Blue Like the Sky

"We've got a special plaster..."

2012-01-09T17:08:00.004-06:00

If you're one of my FB friends, you may recall that I've had the songs from "Godspell" (the 70s version, as there are some beautiful lyrics changes in the current Broadway production) stuck in my head. My brain is churning an essay/post about the relative social contexts of the old and new versions, and about Christianity and politics in general.

I need to do a bit of research before I hold forth, but do know I'm thinking about it. So if you know anything about the Mars Hill community, the recent upsurge of Bible Churches, the move to "re-masculinize" the church, or the current branding of "nondenominational," please contact me privately. I am genuinely interested in your thoughts and will keep them private. If you prefer to leave them as public comments, that's just fine.

The mean and "Christian" [quotation marks intentional] tenor of the increasingly nasty Republican primary race is raising the hair on the back of my neck. I'm hearing a lot of the usual evangelical code words (although I was amused to hear Michelle Bachman loving on Benjamin Franklin in her out-of-the-race speech. Michelle. Look up Deist). And I'm hearing candidates and the nasty new "super pacs" prancing a minuet around the label "Mormon" in much the same way folks did around the term "race" in 2008. Every candidate has his (and I definitely mean the masculine pronoun) special version of religion that he is certain will guide us back to our rightful place in the global patriarchy (and yes, I mean that, too).

So I leave you with the concept of "special plaster," from the original lyrics of "Beautiful City," and ask you to ruminate upon it until I return.

We don't need alabaster

We don't need chrome

We've got our special plaster

Take my hand

I'll take you home.

What "special plaster" do we need?

"Writing prompts are lame, m'kay?"

2012-01-04T11:43:00.007-06:00

Above, behold my current favorite office shelf. I have no design skills whatsoever; my decor is best described as "shabby, absent-minded professor (piling variety) with noticeable lack of chic." But a couple of days ago, I looked up from my writing table and thought, "I really like that shelf."

You need to understand that no intentionality was employed in the arrangement of these objects. In fact, I mostly just stuck stuff up there when I unpacked items I retrieved from my mother's house and sister's apartment. Really. I sat on the floor with a box, raised my arm, and plunked. But the more I look, the more I see and the word that emerges is "matrilineal."

The Man's family has lived in Our Town for several generations, and connects with its and our state's history and Well Known Individuals at various points. My family is about as boring as they come. I was raised in a bland suburb far from my Mother's Iowa birthplace and my father's Oklahoma start. None of this really impacts how we live, but it does mean that Young Girl hears an awful lot about her father's family and next to nothing about mine. Without even realizing it, I've apparently made a little shrine for my girl-roots.

Of course, the shelf heavily features Young Girl: at far left on our steps in Oregon wearing an Austin College sweatshirt sent at her birth from former professors and current friends. Propped in the pale pink frame on the right, she smiles in the same location a few years later during one of our summer visits. The pale pink frame? Class picture from Belden Street Montessori, the world's best preschool. At the bottom right is a picture of The Man and me, mid-eighties, at my friend Beth's (matrilineal), then off-the-grid, Colorado cabin.

The San Simon candle? It's left over from a period of fascination with such candles and prayer cards, available in just about any store in our multi-cultural area. My favorite line from the English translation on the back? "Oh: Powerful St. Simon, I offer you your cigar, your tortilla, your drink and your candles if you help me with any danger I might find." One thing I do know about my mother is that she was raised as a Catholic, at least through her First Holy Communion (courtesy of my French grandfather). until she moved to an area of Texas where no Catholic church was available. He and my Scot Presbyterian grandmother settled in with the Methodists as a compromise position. After my mother's death, I discovered a wealth of prayer cards and medals she'd kept for decades, even some from her aunt the nun, Sister Emily; though Mother never spoke of her Catholicism, it obviously mattered much.

The flat iron was my great-grandmother's. Judging from pictures at her Quincy, Illinois home, she never used it herself, but I know my grandmother did because "having help" was not an option in the Texas oil-field world where she eventually landed. The gravy boat is all that remains from a mysteriously-disappeared set of china my great-grandmother brought with her from Scotland. The one-handled rolling pin was a staple of my childhood, used for everything from my grandmother's homemade noodles and dumplings, to my mother's sporadic attempts at baking, to my own early concoctions. The bell is a mystery. It looks too young to have come from Scotland, though there is a touch of Mackintosh in the handle's design. To my unknowing eye, it says pre-WW I, but barely. Maybe one of you will know more. And in the silvery-frame, anytime from Deco to the 40s, is my beautiful young mother, soon after the birth of her first of three daughters in 1943.

The mirror is just something I stuck in the back, and this shelf was the only one tall enough for the Collected Far Side box set.

Which brings us to the platter.

When I took my job in Oregon, The Man was unable to join me permanently for almost three years. The clock was ticking and we'd begun baby-planning discussions, but weren't very far into the journey. One morning, as I walked across campus, I found a potter selling pieces to benefit the art department. I had no idea why I found the platter so appealing, but I could not stop thinking about it. That afternoon I walked over and spent more than I could afford on the platter and a square trivet. For several months, it sat unremarked on a table in my office. "Nice platter," someone might say, but that was about the extent of its impact. Until the fateful day a Perceptive Colleague did a classic double take and cried, "My God! That piece is all about SEX!"

Why, my goodness, Dr. Freud, it was indeed. All that time, I'd been working with students in an office that was a pornography showcase! Semen! Uterus! Fallopian tube! A lone egg, protected by a diaphragm from an abnormally long-tailed sperm! And, depending on your perspective, either a quite detailed rendering of female genitalia or a basic penis - take your pick!

I, of course, had noticed none of this. None. But once these items were called to my attention they were all I could see.

I continued to display the piece, now christened "The Platter of Reproduction" by Perceptive Colleague, throughout my tenure. I became a kind of sneaky shrink, ever vigilant for the person who stared at it just a little too long. It offered black comic relief during the painful gamut of infertility testing and the miraculous result thereof, and continues to provide amusement to those in the know.

And so we come full circle: pregnancy, a daughter, me, my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother. Join me in this circle, be you male or female. May we all continue to pass on not only the items of the women who came before us and the women who go before us, but their stories and their spirits.

Resolution

2012-01-03T13:26:00.008-06:00

Well, my goodness! It's been about 18 months since I've posted anything of substance. Maybe you even assumed I'd disappeared. Alas, I'm back.

Texas' state flower is the bluebonnet. A funny thing about this flower, way down here along our southern border, is its need for a harsh, cold winter. The seed coating must be scarified through repeated freezing and thawing for the flower to bloom. Some springs, after a mild winter, the bluebonnets aren't particularly plentiful here in NoTex; when the winter is brutal, they are spectacular.

And somewhere in there is a metaphor for my absence. With Young Girl's return to public school and the subsequent lack of long periods of solitude I had a mild season (not that it felt that way at the time). But over the last year or so, something has been lurking around inside, freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing, and being - in general - harsh. I seem to be sufficiently scarified to start the blooming process which may not flourish until spring, just like the bluebonnet.

Today, I find myself with nothing particularly profound to say, a pot of long-cooking Bolognese sauce on the stove, and a bit of time. So let's just gut out some bullet points, what say?

* Yes, I know it's the Iowa Caucus today. And you know my politics if you've read more than a post or two. I wish I could attribute this, but I've heard the Republican primary season characterized as a reality show. Who will be voted off the island tonight? About a year ago, I laid a small bet - based on several years of successful ticket-predicting - that President Obama would be running against a Romney/Perry ticket. Cold Mormon needs good-old-boy evangelical to go all the way. How could I have underestimated the stupidity of the man who has been my own governor oh so many years? Probably because the governor of Texas is not a very powerful position. It took a national stage for his stupidity to metastasize. I still think Romney is inevitable. But I'd like to see the race for number two be something like "Dancing with a Democrat" or "Flaming Kitchen Knives of Malice." There's some entertainment for you!

* Young Girl adjusted beautifully from classic Montessori instruction to whacko public school. Why whacko? The puzzling curriculum-of-the-day switches, the new social studies standards which are beyond bizarre, a GT program that is nothing more than Behavioral Segregation in most cases.....I could go on and probably will after I go Medieval on the school board in a couple of weeks. It is true. I plan to - publicly - speak my mind in Small Town Texas. As does The Man. Let the chips fall where they may. One highlight, though. Young Girl's 2010-2011 Future Problem Solvers team went to state finals, meaning a trip to Austin without parents. Whoo Hooo!

* My sister has continued to decline. The most recent scan showed her breast cancer has returned in her lumbar spine and ribs. She suffered severe side effects from whole-brain radiation, and when you mess with the brain and its messaging system all sorts of bad things can happen all over your body. When I went through WBR with my mother and my sister, we were told that there was really no way to predict who would suffer side effects or the severity thereof. My mother suffered minimally, my sister, maximally. Sis is now in an assisted-living facility, which has been a blessing beyond belief. And before you start screaming at me about cancer screening, let me just say I am on it with a vengeance. I had my ovaries and uterus removed last year, and meet with a breast surgeon twice a year. Both my sisters, my mother, and I were/are BRCA negative. But the cluster is just too weird to be anything other than hypervigilant.

* Thanks to the truly miraculous Couch-to-5K running program Young Girl and I have now completed four 5K races. I've met or exceeded my (extremely) modest goals in each. I'm what runners call a "penguin," but I'm a runner nonetheless. Even if you think you are too big/old/injured/jaded/whatever, I encourage you to look at C25K. If I can do it...

* Large Dog returned to the German Shorthaired Pointer rescue program in 2009, amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Small Dog adopted us in October 2011. One is missed, both are adored.

* I continue to be supported in Our Town by the fabulous women of the First Amendment Friday group. The circle has widened a bit, too. Who knew so many Leftist Ladies hang around these parts!

* I promise to be back tomorrow. Feels kind of great to have my fingers back on the keys.

Addendum

2011-12-20T21:18:00.000-06:00

Or maybe later...

Still here...

2011-11-27T15:10:00.000-06:00

Watch this spot for my return to blogging soon.

Happy winter to all.

More about summer

2010-05-31T21:09:00.003-05:00

Today I officially crossed the line.

White wine, not red wine.

Iced coffee, not hot brewed coffee.

Summer is A'Comin' In

2010-05-17T15:27:00.003-05:00

Oh, lordy, it's hot today.

I've been driving around all day, getting stuff together for Young Girl's birthday party this weekend. Since it's been a year since last summer, I'd conveniently forgotten how friggin' hot parking lots can be. And no matter how brief your stay in a store, the car completely heats up while you're gone.

Saturday night was cool and breezy, and I sat outside at a lovely party and enjoyed the evening weather. Today it's 90 and muggy. There's nothing gradual about the coming of summer in Texas. And it's only going to get worse.

So I've dropped in to my favorite wine bar for $5 Monday. Here's to cool and dark. And pinot grigio.

Don't Come Looking for the Profound Here Today

2010-05-06T12:09:00.008-05:00

I have no grand metaphors or analogies today, just some updating and a little ranting, perhaps. Please feel free to leave comments of agreement, opposition, or support

* Is there no end to "blame the victim" mentality or authorities looking the other way in the case of rape? This post from The Curvature is horrifying. I can't for the life of me imagine how the police could not investigate or how the medical board could not kick this guy's ass six ways from Sunday.

* What to think about offshore drilling? With 35,000 rigs in the Gulf, something was bound to happen sometime. Considering that there hasn't been a rig accident this big since the 1969 Santa Barbara spill, maybe these things are safer than some are leading us to believe. On the other hand, I heard on NPR last week that the most we could hope for in drilling off the Virginia coast is enough oil to supply the country for six days. Is that worth the risk to the delicate portions of the Atlantic coastline? Not to me. I know we're all supposed to be looking for alternative sources of energy but, realistically, we need oil and gas and we need them domestically. Some of you may not know that The Man develops oil and gas leases and always does so with an eye toward environmental responsibility; some of our wells are on grassland that has never been plowed and is flourishing despite drilling thanks to his care in constructing leases. Safe drilling can happen. We just need to make sure it does.

* One of the side effects of my sister's condition is her loss of independent mobility. Her loss of balance means that she can't drive and must depend on others for rides to doctors' visits, the grocery store, and her church. She's fortunate to have a group of church friends who work together to coordinate rides when I'm not available (which is more often than I'd like due to my commute to Young Girl's school), but it drastically impacts her independence. She can't just go to the store when she feels like it or run out to the movies on impulse. A major drawback of small cities like ours is a lack of public transportation; in Our Town you can call for a van, but you're often stuck with long waiting times on one end or the other. Reliable, consistent bus service would be so much better. Public transportation allows people to participate in their communities when they either do not own a car or are unable to drive one, yet it is far down the list for many municipalities. It shouldn't be.

* My workout plans are on hold because I've done something wonky to my left knee. It's sore and swollen and I can't really connect the problem to any trauma (other than the first day of wearing flip flops all day long). I'm missing the stress release and other benefits. GRUMBLE.

Van Attachment

2010-04-29T09:10:00.006-05:00

I have a complicated relationship with my eight-year-old minivan. Every time I see her I see myself.

She's silver-grey, like an overcast sky or a rock road. Perfect camouflage, her color renders her invisible. Her body's not what it used to be, either, missing a big piece of trim and sporting hail stone pockmarks. There's that scrape from the misjudged turn, another from the Starbucks drive-through, yet another from a tree. I won't catalogue the dents, but they're noticeable and plural. One sliding door is broken and the other is recalcitrant and the repair costs are way too high for such luxuries.

For a long time I took pride in my van. She was very fancy when brand new, and among the cars of Oregon she gleamed. When we moved to Texas and I found myself invisible in the carpool line between a Hummer and a Porsche, I felt superior to the materialists who somehow needed a fancy carapace. I wasn't like that, you see. I was perfectly happy with my utilitarian, reliable transportation (and my Birkenstocks and jeans, but that's another story....or is it?). My van rendered me anonymous in a new community, free to observe the landscape, able to move stealthily through the new environment.

Her inside began to resemble her outside. Old French fries, kid meal toys, multiple water bottles in various stages of consumption, a gaggle of empty coffee cups, school papers, books, receipts....they all piled up between my ever less frequent trips to the car wash. I took a perverse pride in this, too. She was lived-in. I could always find something to drink. And why bother cleaning her out only to have her fill up again in a week?

But slowly I began to resent her. She was certainly not the car I'd planned to be driving when I was 50. And when four of five women in my core group of friends bought lovely new vehicles in an 18 month period I found myself with a raging case of new car fever. I had grand thoughts. I researched comfort, foreign and domestic. The van was an embarrassment, an old aunt who'd "let herself go." But a new car wasn't in the budget. As The Man reminded me, she was paid for, ran well, and had a long shelf life. I began to think of her as The Van that Would Never Die. And now that I've just paid for a major service and a new timing belt, I know she's - unfortunately - perfectly healthy.

Some of you know about my stumbling attempts at meditation and Buddhism. I understand that attachment leads to suffering. And this is certainly true when it comes to my van. The perverse pride I took in her ordinariness and invisibility was merely a cover for insecurity in a new environment and led me into disorder. The resentment I feel toward her serves no purpose other than to make me feel bad and desire something for which I have no need.

So I'm trying to break my attachment to my van and to treat her mindfully. I cleaned everything out and visited the car wash. I'm making sure that both Young Girl and I take out everything we put in and leave only minimal supplies (soccer ball, lap desk, notebook paper) inside. I would not say that I'm taking pride in my clean van or feeling particularly noble about my efforts. I'm simply trying to make my van part of my practice.

So far, so good.

For a wonderful look at practice in everyday life, whatever your faith tradition, pick up a copy of Karen Maezen Miller's new book "hand wash cold: care instructions for an ordinary life."

Posting to Post

2010-04-23T09:39:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting in the coffee shop, fingers paralyzed over the keys.

For some reason I have a blog block. A big, nasty, stinking, hairy one. As a Wise Young Woman pointed out to me this week, I have plenty of opinion and a number of things I feel passionately about.

I just don't have the umpf to get any of it into words.

So, instead, I'll give you an update on the quotidian.

* We've decided to bring Young Girl back to public school next year. This will be a change of epic proportions, going from a class of eight students to our city's single intermediate school (grades 5-6) with class-changing and lockers and halls full of raging pre-adolescence. She has to test this summer for readmission to the Gifted and Talented program, and I'll be interested to see how that goes, given that she hasn't bubbled in a Scantron for two years. Why the change? It's become harder to maintain friendships here where we live and we feel she needs a wider circle of acquaintances. I'm confident we'll be able to keep up with the girls from the Montessori, with whom she has really bonded as she'll probably stay in her current girl scout troop (making the commute once a week will be nothing after making if five days a week).

* My sister's breast cancer metastasized to her brain, but after a series of whole brain radiation and a groovy-cool Gamma Knife procedure her scans are now clear. However, the tumors were in her cerebellum which affects balance, and she can no longer walk without the aid of a walker. She falls several times a week, too. Obviously she can't drive, either. On the good news side, she has a wonderful network of helping friends from her church to help with rides and such and has employed an aide for tasks around the house she can no longer undertake.

* I've gone back to the gym after a long absence, and my body is grumpy about it. Let's just say I "wintered well" as they say in ranching, and I want to avoid being sent to the feed lot for further fattening. I've been making hour-long playlists for my iPod and just gutting through on the treadmill. I'm thinking very tentatively of setting a goal of the Arts Fest 5K in September. I know I could walk it right now but it would be nice to be able to run a bit.

And that's about all I have to tell you. If you have ideas for posts, please leave a comment and inspire me!

A Touchy Subject

2009-11-30T09:59:00.005-06:00

I've been away for a bit, but I thought I'd come back with controversy.

While my blogs during last year's election made plain my liberal views, I've stayed away from potentially touchy subjects like religion and reproductive rights.

No More.

I've become convinced, through reading and conversing with friends, that individual access to reproductive rights - everything from contraception to abortion - is in grave danger.

From the Stupak amendment and its expansion of the Hyde language through possibilities that it could be interpreted to exclude contraception from any insurance plan purchased with federal subsidies, we need to wake up. Many women still have trouble getting insurance to cover their birth control pills, while many men have prescription coverage for Viagra because erectile dysfunction is characterized as a medical condition.

And about the big one: abortion.

No one wants abortions. No one, trust me, wants to have one. But it is a MEDICAL procedure not a legislative one. Access to this procedure should be through the gateway of individuals and their doctors rather than individuals and the U.S. Senate and House.

I'm of an age that makes complacency on this issue impossible. But for who have always known abortion as a legal procedure post-Roe - including our President - the issue has less urgency.

Whatever your position on this issue, I urge you to check out this piece from the New York Times. It might just wake you up.

2009-11-18T10:19:00.001-06:00

Keats at Last!

2009-11-18T10:06:00.006-06:00

Today, I finally saw my breath outside, and longtime readers and friends know what that means: the annual dose of John Keats!

You can read last year's more extensive Keats posts here and here. And if you haven't seen it already, I highly recommend the recent film about Keats, Bright Star.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,: Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless: With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,: And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells; With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,: For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?: Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,: Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,: Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook; Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep: Steady thy laden head across a brook;; Or, by a cyder-press, with patient look,; Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?: Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,: And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn: Among the river sallows, borne aloft; Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;: Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft; The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

-John Keats (1795-1821)

Waiting for True Autumn

2009-10-26T16:10:00.005-05:00

When will it truly be fall?

I'm as restless as a migrating goose, but free of any drive to take off (or do much of anything).

I keep waiting for the first seen breath, the first comforter night, the first earnest foliage-drop. Those of you who know me will have patience, aware that I pine for my favorite season about this time every year, jealously ogling AP photos of New England leaves.

What do we have?

Rain. Tons and tons of mid-fifties rain.

A permanent holding pattern.

But today I "found" an hour and a half to snuggle into a corner of a deep sofa at a local wine bar. I'm enjoying a delicious glass of red wine, and doing my best to imagine that it's as cold as it looks outside.

Cheers!

Health Care Thoughts

2009-10-19T09:57:00.006-05:00

Yes, reader(s)....I'm still alive. It's a season of memories and not enough time to think about them as life does still seem to go on.

A couple of folks have missed the blog, so I thought I'd make an attempt at a post. Know that what you are about to read is pure opinion, shamefully unsourced. But it's that kind of a day...kind of rantish.

So, for your consideration, some random thoughts on health care.

1. I've given up on trying to follow the permutations of the "health care bill" until, at least, one makes it to the floor of Congress. Seeing key provision after key provision go by the wayside in committee, in pursuit of utopian bipartisan support, has proven too frustrating. Our Democratic majority seems unwilling to stand up to special interests and the media, even in the face of the public's desire for significant reform.

2. We would be hopelessly naive to think that the insurance industry is going to place the availability and affordability of a private health plan over the profits it will generate. We need a public option. Maybe you know: did some of the obvious, simple solutions go by the wayside when I wasn't looking? Why not open federal or state employees' health plans to individual buy-in? Or do the same with Medicaid? Surely the government has had enough experience with Medicare premium programs to figure out a workable procedure. Or maybe not.

3. And yes, I have private health insurance. But since The Man and I are self-employed, we pay for it. And I mean PAY for it, an exorbitant amount, to the tune of a small car every year. While we hear about the problems of the uninsured at every turn, we don't hear much about those of us who already purchase insurance in the private market. A public option would give us a chance to take advantage of a large buying pool or maybe even force insurance companies to create buying pools due to competition. Ask anyone who buys his or her own insurance without employer contributions: we need relief.

4. Is it even possible to get to the bottom of why health care costs so much? Depending on the source, we can blame trial lawyers, insurance companies, big pharma, greedy doctors. Who knows? One interesting, informed opinion can be found in "The Cost Conundrum," initially published in The New Yorker.

5. Why are people worried about "the government instead of doctors making health care decisions" when our doctors' choices are already influenced by what private insurers will or will not cover? We now have a system where actuarial tables and statistical medicine determine, to a huge degree, the care we receive. It's my understanding that doctors actually have more freedom under Medicare and Medicaid than they do under some major health plans. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here.

Autumn Deficit Disorder

2009-09-29T11:16:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year when I long for a fall that just won't come. When the usually ubiquitous squirrels go missing, probably to Vermont or some autumn haven, because nothing in the atmosphere suggests they should bother burying acorns. When the desire to pluck a perfectly ripe apple from a tree is defeated by green pecans.

Slight Cooling Trend

2009-09-01T09:18:00.002-05:00

Sorry I've been away for so long. My days in Oregon were full if hot, my trip home was uneventful, and settling back into a routine has been challenging.

The last two mornings have held a suggestion of coolness, and evening walks have become slightly less sweaty. Such minuscule harbingers of fall always improve my mood and inspire new ideas.

Along these lines, here are some random plans/resolutions for the upcoming season.

1. Eschew restaurants for food I cook myself.

2. Go to Young Girl's soccer practices and games with glee.

3. Revive my blogging spirit.

4. Advocate calmly for health care reform.

5. Advocate calmly, period.

6. Inspired by Karen Maezen Miller, do the laundry.

7. Attack a pile of paper a day.

8. Spend time outdoors, damn the mosquitoes.

9. Touch base once each week with an old friend.

10. Renew.

Random in Oregon

2009-08-12T17:04:00.005-05:00

* My writing group is as wonderful as I remember it. If I had that kind of support in Texas I'd be glued to the keyboard, I think. Now I just have to figure out how to feel the love 2100 miles away.

* It's been very difficult for me to make calls and re-cement old friendships this time. I'm certain that has to do with my mother's death.

* Young Girl had two marvelous sleep-away camp experiences, one near the coast and another in the mountains. She's tangibly more grown up, but in a good way.

* I leave to drive home this Saturday. I'm going to shoot for four nights on the road because I need to be back for Young Girl's Upper Elementary parent orientation on Wednesday night. But, after all, safety first.....as long as I'm home for YG's first day of Upper El on Thursday I'll be fine.

* I miss Large Dog. After a streak of destructive digging behavior, involving my dear hosting friend's yard and camellia bushes, I had to board him at a local vet's. I'll pick him up on Saturday morning, after I deliver YG and The Man to the airport and start my own journey home.

* And, about home...I'm ready to be there.

Somewhere in the Panhandle....

2009-07-11T20:14:00.001-05:00

During my drive across the Texas Panhandle, in a tiny town whose name I can’t remember, I entered into an interesting conversation. I’d stopped for gas and something to drink, and when I approached the counter to pay I overheard the clerk and another woman discussing their health insurance woes.

This is a subject dear to my heart (The Man and I are both self-employed, so we pay through the wazoo for coverage), so I began to commiserate. “This may make me unpopular in this part of the country,” I said (expecting cold shoulders), “but I’m really hopeful that President Obama will improve things for all of us.

“No,” they replied in near-unison, “we’re all about Obama.”

Lesson: appearance can be deceiving and hope lives everywhere.

Dispatch from SLC

2009-06-27T18:51:00.002-05:00

Some random musings from the cross-country drive:

• What do you do when you pull out of your driveway to log 2200 miles, turn on your radio, and get NOTHING? That means no NPR, no random Tejano, no books on iPod. You decide to be in the moment, as deep introspection interferes with driving acuity.

• The taste of fear: being in the middle of the pack of cars and trucks driving 85 mph on I-25, even when it’s down to one lane.

• Even though the amber waves of grain have been harvested to frankly unattractive stubble, the purple mountains’ majesty is out in full force, last lingerings of snow on top.

• Breathtaking? Two huge thunderstorm cells outlining a clear alley when you turn west into Wyoming. Alas, the alley did not stay clear; a truly horrendous thunderstorm (and, as a Texan, I’ve seen my share) with an active lightning display, followed by pea-soup fog on a twisty bit of I-80, makes the last room at the overpriced Best Western look mighty good indeed.

• Little America is still scary. I've never seen so many blond children in one place. Never.

• The Hotel Monaco Salt Lake City is featuring white sangria in its fabled Wine Hour. Yum.

Kelly and Kaiser hit the road....

2009-06-25T19:18:00.004-05:00

If you're interested in a thoughtful reflection on my day's drive, click here.

I've been on the road a solid eight hours, so I'm going to postpone a post until I'm more rested.

I will say that the grass is drier and the small towns more boarded up than on my last pass through.

Trip Prep, One

2009-06-17T11:27:00.001-05:00

I began, today, the ritual Sorting of the Clothes.

First stop? Melange Mountain, the stratified heap of miscellany in my dressing area. I recovered a few missing items, uncovered two forgotten purchases, and discovered many things that Simply Will No Longer Do.

Next stop? The Oregon Pile, where I re-heap the clothes I may need for my trip, including long sleeved items and light jackets that make me sweat on sight, even in my air conditioned rooms.

Final Stop? Laundry Junction, where I de-dirt the delicates and soap the sturdy.

Tomorrow actual packing begins!

Hovering

2009-06-14T17:46:00.002-05:00

...is how I feel. Since Mother died the 29th, we've had the memorial service (the 5th), the burial (the 12th), and we have probate tomorrow.

Then it's on to executor stuff.

I promise I'll return, most likely while on the road to Oregon, beginning June 24th.

Requiscat in Pace

2009-05-31T10:17:00.005-05:00

My mother died around 11 p.m. Friday night.

Many thanks to all of you who have surrounded me with love and support throughout this difficult period.

And We Wait....

2009-05-26T09:09:00.004-05:00

I've decided to take a break from blogging until after my mother dies.

I suspect this will be sooner, rather than later. Her decline has been exponential over the last three days. I'm almost certain she still recognizes me, but she has little to say. She's eating and drinking less and sleeping more. She is not in pain.

Thanks for all your support.....I shall return.

Another good way to spend an afternoon...

2009-05-20T15:26:00.001-05:00

Here’s a shout from the patio at Uncle Julio’s. Two and a half hours of unexpected mid-afternoon leisure have led me to plonk down in the breezy shade, margarita in hand, ceviche on the way, and a big blob of salsa on my shirt. It’s a mini-vacation. If I don’t look at the parking lot I can pretend I’m in Mexico.

So be it.

Three Legged Race

2009-05-18T16:04:00.005-05:00

Again bereft of inspiration, I'm recycling another favorite from June, 2007. The photo of sweet Poogan was taken by her owner, Lori V of Do You Realize?

So, dogs and people. A lot alike, according to the old saw.

I adore Ashland's dog park. It’s beautiful to watch the animals run, ears flapping, muscles doing what they were meant to do, coats gleaming in the sunshine. Some are perfect specimens. The rest do all right. Even that miraculous phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me: the three-legged dog.

We’ve all seen one – leg lost in some traumatic way – that runs, wags, even leaps for a Frisbee now and then, perfectly compensating for his loss, never looking back. The disability is obvious, but its effects are invisible. Sure, it must have been hard to relearn some things, and maybe he can’t sit up and beg any more, but he’s done what a dog does. He’s just gotten on with the business of joy.

In some of the early entries in this blog, I mentioned the epidemic of change in the lives of my friends (and, of course, my own as well). While some of these changes are positive, many of them – even the good ones - involve loss. The loss is sometimes sudden, an amputation if you will. A parent dies, a job disappears, a child gets in trouble in a spectacular way. Such loss is brutal, ruthless, but is easily defined. Something Has Happened.

But what of more insidious loss? What if the limb isn’t severed but is slowly withering? What if the leg is there, even normal in its outward appearance, but is without function? When these losses happen in the confines of a family or an individual’s essential self, the analogy to limb loss becomes a little less stable.

When an actual limb begins to fail, a person has options: physical therapy, medication, adaptive technologies or supports. In extreme cases, amputation is the answer to creating a new whole. But people and their systems aren’t that simple, are they? Think of the physical and emotional erosion of chronic illness. The slow train wreck of substance abuse. The withdrawal of intimacy in a strained marriage. These traumas – and that is what they are, even if they are not sudden – happen piecemeal, painfully.

Sometimes the loss is a realization, an “I will never…” statement. Not the whining kind that calls up a response like, “Don’t be silly! You have plenty of time/energy/money to do a, b, or c.” but the peaceful, mature knowledge that the time for a certain action is truly past, that the skills required are beyond a person’s reach, or that some dreams will simply never come true.

None of these scenarios are uncommon, and none are beyond our imagination. They number as many as the grains of sand on the floor of the ocean. The challenge comes, as always, in how we react. Is a full recovery possible? Sometimes the loss is too great, the energy required long gone. People do hit bottom, and they don’t always come back up. I’m not a character-Nazi, the kind of person who believes that a stiff upper lip and a strong work ethic can bring you back from anything. And not everyone is capable of adaptation.

But what of those who don’t want to stop walking, who dream of leaping once again for a well-tossed Frisbee? Even if you do persevere through loss, even if no one around you has any idea that recovery is in process, you still must face the absence. The leg is never going to function again. You leave an untenable situation. You strengthen the remaining limbs. Perhaps you find substitutes.

The challenge lies – at least for me – in the choice of a metaphor to understand your life from the loss forward. Do you choose the four-legged-but-one-is-impaired dog image, or do you radically remake yourself as the three-legged dog?

The answer means the difference between staying in the crate or chasing the tennis ball with your ears flapping and your coat gleaming. You may no longer be the fastest dog, you may no longer have AKC conformation, and you may even elicit pity from those who stare at what is no longer there.

But you will have found your balance.

And you will continue to run on your three strong legs, and the sun will feel good on your back when you take a big slurping drink of cool water and collapse, happy, in the soft, green grass.

"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night..."

2009-05-14T09:18:00.003-05:00

Since I can't seem to choke out any substantive posts, I'm recycling...enjoy this, from April 2007.

When I was a college senior, I took a course titled “Fielding and Byron.” I remember telling my professor something along the lines of, “I just can’t get into Tom Jones.” She looked down at me and replied, “You’re not old enough, not ready. Read it when you’re thirty and we’ll talk.”

I was insulted. How condescending! A sophisticated 21-year-old English major like me – well versed in the ways of the world…I could write my own damn picaresque based on the last two years alone...if she only knew – was “old enough” for anything she could throw at me. I even wrote my major essay on “Tom’s Naiveté.” That'll show her…

…that I was the queen of Unintentional Irony. She was, as usual, right, even though I “got into it” quite well just three years later. That professor has been a colleague and is now a friend, and we had a big laugh about that exchange a few years ago when I reminded her of it. Sometimes you’re not ready for a book; it’s just that simple. And sometimes you’re ready again, and again, and again and it’s new every time.

While we may well be able to do dispassionate analyses of our favorite flavor of art (and – burn me as a heretic – sometimes I doubt that we can ever put ourselves outside our analyses), and while we may be ashamed to admit it, we do see ourselves in books, paintings, songs. As a writer, I struggle with taking myself out of the work so a reader can put himself into it. But this entry is getting away from me.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably old enough to remember records. The kind you played on a turntable. The kind you stacked on a spindle and let drop while you lay on your bed and thought about your life in all its miseries and triumphs. Maybe this is something only girls do, but I doubt it. I know enough audiophile men to suspect otherwise. Perhaps you’re back there in your head right now, thinking of a particular song.

If so, track it down soon and play it. Listen to it the way you did back then. Notice the differences in the places it touches you, in the messages it holds. Let go of the part of your intellect that says, “Well, this line doesn’t exactly capture my existential ennui” or “You think your heart is broken now, singer, wait until you express those feelings to the person in question and see how you feel then.” Close your eyes. Be patient. It’s going to be a very different song, but the experience of listening while open to reverie is liberating.

This and That

2009-05-11T09:33:00.012-05:00

Greetings from the coffee shop, where I'm watching rainstorm clouds move from the NE to the SW and listening to old Jackson 5 tunes on the shop sound system. If that's not incongruity....

I'm sure a significant thought exists deep in my brain, but my daily life is so complex right now I can't access it. So as an attempt to retain my two or three readers, here's some random scatter.

Young Girl turned 9 in January, but we just had her party last Friday. The "Cowgirl Campout" included horseback riding, tie-dying, roasting hot dogs and s'more marshmallows over a camp fire. Note: today's hangers are mighty flimsy compared to the ones I used as a child. The highlight of the evening was an activity I pulled from the net: Makeunders. Unlike a makeover, during which someone attempts to make the client as attractive as possible, a makeunder involves the attempt to make your guinea pig friend as hideous as possible. I expected them to use the garish and horrid cheap makeup I provided in conventional ways and places; they had other plans, which included in more than one case covering an entire face in red lipstick. I heaved a sigh of relief, as I realized that - for all their pretend coolitude - they're still little girls. I sadly suspect that this may be the last birthday party where that is the case. Bittersweet.
My mother is failing more everyday, but her spirit is strong and not ready to leave. She's catheterized, diapered, and hospital-bedded. Our hospice service has been wonderful. We've found compassionate sitters, who are there 'round the clock.
I'm aching for a summer in Oregon, but cannot make any plans while Mother is still alive. I'm trying to stay in the moment, in the hour, in the day, in the week and take things as they come. If it comes down to packing a single suitcase and loading child and dog in the car at a moment's notice, so be it.
Several good friends are experiencing loss and tragedy. Please send your healing thoughts out into the universe.
And the rain just keeps on falling.

Hopefully my next post will be, well, a substantive one and free of the annoying italics!

Finding the Umm in Summer

2009-04-23T16:02:00.004-05:00

Summer is my least favorite time of year. I despise heat.

For five of the last seven years, I’ve escaped to my favorite home away from home, Ashland, Oregon. There I revel in cool mornings and evenings. I also get to hang with my friends in the Lithia Writers Collective.

What’s not to love?

Will I go this year? I don’t know yet, but I’m steeling myself for another Texas summer, just in case.

To psych myself up for that dreadful possibility and to make up for yesterday’s glum trinity, I’m determined to conjure some positive things about summer in my native state.

• Friday mornings around my friend V’s pool. She’s gracious enough to extend a standing invitation to the women of First Amendment Friday (i.e. our wine and conversation group), kids and all.

• Consumption of the year’s summer beverage with friends and family (in moderation, of course). Our standard Pinot Grigio (from Target! In a box! Go get some! will likely, this summer be supplanted by a vodka concoction. The current contenders are sweet tea vodka, mixed with either water or lemonade; fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and plain vodka, with or without a salted rim; and blood orange Italian soda with vodka. My sister-in-law plans something that involves soaking pineapple chunks in vodka, too. Vote now for your favorite.

• Enjoying (in the morning, early afternoon, or at night) the patio furniture I finally talked The Man into purchasing at the end of last summer thanks to a ridiculous combination of discounts. If you sit without shade, you will not be enjoying anything.

That’s three….do you have any to add?

Summertime

2009-04-22T21:08:00.003-05:00

Sure feels like summer here: the first mosquito bites of the season, the first grass burr underfoot, the car's AC breaking on the first 90 degree afternoon.

Stream of (Un)Consciousness

2009-04-08T10:41:00.003-05:00

Where are my posts, you might wonder (at least I hope you're all still out there, wondering).

I've been far too wrapped up in the minutiae of my Mother's (and my sister's) care to think, much less write. So I thought I'd just throw some random thoughts out there.

Local lore tells that it's always cold at Easter, whenever it falls. The annual "Easter Spell" came through a few days early. Yesterday, we woke up to temps in the 30s; tomorrow our high will be 83.
The most challenging part of all the illness around me is accepting that I have absolutely no ability to help anyone get better. A natural "fixer," I feel as if I'm treading water. All of my self-discipline (and my friends know such is not my strength) is going toward being a stabilizing, calming influence, and I certainly don't feel I'm doing a very good job. The other areas in which I need self-discipline - food, exercise, housework, homework monitoring, to name a few - are definitely suffering. So I'm lying around with hummus and pita chips watching the laundry pile up while my daughter blithely bicycles. That's me: all the sloth you want, all the time.
Speaking of bicycles, I haven't ridden mine in almost two years. I went so far as getting it out of the garage a few weeks ago and there it sits, in the way. I need to take it to the bike shop for some minor repairs, yet that looms as an impossible task.
I have no way of knowing if I'll be free to go to Oregon this summer. It's time to sign Young Girl up for camps and such, and I don't know if she'll be camping were she'll need a sweater or camping where she'll battle chiggers 24/7. Sigh.

And there you have it: what's on my mind in an absolutely mindless format.

A Good Way to Spend the Afternoon.....

2009-04-03T14:34:00.003-05:00

Update From Cancerville

2009-04-03T10:46:00.003-05:00

My sister received good bad news yesterday; her breast cancer, although it is Stage IV, has not spread to her bones or to any of the usual organs.

My mom is weaker every day, but felt good enough yesterday to attend the "Super Seniors" event at her church, albeit in a wheelchair.

I am waiting on some new genetic test results from my mom's doc, and then I will meet with a genetic counselor at the medical school in Dallas to discuss my options.

I draw strength from all the positive messages and thoughts you send us, so keep 'em coming my friends!

The REAL 3G Network

2009-03-25T09:14:00.005-05:00

Two Weeks.

That's how much longer the oncologist thinks I will have a mother.

I realized yesterday that Young Girl hadn't seen her grandmother in weeks, and that each needed time with the other. So, last night, YG accompanied me when I went over to put Mother to bed.

I've never felt more like a fulcrum.

I held two hands: one gnarled and cool, the other smooth and warm.

I stoked two heads: one bald, the other covered in thick, lustrous curls.

I rested my head on two shoulders: one bony and brittle, the other round and strong.

This is the true 3Generation network.

While it is painful to be in the middle, it's a blessed pain.

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming.....

2009-03-21T08:21:00.003-05:00

Posts may be few and far between over the next couple of weeks.

My sister's been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, and my mother is rapidly deteriorating and can no longer be left alone.

My calendar is a tangle of medical appointments and personal responsibilities. As I try to weigh the needs of my original family against the needs of my second, blogging slips ever lower on the ladder of priorities.

Give me time to balance this seesaw and I will be back.

Thank to all of you who have sent messages of support. They help more than you know.

Jargon Riff -- Part Two

2009-03-18T11:45:00.005-05:00

I suspect the reason I'm so miffed about jargon right now is my need - with so much serious illness and upheaval in my life - to pare things down to the bone.

I've always been fond of sparse, precise prose. "Be precise," I say, over and over and over again, to my writing students. In fact, my own precision hang-up is the number one driver of my on-going writer's block.

Sigh.

So imagine my miffed-ness when I looked up at coffee shop television (blessedly muted) and saw the following bullet point:

Fear of Risk Aversion

Just what does that mean? Am I supposed to be afraid of "risk aversion" or am I supposed to be averse to "fear of risk"?

Literally, both form a kind of emotional double negative and connote bravery in the face of risk.

When I googled the phrase, however, I found the following quote:

Can GM overcome the fear of risk aversion so many American consumers have about its brand, regardless of the actual reliability and competitiveness of its cars and trucks? That's a hard question to answer, and one only the consumer, over time, will be able to answer.

This poses another interpretation, in which "fear of risk" modifies "aversion" (i.e. What kind of aversion? The kind that fears risk, of course!). Such sloppy modification drives me nuts.

But this version, posing perception against reality, offers a lesson far removed from current economic crises.

What is depression (both economic and personal) if not fear of risk? Of change? What is it if not paralysis of courage?

I want to be clear: I do not see depression as cowardice or even as something that can be alleviated by a change in perception; neurotransmitters don't respond to will, after all. Clinical depression is a medical issue, and it's not what I'm about in this post.

A "fear of risk" aversion - just like "process management" - keeps us from living fully and authentically.

Here's hoping all of us can put such aversion aside and stride out into the messy chaos of life.

Jargon Riff - Part One

2009-03-13T11:06:00.005-05:00

It's a cold misty day outside, perfectly suited to my current activity: Drinking a cafe' au lait at the coffee shop in front of one of the better fake fires I've seen in a long time.

I'm doing my best these worrisome days just to be, to enjoy what the day brings, and to be mindful of my good fortune.

And thank the universe that I'm not part of the jargon-filled world that surrounds me.

My understanding of the need to sit with my life crystallized this week when, making my daily drive past various plants and office buildings, I happened to glimpse - literally - the writing on the wall.

EMERSON

PROCESS MANAGEMENT

"Wait," I thought, "How do you manage a process? Why would you want to? Isn't 'process management' an oxymoron?"

A little googling alerted me to the "true" meaning of that word duo (PM even has its own international journal), and I slapped right up against what I miss the least from my days in university administration: jargon. I flashed back to those horrid meetings - program evaluation, task forces, assessment reports, and mission statement creation. I can feel my pulse rate increasing as I type those words.

As a writer, I was constantly frustrated with the clunky diction and obfuscation such gatherings generated. I'd take my pen in hand and eviscerate cumbersome paragraphs, peeling them down to their essence; sometimes I'd prevail, but often others clung to catchphrases or worried that a pared down version didn't sound "smart enough." Insert graphic of me virtually banging my head against the wall. Why couldn't we just stop and go back to our work with students? Back to true process, which tended to manage itself on its own timetable?

But back to the present.

What are our lives if not process? What are our days if not process?

All around, I see pain and difficulty as people try to manage their process down to the last tiny detail and attempt to control events and individuals.

Granted, some planning is necessary. But isn't the joy of life to be found in its unfolding? Its unfolding, not our attempts to shape circumstances to fit our needs.

Every time I drive by that building, proudly broadcasting its commitment to total control, I pledge to remind myself to let go. To just be.

Stepping away can be the best process management tool I know.

Trees Aren't Always Trees

2009-03-07T11:02:00.007-06:00

All around me, trees welcome spring. Normally I love to watch this process, but this year is different.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know of my mother’s amazing cancer journey and how it is drawing to a close. You may not know that my oldest sister died, at 55, of ovarian cancer in 2000. And now my remaining sister has discovered suspicious lumps; her doctors are rushing her through tests and plan to excise two lumps this Thursday for biopsy

I, thankfully, remain healthy.

Back to those trees. I’m stuck in a metaphor loop.

Dark branches against the sky are lungs. Bronchi. Bronchioles. Alveoli. All reaching toward the sky in a gasp for air.

Dark branches against the sky are the blue veins visible under the milky white skin of a breast.

Dark branches against the sky are the circulatory system.

Dark branches against the sky are the lymphatic conduits that run throughout our bodies.

Dark branches against the sky take the shape of a brain, tracing the folds and valleys, mimicking the neuron. Axon. Soma. Dendrite.

The tangled nests of squirrels are tumors. The small nests of birds are tumors. Fruit trees bloom with disease. The green buds are tumors, coursing their way though lymph, blood, and tissue.

The process of spring, which should mean growth and blooming and change, has become malignant.

Photo credit: Tiny Topaz

3/12/09 update: My sister's simple biopsy turned into a general anesthesia, tangerine-sized lump removal, chest drain kind of thing. Pathology should be in on Monday. Send white light.

3/17/09 update: Both the tumor and the scalene lymph nodes were malignant.

Rigorous Introspection (or "I'm Just Like Them...sort of."

2009-02-25T10:28:00.005-06:00

During George W. Bush's presidency, I and others of the same political persuasion would be having a conversation about some political event or administration position. Sooner or later someone would pose some variation of the following question:

"How can someone who has

a) lost a job while CEOs plundered

b) found himself with no health insurance and ended up paying through the nose for private or "risk pool" insurance

c) living on a fixed income with high cost of whatever

d) been forced to work 2 or 3 part-time jobs with no benefits thanks to

the corporate trend of eliminating full-time jobs.

e) some combination of the above

possibly vote for Bush?"

We asked a variant of the question during the last election: "How can someone whose life has been decimated by Republican policy even consider voting for McCain?"

Now I think I know the answer, and it isn't pretty.

During the year or so leading up to the election, I was a passionate constant consumer of political writing. I paid attention and spent countless hours informing myself.

But ever since the inauguration my consumption of such media has dropped by about 75%.

At first I thought I had political burnout or a simply too much on my plate, but now I'm investigating an unflattering possibility:

Could I be a blind follower, too?

I have little interest in following issues these days. I no longer read Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or Wonkette three times a day. I no longer watch CNN during my time in the kitchen. I no longer read the newspaper regularly.

I am, under this hypothesis, exactly like the individuals on the right I used to castigate.

So I want to ask for your help.

Will you let me know, in the comments if you (as a conservative) are now consuming more political media or if you (as a liberal) are consuming less?

Please throw your virtual two cents' worth into the fray.

Suitcase Central

2009-02-22T15:21:00.003-06:00

I'm busy packing for a trip to West Virginia, home of Taylor Books and Ellen's Ice Cream and very dear friends.

Post may be few and far between, but I'll check in when I arrive. We're taking Young Girl to visit her BFF. Hope for some snow, okay?

For those who've asked, my mom is doing much better now that her docs have reintroduced steroids to reduce the inflammation around the tumors in her brain. Her aphasia is about 80% improved, as are her balance and handwriting. It's not a cure but it's a good management strategy.

Here's to safe travels.

Mea Culpa - Comments Encouraged

2009-02-17T09:58:00.005-06:00

What I feared when I revealed my identity has happened.

Someone, mentioned during my years of anonymity, has expressed dissatisfaction with his or her portrayal.

During those years, the blog was a protected outlet. When I joined Lithia Writers Collective I needed to link my name to this blog for administrative reasons. I thought I'd "scrubbed" any significant identifying references to others; apparently I did not.

Over the next few days, I will endeavor to do so. If you feel that I've have portrayed you in a way that makes you uncomfortable, please let me know (bluelikethesky@gmail.com ) or feel free to comment on the post in question.

Initial responsibility for the words on this forum lies with me. But only I know my intentions. Final responsibility lies with those who read. While I never bought into Reader Response Criticism, all readers shape their interpretations through their own experiences. I hope readers will remember that I mean no one harm.

Buddha Blanket Update (or "Planning to Fail")

2009-02-16T09:13:00.004-06:00

I've resolutely decided to fail at knitting.

What I needed to do, I decided, was just to knit, over and over and over again without thinking about pattern.

Big lap throw, I thought.

At the hobby store, I bought several skeins of the nobbliest yarn I could find, with colors that take me immediately to Lake Tahoe. I selected long needles, bigger than any I had at home.

While sitting with my mother, I cast on 125 (more or less) stitches. And then I began with abandon.

Sometimes the needle went through the nobbles instead of the loop. "Big Whoop," I told myself. Sometimes two stitched popped off instead of one. "Whatever," I blithely considered. But the stitches were still too tight, too crammed together on the rigid, limited needles.

So I took a big leap, returned to the hobby store, and picked up 36" circular needles. Now my stitches can breathe, and the throw is growing, helixing lushly like DNA on the curving cables.

What I've learned so far:

* Loose is better than tight.

* Holes can be repaired later or left alone as "character" and "texture."

* If you cover the sharp points when you stop, your work won't unravel.

* Soft, organic shapes make things easier.

* Knit when you want to, and stop when you don't... where ever you are.

Not bad lessons for life, either.

Enjoy.....

2009-02-12T15:20:00.003-06:00

My well is dry, so I offer this - blatantly stolen from Miles Inada's blog.

'coz this is Sunday night and everybody's got to go to work.....

Taking a Bow.....

2009-02-10T10:44:00.005-06:00

It’s a dreary day here today: pending rain, gray skies, temperature in the upper sixties. Everything outside is saying stasis.

But inside, progress is underway.

Unfortunately the progress is the other team’s.

On Friday, my mother made the decision to stop treating her ovarian cancer. For almost three years, palliative chemotherapy, her otherwise excellent health, and the smart, compassionate care of her physician, Dr. Tammy Roque, have kept the tumors in stasis.

Gray and pending, no doubt, but still.

We began the new year with bad news. Her disease had eluded the poisonous chemotherapy and found a new home in her brain. It immediately set up six malignant outposts, each of which began to march.

A radiation oncologist ordered total brain radiation, hoping to shrink the tumors and avoid any new symptoms. While we can’t be sure, it does not appear to have been successful; no one can be certain if Mother’s worsening aphasia and balance are caused by tumor spread or continued inflammation from the treatment.

And uncertainty intruded elsewhere. The usual question - “Have you reached a point where the treatment is worse than the disease?” - was not really pertinent for her case. Mother had no idea what the disease felt like on its own. The treatment was, however, causing such fatigue and lowered blood counts that her doctor had to postpone two infusions. When the weakness and fatigue did not improve, we faced the decision point.

Only one drug remained in Dr. Roque’s arsenal, and while it held out a very small chance of effectiveness it also promised severe side effects, ones that would not be easy to bear in a weakened state.

We’ve always known the cancer would win. That was never in doubt. The time had come to concede.

So on Saturday, my mother transitioned from treatment to hospice care.

Her focus can now be on living rather than fighting.

I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be posting over the next few weeks. I’ll be spending more time with my mother and my focus will narrow. I hope to just sit with her, listen to her thoughts if she chooses to share them, and be a calm presence in her life.

Please continue to check the blog, though, and send compassionate, comforting thoughts our way.

Things I'm Trying To Tell Myself Tonight...

2009-02-08T20:02:00.004-06:00

The laundry can wait.

People who talk endlessly about themselves despite social clues to stop are lonely and need our kindness.

Scrubby brown winter woods can be beautiful.

Wind is pleasant.

Mistakes are fine.

My daughter’s selfishness is not evidence of irrevocable spoiling.

I’m not tired.

Buddha Blanket - Part Four (or "In Development")

2009-02-05T14:47:00.005-06:00

I had a long talk with a wise young woman today about knitting and writing. She posed a wonderful question. “Have you ever set out to fail?” she asked.

“Well, I knew when I started knitting that I would make mistakes. Other than that, honestly, I’ve never done so consciously but unconsciously is another story altogether.”

And right then and there a nutshell opened; fear of failure and fear of success tumbled out.

I resolve today no longer to fear either with my writing.

I resolve today to be gentle with myself.

I resolve today to write to explore rather than to control.

For that last, we have editors.

I may finish the blanket or I may not, but I have finished this series of posts. Let’s move on.

Buddha Blanket - Part Three (or "Let's Just Scupper This Whole Idea")

2009-02-04T17:49:00.005-06:00

This is supposed to the post in which I wax rhapsodic on the joys of knitting. I’m supposed to tell you that nothing has ever brought me out of my head and into the moment like the hypnotic rhythm of looping and pulling. I’m supposed to tell you how I’ve abandoned my perfectionism, my inner critic, and learned to love each stitch, even the dropped ones.

That was all true.

For a bit.

I spent several days knitting and unraveling. Knitting and unraveling. Knitting and unraveling.

Binding off.

Gathering courage to purl, and discovering it wasn’t difficult at all.

Unraveling.

Starting again.

Unraveling.

I completed two little rectangles my daughter called “knitties” and took to bed each night.

I was totally relaxed. Peaceful and Mindful.

Then I noticed I was actually producing something and that it actually looked like knitting done by a knitter.

So I choked.

The minute my project began to have the potential to become a scarf, a sweater, a doll blanket, the minute the process disappeared, the joy went away.

I began to tense, to worry that I would make a mistake many rows into the project, a mistake so egregious I would have to abandon the entire thing, beautiful yarn and all.

This is, of course, pertinent to both meditation and writing.

More to follow.

Buddha Blanket - Part Two

2009-02-02T16:12:00.003-06:00

A certain kind of religiosity hangs in the air around here. It’s heavy. You can barely breathe sometimes. I’m not talking about sincere Christians, for whom I have the utmost respect. It seems to me that central to a sincere belief system is the willingness to relinquish certainty. That act is called faith. We cannot know, so we choose to believe.

Yes, the faith is fine. It’s the folks with all the certainty who are oppressive. To me, presuming to know that mind of God is tantamount to blasphemy.

But tell that to the Gospel-Of-Affluence-I’ve-Got-A-Ticket-To-Heaven-That-You-Don’t crowd. They know.

But I digress. Isn’t this supposed to be a post about a Buddha Blanket or some such?

I know exactly enough about Buddhism to be dangerous – or at least annoying to those who seek to understand it. But central to my understanding is the concept of impermanence (I could go on about parallels to Christianity, but I’ll save that for another post). Joy and sadness will both come and go, no matter how hard we strive to control them. Being mindful of the moment you are experiencing – not the one you lived five years ago or the one you’re going to live tomorrow - becomes your practice.

Pretty simple, but exceedingly difficult.

The inability to get out of my head and into the moment has plagued me for as long as I can remember. It’s impacted relationships and decision-making, self-censored prayer, and dogged every attempt to learn formal meditation. It bloomed into crippling perfectionism earlier in my life, but the practice of motherhood has helped with that.

But it’s hell on hobbies, particularly those involving needles.

Over the years, I’ve tried many kinds of needlework (my jaunt into counted cross-stitch in the early 80s is particularly painful to remember), each bringing tension and aggravation instead of relaxation. But I’ve begun to have some dexterity issues and thought that I might try the Holy Grail, the big one, the craft that intimidates me more than any other.

Knitting. Pretty simple, but exceedingly difficult.

More tomorrow…

Buddha Blanket - Part One

2009-02-01T14:27:00.002-06:00

Religion is a complicated matter for me.

My childhood could best be described as “Christian Unchurched.” My father did not trust organized religion, believing that it was often about money rather than God. We would sometimes attend on Easter.

Then came youth group, in my case Methodist Youth Fellowship (or, as it was commonly known, MYF, now UMYF). I was fortunately to receive my “religious education” from people with a liberal theological bent (not to mention the fact that all this happened before the rise of the religious right…politics and church just did not mix). Our youth directors (often interns from Perkins School of Theology at SMU) would say things like, “Oh don’t be ridiculous. Jonah wasn’t swallowed by an actual whale. Bible stories use narrative constructs to teach.” Obviously this is why I became an English major.

We put on anti-war musicals, painted banners that read, “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things,” did an experimental communion once with tacos and Dr. Pepper.

What can I say? It was the 70s.

This all left me with a healthy suspicion of supernatural claims…. such as the fact that an actual dead body would get up and walk around on earth. Needless to say, in today’s theopolitcal world – especially here in Texas – this position must be shared judiciously (just ask the folks at Nicaea about consequences).

While many of my friends have crossed over completely to atheism, I still have my doubts about the nonexistence of God. What to do?

Gnosticism helped.

But Buddhism makes so much sense and, as is increasingly clear to me, conflicts in no substantive way with either doubt or belief.

More on this topic tomorrow.

Needlework

2009-01-30T10:42:00.004-06:00

So many worries…

Is it time for my mother to stop her cancer treatment?

Should I take an aggressive, invasive approach to prevent cancer in my own body?

Need the release of every dollar be fraught with such anxiety?

Why is my sweet daughter suddenly exploding with anger?

After 25 years of marriage and 50 years of living, why do I feel as if everything is starting over?

But such elegant, smooth cord….

I treasure good friends who listen and who have, in some cases, faced the same worries.

Each day my daughter learns in a peaceful, loving academic environment

My sister, at least today, shares rather than attacks my thoughts about our mother’s care.

I’ve found new pursuits – knitting, drawing, and painting – to open a new chapter for my hands; my heart will follow, surely.

I’m grateful for the Lithia Writers, who have my back from so very far away.

And the finest needle, language, in its infinite richness and precision….

May it help me string these beads, and place them in my fingers to touch and consider.

Every word can be a healing, every page a release.

We are fortunate, indeed, to write.

A License to Practice Medicine....Again

2009-01-23T12:43:00.007-06:00

One of my significant beefs with the Bush II administration was its complete disregard for reproductive rights. While its restrictions on women, their doctors, and their hospitals in this country were bad enough, its determination to impose a specific brand of morality on those who practice medicine in other countries and receive US funding was abominable.

In places where disease, hunger, famine, and rape are rampant; in places where HIV/AIDS and other diseases rage out of control; and in places where women have little opportunity to make decisions (reproductive or otherwise), NGOs have been unable to discuss, much less provide, abortion services as one option among others.

Things really can change with the stroke of a pen.

From Rebecca Traister in today's salon.com:

This just in: Globe to be ungagged

Day three of life in Obama times, and there's more good news to report: today the president will lift the so-called "global gag rule" or "Mexico City Policy" that forbids NGOs that receive federal funding from providing abortion services or counseling abroad. The rule was first announced in 1984, in Mexico City at the United Nations International Conference on Population, at the height of Reagan-era social conservative fever. It meant that many international family planning and reproductive health organizations (including the International Planned Parenthood Federation) lost a heap of money from the feds, and that others that wanted or needed to keep their funding had to conform to strict policies in which advocacy, counseling or provision of abortion services was verboten. The rule was rescinded by Bill Clinton in 1993, immediately after he took office, and promptly reinstated by George Bush in 2001, days after he took office. So Obama's decision here is not surprising, but it is certainly good news for women and men around the world.

His choice to lift the gag today rather than yesterday, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade decision and the date that both Clinton and Bush made their announcements, is being read as a sign of respect toward antiabortion activists, who staged a large march in D.C. yesterday. That may be true, but it's also true that by making more pro-choice news today, after issuing a very strong statement in support of Roe yesterday, Obama is ensuring that his lift of the gag rule -- which really does change the landscape for international health and family services -- can stand as its own news story, rather than just getting mashed in with the rest of the January 22 "abortion day" news.

― Rebecca Traister

Words and Lawns

2009-01-22T15:30:00.003-06:00

Last May, I overcame extreme anxiety and hit “send,” pushing two essays of the nest. I submitted these fledglings, the first non-academic work I’d submitted anywhere under my own name since age 16, for inclusion in a collection of creative non-fiction. Its editors are two writers and bloggers I’ve come to admire and respect.

The publication date, “fall of 2008,” implied a decision sometime around October. Apparently they did not receive enough submissions, and instead extended the deadline to December 31. Despite the standard “we cannot respond to inquiries about individual submissions” warning, I sent a “cheery little email” not long ago and received a form response. The project’s website has not been updated in any form or fashion; it still mentions the original submission deadline: May 15, 2008.

I do not have the confidence of the other Lithia Writers. I am meek. It was a huge leap of faith to hit that button. And you know what? When I sent those words away they somehow were no longer mine. The sending itself was the point of this event, not acceptance (or so I’m telling myself until the rejection email arrives).

All this brings me around to my lawn.

Every fall, in the hopes of continuous employment, a landscape service spreads winter rye seed over our two acres. The first time they did this, I blustered, “How dare they assume I want a green winter yard!” Then the compliments began to roll in and I learned to savor the feel of soft, cold green blades under my feet.

But this year? My yard looks like a Chia Pet undergoing chemotherapy.

You see, we’re experiencing a serious drought. Smack in the middle of all those biblical weather systems (floods, blizzards, Gulf hurricanes, etc.), we’re high and dry.

Here and there, hopeful patches of brilliant green have erupted among the brown dirt and sere Bermuda and St. Augustine. Looking down, I see hundreds of seeds, dreaming of germination.

This afternoon, I realized that my lawn resembles the writing life as well. Amid the drought of anxiety, we sow our seeds and we wait.

Here and there, celebration and growth!

There and here, patience and nothingness.

And you always have to mow, either way.

Bright, Bright Sunshiny Day...

2009-01-21T11:21:00.008-06:00

It’s been a good long time since we merely chatted…about 18 months. So grab your hot toddy, pull up closer to the fire, and listen to me ramble about what’s on my mind.

• The Obama inauguration was an overwhelming joy. I stopped trying to force Young Girl to “get it” once I realized that her blasé attitude is an object lesson in why he was elected. His race is simply not a big deal to her, and not just because of her age. She’s had peers who look like Sasha and Melia all her life. They’re just two girls about her age who have the incredible luck to be living in the White House. Oh, right. They’re African American. Whatever, Mom. During the President Obama’s speech, The Man saw a bald eagle flying out at the ranch. We agreed it was a beautiful, positive omen for the day and the future.

• I have not truly been happy for a long time. But more importantly, I had no idea how blue I’d become. I’ve taken some actions to ameliorate the situation, and I’m pleased to report that the sunshine is breaking through and I’m feeling better than I have in years. Oh, yeah, the menopause thing being over could have a little something to do with that, too.

• As to the above, if you are not happy, and you know what you need to do to feel better, and you can’t do it no matter how much you know you should, please discuss with your health care provider the possibility that something might be up with your body. That’s all I’m saying.

• We’re having a string a stunning, crisp, sunny days. Still, sunny, blue skies with temps in the 40s and 50s are my idea of perfect weather. But I’ll take sunny post-snow days, too. Hint, hint universe.

• My mother continues her miraculous response to her cancer treatment, despite metastasis to her brain. She’s finished radiation for the 6 brain tumors, and is waiting for the go-ahead (neurological stability for a month) to join a clinical trial. She’s breaking all survival expectations. GO MOTHER!

Enough self-important yammering. As soon as I can, I’m headed outdoors.

I Want This Dress In Deep Rich Bottle Green

2009-01-16T16:08:00.009-06:00

The lovely Christy has blessed me mixedly with an award:

I now must reveal five addictions and make five other people do the same. If I'd received this award in the 80s, I'd have been honor bound to begin with my addiction to black shoes, but I am thankfully in recovery from that one. I'm more of a "propensity" type than an addiction type, but I have come up with 5 things suitable for general consumption. So, here goes.

My name is Kelly, and I’m addicted to

1. My Laptop More precisely, I'm addicted to googling people and things that don’t do wonders for my self-esteem and compulsively checking blog comments, FB updates, and emails.

2. The Pacific Northwest I am meant to live there. I dream of Oregon and the San Juan Islands daily, and would love to retire to a craftsman cottage in either spot and grow lots of peonies.

3. Very Nice Hotels I’ve had insomnia issues for years, and I always sleep well in a cold, dark, quiet room on a good bed with tons of pillows. I also like to take my laptop to the bar and people watching in conjunction with addiction #1.

4. My Goofy Dog, Kaiser He’s a pain in the ass, my husband is allergic to him, and I have to do all the work. But those eyes! And all that love!

5. Procrastination But I will make significant progress on this one tomorrow, believe it or not, I promise!

I honor the following bloggers: Do You Realize?, What I Saw Today, Redmolly Picayune-Democrat, Cheerio Road, and The Savvy Navigator

Let The Sun Shine In....

2009-01-14T19:43:00.006-06:00

Hair Lyrics

Five preteens, four girls and a boy, sit in the small bedroom, playing their favorite summer game. It’s 1969. While “spin-the-bottle” has been part of their repertoire for some time, let me remind you that it is summer. Texas summer. And it’s 1969.

What this means for those of you who are younger or more economically or geographically fortunate than our five friends is that the 3BR 1.5B brick has no central air conditioning. The boy in question is fortunate enough to have a window unit.

The game is “Freezeout.”

They’ve set the Kenmore at its lowest setting, blocked the crack under the door with a JC Penney bath towel, and are just beginning to feel the first goose bumps. Someone drops the needle on an album forbidden in at least one household, in spite of the squeaky-clean family band, because of a single song, the song they all love, the song that brings them to their chilly bare feet….

“Gimme a head with hair…”

Shining. Gleaming. Streaming. Flaxen. Waxen.

I’m pretty sure I was the only one who knew – at least at age ten – that the song was from a play famous for actual naked people (did you guess that I was the one without the Cowsills album?), on stage in a city far far away. Our parents worked desperately to convince us that hippies, Be-ins, yippies, protesters, and other manifestations of malcontent would turn us into “juvenile delinquents.”

We taped our peace sign posters up inside our closets and Bobby Sherman on our bedroom walls.

In one of those great ironies only the universe can create, I now assiduously work to ensure my daughter has the kind of social consciousness my parents did their best to prevent me from developing.

Toward that end, I downloaded the soundtrack from Hair and slipped it on her iPod Monday night.

Never trust anyone over 50.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes....

2009-01-11T20:27:00.004-06:00

It is time to face the strange changes....

Small Child turned nine years old yesterday.

As I watched her run and ride and twirl with her friends I realized she was no longer Small Child.

So three cheers and nine candles to Young Girl, in all her glory.

Making Beautiful Music

2009-01-09T09:24:00.005-06:00

If a blood-sucking, buzzing bitch is in the same county, she will find me. And feast.

No, this is not the first line in my new lesbian vampire novel.

I am a mosquito all-you-can-eat buffet. A smorgasbord. A slop-trough. You get the idea. But, as a new article in the journal Science explains, I have the metaphors all wrong.

I am a symphony hall; a dim, romantic piano bar; a frenetic 80s disco dance floor on ladies' night.

You see, for mosquitoes it truly don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

A receptive female mosquito ito emits a tone, say a G; an interested male emits a tone a perfect fifth higher, a D. When the notes align and the pitch is right, they create an audible (to those with wings or fancy recording equipment) overtone.

Mosquitoes mate only when this overtone is present.

Males without perfect pitch don't get to play.

It just goes to show you, guys: your pick-up line better be pitch perfect.

Learn more about this fascinating story here.

photo credit: Visuals Unlimited/Corbis via npr.org

We Can Build a Dream With Love

2009-01-07T14:38:00.010-06:00

Beautiful image by Jen Lemen* used with artist's permission

Come on people! Sons and mothers!

Keep the dream of the two young brothers.

Gonna take that dream and ride that dove.

We could build the dream with love,

We could build the dream with love.

I got fury in my soul, fury's gonna take me to the glory goal.

In my mind I can't study war no more.

(Lyrics by Laura Nyro)

Today I drove Small Child to school on a bright, cool Texas morning...the best possible weather. In yesterday's mail, we'd received a copy of a long lost CD, a mix I'd made to celebrate the first birthdays of a mess-o-babies born in our Oregon town in the year 2000. We rolled through the flat, sere pastures, rediscovering old favorites and singing along with everyone from Sinatra to Smash Mouth when the gentle acoustic strums of Roseanne Cash's cover of "Save The Country" broke through like Hand-of-God-Through-The-Clouds-Sunshine.

About half way through, when I heard the lyrics I've copied above, I hit repeat.

And again.

And again.

And then it hit me in the gut.

On January 20, our nation will have kept that dream.

And if, as I fervently hope, the older brother's brilliant daughter is seated in the United States Senate, we will have built it with love.

Godspeed, Barack and Caroline, as you approach your glory goals.

A nation is behind you, fury in our soul.

*Jen Lemen is an amazing blogger, artist, doula, mother, NPR contributor, and advocate for the girls and women of Africa. Please visit her blog for information on her work, both written and visual.

I Embark

2009-01-05T09:19:00.004-06:00

After my daughter was born, I decided I would conquer my "math block." I resolved, at age 41, to complete a calculus course before I turned 50.

One obstacle lay in my path: my last math instruction, trigonometry, had taken place when I was 17. Truth was, I could no longer factor an equation.

Finally I had a reason to be thankful for the sad state of public education. I enrolled in the easiest developmental math course at the university where I worked. While on maternity leave, I factored and solved while my baby slept. I loved it. Putting numbers in neat columns and arriving at finite, correct answer was the perfect counterbalance to the chaos of first-time motherhood.

I breezed through the three "pre-credit" courses once I got my number legs back; the hardest part was using that newfangled graphing calculator. In the old days, such wonders didn't exist and the dinosaur versions were so expensive - even though TI was a 20 minute drive from our school - that we had one per classroom and had to take turns. Yes, Virginia, we used slide rules. Google the term.

My return to work coincided with my entry into "College Algebra." I was doing fine, but the combination of math, child care, sorting out the adminstrivia of six months' absence, and finding time to sleep was not working and I put numeracy aside. And I never resumed, even after I resigned and returned to Texas.

So 50 came and went last month with nary a bit of calculus. No big.

But I have decided that something else absolutely must come to pass this year. I owe it to myself and to one amazing teacher in my past and colleague and friend in the present, Carol Daeley.

I've never read a novel by Charles Dickens.

It's a long story, but over the years it's become a point of perverse pride, a literary party-fact: "Why, yes, I'm an aborted-doctor-of literature and you know what? I've never read Dickens. Take THAT."

But in my sixth decade, it's time to shit or get off the pot. My education is incomplete.

I have chosen Bleak House, and just clicked the checkout button on amazon. The die is cast.

I Still Love the Modernists

2009-01-03T22:15:00.010-06:00

I've been out of the crosshairs of the literary canon for quite a good long time. During my most recent enmeshment, the writers I "specialized in" during graduate school - The Modernists - had fallen out of favor. Their deadwhitemale corpses were the cannibal feasts of fierce young Xinists and Xicists who, ironically, had adopted one of the great Modernist mottoes:

Make It New

Everyone was chasing after some new writer and some new angle to (dare I say) fetishize, and being Dead and White and Male pretty much meant a writer was Going To Pay.

Given, the new writers were mostly wonderful; granted, the old writers (they weren't all men though they were all dead and they pretty much were all white) were not always on the fashionable side of the political fence. They drank, smoke, and screwed with abandon. Some were not very nice to each other or anyone else.

But they wrote with the angels.

The angels.

I could go off on a rant here about how anyone who still thinks Hemingway is a misogynist needs to go on a very long retreat with a copy of The Sun Also Rises and anyone who thinks Faulkner is a racist should do the same with The Sound and The Fury, but I'll spare you.

Instead, I just want to tease you with a tiny bit of light. This isn't the happiest poem, but glory how it sings.

Take it away, Mr. Eliot.....

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

(T.S. Eliot 1888-1965)

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

...

If you would like to read on, click here.

Turning Over a New Lexicon

2009-01-02T21:30:00.005-06:00

Those who know me will back me up on this one: I am not stodgy. I will say just about anything to anyone anywhere at anytime.

That said, however, I also believe that certain niceties should be observed, and right at the top of the list is Standard English When Appropriate. I toss around slang and, um, colorful diction all the time but I do my best to be cognizant of my audience. And one thing I guard against is the linguistic equivalent of “mutton dressed as lamb.” Nothing is more cringe-worthy than a middle-aged teacher trying to hang with the peeps.

Writ small, u will not c me l8er.

As a neophyte texter, I faced a dilemma every time I whipped out my thumbs. Character limits forced me to send three messages to every student’s one. And since it took me forever to figure out how to coax an apostrophe from my non-QWERTY device, I wrote without contractions for months.

Eventually I loosened up a bit, but only to a small circle.

My peeps, u no.

When I teach, my students are usually veterans of the AP wars; they write shell-shocked, stilted, voiceless prose and I must help them loosen not tighten their diction. But I still want things right, damn it.

So when I finally became a mother, those who’d known me for big chunks of the 41 years it took me to breed braced themselves for the birth not only of a girl child but also of a fire-breathing perfectionist bitch of a mother… Joan Crawford with The MLA Handbook.

But just as ligaments and tendons loosen to allow a baby’s body to pass through a small space, my rigidity collapsed in the presence of my daughter’s linguistic development. While an adult mispronouncing a word usually sends me running for the Xanax, I was fascinated by the organic process in which she sussed out verb tenses and found her "r" and "l." But I’m still a perfectionist on the inside, and her spelling is another story altogether. Maybe I’ll come back to that in another post, after enduring homework thanks to a couple of glasses of Oregon pinot noir. A commentator on NPR recently urged listeners to accept the reality that “thru” and “nite” may well become standard spellings in 10 years.

ROFLMAO!!! No wA.

But motherhood has relaxed me. It’s made me a more patient, process oriented teacher and a more self-forgiving writer (which is a good thing, considering that this post ended up in Chicago when I was headed for Providence, but oh, well…). My daughter has taught me more about Being, Impermanence, Suffering, and Life than any wall of texts could. She’s also inspired me and made me laugh.

And she’s a princess of neology.

I’d refer to her as a “neologist,” but Merriam-Webster Unabridged hasn’t extended its definition yet. So as my initial contribution to Lithia Writers’ Collective, I offer you two new words, courtesy of Small Child, age eight for six more days.

Snoreful: one who snores noticeably. “Mommy, Kaiser's such a snoreful dog.”
Braggative: someone (most often a third grade girl, but you never know….) who seems to think she’s awfully special. “Mommy, Narcissa’s nice, but she’s kind of braggative sometimes.”

Use these with pleasure, and happiest of Januarys to you all.

Starting The New Year Right

2009-01-01T21:01:00.006-06:00

Today, a secret fantasy came true. No, Alan Rickman did not whisk me away to a remote windswept island.

My Oregon writing group, The Lithia Writers' Collective, invited me to fill the Friday blogging spot recently vacated by Julie Inada, a writer and writing teacher from whom I have stolen so many tips I should be locked away under the "Three Strikes" rules of most states. I have missed these women so much for so long that I can't wait to be part of the group, even if I'm 2000+ miles away. I only hope I can keep up, especially since I must follow Christy.

If I can overcome my mounting performance anxiety, you can read me tomorrow at LWC.

Unless Alan shows up.

Then, dear friends, find yourselves another girl.

Your Healing Thoughts

2008-12-30T23:38:00.010-06:00

Writers are taught to show, not tell.

If you've been following my blog (all two of you) since its birth, you are aware of my mother's amazing journey with ovarian cancer. She was diagnosed with badbadbad Stage IV disease in May, 2006 and is miraculously still alive. We found out today she's been approved to be Patient One in a groovy clinical trial.

But then.

But then her doctor noticed she was listening with one eye closed. Mother's explanation? Her "glasses must be messed up or something," because she's been seeing double for a week out of her right eye.

So off we dashed for an MRI of her brain; we will know the results tomorrow when we go for a spinal tap.

I've known the word "metastasis" would enter our vocabulary eventually. I hope it will not be tomorrow.

No words, at least none I can wrangle, can do justice to the destruction of this disease. I clicked on an "event" in iPhoto yesterday and saw it like some perverse makeover ad.

I simply cannot tell you.

So I will show you.

My mother (age 82) and daughter (age 3) in October, 2003:

My mother (age 87) and daughter (age 8) in December 2008:

I'll let you know how it goes.

Update 12/31: Mother's doctor confirmed metastasis to the brain this morning, and ordered radiation treatments that began this afternoon. Thanks to all who have responded by email, phone, facebook, and in person.

Anniversaries

2008-12-23T22:57:00.003-06:00

It's happened, the big birthday.

I am now fifty years old.

I wish I could say that today was full of joy, but the universe chose to remind me of impermanence and physicality. And that is as it should be, no?

The planned celebration, pared back this year to a few close friends, was cancelled as The Man, Small Child, and I are all suffering from various layers of an infectious parfait. We've been unusually healthy lately, but all running at hyperspeed.

And now, we're forced to rest.

When things do not turn out as you plan, try to find the real plan. The one that time reveals.

It's there, underneath your worries, complaints, aches, impatience.

I haven't quite found it yet.

I suspect it will turn up when I stop looking.

Thanks to all of you who sent greetings and good wishes. Your friendship will mean even more in the next half-century.

Winter Dreams

2008-12-12T11:24:00.005-06:00

I adore winter.

Those who live elsewhere think it never gets cold in Texas. It certainly doesn’t seem to get as cold as it did during my childhood, when we enjoyed at least one snow day each school year and our parents suffered multiple bouts of black ice. Now our snows are freaky…like the March week this spring when we had six inches one day and nine two days later, with a 60 degree day in between that cleared the yard completely.

The climate has definitely changed in my lifetime.

But winter still arrives acutely in these parts. As I always remind some shivering transplant, our only defenses against the frigid Canadian cold fronts are barbed wire fences.

Everyone has a story. My friends C & L “fondly” remember a west Texas high school football game where balloons were released during a balmy halftime show, floated gently northward on a light southern breeze, and blustered back during fourth quarter on a fierce north wind that dropped the temperature 40 degrees.

My special memory? The year before I married, our town endured ten days with high temperatures below ten degrees. The Man had renovated a turn-of-the-century farmhouse. Our Christmas tree stood against the north wall, and the water froze in the stand. We went out twice a day with an axe to chop holes in the tanks so the cattle could get to water; the ice was four inches thick at the edges. The night skies were crystalline. I’m not sure any subsequent Christmas has ever measured up in terms of natural magic.

This year we’ve been weather waiting. Waiting for rain. And waiting for winter. And I’ve been waiting: for understanding, enlightenment, calm, clarity, direction.

Our first “norther” blew through this week. While the slight promise of snow flurries did not prove true, the wind chill did drop into the teens and the koi pond was encased in a thin film of ice. I was caught off guard by it. I’d left the house in a t-shirt and yoga pants, but somehow never made it to the Y, instead whiling the day away with coffee and a book at Starbucks. I stepped outside at 2 p.m. into a different world: gray, gusty, and 35 degrees toward winter.

I was early to pick up Small Child that afternoon. First in line, I turned off the engine and listened to the roar and whistle. And as I watched the wind, as I could almost see its linearity – north to south – in the motion of tree limbs, I felt my need for winter stir deep inside me, particularly sharp as my fiftieth birthday approaches.

I want to stand, vulnerable and exposed, facing the north.

I want the wind, harsh and unforgiving, to rip the unnecessary, the obsolete, the dead weight from my soul and my life just as it tears the last remaining leaves from the trees.

I want to know my basic architecture, my trunk and my branches, from the roots to the tiniest twigs, with nothing to interfere.

I want, when the wind dies down, to gleam under the crystal stars of the winter sky.

I want the snow to come.

I want to rest under its blanket, to store up energy.

I want to dream of what is to come, of the next chapter, of the new growth that lies ahead.

I want the peace of winter solstice.

May it come to me and to you, my friends.

A Good Place to Remember Leslie Marenchin*...

2008-12-03T10:57:00.004-06:00

The vast majority of good times I shared with my friend Leslie were spent as part of a triumvirate of mirth. The third leg of the stool (heh...heh....I just typed stool, with all its scatological connotations...that one's for you, P.J.), the inestimable Freebird, has created a blog in Leslie's honor.

Friends, students, and others who wish to leave comments or read what others have written will find the blog at:

professormarenchin.blogspot.com

If you don't like the comment posting process, you may also send comments directly to Freebird at keithjon@hotmail.com and he will post them for you If you prefer to leave a comment here, I will send them on so Leslie's family will have a central site to visit.

Thanks again to all of you who have expressed your sympathies to me in words spoken and written.

A memorial service is tentatively scheduled in the chapel on the University of Houston campus at 1 p.m. on Sunday, December 7.

*or, as Leslie might have said, "A Clean, Well Lighted Fart."

Be Careful Out There

2008-12-02T19:49:00.000-06:00

I received word this morning that a friend from my graduate school days died over the weekend. I have many, many memories of Leslie, bookended by a spur-of-the-moment Who concert in early 80s Houston and a reunion of our cocktail-consuming-trio on an Oregon beach in 2003.

The one constant in all these years? Laughter.

Alert: Holidays Ahead!

2008-11-23T22:39:00.009-06:00

The holidays officially begin this week, and the "horns of plenty" are overflowing with tales of family eccentricity.

The Man, Small Child, and I will be - as of this minute - having a tiny Thanksgiving courtesy of multi-car pile-up of drama that I will do my best to pull together in an amusing post over the next few days. I'm going to roast a duck and prepare my sinfully delicious cornbread-and-bacon stuffing (endorsed by the portfolio managers of cardiologists everywhere). Yum.

On a vaguely related note, today is the birthday of both my adorable Third Nephew and my sister. I feted the former, a kind and loving child, by providing the comic relief at his birthday party. Bowling is not like riding a bike, it seems. If one goes, say, thirty years without aiming a pin her skills do not rush back. But nothing puts smiles on the faces of the ten-and-under set like middle-aged physical comedy. I'm proud to serve.

Honoring my sister was not so easy. I opted for a drive-by: gift card in birthday envelope deposited in mailbox. Always the safe choice when the recipient isn't speaking to the giver.

Everybody Plays, Everybody Wins.

2008-11-22T12:33:00.005-06:00

Congrats to Christy and Sarah, the two winning commenters.

Sarah, drop me an email at bluelikethesky@gmail.com with your mailing address and I'll set things in motion, most likely via amazon.uk. Christy, I know where to find you.

All Grown Up Now

2008-11-16T18:24:00.003-06:00

On election night, amidst all the talk of "historic moments" and "monumental firsts," I suddenly realized I'd just passed over a meaningful tipping point.

For the first time in my life, I am older than the President of the United States of America.

But not by much. And therein lies one of the emotional reasons I chose to support his candidacy. Barack and Michelle Obama are of my generation. Our daughters are in the same age bracket. Their personal concerns are my personal concerns. Lest you think I am a left wing nutjob who votes the blue state equivalent of "I love Sarah Palin! She's just like me!," know that ultimately my choice was reason-based. But I'd be lying if, now that the election is over, I didn't 'fess up to the identification thing.

Barack Obama is old enough to be President, and so am I. Welcome to true adulthood. The place and time where we take the reins.

Every campaign - indeed, every presidency - is like a lifetime in miniature. Some presidents, like some individuals, never quite grow up. They either chase rainbows or pick on the weak or live out their lives thinking the world literally revolves around them. The drama of youth plays out on the world stage, damn the consequences.

You know who I'm talking about.

I truly believe that is about to change.

Across the street from my elementary school, a vacant lot was blocked from our daydreaming eyes by a cinder block monstrosity known as The Brick Wall (deep in the Cold War, the Berlin Wall probably had a lot to do with the moniker). We were pretty good kids, and closely supervised, so disputes were usually shut down before they erupted into anything physical. But diplomacy isn't always effective when you're ten. Occasionally, whispers would drift through the halls and notes would change hands; our covert skills rivalled those of any Le Carre' spook: "Fight today behind The Brick Wall." The game was on.

I never made it ringside since my mother picked me up promptly every day, but I heard tales of the rollicking violence that blacked eyes and ripped shirts before the principal would amble over and break things up. He could usually set things right by requiring a handshake, mutual apologies, an honest admission of who started it, and a classic punishment such as writing "I will not fight behind the Brick Wall." 100 times. He was an outstanding example of a grownup in action. Thanks to his leadership, such fights were rare.

This presidential campaign had much of the schoolyard brawl about it. Spitballs. Dinner rolls across the cafetorium. Glue in the chair. Every day brought another taunt, another challenge. Rumors. Lies. Stabs in the back. Every day, someone from the McCain camp was spoiling for a fight, showing up Behind The Brick Wall, ready to kick some ass.

But there was one big problem. No one showed up to fight. Obama wasn't a chicken. He wasn't worried about getting in trouble.

He didn't fight because he is a grown up.

Over the last few days, as I've thought about the election, as I've watched the Obamas do their best to live authentic lives, what has struck me is how remarkably consistent he man is. How grounded. How controlled. How reliable. How disciplined. Just as he was throughout the two-year process. During the primary, he didn't change his wardrobe or his accent to fit the venue as Senator Clinton often did. During the main campaign, he maintained a calm, strong demeanor in the face of outrageous accusations and falsehoods. In doing so, he presented an admirable counterpoint to a ticket that drew each day's talking points from a grab bag, hoping feverishly that one would hit home.

Yes, we are going to have a grownup in the White House.

And I am optimistic that our nation may also be coming of age.

On election night, my friends and I watched the massive crowd in Grant Park - exuberant yet peaceful, so peaceful. Tens of thousands of fully enfranchised Americans, individuals of every shape, size, and color, waiting in hope and joy and grace. I recalled the hate-filled shouting that peaked at McCain rallies in the final weeks before the election, and I thought again of children and adults. I believe the inherent good in us all will eventually make the first example the overriding norm.

My hope is that wise, adult leadership will calm the remaining angry, fearful bullies in our country. That we will hear fewer calls to meet Behind The Brick Wall and more to Hang Out in The Park Together.

Guidebooks for parents and teachers are a dime a dozen, but share core principles:

Be Consistent.

Don't Raise Your Voice.

Support and Challenge Those in Your Care.

Be The Adult, Not a "Friend."

When parents and other grownups follow such advice, we do not call them weak. We call them wise.

When a president follows them, we call him a true leader, a statesman.

When a nation follows them, we can call her mature and truly triumphant.

America, here's to your majority.

Coming Attractions

2008-11-12T22:24:00.003-06:00

Coming soon, to this very blog....a post about the election.

I keep starting and stopping and revising, things I rarely do as a blogger. This probably means that the post will reek.

You never know.

Hopefully I'll have something up tomorrow.

The Answer, My Friend, Is 271....

2008-11-04T12:15:00.003-06:00

A little music for today, classic in every way....

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T10:57:00.005-05:00

This entire post is stolen blatantly, word for word, from today's Wonkette. Thanks, Wonkette, for making my Halloween witchilicious!

Lil’ Sarah Palin Wants Welfare Handouts

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Family Circus

Dolly’s sadistic parents have dressed her as America’s most-hated angry dingbat, so the neighbors will feed her poison.

Flashback: 1964

2008-10-29T14:39:00.008-05:00

One of the memories that crossed my mind when I voted for Barack Obama was watching my mother pay her poll tax.

For those of you unfamiliar with that term, the "poll tax" (along with other practices such as "literacy tests") was a particularly pernicious form of disenfranchisement, abolished in federal elections by constitutional amendment in 1964 and in state and local elections by the Supreme Court in 1966.

My mother often took me along when she voted. When possible, I take Small Child with me.

But, in a change of seasons, today I took my mother to vote.

With a spiffy cap covering her chemo-hairless head and a cane to steady her ever-weaker gait, she made her way into the courthouse for early voting. She was able to handle the ten or so stairs down into the courthouse entrance nearest our parking spot, and fortunately the elevator was working.

When we reached the second floor, the stairs loomed so very large. She was ready, though. Ready to climb to vote in what is, realistically, at age 87 her final presidential election.

But in one of those moments of grace, all too rare in this season of sniping and vicious campaigning, the worker stationed to greet and guide those arriving to vote took one look at us and said, simply, "We're so glad you're here. Would you like us to bring a machine down so you don't have to climb those last few stairs?"

Mother paused a moment, then replied, "Yes, I think that would be best."

I wish I could say that in the 44 years since the poll tax was repealed the world had changed enough for her to vote for Obama. In truth, I think she was voting for McCain rather than against an African American man.

But as I sat there, watching a patient Latina assist her with the electronics and a rainbow of diverse voters pass by, I felt so very grateful that my world has.

History.

2008-10-29T00:04:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I voted for Barack Obama for President of the United States of America.

Texas has "early voting," and turnout has been brisk.

All sorts of memories of discrimination - de facto and de jure - flooded through me as I worked through the screen.

And with one touch of a flashing red button I blasted them all away.

Good luck, Senator Obama.

And all you folks out there... go make some history, okay?

Melancholy, Thou Hast Thy Music, Too...

2008-10-26T22:13:00.005-05:00

It's happened. Fall has come (and gone, with today's warm sunshine, but will come again). On Thursday morning, we officially saw our breath and the overnight low dipped to 39.

Or has it? The drought continues, giving the grass a bonus crunch. The mosquitoes are still biting.

Nothing seems quite right.

Astrologers claim this is a result of some pretty dramatic planetary dancing. Pundits attribute it to the election. Common sense suggests a look at the financial crisis.

All I know is that I am not feeling fall. And that is a bad, bad thing.

Friends of Blue know I am prone to Fall Fever: giddiness, spurts of activity, glee, joy, and the tendency to lie on blankets with books. The first symptom is the annual Keats Email, in which I expect my friends to share, once again, a sentimental attachment to A Beloved Poem. Last year, I experienced a second symptom, the first annual Keats Blog Post: a cry of bliss to the universe.

Earlier this month, I alluded to my autumn-ennui on these pages. I thought that might banish the funk, but it did not.

Maybe I wasn't explicit enough. Maybe I need to summon seasonal joy in a different way.

Maybe if one of Keats' Odes is good, two would be better?

So this year it's a two-fer. We're going to begin with "Ode on Melancholy." Feel free to skip the first stanza (I always do), but don't miss the opportunity to roll around in the gloom of the second and third. If you sink into it, really feel it, you'll begin to feel better. And then you'll be ready for "To Autumn." It's a wine-ripe apple of beauty.

Enjoy.

Ode on Melancholy

NO, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
  Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
  By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
  Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
   Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
  For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
   And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
  Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
  And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
  Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
   Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
  Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
   And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
  Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
  Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
   Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
  His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
   And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

To Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
   To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
  And still more, later flowers for the bees,
  Until they think warm days will never cease,
   For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
  Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
   Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
   Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
   Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
   And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Just Say No to No!

2008-10-24T10:15:00.006-05:00

I received a disturbing email from a friend last night.

The local junior high is presenting the Aim for Success abstinence program next week.

As it turns out, the kids who attend the assembly get a homework pass.* The kids who don't attend the assembly have to bring a signed form from their parents saying that they are not going to attend. And guess what? No homework pass.

Of course, part of the assembly is The Signing of the Abstinence Pledge, a statement that the signer promises not to have sexual intercourse until he or she is married.

Let's forget that CDC statistics show abstinence programs don't work.

Let's forget that asking very young teenagers to broadcast publicly private decisions about their sexual choice is offensive and intrusive.

Let's forget that, should an individual be gay (in most states) or unable to find a spouse he or she - under this ludicrous model - is signing away a basic human need.

Let's forget that the "science" behind this program is suspect at best.

Let's forget that our children need knowledge to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease.

But let's do make sure to "reward" those students who participate in this sick charade and "punish" those who don't.

Wonder what the homework load will be on the night in question?

*Correction: I was wrong about the method for homework pass distribution. Parents will receive the homework passes, presumably to give to their children, if they attend the parents' meeting.

Harvest

2008-10-17T22:48:00.002-05:00

Today, Small Child and I saw our first V of geese.

A few days ago, a beautiful, giant full moon hung low in the sky.

Here and there, leaves go golden.

The squirrels have been frantic for a couple of weeks, and Large Dog has been in what can only be described as a manic state.

And exactly one year ago tonight, I wrote a post that ended with the words, “I wish it would rain,” words that crossed my mind endlessly today as my feet crunched across dry grass on cracked earth.

All signs point to autumn. To fall. To harvest.

But I’m anxious.

I have not been tending my garden lately. Since I began blogging 18 months ago, I’ve sown many seeds (consciously and otherwise). I grew weary of carrying water when the rains stopped. I’ve veered off into the easy subjects, partisan politics, sentiment-at-hand.

Honestly? I’m not even sure I remember what seeds I threw in which direction. I didn’t keep good records. Some plants looked promising but withered in the brutal summer sun. Others I just abandoned, too busy to water. Entire sections fell to mysterious blight. I put a few seed packets down and forgot about them; plants sprouted right out of the paper. The months have been that way.

The months have been so much that way that often many go by without a glance at the garden. But autumn forces the gaze.

Some of those seeds have grown into plants I really can’t ignore any longer, the kind that crack walkways, ruin foundations, choke out desirable species. The tough, spiny ones that can live without irrigation or attention. It’s time for me to face my fear of runaway vegetation. Gotta thin, prune, mulch.

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way. You only have to flip on the news or walk through a store to hear uneasiness, fear, and worry.

But not all gardeners have been dithering or wringing their hands. I admire their work.

One is seeing her children through transitions joyous and painful, making enormous sacrifices yet still finding time to laugh, play, create and be a wonderful friend.

Another has, in what most find a daunting economic climate, listened to his heart and birthed a second successful business that feeds his soul.

Yet another, who completely plowed under a marriage of many years and lost much in the process, found not only freedom but also a second go at love and parenthood.

Finally, a friend and fabulous writer with talent and discipline and wit persevered right into a two-book deal.

It’s been a heavy year, friends. I don’t know what I’m going to find out there when I pull on my gloves, pick up the shovel, and start digging. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll find succulent autumn vegetables, as much as I adore them.

Whatever I find, I’ll do my best to make it relevant and readable. If not, you can always toss it in the compost.

What Generation Gap?

2008-10-14T22:52:00.002-05:00

I've been running my mouth enough lately.

Try this for a breath of fresh air:

www.margaretandhelen.wordpress.com

Another 40 years...

2008-10-13T23:17:00.004-05:00

Here and there, as I've caught bits on radio or television or scanned blogs and print, I've seen references to the presidential election of 1968 and the George Wallace campaign in particular. Readers, I'd been thinking those same thoughts but had not voiced them. To prove that I am not recycling content, I'm going to share another elementary school memory.

1968, for you pretty young things, was not a pretty year. 1968 is why protesters are now contained in fences far away from political conventions. Why you don't see coffins come home on CNN. People were dying abroad and on American soil for the issues in play in that fall's election.

I grew up in a Texas suburb that had "desegregated" by writing a policy. The policy was "school choice." Students could attend any school in town, but they could only ride a bus to their neighborhood campus. Again, for younger readers, this was not the open door shindig it may appear. Many families had one car, and that car was used for one person to drive to work. Most elementary children got to school on foot or bike or on the bus. This policy remained in place until my graduation, as far as I know. In 1977, my graduating class of 626 was "integrated" by perhaps ten African-American students. I never sat a class with one of them. Our school song was "Dixie." The confederate flag flew at football games. Yet we were, for the most part, good kids.

But I digress.

At the Blue house, politics veered pretty darn far to the right, at least where my father was concerned. My mother never said much, which I now know meant she spoke volumes. But "hippies," "liberals," "communists," and "Humphrey" all pretty much added up to the same thing in the paternal lexicon. I honestly don't remember which of the other two candidates he actually supported. I suspect I'm afraid to remember.

But I digress yet again.

Even in elementary school, it was impossible to escape the campaign. All most of us had in our homes for entertainment was a single television, so we all saw the same news. At least our input was fairly consistent.

Every day at lunch, in the School Cafetorium, we'd peel the tops off our "ice milk cups" and start politicking. Amid a fair amount of trash talk (always within acceptable volume limits, lest the red-yellow-green traffic light of silence glow crimson), nine- and ten-year-old Americans would vote with their wooden spoons.

The letters were carved into the pristine surface of our dairy-ish confections. I will admit, right here and now, that I did not commit firmly to Humphrey, a fact I now regret. I like many others vacillated between the N and the H, depending on the mood of the day or the friend of the moment.

But you know what?

The W kids never wavered. They knew. They sat together, and they never changed the letter they carved.

The cafeteria contained nothing but white faces*. Those kids (well, most likely their families, but still...) may not have known what Wallace was for, but I'm pretty sure they knew what he was against.

And that is exactly what I remember when I watch those clips of angry, fearful faces at McCain/Palin events.

The Wallace Kids.

* I no longer live in the town mentioned above. Out of curiosity, I visited the school's website. Its population now appears to be significantly made up of children of color, which suggests that the same de facto segregation policy is still in place.

Gone Too Far.

2008-10-12T21:29:00.006-05:00

I'd like to stop posting these. But this one, from a Pennsylvania Palin rally, is truly awful. You can find the accompanying article here. I have such mixed feelings. I want to share my outrage by letting people know this poison is out there. But I also worry that I'm spreading toxin merely by posting it. Troubled.

What's more, McCain held a rally in Davenport, Iowa yesterday. At that rally, a minister gave an invocation including the following language (you can find the full story here,):

"I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons,” Conrad said.

"And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day.”

The racism is frightening. But these words scare me much, much more.

My leaves aren't golden; silence isn't either, you know.

2008-10-10T07:07:00.007-05:00

Greetings from persistently green though increasingly scraggly NoTex.

I know you are out there, readers. I see your hits on Google Analytics although I have no idea who you are.

My blogfriend, Molly, announced recently that her amazing site had garnered its 3000th comment. This fact has awakened the competitor in me, the one I have been secretly dosing with Ambien for a couple of decades. If you know me, you are aware that this could be a very scary situation indeed. Spending a fall afternoon walking near Dick Cheney with a bird dog and a gun will seem like a walk through Portland's Japanese Garden.

Perhaps I exaggerate. Or not.

Anyway, friends, I am comment hungry. Starved. I refuse to believe that, of all the things I've written, something hasn't pissed you off or made you think. So flog me with your brilliance, even if it is anonymous.

Don't make me resort to giveaways.

Here's What I'm Talking About

2008-10-09T12:45:00.003-05:00

The kind of thing that's worrying me these days...

and another:

Hat tip to The Huffington Post.

Now I really need a glass of that Strenuous Tongue Cabernet!

2008-10-08T12:50:00.004-05:00

I just thought I'd been rendered mute by melancholy. Last night's debate, and the events of the days leading up to it, made me more so.

Tell me why the Secret Service did not arrest the individual who shouted "Kill him!" (calling for, if you have not heard about this, Obama's assassination) during a McCain/Palin rally.

Tell me why McCain felt that a young black man would not have heard of the two largest mortgage programs in America.

Tell me why the man who wants to lead our country into a era of smaller government last night proposed having the government buy up mortgages.

Tell me why the same man could not correctly state the details of his own health plan, suddenly promising a 5K credit per individual American rather than per household.

Tell me why Rush Limbaugh, a man I foolishly listened to this morning, is now blaming the entire "bailout" (the one proposed initially by the current president) on the Democrats, claiming it is an Obama plan to socialize our nation's economy.

Tell me why the same talk show host is saying, many times a day, that Obama and Osama bin-Ladin are the same because they "know terrorists."

Tell me why fliers are appearing in low income Philadelphia neighborhoods warning people that, "according to an Obama operative," if they have any outstanding warrants (even for traffic tickets) or prior felony convictions they should "take care of them" before voting because police will be at the polls to arrest them. Maybe it would be best to stay home.

Tell me why people are willing to believe in and act on such vitriol.

Tell me why I am supposed to feel pride for my country instead of sadness and shame.

86: Mist, Mellow Fruitfulness

2008-10-06T12:01:00.006-05:00

SCENE: Keats’ Café. Early October.

A WOMAN of a certain age, obviously exhausted, walks slowly through the door. She looks around, as if seeking a familiar face. Finding none, She moves to a table near the window, where she places her heavy bag on the floor.

Placing her reading glasses low on the bridge of her nose, she scans the menu.

A waitress, FANNY, approaches. She is smacking gum.

FANNY: Hey. I’m Fanny. What can I getcha?

WOMAN: Just some water for now. It’s been a while since I was in, and I should probably look things over.

FANNY: You betcha.

FANNY exits.

The WOMAN continues to move her eyes over the menu.

WOMAN (to herself): Ah! There it is. I was afraid they’d taken it off the menu.

FANNY (setting down a large glass of water): You ready?

WOMAN: You have no idea how ready. I’ve been waiting for this all year. Let’s see…I’ll have the “Season of Mist” and definitely some “Mellow Fruitfulness.” I’m starved.

FANNY: Sorry. We’re out.

WOMAN (incredulous): WHAT?

FANNY: We’re out. Out of mist. Mellow fruitfulness, too.

WOMAN: You’re kidding, right?

FANNY: Nope.

WOMAN: But your thatch-eves have vines running ‘round!

FANNY: They’re from Hobby Lobby. I had to go pick them up last week.

WOMAN (stunned): Guess I’ll settle for the swollen gourds, topped with plump hazelnuts and sweet kernel.

FANNY (over her shoulder): Yo, Keats, we got any squash yet?

KEATS (offstage): Truck didn’t come.

FANNY: You heard the man.

WOMAN: No. This can’t be happening. My hair was soft lifted by the wind, wind that winnowed, when I got out of my car. And I’m sitting careless… or at least I was until you started telling me you’re out of everything good. I mean, look outside! The day’s soft-dying! Crickets! Whistles and twitters!

FANNY walks over to the jukebox, pops in a quarter, and presses a button. Happy music fills the air.

FANNY: Maybe that “Song of Spring” will perk ‘ya up.

WOMAN: Turn that crap off. Nobody comes to Keats’ Café for spring. It’s October, Fanny. I need autumn. I’ve been coming here every October for years for my favorite dish. And now this nonsense. If you don’t have mist, mellow fruitfulness, gourds, hazelnuts, sweet kernels, or even a real damned vine, what do you have?

FANNY: Well, there’s a great wine special.

WOMAN: God, I could use a drink.

FANNY: We have Strenuous Tongue Cab by the glass. It’s like squishing grapes in your mouth.

WOMAN: Bring me a bottle. And tell Keats to get his sorry ass out here right now.

FANNY EXITS, calling the order.

A moment passes. KEATS, a dark-haired man wearing an apron and a toque enters stage left. He sees the WOMAN, removes his hat, walks slowly to her table, and sits beside her.

She looks up, and into his eyes.

KEATS: So it’s you who ordered the melancholy. How have you been?

FANNY returns with a bottle and two glasses, pours wine for both, and exits. The lights fade to black as KEATS takes the WOMAN’s hand in his, and she begins to answer.

What to say?

2008-09-25T23:29:00.003-05:00

I'm tongue-tied. Word-bound. Fuzz-brained.

World events seem, simultaneously, perilously close and impossibly distant. Palpably meaningful and totally facile. Organic and constructed.

The audacity with which (almost exclusively) men in suits are playing with lives about which they know next to nothing is both frightening and fascinating. It bears no resemblance to reality yet is reality.

My nature is to believe in authenticity, but I'm finding it only in the worried looks of friends in unguarded moments.

So, I'm "going dark" for a few days.

I need to let things coagulate. And get some rest. Watch this space. 'Bout a week?

Book Plugs

2008-09-22T06:56:00.006-05:00

Hey....they're better than hair plugs, right?

I have a few quick moments before the off-to-school drama takes off, so I thought I'd offer the love to a couple of wonderful books.

First, Momma Zen. The subtitle, Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood, may scare off men. It should not. Anyone, with or without children, will benefit from the gentle lessons in mindfulness and peace this book provides. The author, Karen Maezen Miller, is a Buddhist priest, but thinking humans of any faith (or none at all) will find grace here.

And now we turn to a sadder place. The most poignant literary place I've been in thirty, maybe forty years...at least so far. Why so far? Because I can not make it past the first seven or so chapters without starting over or flipping back for selected bits. This fact, in and of itself, is astounding. After all those years of careful close reading in college and grad school, I now take my books at a quick clip. But Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is new country. I've been put off for two years by the back cover copy, which suggested a "look at me" extravaganza of mixed media and stunt writing; nothing could be farther from the truth. Some reviewers have compared him to Vonnegut but, so far, I find that comparison facile, at best.

Fall is not here yet, but those of you lucky enough to live where the air is crisping now have two excellent reasons to curl up in front of the fire.

Twenty Questions

2008-09-20T12:29:00.011-05:00

I find myself, this lovely Saturday, with exactly zero resources. How convenient, then, that Molly has so graciously tagged me and solved my content crisis.

People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs & replace any question that they dislike with a new question. (note, you’ll need to pull the list of questions from Molly's site if you want to see which one I switched out. But I'll save you the trouble... I didn't change any because doing so would take energy that I do not have. My slug-like state also explains the fairly boring quality of my answers. Some days are like that.).
Tag 8 people to do this quiz.

1. How many songs are on your iPod? 2796

2. What music would you want played at your funeral? Depends on my mood. Today I'd say "Goodbye" (Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle) "Court and Spark," (Joni Mitchell) "Tangled Up in Blue," (Bob Dylan) "Alison," (Elvis Costello) "Sleeping in Paris," (Roseanne Cash) and "Ventura," (Lucinda Williams). By the way, I have other genres and other decades in my repertoire; these just suit the mood.

I've had better weeks.

3. To what magazines do you subscribe? These magazines come every month and go unread: Vanity Fair, Texas Monthly, Food and Wine, Travel and Leisure, Gourmet, TNR (online). Recently Lapsed: New Yorker, Reason, BrainChild

4. What is your favorite scent? Lavender, sandalwood, cinnamon, Niven-Morgan "Gold" and Bulgari "the' vert"

5. If you had a million dollars that you could only spend on yourself, what would you do with it? Practically? Retire debt and start saving for a craftsman cottage in the San Juan Islands. Bitterly? Personal trainer, cook, plastic surgery, legal fees. Fantasy wise? That craftsman cottage.

6. What is your theme song? Probably "Left of Center," by Suzanne Vega or "Fruits of My Labors," by Lucinda Williams

7. Do you trust easily? Far too.

8. Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think? In action, it's often way too much of the former, and I miss the good stuff; in conversation, alas, it's usually the latter.

9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days? She laughs until she cries about this one, waiting for the world to shift on micro and macro levels.

10. Do you have a good body-image? Of course not.

11. Is being tagged fun? Of course.

12. How do you spend your social networking (Facebook, etc.) time? Being geeky and hoping I do not appear so.

13. What have you been seriously addicted to lately? Email, iced coffee, and political blogs I find depressing.

14. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is? Creative, smart, dedicated, and an outstanding mother. Oh, I forgot... she's lucky enough to live in America's finest city.

15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head? A song Small Child and I created to celebrate Large Dog's propensity to uncover and consume cat poo. We are an alternative lyrics household.

16. What’s your favorite item of clothing? I don't like much of anything in my closet right now, thank you economy. The most reliable things, however, are a black jersey skirt that falls swingily just below the knee and my Dansko clogs... not together, of course.

17. Do you think Rice Krispies are yummy? No.

18. What would you do if you saw $100 lying on the ground? Pick it up. Get a massage.

19. What items could you not go without during the day? Laptop. Iced Coffee. Protein. NPR.

20. What should you be doing right now? I'm trying to change my thinking, to believe that whatever I am doing is what I should be doing. But I'm still a child of the western world. So here is my Should list. Facing Reality. Buying groceries. Tackling one of many organizational challenges. Working on my Beatnik costume for a party tonight. Checking on my mother.

I tag Lori, What I Saw Today, Old Roman Symbol, Her Other Evil Twin, and Juvenesence. I know that's not 8, but I have a small circle. Participation is optional; no calamity will befall you if you choose not to participate.

50-Hate: The Tennis Ladies

2008-09-17T23:35:00.004-05:00

Prologue: I remember All in the Family. I saw the phrase "The Generation Gap" defined in my childhood home. I heard the battle cries, "Don't Trust Anyone Under Thirty!" and "Question Authority!" I may not have been old enough to shave my legs, much less burn a bra, but the message came through loud and clear: young = forward thinking; old = backward looking.

I see them everywhere in the county where Small Child attends school: The Tennis Ladies.

Toned, tanned, tended, and tenacious, they meet for coffee and lunch and conversation. Somehow, even after vigorous exercise, they always look put-together, earrings dangling and makeup intact. Yes. They play tennis in makeup. And lipstick. It's different here.

I've always been an outlier where this kind of girl is concerned, "in the corner" as Suzanne Vega once put it. And "in the corner" was where I was Monday, at La Madeleine to be exact, in my version of exercise wear (black yoga pants, shapeless PTA t-shirt, sans earrings and makeup), shielded by my laptop as a trio of tennilicious ladies lunched at the table next. Definitely the kind of folks for whom "economic downturn" means "Lesser Lexus."

After a quick scan (two late20somethings, one working the ponytail-through-cute-ball-cap look and another with the best blond highlights I've seen in ages, and an oldersomething close to my age with the best matte red lipstick I've seen in ages) and a quick listen (kids, blah blah, car, blah, blah, kids), I returned to the chicken Caesar salad that has been my comfort food lo these many years. Move along, Blue. Nothing to see here.

Then suddenly, this:

"..for Obama."

"You've got be be FUCKING JOKING."

Up popped my head.

And there, calmly smiling with those beautiful matte red lips, was my mid-life sister.

PONYTAIL: Oh, no. No. Why?

MATTE RED: Because McCain and Palin scare the shit out of me.

HIGHLIGHTS: Oh, come on.

PONYTAIL: No, really, why?

MATTE RED: Well, for one thing, they want to overturn Roe v Wade

PONYTAIL, SCOFFING: You know THAT will never happen. They're [the dems] just trying to scare you.

MATTE RED, REMEMBERING ALL TOO WELL: No, they do.

At this point, Ponytail and Highlights unleashed a stream of anti-Obama vitriol the likes of which I have never heard apart from AM talk radio. Vicious. Untrue. Unadulterated Hate.

Matte Red never lost her cool. She continued, pointing out that Sarah Palin is, essentially, stupid. That her presence on the ticket is pandering and insulting. It was clear that Obama would not necessarily have been her first choice. But she has been around the block. The others have not.

Matte Red glanced at me. I mentioned that perhaps the younger women didn't understand that the freedoms they take for granted have not always been universally enjoyed (okay, I may not have been that slick). I agreed that an Obama victory was critical, if only to shift the court. Matte Red shook her head in agreement. Ponytail launched again.

Their party was breaking up, and their spirited debate continued as they made their way out.

As they reached the door, Matte turned back, gave me the thumbs up, and said, "See you at the victory party." The other two were not amused.

In an instant, I passed through some kind of time warp, some kind of bizarro reversal. At that one point in that most red county in this most red state, the Generation Gap flipped.

And I thought to myself, "Never trust anyone under 30. At least not anyone in a tennis skirt."

Afterword: I know. I said I wasn't going to write about politics anymore. So sue me.

Tragedy and Travesty

2008-09-14T23:34:00.004-05:00

Of course, you've all seen the CNN and Weather Channel footage of Hurricane Ike. And the coverage of the horrendous train accident in Los Angeles.

My heart goes out to all those who suffer, and my gratitude is immense that my friends in Houston are safe, even if their homes sustained damage.

On a micro scale, things aren't much better. One friend has been forced to hospitalize a child, just to make certain that insurance will "kick in" for the residential treatment the child needs. Two other families, both connected with the school system in different districts around the state, have insurance that is so worthless that their health is being compromised.

And, in the face all this national pain, those who wish to be our leaders continue to smile and lie - so very certain of their position, facts be damned.

I see Sarah Palin, and I am reminded of Reagan - a plastic face with no relation to reality. My biggest fear is that the press and the public will continue to present more and ever more evidence of her unsuitability for any public office, but that none of the evidence will matter. Reagan, once called the "Teflon President," will appear - in retrospect - to have been covered with Velcro instead.

What can we do?

Tonight I want to throw up my hands.

But tomorrow I will try to remember that all I can do is live where I live in a way that demonstrates my beliefs. I can walk slowly, think clearly, and speak carefully.

And I can try to find hope.