Happiness is not

 

Negative people often do not even realize who they are, but they are a drain on those around them.

I have tried every way I know to redirect a negative person's conversation without any real success.

They believe they are just sharing information, but all that information centers around sad, bad, or even cruel things. Their friends all have problems with family using them or ignoring them. They focus on the one child they say they want protection from. Their pets all have quirks that they find funny but annoying, only not annoying enough to take the time to change. 

They are constantly having minor problems with their car. They don't know how to use many of their car's amenities. They don't know how to use their own phones or computers and don't really want to learn.They think people don't send them the same photos and texts other folks get because they really don't know how to use their electronic devices.

They hyper-focus on things and want to share how vigilant they are by shampooing their carpets all the time or counting the bugs in their vacuum cleaner dirt.

No matter what they are asked, they will find a way to turn it into a negative reply of some sort and if you point this out they become angry and accuse you of thinking they are dumb.

It is a losing proposition that upsets me unnecessarily. I have tried to think just let them be who they are, but they have a way of wriggling it around to where they seem to need a response from me - just one that enables them or else.

I find myself angry, frustrated and my blood pressure soars to the point that I am actually ill sometimes.

I know you think I should just ignore these people. Avoid them. Keep them at arm's length, but that is very difficult when it is a close family member. Any and all family gatherings must include this person. They are not avoidable.

And they are not going to change. In some strange perverted way this life style makes them happy.

The right way

 

There is a time while we are children that the adults in our lives rule! We believe they know. They really know! And so we love them and honor them and try to emulate them in every way. We believe this is the right way. The best way. Maybe even the only way.

Growing into young adulthood we branch out, go off to school, or move away to live among other people and most of us gradually discover that other people often have other beliefs and they are as adamant about them being right as we are ours.

But over time we grow. We discover other ways of being and some of those are just as good or better than those things we grew up with. And sometimes we discover that the things we took for granted as normal were not so normal, or even so good.

Not everyone comes to these decisions or has these thoughts. There are people who never really grow up. They just continue to parrot the ways and words of their families as gospel. Some people discover their families were not as odd as they might have felt they were and some people find that the things their parents or families did were not always as good and kind as they believed.

These discoveries can create mental blocks, or even anger, but they are learning situations and important in our growth as whole human beings.

We can forgive our families for many things. Most of the time they were truly doing the best they knew how even if it hurt and most of the time they would be crushed to know that they hurt us the way they did.

It creates a strange dichotomy of feelings. Love and anger, resentment and nostalgia. It is the road to wisdom when we realize we can accept these things for what they were and move on along our own road to try and do better.

It is true, I am what I am. But it is also true that I have the power to be stronger, wiser, kinder, more open to learning and understanding. If I am still trying to do everything Mom's way when I am an adult I have failed to mature into myself.

Live

 

I think women in my generation especially used to get caught up in the idea of who we were.

Maybe because we were sort of the first generation of television children. Kids who knew what day and time it was by which program they were watching was on the air.

Instead of relying on the fairy tales and folk tales from books, we saw soap operas and westerns. Lots of westerns! The women often standing in the background with their hands over their mouths in horror as the men battled it out with their fists. Heaven forbid one of those women pick up a chair and lob the bad guy over the head. They were bystanders. Watchers. People to be protected and honored. Judged on their beauty and money and clothing, but not much else.

So when these women grew up they seemed to either follow suit and put themselves in that make believe role of being pampered and protected, or they did an about face and became rude and crude in order to make their point. Both of course were extremes and neither one was enough for a whole life.

I see women now who spent their youth slaving day and night thinking that was the noble and only way to live. And I see women who are aging primadonnas trying to recapture a youth they should have outgrown fifty years ago. They seem confused and sometimes almost frantic as they realize something is missing, but they just don't know what.

Then there are the women, I was going to say lucky, but I don't think they really were lucky, I think they were realistic, who stopped trying to live somebody else's life, or emulate an idea that only existed on film. They got out there and did things! They were the ones who found fulfillment in jobs, art, sports, mothering, whatever seemed important to them. 

They made mistakes. All human beings do, but they lived and they were willing, wanting and able to accept responsibility for who they were and what they did.

I admire these women.

Independence is the ultimate gift

I know a family who considers helping people a Christian trait they are proud of, but what they really do is enable people

They do it with the best of intentions, but the truth of the matter is that what they do makes them feel better than the people they supposedly help.

The old adage that if you give a man a fish he eats for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime applies to everything in life.

If you wait on someone hand and foot, encourage them to ask you for help with anything and everything, you are turning them into eternally needy people.

I have always believed that the best gift we can give anyone is to teach them to think, to solve problems, to figure out how to do what they think they cannot do.

It is usually easier to just do it yourself, but that is truly unkind. There will come a time when you are not there to do for them and what will they do then? 

Teaching someone to be self sufficient is not abandoning them. It is a careful way of nurturing that encourages self sufficiency, increases self worth, makes people feel stronger and therefore more confident and content.

But if someone has spent a lifetime enabling or being enabled that can be tough. It requires real love to put up with the tantrums, the self pity and the destructive actions of people who don't want to learn or grow. Whether it is out of laziness, or fear, or some disability, relying on other people to get through life does not feel good, because there is always the niggling knowledge that this help may not always be there.

Being an enabler doesn't make people love you. In the end it is just the opposite. It teaches them to use you and not respect you.

Teaching people how to solve their own problems is a much better way of showing love. It requires patience, repetition, and intelligent redirection. It is laying a path through the forest, not carrying someone on your back.

Who are we

 

Over the years I have noticed that people in my generation often value themselves by who their relatives are, where they live, what kind of car they drive and how much money they have.

I once did this too. I was raised to do this. 

But the difference between me and some of the people my age is that I knew early on that something was off. I wasn't sure why, but I knew it felt wrong. We followed all the rules and there were rules for everything! How to sit. How to talk. How to set a proper table, make a proper bed, cultivate the correct friends, even how to laugh. It was all about presentation. How we looked to those around us and the world. 

We were taught this was the price for being who we were, somehow superior to many others. It created a generation of people out to please everyone else (who was worthy of being pleased that is.) Noblesse oblige took care of the rest of those poor souls around us who couldn't help being born who they were. 

Thank goodness for the sixties! The hippie generation had its ups and downs, but it taught me that there was more to life than the facades and faces we donned every morning before we went out in the world. It was one of those things my dad tried to teach me. There are extremes at both ends, but the middle is generally a better place to be.

I wanted to change. 

It took years of reading and therapy and meeting people and trying things out to learn that passive aggressive is really a terrible form of aggression used by people who are angry and afraid to show it for one reason or another. I discovered there was nothing wrong with stating my needs or wants, but that no one else was obligated to take care of them.  I discovered that simply being born a lion didn't mean I had to, or even had the right to, eat everything I could catch and devour.

I discovered that for every idea there were probably ten others that were different in some way, but they could all be valid in some ways too. And, sadly, I learned that all those rules I had learned were the very most basic lessons for being a human being. Each one had its uses, but not one was sacrosanct.

I can still enjoy setting a fancy table. Sometimes I like to dress up. Eating good food that I enjoy is still wonderful, but it's just that now I don't think everyone who does it differently is wrong. I don't long for the good ole days. They were sometimes awful too and I don't idolize people anymore either. 

I do have a hard time understanding people who refuse to grow and change. To me that is like collecting dead wood. All it's good for is the fire and as beautiful as a fire can be in some moments, it is so destructive left unbridled. 

Who we are is a product of who we were and we are artists creating an unending masterpiece if we choose to be.

Grief

 

I've been thinking about grief lately.

Grief is such a personal thing. How we experience it. How we process it. How long it dominates our lives. The way it affects the rest our lives. Or doesn't.

No one knows grief exactly like someone else and yet it is a universal feeling.

Even animals seem to express and feel grief.

In the seasons of a life grief is more than the dying world of autumn or the dead world of winter. It is the hope that fills us with the first breaths of spring enriched by the fullness of summer and the richness of fall's bounty. Over time it slowly becomes the peaceful acceptance of winter lying beneath a frozen blanket and knowing there is life of some sort underneath.

In its first stages grief can feel unbearable and yet it is bearable. It is a glance into Pandora's box that overwhelms us with its vastness and mystery. It is finding emptiness in the midst of so much. It is coming to terms with the unthinkable, at least in momentary periods of glimpses of eternity.

Grandmother

I knew one of my grandmothers very well. My mother's mother was a big part of my life, but my father's mother was not. She and my mother did not see eye to eye on much and I saw her very seldom. 

On Christmas Eve my father would take us to visit her while my mother wrapped our gifts and Santa Claus came, but even that stopped when I was nine and she moved far away with my aunt and cousin.

I've always thought that was a shame because I think she was the person I was most like out of our entire family. She was a teacher. She sewed dolls and made clothes. She painted. She loved to read and her gifts, although they came from far away contained the best fudge I've ever eaten in my life. I've spent years trying to replicate it with no success. The toys she sent were quality ones and usually unique.

She was the only person to buy me books and I wasn't allowed to appreciate them at the time. My mother felt they were not great gifts, but looking back now I think they were. My love for ancient people and the Anasazi came from her stories when I was very young. Her Tales That Never Grow Old taught me the old fables and stories with a point. I read fairy tales and the Books of Lands and People. And one book I read, but never quite understood at such a young age was read out loud on Northern Exposure recently. It was Paddle To The Sea. 

I remember that book even though it was not about little girl things and on hearing it again I realize I internalized a lot of it and brought it with me into adulthood. 

Yes, I wish I had been allowed to know this grandmother better. I think I would have felt less like the odd child and I think she would have fostered all those things I loved so much I introduced them to my children. Art, music, embroidery, knitting, sewing, museums, National Parks, history, Bridge and an unending curiosity for the world around me that made me gobble up books like my siblings did candy. Some of these things came from my father, her child, but he often worked three or even four jobs to keep a roof over our head.  She would have had the time to indulge me in things she loved that my mother did not.

USPS

 

There is nothing more frustrating than automated answering machines for businesses. 

They are set up assuming that the problem is not theirs to begin with and they are right. We become collective hostages once a package is sent by some Internet business.

The fact that they cannot deliver something because they have no access code is ridiculous when there is nothing to access except one of the doors around the house. All they have to do is walk up and drop off the package in front of one of these doors.

Call them on the phone and get all kinds of suggestions. EXCEPT you cannot tell them there is no access code.

I sometimes wonder if that is just what they put when they don't want to take the time to walk up to the door.

I live in an apartment building. Everyone here pays just as much for delivery as the houses in town, but business just drop our packages in the lobby where we have to pick them up, or anyone else can pick them up

This is not just because of holiday rush. It is an all around the year problem. If they can access the lobby, they can access my door! The same thing is true in the country. If they can drive up a lane, they can reach the door.

Some delivery drivers are just plain lazy. Others could care less. Companies need to reassess their services and their service people.

Deserving

 

I have three children. One is well educated, almost affluent with lovely children in a home he bought and renovated. One was in special ed all through school, has worked grueling minimum wage jobs most of her life, has two lovely grown children, a fantastic husband and is living an almost fairy tale existence at this moment. The last one calls me almost daily because he knows I love it. He goes above and beyond for anyone who is in his life, especially his friends and he has lots of them. He works hard for more than minimum wage, but not a lot more, lives in a shared house, drives a truck that is in constant need of attention and is in the end of a divorce. That part of a divorce where you divide up the assets.

He married a woman seven years older than him and they were together for over 25 years. They have one lovely child who is almost grown. Every day he got up, warmed up the bathroom, put her robe in the dryer to heat it up and took her a mocha latte with caramel drizzle and whipped cream to wake her up. He did the grocery shopping on his way home from work. He home schooled their son and walked, or ran their dogs. He maintained the house, the yard, and the cars. He vacuumed, dust mopped, cooked dinner, did the dishes, and often did the laundry. He made every celebration something extra special and when she tired of him he awoke one morning to find himself being escorted out of his home with a restraining order saying all sorts of untrue things.

Now he and his son are closer than ever. He is allowed to have friends that are not his wife's. He has an active social life and her friends have shunned her for him, but every penny he makes is spoken for. He is the one I bought gifts for this year and I don't think there is a soul in this world, including his siblings, who wouldn't think that was the right thing to do.

Except maybe his ex-wife.

Moody machines

 

As a child our furnace could only be serviced by one very old man. When he died, we had to get a new furnace. The new one did not work right for a long time, but that turned out to be because the thermostat was directly over the main heating pipe in the wall. Once my parents figured that out all was well.

I've lived in apartments where the air conditioning and heating both came from one place and generally those did not ever keep the bedroom especially cool at night.

But this is the first air "conditioner"/heater that I've ever had that was moody!

If it gets worked up it can run like a tornado down an Alabama alley. Blowing heat out like a roaring lion and stopping for nothing. Especially not for something as mundane as the regulator. I've had it run until it was 73 degrees in here one hour and zoom up to 79 degrees the next. 

It does not like the dark. Once it gets dark it begins to whimper and moan and blow hot air indiscriminately into my apartment. So, I have found a solution. I turn it off late in the evening and don't turn it back on until morning. That works! Evidently my neighbors enjoy heating the building from their apartments, so I've never had it get below 68 degrees in here.

Then last night I was awakened by a roaring! A grinding! A horrible, monstrous, loud buzzing sound. I thought, "Oh no, the refrigerator must be going out," because that was all that could be making such a noise. It did not stop so I got up about 4:45 AM and checked on it. It was not the fridge. It was my wall ac/furnace contraption that was turned off! Off!

How can a machine that is turned off make such noise? And it was madly blowing hot air out into the room like some fractious child throwing a temper tantrum. 

I couldn't unplug it, so I sat with it until it calmed down and went back to being inert. Then, hoping I had averted a fire hazard I went back to bed and called the maintenance people this morning. It turns out it was trying to save itself. Not my words, the maintenance man. He said it was so cold outside that it over rode being turned off and tried to warm itself.

Nobody is happy this morning. Not me who is sleep deprived. Not the maintenance man who had to come out in sub zero weather on a Sunday morning. And certainly not my moody little ac/furnace who is grudgingly giving me the modest amount of heat, which is all I ever ask of it.

God is a metaphor

Joseph Campbell said, "God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being. Those are categories of thought. I mean it’s as simple as that. So it depends on how much you want to think about?"

I think about it a lot.

I am surrounded by people who are adamant about what they believe. I respect that. I never want to destroy anyone's fundamental beliefs. And yet, I often find myself wondering how they can be so shortsighted and unbending.

"Some people believe that to ask questions is proof that you are a non believer. I think not to ask questions is proof that you don't have enough faith to explore what you love.

There is a profound difference between God and religion. One is ineffable. The other is a collected source of man's interpretations and beliefs mixed in with an agenda to control.

One is eternal. The other is moribund.

It has always seemed to me that religion is an attempt to gain power over God. If that were possible then how could this beautiful mystery, this unknowable power be what we claim it is.

Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in God. It is a transforming experience of recognizing that everything I see, hear, feel and understand is a part of something so huge and unfathomable I will never understand it, but I will always be part of it. Forever more and before.

Simplyfying

 

Simplifying my life is a constant process.

I have been living in my new apartment for about 17 months now. Yesterday I went through my big walk in closet and then my coat closet. 

I weeded out nearly five big eleven gallon bags of stuff! 

Clothes that I can no longer wear and that my sister liked, I gave to her. The rest I simply disposed of, including sheets for a bed I no longer have and extra pillow cases.

Now my coat closet has my winter coat, two jackets and a rain coat. The rest is all cleaning or art supplies and the emptiness draws me like a moth to flame.

My walk in closet has everything neatly arranged with room to spare.

I moved the chair I have tried to use into my bedroom. It is a comfortable chair for occasional use, but a poor one for my back to use for any length of time. Instead I bought a wonderful, super comfy, very basic recliner for my living room. I love the openness of my rooms, the lack of clutter, the order!

One big perk is that I can now look out of my living room windows from a distance that keeps me out of direct sunlight, but allows me to enjoy the beautiful view. I can also watch my television without any glare from the windows. And there is ample room to open up and expand my dining table when I have guests.

I think people under estimate the peace of mind that comes with fewer possessions. Everything we own requires some kind of space or care that is eliminated when it is gone. That allows me to take better care of myself and the things I choose to keep.

Growing pains

 

Moving to a small town near family last year was a financial necessity, but also a huge cultural change. It wasn't a cultural shock. I knew what I was getting into, but I didn't quite understand all the fine points.

This has probably been the most difficult 18 months of my life. Starting with a back that spasmed for nearly a year, backed up by an inability to get new orthotics for over a year and in the midst of all this I broke a tooth and had to start treatments for anemia. 

And if that wasn't enough, somehow I, who never go into anyone else's apartment, and do not go into stores or shops ended up with bedbugs! I still don't know if I got them from the hospital or in the hallway that I walk through to get to my car. But I do know they are almost impossible to get rid of. Our building provides the service, but only every two weeks and in between I have to vacuum every surface and floor several times a day. And even doing that I have bites all around my neck area. The rest of me is covered in sweatshirts, long pants and socks pulled up over the pants. I have put a bed bug cover on my mattress, but my recliner is ruined.  I have vacuumed it so many times that the upholstery is ruined. My nephew is disposing of it for me as soon as he can get a truck and a permit to dump.  And even with all that vacuuming I have an occasional bug crawl out of it!

On top of all these aggravations is the matter of family relationships. I have two siblings living nearby. One is a rock. The other means well, but I think I finally figured out our problems.  She is still living the way we lived sixty years ago. She actually called me last night to tell me a certain actor was on the tv in case I wanted to see him. She "knew" he was my favorite. Yes, he was my favorite when I was fourteen. I left town and grew not just older, but up. She was left stranded when my mother and grandmother died, because she had never even gone to the doctor without one of them going with her. Her best friend has been the same since then too. She has not changed. She still likes the same music, the same colors, the same movies.

I have been gone from this town for the better part of fifty seven years and they were rich wonderful unique years. The person I am today is unrecognizable next to the person I was back then.

I think this past year has been a stretch for me. Now I have to grow into a more patient, understanding adult if I am going to be happy here.

One year

 

I am approaching my second birthday here and I realized today how far I've come. Not all at once and still not completely where I'd like to be, but so much better.

For one thing I can now shower without rushing through it and going straight to bed for fear my back will begin to go into spasms. Now I can do what any normal person would do -- just move on with my life.

I am cooking a little more. My freezer is full and my refrigerator looks like someone actually lives here. I have condiments, vegetables, and other assorted things in it.

I am painting again! And this is the thing I enjoy most of all. Whether I am making birthday cards for my children and grandchildren or paintings that people have requested, or even for me, I am dabbling in the arts again. Just dabbling, but that's all I've ever done.

I am able to do my own laundry and cleaning and even though it is stressful and wears me out, it gets done regularly.

I have worked out a sort of social system that works for me. I am nearly a hermit. I enjoy my own company and am not lonely if I'm not surrounded by people, but once in a while it is nice to do something with family and I have my sister, my nephew and my brother to do things with.

I have my new orthotics and in some ways my feet are much better, but there is still some adjusting to do. I've been hobbling for over a year and it's only been a week, so I have great hopes. 

I am happy here.

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.