Cover girl

Everyone does something they are proud of once in a while, but mostly no one else pays much attention to it.

Things just go along in an every day way. Nothing unusual, or spectacular happens.

Until one day a friend texts you, "I saw your picture, congratulations!"

You look all over the Internet trying to figure out what she is talking about and finally have to text back, "Um, I really have no idea what you are talking about. Where did you see my picture?"

It turns out that after years volunteering at jobs you deem important enough to keep on doing, you spend a few hours doing something else and someone takes your picture.

At some point someone asks if it was okay to use your picture. It is a general question and you have no problem with it, so you say yes.

And there you are. No makeup, hair slicked over to the side, wearing an old Henley shirt. A face almost bigger than life on the cover of a magazine! To be fair it does not say who you are and it is for a good cause, but you don't even recognize yourself until someone else points the way.

Strange how things happen.

Intensity

I used to fall in love with a song and record it over and over on a tape, so I could just listen to it and nothing else. I don't generally like to reread books, or watch movies more than once, but there is one movie I have watched many times over the years.

In the same vein I have a few pieces of art that I never get tired of looking at. They have meaning for me that involves nothing more than I coveted them from the moment I saw them and saved until I could buy them.

I love looking at architecture and especially houses that are unique. Once upon a time I dreamed of my own lovely mansion, designed and decorated exclusively by and for me. That never happened and that is fine now.

Now I am more into minimalism than mansions, whether by actual belief systems or simple realism, I don't know, but I'm there. I don't want too much clutter around me and the things that are around me are in a specific order that pleases my eye.

My living room seems to have reached critical perfection in my eyes. It has small concentrated areas of things that are intensely lovely or satisfying for me to look at, surrounded by open space that allows them to stand out.

The bedroom still needs lots of work, but that is fun too.

It's mine!

Queen of the castle. Lordess of the manor.

Nope, not Lady. I want it all.

After a childhood of being the obedient daughter and a life of being "just the wife," or girl friend, I want it all!

My home.

My problems.

My choices.

My joy.

My life.

Otherwise I feel like glorified chattel to someone else's whims.

Endowments

Life is created from certain patterns. DNA, crystal formations, molecular chains, somehow it all connects in reasonable and recognizable patterns.

The trick is finding the symbiotic relationships that are the most gratifying,

I have no idea how science does this, but I think people are endowed with a sense of it that creates a feeling of intense satisfaction when it is discovered. No matter how that may come about.

I have a sort of modern inglenook in my home. It is a logical place for a television because there is no glare there, so I have my TV there over a small (fake) woodstove, surrounded by books. Scattered among the books are articles that I find especially appealing, a tiny cairn, a canvas print in colors I love, a couple of amethyst geodes.

Pulling my big recliner right up to this creates an unusually comfortable, soul satisfying place to relax. It is not a layout that seemed natural, but the end result is certainly right for me.

This is the perfect example of something that feels as if it were meant to be, a place that I've known since before I was born.

Such things are harder when more than one person inhabits a space, but I think they are an important contribution to living a rich and satisfyingly comfortable life.

Dream a little dream for me

I can never outrun myself.

No matter what I am doing, or thinking, or not thinking, there is a part of me that knows the rest of the story.

I can fool you, or my sister. I might even be able to fool Bestest, but I can't fool me.

My mind knows what I am afraid of and what I really love.

Unfortunately I think my mind is a bit sadistic. It prefers to dwell on the phobias rather than the ecstasies.

It also likes to dangle things just out of reach. I will dream of something I desire with all my heart and then wake up just before I get it in a dream, or lose it if I don't wake up.

Both the joy and the curse of my vivid dreaming is that I remember them as experiences rather than piecemeal dreams. In essence I have two lives. The conscious one where it is up to me to make things happen and the unconscious one where things happen I only dream of.

Anatomy of a dream

As an avid dreamer I remember my dreams more often than most people, but that does not mean they are any more prescient, or meaningful than others.

Yesterday I read about iguanas falling out of trees in Florida and my dream carefully changed iguanas, which we don't have and which do not live in snowy parts of the country to bullfrogs. (Which normally do not cavort in the snow either, but do live in this area.)

There was also an elephant in the room, in my dream an actual elephant and since Bestest had mentioned I belonged in his current class on horror my mind carefully picked a basement lab from the last horror movie I saw and voila!

I was attending an English class with an avantgarde professor in a basement lab where we were required to climb onto the back of an elephant after our discussion. The elephant, who was not happy began chasing us (like the bull I saw chasing two women on Facebook yesterday. Evidently an elephant in the room is more likely than a bull in the street for my mind.) Running for the steps we had to dodge two bloated bullfrogs bouncing down the steps towards us.

My sister and I ended up outside, away from the bullfrogs, the angry elephant, and now my mind, unwilling not to spice it up a bit, has added two large German Shepard dogs, It was a snowy day, not the Ezra Keats sort, but more like Dr. Zhivago sort. We decided to walk home rather than go back into all of that.

Half a block away the houses changed from twentieth century bungalows to nineteenth century palatial Russian mansions. About that time we realized we were a very long way from home and wondered why we were walking. Then my dad showed up, a very handsome combination of himself and Omar Sharif in a long wool coat.

We went back to the house with the avantgarde professor and tried to get a ride home, but it still had the bloated bullfrogs and elephant and barking dogs, as well as an old horse now. Evidently even with Dad there some things were not worth dealing with, so we returned to walking.

For a while we frolicked in the snow like children. Sliding down little hillocks and playing, but then decided to go inside one of the fancy homes. My father assumed it was the friend's home we had been visiting, so we were all wandering around looking at things when two very proper, very wealthy, elderly women confronted us, asking why we were in their home.

Had they been less proper I think they might have called the police, but the last thing they wanted was to create a scene, so they were trying to arrange a ride home for us when my phone rang, waking me up.

I leaped up and banged my head on the wall because I forgot I'd moved my bed into the corner of the room and with my eyes closed had no idea how to get out of that bed. Thus ending one of the more bizarre dreams I've had in sometime.

It still involved the long walk home with lots of obstacles, but this time those obstacles were much more lively. And it was in broad daylight.

Slots

We have developed a sort of shorthand for describing ourselves.

If we were things it would be easy to say, I'm a teapot, a stamp, a linen napkin, or even a vase.

Since we are people we say what we do, I'm a teacher, a salesman, a nurse, doctor, psychiatrist volunteer.

Locking ourselves into tiny cubicles of voluntary restrictions that encompass whatever our "thing" is, suffocates me. Would it be so bad to just go through life doing good things for yourself and other people?

Yes it would. We have a name for those people. Do-gooders. It is derogatory and actually only encompasses a small fraction of people who misuse the idea, but it is there.

We do not trust, or perhaps just don't understand, people who cannot define themselves in some concrete way that appeals to our societies sense of rightness. Without that we are not easily slipped into the appropriate slot that defines where we belong in others worlds.

We even have a term for people who no longer need to do those things that pay. We call them retired as if that defines exactly who they are now. Of course it is no more definitive than saying they are fish, or dogs, but it is easy.

Right now I am experimenting with having no obligations other than social ones that I choose on a piecemeal basis and I am starting to love it. I don't get up thinking that today I have to be somewhere to volunteer, or that tomorrow I volunteer, both meaning I need to get as much of the rest of my life as I can in order right now. A few hours of compulsory commitments affects many hours that could have been free.

For me this really works. I am totally capable of entertaining myself on many levels and it enriches my life immensely.

No wallpaper

Looking up from my bed I see a shadow looming.

It rises through the door sucking in the light.

Then it blossoms over the window like a gift from the void.

I blink my eyes.

Look away.

And still see its ghastly presence creeping into my bedroom.

Moving my bed into the corner of the room makes it disappear,

Is it better to know where it is?

What follows retirement

A little bit of this. A little bit of that.

The computer.

The food.

The rearranging of the apartment.

So, what's retirement? People who are here are afraid to tell the truth.

Some rest. Some play.

What did we leave? Nothing much.

Misunderstood, overworked, just retirement

Where else could a day be so sweet?

Retirement. Retirement.

Full of fun, free to be

Me in retirement.

Maybe I won't worry about the wrinkles on my face.

Of if  I'm first or last in the old rat race.

My blood sugar will blend in with the sweetness there

Pounds will not matter and neither will my hair.

Cause everyone will wonder if I'm quite all there.

All my outings will take me to a zoo of sorts

Where knobby kneed old people are all wearing shorts.

And money flows like taffy in a frigid resort.

And I am free to say whatever I retort.

Soon I'll be a stranger in a strange new place.

Retirement. Retirement.

Comfort zones

Is life paying you back with a lousy job, a miserable spouse, no social life?

No matter how much you put into the wrong job or the wrong people you will not feel better by taking a pill to improve it.

You do not need to change your prescription. You need to change your life.

Prescriptions are for chemical imbalances.

They might dull your senses and allow you to sleep through the agony, but they will never cure the problem if it isn't a medical one.

Sometimes it is necessary to bite the bullet and take charge of things. Get a different job, new coworkers, move to a different city, settle things or leave your spouse, reach out to new friends who have more in common with you.

Get out of your comfort zone.

Make changes. Suffer a bit of unease.

It won't last forever and chances are pretty good you will feel the change relatively quickly.

Three months after my husband and I separated I went off of antidepressants for years. Recently I stopped doing things I really didn't want to do and I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off of my shoulders.

Comfort zones are exclusive to you. No one else can decide which ones are best for you and no one else can give you a pill to make a bad one better.

Happily ever after

Most of my life has been filled with extremes, joy, depression, mourning, celebrating, wonder, even awe.

There have been times of overriding fear about my health or the health of someone I love.

Times of terrifying frustration and sadness during my marriage.

Brief moments of overwhelming love interspersed with that absolute and enduring love for my children.

Times when I was totally immersed with concerns about this child or that.

All of that feels like a distant memory right now.

I am cocooned in a bell jar of contentment.

The purity of the emotional air is unfamiliar but not uncomfortable.

In fact, the comfort is so complete right now that I feel like I could sink into it and live the rest of my life in obscure anonymity.

Is this happily ever after?

Or is it some cruel precursor to a hell as yet undiscovered?

I don't have a sense that it is. Instead I believe it is just that thinking that created much of the chaos in my life. Looking for problems that do not exist.

Personal horror

My family moved into a new home with a large great room. We had not unpacked, so we were gathered near the closed patio doors, sitting on boxes and what not until I smelled smoke. Everyone looked around and then I saw what it was. On a table across the room, where we had put all the plants, half of the potted rose bush was burning!

We looked at it with both curiosity and awe. How could only half a plant burn and how did it catch fire? Of course this was really just the beginning of a plant, a twig with a grafted twig on it's side. That was the part that was burning and my dad put out the smoldering mess immediately then we all returned to our seats by the patio door.

Suddenly my brother leaped forward, through the glass, picked up a small trinket laying on the cement outside and held it up, laughing at our shock. I wanted to know how he did it, because I was sure I could do anything he could do. I sat there trying to figure out how he was able to go through glass doors without breaking them, or hurting himself.

It wasn't until I woke up that I realized everyone in that room was dead except me.

We

Yesterday I took my granddaughter to the zoo. She is an adult, but does not drive because of her cerebral palsy.

We went to lunch and shared some garlic cheese bread.

We got close enough to the guanaco to actually pet its soft sweet face.

We both opted to skip the rain forest because it is too hot.

We sat listening to the female snow leopard explain how much she hated being separated from her brother.

Then, at the end of the day,  my granddaughter fell on one of the downward sloping sidewalks and it was very difficult getting her back on her feet again. It took a long time, some finagling and today my shoulders and arms are sore. She was crying, not because she was hurt, but because she was embarrassed and whenever she falls is reminded of times when she was mocked, or bullied.

So, I did the grandma thing.

We went out for donuts and chocolate milk on the way home.

There is about fifty years of difference in our ages and she is the daughter of my adopted daughter, but this is probably the grandchild who gets me best. She is 4 feet 9 inches. I am nearly 5 feet 7 inches. She is a brown eyed, red haired beauty. I am a hazel eyed, brown headed going gray gramma. She has cerebral palsy. I am pretty much as healthy as a horse. And yet, she comes up with these unique and perfect gifts, loves animals, and seems to have similar sensibilities to mine.

We are both adults on opposite ends of life's journey, but we are kindred spirits.

Decisions

Is there a process for making decisions?

I am not sure there is for me, but maybe I do it all subconsciously.

This morning I woke up and suddenly began thinking about something that has been going on a very long time. I've made excuses for it. I've tried to work through it rationally, emotionally, practically. I discussed it with Bestest and my youngest son.

And I have come up with so many different solutions. None of which worked.

Last month I realized I had been used in a way that only seemed possible in a very bad soap opera.

But only today did I come to the conclusion that I want nothing more to do with it.

I am through.

Not just emotionally, but kaput, finished, done, I have almost no real feelings about it at all right now. There was a little anger this morning, but now it feels far behind me.

That is good, because I really never had any control or say so in this situation and prolonging it had no positive outcomes.

Now all that can be said is:

It is over.

Thinner

I am experiencing something that is totally new to me.

This morning I took my usual medicine and then met my friends for breakfast at ten o'clock. I had not eaten or had anything to drink except water to swallow the pills since last night.

I ordered a dish that I loved. They did a really good job on it, but I was only able to eat a few bites of it and a half a piece of toast. I brought the rest home.

It is now late afternoon and I am still full. I don't think I have ever experienced such a feeling unless I over ate and then twenty minutes later was too full, but I have always been able to eat as long as I wanted if I liked the taste.

I am a little concerned about this since in seventy years it is my first experience of it, but I am also hoping it might be a new trend that will help me lose some of these excess pounds.

Hallelujah

Imagine spending your whole life writing your biography.

Hearing the deep voice of the narrator reading the words describing your thoughts, your actions, your meaning for being.

Sometimes hearing the voice of Leonard Cohen adding a sound track.

Dreaming the past.

Living the future.

And always surprised to wake up and find yourself in the now.

Grief

Our book club read, Grief Is A Thing With Feathers and I hated it, but now I am reading Lincoln in the Bardo and looking at that first book in a different way.

I was looking for a novel, a story filled with pathos, climax, intrigue. It is a book about grief. Honest, real life, gut wrenching grief that goes on in spite of the fact that the kids need to be clothed and fed and that people mean well, but also tend to jump in and take advantage of things you wish they wouldn't.

I remember telling one of my adult children, "Grief is personal. They say it takes a year, but sometimes it takes five years."

That is true and in my father's case, it took the rest of his life. Literally.

Fifteen years and one marriage after my mother died I asked my dad what he wanted for Christmas. He said he wanted to be with my mother. He got his wish and as much as I miss him, it was hard to not be happy for him.

My mother was not so much a woman as a force. A red haired, green eyed bundle of energy, sprit, jealousy, desire, creativity and love that spilled out of her body like an atomic bomb at times, but also manifested as the safest, softest security blanket ever created.

How do you grieve something like that?

Suprise suprise suprise

Moments of self understanding have always seemed simple to me. Why wouldn't I be able to understand how I feel?

Today I learned something about myself that I kind of knew, but did not understand how deep it went.

All my life I have had a sense of noblesse oblige, a feeling that those who are abundantly blessed are under an obligation to give back.

Most people have traditionally considered that to mean people who are wealthy need to care for those less fortunate, but I think I internalized that to mean anyone blessed by anything -- money, good fortune, luck, whatever.

I have always felt blessed by life. Even when some of it was very hard I have had a sense that others have, or have had, much more difficult times. Especially when it came to being paid to work. I never felt I had to work. Therefore I could be a stay at home mother, or a woman who could volunteer her services.

I never realized that I felt I was obligated to volunteer until today.

I stopped volunteering in the elementary school library this year and immediately began looking for another semi permanent volunteer job to replace it. I already volunteer for smaller jobs here and there, but decided to begin volunteering for a counseling agency this January.

Over the past month I have felt many qualms about this and this week, when it was about to start, I started feeling sick and wondering if I would miss the first day. It has manifested in my dreams and pretty much consumed my thoughts for weeks.

Today I asked myself why I was feeling this way and for the first time realize I felt like I was under an obligation. I was not volunteering because I thought it would be fun, but because I felt it was the best choice for something I HAD to do.

I sent them an email and said I would not be able to volunteer due to personal reasons and they were fine with that. They said if things changed give them a call.

I have not felt this good in years!  All day long I felt free and relaxed and more energetic than I have felt in months.

No one could be more surprised than me.

On the edge

I awoke from a dream where I was trying to escape from a huge underground construction site. Filled with two story machines grinding, exploding, digging away in tunnels that snaked around everywhere under my grandmother's house.

I was sorry I could no longer find the basement steps, or the dirt room, sorry I had gone down there looking for pumpkins to use with the poverty stricken preschool visiting us in the ramshackle kitchen and collapsing house above.

I think my dreams are mirroring the disaster the world is now. A place where I drive through a fast food place for breakfast and the woman taking the money in the window practically weeps with sorrow for the soldiers Trump is sending off to war while Australia's animals burn.

There is no peace on earth anymore. The devil leading the Evangelicals like sheep to the slaughter waves his gold club in one hand while tripping over his spiked tail and tweeting like a deranged cuckoo. The hyenas and  jackals are ashamed to be associated with the whiney bullies leading the senate with their double chins and sly smiles.

Bestest says there is comfort in the fact that more good people voted Democrat than Republican even though they did not win. He says we should draw hope from that fact that means more good people than bad exist.

Right now that feels like shaky comfort. If there is a god he might just look at this mess and say, "To hell with humanity."

Glimmers

We dream to dream. The impossible dream. The daring dream.
Dreaming of things we want or wanted
Of things that are heavenly
And then we hold those things in our arms
Cup their faces in our hands
and we cry.

Tears carry our joy away and replace it with
Sorrow? Disappointment? Reality?
How can something so loved hurt so much?
What fatal flaw did we miss?
Gazing at our own desires
outside of us.

The joy is hidden inside the dreams
Folded up in the love that is
Tucked into tiny pockets here and there
Not a veil that blurs everything
But glimmers of light for those
Who take the time to look.

One little chick

Many believe there is little point in examining the what ifs in life, but the questions still arise.

What if my one son had been an only child?

Of course he would not have had the benefit of siblings, but he would also not have had to share his father's money, or time, which apparently had a limit.

He would also not have had to compete with a brother who excelled at everything, or a sister who required huge amounts of time just to barely make it.

Possibly he might have been more cherished as an only chick.

I don't think I could have loved him more, but . . .

Would I have had more patience?

Would I have focused more on his success?

Would his life have been better, or would we have just put more pressure on him?

It's not like we didn't try for years before adopting, so was what happened actually meant to be, or simply a fluke in time?

Sometimes it might be nice to experience alternate realities.

How it feels

I don't know how long it takes most people to come to terms with themselves and I don't know how long it really takes to recover from a difficult situation, but I do believe I'm getting close.

Not that it hasn't been a long time coming. It has. I am now seventy years old, or young, depending on how you look at it. I remember feeling very old in my forties and having an older woman refer to me as a girl. I thought that was funny then. Now I can imagine looking at me from the viewpoint of a 96 year old woman -- and seeing a relatively younger person.

The past twenty years have been transitional and like most transitions, parts of them have been painful, difficult, frustrating, but with moments of great joy scattered throughout. The joy has not been constant in any way, but it has always been transforming as has the bad even though I might wish it wasn't.

I am beginning to find myself surprisingly content with much of my life. I am looking for apartments for my granddaughter and realize I haven't seen anything that would fit me better than where I am now. I think I could move anywhere in the country and realize that I don't want to leave the friends and opportunities I have here. I wouldn't mind being thinner and more beautiful, but I'm actually pretty happy with the way I look in this moment.

In other words I am finding the gift of satisfaction right here in this place and moment. It feels really good. Stable! Surprisingly comfortable! Oddly anticlimactic.

A little light

I received a little white owl lamp as a Christmas gift, which meant I needed to shop for a lightbulb.

There was a day and time when that might have been a monthly errand, but the last lightbulb I bought was in 2010. It was one of those new long lasting ones that is still working just fine.

I finally made it to the store and found the light section. No longer filled with yellow and blue flimsy corrugated sleeves, I was surprised at the difference ten years has made.

I needed a 40 watt or equivalent and found a package of four guaranteed to last nine years each. Since I will probably only use them in this lamp I would be 106 when the last one burnt out, or 97 when I put the last one in! 

I really don't need more than one of these. but that was a problem.

I finally found a 40 watt soft white general purpose LED bulb sold one at a time and purchased it.

Now that I am home I read that this bulb will work for 90 minutes if the power goes off, or even as a flashlight if I put my fingers on it in the right way.

My how things change.