, aspire to be anything like them. And while I understood that I could not leave, there was no escaping the hold they had on me, I also knew in that instant that the only way out was education. And that I could, and indeed would, work four more years to get the grades I needed to go to college.

I am not sure how exact those thoughts were in my head at that moment, but the gestalt understanding of what it would take to survive the family, the parents, I had been born to was completely formed at that time. I was orphaned again in the kitchen of that house and it was my own doing.

Almost twenty-five years later when my mother died, followed shortly by my father, I was orphaned for the last time. I had become educated, married well and had two beautiful sons, but the desire to be someone's child never left me. I went away to school but came back time and again seeking a mother and a father. They were not there; not the way I needed them. The visits were short lived but always I came back trying to be the good daughter, giving them the opportunity to be the good parents.

I am not sure we ever stop needing to be someone's child. At some point, in order to achieve some real kind of maturity, we have to become the parent to our own little orphan. Luck was on my side the winter my mother died; it was the right time and place to learn to love the abused little girl I carried inside. It was not easy and it did not happen overnight but I know now that my parents were just orphans themselves, suffering from their own brokenness, and that they had neither the energy nor the skills to heal themselves.  They just passed that wounding on to their children. But what I also know is that the greatest gift they gave me was dying young. I do not grieve for those lost years.

The Christmas before my mother died in February we were once again standing in her kitchen and she was telling me about the chest pain from which she was suffering. She knew she needed a cardiac cath but she could not leave my father long enough, trust him enough, to go and have the procedure that would have saved her life. She died two months later of a massive heart attack. My father was drunk when I arrived for the funeral and except for the actual day she was buried he remained drunk until the day he died eighteen months later. It was his drunkenness that forced me to face my demons and enabled me to become the parent to my own child.

It was not easy and I am not sure it is ever finished, this work of raising yourself, but it becomes easier over time and the results are incredibly rewarding. However what I have come to understand is that while being a parent to my own child had to be learned, trying to parent my parents was a job I had assumed early without thought or preparation. So now, even as I find myself healed from those early parental wounds, I realize I am drawn to parent other orphan children. The mother in me cannot stop. And it is not the loving mother but the disapproving mother that often takes over. Because while I am compelled by the orphans staring out of the eyes of friends and lovers I am also frustrated and irritated with them for not being their own good parents.

Forgiveness is the underlying desire of this place I find myself. Forgiving my parents, forgiving myself, forgiving my friends and siblings and lovers. But also seeking the forgiveness of my children for being the imperfect parent I was and am. Because while I have come to understand that all parents are flawed it has been especially difficult for me to accept my own imperfections. I do think my sons and their wives are light years ahead of where I was at their ages, and certainly where my parents were at any age; they understand forgiveness in a way I have only just begun to appreciate. And I, their mother, find myself the beneficiary of that wisdom. Children and parents...the circle of life. Easy to embrace, challenging to hold.

Artist-in-Waiting?

It's too early for coffee; perhaps I will go back to sleep I think as I write. Perhaps.

I have been immersed in a renovation project, actually two projects, this year. I have not taken time to write or make art but I have worked steadily keeping my head down and until the last few days slept well. As this second project comes to a close I find myself unable to sleep. Or not able to sleep for long periods; the full nights sleep that has been a trademark of the last ten years eludes me.

My friend Rosie has come to visit for the month of August. She is renting the other little house just down the hill that we own here in the mountains. She came with hope and desire; a desire to spend time writing by herself and writing with me. I have not written since last December, and I was not sure that I would again until Rosie came.

In years past whenever I was having trouble sleeping it often felt as if God was calling me. I am so busy during the daylight hours I don't seem to hear that call and so it is the middle of the night that I get awakened with an image or a thought, or more than a thought; an essay. That is what happened tonight.

Rosie is retired from a life of dedicated work. She was a nurse, a teacher, a visionary in the medical community and finished her career as CEO of a retirement community. Rosie saw the need, found the resources and initiated the project in our hometown. It is a model program. Now she has retired, with a pension and her savings and moved back to Virginia. That  is why she is visiting for a month and not just a week or a weekend.

I am not retired. True I am sixty-three years old and have had various jobs from which I might have retired if I had dedicated my life to any one, or even two of them. What I do now, over the last ten or twelve years is just an extension of that job life, but not really a job. I am not sure what to call it or what it is.

Upon graduating from school in the early seventies I took and passed my boards to become a registered nurse. I dedicated myself to that work, first in the army then in teaching hospitals until I had my first child. Then I became a stay-at-home mom. Another child and four years later I became possessed of the itch to go back to school. Always a mom, a cub scout den mother, a PTA worker and elementary school art mother I began taking classes, succeeding in getting my BFA in studio art. Six years had elapsed. I still had no career but I was hired as an art teacher in the very school I had just volunteered hundreds of hours. An award of sorts.

Married, at the time, to an army officer there was no doubt that he had a career. A graduate of West Point and Rutger's Law School his work defined career in our family. Many of my shifts in jobs, and school, were precipitated by his reassignments. So just as I caught my breath and began to have a feel for teaching we moved to New York; where a BFA did not qualify me to teach art. After getting my children settled in a new home and a new school, and a couple of months of pondering my existence, I went back into nursing; a field I had left thirteen years earlier.

It was overwhelming at first but as I got back in the rhythm I remembered why I loved this work. More jobs would follow, some in nursing, some in the arts. At the same time I became truly immersed in painting, something I had not felt particularly called to when getting my degree. It was invigorating and inspiring to be me, a healer of sorts, a teacher and community activist. I felt at the top of my game.

At that point I decided to turn the non-profit I had conceived and given birth to over a period of ten years to a new director and retired to my home and studio to make serious art. Only it did not come. Sure we bought a new house and I, being enamored of the Bloomsbury Group, painted every room. Applying faux finishes and decorative murals throughout, the work was beyond invigorating. But my studio work lanquished.

I made my first mosaic in that house after a trip to Italy with women friends. Many more mosaics would follow. In the hope of saving my marriage there was a move to another house, this time with major renovations and redesign projects. The budget dictated saving the old kitchen cabinets so I designed the space around them, painting every surface; beautiful painting some of it. New rooms were added with skylights and large windows overlooking a wide deck and garden-in-waiting. I did finish the house but I could not save my marriage or finish that garden.

I bought a condo and invigorated by the previous project began another renovation. This time I did more of the work myself, ripping out carpet and scraping the cement slab until it was returned to a near virgin state, I stained and sealed it. I applied mosaics in the kitchen and bathroom. I hired painters for the walls. It was a little gem and when it sold two years later there was a nice profit to show for my labor.

Remarrying, this time to a judge albeit another lawyer, I moved into his newly re-imagined, renovated early twentieth century home. I kept my studio in a rundown warehouse of a building nearby and got busy with the business of marriage, again. A month later a tree fell on the old garage and we began the process of building it back, this time inspired by the idea of an arts and crafts era "gar-low", combination garage bungalow.

I drew up the plans and my husband and I, acting as our own contractors, began the paperwork necessary to rebuild in a historic district. The little shed garage grew into a six hundred square foot building with a studio above that now serves as our media center and overflow guest space. It was almost two years in the making, as well as another few months of landscaping and hardscaping, but finally we were done in the spring of 2008. The next summer we bought a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina.

That is where I sit now as I write this. Well not exactly in that cabin but in the slightly larger, newly renovated, bungalow up the hill. After completing the remaking of the little cabin three years ago we began feeling the urge to have something just slightly larger. With more bedrooms for little visitors. And a flat driveway. So here I sit.

It is a quarter to five in the morning and we are getting ready to host a family reunion in two weeks at the new house. Last week the painters finished the exterior while the masons completed the front entrance; today the contractor comes back to install the mantle on the new fireplace. Since April we have torn out windows and doors, moved and added walls, opened old doorways and restored rooms to their former function. I have painted, and re-painted, kitchen cabinets and walls, stained paneling and helped refinish floors. Imagining, and re-imagining, the front entrance I moved brick and stone trying to maintain the original concept while improving the function. Only then did we call the masons. Much of the work has been about function although aesthetic concerns were never secondary to the process.

Sitting here in the master bedroom there is the feeling of a nest. Unintentional but after all we are in the trees. Not much was changed in this room; new french doors that actually open to the deck and painted walls come to mind. There is a new seagrass rug on the floor under the bed and a new quilt on top of it. It is the most recent in a series of quilts I began making when our first grandchild was born seven years ago. Fabricated over the past winter while we were waiting to get started on this newest project, it is the first one made for myself, and I love being in this bed.

So what next is the question everyone has begun asking. Are you doing any art is the other. I always make excuses when that query comes along; new marriage, ten grandchildren in seven years, new houses. But now as I look back I see all I have been doing is my art. For the last fifteen years, since leaving the employ of the Art Factory and striking out on my own.

Everything I have done, every house constructed or renovated has been a work of art. In addition to conceiving the space and drawing the plans I have created mosaics and floorcloths and quilts to fill the homes. Some I have left behind. Some I have carried with me. Some are yet to be made. But the conception, the inspiration and the energy are all there, waiting.

So yes I am a working productive artist and no, I am not retired. Hopefully I never will be. But this time I have plans to finish the garden; after I paint the bathrooms.

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.