Van Attachment

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

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

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.

Keats at Last!

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

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

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.