Three score and twelve days ago

Although I still have nightmares about injustice and frustration that are so bad I wake up drenched in sweat, my heart thundering in my ears, I am starting to reach a new level when I'm awake.

I no longer have this feeling that there is unavoidable impending doom. 

I am now at the point where I feel it is only a matter of time until it's over.

How long I don't know.

How much collateral damage I don't know.

Everyone expected damage. In fact, everyone knew there would be damage. They were counting on it! - - - for the other guys.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil (disturbance,) testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure" . . . the hatred, the spitefulness, the lies.

But the people voted for it, so now they need to see where it takes them, what it really means, how these things really work - - - so they don't do it again  - - - too soon.

Dreams

I arrive at a vacation lodge in a small motorboat and as we pull into the dock leading to a metal staircase going up, an alligator plops down from above and lands in the water right next to the boat. It is a large creature, probably six feet from nose to tail.

It promptly swims off and I look up to see my ex-husband and my son leaning out the window above us looking down. "It's safe, don't worry." He yells.

I go inside and they show me to my room.  It is simple and plain, but more than adequate and I am surprised at the affection I feel because I was invited here. I give him a hug and ask if it is safe here. He assures me it is, but I notice wooden baby gates across all the doorways and looking down from the landing I think I see an alligator tail disappearing around a corner down there.

I wonder when he started running a vacation lodge and I also wonder where the other people are.

There was an old woman

My great grandmother grew up after Culloden ended the nobility of her family's poor Scottish life style and forced them to come to America; and after the Civil War in America ended her family's wealthy southern life style based on slavery in Charleston, South Carolina.

Great grandmother was raised on the rules of etiquette and the power of manners. She prided herself on being able to polite someone to death without batting an eye. Her daughter, my paternal grandmother, warned me not to touch her when she learned I was going to go meet her for the first time. She said she was very old and gray, but this same woman also walked out of my mother's dining room one day because she "would rather be hungry than improper." The damask napkins did not match.

I was six year's old when all of this came into my life. I had just started first grade and had a gentlemen's agreement with the principal. We shook hands over the decision that I agreed to go to school and high school, but not college -- like my mother. It seemed like a fair deal and in exchange I  got to turn the crank on the huge old fashioned record player in my classroom on the days I was line leader. And that was where I learned my first song in first grade.

I came home from school brimming over with excitement, but my mother had three younger children to take care of, dinner to cook and it seemed my great grandmother had died and I was to accompany my mother to the viewing that evening. She said I could sing her the song then.

It was 1956. My mother drove our old black Buick down to the funeral home and tried to explain death to me in terms I could understand on the way. I got it. Great grandmother was dead like Caruso, our canary, and they were going to bury her tomorrow. I didn't really know her and so this information was of little concern to me.  Of great concern was the new song I had just learned. It was really long and I proudly began singing it to my mother as we walked several blocks from the car to the funeral home.

"There was an old woman who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she'll die." I sang loudly and clearly and the song was long, but that was part of why I was so proud. I knew it all.  I got as far as the goat when my mother suggested that I might want to stop before we went inside and sing the rest to her later. I was a little hurt. I thought my grandma would want to hear it too, but my mother was firm. "Not tonight."

As soon as we walked in my grandmother grabbed my hand and whisked me off to look at Great Grandmother. Leaning down, she whispered in my ear, "Look at her, doesn't she look peaceful sleeping there?"

I really wanted to take Grandma outside and sing her my song, but the news that Great Grandmother was sleeping horrified me.  I tried to warn Grandma. "You've got to get her out of here!" I cried, "They're going to bury her tomorrow!"

I was quickly given back to my mother who hustled me out the door and back into the night air where I tried to straighten things out and my mother tried to explain that Great Grandmother really was dead and Grandma did know that and she didn't know why she had said she was sleeping. I found it all very confusing, but it did give me a chance to sing the rest of my new song to my mother as we went home.

Up up and away

There is s perverseness in people that makes them push through and do things whether they want to or not. The idea that we should take care of everyone else before ourselves is built on hubris and it is water soluble. Eventually tears will fall and the whole thing will melt away in one untidy mess.

Kindness is not just an act. It is a foundation that must be built on reality. The kindest people I know are kind to themselves too. They take care of themselves. Nurturing themselves makes them strong enough to persevere when times are tough without falling apart.

Living is not a linear thing. It is a sphere, a wholeness that requires things to connect in real ways. Imagine a balloon filled with molecules of air. Each molecule is a different aspect of your life. Eating the right foods, getting enough sleep, keeping up on the news, sharing things with friends, doing good deeds, exercising, being creative, being clean, indulging in those things that are special to just you, and so forth.

Remove any one of them and the balloon is not as full as it once was.

Keeping that balloon big and bright and translucent requires constant attention to all your needs. It makes you stronger and more capable of being better at everything -- including being kind and taking care of other people in the best way possible.

Daughters of Eve

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, a terrible plague killed the queen, leaving a Daughter of Eve all alone in a world of men. Her father and brothers did what they could, but she was lonely and sad and sought the company of her best friend, a poor woodcutter who lived in the nearby village.

Afraid of everything, the Daughter of Eve would sit in her window and weep until a tiny bird would tell the woodcutter and he would come to save her. At first they only talked. She from her window. He from the cover of the woods below, but her piteous cries that now her mother had died she had no one to hold her close and cherish her finally wore away his sense of decorum and the woodcutter built a ladder. He climbed up and sat for hours holding her as she nuzzled helplessly against him murmuring about how grateful she was and how much she loved him.

And then one day, as you might have guessed, she discovered she was with child and the woodcutter offered to marry her and take her away to his hovel in the village, but this Daughter of Eve was terrified of living in poverty. Who would drive her around when he was out cutting wood? Who would do all the things her father and brothers did? It took a lot of people to care for this little princess of Eve.

No, she could not be expected to live that way, so it was arranged, the woodcutter would send her a fifth of his money every month to help defray the costs of raising another little Daughter of Eve. In the beginning this was enough. Everyone brought lovely gifts for the new baby and her mother felt very loved and special, the center of attention, but eventually that wore off and then life changed.

No one wanted to listen to a crying baby. No one wanted to change a wet and smelly baby and no one wanted to stay up all hours of the day and night caring for an unhappy or sick baby. By the time the child was a toddler this Daughter of Eve was heartily sick of her life, so she devised a plan. She would go off and join the army and when she got out there would be money for school and a way to better herself and everything would be wonderful!

Her brother, who was at university, came back to his dorm one day to find his abandoned niece sitting on his bed with her bottle and teddy bear. There was a note pinned to the bear: Be back soon, gone to join the army! The woodcutter will send money. He was shocked, because she claimed he was afraid to go to the village store in the castle carriage, but he was kind. He hid the child in his dorm and managed to care for the baby until her mother returned several years later.

Upon returning the Daughter of Eve was relieved to find her child potty trained and talking and much easier to care for, but she occasionally still needed time to herself and during those times she would leave the little Daughter on her grandfather's doorstep with a note: Be back soon, gone to (wherever.) The woodcutter will send money.

In between she often sat in her window weeping. Until the same tiny bird told a soldier that a beautiful Daughter of Eve was stranded in her tower, alone and unloved. And he rescued her. Of course he took the child too and soon her daughter was safely tucked in among his own children during the months he had custody of them.

Time passed and the soldier had to go far away to fight a war and the Daughter of Eve did not like living by herself with her daughter so they got on a train and went to visit his mother. It was only a temporary situation she said, until the soldier came home.  The mother took them in quite happily until the time came for her son to come get them. Then the Daughter of Eve asked the mother if she would keep the girl until she graduated from high school so she could go back to be with her husband alone.

The mother said no she did not feel up to that, so the Daughter of Eve rented a house near the mother and moved into it. She wrote her husband and told him to sell their beautiful big house now that she had rented one by his mother. We no longer need it she told him. He was concerned about where his children would stay when they came, but the Daughter of Eve convinced him that he only needed a small place, big enough for him. He would soon finish his time as a soldier and then they would move to a new place.

He did as she suggested before coming home to visit her and his mother. The little daughter stayed at the grandmother's while he was there and when it was time to go back, the Daughter of Eve told her own daughter that they would be leaving her with her real father and grandfather and uncles because there was no room for her in the new place. The girl cried and begged. She did not want to go back there. She said they did not want her there.

And she was right, but the mother convinced her husband that it was the best thing to do, so they dropped her off on the way home. Unfortunately the Daughter of Eve could not convince him not to pick up his own children along the way and so they had to put them down on pallets all over the house during their visit this time.

Meanwhile, back at the castle, the younger Daughter of Eve was right. No one really wanted her there. She sat in her mother's old window weeping until a tiny bird told her best friend from childhood that she was there. And, as you might have guessed, history repeated itself. Except this time neither the king, nor the uncles, nor the girl's father wanted her to stay when they discovered she was pregnant and her mother certainly did not want her living with her and her soldier husband in their tiny love nest, so it was arranged.

The young Daughter of Eve was put on a bus and sent back to the grandmother's town to, supposedly finish high school. She was to live in the rented house the mother had set up before going back to her husband. The grandmother felt sorry for her. She was so young. She had never lived alone before. She had never had a job and she was barely eighteen. All the younger Daughter of Eve knew how to do was fix her hair, put on make up and look pretty. How could the grandmother leave her all alone like that now she was pregnant?

It was arranged that a Grand Duke and Duchess, who had never been able to have children of their own and who loved them dearly, would take the baby when it was born so the young Daughter of Eve and the baby's father could finish growing up and have a chance at a happy life. Then the grandmother and the young Daughter of Eve settled in to live through all this and make the best of it.

But they did not count on the Daughter of Eve! She had wanted a child with her soldier husband, but his vasectomy was not reversible. Here was her chance to have all the joys of an infant with none of the work. She filled her daughter's head with thoughts of pretty pink diaper bags and sparkly clothes. She painted pictures of walks in the park showing off a gorgeous baby girl. She told her that the father must send her money to help take care of the baby. She arranged a baby shower and the young Daughter of Eve, like all children, was tempted by the prospect of this new baby doll she was about to have. They could stay with her mother and soldier step father for one year and then they would be on their own.

A year is forever when you are that young. The Daughter of Eve sat back, sighed and thought how lovely life was. All you needed to do was let people know what you wanted and what you were afraid of and they would take care of everything else. The world lay at your feet if you were lucky and she intended to stay lucky.

Auntie Rene's little lady

My godmother was an awesome woman. Calm, practical, resilient and a lady by all standards. She outlived one husband who died in world war two and married another to have children later in life than most women in her era. She was fifteen years younger than my grandmother, her best friend and thirteen years older than my mother, her other best friend. No one could have had a better best friend or godmother. She called me  Auntie Rene's little lady. Dreaming of flouncy dresses, high highfalutin tea parties and elegant manners, I wanted to be a lady!

That view changed as I grew up. Slowly but surely I noticed that I didn't relate to the airs of many so called ladies. Most of them were not the level headed, kind women my godmother was and I hated the way they feigned weakness.

I found myself drawn towards men. Not as prospective lovers like my friends, but as the kind of people I wanted to be. There was something more genuine about them. a quieter honesty and strength that made them very appealing. There are a thousand ways to misconstrue that and I learned early to keep that particular preference to myself.

When I said, "Look at him," people thought I thought he was cute and sometimes I did, but no more than when I said, Look at her." I am attracted to strong, self confident people who do not need to show off.

I thought confidence. competence, and kindness were the true marks of a gentleman and those were the things I coveted.

The other

I walk slowly up the curving staircase of an almost stereotypical southern mansion.  He is up there, not in a room, but in a capsule, a sort of bathysphere, like an Easter egg, waiting for me.  He knows I am coming. I only have to find him, but his family is going to make it as difficult as possible in their sweet passive aggressive way.

Sometimes I feel like a ghost. Moving through familiar turf that has become unfamiliar while I've been away, but how much could things change? Surely the bond between us will be strong enough.

My search feels futile.  I keep missing him, but just by moments. By the time I reach the bathysphere only a beautiful soft blanket remains. He is gone. Then I hear him laughing and talking to someone as he escorts them down those same steps I just came up, but by the time I return to them he is gone again, far ahead of me down one of the long corridors on the main floor. I have missed him again!

Wandering around in the dim black and white light of late dusk, I hear something upstairs now. It has to be him. This time I run and arrive out of breath, pushing my way into what turns out to be a bathroom. He is in there! But he is helping someone out of a shower bath. It is a woman and she gazes blankly in my direction. There is something very familiar about her.

Not until I look into the wall mirror and see us both, do I realize the woman is me. I know that is impossible and yet I am overwhelmed by a feeling of cold stark terror. This other me cannot not be real can she?

Fear shivers through me followed closely by rage. What if I stabbed her with a hat pin, would I feel the pain too? Are we connected? Is that thought any crazier than what I am seeing?

He looks surprised to see me and looks from one of us to the other, but he never falters in his gentle ministrations of caring for and wrapping the big white terry towel around her. What does this mean?  Does his look mean he is confident that I will understand what he is doing and that it has no bearing on us?

She continues to stare at me, no real emotion showing on her face, but the eyes!  There is something terrifying about her.

And then -- I wake up.

"I've looked at love from both sides now"

1969, I am shiny and new. A sophomore in college. Out and about sort of on my own a little and listening to all the music of my generation. One line stands out. I remember it as I really don't know love (at all.)

Of course we always thought we did know love. It was the age of love. Make Love Not War. But society made war and we made love and we made marriages and then we tried to make babies. It took a long time to get those babies, but when we did!?

Oh my, I knew. The first time I held my baby in my arms I knew! I knew that I knew love in that moment and it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I told myself that loving babies and loving grown ups was different. That was all.

And I believed that until we were divorced. And I believed it for ten years after that. The absolute unconditional need to love my children filled me to an overflowing I never really felt for any grown up. It was just different. The give and take was different. The trust was different. The sharing was different.

The fact that I continued to love them in that way long after they grew up didn't change my feelings. I assumed that it was just because they would always be my babies.

But I just hadn't met the right people, because now I do know love. I've known for seven years and it is just like it was when I first held those babies. I am not anyone's first love, or really even their second, but that doesn't matter. Love is love when it is real and not just infatuation, or attraction, or lust, or need.

It gives and takes with almost total abandonment. It wants only the best for the beloved. It finds a way to surmount all obstacles. It is a closeness that is in no danger of being breached by another, because it is not related to quantity.

Love is a beautiful mystery, a quality that can survive anything, because the connection is so complete, so ethereal and discerning it is a part of you -- like the beating of your heart, or breathing.

What do you pay

I don't really understand why it takes so much money to win an election.

I do understand that it takes money to run a campaign, but in this day and age I get most of my information from the radio, internet and televised news. Trump was on the news nearly every hour of every day.

Evidently all you have to be is inconsistent, rude, bigoted, prejudiced and bad mannered. Truth is irrelevant because, like children, the people who voted for him want what any sane person knows they aren't really going to get.

Information is there for the asking, but many people don't want information. You could spend ten billion dollars putting information in front of the people who voted for Trump and most of them would still do exactly what they just did.

They simply looked for ways to justify voting for a man who was obviously exactly what he has proved to be.

But I did hear and do hear about candidates who seem much more viable and I do not have to go to big expensive conferences, where they pay for buildings and transportation and the upkeep of a huge staff to learn about these people. In this day and age that kind of information is available on all sorts of media.

If people really want a better government they have to pay - attention - and think.  It isn't brain surgery to understand most of this stuff. The hardest things to understand are the games politicians play and the constituents who buy into them.

Life-edits

Life is full of surprises. We go along getting smarter and smarter and the smarter we get the less anyone listens because no one likes a smarty pants, or a know it all and most of all no one likes to hear things they don't want to hear.

The ideal world that lives inside our heads betrays us over and over. Happily ever after predisposes an ability to change -- to evolve, because people change, seasons change and the world changes too. If we don't find a way to reconcile those life-edits with reality, things are going to be hard.

There are lots of phrases people use to try and get through those hard times: when one door closes another opens, when God closes a door He opens a window, sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together, how lucky I am to have something that makes saying good-bye so hard.

We hear these things at all the wrong times -- the times we don't want anything to change, or any glad thoughts to make the darkness less murky, because, like little children, we have this feeling we can hide from our sorrow if we stay in the dark.

It might be better to leave the light on until we find our sorrow and can rescue it from that awful darkness. Pick it up, carry it around, and look into its eyes until we find ourselves sitting there sharing remembrances, resurrecting the good times.

And that is when the magic happens.  Love attracts love and so one day you buy a cake, light some candles and celebrate the gift of loving and being loved on top of a rich layer of memories.



  

The good ole days

How many hungry people are okay? Does their age make a difference? Are people more expendable if they are under sixteen, or over sixty-five?

Perhaps free breakfasts and lunches should only go to the most successful students. We could have them vie for food like their older brothers and sisters do for scholarships. That might whittle down the competition a lot earlier.

If we need proof that some people are worth more we should be able to manufacture that by withholding food, health care, education and access to the arts to anyone who can't afford to pay for them on their own. A lack of those things has a tendency to wear people down.

The occasional success story, the real tear jerker tale of the starving disadvantaged person succeeding is enough for many people. It gives them someone to point to and salves their conscience.

These decisions used to be the stuff of science fiction movies . . .

A certain age

I am always amazed when I hear people say she had no reason to make that up, or he had no reason to prevaricate. After all they were 75 or 85 years old.

Speaking for myself, I am basically the same person today that I was years ago. I still love many of the same things, still loathe a few of the same things and although I am wiser and wilier, I still appreciate the good things.

And nothing is much better than a good story.

So when you hear an old person tell you a whopper you can shake your head in despair, smirk at the gall, or just enjoy the story.

Because, after all, everyone knows people that age don't make things up.

Coalescing memories

I took the garbage out a little after midnight last night and coming back was startled to see what looked like white pants hanging at the end of our building.

I couldn't imagine who or what it was, but I could see those legs as clear as day. They seemed too close to the ground, but I remembered how, when I was on the Coroner's jury, I learned that it was possible to pass out then die while unconscious even though you could have stood up.

I tried to remember what was down there in the dark, how this could be possible and then I remembered something very sad.

I was in a play that people were paying to see for the first time in my life and a young man, a teenager really, gave me a rose on opening night. The note said, "To the only person who has fewer lines than me. Love, "  I had two lines, but I was tickled by the rose, the only flower I ever got for acting.

This youngster would always be standing on a stone bench outside the theater when I arrived. He wore a large black Sherlock Holmes cape and hat and looked very dramatic. We would walk in together and sometimes talked while waiting. Then very early one morning, while driving down Main Street I saw what looked like a large crow hanging from a tree by the university high school. I wondered what it was, but I didn't find out until that night when no one waited on the stone bench.

It turned out all I was seeing last night was a combination of a new sign's post superimposed over another signpost.  All that was there were old memories coalescing into an imaginary fear.

I'm so glad.

Ordinary people

People have a disturbing ability to destroy things.

It is easier to fight than feed the hungry, to be rude than gracious, to kill germs than save lives.

It is a very ordinary person who destroys and kills and takes away.

Greatness requires vision and empathy, graciousness and persistence.

We aren't as dumb as you think

Donald Trump may believe that blue collar workers won't understand why he would fund PBS, etc., but he better believe they will understand the hunger on their children's faces when school lunches cease to be.

And they will understand when their neighbors or grandmothers begin to suffer from malnutrition and need more medical care or are forced out of their homes because senior meals stop.

They won't have much trouble figuring out that they can no longer afford to go to the doctor when they or their children are sick.

And they will probably have no trouble figuring out that the increased military budget will use their sons and daughters to fight his wars because they are too poor to make it any other way.

As education, medicine, food and freedom become increasingly the realm of the wealthy most of those excluded will realize they don't have it.

There are not enough rich people to elect Trump again, not if those suffering remember they have a choice and can vote to end their misery.

The best gifts

The best gifts in the world are seldom bought in stores, or ordered on line.

You can't build them in the back yard, or drive them down paved highways.

They don't squeak or cry, or grow up to look like you.

They really aren't cuddly unless you have a pretty weird sense of cuddly and they probably don't affect anyone else the way they do you.

The best gifts in the world are the ones that let you know just exactly what someone you love and respect thinks, or feels about you.

They validate who you are in a way that touches your heart deep deep down.

Most likely just words -- said or written - in simple heartfelt ways . . .

And presented to you in a quiet moment alone.

Time

Time is measurable and finite and totally mystifying.

When I am deeply ensconced in a project, hours can pass before I notice.

When I am stuck doing something I would rather not be doing, time stands still.

My sister fell on the ice and broke her wrist. She swears that one second she was stepping off the curb and the next she was on the ground.

I flipped over a set of wooden steps for children in the library. I grabbed for the cart I was using to shelve books and it slid me right into the bookcases where I hit my head as I reached out to catch myself, then I knocked both shins on the handles that flanked the wooden steps and reached out to stop myself again in the hope that I would not fall on my knees to the floor. I missed and cracked the outside edge of my hand so hard I thought it was broken as I tumbled over the little steps and hit the floor with first my right knee and then my left. I landed so hard I couldn't get up and lay there looking up at the glass partition in the upstairs hallway, glad no one was there to see me fall. I knew it was really going to hurt when I rolled over on my knees and tried to pull myself up. But I did it and the whole thing, which felt like a long and protracted event probably took ten seconds.

I felt like I had time to think and contemplate the way I could break the fall, but I really didn't.

Time is relevant. It is a mystery. And apparently it is totally different for different people.

Family of the heart

I don't know if I believe in Fate with a capital F, but I do believe that life's path can be strewn with gifts that we may either pick up, or leave behind.

And just picking them up is usually not enough. It becomes a process, a journey of the heart down what may seem like dark or twisting ways.

Only the discerning eye recognizes what makes one breadcrumb different from another, which ones lead to the pot of gold and which ones just end up at Pleasure Island.

First you must know yourself, and then, one day, if you are persistent enough and maybe a little lucky too, you will discover you are surrounded by people who are the family of your heart.

Possibilities

Imagination, creativity, or reality?

Whether our minds are used to create hypotheses in math and physics, or abstract art on canvas or sculpture, or creative stories that people see and hear -- they require using a remarkable amount of reality and possibility stirred together into a cocktail by the mysterious.

I have this niggling feeling that talking about quantum physics and using the subjunctive mood to communicate are both forms of combining two dual existing "things" into one expression that defies any easy explanation.

The waves and particles of quantum physics allow things to be in two places at once. The use of the subjunctive speaks of the imagined or possible from the place of the present.

I wonder if a yogi attempting astral projection is practicing a similar type of thing?

Is the idea of ghosts related to the truth of waves and particles of quantum physics or the subjunctive life of a living person?

Is quantum physics the subjunctive form of science?

A little knowledge is both scary and fascinating.

Decendants

Life is rather ironic. At a time in your life when you have the most energy and health and your whole future is before you -- you have less experience than you will for the rest of your life.

Good people will try to help you, to tell you what they know from their own experience, but you won't believe them and there will be other people  who won't try to help you. They will tell you what you want to hear, or what they want you to do, but not what is right for you.

It's very difficult to know the truth in these circumstances. Who do you trust?

Yourself? The people who make you feel good in the moment?  The people whose life seems reasonably successful?  Ultimately you have to trust yourself and hope you've gathered enough "savy" to do the best you can picking and choosing from the others.

Look closely. Some of your favorite people had unnecessarily hard lives because they did not choose wisely. Some of their decisions made your life harder than it needed to be. And some are now spawning a third generation of bad decision makers who will also have lives that are more difficult than they need to be.

And sadly they will pass this tendency to choose less wisely on down through the ages.

So break out of the rut. Do the hard thing, the wise thing, the loving thing, now and lay the way for an easier and happier life for you and your descendants.

Perspective

I bought a large framed copy of  Monet's Japanese Garden back in 1999. I loved it, but I left it at my old house in North Carolina when I moved back to Illinois. It is one of those paintings that seems to check off all the boxes of near perfection for me and I have missed it.

I love bridges. I like the way they are engineered, the way they span the distance between two things in both an artistic and functional way and I like that they are usually over water.

I like the colors of this particular painting. Deep greens and blues highlighted with touches of yellow and a dab of pink.

I think this picture portrays nature at her best, soft, verdant, reflective.

I realized that the size and perspective of this painting made a difference to me. When I began to look for a replacement I had to search for the right color scheme, because Monet did this in various colors. Then people began hacking it into difference size canvases. Square ones looked disproportionately wrong. A span of bridge this size cannot be correctly placed in a square. It looks chopped off.  And even rectangular versions have often altered the depth of the overall painting by cropping them at the incorrect place top or bottom. It took months before I found one that included the whole scene in the proper rectangular shape and size that allowed me to lose myself in the picture and not the mechanics of someone else's interpretation.

Now I can sit and look at this canvas for hours. It gives me a feeling of peace and well being, and evokes a sense of possibilities I cannot put into words, which is a perspective rarely found in my world.

What are we?

The collective suffering of human beings increases daily and with it the sense of unease any sentient being feels.

People react differently.

Fear elicits an instinctual response for some. Attack! Kill! Find a scapegoat!

For others it elicits the opposite. Soothe, care for, feed the masses.

And the question of civilization rises to the top like it has since before Neanderthals walked the earth.

Suffering

Suffering is often considered good for the soul. It builds character in those people who need it. You know . . . those others.

Other people.

Other people like: the poor, people of color, people from other places, women, but mostly the poor.

The very rich know that if you have enough character and work hard enough anyone can have money and money can buy a lot of ease.  In fact, God probably keeps you poor because he doubts your ability to handle money and therefore other things in your life -- like what to do with your own body, who you love, where your kids go to school.

Sometimes the rich suffer too, but unlike the poor, or the rest of us, they are just victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Belonging

We like it when we know who we are, where we are in life.

Identifying with an idea, a family, a group, almost anything, makes us feel validated and safer. I don't know if it is part of our pack mentality, or just the security of knowing we are not alone.

But knowing anything for certain is bound to be right up our alley

We want to know the name of our illness. Even if the doctor can't treat it any better than he did before he could tell us what it was. We are a cancer victim, or an osteoarthritis patient. We have allergies, or we are bipolar. Naming it seems to be almost as important to us as treating it.

When asked who we are, most of us will tell people our name, but then go on to reveal that we work here or there, or belong to a particular club, or are members of a certain church.

Perhaps we are fishing for commonalities. Maybe we are fishing for one up-man ship. Possibly we are just establishing our credibility.

Whatever it is, people seem to like naming and belonging.

Faith

We are constantly searching for magic, but in today's world we are too embarrassed to call it magic. Yet, two thousand years from now I believe people will look back at us the way we do the ancient Egyptians. Our religions will look so primitive to them.

And yet what they replace them with will probably be just another form of magic seeking, rituals designed to make them feel as if they have some control over this elusive thing we call God, or gods.

Not that there isn't a power who does the godly things, the Creator exists. I"m sure of that because we exist and earth exists and the universe exists. It is only our understanding that is still very primitive. We conceive of God in our own image with all of our shortcomings and failings. We make God personal.

I think we will discover God is more like mathmatics and engineering and science and that the magic is what we now call faith because without faith the miracles don't occur. We look for the light and when we plug into the electricity it comes on.

The electricity is only a catalyst that allows the light to do what it is built to do. Only the light does not feel it must praise the electricity, or bow down before it, or sacrifice to it. It does not need to do that. It only needs to plug in. And that is what faith is. It is the way we plug into the power we call God.

Who knows what this power is? I don't, but I do believe it is much more than a being who can be cajoled and prodded and praised so we can get our way. It  must be immensely powerful to keep the planets in orbit and the gravity working, and I think there is a little piece of us that can mimic some of that if we plug into it . . . if we have faith in it, or ourselves, or both.

The adventure

My granddaughter cut her hair. She is six so you might think that is a little old to be tempted by scissors, but it was more than that. She had s vision in her mind when she took those scissors and went to work.

She was working on a masterpiece. In her mind's eye it already had shape and form, but she's only six. She did not foresee that a lack of skill might not produce her vision. It was with confidence in her own abilities and the desire to try something new that left her with long blonde hair in the back and almost white walls on both sides.

The end result disappointed her. She's aware enough and bright enough to realize it didn't turn out the way she imagined and that is where her parents come in.

Her school teacher told her she would never do it again and that it wouldn't grow back! Her mother told her she would probably do it again and it would grow back. I'm proud of her mother.

Of course it won't grow back in the same baby blonde hair she's known all her life. It is darker underneath, but that's okay. Had anyone been cutting her hair it would have eventually shown up darker too.

Her mother took her to a good salon and they all picked out a cute little style that will grow in nicely after a while. Then they went home and played dress up with her princess dress and make up and even a little spray in pink hair color.

Now it's an adventure and everyone knows adventures leave us a little braver, a little wiser and a lot empowered once we've completed them. I'm betting this little girl grows up to be just what she wants to be and is very good at it.

A better way

Once a deed is done the consequences settle in.

You can't unkill a person, or unbomb a building. These are horrible and irreversible acts.

But you can mend a friendship, or grow out hair. You can find another bike, or build a new building. It may not be easy, but it is not impossible. This is one of those moments when there is an opportunity to redeem something.

Nobody really knows exactly what is redeemable, or how that redemption will end up working, but it is almost always better than what just happened before.

At the very least you are setting a positive example and God only knows what the best thing that could happen might be.

Whatever happens, it is best not to dwell on the unchangeable, or over react if it is at all possible, because that is something you will almost certainly regret later on.

The act of kindness

Kindness is a trait that everyone I know personally would tell you is important. My family, at least my maternal family, the one whose values governed my childhood, defines itself through kindness. People who made a living caring for people, they claim kindness to the nth degree.

Act nice -- kind -- polite. Put on a happy face. No one cares how you really feel. (Oops that one jut slipped out.) So smile and look happy.

With all this kindness oozing from every pore, you might think I grew up being taught how to be loving, kind and gentle, but the family stories were all about pulling one over on someone less savvy, or getting even without anyone realizing it until it was too late.  Instead of honest disagreement, or truth, or anger, I learned to be passive aggressive.

And perhaps the saddest part of it all is that we all thought it was kindness and love because we said what people wanted to hear and did what they wanted us to do -- just silently seething inside.

It wasn't until I watched my daughter-in-law's mother deal with a crabby two year old that I began to think about all this. Then I met Bestest and honed in on the finer points.

Kindness is honesty. It is empathy not passive aggressive anger. It is love on the ground with two feet, head on straight, intelligent living.

Love is not just an act and neither is kindness.

Tradition!

My world feels normal to me, but that wasn't always true. I grew up knowing all kinds of things I took for granted.

Those things we grow up knowing are almost sacred parts of us. They are the traditions we fall back on whenever we are in doubt and they vary from family to family.

Unless you are a counselor who listens carefully to people, you generally only know the traditions of your own family and maybe your partner in life.

In my family the workaholic is highly praised, topped only by martyrdom. It is considered a mark of heroism to over do, to go to extremes. When these extremes produce dire results, instead of becoming a lesson for moderation, they become the folk tales and epic sagas of our family heroes.

We believe if a job is worth doing it is worth doing until it surpasses the point of questionable sanity.

If one pill makes you feel better, imagine what ten can do. If one drink makes you happy, the whole bottle should send you into ecstasy. Broken bones, misaligned backs, illnesses and disfigurement of every sort are a badge of courage earned by over lifting, over working, over doing -- almost everything in life.

Extremes, no matter how misconstrued, are the norm. And with lots of people in the family there are lots of different extremes. Few people live farther than the edge of town. The ones who do are considered odd. Strange. People who do bizarre things like run for their health, or travel alone, or just choose to try and live a more moderate lifestyle based on healthier, more educated ways.

These are the family odd ducks. The ones who broke tradition and no one knows quite what to do about them. They make jokes about them. Occasionally they look up to them, or marvel at their success stories, but they don't EVER model their ways, because that is not how things are done.

It is not tradition!

Like a girl

Women drivers!

Run like a girl.

Weak as a woman.

Play like a girl.

Mostly shouted at women by men, but not just any men. Usually loud, nervous men.

I know women who run like the wind and are so strong it makes your heart break.

I have driven all over this country.  Independently, alone, and as efficiently as it is possible to be.

I have always played like a girl. I was a girl and I won a lot of tennis matches.

It's time to own these phrases and make them our own.

Need

I'm not sure people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.

People who like, or love people might be luckier.

Need can cause lots of problems.

Drug addicts need drugs. Cigarette smokers need cigarettes. And some people need, or want, things from us that we cannot, should not, and don't necessarily need to give them.

It's complicated.

In the best of all worlds we could give those we love everything they ask for and they would do the same for us. That sounds wonderful, but we aren't created to have everything we want.

Being needed can feel good and even be addictive, but there is great value in learning how to support and soothe ourselves.

We see animals on television give their young a gentle nip, or nose them in the right direction. They understand something many people don't because animals don't have the luxury of trying to buy their children's safety or happiness.

We need skills, courage, understanding and persistence.

We need people who help us find these things for ourselves.

Then we can love both ourselves and people.