Contrast

I love innocence. I suspect everyone, or almost everyone, else does too. There is something alluring about sweetness. It makes horror movies like The Fly all that more terrifying. Flies are drawn to sweetness.

They want to gobble it up, Wallow in it. Lay their eggs on it. Raise their young in it. In a way it is their own steadfast faithfulness to being true to who they are, but to others, like me, it is a horror story filled with squirming larva.

Contrast fills this world. It is as if nature was afraid we might miss something so it gave us day and night, birth and death, health and putrefaction, youth and age. Such large complex differences are hard to miss.

I am aware that my body has been slowly decaying since the day I was born. By age ten I spent hours with the very elderly and knew what was coming. It seemed so far away then. Now it looms over me in ways I am unsure of.

Part of me feels as if I am slowly fading into the atmosphere, becoming one with everything else and less of a force myself.

Part of me sees the horror of that beautiful blonde baby now bloated with age and over indulging.

I wish I could be one of the innocent old ladies sitting sweetly in the sunshine watching the young people get on with their lives, nodding in affirmation, but I still want to be part of it all.

I just don't want to be a suffering harridan projecting my pain out onto others around me; a lighthouse highlighting imperfection and disgruntlement.

The Miracle

Perfect places filled with human beings are impossibly imperfect.

Homesickness and joy, fear and wonder, creativity and boredom all tumble about in a conundrum too confusing to ever sort out.

The miracle is that there is no miracle in Paradise.

Conceiving and producing any great project takes hard work and perseverance. Doing it in community may add to the diversity, but it also adds to the complexity.

In the end, a great work of art may be just as hard, or harder, to produce in Paradise.

Sometimes

Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave.

I just spent hours helping a relative move. It was hot, physically grueling work. I really didn't mind the work, but the lack of organization was frustrating.

All of the suggestions I have made about sorting out what you don't want to keep ahead of time were laughed off. They wanted to keep it all -- until today when they realized they don't have room for it all.

All of the suggestions I made about labeling boxes were ignored. Things were mostly just thrown into open boxes, or even into the cars in piles and then there was a great deal of talk about what and where it went as we unpacked the trucks and cars.

I unloaded six van loads of stuff mostly by myself as they struggled to decide what to do with the surplus of stuff and the big furniture.

When I left this afternoon, after a day and a half of work, the cars and vans were empty, but the trucks, with four people working, were not.

He suggested I help her sort through boxes inside and put things away. I knew from experience she would ignore anything I said and besides, who can decide which of someone else's things is worth keeping?

Everyone was exhausted and we would have only ended up bickering.  I have moved many times in my life and organization is everything.

I realize that these people all have minor disabilities, but they never waver from their right to be the ones in charge and they think they are absolutely right about everything. Sometimes the best way to learn that your way doesn't really work is to just do it and find out.

But of course they may not even realize it didn't work. They may think that every move is this uncoordinated, this long and this messy.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is finish your part and leave. You are not obligated to clean up the messes they choose to experience.

Dangerous help

Lately I get up in the morning, check my blood sugar, take my blood pressure, weigh myself, as if I am some sort of invalid.

I feel fragile.

Yet nothing has changed except that I am going to the doctor and he has ordered heart tests, blood tests, raised concern over all of my body's functions.

Up till then I felt good. I felt strong. I was walking, working, doing everything without a thought.

I know that keeping all these things in check is ultimately important, but I also know that I am mostly a mind and bundle of emotions encased in a body, so how I feel is equally important.

I don't know how much my high blood pressure is my heart and arteries and how much is psychological. I can feel my heart begin to pound the minute I take out my blood pressure cuff now.

How do I survive old age without being swallowed alive by well meaning doctors?

Musings

Years after my mother died I still liked to put my nose up against the few things of hers I had kept in my closet, a woolen kilt I had given her for Christmas one year and a navy blue suit she wore to work. Both of them carried her signature scent and if I had been smarter I might have put them in plastic bags to keep it longer. But I did not think of that back then. I was too heavily immersed in surviving something that felt surreal. Now all I have is the large kilt pin from that skirt and her squash blossom necklace and earrings, which I honestly never saw her wear, but I know she treasured them and so I try to wear them to important events like my sister's birthday and my brother's funeral.

I also have her Italian cameos that she always intended to have reset. I also had that intention, but I know I never will. Somehow they have become sacred just as they are.

I don't really have anything of my father's. He was writing a book. I had read the first chapter, but that disappeared. My niece and his wife swooped in and it was all gone before I knew what had happened, but that is okay. I mostly think of my father when I am writing, or reading. Learning was something we both shared a love for. My father will always be a voice in my head. Nobody can take that away.

It's strange to think that I never worried about my parents dying. They were young when I was born, 21 and 22, but they were fragile souls. Barely made for the world they lived in and entirely unsuitable for the world today, it's probably good they went when they did.

The only other member of our immediate family who has died is my brother. It's funny, he always said he was going to come back and haunt me and in a way he has. I can't really mourn his passing, because I always feel as if he is  "still here dammit!" That was the way he always answered his phone because we had been waiting for him to die since the day he was born. He lived well into his sixties and his stories will probably live forever. Tom was a character, a womanizer, an adventurer and everybody loved him. (Or hated him!) It was always expected that he and all but one of his five ex-wives and their children would come and sit together at all the family weddings and funerals. That is just who he was.

I sometimes wonder what people will remember about me. I hope it is the inscriptions in the books I helped edit. Those are some of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me and I am really proud of those.

The more the scarier

I am not a more the merrier type person. When I say I would like to do something with you that is exactly what I mean. You. Not you and your three best friends unless we are attending a class reunion.

If I say, "Oh, please don't bother." I mean it!

The last thing I want before doing something fun is to be kept waiting for late comers and the last thing I want at the end of a long trip, or day, is to come home to a house full of people that I will have to interact with, or possibly entertain.

People who need people seem to find joy in the chaos of interminable indecision. Factor in all the possibilities each extra person brings with them and by the time those decisions are finally made I want to throttle most of the people around me.

I can't tell you how many times I've been held hostage by some inconsiderate person who relies on the fact that others don't want to hurt her feelings, so they are willing to wait hours while this person satisfies all her personal urges. She sees herself as fun loving and free. I see her as annoying as hell.

The more the merrier is actually the more the scarier. The possibilities for misery are endless.

Self discrimination

It is interesting how I see myself.

My dad always said he saw my mother the way she looked in their wedding photo. I attributed that to being a man and being in love.

You would think that living with me day in and day out, I would be a lot more grounded in reality when it comes to knowing what I look like, but . . .

I have let some friends put enough peer pressure on me to try out things I wouldn't normally do on my own like painting my nails (which seems to have ruined them) and dying my hair. I have had no luck with finding a hair color I like and want to stick with, so I have been in transition for two years now.

I don't mind this latest transition, but I feel like Brienne of Tarth, the lady knight in Game of Thrones. It's a shame I don't look like her when she is not acting and is actually a high fashion model.

The truth is almost unbelievable. I still think of me as the dark brunette with long hair and a tall willowy frame. I haven't been that since before I turned thirty.

I am still tall. Maybe taller if the world is right, but my hair is short, blond at the moment and I am rotund. If I were a guy, I would be wearing three piece suits and smoking a cigar! I could see myself sitting around some old gentlemen's club discussing -- well all kinds of things, but not what I look like.

I hate that I care what I look like and truly I think if I were a man I could give myself permission to be exactly who I am now minus that one fact.

So why can't I do that as a nearly seventy year old woman.

In the good old summertime

During the last twenty years I have been traveling alone a great deal and it has given me the opportunity to watch many new people in far away and interesting places. Places right out of history and story books, television and all kinds of misconceptions. I don't believe you have the same experiences when you travel with someone. The security of being with someone you know allows you to be pretty insular. You never really have to get out of your own comfort zone if you don't want to.

For the past two weeks I have been in Alabama, home of the University of Alabama Football team, The Crimson Tide, where people routinely call Roll Tide to each other and hang university flags on their front porches. The accents are soft. Even the voices are soft, but the spirit is tough and the weather is brutal. Today I thought it was cool for a change, but it was still above 85.

This is a gated neighborhood. I can stand in the alley behind the garage and see a BMW, a Mercedes Benz, and a Porsche and the parks look like something right out of  The Twilight Zone. I expect to see bright uniformed bands materialize in the pavilion playing In The Good Old Summertime while ladies with parasols parade by two by two over the manicured grass and under bright blue skies with fluffy white clouds.

Instead I see people running. Running in racing shorts and tank tops. Running with big dogs racing along beside them. Running two by two and one by one up and down the streets of the otherwise empty looking neighborhood. At night I see golf carts overflowing like clown cars with ten year olds driving up and down the streets and today I saw a tiny little girl in a princess costume, complete with crown, driving a motorized convertible while her Daddy walked beside her. She smiled and waved very regally, melting my heart.

I join in with the mothers and babies, they with fancy strollers, me simply strolling and walk blocks through this heat shimmering perfection while carrying bags of dog poo. I understand having to pick it up. I'm not sure I understand why all the trash receptacles have signs saying, No Animal Feces.

Tomorrow I go home and I will miss my sweet four legged charge who understands, "just a minute, give me the ball, drop the ball, wait and come here." I will miss tucking her into bed every night after taking her to go potty and I will even miss checking on her water bowl twenty times a day because she drinks even more than I do.

Fairytales do come true

Like Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Hansel and Gretel, you appeared out of the blue in black and white. A tale too good to be true, but fascinating all the same.

A real disembodied voice speaking through the miracle of the Internet. A reflection of my most innermost thoughts that made me doubt your existence.

I was afraid to look into your eyes for fear of what I might see. Scorn? Sarcasm? Criticism?

Avoiding you while savoring your senses became the focal point of my life. Going round and round, wondering, imagining -- afraid.

Courage. Faith. Fear. Resignation. A wave of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother's wand and you appeared. A real life prince whose hug turned me from a frog into a princess.

For years we hung around the lily pond putting our best, most regal, feet forward. Fairyland at its best with lightning bugs and butterflies, sunshine, stories and Chucky E Cheese.

We stopped writing and began drawing from the world around us until we found ourselves far from the pond, wearing everyday faces and sharing both our dreams and woes.

Until we reached that final frontier where happily ever after comes with chores, floors and stores and being real is security.

Canterbury Tales vs Beowulf

I am always a very vivid dreamer.

Since I came to Alabama to watch Maddie my dreams have changed drastically. They are filled with people from my past and homes I never lived in. Most of the people are power figures in my life. People who held sway over what I did or did not do while I was with them, although none of them have been my husband.

In all of them there is a fantasy feeling where things are a little more dramatic and  fanciful than reality. My dog, Chauncey, a Shih-Tzu, showed up as a very rotund curly apricot poodle with long legs, running around in a giant hamster ball! I only recognized him by his toothy grin. My travels are mostly inside homes with doors that open into endless dark wooden stairways that take me to other buildings and even other states and towns -- like worm holes.

I am often trying to get ready for school or some big event and something or someone is holding me up so that I am afraid I will be late. But there is also a surfeit of wonderful and exciting clothing, knickknacks, nooks and crannies all around me.

These are frustrating dreams because there is always someone or something trying to keep me from doing what I need to do.

They are dangerous dreams where there is some unknown thing haunting or stalking me.

They are rich dreams where I am young and healthy and have everything I ever dreamed of and more.

I think of them as Beowulf dreams, epic, fast moving, exciting, and a bit grandiose.

One step behind

It was one of those days.

I woke up twenty minutes late. The dog was dancing on two legs by the front door and we were across the street in the grass before my feet even felt the first step.

I watered the patio, the front porch and the dining room floor. A few plants got lucky in the process.

I did one load of towels -- in three short re-starts because I kept finding more towels.

I took my blood sugar five times in a row and got five numbers almost a hundred points apart! I'm looking for a new meter.

I made it through the whole first walk this morning without seeing a single loose dog then when I went to throw away the bag of you know what, there was a ginormous dog as wide as a football linebacker walking down the alley.

Maddie kept putting her Chicken Little in my face during the Alabama Football game, so I took her out and threw the ball. Turns out she was actually hungry. I fed her at 6:10. That's ten minutes late.

Now it is time for our last walk and it is raining, but maybe that is a good thing the way things have been going today.

In the groove

I am halfway through babysitting Maddie and I am noticing several surprising things.

First of all, my body no longer feels like it was run over by a truck. I think I am adjusting to walking. According to my Fitbit I have walked 24 miles and some mornings I felt like I walked them all overnight. Not today. Today I woke up feeling good.

I no longer feel my heart pounding when I walk! Maybe because I am more comfortable with neighborhood dogs and maybe because I am in better shape.

I finally figured out how to safely throw the ball with Maddie. I don't know why it took me a whole week to think of the back yard. It just didn't look that big, but I actually have to use the ball thrower to get the ball from one end to the other. Of course now my pitching arm is feeling it, but I will get used to that too. (About the time I go home.)

And last but not least, now that I am in to my routines of when to put the trash and recycling out, when to turn the garage fan on and off, when to water the flowers and how much, when to feed Maddie and how to keep her water bowl full, when to get the mail, when to turn the thermostat up or down and the best times and ways to walk -- I'll be going home on Thursday!

I'm going to miss all this!

Close Encounters

I am afraid of dogs. No one who knows me doubts that, but if the idea that doing something you are afraid of means you are courageous -- then I am courageous!

I have had more encounters with these four legged critters in the past week than I have had all year. And that is not counting Maddie, who I am not afraid of.

I have been scared almost witless by two different growling, snarling, barking beasts in two different places on two different occasions. They were both in fenced in yards, but the fences were very short wrought iron ones that wouldn't even have kept me in had I wanted out. We still walk by those yards every single day. Cautiously. Very cautiously, but we do it and so far have been fortunate enough to miss any repeat performances by these Brutus beasts.

I  had a woman with a small schnauzer type dog lay in wait for me at the park. No matter how much time I gave her, nor how much of a detour I made, she managed to snag me. We talked for quite a while. I know all about her family, the ages of her parents and the upcoming trip to Italy. Her dog frolicked around Maddie the whole time we talked.

There is a lovely white fluffy dog whose owner is very solicitous. I don't mind her but she is the only one who seems to be aware that we are trying to just do our thing and walk without any big to-dos

There was one little boy who had his dog on one of those retractable leashes that he couldn't seem to hold on to. The thing got away five or six times, finally wrapping it's long line around and around my feet. His mother stood back by the pavilion smiling sweetly and offering us no help at all. I didn't topple over and Maddie was a doll.

Then there is the corgi mix who sounds horrific, but who, the lady, with the fluffy dog, assures me is fine. I'd rather not test that out if I don't have to.

One dark night a collie dog ran at us. Coming out of nowhere he was following a boy on a bicycle. That dog really scared me, but he had almost no interest in us at all. He just gave Maddie a sniff and breezed on by.

And last, but not least we had an encounter with two hummingbirds that flew right over our heads at the park today! 

This afternoon we avoided all of them by playing chase the ball in the backyard. I think we'll do more of that.

Fascinating

I love going into people's homes. Especially homes that are not professionally decorated. Those are interesting, but not fascinating. I want to see who you are, not what your wallet can pay for.

Fascinating is seeing what is important enough to folks that they want to paint their walls with it, hang it from the ceiling, drape it over their beds.

Fascinating is looking at the art they choose: its colors and style, the way it is framed, or not, what it depicts, if all the art in the home is themed.

Fascinating is finding out what is more important. Style or comfort? Maybe both?

Are they practical people who only put what they need in their house, or are they collectors? Like art collectors, junk collectors, little blue turtle collectors?

Are they against the wall people or free flowing Feng Shui type people?

Are their plants real contributing members of the household, or some sort of silk zombies?

Do their pets sit on their furniture, sleep on their bed, or peer in through the windows with begging bowls.

Fascinating is why they choose people like me as friends!

Enough

I think I am happier right now than I have ever been.

It's not that I haven't been happy in the past. There were moments with my children, many of them in fact, where I was so happy I thought I'd burst with joy, but in between there was always that nagging feeling of not being enough.

I was not thin enough. That could be the theme song of my life. Twiggy set the standards for my generation, but somehow I didn't get the message that she only set the standards for how she looked and looking is much different than feeling. In my younger years that was okay. I could maintain that anorexic 102 pounds on my tall frame and feel happy. For a while I was enough, but for the rest of my life I put off so many things because I thought I was too fat to be seen doing them.

My hair was not long enough, or straight enough. That too was okay in the brief heyday of my twenties. It was never really straight no matter how much I ironed it, but it was long. Then in 2008 I cut it very short. My new role model was Judi Dench. I have not regretted that.

I was not educated enough. I always felt like I was fooling the world by pretending to be smart, but since I've met Bestest that has ebbed. He makes me feel like I am perfect just the way I am.

And maybe that is why I have been so happy the last ten years. I stopped drawing pictures of me on paper that were frizzy haired chubby wanna-bees and began drawing them in my head where I really live.

I live in a pretty awesome world where a woman like me can find her name in books that a distinguished English professor writes. He writes lovely things about me that I have a hard time owning, but that fill me with joy. I have been able to jump in my car and drive all over the United States. I have friends to do exciting things with and friends just to sit with. I can pay my bills. I am relatively healthy for a woman my age.

Life for me is now more than enough.

Goldilocks syndrome

I sleep in the dark like any normal adult and yet it seems that it can be too dark!

I have a choice of three bedrooms in this house.

If I sleep in the dollhouse bedroom with its Victorian furniture and grandmother clock, a little light seeps in from the street and I can see to get to the bathroom without any night light at all. I dream happy dreams all night long, which is much better than home.

If I sleep in the back bedroom where there is a desk I like to sit at to write or draw, it is full of cheerful pictures and stuffies, but darker than a black hole in the middle of the universe when I turn out the lights. There is a lovely little Spider man nightlight I discovered in the bathroom, but it still leaves the bedroom perilously dark. In spite of the fact that my eyes are closed, I have bad dreams just like home.

If I sleep in the big master bedroom I have to share with a very large snoring dog.

I thought I had three choices, but it turns out I do not.

The house has decided that I will sleep in the dollhouse bedroom it prepared for me. The other bedrooms are too dark, or too crowded.

This one is just right!

Deep

The deep south is a strange and beautiful place.

At first I was wondering if I was in the deep south. I was near Tupelo, Mississippi at the time, headed toward Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Then I realized Alabama ends in the Gulf of Mexico, so if this isn't the deep south, nowhere is!

People here have gorgeous lawns and magnificent porches. There is an old world elegance to many of the neighborhoods, but there is also a wariness I am not used to. People don't seem to sit on these porches or lawns and they seldom smile and wave like they are genuinely happy to see each other. Maybe that is because I am a stranger, but I'm not totally convinced.

I suppose the heat makes a difference. Going outside feels almost dangerous in the afternoon. I feel like I am up in Grandma's attic trying on old wool coats, or maybe like a panini right after the iron drops and it knows there is no escape. Any moisture left in my body quickly tries to escape out my head and is wicked down onto my face.  By the time we go back into the house I look more like I've been swimming than taking a walk.

The house I am staying in is deep too. It runs under a long wide porch into an entry hall flanked on one side by a bright sunny dining room and on the other by a dark rich Victorian bedroom. The hallway pulls me down into the gullet where a gourmet kitchen and large cozy living room are lit by shaded windows high up in the wall. And if I keep going there is a master bedroom and ensuite dressing room-bathroom almost hidden off to the right. Or another hallway that wraps around a screened in porch as it slides by a laundry room and into a large dark bedroom at the end of the hall. It's a half a block of house cooled by ten foot ceilings boasting big fans in nearly every room. Big enough that each of the three bedrooms with their baths feel almost like separate apartments.

The house is lovely, dark, and cool in sharp contrast to the vivid Tiki themed screened in porch, or the deep comfy patio set and swing on the covered front porch.

Deep is the best word for this area. Deep shadows, deep rich sunlight, deep dark cool houses. Perhaps even some deep dark secrets and mysteries hiding in those shadows and overgrown woods nearby.

Loneliness

We live in such a wonderful world today.

A few days ago I was 668 miles north of here in Illinois. Now I'm in sweet home Alabama where the air is hotter than a frying pan! But the house is cool.

Cool in so many ways! First of all I spent three and a half days with great friends eating wonderful food, drinking exotic drinks and devouring magnificent desserts.  I received my copy of a book I helped with and the inscription was worthy of framing. And the room I am staying in looks like something right out of my dollhouse with a four poster Victorian bed, grandmother clock and even a rose in a crystal vase.

Every room has a television that is voice activated. The doorbell takes a video of whoever comes to the door and rings the bell. I have an app on my phone that makes it possible for me to keep in touch with my friends 24/7, including on a plane in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

I use apps that showed me the way down here from Illinois, show me how many steps a day I take walking Maddie the Labrador, and allow me to talk to my son in North Carolina as he drives to a play in Asheville and I am texting my friend out over the ocean.

My computer lets me see pictures friends, all over the United States, post minutes afterwards and comment on them.

Loneliness does not have to exist anymore just because you live far apart. If you have friends you can keep in touch. It's not the same kind of relationship, but it definitely can be a close one.

Only in America

Only in America are we guaranteed to protect our freedoms to the death.

You do not have to vaccinate your child and he is allowed to spread his unvaccinated disease ridden gift to all the babies not old enough to be vaccinated. Some of them will die. Some of them will go blind, all of them will suffer because of your choice. And, occasionally, in some horrible bit of divine justice, so will your child.

You have the right to all the guns you want.  You can sleep with them next to your bed and shoot your kid when he sneaks in late at night. You can carry them in your car and shoot people out the window should the spirit move you. You can carry them into churches and stores and schools and murder mass numbers of children and good people and you will only suffer after the fact.

After the fact everyone will send good wishes and prayers to everyone else. Soon Hallmark may develop a line of cards, Sending you good wishes and prayers on the death of your mass murdered (child, husband, mother, teacher, pastor.)

But no one, in any way, will lose the freedom to keep their treasured firearm. The holy grail of American manhood is safe forever more. Amen.

Only in America are we prouder than we are smart. If we don't believe in it, it doesn't happen that way. This is the country of wishful thinking. Religion for the politically needy. Taxes on the terminally poor. Health care for those who can afford it.

And we don't let immigrants take any of our hard won stuff. Instead we take their children if they come here. We let them work for less than minimum wage at jobs we don't want  and then we take their critically ill children off of life support and send them home to die.

If we have anything to say about it the earth will be forced to go through another mass extinction to get our poisons out of it's lungs. Otherwise we will just go right on polluting and burning and raping -- because we can.

Yep, only in American do our freedoms surpass our common sense.