Waiting

Have you ever ached for the unknown?

Not just novelty, or adventure, but something more. Something rich and deeply satisfying that flows through all of you at once?

Indiscernible but there, like a sense memory of an experience you know you never had?

I do.

Sometimes I find myself waiting for it, sure that it is just around the next corner in time and sometimes I yearn for it as though I am looking at old pictures in a scrapbook.

But the pictures are fuzzy and the corner never quite comes.

It isn't as though I believe this will make me happy, but that I need it to complete something. It is as though I have forgotten something very important to me like my mother's name, or the address of home.

Sometimes I wonder if it is the same thing that makes Monarch butterflies fly to Mexico, or geese fly south, or salmon swim upstream, but I can't put my finger on it.

The day my mother passed

 I remember being three years old and standing in the big window of my grandmother's living room watching long parades of cars that people called weddings and funerals. To me they were just words that meant lots of people getting together. I still interchange those words to this day.

Since the road to the cemetery was just past our block, every funeral passed us. People in small towns pull over for funerals, or peer out windows paying their last thoughts to someone they might not even know.

The day of my mother's funeral I found  myself in a surreal dream. I watched as we passed my grandmother's house and the window I had looked out of when I was barely a toddler. I told myself that today I was in one of those funerals, that people were looking out their windows and seeing us pass by, but today the streets were lined with the living, all coming out to stand on their porches and steps and even the curbs to watch my mother's final moments above ground. I recognized these people. I knew them. Yet it all seemed unreal.

We passed the childhood homes of her best friends, the lady who did our ironing, the women who worked for her and my grandmother and I felt like a ghost. I wondered if they could see my mother sitting beside me watching them as we drove her out past the graves of her father and uncle and grandmother.

And then I don't remember anything else until that night when my sister and I sat at my father's dining room table eating Tombstone pizza and writing thank you notes for the flowers and plants and food that filled three houses around us. I was giddy with the stress of the last three days. It seemed hysterically funny to be eating a pizza called Tombstone and writing thank you notes, but I kept breaking into tears at the oddest moments.

That was the day my mother passed away. The day she could no longer sit beside us telling us who this person or that person was. The day she could not tell us what to write or how to say thank you for so much more than ham salad and chocolate cake. The day I cherished the smell of her closet when I went to find a sweater.

Now my grandmother's house is no longer in our family. Sold to a man who tore out the fireplaces and wood work to sell as piece work. The windows stand empty and dark, sad eyes peering out at the street where the family all passed by to say their final good-byes.

Growing old gracefully

First of all I don't believe there is one perfect way to grow old gracefully. In my nearly seventy years on this earth, though, I have had the ability to watch many women age and some definitely do it better than others.

To dye or not to dye, that is not really a question.  I tried the embrace my natural gray hair way and then I dyed away, both professionally and at home. All of those seem valid to me. The only question I see is picking a color or style that compliments your face, skin tone, and lifestyle. A hank of dry dead hair spraying down your back will not make anyone look younger, or more attractive. Go for the shine! That's what makes young people so beautiful to look at. They are healthy!

All that glitters is not youth. For some reason older women start piling on the sequins and rings, bangles and baubles. If one necklace is good, three must be better. If God wanted you to wear one ring he'd have only given you one finger, right? If you are going for the aging gypsy look, all this works beautifully.

And then there is makeup.  Old flawed skin with its brown spots and wrinkles can be depressing to look at if you worship youth, but it is a fact of nature. More a fact if you've worshipped nature's sun, wind and water. You may have the leathery skin of a Norwegian fisherman, but daubing tons of blue eye shadow on your eyes and red rouge on your cheeks turns you into Emmet Kelly, not Grace Kelly. Keep it simple.

Embrace the inner you. When I look at the people I love I see what I feel for them, the sparkles in their eye, not the things covering them like an out of season Christmas tree. (unless those things block my vision.)

How do you know

How did you meet?

Is it true there are soul mates who meet again and again throughout time?

Is it possible that people can be drawn together by fate?

Is it simply luck?

Or perhaps simple attraction -- like magnets?

Whenever I have met people who end up being important to me I always have the feeling we were meant to be together, but I have been wrong at least once. At least I think I have been wrong, but who knows? Even bad experiences shape our lives, draw us down one path or another .

If there is a divine power directing our lives I suppose it is possible that sixty years might not seem too long to it in the scope of eternity. Where we feel we have twenty or twenty five years to shape a child into an adult, that power might feel it needs fifty, or sixty to achieve some purpose.

Maybe even more!

Cloud nine

Imagine believing it is okay to be you.

When it comes to me there has almost always been something I was waiting to fix before I thought I might be okay.

Part of happiness is liking yourself or your life and finding joy in the present.

I was there in my early twenties. I remember telling my dad, "You've heard about the Joneses? Well we ARE the Joneses right now." It may, or may not have been true, but it felt true and it gave me a lot of self confidence.  I liked where I lived, what I did, how I looked.

I have not felt that way in a very long time, until lately.

I'm not sure quite what happened, but I have found myself particularly contented with myself and my life the past few weeks.

I don't want to dissect it, or do anything to end that feeling. It is just too nice.

The times they are a changing

Once every so often society transitions into a new way of being and generally it is a step in the right direction for nearly everyone, But a few people always get lost in the process.

Change takes time. It doesn't happen over night, but if people are isolated or insulated against the world around them they may not even notice until it is so late that they are completely befuddled by the state of their lives.

The last century was one of those times. Women began to take on more and more power and with that power came expectations as well as rights.

The long suffering woman work-a-holic's self image has always been I work myself to the bone, I do every thing a man does even though I am weak and frail. I am lovable because I am pitifully and pathetically hard working and if I get sick I expect even more attention, because I am sick because I worked so hard for you.

This is often not a conscious way of living. It is has been learned from mothers and grandmothers as the only way to survive in a man's world.

Only it is no longer a man's world. Women today, especially young women, are strong, independent, smart people and the successful ones balance work and play just like men can. Being sick may generate compassion, but there are no extra points because you passive aggressively worked yourself into a tither.

Not understanding this and not being able to move into this world can be very painful for women who don't understand why they are working as hard as they can and doing everything they've always done, but people are not responding the same way anymore.

Schubert and sneezes

One of the first poems I ever learned. From my mother, of course:

Spring is sprung, the grass is griz. I wonder where them flowers is.

Of all the faces of spring, the ones that were the most glorious were those early ones.

When the first tulip burst into all is glory, looking like a cup for fairies to gather round. When hyacinths seemed so extraordinarily dainty and pansies were my favorite flower.

April showers meant walking to school under my mother's huge umbrella. Sharing with my sister, both of us arriving with soaked feet, wet legs and filled with giggles.

May Day followed with paper baskets filled with lilacs from the backyard bushes, their heady scent so strong it made me sneeze when my mother put them on top of the baby grand in the living room..

Schubert and sneezes!

The signs of spring.

Only the dead

We had a house in our family that we all called the Big House. Not because it was like a jail, but because it really was a big old Victorian family home and our family had lived in it since before my mother was born.

Most of the rooms were the size of my entire apartment and there were many. Living room, library, kitchen, dining room, music room and a downstairs bedroom. Add a hallway almost twice as big as my apartment and you had the downstairs flanked by a kitchen porch, a side porch and a front porch. Upstairs were six bedrooms connected by doors one to the other and a hall big enough that when it was turned into two apartments, one of them included a bedroom made out of just the end of the hall. There were only two bathrooms and closets were either tucked into these or the little alcoves connecting the bedrooms.

There was a full attic above it and a basement with a warren of rooms below it.

My mother grew up here with her grandparents, aunt, uncle, three brothers and parents. I spent family holidays here and two weeks in the summer. For a while my mother lived here with us, my grandmother, great aunt and youngest uncle while my father was in Germany and later she and my father lived in the entire first floor. This was an important house in my life.

Last night I dreamed I was there doing laundry. In the dream there was my old neighborhood right next door, but that is the way dreams connect things. I was doing laundry and had even put my shoes in the machine when I saw a fire flickering in some outlets above my father's head. I yelled at him that I thought there was a fire and suddenly bedlam ensued.

My father and mother were both trying to put the fire out. My oldest brother was trying to salvage what he could and I was pulling on long over the knee socks because I couldn't find my shoes in the washer!

I finally decided I would have to go upstairs and get another pair of shoes, but by that time the house was pretty much consumed. I was trying to find a safe way up and thought maybe I could take the back stairs when my great Aunt Lela came out of the rubble that had been the kitchen. She didn't think I should try it.

As I stood there watching, three boys between nine and twelve years old came sliding down what was left of the staircase. Typical boys they were laughing and playing as though it were a great escape in a playground rather than a fire.

I stood there in the back yard by the old winding driveway and saw my grandmother looking at the house. She was dressed like she was when I was very small, in a striped sun dress and white wedge loafers.

Then the phone rang and woke me up, but the dream has stayed with me all morning. There was a sense of frustration because I couldn't find my shoes, sadness because the house burned down to black flaking charred timbers, and relief that no one was killed in the fire.

Then I realized that everyone in the dream, except me was already dead.

Beware of fantasies

I just read Priscilla Presley's account of her relationship with Elvis and I have walked down that same trail minus the drugs and fame. Only she had the wherewithal, both financially and mentally, to leave after four years and I stayed nearly thirty.

I am constant if not the brightest bulb on the loyalty string.

On the other hand I have managed to live out many fantasies in my lifetime.

There is something tasty and exciting about doing that. In the beginning the wonder is exhilarating. I can't believe I am doing (whatever it is that I am doing.)  I am following a dream that I have often had since childhood, or at least my teenage years.

Living the dream!

Everyone should do that! But the kicker is dreams are not forever and knowing when to wake up, smell the coffee and bow out is crucial to survival.

All leprechauns do not lead you to pots of gold. All angels are not from heaven and symphony conductors are not all heart and soul.

In the end I have to walk on my own two legs, use my own good sense and waltz away knowing there will be other fantasies and perhaps one of them will morph into a reality more fantastical than the dream.

Reality

Life is not a reality show.

In a world were reactionary actions become the norm it is much easier to control people. Condense life into an hour a week of reacting, over reacting, responding to their basest emotions, before considering what is going on, or how vulnerable it makes the reactors to manipulation and we are in trouble.

These people do not believe education has any real value because they do not know how to think. They believe that an instant response from the gut is the "real" way to go and that is because not knowing how to think makes people vulnerable to those who do know how to think.

Unscrupulous thinkers are already manipulating these people.

It is a melee of emotions the like of which we have not seen since two year old preschool. Only now the teacher is the president of our country and he believes that his reality can be made real by simply changing the story at will.

Once upon a time does not end in happily ever after if the building blocks were never real to begin with.

Betrayed

I had a very disturbing dream last night that left me feeling sadder than I've felt in a very long time.

In it I was betrayed.

It took me several hours to realize that was what it was this morning.

First of all I had a hard time getting up. Then I had this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. The kind you have when someone dies, or you lose a dear friend, or break up with someone.

I can think of no reason I would have this particular dream, but it has certainly left a lasting impression.

Perhaps it is only a residual from the past, but why now?

Why? That is always the question and the answer is usually as simple as why not.

Expecting life to be fair is ridiculous.

It is what it is.

Genesis

Tipping over they spill out into the universe

And then the fun begins.

Blown by a cosmic breath

Pulled close by a magnetism I don't understand

Clicked together by an indiscernible intellect

Infinite creation all out of one box.

Feelings

Movies are full of people falling in love. They do it in a million different ways, but it always seems so natural in the end.

I thought maybe we had soul mates when I was younger, but if we do either I didn't find mine, or time and space played a colossal joke on us.

If you had asked me last month if would I ever date again, or take a chance on being in that sort of relationship, I would have said no.

But all things change.

Once in a while we find ourselves drawn to someone in a way that feels different. A person walks into our lives, shakes our hand and you just feel something. Why? I have no idea.

It may never amount to anything, but it does change the way I feel.

Tempting fate

Today I granted myself the favor of reading a good book in the middle of the day!

That may sound ridiculous, but most of my life, really fascinating reading material has been hard come by and reading is one of the great joys of my life.

From the time I could read I would save good books for special times so I could savor them, loll in their mysteries, become one with the story. I remember reading at my desk on a Sunday afternoon with a much coveted glass of Coca Cola and two ice cubes. It was much diminished by the spider that somehow fell into the glass and crunched between my teeth!

Later I would read in the bathtub, carefully picking a time when no one else in the family was likely to need in. Propped up with a cheese sandwich and steaming hot water, I was in paradise.

I did not have access to the public library as a child except on very rare occasions. We were a one car family and it was far away. I read nearly everything in our house, but it wasn't always what I was dying to read.

Later, when I should have had access to anything I wanted there was a sense of scarcity. I didn't feel I had the right to go buy books and I also didn't have the time, or means to get to a library much of the time, so when I did have a really good book? I cherished it! That meant pacing out the reading so I wouldn't finish it too soon and lose those "friends" I found between the covers.

Now I live by myself. I have a good working car and lots of time, but old habits dye hard.

I tend to read at bedtime. I look forward to it and it helps me go to sleep. It is the reward I get for going to bed. A part of me is almost afraid that if I take advantage of my resources (book) and time, that somehow I might lose this precious right. I know that makes no sense, but it's a fear that has been with me since childhood.

Today I gave myself permission to just sit down and read! After all it's a big book and it will take me a while to finish it. And -- when I do -- I can either go to the library, or order another one.

I am enjoying every second, but when I pause to think about it, it does seem as though I am tempting fate.

Passion

When I was a young girl living in a small town during the 1960s, it seemed important to be passionate.

The people in the movies I saw were passionate. They slammed doors, threw things, made grand gestures for love and retribution. Then they lived happily ever after.

My mother was a fiery redhead who reacted almost without thinking, breaking chairs, throwing glasses, backhanding me when I least expected it -- and yet it was obvious my father adored her.

The big Italian family who ran our local grocery store sang opera and Italian love songs as they stocked shelves and cut meat. It there was any disagreement it, too, was loud and passionate (and in Italian.)

Of course the sixties were also the time of protesting and meditating and drugs, which kind of clashed with everything else in my life and itself too.

We had Pooh and Peanuts and wanted to celebrate the world as simpler, kinder people.

Except we didn't.

We became the forerunners of this awfulness our country is going through. Liars, cheats, child molesters, racists, people with no real conscience and a love of money that is idolatry. People who glom onto one idea and pervert it into a lifestyle that serves nobody.

Winnie the Pooh cannot erase the corruption, or hold the suffering children, but he can open a window to a bit of light that might see a few souls through in especially trying times.

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.  Winnie the Pooh