Cover the Fear with Love

Before I went to bed, as usual, I was trying to figure out ways to save money and then I started scrawling all over the page, "Believe." Over and over and over again, I wrote that. Then I started writing "Act out of love" and I scrawled on top of the scrawl, faster and faster, then just "Love." Over and over. I turned the paper over.

I wrote "Write the names of every single person you remember loving." And I did. I wrote the name of my horrendously abusive brother even. The one who tortured my other brother and me. I wrote his name because I remember he carried me the mile and a half from the beach one day because they had just tarred the road and he didn't want me to burn my feet. I'd lost a flip-flop. When we got home my mom started to get understandably upset and he said, "Oh, Mom. We'll find it. She feels really bad."

My mom was so surprised she didn't yell. She kissed my brother instead. I loved him mightily that day.

I wrote the names of old best friends and boyfriends and teachers and adults who helped me and grandparents and people long gone from my life. I covered the 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper to the point that you could no longer see the scribblings of numbers way beneath.

I literally covered my fear with love.

I went to sleep at 2 a.m., smiling.

Nothing has changed today and I am way too tired to boot. But in the light of today, it still feels wondrous to have loved so many people in 57 years. Next Thursday I will have lived 57 years. I have no money to show for it. I struggle, like so many. I don't know what is down the road, but don't we delude ourselves when we think we DO know what lies ahead?

Behind me? Love all over the place, far bigger than the pain, the abuse and the dysfunctions of my family, there is passion. Passion enough for twelve families.

So I cover the fear with love and know that all will be well. Don't know what that means. "Well" may be something I cannot see today. Who cares? I covered a whole sheet of paper three times over with the names of people who have made me know I was loved. I can cover a sheet once over with the names of people I love who are still active in my life--some of them are not with us, but they are active in my life. Behind me lies a world of love; why should I doubt that the same lies ahead?

I was right. Today IS a better day. And all that changed was me.

Trying to Stay Positive

Sometimes it's hard to stay focused on what is going right; I am not Pollyanna and never was. Yesterday I thought I would be able to switch from my current self-employment medical insurance policy, which costs me about $750/month to a high deductible low premium alternative through the same provider. Nope. I would have to reapply from scratch, in which case I would be automatically denied for one of my pre-existing conditions.

What that condition is is irrelevant. I am faced with the prospect of insurance I cannot afford for a few months, and trying to apply for disability, if the work I just got for the summer does not turn into more regular employment. Or, I could walk away from work and apply for disability. I can be paid a great deal of money per hour and make my own schedule with the work I have, but it does not support me. Neither would disability, but I'd have insurance.

These are horrible choices. Everything in me screams to give working my needed hours per week one last hurrah before I apply for disability, for the third time in my life. I think I would get it. I think I would have been able to get it had I gone for it last winter, rather than try to forge yet another career for myself. Yet, just as I did the first two times I got off disability, I wanted to work, to know I earned my own way, doing what I love and what I'm good at.

I was afraid that I didn't meet my 30 hours a week requirement for my insurance, but my friend reminded me of the work I put into tutoring OUTSIDE of the in-person hours, that painting as an artist is REQUIRED if I want to teach art, and that I put research and time into all my paid writing work as well. She is right. I put in my 30 hours per week. Sometimes I get sick. Don't we all... The difference is that some of those hours have to be on weekends. Some of them are in the wee hours of the morning. I must work around a back that no longer functions, around legs that do not always move on command. I must work around unscheduled, excruciating pain.

It wears on me. I get frustrated. I listen to pundits go on about traveling down the dangerous road to Socialism and I want to throw things. Find me someone without insurance who agrees. Don't tell me that public healthcare will suddenly PUT bureaucrats between me and my doctor, when bureaucrats have been there since 1990 or before. It has done nothing but get worse since Hillary Clinton tried to get us there. I am depressed because I face what millions have had to face already--the threat of bankruptcy if I gamble on not having healthcare coverage.

This is personal and it is public. I have never missed a mortgage payment. Like millions, I would rather work than be on disability. The system is designed to punish those among us who try to work. You are bounced off when you earn far less than a living wage. But I have done that anyway, for the pride of accomplishment.

I am no rocket scientist, nor a saint. I am probably like most of the country. It sounds all cool to be a writer, to be an artist, but it is work--just like everything else, only not quite as physically taxing. Still, when tutoring time comes, the pain has to be ignored. When I teach an art student, I cannot register pain or worry. The focus must be on what the student is doing, on giving each one the experience that she (or he) deserves. Just as each of you must put aside whatever gnaws at you, when it comes time for work.

I love what I do. I wish that more would hire me for what I do, but that's no different from most of the country. We cry out for help; not to bail us out, like the banks and corporations. All we want is the ladder up which we may climb, and maybe a hot meal or two to give us the strength to move on ourselves.

I am terrified; I am not sure how I will survive after six months. It's easy to say, we'll sell the house, but we all know that this isn't always an easy matter. Still, I have a house to sell. I am better off than millions. A lot of good can happen in six months, not just bad. I've had the good happen, not just bad. But I'm not Pollyanna; knowledge of my being better off doesn't keep the fear away. And it is not fear without reason. $10,000 for medications, routine preventive care and premiums? This is more than most can afford, let alone this person. I have not given up, nor given in. I am putting in my time and just deposited money I earned. Again, one of the lucky ones.

Tomorrow will be better, perhaps. Sometimes I just don't feel wise, nor poetic, nor uplifting or uplifted. Some days, I simply feel extraordinarily human. And I pray for the strength and the wisdom to focus on each day, not that scary place "down the road."

The problem with being human is that I never get to be perfect. I hate that!

So maybe I'd best look at the new rose bush in the garden that is in bloom right now. Right below my window, glowing in the rain, now that the peonies have past. Perhaps it would be best if I focus on the breath-taking beauty of rain on my flowers and on how green the lawn is, storing up the lushness against whatever lies ahead.

Tomorrow will be better.

Painting for My Life

I never thought that painting could take the place of singing in my life — at least in part. Before the shingles aftermath, I sang in choirs and choruses. It was the way I got my jolt of art beyond myself and connected with people in the strictly social way. By that I mean having casual relationships with people built around a mutual interest, where we laugh together and produce together, but were not necessarily wrapped around one another's lives. That door is closed to me now, as is even the enjoyment of listening. That was a tortuous adjustment for me.

I forget how much I miss those sorts of relationships in my life, but I do. I work at home. I pursue largely solitary joys, and since my neighborhood successfully blocked my attempt to create this sort of community in my home, I find my sense of isolation has grown. The degeneration of my spine precludes the trips to the gym now as well. So I search for the thing that will bring me casual company.

I have found, however, something beyond writing, to give me the jolt of creation.

Yet I feel something else happening as I get back into some routines of painting. The act of teaching a friend is waking me up. We hand a painting back and forth, each adding a piece of herself to the work started by the other. It is an electric process because whatever we envision in each step must necessarily change the next time the painting returns. She and I wrote together as adolescents, building on one another's riffs. Now Paige and I do the same with our art. She has not let herself paint or draw. And I have not let myself fly. Her imagination frees my own. We paint, draw, tear, paste. We laugh.

And it spills over into my solitary art.

I love the rhythm of collage and painting. I built a peony from scratch. One layer of tissue at a time, I built my flower, lightly tinting each petal. Fifteen minutes here and there, and from a blank paper rose something I've never done, captured my impression of the blossom from a tree peony. It excited me and made me cry. I thought of my mother and her joy at the slow art of flower gardening, how it made her seem to be more alive. I have felt barren for so long, and there it was before me--this birthing of something from my own mind. Once more I felt the thrill of the process and result, both. I had not felt that for three years, when I began the huge painting I just finished two weeks ago--my vision of a treasured memory with my dad.

The best of my life seems to be surfacing when I pick up my pencil, my brush, my papers. I have begun a diptych of New England, with the unifying thread being a stone wall--my impression of a wall. Winter will melt into spring, burst to the right into summer and drop down into the second part, summer still. Then blazen into fall and fade into winter again. I do not know whether there will be anything beyond texture and color that will be those seasons, but the wall? The wall will be absolutely recognizable as that. To me it is the quintessential New England item, wherever you go. Into the middle of a forest and there it will be, the reminder that so much of our land was once tilled, then allowed to grow wild again. I loved Central Pennsylvania, but I missed my walls. Walls that did nothing so much as invite you to cross them. they marked properties, but did not keep neighbors out. Just cows...

I will find other ways to connect in a group; I feel more confident again. The painting has opened doors I had not recognized were closed. I have walked into a different stage of biological life, but realize that I do not have to allow barrenness to be anything more than that. I am alive again, if not blooming. But, then, Fall foliage is not about flowering, so much as the last dance before sleep. And it can be a long, brilliant, lush season indeed.

The miraculous thing about facing our demons that they do not describe, is how it feels to be free of them at last. If I cannot dance with my legs or sing with my voice, then I will dance with paint, with paper, and with pens. I may just hit sixty in a few years, more alive than I have ever been. We'll see. For now? For now I will simply walk outside and weed the garden and take it from there.

Tiananmen Square: Reflections on My Long March

The Short March © June 6, 1989
Pre-dawn,
Beijing waiting,
Ancient streets mist-shrouded.
Four old men, more shadow than flesh,
Hobbled rigid, but bent, into death-quiet Square;
They looked long and pointed,
Shook heads and muttered,
But did not cry.
One tripped,
Slipping on slick stone.
The others helped him stand,
His once clean khaki, now stained, deepest red,
Wind-sounds through fog, but the air refused to move;
The oldest shivered,
Heard wordless curses
On this too-still wind.

One million voices,
Whispering in shocked fury
Raised the wind.

"Quiet!
Move quickly!"
His voice ripped the dawn,
And the old men retreated, clattering.
One soldier fired, but the People's Army killed him;
The Four scuttled safe
Through cracks in the Hall,
Like roaches.
"Imagine,"
Clucked a comrade
As he toed the dead offender,
"Mistaking heroes of the Long March
For Enemies of the People," but he stopped.
The People's Army shivered,
Stood frozen silent,
In un-named terror.

Roaring now,
The too-still wind
Struck down the day.

***

I was at a cookout at my friend's--more sister than friend, really. I was married then, as was she, and as was the third couple who had driven from NYC. My husband and I had been listening to NPR, as had the other couple. When we arrived at Gail's the t.v. was already on. We six watched in stunned and revolted silence. In inspired silence as well. All six cried, even my husband and Gail's. These were not men moved to tears, as a rule. We spoke of this throughout the evening, not feeling resentment that the big cookout was ruined, not caring about any of that. For once, the subject was far greater than the event.

We spoke of the Civil Rights Movement here. I remembered my mother making me watch the dogs and the hoses; she made me watch the children cry and the mothers hitting the ground and bruised and bloodied people hauled away. She forced my brother and me to sit on our seven-foot couch, eyes open wide, hunkered into opposite ends. I sobbed. Jack threw up. Lesson learned, but my mother was relentless.

"And that's how you feel just seeing it from across the room on t.v., safe. Imagine what it is for them? THIS is what we are doing. THIS must change. But we live in a country where it is shown to us on the national news, so we cannot be blind any more. And we must change it."

She could not march on Washington. There were children at home. She, however, like thousands across our country, could organize the sympathy marches and demonstrations, keep us by her to listen to the speeches. I do not remember where I heard what, but I remember that we were on the steps of the library. I remember I heard the speech with her and watched her cry. I learned.

She made us watch the coverage of the shooting of a President. She made us watch the news when the images of Viet Nam were vivid. She was proud of my brother Jack, when he went to D.C. She was proud again when he was prepared to file as a conscientious objector, at the depth of his commitment and his willingness to go to jail. Ultimately it was moot; his health kept him ironically safe. She did not fight my other brother when he joined the Marines, though he was likely to go to Nam. She understood that Jim was flailing in life, and that he felt it was his last chance to right himself. Ironically, it was pneumonia that nearly killed him; he never went to Nam. She respected his convictions as much as Jack's, though her sensibilities were with the pacifist. She taught us that you do not protest the soldiers, especially as a woman. We did not know the burden of the draft hanging over our heads, she pointed out. This lesson was one I took with me to college myself, and my friend Gail and I were always in the fight against the war, but not against the returning vets.

I was taught the danger of numbness, so when the Tiananmen Square events unfolded before us, I was blessedly alive. We all were. My husband began to speak more of the war and what it had done to him. We had been to the Viet Nam War Memorial two years before, and I had seen my husband ask to make one round alone, after I helped him find two of the four names he was driven to find. I stood and watched him grow smaller in the middle and larger as the Wall shrank. He took me by the hand and we made the second swing together; it was the closest we ever were, before or since, in our marriage.

The six of us spoke in hushed tones. We were bonded intensely for that one night; it did not last. I don't know how the others feel at this point. I have no idea. I wrote this poem two days later because I needed to have hope for these people, these courageous, peaceful soldiers of their own convictions. The man who stood before that tank SHOULD be emblazened worldwide on posters to the Heavens, for all of us to see.

I do not know who wrote about the Power of One to Change the world. That we must never doubt the power of one committed person to change the world, because that's all that ever does. It remains true; today reminds me of the power of hope as well. I can see the sadness in my husband's eyes. I feel my own pain today, as I did then, as I did as a child watching children fall from the force of water.

Many of those people in China were imprisoned or killed; others were not. Perhaps today their hope, partly through our remembrance, will burn brighter within--where no State can dim it. And my hope is that their hope and passion will bring them to the place where they, once again, rise up as a mighty wind and strike down their day of oppression.

And that we all, as ONE people, support them. I don't care if this is a dream of Utopia. I don't care if it is a trite or naive thought. Unless we dare to envision Utopia, nothing much will happen.