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.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Friday, October 11, 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
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.
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.
Friday, September 20, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The Road to Home
Home is a word which historically sparks little emotion for me. Growing up in the military, as an "army brat" we had no home. We lived in a lot of places, and in a lot of houses, but none that ever felt like home.
The closest I ever came to having those feelings was returning 'home' to visit my in-laws after I was married. They lived in New Jersey in the same town where I went to high school and held every intention of making home someday, so I allowed myself an attachment I had never experienced before. But even my in-laws sold that house and moved to Florida.
Growing up without grandparents, my parents had no home base. Of course we would go 'home' to West Virginia where my uncles lived, and to Illinois at times where other family lived, when we were stationed somewhere close by. Never did those houses feel like home to me. Never was there one house where whenever I crossed the threshold I knew this was it, home.
More than a few years back I went to Italy with a group of friends. We rented a house outside of Florence for two weeks and used that as home base. After traveling around the countryside, to both small towns and large, we finished our trip with four days in Rome. Walking the streets of that city, along the banks of the Arno I had a sense of belonging. But the feeling that was most striking to me, that I remember very clearly all these years later, is getting off the plane in Rome when we first arrived. The plane was parked on the tarmac and it was necessary to walk to a trolley that would take us to the terminal. The moment my foot hit the ground, early in the morning after an all night flight, I had the strangest sensation. Home. I felt as if I had come home. I have held that as evidence of the longing for, and recognition of, what I am missing.
My husband bought this house twelve years ago, before I knew him. Stumbling upon it after graduating from law school and moving to Augusta, before he was married, before he had children, he told me how, when he first drove past this house he thought 'I'd like to live there someday.' It was an unusual aspiration for a young lawyer; a small bungalow on a nondescript street, with none of the glamour one might expect would engender that kind of yearning.
Almost thirty years, and two marriages later, my again single husband drove by this same house. Finding it sporting a 'For Sale by Owner' sign he jumped from the car, knocked on the door, and began the process of ownership and renovation. A small two bedroom bungalow is now a three bedroom stunner, with three fireplaces, a 'cook's kitchen', a library and a garage-bungalow out back. The garden is a work in progress but holding its own in the neighborhood. And yet from the street it still has an understated, hundred year old, curb appeal. Still it is not home.
I wish it was because it so home for my husband. So much so that he never plans on moving again. After a lifetime of moving, first with my father's career and then with my first husband, I cannot imagine that kind of loyalty. Although I do believe houses deserve loving ownership and think they respond to it. How that relationship, between home and owner is measured I do not know, but I believe it is a fact. And while I do love this house, an outer manifestation of my husband's creative self, and I do take care of it, it is not home. Not yet.
I don't really expect to feel at home, I realize. Two of my favorite childhood books were Black Beauty and Heidi. Reading them both repeatedly, I lingered over every word. The theme they have in common is constant displacement and uprooting. Only late in life does Black Beauty come home; Heidi is luckier and returns home to her grandfather when she is still young. I identified with both; hopefully, with longing, finding comfort in the idea that one could survive such upheaval.
Four years ago, after looking at houses for three summers, we purchased a small cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. It is technically my house; my name is on the mortgage and I pay the bills. But we found it together, chose it together and love it together. And suddenly, surprisingly, I feel like I have come home at last.
I am not sure I would have found it by myself. I am not sure I would have bought it by myself. I don't even know if I would have been looking for it by myself. But for my husband I might not even have come to the realization that I could have a home. But I have, and I do, and it has started me down the path of finding the mountain woman in me. The roots of my tree revealing themselves perhaps. Time will tell, but it is a good beginning as beginnings go.
The closest I ever came to having those feelings was returning 'home' to visit my in-laws after I was married. They lived in New Jersey in the same town where I went to high school and held every intention of making home someday, so I allowed myself an attachment I had never experienced before. But even my in-laws sold that house and moved to Florida.
Growing up without grandparents, my parents had no home base. Of course we would go 'home' to West Virginia where my uncles lived, and to Illinois at times where other family lived, when we were stationed somewhere close by. Never did those houses feel like home to me. Never was there one house where whenever I crossed the threshold I knew this was it, home.
More than a few years back I went to Italy with a group of friends. We rented a house outside of Florence for two weeks and used that as home base. After traveling around the countryside, to both small towns and large, we finished our trip with four days in Rome. Walking the streets of that city, along the banks of the Arno I had a sense of belonging. But the feeling that was most striking to me, that I remember very clearly all these years later, is getting off the plane in Rome when we first arrived. The plane was parked on the tarmac and it was necessary to walk to a trolley that would take us to the terminal. The moment my foot hit the ground, early in the morning after an all night flight, I had the strangest sensation. Home. I felt as if I had come home. I have held that as evidence of the longing for, and recognition of, what I am missing.
My husband bought this house twelve years ago, before I knew him. Stumbling upon it after graduating from law school and moving to Augusta, before he was married, before he had children, he told me how, when he first drove past this house he thought 'I'd like to live there someday.' It was an unusual aspiration for a young lawyer; a small bungalow on a nondescript street, with none of the glamour one might expect would engender that kind of yearning.
Almost thirty years, and two marriages later, my again single husband drove by this same house. Finding it sporting a 'For Sale by Owner' sign he jumped from the car, knocked on the door, and began the process of ownership and renovation. A small two bedroom bungalow is now a three bedroom stunner, with three fireplaces, a 'cook's kitchen', a library and a garage-bungalow out back. The garden is a work in progress but holding its own in the neighborhood. And yet from the street it still has an understated, hundred year old, curb appeal. Still it is not home.
I wish it was because it so home for my husband. So much so that he never plans on moving again. After a lifetime of moving, first with my father's career and then with my first husband, I cannot imagine that kind of loyalty. Although I do believe houses deserve loving ownership and think they respond to it. How that relationship, between home and owner is measured I do not know, but I believe it is a fact. And while I do love this house, an outer manifestation of my husband's creative self, and I do take care of it, it is not home. Not yet.
I don't really expect to feel at home, I realize. Two of my favorite childhood books were Black Beauty and Heidi. Reading them both repeatedly, I lingered over every word. The theme they have in common is constant displacement and uprooting. Only late in life does Black Beauty come home; Heidi is luckier and returns home to her grandfather when she is still young. I identified with both; hopefully, with longing, finding comfort in the idea that one could survive such upheaval.
Four years ago, after looking at houses for three summers, we purchased a small cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. It is technically my house; my name is on the mortgage and I pay the bills. But we found it together, chose it together and love it together. And suddenly, surprisingly, I feel like I have come home at last.
I am not sure I would have found it by myself. I am not sure I would have bought it by myself. I don't even know if I would have been looking for it by myself. But for my husband I might not even have come to the realization that I could have a home. But I have, and I do, and it has started me down the path of finding the mountain woman in me. The roots of my tree revealing themselves perhaps. Time will tell, but it is a good beginning as beginnings go.
Roots and Trees
Years ago I kept a journal. Writing almost daily I kept track of my dreams and thoughts filling on the average three books a year. I am not sure when I quit that practice, I could go back and look, but at some point it fell by the wayside. Today those journals sit on a shelf in my mountain home, rarely read, never shared.
Journaling became a way of life after my mother died; returning from her funeral I sought therapy to deal with the panic attacks that began the summer before and again at the funeral. Writing was not the suggestion of the therapist, but a natural outflow of having kept sketchbooks while getting my fine arts degree. Very quickly, upon entering therapy, the sketching turned to the recording of dreams which followed the panic attacks. And the recording of dreams led to a recording of thoughts.
I have always been a thinker. For the longest time I assumed everyone had an interior life like mine, just like as I kid I assumed everyone could draw. Growing older I have developed close friendships, people with whom I share my private thoughts; at times I am met with blank stares and the changing of subjects but occasionally the response is just a straight forward "I don't think about things like you do." And occasionally there are the kindred spirits who welcome the exchange.
As I begin writing again I am not sure of my motivation; I do wonder if it is egotistical. But I think there is some obligation to pass on observations and experiences we find meaningful. A blog is easier than keeping a journal for sure, but wanting to share my thoughts, it is a vehicle providing access to those who desire to read them both now and in the future. I have been wanting to have a ceremony to burn my journals but have been reluctant because they seem so much a part of me, my process, and what I have to leave my children. And now grandchildren. With a new writing tool I find it easier to imagine that bonfire.
I don't know those who preceded me. I know where my father was born and lived until he joined the military in WWII, but I know very little about the people who raised him. My father was a fifth generation member of a family hailing from Raleigh County Virginia, now West Virginia. Thanks to a distant cousin I learned that my great, great, great, grandfather Thomas Dickens was born in 1785 in Montgomery County Virginia. He had one brother, Ephraim, two years older who was also born in Virginia. No one has yet determined the names and birth places of the parents. There isa book listing every known descendant of those two men, but very little detail of their lives or interests. No stories.
My mother was Hungarian, also born in West Virginia. Her father, my grandfather, Stephen Gyovai came from Csongrad, Hungary sometime in the early 1900's seeking a new life after his wife died. Leaving a family of children behind he brought his new wife, my grandmother Ethel Papai, to live with him in America. Together they had thirteen children, eight of whom survived childhood. The reason he left Hungary or what happened to the children he left behind, is a mystery to me. I don't know if they were grown or just left with relatives. Thanks to the internet I know the name Gyovai is popular in and around Budapest.
The circumstances surrounding our family history never mattered to me until I had a family of my own, and even then I was too busy to seek answers to the questions. It was when my grandchildren began to be born that I wanted to know about their family, to share those stories and facts with them when the time came.
As a child, like many children I imagine, I did not like my parents. More than that I had a deep dislike of them and the choices they made. At some point I remember making the decision to not be like them, to not need them, in fact to not need anyone. It was the way I propelled myself out of the bog in which they seemed mired; education, marriage to an educated person, was the vehicle I used to move away from my family. Interest in where they came from seemed like so many tethers keeping me down.
Over time my perspective of family has changed. I better understand my parents' dreams and the obstacles they encountered. I know that my family will always be part of me. And I have forgiven them, and myself, for that shameful fact. Currently I am reading the book Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi. My son offered it to me thinking it might lend some perspective on my father, but also on the men I married. It is certainly interesting in that regard but at one point the author discusses a conversation with the leader of Promise Keepers wherein he, the leader, is talking about his son:
" I didn't understand that then." Referring to his relationship to his own father. "I do now as a father. There's something of me in that boy, a mystery beyond all mysteries. As a father, I am the root, the trunk, upon which my boy is the branch. My history is his history.Who I have been is who he is. My heart is the boy's heart."
Reading it, the passage burned in my brain. Because isn't it something that we all feel as parents, and again as grandparents? And don't our children, and grandchildren, deserve the opportunity to know the tree, or trees, from which they spring? We can deny them, as I did, or we can embrace parts and deny others, which is also tempting, but the truth is that we come from all of it. And it is a mystery, and mystical. And while we are all different there are times when children are so different from their birth parents, or even grandparents, that knowing something about those who came before might be enlightening and comforting to the little oddball that seems to come out of nowhere.
I am a bit of an oddball. Taking hold of myself as a child I determined my own path with little assistance from my parents. Making mistakes along the way I was still able to move into a world unrecognizable by the family left behind in West Virginia. I have become an educated person, vital and interested in the world with great empathy for the people who reside in it. Some of that curiosity comes from the way I was raised, as a child tagging along as my parents moved around the world, and some of it probably comes from ancestors of which I have no knowledge. I know it did not reside in my parents. For them I am deeply saddened at times, but no longer angry or hurt. They did the best they could.
So I too endeavor to do the best I can. At every stage along the way I have struggled with my fears and desires to be someone worthy of being called mother, wife, teacher, but most importantly human. I have hoped to create an imprint that inspires and energizes those who know me, or who will know of me in the future. But most importantly I want to find meaning and joy in the daily comings and goings of my life. Writing is, and always has been, part of that endeavor. More now than ever.
Journaling became a way of life after my mother died; returning from her funeral I sought therapy to deal with the panic attacks that began the summer before and again at the funeral. Writing was not the suggestion of the therapist, but a natural outflow of having kept sketchbooks while getting my fine arts degree. Very quickly, upon entering therapy, the sketching turned to the recording of dreams which followed the panic attacks. And the recording of dreams led to a recording of thoughts.
I have always been a thinker. For the longest time I assumed everyone had an interior life like mine, just like as I kid I assumed everyone could draw. Growing older I have developed close friendships, people with whom I share my private thoughts; at times I am met with blank stares and the changing of subjects but occasionally the response is just a straight forward "I don't think about things like you do." And occasionally there are the kindred spirits who welcome the exchange.
As I begin writing again I am not sure of my motivation; I do wonder if it is egotistical. But I think there is some obligation to pass on observations and experiences we find meaningful. A blog is easier than keeping a journal for sure, but wanting to share my thoughts, it is a vehicle providing access to those who desire to read them both now and in the future. I have been wanting to have a ceremony to burn my journals but have been reluctant because they seem so much a part of me, my process, and what I have to leave my children. And now grandchildren. With a new writing tool I find it easier to imagine that bonfire.
I don't know those who preceded me. I know where my father was born and lived until he joined the military in WWII, but I know very little about the people who raised him. My father was a fifth generation member of a family hailing from Raleigh County Virginia, now West Virginia. Thanks to a distant cousin I learned that my great, great, great, grandfather Thomas Dickens was born in 1785 in Montgomery County Virginia. He had one brother, Ephraim, two years older who was also born in Virginia. No one has yet determined the names and birth places of the parents. There isa book listing every known descendant of those two men, but very little detail of their lives or interests. No stories.
My mother was Hungarian, also born in West Virginia. Her father, my grandfather, Stephen Gyovai came from Csongrad, Hungary sometime in the early 1900's seeking a new life after his wife died. Leaving a family of children behind he brought his new wife, my grandmother Ethel Papai, to live with him in America. Together they had thirteen children, eight of whom survived childhood. The reason he left Hungary or what happened to the children he left behind, is a mystery to me. I don't know if they were grown or just left with relatives. Thanks to the internet I know the name Gyovai is popular in and around Budapest.
The circumstances surrounding our family history never mattered to me until I had a family of my own, and even then I was too busy to seek answers to the questions. It was when my grandchildren began to be born that I wanted to know about their family, to share those stories and facts with them when the time came.
As a child, like many children I imagine, I did not like my parents. More than that I had a deep dislike of them and the choices they made. At some point I remember making the decision to not be like them, to not need them, in fact to not need anyone. It was the way I propelled myself out of the bog in which they seemed mired; education, marriage to an educated person, was the vehicle I used to move away from my family. Interest in where they came from seemed like so many tethers keeping me down.
Over time my perspective of family has changed. I better understand my parents' dreams and the obstacles they encountered. I know that my family will always be part of me. And I have forgiven them, and myself, for that shameful fact. Currently I am reading the book Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi. My son offered it to me thinking it might lend some perspective on my father, but also on the men I married. It is certainly interesting in that regard but at one point the author discusses a conversation with the leader of Promise Keepers wherein he, the leader, is talking about his son:
" I didn't understand that then." Referring to his relationship to his own father. "I do now as a father. There's something of me in that boy, a mystery beyond all mysteries. As a father, I am the root, the trunk, upon which my boy is the branch. My history is his history.Who I have been is who he is. My heart is the boy's heart."
Reading it, the passage burned in my brain. Because isn't it something that we all feel as parents, and again as grandparents? And don't our children, and grandchildren, deserve the opportunity to know the tree, or trees, from which they spring? We can deny them, as I did, or we can embrace parts and deny others, which is also tempting, but the truth is that we come from all of it. And it is a mystery, and mystical. And while we are all different there are times when children are so different from their birth parents, or even grandparents, that knowing something about those who came before might be enlightening and comforting to the little oddball that seems to come out of nowhere.
I am a bit of an oddball. Taking hold of myself as a child I determined my own path with little assistance from my parents. Making mistakes along the way I was still able to move into a world unrecognizable by the family left behind in West Virginia. I have become an educated person, vital and interested in the world with great empathy for the people who reside in it. Some of that curiosity comes from the way I was raised, as a child tagging along as my parents moved around the world, and some of it probably comes from ancestors of which I have no knowledge. I know it did not reside in my parents. For them I am deeply saddened at times, but no longer angry or hurt. They did the best they could.
So I too endeavor to do the best I can. At every stage along the way I have struggled with my fears and desires to be someone worthy of being called mother, wife, teacher, but most importantly human. I have hoped to create an imprint that inspires and energizes those who know me, or who will know of me in the future. But most importantly I want to find meaning and joy in the daily comings and goings of my life. Writing is, and always has been, part of that endeavor. More now than ever.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Communion
Writing is a chore; truly. It is like counting calories. You make a pledge to do it every day, and very quickly you fall off the wagon and find yourself in the dust and dirt of some road you didn't even know existed. Straying onto random roads seems to be my life right now.
Yesterday we drove to Birmingham to have lunch with Al's cousin, his wife and daughter. The very same daughter who lost her husband to cancer last Saturday. A week ago today. Which would all be fine if I knew the daughter, but other than saying "Hi" when we met at one family reunion or another in the last seven years, I am not sure we have ever spoken.
It is a strange feeling sharing a meal with someone you barely know, but it is particularly strange when the other person is in obvious emotional distress. In the southern way she was polite and made us comfortable but I could tell it was not easy. And because I did not know her husband it should have felt even more awkward. Except it didn't.
The daughter was incredibly gracious, asking questions throughout the meal, questions that helped her get to know me, giving me permission to do the same. In the midst of three other people we focused to this task and a couple of hours later when we got in our car to leave I felt a kinship that was, and is, not really explainable.
I meet people in all kinds of circumstances. Rarely these days do I feel a connection. It is an odd thing but it seems to me that as people get older they close in the walls surrounding their psyche and admit fewer and fewer new players. So meeting this woman and finding her wide open, maybe because of her recent loss, her new grief or her gentle nature, I was surprised. I was even more surprised at my willingness to step in. Because I too am more closed off than I used to be.
I read a book recently by a Canadian author entitled The Impostor Bride. Late in the book two tangential characters, older women who share a grandchild, meet for the first time. They fall into polite talk but at one point one says to the other "What were you like when you were a girl?" and a dialogue opens. Later, in thinking back over the exchange, one of the two muses about how surprised she was by the connection. She knows she is loved, but very few people really care who she is or what she thinks anymore, and certainly she didn't expect to meet someone new who would care. But here it was; a surprise. That is how I felt yesterday. Not only by the other's genuine interest, but by my genuine response.
I wonder if in the presence of grief, or any raw emotion, it is easier to cut through the societal boundaries to real discourse. If at those times we recognize, or admit, the unseen in the form of a stranger who genuinely cares. Because my caring was genuine; that my caring was welcome was what I found surprising.
I believe I am someone who is comfortable with death, and perhaps that is unusual. My grandparents were all dead and buried before I was born; I wasn't around older people until I went to nursing school and was confronted with elderly patients. That was short lived because my subsequent work as a nurse, and as an art teacher, centered around women and children and families. It was where my wounding occurred and thus it would be where my healing would commence. I did not recognize that at the time but certainly at some unconscious level I was seeking a safe, somewhat remote, place to nurture myself.
Not many people die in the areas I chose to work but occasionally, as a NICU nurse, I would deal with the death of an infant and thus the emotions of the bereft parents. Those instances were few and brief however; the deaths were often expected and the parents were often absent. The process of saving some and loosing other sick infants awakened me to the randomness of life and death. It was this awareness that helped me cope when I was confronted with my mother's death at the age of thirty-eight, a year older than the current age of my eldest son, and the passing of my father a year and a half later.
It was in the presence of my father that I had my first experience of not just death, but dying. He was an alcoholic, a veteran of three wars, and courted death throughout his life. But it wasn't until my mother unexpectedly passed away that my father seriously begin moving toward his own demise, as only an alcoholic can do. It took him a year and a half. We had moved to West Point the summer before the winter of my mother's passing so I wasn't present for much of that time, nor was I aware of how lost he had become; the short visits home after my mother died did not allow much of a window into his intent.
A year and some months after we lost my mother, as we were on the road moving back to Augusta, I was tracked down by a sibling asking for my consent to a DNR for my just hospitalized father. Do not resuscitate. The joy of moving back 'home', which was Augusta, where not only had I lived for five years but where my parents and two of my siblings resided, was quickly extinguished.
My father did not die immediately, the call came in July and he died on September tenth, twenty-three years ago this past week. That summer was horrendous; moving into a new house, transferring children into new schools once again, daily visits to the VA hospital, all contributed to a sense of displacement. There were times when he recognized me and times when he didn't. Times when he was kind and times when he was incredibly cruel. There were moments of hope that he would recover enough to return home and the moment when we knew that was no longer possible. And then there was the movement to a nursing home and, one week later, the call informing us that he was on his way back to the hospital in an ambulance.
Three of his four children gathered at the hospital that morning and stood by his bedside as he struggled to breathe. My father was a son of a bitch, a brutal abusive alcoholic much of our growing up years, but he was still my father and I had to play this out. I had been at many births in my years as a nurse, and I am now aware how that work formed my thinking about death. We do not come into the world alone and I was determined my father would not go out alone. I stayed by his side as he drew his last breath.
Later I would have the honor of helping my father-in-law, a kinder man, as he lay dying. I was able to use my nursing to ease his pain and open the passage to his death. My mother-in-law died seven years later and I was with her almost to the end, singing hymns as we waited for her son, by then my ex-husband, to return from out of town. But it was my older brother who taught me the most about dying.
Three years ago my brother Michael died shortly after his sixty-second birthday. He was only two and a half years older but he was my big brother in every sense of the word and deserves a whole post to do justice to the relationship we shared. But it was in his last few months that he was most excellent. Having recovered from throat cancer only two years earlier, his thoughts about living and dying were greatly formed by the time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he was generous in sharing them with anyone who cared to hear.
A month before Michael died I was able to visit him in Texas where he lived. Unlike previous visits we didn't do much, although at that time he was still trying to live so we walked a little and even went to a movie; but he was coming to terms with his death and he shared a lot of his thoughts. It was a mystical time for me and returning home I felt a sense of peace. Still, when I got the call telling me the end was near, I hopped a plane and returned to Texas.
Michael, thinking he had more time, had asked me to return after giving my other brother and sister a chance to visit. He asked it in person as I departed from my previous visit and on the phone a week before he died. When I arrived at his home at three in the morning I was not sure what to expect but was certain it was the right place to be.
My brother died that evening after a pain filled day. Hospice failed him. We were all very distressed by that failure. But when the help finally came, and he was at last able to rest, he died within moments. And I was able to be there with him and for him. And for me.
Being in the presence of death, of a human dying to this physical reality, is an experience of sadness but also of wonder and awe. And because I have been able to do that I think I was able to be with this new widow, a relative stranger, in her fresh, raw, grief. I don't know what that means for any future relationship but I know we connected on the physical plane we found ourselves yesterday, and that we held each other in love and regard. It was a wonder-filled experience and one for which I will always be thankful.
Life is a miracle. Death is something onto itself. I am sure it is part of the life experience and that if we shy away from it, remain afraid of death, we are missing out on some aspect of living that makes us fully human. After all, life may be about many things but most importantly shouldn't it be about becoming human? Within the human community? Communion is what I think about when I think about death; a communion of saints, a communion of angels, a communion of brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren. Communion in its purest form. And if we fail to enter into communion with death I am not sure we are ever fully alive.
Life is a gift we are often told. It was in the presence of my brother as he died three years ago and, again yesterday, with my husband's cousin's daughter and her grief, that I was reminded of that truth.
Yesterday we drove to Birmingham to have lunch with Al's cousin, his wife and daughter. The very same daughter who lost her husband to cancer last Saturday. A week ago today. Which would all be fine if I knew the daughter, but other than saying "Hi" when we met at one family reunion or another in the last seven years, I am not sure we have ever spoken.
It is a strange feeling sharing a meal with someone you barely know, but it is particularly strange when the other person is in obvious emotional distress. In the southern way she was polite and made us comfortable but I could tell it was not easy. And because I did not know her husband it should have felt even more awkward. Except it didn't.
The daughter was incredibly gracious, asking questions throughout the meal, questions that helped her get to know me, giving me permission to do the same. In the midst of three other people we focused to this task and a couple of hours later when we got in our car to leave I felt a kinship that was, and is, not really explainable.
I meet people in all kinds of circumstances. Rarely these days do I feel a connection. It is an odd thing but it seems to me that as people get older they close in the walls surrounding their psyche and admit fewer and fewer new players. So meeting this woman and finding her wide open, maybe because of her recent loss, her new grief or her gentle nature, I was surprised. I was even more surprised at my willingness to step in. Because I too am more closed off than I used to be.
I read a book recently by a Canadian author entitled The Impostor Bride. Late in the book two tangential characters, older women who share a grandchild, meet for the first time. They fall into polite talk but at one point one says to the other "What were you like when you were a girl?" and a dialogue opens. Later, in thinking back over the exchange, one of the two muses about how surprised she was by the connection. She knows she is loved, but very few people really care who she is or what she thinks anymore, and certainly she didn't expect to meet someone new who would care. But here it was; a surprise. That is how I felt yesterday. Not only by the other's genuine interest, but by my genuine response.
I wonder if in the presence of grief, or any raw emotion, it is easier to cut through the societal boundaries to real discourse. If at those times we recognize, or admit, the unseen in the form of a stranger who genuinely cares. Because my caring was genuine; that my caring was welcome was what I found surprising.
I believe I am someone who is comfortable with death, and perhaps that is unusual. My grandparents were all dead and buried before I was born; I wasn't around older people until I went to nursing school and was confronted with elderly patients. That was short lived because my subsequent work as a nurse, and as an art teacher, centered around women and children and families. It was where my wounding occurred and thus it would be where my healing would commence. I did not recognize that at the time but certainly at some unconscious level I was seeking a safe, somewhat remote, place to nurture myself.
Not many people die in the areas I chose to work but occasionally, as a NICU nurse, I would deal with the death of an infant and thus the emotions of the bereft parents. Those instances were few and brief however; the deaths were often expected and the parents were often absent. The process of saving some and loosing other sick infants awakened me to the randomness of life and death. It was this awareness that helped me cope when I was confronted with my mother's death at the age of thirty-eight, a year older than the current age of my eldest son, and the passing of my father a year and a half later.
It was in the presence of my father that I had my first experience of not just death, but dying. He was an alcoholic, a veteran of three wars, and courted death throughout his life. But it wasn't until my mother unexpectedly passed away that my father seriously begin moving toward his own demise, as only an alcoholic can do. It took him a year and a half. We had moved to West Point the summer before the winter of my mother's passing so I wasn't present for much of that time, nor was I aware of how lost he had become; the short visits home after my mother died did not allow much of a window into his intent.
A year and some months after we lost my mother, as we were on the road moving back to Augusta, I was tracked down by a sibling asking for my consent to a DNR for my just hospitalized father. Do not resuscitate. The joy of moving back 'home', which was Augusta, where not only had I lived for five years but where my parents and two of my siblings resided, was quickly extinguished.
My father did not die immediately, the call came in July and he died on September tenth, twenty-three years ago this past week. That summer was horrendous; moving into a new house, transferring children into new schools once again, daily visits to the VA hospital, all contributed to a sense of displacement. There were times when he recognized me and times when he didn't. Times when he was kind and times when he was incredibly cruel. There were moments of hope that he would recover enough to return home and the moment when we knew that was no longer possible. And then there was the movement to a nursing home and, one week later, the call informing us that he was on his way back to the hospital in an ambulance.
Three of his four children gathered at the hospital that morning and stood by his bedside as he struggled to breathe. My father was a son of a bitch, a brutal abusive alcoholic much of our growing up years, but he was still my father and I had to play this out. I had been at many births in my years as a nurse, and I am now aware how that work formed my thinking about death. We do not come into the world alone and I was determined my father would not go out alone. I stayed by his side as he drew his last breath.
Later I would have the honor of helping my father-in-law, a kinder man, as he lay dying. I was able to use my nursing to ease his pain and open the passage to his death. My mother-in-law died seven years later and I was with her almost to the end, singing hymns as we waited for her son, by then my ex-husband, to return from out of town. But it was my older brother who taught me the most about dying.
Three years ago my brother Michael died shortly after his sixty-second birthday. He was only two and a half years older but he was my big brother in every sense of the word and deserves a whole post to do justice to the relationship we shared. But it was in his last few months that he was most excellent. Having recovered from throat cancer only two years earlier, his thoughts about living and dying were greatly formed by the time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he was generous in sharing them with anyone who cared to hear.
A month before Michael died I was able to visit him in Texas where he lived. Unlike previous visits we didn't do much, although at that time he was still trying to live so we walked a little and even went to a movie; but he was coming to terms with his death and he shared a lot of his thoughts. It was a mystical time for me and returning home I felt a sense of peace. Still, when I got the call telling me the end was near, I hopped a plane and returned to Texas.
Michael, thinking he had more time, had asked me to return after giving my other brother and sister a chance to visit. He asked it in person as I departed from my previous visit and on the phone a week before he died. When I arrived at his home at three in the morning I was not sure what to expect but was certain it was the right place to be.
My brother died that evening after a pain filled day. Hospice failed him. We were all very distressed by that failure. But when the help finally came, and he was at last able to rest, he died within moments. And I was able to be there with him and for him. And for me.
Being in the presence of death, of a human dying to this physical reality, is an experience of sadness but also of wonder and awe. And because I have been able to do that I think I was able to be with this new widow, a relative stranger, in her fresh, raw, grief. I don't know what that means for any future relationship but I know we connected on the physical plane we found ourselves yesterday, and that we held each other in love and regard. It was a wonder-filled experience and one for which I will always be thankful.
Life is a miracle. Death is something onto itself. I am sure it is part of the life experience and that if we shy away from it, remain afraid of death, we are missing out on some aspect of living that makes us fully human. After all, life may be about many things but most importantly shouldn't it be about becoming human? Within the human community? Communion is what I think about when I think about death; a communion of saints, a communion of angels, a communion of brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren. Communion in its purest form. And if we fail to enter into communion with death I am not sure we are ever fully alive.
Life is a gift we are often told. It was in the presence of my brother as he died three years ago and, again yesterday, with my husband's cousin's daughter and her grief, that I was reminded of that truth.
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