Intervals

Every day's a new day.

Except for this one.

Today was just an interval in my life where I finally found and used the post office they moved, bought almost out of date pumpkin pie at the grocery store, and slept through Myth and Monsters on Netflix.

I thought about mopping, and writing Christmas cards, and vacuuming, but instead I ate pumpkin pie with leftover whipped cream from Thanksgiving and played Words with Friends.

I talked to two people on the phone and one person texted me that they gave my Christmas tree away.

To a good cause.

Now I'm drinking Diet Coke and watching an Indian musical on Buddha in Hindi.

I don't speak Hindi.

A rare day

I almost did not go to the zoo today. I've been a lot lately and it was cold, but something just drew me in in spite of all that. I didn't take my camera, because I thought there wouldn't be anything new to take pictures of and people on Facebook were probably getting tired of my animal photos.

What a mistake!

I realized it right away when I was looking at the eagles as the keeper came to feed them. I have a video of them making all kinds of racket once before, but today they really put on a show. Hopping down off of their respective tree branches and loping down the slope of their enclosure where they squawked and jumped around until she threw each of them a rat. One eagle garnered both rats, so the keeper threw another one. Both eagles grabbed a rat in one foot and hopped to separate places. This went on for some time before one disappeared from view behind some branches and the other tore into his dinner. These are huge birds who can no longer fly, but they are something to behold.

Many of the animals still on display are much more active in the winter. I noticed they had Pallas cats both in their regular enclosure and in one almost hidden behind the reptile house. The zookeeper said they have now separated the boys and the girls because they are old enough to breed, but soon the kittens will go to other zoos and the two adults will be back together.

Both the otters and the guanacos came running when I approached their pens. Maybe they like to watch us as much as I enjoy watching them?

I went into the Rainforest exhibit reluctantly. It is always hot and most of the animals in there don't really attract me that much, especially since they removed the Macaw. I don't know where he went. The man removing his cage was deaf and couldn't hear me when I asked and the woman in the gift shop said, "He's gone to a better place. I'm not sure where, but I know it's better." When I asked if it was here she said yes, so I am supposing he didn't die, but I can't find him. I am reasonably sure he isn't dead, but her answer was strange for an adult woman.

Today there were new bright yellow birds running around in there and a new duck that attacked my ankles. I looked to see if maybe she had a nest, but I didn't see one. Evidently she is just a mean little duck.

When I got to the reticulated python I was transfixed. I don't know how long he is, but he is huge. I would guess maybe twenty feet long and today he crawled down into his water pond, his long muscles twitching and quivering as sections of him began to move. I think he was hungry and looking for food because he kept smelling around the back door and the door between his enclosure and the birds next door, but it was impressive to watch him moving around, his huge head and body reaching up, climbing over, poking into things.

The snow leopards were separated again. This time both of them on opposite sides of the door meowing and crying for the other. I wonder if they are getting ready to separate them and trying to get them used to the idea. That is a sad thought, because they are usually all cuddled up together in a corner somewhere.

And the tiger! I wondered if he ever played, if that bowling ball in there with what looks like tooth marks in it was ever really used? There is also a big plastic oil barrel hanging from a heavy chain in his cage and today he played with it while I watched in amazement. Banging into it with his head like a sledgehammer, the sound reverberating off the walls, then leaping up and grabbing around it with his big front legs and sharp claws. Tigers at play are fearsome looking creatures.

Today would have been the day to take videos, but with no camera I just had to be present and stand in awe of all the things I saw them doing.

Sense

Seldom have I felt as content with my life as I do now.

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I think it is because I am starting to feel more comfortable just being me.

Being me is scary, because I know my size, sense of humor, sense of what is entertaining and sense of comfort are not particularly mainstream and there is nothing harder than opening yourself up to criticism, or, even worse, ridicule, for something you choose to be or do.

I love my apartment and I love the way it is furnished, not a consciously chosen style, just a conglomeration of things I love. It continuously surprises me when I look around and see who I am, but I like it.

I love the geographical place that I live and I know this because I have lived here since 1971 except for a brief moment in time when I tried other places before coming back.

I love my friends and family of the heart who surround me.

Persistence evidently pays off in the long run.  Continuously opting to not do things I don't love and continuously surrounding myself with people and things I do love has brought me into this sweet spot at just the right time in my life.

70 years ago today

I had breakfast with my daughter this morning
Bagels and coffee
Then I dropped her off home and went to the zoo
I like to talk to the animals
But today the eagles talked to me
Or, one of them did. I stepped out the door
Into his sight
And he let out a raucous series of chirps.
It had to be me he called.
It wasn't feeding time and no one else
Was anywhere near.
I took my picture with him
Only he didn't show up in it
It was just me, but the time
Showed on my phone and
It was the exact minute
I was born
Seventy years ago today!
I wanted to talk to the animals
They talked to me.

Talk to the animals

I put on my winter hat, the one I knitted with cable stitches and ribs.
It's very warm.
And I pulled on my wooly black gloves with the leather palms so I can drive.
Then I went to the zoo.

The lady in the admissions booth didn't even open the window.
She just waved me through.
And I thought, hmmmm, does she recognize me?
Or is she just too cold to bother?

The red panda was out with all her babies.
Eating bamboo and whatever they found
While crawling up the fence and onto the top of their house.
All three babies eating. Mama watching.

The eagles watched me with curious eyes and I wondered.
If my brother was in there someplace
Watching me through eagle eyes
From the great beyond where he has gone.

The goofy guanacos were cavorting
Kicking up their heels
Examining me watching them
Coming close for a nose pat.

I sat for a while listening to the tiger roar.
His striped patterns pacing
Back and forth, impatient, enclosed
Wishing he were outside in the cold.

But the snow leopards were outside
Cuddled up, asleep,
Looking for all the world
Like they'd rather be in.

I paused here and there
A lonely human communing
With those less fortunate than I
And I think the animals understood.

Behind the mask

Everyone should know true love at some point in their lives.

The earlier the better, because it can be the catalyst for so much more.

But any kind of real love is a miracle on its own.

Whether that love is for you or from you, for a person, or a thing, or any combination thereof, it is always a good thing.

Love is one of those things that only creates good. If it doesn't, it was never love in the first place.

Cause lots of things can masquerade as love.

Love

Love is probably the biggest word in the English language. I have never looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, or even Webster's, but I can only imagine that it would take volumes to talk about all the sorts of love there are.

Love is so liquid it leaks out into everything else. Into grief and joy, pity and pain.

I see it in the bare bones of a sculpture I bought. Pure, unadulterated love. No trappings necessary. No heart, real or crayoned in. Nothing but adoration pouring from one human being to another.

Love like that can't be bought. It can't be dressed up, or down. It can't even be vocalized.

Few things are that pure, that perfect that nothing could improve it.

No more

It was one of those gray wet days where the rain did not so much fall from the sky as seep out of the fog and into your pores. Everything was damp and soggy when I began my daily walk around the square of park allotted to me.

I pulled up my hood and it blocked my view like blinders on a horse. I could look straight ahead, but not much more and that is probably why my hearing was so vigilant. They say when one sense is inhibited the others fill in. I could hear footsteps behind me. Someone running in rubber soled shoes at a constant pace and I moved to my right to allow them to pass.

No one materialized. Finally, I sort of swung my whole body a quarter round to the left to see what was going on, but no one was there. I had heard someone. I knew that, but obviously they were no longer behind me. I just kept walking, really not giving it too much more thought.

Then, three quarters of the way around the block I saw someone across the street. She, or maybe he, I couldn't tell because of a hood around the thin, African American face, saw me and ducked behind a tree. I couldn't see her anymore, but I had seen she was wearing a yellow and orange dress.  Cheap looking cotton, like a house dress from the past, it came down below her knees, covering long khaki colored slacks. The slacks were slim cut and ended at her ankles like two tan pipes. It was all covered by a three quarter black wool coat that hung from her shoulders as though from bare bones.

She peeked out at me, saw I was looking and ducked back behind the tree. I looked up and down the street. A red pick up truck drove by, but no one else appeared to be near. Not wanting to upset her I turned and kept on walking.

That was when I heard the footsteps again, running, and glanced back to see her dart across the street towards the park . Not wanting to be obvious, I didn't look around for a few more moments.

The running stopped and I searched the park with eyes looking for any movement, anyone peeking out from behind a tree, but there was nothing.

I finished walking around the block.

No more sounds. No more glimpses of that strange figure. No more indication that anyone was around except me.

Now and then

She's squeaky clean by the world's standards, but who is really that blank?

It takes a lot of feelings to live decades of life, to raise a family, to weather a divorce, to be a whole human being.

And human beings reach breaking points sometimes.

Points where things got too hard and they opted for un-optible solutions that were life altering.

How much of this is pertinent to now?

It's not shame, or legal reasons that keep her from unearthing this part of her own archeology.

It is simply that they have been put to rest in a deep dark tomb and covered over with monuments that do not want to be moved.

Gotta get there

I am often befuddled by the differences I do not see when women go to $200 stylists and others who go to $30 stylists.

No woman in her right mind would ever say that to her friends who routinely spend so much money on their hair. I, partly because I need to go more often than they do with my short hair and partly because I always wonder if there is something I should be seeing that I don't.

When I took oil painting classes my teacher taught my eyes to discern very small differences in hues, so I know it is possible to learn something you never even knew existed before.

I can see the difference between a good cut and a not good one on me, but that can come from a Walmart hair stylist who is just good at her job. If I find a person who works for me I stick with her.

Still, it sends shivers down my back when the ladies begin talking about their hair. I don't know which of us is better at finding the right place, but I think it probably really depends on who has the most self confidence.

Most seventy year old women that I know are: drumroll -- VERY CONFIDENT.

A sense a huma

I think I have arrived.

Where once I got ads on Facebook about washing machines and Boho clothing now I get them for cognac and Porsches.

One of my friends flies off to her daughter's private island soon and others have recently purchased BMW's and other upscale automobiles.

My status by association has risen.

I am brushing shoulders with the up and coming.

Kind of like being a valet . . . except I don't get paid.

It's okay

It's okay to identify a problem and give it a name. If that helps you find a cure, or way to deal with it, I am all for it.

Just don't become the problem.

Don't identify yourself as one of them.

You are more than one set of setbacks.

Even if it is huge. Even if it is life threatening, or life destroying, don't allow one thing to define your whole life unless that one thing makes you feel good.

Find the things, or maybe even one thing, that does make your life better, that makes your life worth living and become that. Sometimes distraction is the only way.

It's okay to be honest and out spoken and vocal in every respect, but there is another big chunk of life out there beyond that.

Don't miss it.

What you do

Loving what I do has been a theme throughout my life. Perhaps because I am a little self-centered, or lazy, or stubborn, I have never been able to sustain doing things I don't care about.

It has served me well in the long run.

I love learning new things and I love music, so musical instruments figured heavily into most of my life. I took lessons on piano, saxophone, violin, oboe and flute. I also dabbled in the dulcimer. I am not a master on any of these instruments but the piano has been one of  my major turn-tos for survival. When I am sad, bored, depressed, or so joyful I need to express myself, I play the piano, or keyboard. But . . . teaching, or playing as part of a group like an orchestra, or band does not really grab me.

I did love teaching three year old preschoolers though! It was an occupation I stumbled into through a close friend and not once, in all the years I did it, did I not love what I did. And I did love being a most-of-the-time at home mom for my three children, so I can say with great experience:

Do what you love.

When you pick your life's work, pick something you are passionate about, something you truly care about. Something you would do if you didn't even get paid. It will make your life immensely better.

Some people pick a job because it is the best paying one they can get and I say great as long as money is the thing you love the most. If you are like the king in his counting house counting out the money and that satisfies something in you -- you are in the right place.

I know we need to make ends meet, but in the long run I have to love those ends an awful lot to be miserable doing it. I also know not everyone gets to have the choices I have had, but don't give up trying.

There is time and a place for nearly everything. Even quitting. I have quit several good paying jobs like working for a major company to move to places like a small flower shop where the personal benefits far outweighed the cut I took in salary. I also recently quit volunteering in a school library after doing so in one form or another for nearly forty years, but the joy and satisfaction I got from that stopped.

Only you know what adds quality to your life. Allow yourself the imagination, time and willingness, to find it.

Waking up

I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was jump out of bed and begin rearranging my apartment. I did not go to the bathroom. I did not make coffee. I did not take my morning medicine.

I moved two chairs out of my second room and one table into it. Then I went to the bathroom and made coffee and pondered my next move.

Six hours later I am still moving things and pondering.

It is a process born out of too little control in my life for most of my life. When I cannot do other things, I can always rearrange my living space.

Yesterday I redid what had been my living room/bedroom. Moving furniture and plants around and then going to sleep only to dream I was living in our old family nursing home. Everyone was there. My grandmother, my mother, my aunts and even some of the women who used to work there. The only difference was that in this dream there was an old man in a bed in the library. He was hooked up to IVs and his bed, as only dreams can make it, was also an old beat up pick up truck. Everything was lit by that dingy yellow light incandescent bulbs give off. It was uncomfortable and I felt both defensive and awkwardly incompetent.

Waking up was slow and awful. I wanted to put as much space as possible between me and these feelings. I felt dirtied somehow and not the kind of dirty you can wash off in a shower. I think this was the first time I woke up and began moving things around before I did anything else. The only thing I paused for was to tie my shoes tighter to support my feet during the move.

Now I have completely flipped the rooms. I will sleep in what is supposed to be the bedroom according to normal standards and watch television in the front room. It has been a long process and I am still not finished rearranging the bedroom, but I am finally feeling better.

Maybe now I can break my fast and figure out the rest.

The gene pool

I come from a large extended family and one of the things I learned early on was that everyone had something to teach me.

My mother taught me to empathize with very young children and that girls are disposable after maturity. My father taught me to indulge my curiosity and continue to love learning for the sake of learning.

My grandmother showed me that working can be martyrdom at its best. You can escape anything and sound like a saint as long as you say, I have to work.

My brothers showed me the beauty of nature in different ways. One by striving to perfect it and the other by celebrating its wildness. They also taught me that when other people go fishing, I should read a book.

My sister taught me not to be passive aggressive and her daughter taught me that a life really can be centered around trying to scam the world.

My godmother told me to always keep a nightie under my pillow in case of fire.

We all have our own ways and means and some of them are meaner than others, but the trick seems to be to skim the top off of each one and keep on swimming.

One point in time

I never pass a park ranger's cabin without thinking of my brother, Tom. As a child he would walk right up to birds and other small animals and pick them up. Had I known about St. Francis of Assis, I might have wondered who this brother was, but we just knew him as a boy who always walked to the beat of a drum no one but he could ever hear.

His eyes were not good. He could not see six feet in front of him without thick glasses, but no one knew that until he started turning somersaults in first grade and the teacher thought he was "retarded." Several visits to a child psychologist later it turned out he was actually very gifted. He could already read, play chess and do most things -- if the spirit moved him.

But it took spirit to move him. Nothing else mattered enough to him. He couldn't play baseball like the other boys because he saw no point in running around hitting balls with a stick  and when he was standing in the field he was more likely to be watching that beetle carrying something through the grass than the ball flying towards him.

He wanted to be a Park Ranger when he grew up. He liked the idea of working out in the woods with animals, so in high school he got his first jobs mowing grass for a state park. It was a dangerous job working on steep slopes, but they just tied a rope to his waist and he was content.

After graduation he began taking the first steps towards this career. Unfortunately he also began dating a sixteen year old girl who wanted to get married. I think they imagined themselves living in that little house in the big woods together, but both parents were against it. So, being young and impetuous, they got pregnant! Solved their problems. They thought. In those days if you were pregnant you were married. And they were.

Now the boy who loved nature discovered you cannot pay rent and take care of a family mowing grass so he went to work in a factory. The money was good. He worked the night shift and sometimes in the daylight he could still walk in the woods. Sometimes.

That marriage didn't last five years and neither did the rest of them. He continued on working in factories and doing maintenance work to pay child support for his various children for the next forty years. Then he injured his back moving a five hundred pound stove and slowly succumbed to alcoholism, heart problems, and diabetes.

For a while he walked in the woods, but then he had to settle for watching nature programs on television. Smoking cigarettes' and watching Captain Kangaroo . . . don't tell me, I've nothing to do.

He finally died, a hard drinking, smoking man who quit both too late, missing two toes to diabetes with a bad heart and breathing problems. He was loved and missed by many people, but he was still  dead.

I think he would tell you he did it his way, a free man who walked to the beat of a different drummer, but I believe he took the wrong fork in the path when it really mattered.

Well loved

I remember moving into a new house right after my fifth birthday. My parents made that move because they wanted me to have the advantage of kindergarten, something that was not prevalent everywhere at that time.

The day we moved in I saw this man trimming the hedge between his house and ours. I was surprised, because I had been living in my grandmother's huge old Victorian house firmly planted on a corner where no one else ever encroached on my world. And being the kind of person I am, I immediately challenged this stranger. "Why are you cutting our bushes?"

Instead of being offended by an impertinent child he kindly explained that it was both of our bushes and he was just evening off the top. His name was Ralph Brown, soon to be known as Uncle Ralph.

Uncle Ralph and his wife, Aunt Jo, were interesting people. Unable to have children of their own they became surrogate aunts and uncles to many children through the years, but none turned out to be closer than my baby brother who was born the following spring.

Over the course of time they became a second home to him. All the rest of us were well loved and spent a lot of time with them too, playing on their back patio, watching our favorite television program in their air conditioned house, eating dinner at their kitchen bar, or even going to visit the farm. Sometimes, Uncle Ralph, who was the custodian for the local armory, took us to see important people like Gene Autry, or the Governor when they came there. We never missed a Ringling Brothers Circus, or any other wondrous event because our Uncle Ralph was the custodian.  In our eyes he was a very important man. But it was Henry who became the son they'd never had.

Uncle Ralph gave Henry all the wisdom and skills a boy usually gets from his father. Our father was working night and day just to try and keep our heads above water, but we didn't know that. In the end, many years down the road Henry took care of Uncle Ralph and Aunt Jo too, bringing them into his home and making sure they had whatever they needed until they died. He loved them and they loved him too.

That kind of bond seems pretty rare in this world, but no one can have too many people who love them so if you have the chance to become a surrogate parent, or are lucky enough to have surrogate aunts and uncles who love you enough to treat you like their own, consider yourself well loved.

Knitting

We are on the cusp of winter here in the Heartland. There is already several inches of snow on the ground and it is only the first of November. Of course that kind of cold will ebb and flow for a while. There will be days so warm it will feel like spring, but the trend will relentlessly move towards colder and colder.

Today when I put on my coat I looked for a scarf only to realize I must have given them all away in the great purge a few weeks ago. Necessity is often what tweaks my interest in renewing old skills, so I checked out my knitting bag. Sure enough there was a nearly finished short scarf in there.

Not the color I wanted and not quite the length I wanted, it sent my imagination soaring. I imagined all sorts of wonderful confections from fuzzy chenille to practical stockinette wool and after walking at the zoo this morning I stopped by to look at yarn.

The yarn I picked out was neither fluffy, nor any shade of coppery pink that I had imagined. Instead it is one of my old favorites of dark forest green and burgundy, but I love it and loving it is one of the determining factors for me knitting anything and finishing it.

I learned to knit from my next door neighbor, Aunt Jo. In theory because my mother was a lefty and didn't feel she could teach me properly. In truth, I never saw my mother pick up a knitting needle. Aunt Jo knit all the time. She made fine cashmere suits and soft beautiful shawls. And even more important she was very patient.

She stuck with me until my fingers learned the stitches. My eyes didn't see the difference between knit and purl for many years and I'm still not sure I could teach anyone else how to cast on, but my fingers know it and they remember it. It is the same way I played piano. My fingers seem to have a mind of their own and it isn't always attached to the mind in my head.

The last ten years have been a boon. You tube is always there with someone who can show me whatever I have forgotten. How to cast off, how to make a particular pattern, what ever I need and it will play it, replay it and replay it as many times as I need it. With this kind of help I have made a few pretty involved things.

But mostly I just like the feel of plastic knitting needles clicking in my hands and the sight of some beautiful yarn growing into a pattern that gets longer and longer.