There are more things on heaven and earth . . .

 

Merna was always a sensitive child prone to what adults called a vivid imagination. Before she was two years old she insisted that her bed was filled with fire and screamed for her parents to come, but of course they saw nothing and attributed it to her over hearing her mother talk about a child whose nightgown had caught fire. Yet, Merna remembered those flames, remembered wondering why they didn't burn this time, wondering where they came from.

When her mother read to her in the big chair in the living room, Merna sometimes saw a red scarf, tied in a knot fly through the transom on the front door and land on the rug. She knew that meant her grandmother was coming and was always happily awaiting her entrance when she came in minutes later.

That house was a beautiful playground for her. She had her own little porch that led off the kitchen into the backyard where she could play in her sandbox while Cappy, her English bulldog slept nearby. And then came the day when she opened the basement door and Cappy lunged at her, his mouth foaming and bleeding and someone behind her slammed that door shut. It was terrifying.  After that when she rode her tricycle through one big double door in the living room and down the dark front hall at night towards the other double door on the other end, she saw shadows. Shadows that peeked at her through the staircase on her right, or poked out at her from the pantry up ahead. She rode fast after that.

The family moved the next year and she now she was a big girl sleeping in a bunk bed and sharing a room with her baby brother and sister, Merna no longer saw the flames on her covers. Now she saw three white chalky pigs with candy cigarette pink noses and eyes. They were terrifying. She remembered when their mouths dripped blood. Her blood and knew they would soon eat her. They came night after night and all her parents said was, "It was just a dream."

She had lot of dreams. Almost as if she lived two lives because they were so vivid.

Later she became a prolific sleep walker who ran shrieking through the house asking where the dough balls were and when she was gently awakened by her parents she had no idea what dough balls were, or trying to avoid the little man who stood on the landing of the staircase waiting to grab her. At night she pulled her blankets in all tight around her so nothing could get in underneath them.

Those were the moving years. In the middle of sixth grade they moved and again at the end of seventh grade, this time to a house in a tiny country town with a backyard so big they discovered a real live horse tethered in the back of the backyard. There her brother would catch huge spiders and play with them until one got away in his bedroom across the hall. They never did find it, but Merna dreamed it was dropping off her chandelier in the bedroom onto her bed and she woke up screaming in terror. Those dreams finally convinced her parents to move back to the city and even though the spider dreams continued for many years, Merna seemed much calmer and better adjusted.

She still had the occasional night terror seeing people who shouldn't be there lying next to her bed, hovering three feet off the floor, but her parents just made her sister come sleep with her the rest of those nights. And eventually Merna graduated from high school and left for college where she met a very handsome young man whose name was Angel. 

Angel was such a romantic. They went on dates to see what ducks did in the rain and rented a big blue bus for a camp out with friends. He was much older than her and so when he graduated he was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam. 

Merna was in love. With an angel! But her dreams returned. She was in the front pew of a dark church. Before her was an upside down cross and Angel was the priest. He was saying, "Thou shalt not honor they father and thy mother. Thous shalt commit adultery. Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's wife." There was dark chanting in the background and Merna woke up screaming. Her father came and told her to get up, get a drink of water then go back to bed and lie down on her other side. She did that and the dream repeated itself! The chanting was terrifying.

But Angel came home and they were married. He was still in the army so they rented a small Airstream mobile home to live in. Angel had to get up very early to be at the army if he wanted to live off base, so Merna usually got up and fixed him breakfast then went back to bed. At least that's what she did in the beginning. Then the one morning she woke up and couldn't move. There was someone sitting on her back and every time she tried to move they gave an evil cackle and pushed her back down! She tried to tell herself she was asleep, but she could see her bed and the walls and even the windows above her, but she couldn't move. Finally it stopped, but the next day it happened again and again. 

Then she dreamed she was outside running away from whatever the evil thing was that came to sit on her back and when she woke up later that morning her nightgown was damp and her shoes covered in mud. Thankfully that never happened again. 

The army time ended and Merna and Angel moved to a small Midwestern town where their adult lives began in earnest. He worked for a large company and she kept house and played tennis. Playing up to six hours a day, she often dropped into bed and slept soundly, but there were the occasional dreams. Once she thought there was a huge man threatening her beside her in bed and she woke Angel up holding an invisible knife to his throat. Another time she thought she was on the African Queen and there was the light ahead of them through the rushes. Angel heard her crying, "I see the light, I see the light." He comically replied, "Hallelujah, go back to sleep!"

A few years later Angel's mother came down to live in a nursing home near them. One night she broke her hip and had to be taken to the hospital. The next night Merna dreamed she was Angel's mother and in a car trying to find Angel and Merna's home when she hit a tree. She was so tired. So tired. So ... Merna woke up gasping as the darkness enveloped her. She wasn't Angel's mother! Angel's mother was dying! The phone ran right after that. It was the hospital saying that Angel's mother had just passed away.

Sometimes Merna heard her own mother's voice. It always had something to tell her. Sometimes it said it was time to get up and it always was! Another time it said her brother's wife had just had a baby and it was a boy! The next day her mother really did call her and tell her the baby boy was born at 3 AM.

Merna joined a dream group where they shared their dreams and discussed what they might mean, but people noticed that Merna seemed to have dreams very similar to her best friend's dreams on the same night. Since they all wrote their dreams down when they occurred this was oddly synchronistic. But when the dream group experimented by sleeping in a circle on the church floor, it happened again and this time Merna shared first before anyone else. These dreams were unique because they were totally unlike any other dreams Merna ever had and meant really nothing to her, where they mean something very personal to her friend.

Then one day, like many families, Merna and Angel wanted a fresh start and went house hunting and the minute they walked into the house they were sold. They knew this was where they wanted to finish raising their family. The children were 12, 14 and 19 and this house was exactly what they wanted with its two family rooms, five bedrooms and four baths. There was a big screened in porch and a huge in-ground pool. It could not have been more perfect. The fact that a pigeon pooped right on the owner's head as he showed them the pool was a fore-shadowing they totally ignored.

Moving day was punctuated with a resounding boom that took everyone by surprise. It turned out to be a duck that had flown into the dining room window and knocked itself out. The whole back of the house was windows and patio doors that reflected the pool and shrubbery of the backyard and all kinds of birds were constantly flying into them. Some of them recovering and others dying right there below the windows.

Some people said that because the children were teenagers that was why trouble began to manifest itself in their lives, but Merna had a sense this wasn't so. The house was beautiful and life seemed as though it should be perfect. It was not. 

The downstairs bathroom was in the very heart of the house. They called it the Bordello bath because of the flocked red velvet and gold wallpaper. Merna always planned to redo it in wedgewood blue and whit, but that never came about. A night owl, Merna was often downstairs long after everyone else was in bed and she often had a sense that she was not alone.  She chalked it off to late night jitters, but one night while she was shampooing the family room carpeting she glanced up to see someone watching her from right outside the bathroom. At first she didn't think anything of it. There were always at least five people in this house and sometimes more. But later she glanced up and thought she saw them again. This time she wondered why they didn't just come on into the family room or kitchen, so she called out. "Don't just stand there. Come in." No one came. No one was there. She checked all the bedrooms only to find everyone sound asleep in their bed. It was a little unsettling.

Also unsettling was coming down in the morning and sometimes finding the front door unlocked and wide open. The first few times she blamed their daughter. She thought she had come in from being with friends and carelessly left the door open all night, but her daughter swore it wasn't her and there were many times when Merna knew her daughter had been home all night. Yet, still that door was wide open in the morning.

Merna had other strange experiences that she couldn't quite explain, but they were so ordinary that she didn't think about them for a long time after they started. She would be sitting in the family room and hear the garage door go up. That meant Angel was coming home, or one of the kids had used the keypad to let themselves into the garage, but it would be later before anyone came in.  Someone always did come in, eventually, so Merna began opening the door and checking when she heard the door go up. The garage was always dark and the door completely closed until the second time, ten minutes or so later, she would hear the door go up again and this time someone would come in from the garage for real.

One night Merna went to bed early. She was reading a good book and her favorite place to read was in her big four poster bed. Propped up on pillows and engrossed in the story, she saw Angel come into the bedroom and open the closet door, then walk in and close it. She didn't give it a second thought. He often did this if the patio door drapes were wide open as they were that night. But he didn't come back out. At first she thought nothing of it, but when it had been way too long, she called out asking him what he was doing in there? He didn't answer. After asking several times, she became angry and got out of bed to go see. Throwing open the big double doors to the closet she was met by no one! Angel wasn't I there. That made her heart leap in her chest and she ran downstairs where she found him totally absorbed in his computer. No he hadn't just come upstairs and gone into the closet. He was fully dressed and he looked totally confused.

The house was beginning to have an atmosphere that Merna found slightly creepy. People frequently mentioned seeing someone out of the corner of their eye in the hallway door by the bathroom, or the basement door would just open up in spite of being latched. Birds continued to throw themselves into the dining room and kitchen windows and odd birds would appear sitting on the tall fence around the pool. There was a rag tailed hawk that like to sit on the fence and stare at the house for hours, a possum that came in under the screened in porch to lick the grill and occasionally dead birds appeared in the trash can where she kept the extra bird seed in spite of the lid being closed after each use.

They had two Himalayan kittens who loved to play upstairs in the bedroom, but when she brought them down to the kitchen and the family room, they would crawl in under the cabinets and refuse to come out. 

The children began to act out. Some of it was typical teenage stuff, but there seemed to be an aura of anger that hung over everyone's head much of the time. People were on edge and very temperamental. The cockatiel was not. He loved to be allowed to fly free. If he was out on the screened in porch he could be easily contained by simply holding up a perch and he would land on it, but not in the dining room. There he would perch on the silver teapot and chitter and chatter and squawk, then fly madly into the air before returning to the teapot to do it again. He refused to come if he was in that room.

After hours of counseling and dealing with all kinds of problems with the children they decided to move. This decision came when their daughter came home to find Angel filming a young woman in her parents bed! He swore he would be faithful from then on and built them a new house on the lake to prove it.

Of course the new house was really just a final step towards a divorce. Like many people they honestly believed they could make a clean start and everything would be okay. It was fun designing their dream home and it truly was beautiful, but people seldom really change and what had been love now became distrust.

Merna bought a lovely condo overlooking a lake surrounded by evergreen trees and settled in to begin living alone for the first time in all her fifty years. It was strange having the children all grown and away, but her new home was like a miniature version of the house they had built. It had two bedrooms and a balcony upstairs complete with a bathroom that had a jetted tub. Downstairs was a living room with a brick fireplace, a dining room and a good sized kitchen, plus a bathroom/laundry room. There were French doors off the dining room to a deck facing the lake. The only problem here was the flushing toilet downstairs. It never flushed on its own while Merna was down there, but at night it would sometimes flush three or four times. It gave her the oddest feeling that she was not alone. This was exacerbated by waking up and feeling someone cuddled up behind her back with an arm around her. It was a comforting wonderful feeling, until she remembered that she lived alone and no one should be in her bed besides her. When she had that thought, the arm gave her a quick hug and disappeared. Then she felt terrified. Was it sleep paralysis again? It felt so real.

Eventually deciding to move closer to her siblings, she sold the condo and rented a succession of homes over the next few years.  Each one was very old with darling little quirks like a stained glass window in the closet, or being located on a farm next to a huge sunflower labyrinth, or not so darling quirks like being besieged by thousands of slugs that would find themselves on the handle of her storm door, or crawling up her bathtub, or the walls of her house. There was a small sink hole by the back door and no matter how many times her landlord filled it up it sank down to hold hundreds of squirming slugs! She put salt around all the interior walls and saucers with salt in them under the four posts of her bed to deter them.

But in general there was nothing unnatural in any of those homes, except for the country one. Every so often that house, which had been an original homestead house, would be filled with the scent of an old lady's powder. Strangely enough, instead of frightening her, Merna often felt a sense of comfort when that happened. As if she were once again a child visiting her grandmother and great Aunt Lete.

Time passed. Merna moved again and again. She couldn't seem to settle down and stay in one place more that a year or two, but none of these home contained anything out of the ordinary. She could walk in the dark basements or big closets without any fear at all and she slept comfortably in her bed at night.

Until she moved into her last apartment in the city. There she began having screaming night terrors and finding herself leaping out of bed in the middle of the night. Several times she began experiencing sleep paralysis again and once during those times, she looked over and saw an old woman standing on the other side of her room looking at her. The woman was wearing a head scarf tied under her chin and had on old fashioned clothes, a shawl and a long skirt. Merna looked at her for the longest time trying to convince herself it was a dream, but the woman seemed very solid. Eventually Merna blinked and the woman disappeared never to be seen again.

Just before she moved out of that apartment she was working on her computer one afternoon. It was broad daylight. Her computer was in her lap and she was typing away when she saw a young man standing on her right side. He was stocky and about five foot eight or so. He had very pale skin, reddish hair and an enigmatic look on his face. He looked so natural that it took a minute for her to realize that no one else should be in her apartment. She looked away and when she looked back he was not there. It wasn't scary, but it was very very odd.

Merna moved one last time, to a high rise for people over 55. She had a lovely apartment and there was a comfort in being able to hear other people, or smell their cooking, or pass them in the elevator, because she could just tell herself these were her neighbors and not something unique to her senses. Her dreams were still very vivid. It was as though she lived several lives. One awake and the others while sleeping. That could be both comforting and sweet, or terrifying, depending on the experiences. 

Merna knew she was approaching the end of her life as she knew it, but because of all her experiences, she thought that there was probably something much different than the heaven Christians all believed in. Perhaps there were multi-verses, or different layers of being, or something she could not yet imagine. She wasn't sure, but she was certain that life was richer and rarer than most people ever suspected.

Be yourself

 

I grew up in a world that worried about crazy things like where to put your feet when you sat, or the exact placement of silverware as if the world would crash if it was wrong.

Now I admit that I remember all these things and I do generally employ them, but just because I like the order, not because they are life ruining problems if I don't.

Today we are trying to allow people to be who they really are. Race, gender, weight, hair styles, are all important parts of being a human being with character.

However just doing exactly what you want is not.

The simple rules of human kindness and empathy will always rule. We do not have the right to just do as we please ignoring the people around us. Our actions speak about who we are.

Being considerate of other drivers on the road, other people along the trail, our neighbors ears and eyes and feelings is not losing ourselves. It is simply being aware of those things we do that affect other people.

For example: Don't be loud at night when others are trying to sleep. Don't block traffic just to sight see. Don't scream in quiet zones.

It's not difficult.

It's simply a sign that who you are is a considerate human being.

Soul music

 

I am not one to carry around a device listening to music. Silence is something that I value greatly. It gives me the space to consider what is going on around me and how I feel about it However, I enjoy live music and I love hearing my granddaughter sing or my sons play their guitars.

I do listen to music in the evenings, sometimes, and that is what sparked this particular blog post.

One night I was listening to Yo Yo Ma and totally immersed in his mellow cello.

Another night I found myself listening to Ed Sheeran. Perfect is one of my favorite songs.

Last night I was totally absorbed listening to Loretta Lynn, a long time favorite of mine.

Add to those, Pavarotti, The Three Tenors, and John Denver and you have touched on the music I adore.

To say it is eclectic is an understatement. 

I could not possibly list all the music I adore, but two of my favorites are What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong and Perhaps Love by Denver and Domingo.

Music is the voice of the soul.

Older and older

 

I was brought up to fear doctors. My mother feared them. She feared hospitals even more. That was where her father died a long agonizing death from cancer.

So I have spent my life alternating between these almost inborn beliefs and the reality of modern medicine, which is making leaps and bounds every day. 

Believing that my doctors are the caring, dedicated people I see in movies or on television is hard for me. My natural cynicism says they are just like so many other people, out there to make money.

And yet I have had some really good doctors in my life. I need to draw on those experiences as I grow older, because much of my life now centers around doctoring. If I don't trust these people life becomes very difficult.

I will soon be 76. Not old by today's standards, The anticipated age for dying according to older ones. I have a functional heart murmur that I was born with, stage four kidney disease, blocked arteries, diabetes, flat feet, all kinds of foot problems and allergies. Now I'm having dental work done. I had cataract surgery ten years ago. 

I am literally a medical marvel from head to foot, so I need to find a comfort level in doctors if I want to live with less anxiety. My mother died at 58 from heart and kidney disease. My father died at 70 from a broken heart. 

I'm just trying to live my best life as I get older and older.

Candle candle burning bright

 

Human beings seem to have a fascination in the difference between physical and nonphysical influences. 

For many people when anything good happens that they cannot explain scientifically, they call it God. 

And yet I wonder.

We are physical beings. We live in a physical world. 

Many of those things we thought were magical in the past have turned out to have simple scientific explanations. Science does not mean there is no God. It only means we understand how something works.

We like to think we understand God and that is where I step away from the common beliefs. I suspect there is no separation between physical and nonphysical. I believe there is some ineffable power that has created everything that is.

That I can control this power by certain rites or prayers only makes sense to me if I consider them a way to reach into the power that is already there everywhere. I don't think they are necessary to appease or beg from a man like creature God. I believe they are merely a way to connect with a power so great I will never understand it.

This power created a universe and everything in it. I am part of that and if I use the powers given to me by that I may be able to experience wondrous things. The faith really has to be in myself, that I am capable in using all my physical gifts to achieve what I desire. I may fail, in fact I will fail, I am not a perfect creature, but it is the trying the makes my life good. 

What happens to me when this body wears out is way beyond my understanding or control, but all creations have been coming and going, being and ending since before I can comprehend and therefore I must think it is a natural thing to do.

Some candles burn longer and brighter than others, but they are all candles. They all burn and they all burn out. We are no different except to ourselves and those who love us. We miss the ones who have burned out.

Choices

 

The more I am around the people in my building and my life, the more I realize that there are really two kinds of people.

There are the people who love to complain. They go on and on about how good the old days were, or how bad this or that is. They make whole social occasions around their problems, but they are not really looking for help. They are not willing to change one thing even if it bothers the people around them. They are proud of who they are, even when it labels them as less than.

Sure they would be glad to have you step in and do everything for them, but the kicker here is that eventually they will talk about how you do things and what they don't like about it. That's who they are. These are the complainers. They don't really want solutions, they just like to think they sound knowledgeable when they hear themselves talk.

Then there are the people who subscribe to an old adage that has been around for eons. 

Where there is a will there is a way.

These people are willing to try new things, to step outside their comfort box, to admit there might be something else worth trying because they really do want to solve the problem. They want things to get better and they want to be part of if. Being part of it gives them more choices about how or what is done and even when it is done. These people would prefer to taste foods before saying they don't like them because eating a variety of foods is good for their health. These people might even try being more energy conscious about running air conditioners, heaters, lights, and opening windows only when those air conditioners and heaters are off.

These people tend to be more successful in all the areas of their lives because being open to learning and trying things creates all sorts of perks in both business and social circles.

The wonderful thing about both of these kinds of people is that you are not genetically predisposed to be one or the other. You can choose. You can even choose to change from one to the other. 

It's totally up to you. 

The art of living

 

People seem to approach life in two basic ways.

The first is trying to adapt and find solutions for their problems.

The second is complaining about their problems and finding excuses for why nothing works.

There really are unsolvable problems, but most things can be dealt with if a person is willing to adapt, experiment, and think! 

Believe it or not, thinking is a miracle worker!

Open the mind. 

Break down the problem into parts.

Deal with each part in a plain old common sense way.

And voila! It's amazing how much less confusing and difficult life can be.

Happiness is

 

Our society seems to always be in search of happiness outside itself. Of course happiness is actually an extreme. Contentment would be a better goal, but whatever they are seeking it seems most people expect it to come from somewhere that is not them.

The world is willing to jump on that! Doctors prescribe anti depressants, psychologists offer all sorts of services, the entertainment industry thrives on it. 

Theme parks like Disney, Harry Potter, Six Flags, all rely on people needing the odd or exotic experience to feel happy, gleeful, joyous! 

Television has whole networks dedicated to romance and uplifting faith movies. Magazines and books and podcasts tell us how other people supposedly find real joy and love and happiness!

There are people who shop continuously, always hoping to be able to buy something that makes them happy. They even try to buy happiness for their children and family and friends, thinking that the newest fad will give them fifteen minutes of joy. 

And there is the kicker.

Fifteen minutes of anything except life can be bought for some price almost anywhere. Death cannot be cheated. Eventually everyone dies, but in between being born and dying you can find tiny increments of happiness outside of yourself, all around you, if you have enough money, and that is what you are seeking.

But long term happiness, contentment, the kind that gives us good dreams and makes sitting with ourselves feel really good only comes from within.

That is hard to give anyone else, maybe impossible, but we can demonstrate it to people around us if they are interested. Unfortunately in today's world that is uninteresting and too slow for many people. They want what they want and they want it now!

Young children are perfectly happy as long as they are healthy and cared for and fed. They don't need fancy toys. Everything is a toy to them even their own bodies. They don't need peer playmates until they are around three. They find themselves infinitely intrigued by the world around them. Then the people and things around them teach them this isn't enough and suddenly they have NEEDS and they are BORED and it gets worse from there.

There is nothing wrong with wanting or even needing things outside of us to spice up our life, but the problem comes when these things become necessary for what we believe is happiness. It is possible to have problems, big problems, in life and still be content within yourself.

It's worth spending some time with your self, getting to know the real you, discovering your hidden talents and what makes you special, because no one else can really do that and that is where the mother lode is.

The road from independence

 

People who pretend to be nicer and sweeter and more caring than they act terrify me.

They are untrustworthy.

They are manipulators.

They are parasites in a world where most people seek to be independent and it backfires on them in the end.

Eventually they forget they are pretending. 

Then they forget how to learn new things. 

And finally they forget how they did the old things.

They become raging maniacs when someone calls them out for lying.

This is the road to dementia.

incentives

 

I think it's kind of sad that most incentives in this world seem to be monetary.

Big pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to produce drugs if they can't make a lot of money from them.

I wonder how important those drugs would seem to them if their children needed them to live, or to have better quality lives?

Doing good things just because they improve our world is still rare enough that it makes headline news when wealthy people use their wealth for someone other than themselves. It's not like these people are making great sacrifices, but they are doing good things. I appreciate this. There should be more of it.

I know many people who are middle class or lower in income who make real sacrifices in order to make the world a better place, but we seldom hear about any of them.

Here's to the people whose love of humanity is their only real incentive.

Illusions

 

I know someone who is always trying to make a point by telling me of another person who had the exact same experience as she did. (Like sitting on her toilet and finding it to be very close to the ground.} I don't disagree with her. I never have disagreed about the height of her toilet, but for some reason it is important to her that I understand she and this other person agree upon this very important thing.

Needing people to agree with us comes from an innocent part of our lives where grown-ups were more likely to let us have or do something if they agreed with us.

As adults it should be very clear that someone agreeing with you may be satisfying, but it hardly proves anything. A lot of people agreed that the current president was the one to vote for and most of us know this was not true. 

Now majority rules. That I agree with, but whether that majority is right or not is always a matter up for discussion (or maybe not in our country anymore.}

Mob action , lynch mobs, mobsters, are all examples of people banding together for all the wrong reasons, even if they happen to agree with each other.

A thousand people may sit on your toilet and proclaim it to be very close to the ground, but what does that mean? Are you going to get a new toilet? Are you going to modify your present toilet? Are you asking me what I think you should do?

I think you should just get over it. Adjust and plan for how far down you are going to have to sit.. 

Why do we focus on being like other people as if it proves we are right? It only proves someone else sees things the same way and maybe there is some comfort in that.

But it is an illusory comfort at best.

Blessings

 

Blessings don't have to be religious at all.

Some blessings are simply the reflections of good that is so often missing in this world.

Our world has become a corporate structure. Every business, including churches, medicine and schools are now built around rules.

Rules, while being quite important  for order, often become excuses for not going the extra mile.

Today, in a huge medical complex, with a doctor who drove to our town for his weekly visit, a nurse went above and beyond all expectations and beyond the rules.

I walked the equivalent of a city block just to get in the building. Then I walked another block just to get up the elevators and to the office desk. And even after all that, on a severely injured foot, I had to walk down two very long corridors to the examination room.

I could have asked for a wheelchair when I entered the building, but I was too proud.

By the time I was done with my appointment the prospect of making my way all the way back to my car loomed as an insurmountable trek. I asked the nurse if he could just get me a wheelchair as far as the front door of the building and he happily agreed.

Imagine my surprise when we passed the front door and he pushed me all the way out to my car in the far parking lot! 

His only request?

Don't tell anyone. 

So I'm only telling you because you have no way of identifying him, a true angel without wings or halo, doing the work of good people.

The horror within

 

It's not politically correct to call someone crazy, but sometimes other words elude me.

Imagine spending your life with someone who was always held up to be everything you are not (and everything your family thinks is important.)

People are created by the molds that form them, which is why there are so many family rituals, traditions, and preferences. We want to be liked and being like someone makes us more likable to them. 

My mother used to get so mad she would throw glasses or even whole chairs. It did not seem unnatural to me and neither did her habit of slapping me so hard across the face that my nose went numb. Her criticism of me was subtle, always supposedly for my own good, but she considered everything about me awkward, clumsy and not pretty.

I knew I did not want to be like her and yet some of her habits carried over until I was nearly middle aged. Not the slapping in the face habit, but the taking it out on material things habit. Little by little I worked through all that. Still, I had a maternal aunt who was a bit dotty too. She use to send my dad bottles of clear water that supposedly contained mites from her head.  They weren't there, but she shaved her head to get rid of them and once set her whole apartment on fire. 

It comes from both sides of the family, this craziness, and I worried it might get me. Instead it got the perfect member of our family. The petite, pretty, social-lite who tried to be as low class as she could manage all her life. She taught herself to use bad grammar, walk pigeon-toed, dated men who were truly losers and put all her focus on a pretty daughter who is now considered bi-polar. 

This person will bend over backwards, lie, make up things, or do whatever it takes to please people and most people think she is a sweet little woman who is just a bit dotty. That's the scary part. 

I've always been leery of her passive aggressiveness. It can be incredibly cruel and sly, but after seeing her explode into a bellowing, screaming, foul mouthed monster who could not be reasoned with or stopped for over twenty minutes I saw what lay beneath. It's just possible her daughter is the result of living with this woman.

She scares me. It's like living in a horror movie. I know that monster that lurks within, but no one else will ever believe me unless they see it too and she has a lot of practice hiding behind the kind old lady facade.

Seething smiles

I come from a family of passive aggressive women who consider it only polite to make people miserable with smiles that chill your blood.

We were taught to be people pleasers at all costs and to believe that all mis-truths are only little white lies told with the best of intentions.

The havoc this has wreaked on our lives, not to mention all those other lives we touched is unbelievable. It is, perhaps, the most evil way of communicating that is possible.

It provokes the kind of seething anger that causes heart attacks, destroying marriages, friendships, and relationships of all sorts, because eventually there will be a mind blowing volley of truth that erupts from lips stretched too tight for too long.

It is not rational.

Or healthy.

Or really even normal.

It is something I have spent years disposing of, but it lingers in the fringes of the older generation reminding me how cruel it is.

Something bigger than me

 

This world I live in is extraordinary. The beauty of the sky, the mystery of the waters, the almost overwhelming majesty of its mountains surprise me all the time.

I have been around for over three quarters of a century, not even a blink in the annals of time, but long enough as a human being to realize our human lives are short and as I contemplate what may lie beyond so many things come up.

I know there is something bigger than me. I do not know what that is.

But I can't believe that it would care if someone re-posted a Facebook meme in order to let a baby live one more minute, or that performing all the rituals different religions have come up with trying to control it, or impress it, make one whit of difference. To it.

I do believe those things make a difference to the people doing them. It gives them hope. It makes them feel like they have some control. It can become a way to tap into the body's ability to heal itself.

I don't know where I'll go after I leave this world. I'm hoping it will be peaceful. I suspect I will simply become part of the glory of nature, which is no small thing. To be one with the sun, to float on the wind, to splash along the shore is a kind of congruent belonging most of us long for in this life.

We will belong because we simply are.

Night frights

 

I'm back to the same old things. Some people react. Some people respond and the difference is enormous.

I don't know if it is from watching too much television, or something else, but there are people who seem to believe that everything is a reason for drama.

The truth is most of life is fairly straight forward and simple. Not every sound is a reason to panic and not every person who acts weird is dangerous.

Things may seem more frightening at night, but really, for most of us, we can turn the light on and it is no more dangerous, or different that is was during the day.

When I hear a strange sound in the middle of the night, I listen carefully trying to decide what it is. Then I try to rule out what it isn't. After that I consider my location. I am on the second floor of a large brick building without fire escapes and ways for people to climb up the walls in any reasonable way. I have a heavy door on my apartment with a dead bolt lock on it. in an inside hall. I live in a small town with the police less than ten minutes away, if that. The odds that someone or something is going to choose me, or my apartment over the other 147 apartments here are slim even if that person existed.

Last week I heard very strange sounds coming in my open window. I listened intently for a while trying to identify them and finally got out my iphone and recorded them. The next morning I sent the recording to people I thought might help me figure out what it was.  My brother wrote right back, "It's a gray tree frog."

Now I wouldn't want to hold a gray tree frog and I am not wild about their middle of the night mating calls, but they do not terrify me. The sound is obviously some kind of animal and not a big one either. 

I generally choose to respond to things I don't understand in a methodical, thoughtful way and not react in a panic just because I am not familiar with it and so far this has not ever let me down. I'm still alive and well. I have all my fingers and toes. No one has assaulted me out of the night sky on wings of fire, or anything else.

The room

They filed in. Slowly. Solemnly. Into a room deep under the house.

It was not a dark room. There was a glass block window high up on the back wall and a large rectangular shape in the middle of the floor.

Circling the rectangle, no one said a word, but slowly the solid shape began to blur and then move. It almost bubbled. Almost, but not quite. 

One at a time each person lifted their two hands and allowed little crystal looking shards of light to flutter down into the rectangle.

It was a slow and careful process, done completely in silence.

The viscous liquid in the rectangle began swirling and the light shards twinkled in its depth, but still no one uttered a word. 

Then there was a whooshing and from nowhere something swooped through the liquid, stirring it, never rising above the rectangle until out of the depths they came.

The very people who had been standing around the edge now rose from the goo below and only one of them spoke. "I am the lord and master."

Then they all turned and walked single file out the door and back up into the house. Most of them thinking how fortunate the Lord and master was because he would lead them all. He would make sure they were safe and they would wait on him hand and foot, but these thoughts disintegrated seconds after stepping foot out of the room. They were, each of them, a particular person in the household with a particular job, or use and it was not who they had been before they walked into the room.

Time passed and the ritual was repeated. 

They walked into the room, surrounded the rectangle and dropped their light crystals in silence, The power swooped through the liquid, but this time it resurrected one of them and for a moment he felt the envy of the others as he became the Lord and master.

This time was different. He knew what was happening. He had done it before and he wasn't honored to be the Lord and master. He only felt the weight of it. He tried to tell the others, but seconds after they left the room they were once more transformed into different family members, different people, all with a task or use to fulfill and they had no memory of the room at all.

Why are we here

 

Who really knows why anything is here? 

Some how this planet took a bunch of raw materials and life forms began to emerge. The most adaptable ones tended to last longer than the others, so that was encouraged naturally.

Eventually everything became what we know today and the only thing I can think of is that we are here because we are survivors.

Born into the world helpless, we are incredibly malleable creatures. Our senses are hungry. We want to touch, taste, feel, hear, see, and absorb as much as we can in those first years. Those are the glory years when learning for the sake of learning is as natural as breathing.

Our bodies are designed to be that way. All of its parts need to be used and if we stop using any part it begins to recede, to dry up, to falter and because we are whole beings this affects every aspect of who we are.

Learning is the fountain of youth.

Curiosity didn't kill the cat, it gave it nine lives!

The end of learning signals that the end of life is approaching. Our brain not only reads and remembers and processes ideas. It also runs our hearts and lungs and coordinates our muscles. We are whole beings. In the wild, animals who stop learning die sooner rather than later.

Human beings can sustain life for each other, but the quality is not the same as it is if we are independent learning organisms gobbling up ideas and experiences on our own.

Keep that mind active! Do something challenging as often as you possibly can. Push yourself to understand new ideas and new ways. Feed command central and the whole business of living is richer.

Today

 

This morning I heard the clock chiming on the square.

Beautiful, clear tones that have rung out the hour for longer than I can remember.

This is the part of Taylorville I love.

Not the gossiping, back biting, sordid sharing over backyard fences. Not the cheap shopping in stores that constantly change around the square. Not the made up country vibes the people like to pretend are our heritage.

But the actual heritage. 

A prairie town that sent soldiers to the civil war. A town that survived the depression because starving grocers extended credit to hungry families. A town surrounded by farms that grew corn and hogs and turned marshland in fields.

A place where education is important and each generation sees fewer drop outs. A place whose local newspaper transitioned to online, but still goes on. A cemetery full of history and a library that has outgrown the old Carnegie Library of my mother's childhood.

I remember waking up hearing the clock chiming the hour at my beginning and now, as I approach my ending, it still goes on.

These are the memorable parts of small town living.

What I did

 

After being told that all I did with my life was sponge off my husband's money I began thinking. I have actually done many things with my life, but some of the things stand out more than others.

I have been an ardent tennis player, a Bridge player in three leagues, couples, twin city nu-comers, and even Duplicate. I have been part of a gourmet cooking club, a foster parent, and an employee at a major insurance company.

I was a corporate wife with all the tasks the go along with that.

Once we had children my main focus was on giving each one of my children the support, encouragement, and opportunities to do the things that they showed promise in, the things they loved, the things that would help them become happy, successful adults. 

Our family participated in community theater, each one of us doing their own part. Mine was getting us all to the nightly rehearsals and sewing costumes ranging from tutus to the Von Trapp children's play clothes in Sound of Music.

Each of my children learned to play the piano and each one had the opportunity to play at least one other musical instrument.

I taught preschool classes at Sunday school and made sure all my children had a knowledge of religion to base their future decisions on. 

Then when my youngest started kindergarten I began working at a preschool. While doing that I also volunteered as a room mother and at our local elementary school in the library, our junior high in the nurse's office, and the high school as a mentor who helped students with disabilities take tests.

I was a cub scout leader who later made the neckerchiefs for my son's Boy Scout troop when they went too summer camp. I helped my daughter go out selling Girl Scout cookies.

I taught my children how to drive. I encouraged them to write and read and two of them became Young Authors. I was there for all their music recitals, band concerts, piano contests, soccer games and wrestling matches. I gave them the opportunity to do gymnastics and dance. 

I did everything in my power to give them a childhood that was loving, fun, and left them wanting to go out and explore the world and all their possibilities.

Now they all live in far off states doing the things they dreamed of doing as children. They are successful, happy adults who have, or are, raising children of their own, giving them the experiences they had and more.

And that is some of what I did with my life. 

Of course I also read, painted, wrote, played the piano and flute, pumped gas, and plucked the roses, but those are other stories.

Synonyms

 

I search for the words.

Crazy.

Stark raving mad.

Totally and unrealistically out of control.

What does one call a person who, when approached in a tactful and kind way, even apologetically approached, to please don't talk with your mouth full, becomes irrationally hysterical?

Screaming vulgar invectives, making wild rambling accusations, bellowing at the top of their lungs in a public park with children around, unwilling to discuss it, or even listen once they got going.

Saying absurd things like, "I got thousands of awards when I worked," or "you are just jealous because I worked and you sponged off your husband," which is not true. I worked from the time my youngest was in kindergarten and I always volunteered at their schools, sometimes three different schools in the same year.

And then it got more personal. "Your children live in different states because they wanted to get away from you!" My children live in different states because they are happy, well-adjusted adults who chose where they wanted to live. They all come home to visit.

And this bellowing went on and on and on for over twenty minutes, interspersed with "F---k you." as I drove us home.

I am numb with shock.

I am also relatively certain I never want to be put in that position again where no matter how calmly I tried to redirect us into having an adult conversation about all this, I was ignored and cursed.

I could not possibly write all the crazy things she screamed at the top of her lungs, but they rattle through my mind as I try to go to sleep. 

Lies

 

Nobody likes being lied to.

It doesn't matter if the lies are outright or by omission.

The result is the same.

It is a feeling of being betrayed.

And the worst part of it for me is that I spot lies so easily. It's hard for me to miss them even if I want to and I don't really want to. Not anymore. After my scammer I have upped my ante on truth seeking and feeling.

So, the question is: how do I deal with people who lie to me?

First of all I don't really respect them any more. 

Secondly I begin to doubt everything they say to me.

If you lie to me you should know I may never say anything to you, because if I did you would just try harder and that never works out. For either of us.

I simply take everything you say with less than a grain of salt until you prove it otherwise.

And unless you are aware I know you are lying why would you try to do that?

Lying is a relationship killer.

The hard stuff

 

I found a picture online where the Dali Lama says, The question is: how can I use this as something positive?

This may be the saving grace that preserves my sanity.

How do I take constant inane complaints and total lack of empathy and turn it into something positive?

That is probably one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to do.

I can shield myself from these things, but actually turning them into something positive? Wow, that is hard!

I am trying to say it will help me build tolerance and patience in a world that requires it on a daily, if not hourly basis, but I'm having trouble with that.

I guess that is the basis for most of the good stuff in religions. Learning to deal with the fools, the bullies and the frustrating people with love, tolerance and patience.

It is hard!

Her real job

Someone took all my frozen pretzels out of the box so I don't have the instructions on how to cook them.

I can give you a copy of mine.

I don't like them anyway, they don't taste like the real ones at the mall.

I love them, I think they taste just as good or better.

They aren't like the mall and  besides the mall is almost empty now. There's nothing there.

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After I ordered our ice cream I had to pee, so bad, but when the lady unlocked the door the bathroom was like a closet it was so small. 

I couldn't find the light switch so I just closed the door, then I couldn't find my way out. I pounded on the wall but it took her forever to let me out.

My ice cream was half melted by the time she got out. She got a new cone. I ate my melted sundae.

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I didn't know I couldn't take a bath in my bathroom. There is only a shower.

Didn't you look when you visited the apartment before signing the lease?

I thought it would be like yours, so no.

You could switch to another apartment.

No, I'm not moving again.  (and so she does not shower for the first week and then . . .) There was water all over my bathroom. I have never showered. It's not my fault I don't know how.

Did you close the curtain on both ends? 

I closed it but what am I supposed to do when I am using the soap?

Did you turn the hand held shower water off while soaping up?

No! I don't want to freeze to death!

If the bathroom door is closed you won't freeze. Did you just let the water spray all over while you soaped up? You won't freeze. Part of you is out of the water when you take a bath too.

Well excuse me for not being perfect. I've never had to shower before.

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My son wants everything out of my old house by Friday.

He has been at your old house nearly every weekend since June packing up and running your garage sale. He's even made a gazillion trips back there to get other stuff.

Everyone else packed 3-4 boxes of my stuff to me packing one. I have to sort through everything and decide what to take. And Rose doesn't want me to get rid of the stuff leftover. She wants me to donate it.

But you moved August 1st. Tell Rose she has till Wednesday to get what she wants.

I can't do that!

You could do that if you stopped shopping every day and unpacked or finished moving.

I don't shop every day. I haven't bought hardly anything new.

Just because you walk through the stores and don't buy anything doesn't mean you aren't out shopping.

You think you're so perfect. You're friends don't think so.

You don't know my friends.

I've met them once. Those teacher friends of yours. 

Which of course is not true and even if it were true they would not have said I thought I was perfect. But given all that it would have been twenty years ago if she met them.

-----------------------

The complaints are nonstop and the excuses change with the hour.  She has excuses for not getting her laundry done, unpacking the rest of her boxes, getting the stuff out of her old house and it's always someone else's fault. And she's tired. (but not too tired to shop or run around with her friend.)

Sometimes when she leaves my apartment my heart is beating a hundred miles an hour and I can barely breathe I am so frustrated. It's like talking to a slow three year old who is proud of not being able to do anything she doesn't want to do in the moment. She has given up problem solving altogether. She replies on other people to figure everything out for her. Her only real job is to find excuses for not doing things.

Choices

 

Our problems really are unique to us. They may be similar to other people, but that does not relieve us of the responsibility for our own difficulties.

There are a few genetic things that we are born with, but most of our problems stem from what we do with those things and the rest of the things in our life.

What we eat; how we sleep or rest; how we move; how much we move; how we use our brain and even how much we use our brain; all of these things affect the quality of our lives.

The way we deal with stress has a huge effect on our lives.

Our ability to take control of our own lives depends on our desire to organize, maintain and follow the details that can make our life chaotic or calm.

If our first response is to panic, or run to someone else, we are losing more things than you might imagine.

Problems allow our brains to grow. Learning how to manage our own finances, taking a class, reading instructions, even experimenting on our own all help our brains grow.

Avoiding these things causes all sorts of problems and those problems will only grow if we don't make some changes. People are designed to evolve and grow. Denying themselves the right to do this may be a precursor to a miserable old age.

In fact, they can make life right now pretty inconvenient.

The end

 

The end does not have to be the Big THE End.

Things end all the time.

The last word. The last day at work. The final good-bye. A project finished and submitted. 

Every act looks different once it becomes the final one, so it's worth always trying to put your best foot forward. 

Just in case it becomes immortalized in some way.

For example I know a young man who hasn't seen his family members in years. They were brought together by a wedding and the day after the wedding he went to breakfast with his closest cousins.

Throwing on his kookiest shirt he joined them all for coffee, eggs, and banal conversations. A morning of no great importance or so he thought.

Until last night when he visited his aunt and there on the wall on a large canvas, backed in black was the photo of him and all his family. Everyone wearing something relatively plain and not worth commenting on. And there he was in that kooky shirt, sticking out like a sore thumb for all eternity.

Not the end of the world, but a way he will be remembered for long after he ceases to live on this earth.

Not a problem. Just not what he would have chosen had he given it any thought.

Change

 

I can only imagine the first human being who discovered fire trying to take it home and use it.

"You're not bringing that into my cave!"

"But it will keep us warm."

"My family has been warm enough wearing bear skins for generations. If it was good enough for mama, it's good enough for me."

"You can put meat on it and make it easier to chew."

"Meat from the fire just doesn't taste right."

Or when people started having toilets inside.

"You want to put an outhouse in my bedroom?"

"Well bred people have servants to carry out their chamber pots. We don't need that smelly contraption in our house." 

"And don't get me started on bath tubs. Why would anyone want to take a bath more than once a week."

Or the first horseless carriages.

"A horse is dependable. Feed him a little hay and he always works."

" The dust!  Little Herman won't be able to breath."

Then telephones.

"What an invasion of privacy. I won't have that evil thing in my home."

"Pretty soon people won't even get together and socialize.  They'll just sit in their homes and talk on a telephone. Women won't get their housework done. Children will stop studying. The world will go to . . ."

Change is probably the father of creative complaining. 

Enablers

 

At some point in life we need to stop and ask ourselves are the people around us really our friends, or simply enablers.

Most of us surround ourselves with people we enjoy being around, but then the question becomes why do we enjoy them

Do they think like us? Do they get together with us and the two of us decide what we want to do or accomplish? Do they make us feel good? Why do they make us feel good?

Sometimes it is for all the right reasons and sometimes it is for all the wrong ones. If our friends are simply yes men that brings up a whole different set of issues, but if they are enablers there is nothing much more destructive.

Friends who run in and solve all your problems for you, friends who make all your decisions for you, friends who help you avoid growing and thinking are like acid on a lump of meat. They destroy all the possibilities of who you could be, should be, can be. 

Eventually even the simplest decisions become stressful for you. You can't handle your own finances. You don't even know what you really like. You become one of those nodding novelties that simply sit there being moved around by other people.

These are not your friends. As horrible as this may sound, these people do not really have your best interests at heart. You make them feel good. You make them feel smart and powerful and competent and they make you what? 

Dependent on them.

I've got style Babe!

 

My sister is making the big move from house to retirement apartment, so furniture and style has been much on my mind lately.

My house, while bringing up a family was what I always called Early American Attic. Most of our furniture came from my grandmother's huge Victorian attic, or my mother-in-law's antique laden house.

My sister has always preferred Mid Century Goodwill. She loves a Deal! Her house is literally wall to wall furniture bought at an amazing price from some thrift store. Sometimes it has been hard to tell if we are in her living room or a church basement where they are expecting a huge crowd for an AA meeting.

Her friend, on the other hand, prefers Trash to Table, or perhaps Curb to room.. She loves driving around in a pickup and going through people's discarded stuff, which she then takes to either her house or one of her friends where they use it, scratches, dents etc. Pure and unadulterated.

Don't misunderstand. These people have money, they just like to spend it on second hand clothes that they call vintage. Everything else is something they do themselves and, unfortunately, you can tell. It is a sort of misguided snobbery, sometimes mistaken for moderate hoarding or rickety repairs. Their closets and basements are wall to wall clothes and their garage and bathrooms are creatively pieced together.

Right now I'm in my Moroccan Modern stage, thanks to a beautiful lamp I treated myself to and my motley collection of art, but everyone seems to have a style and very few of them fit on television shows for the rich and the beautiful.

How these styles come into being is anyone's guess, but they seem to suit their owners.

Prayers and mantras and . . .

 

Divine.

Like so many other things it is just a word that someone, somewhere, decided to use to describe something pertaining to godly things, or something exceptionally good. 

That doesn't mean any of those things are true or actually exist as such.

We are such primitive people. We believe that we must capitalize certain things or we will insult some distant being who resides over our lives like a father figure.

We make up rituals that might really help us if we believe in them, but are only the ladder our pysche's use to reach different parts of our own minds.

I believe there is a sort of magic in the world, but only so far as understanding we just don't know how these things work yet. 

Belief is a huge part of making these things work. Somehow we have to tap into the "magic" of our mind and body. I've had enough personal strange experiences to know there is a lot we don't know yet.

So if mantras or prayers or rituals help achieve these magical results - use them!