Are you out there readers? It's me, Kelly.

I'm not even sure I know how to write a post anymore. 

"It seems like yesterday" has turned into almost two years, a return to conventional employment, a life in a new state, sadness and joy, and change beyond measure.

I began this blog five years ago, on the verge of 50, as an anonymous exploration of midlife. For a few years I wrote reasonably often and reasonably well. 

Then I just stopped.

Perhaps I shall start again. The time seems right.

Step Back and Breathe

A bit of my political "wisdom:" If people selected sexual and life partners like they select political candidates these days, our species would die out in a generation. We don't expect our partners to match our criteria 100%. We overlook faults, differences, and quirks because we see the big picture.

 

 

Why do we insist that a candidate support our beliefs 100%? If 80% is good enough for marriage, why not for the presidency?

 

Politicians used to accomplish great things through negotiation and compromise. Now they scream soundbytes and have their SuperPACs dispense vitriol.

 

Discourse is getting overheated, so let's all step back for a bit. Indulge my tendency to take a meta-view. Say what you will about profit-driven networks, seems the nation was more civil when everyone watched the same three channels - ABC, CBS, NBC - and the networks did not expect their news divisions to be profit centers. We still had two parties and diverse attitudes, but we were nicer about it.

 

Now that news divisions are expected to generate profits and ratings and people can choose their news (via cable, talk radio, newspapers, and the Internet) to match their views, we seem to have lost the ability to understand and respect the positions of those with whom we disagree. I remember when my mother supported Johnson and my father supported Goldwater and nary a cross word was uttered. I honestly can't say the same about my own home these days. Mea culpa. 

 

I've read some heated comments on my Facebook page that give me pause. Who among us can be certain of anything? Now that we can source-shop to support our positions, it's good to remember that believing something doesn't make it true, reading or hearing something doesn't make it true, and saying something doesn't make it true. Pardon the arrogance of my mantra, "Certainty is the New Arrogance."

 

If we started our sentences with "My position is X" rather than "X!!!" we might actually accomplish something through consensus and compromise. Try this for the next week and see if the rhetorical temperature around you settles into a more pleasant range.

 

Best Words Ever

This morning on KERA - our local public radio station - I heard the best words ever:

"A high of 78"

It can only improve from here.

Get out and enjoy the north wind.  Look for geese. Think of better times to come.

Could be......Who knows?

Really, friends.  I never intended this blog to go fallow. Life has had other ideas.

For now, I'm going to aim for once-a-month...kind of the post-menopausal version of cramps.

I've been in a tub of glum for a good long while.  The details aren't really interesting (even to me), so you shall be spared. I am, sadly, not one of those writers who is spurred on by adversity.  If I were, you wouldn't have enough time to read about 2012.

But this week feels different.

Fall approacheth.

I've blogged before (here, here, here, and here for example ) about my deep-seated love of autumn.

My fellow hell-dwellers here in Texas can attest to the cruel trick Nature played on us recently, that morning when we woke up to weather in the high 50s.  One of fall's harbingers in these parts is the first time you walk outdoors and find the Air Out There cooler than the Air Inside Here.  While it is true that the temperatures are marginally cooler, one morning does not fall make. Especially if the afternoon brings a high way up in the 90s.

This morning, however, I saw a more reliable sign.  The light has changed.

I am seriously impaired when it comes to the visual arts.  My stick figures are below the 50th percentile.  I don't have the vocabulary to describe this, so bear with me.

Summer light here is harsh.  It's white. It's brutal and unforgiving.  It can start as early as March and last into November in a bad year.

Fall light is softer. It's golden. It gilds things. It flatters. It can be as hot and uncomfortable as summer light, but does not bring the misery.

Today brought golden light.

And the acorns in my yard are twice the size they were last year.

So fall must be close.

And maybe -- just maybe -- we'll see winter.  Then I will have no choice but to cheer up!

Voting "Bock!"

 "Bock! Bock! Bock!"

Let's talk about Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission (2010).

Waaaaaaay back in the late 1970s, my political science professor taught me that the branch of government that would have the strongest effect on my day-to-day life was the Supreme Court.  Decades after decades, decisions after decisions have proved him correct.

Thanks to the Citizens United case, our wallets are now our voter registration cards and our nation's cash registers are our ballot boxes.

Anyone who doubted Dr. Street's wisdom only needed to drive past a Chick-Fil-A yesterday to witness an object lesson. While I cannot confirm this figure, I read today that Chick-Fil-A - that supporter of "Biblical Families" - earned an entire quarter's of profits in one day. One. Day.*

If one individual, Mike Huckabee in this case, can mobilize such an economic tsunami, those of us who hope for President Obama's November reelection should sit down and make some plans.

Do not be deluded.  Put down your delicious glass of Pinot Gris and LISTEN. 

It is extremely likely that our next president will be Mitt Romney.

Why?  

President Obama swept into office on the votes of individuals who were not "players" in prior elections.  Many of those individuals did not get exactly the things they had hoped for.  For this reason, they are unlikely to believe that voting is worth the effort.  Evangelical Christians do not have this problem.  They will not stay home, no way no how.

Several years ago while waiting in a checkout line, I heard a child tell his mother he wanted a rubber chicken he spied on the display rack.  She replied, "Sweetheart, you don't need a rubber chicken."  After a pause, he said, "I want something I need."

Isn't this what voting comes down to?  We all want something we need.

Right now, voters need reassurance. They want to believe that one candidate or the other will quash their fears and deliver a rubber chicken.

Guess what?  There is no rubber chicken.

Instead, there are RIGHTS. And LIBERTY.  And FREEDOM.

Basic civil rights - like marriage and decisions about your own actual body - belong to all Americans, gay, straight, purple, male, or female.  Those uppercase words are in danger for many of us.

I will put my money where my mouth is.  I will respect the right of those who disagree with me to vote for whomever they choose.  I will respect the rights of those who do not believe a woman's body is her own to not get abortions.  I will respect the rights of those who do not believe gay Americans deserve the property advantages marriage bestows to stay home from gay weddings.  And I will support the right of evangelical Christians to buy chicken sandwiches until the cows come home.

After all, this is America.

If, however, you believe that rights are universal - without regard to color, gender, or sexual orientation - I beg you to do whatever you can to bring out the vote for President Obama in November.

Everyone deserves more than a rubber chicken.

*Correction: This figure turned out to be an exaggeration. The last figure I read was eight million, a record one-day profit. Still...the money here is stupendous.

A little love letter....

Yesterday, the heavens opened and rained down love upon me, love dressed in the clothes of The World's Best Friends.


Just over a month since my sister's death, I found myself hard up against the deadline to clear out her apartment. 


I'd been through the rehearsals for this last August when she moved from a non-assisted senior complex into a wonderful assisted living facility, and the year before that when she moved to the senior complex from the house she'd shared with our mother.  Over the years, she had turned into - if not a full-blown hoarder - a person with a serious inability to part with stuff.  She wasn't a generalist, like the folks you see on reality TV, their spaces full of every item they've ever touched.  She was a woman with specific attachments.  While she was more than willing to toss things like family photos ("Why should I keep those? What's the point?" she asked as Young Girl and I pulled our history from the large green trash bin after my mother's death), she refused to part with a single book, be it a cheesy circa-1962 "annual" from the pharmaceutical giant for which my father worked (full of head shots of every intravenous fluid salesman in the country), one of four outdated dictionaries, or one of the dreadful romances or cozy-mysteries she favored. She had mock turtlenecks in every color L.L Bean produced in any given five-year period with fake Crocs to match. In the last move, I did manage to coax her down to 25 shapeless fleecy vests.  You get the picture.


Handling the tangible evidence of a lost life is always complicated, but doing so in an assisted living facility is exponentially more so. With every box or bag you cart down the hallway, you see realization of their near future on the faces of the elders you pass, regardless of their level of cognitive capacity.  They all know what it means when the furniture starts to move.  I did my best to work while people were in the dining room or at "Sit-er-Size" or bingo, but contact was unavoidable and painful all around. I told myself I was putting the task off because of my other responsibilities - funny how busy we become when we need to be - but the truth was I just didn't want to do it.  Too much finality.


I'd declined many offers of help. Part of me somehow felt I was doing some kind of penance, paying attention after the fact, and that such things needed to be done in isolation.  But the unit had been rented for August and it was Time.


I asked the fabulous women of First Amendment Friday if they could help me for a couple of hours yesterday.  I needed, I told them, help bagging up and loading the items I was sending to the Women's Crisis Center resale shop.  If we had time, maybe we could take some of the smaller stuff to my house in our cars.  Then we'd have lunch, and discuss a time when their teenage sons might be available to move the larger things.


Every one of them who was in town showed up at the appointed hour, and pitched in with organization and discernment that was far beyond my capacity. They knew what to do when I didn't and they did it. Before I really knew what had happened, my van was full of the resale bags and boxes, and their cars were packed to the brim with keeper things.  We dropped those at my house, delivered to the resale store, then rendezvoused for lunch.


Cue the cloudburst.


While we waited for our food, they announced that they'd decided they were going to take care of the rest of it that afternoon. Without my help.  They realized, they told me, that I'd reached my capacity and they took away the keys to my sister's apartment. After lunch, they came to my house and commandeered my van.


About an hour later, four chosen sisters, two of their husbands, and five assorted teenage sons and their friends descended upon me with everything in tow.  Everything.  Some went into the garage, some into the house. My van was packed with boxes of books I plan to sell a few towns away. I stood in my bare feet with my drawn, sad face and watched true friendship in action.


This post goes out to you, my friends.  My birth family may be gone, but your love and support hold me close in ways it never did.


Love,
Me

Next Chapter

Once again, I emerge from the depths with a little update and yet another promise to resume blogging.  Maybe this time it will take. For now? Three cheers for bullet points.

• My sister died on Thursday, June 21.  You can find the Whole Sad Story in previous posts.  Her Stage IV breast cancer was diagnosed 6 months before our mother's death in 2009. She endured chemo, whole brain radiation, gamma knife surgery and suffered the worst side effects of them all.  We found out, about six months ago, that the cancer had returned in her bones; her subsequent rapid decline led us to infer that it had again bloomed in her brain.  The amazing nurses at Home Hospice   and Traditions Senior Living and Memory Care, who took such good and kind care of her over the last year, believe she had a left-side stroke on or about June 14.  I believe that most of her final week was pain free, for which I am grateful. 
• Young Girl is tall, strong, beautiful, and smart at the twelve-thirteen midpoint.  She's an inch and a half taller than I am and stealing my shoes. The last six weeks of school were a struggle thanks to a nasty bout of drug-resistant strep combined with mononucleosis.  All of this made the crutching required by her knee injury even more atrocious.  She rarely made it through more than two hours of school each day, but still finished with straight As and outstanding test scores.  I could not be any prouder. She's enjoying a second much-deserved week at camp and will visit a friend in Tennessee next month, her first solo flight.
• Our friends are our rocks right now, our true family.  Some of you know the details of the Great Unpleasantness (there's a southern euphemism for you, right up there with "The War of Northern Aggression") afoot in The Man's extended family.  Let's just say that my chosen sisters and brothers restore my faith in humanity.
• I agreed to humiliate myself in a production at our local children's theater, opening July 6. I'd forgotten how much fun it can be to play.  This was a much needed lesson.

Summer is Icumen In

...'Cause there's bacon to fry and there's biscuits to bake
On the stove that the Salvation Army won't take
And you open the windows and turn on the fan
'Cause it's hotter than hell when the sun hits the land...
                                  -- Steven Fromholz
                                     "Texas Trilogy"

I have nothing to add.  See you soon.

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

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?"

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

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

Or maybe later...

Still here...

Watch this spot for my return to blogging soon.

Happy winter to all.

More about summer

Today I officially crossed the line.

White wine, not red wine.

Iced coffee, not hot brewed coffee.

Summer is A'Comin' In

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

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

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.