Looking for Signs, Listening for that “Still Small Voice”

 New twists in the road this week...

Four times this week I have been visited by an enormous, white-throated stag.  I think his antlers have ten points. Until now I have never seen one, let alone at the edge of my yard. And I've seen no does here since about 1994, when more houses were built in this area.

He came first last week, on the Monday when R. blew my world apart. Funny thing. R. said, when I'd mentioned it, that he wanted to think that was him, watching over me. Perhaps I should have listened to the small voice in me that jumped when he said that. It asked, "Why would I need a buck when I have you?" Not so much. But I think  he meant it at the time. It's in retrospect we see other things...

But then, I did not see him again--the buck, I mean--until this week. He came on Wednesday morning,   Thursday at dusk, and this morning, at dawn. Two out of three times, he seemed to hear me upstairs here, in my kitchen. I stared down at him as he drank from the brook at the culvert, and he looked up at me. We locked stares for a slow five or six counts, then he bounded off, down away from the street,, into the wetlands and woods. Even that is odd. Mostly the deer used to be on their way UP from my house, to cross the street and follow the wetlands to a town sanctuary. The woods cut across town several miles, so they have a good run.

But there he has been. I want so much to believe what I read in Native American lore, and even in Celtic lore. The stag is a power totem/symbol. He watches over the  creatures in his kingdom. He is a transcendent figure, a harbinger of love, of peace, of grace. He gives strength to transcend pain. And he has appeared during two pivotal weeks of my life. I wonder if I dream him... then I wonder whether that matters. ... And I need strength, and some sense that I am safe. No. I have seen him. I don't think my mind is playing that sort of trick.

Last week, I lost the promise of a love I'd never known in my life. It was a time of anger, pain, abject grief, confusion. I felt torn apart inside. That, on the heels of realizing my career as I knew was pretty well destroyed. I cannot say I handled that well. I didn't. In fact, there are times I don't believe I was myself at all. I think I went through it pretty quickly, but that's mostly because, at 57 I just don't have the time to waste on something I will not ever understand from my perspective alone. It is a relationship that spans more than forty years, whether or not this latest permutation was short. It can only be understood when there is conversation. I haven't the luxury of angst, or of trying to figure it out any more.

But then this week? I have been having odd spasms in legs and arms. My right hand keeps going numb. I had another headache that lasted three days. I went through the initial phase of applying for disability--have to finish up the application this weekend, then let my lawyer do her thing. But I called the doctor Tuesday. After writing the last angry note in, yes, desperation--I just wanted to figure it out still, at that point, and I was so frustrated and angry. Feh. I am human. I mess up. But I tried to find closure through anger, which is never, EVER a good way to go.

But almost immediately after I hit send, I made the appointment with my doctor.

And I will be having new tests. There may be problems in another part of the central nervous system. There is reason for real worry.

As if there weren't enough reason for worry? And I realized that I had no time for anger. Or hurt. In the space of a sleepless night, I realized that I had to turn everything around, and I had to do it now. I wrote about my grandmother, after my buck appeared again. YES, I will think of him as mine. It is egocentric, and perhaps silly. But sometimes seeing good signs can help. He is so beautiful.

And I began to write to R. My friends would not be pleased. They want me to stay angry. They feel I never get mad enough for long enough, but I disagree. It is not that I do not have reason. It's that it will cause me more pain. It will close doors I do not choose to close, from my end. It will keep me stuck in that place where I pound my  head against the wall, trying to understand what will never make sense... because it just doesn't make sense.

Not everything does, though. And matters of the heart have nothing to do with logic. I had to get quiet. I had to stop the static of my friends, of my pain, and find the center that is me. I am human and I don't stay in that place, but I've found it again. And I will stay in it longer and longer, if I give it time. Love. Peace. Gathering the troops for a rough time ahead.

It is hard. Since April I have had three very big dreams placed in my hand, and snatched away without warning. And my spine seems hellbent on attacking me. I call the pain Louise. I named it years ago, when I had pain management therapy. My father's mother's named Louise. She was not a nice lady, though she loved us in her way. She was one of those women who holds grudges. She was the first to give pies to the poor through the church, but would criticize the women for being too fat.  Kind to everyone but her husband. And her daughter-in-law. She resented that her daughter moved to Alaska, but my father understood why.

He once said that he thought that all three kids were conceived by  fission, because he never saw them kiss. He and my mother used to shudder visibly when they talked about Grandma and Grandpa's marriage through their eyes. I just thought they didn't like each other all that much, but I was very small. When Grandpa commit convoluted suicide because he tried to dig a basement in the cottage--shoveling dirt by the hour and carrying it outside--with a heart condition, Dad always thought that "Paw just couldn't see another ten to fifteen years cooped up with Ma."

I thought that was mean. But maybe he was right.

I mean, Grandma mourned the day her catalog no longer sold whalebone corsets. I was twelve! Tied up and rigid, my daddy's mom.

But she also taught me how to cook, how to sew, and let me make a total mess all over the cottage living room on rainy days. She taught me canasta. She introduced me to a world of books about nature, about life in the old days. She was the one who told wonderful stories about life in the "Skinnah girls house."  About old-fashioned weddings, and jelly jars, and how the girls saved bits of handmade lace from their wedding gowns, night gowns, and dresses special for Sundays. She had a rhythm of her own, and her stories sang like a creaky Boston Rocker, and made rainy days fly by. When I was small, I loved to ask her about her childhood.

I grew out of her in a far more serious way. Through her meanness to my mother, her snappishness at Jack,  through her manipulation to get Jack and me to tell secrets about our parents, to confess to her about things she did not approve of... I learned a lot about the kind of person I did not want to be. I valued her. I loved her as a child, but grew to learn she could not be trusted. I respected her because she was there. She was a part of me.  She made me stronger and some of who I am. But I did not have to like her.And I never, ever wanted to be all buttoned down and tight, closed off to the sweetness of life. And to be safe in the world, to have all things go as expected, to have everything look right--these were her goals, so much of the time. And if things did not suit her, it was never her doing--someone of us, particularly my  mom or my brothers, had always let here down. Not that she would complain, mind you. Nothing, to her, was pure joy. There was always something not quite good enough. And once disappointed, she punished for years. I thought it must be so hard to be Granny. There was a heart in there, but so protected by thorns, it was next to impossible to find.

I named the pain Louise. My middle name. I'm named after her, something for which my father will never be forgiven. EVER. This pain is part of me, whether I want it or not. It has taught me lessons and I can only accept that it's here, and learn to live around it, in spite of it... and, if I work really hard, because of it. And deep within, below the thorns, the pain has been a gift.  I needed it to grow strong, to battle something other than myself. To stop trying to kill myself, and get up and live, instead.

But Louise is growing stronger these days, and it would seem there are new lessons to be learned. I do not want them. But it would seem, I will be getting these "gifts" anyway. For now, though? I don't have to like it or look for anything other than why Louise is shouting me, and attacking from all directions. I'll figure the rest out later.

So I wrote R. today, but I may have written too late. My anger may have been the last he could bear to read. I hope not. I hope he could see I had reasons and the right to write. I hope he cared enough to read, but it's okay, regardless.

When we throw love out into the universe we have to accept that we may never know whether it is received. I miss the man. The friend. I had found myself writing something funny, totally forgetting for those five minutes, that he is gone. As I said, I am not wholly in my right mind. But I realized in time... I miss my friend far more than the man who would be my love. It's not wanting all or nothing. It's wanting the best of who we are together, and we were always friends. I realized this week that I would not have been able to go on anyway. That friendship's all I have the strength to offer now anyway, and leaning's not an option.

I need to stand on my own through this.  Leaning on someone this soon isn't right. My ex-husband courted me in the hospital, and he wanted me to need him. He wanted me to stay needy, and turned away as I grew to be stronger.  I do not want to be loved because I am in need. I want to be strong.  I want to be loved for my strength, and supported for that.  It's a little different, I think.  We all want to lean sometimes, but it isn't the place to start.  Not for me. Not again. And it seems just wrong to ask or expect support in a time like this, of anyone newly back in my life. I would have asked him to let us step back for a time. Irony hurts.


The last thing I want in my life is to burden my son with me, and we may have  some options that will limit that. And I have to believe that my stag came for a reason, one I just don't understand. And perhaps R. came for a reason that I'll understand with time. I don't mean that some puppeteer is in the sky, messing with my life. I use the phrase "for a reason" more metaphorically.

I think I mean that perhaps the lessons that these things have to offer will come with time.  And if that small voice in me is saying over and over, "All will be well. There are no lies here," perhaps I should listen.  I read Jo's blog today about listening to that voice that warns us. I think we should listen to us when it clearly says "THIS IS RIGHT."

It said that when R. came back to me. All is well. This is right.  It says it still, beneath the anger and pain. So I let go of ALL of it today, in the only way I can. I wrote it. I left the door open because to slam it, so that I have supposed control?  That is to be someone else. I can let go only with a door wide open, and trust that only  my friend will ever come in. If he chooses never to come, so be it. But I felt as if a weight had been lifted from me, so that's the best I can do.

I have done this before; I write. It's who I am; it's what I do. Love beats control, it beats fear. And every time I panic about the money, that voice says, "No. Just stop." And when the pain in my hand catches me off guard and I tip over the water onto my work, it says, "Just breathe. Just breathe."

And I do. I am afraid for my future, but as two friends said, "Even if you are in poverty, you will not fly off the face of the earth. You are not alone."

And my buck stared up at the house, but I was at a different window. I smiled inside. That deer is mine, and he's watching over me, telling me I can do all of this with grace. I named the pain Louise. But Helen is in me, too.

And my mother's and my sister's blue eyes loving me, from wherever their souls have flown. And my daddy's arms and Old Spice cheek enfold me still. And I will let R. go, and the still small voice reminds me, friends, in my life, are the ones who always come back... in their time, in their way. I have to trust the marvelous boy in the man. I have to trust myself. I must stop listening to everyone else. And I will bask in the love of the twelve--the women friends who are in my life. Give where I can, but for now, this time, receive their love--and ask them to let go of their anger, too.

I have had loss.  I have had pain.  I have had dreams disappear just as they became real. I have never had so much of it happen in so short a time.  And the consequences this time are far greater.  I may lose my home or my independence or both. And the pain will not go away. The old dreams are gone, and I will need to find some new ones. But not today. I don't have to figure it all out today. There is a poetry chap book to work on, two paintings to finish. I have an application to finish. There still is a little time before it all hits too hard. I must use it well.

There will be lessons enough in all this; I need not rush them. I must rest. I must gather myself inside, be still, and listen.

And, of course, write. It's what I do; it's who I am.

Spring and the Celebration of the Mother of Mother

I keep thinking that I have written about this subject before, but perhaps it was not here. I think it was probably to someone in an email, or for another project. If I have, I'm sorry, but the story as written here, probably has a different rhythm, and the details will have shifted in emphasis. The truth of my grandma remains the same. I miss her sometimes still, as her joy for simple pleasure reaches through the decades and grabs me by the heart.

The Seasonal Dance ©2009
Here it comes again,
When spring smells stronger than fear,
And familiar dampness spreads like wine through veins.
Here it comes.
Again.

The season of loving
kills sobbing, and shoving
the pains of loss into a drawer,
I taste the juice of spring, 
blasting death—through the greening of grass,
and the yellow of branches ready to burst
with a sun-filled cacophony of over-bright flowers
that will fall to substantial new growth.

Here it comes again,
When spring Heaven beats loneliness,
for the company of colors too noisy to tolerate gray.
Here it comes.
Again.

The dancing in gardens
of steaming up-turned earth,
with worms wriggling back to the dark,
I dance my own ritual to birth—
Through the smoothing of edges, and clearing of space 
around shoots fairly aching to breathe;
through the weeds that have crowded their colors too long;
I discard what we no longer need.

Here it comes again,
When spring trumpets louder than pain,
for this birth that defeats any winter’s worst freeze.
Here it comes.
Again.


I associate Spring with my mom and with her mom... And I know it's Fall, but there is something about feeling one is coming to life again. And perhaps I am.

Seems appropriate somehow to write about Grandam M., Mom's mom.  When I was little, Grandma did the coolest thing for Jack, me and our friends. I was probably about Eight. When she would come, she would take out her teeth AND her glass eye to show us, and tell us all about them. AFTER she put them back. Then she taught us "After the ball was over..."

She also took me on my first wildflower walk and for some reason, all I remember is that the field was full of vetch, which  I thought was a completely gross name for such a gorgeous violet flower. Vetch. She also used to buy Jackie and me toys at Wallach's grocer, the corner equivalent of Seven Eleven® back in the late fifties. Mr. Wallach, like our neighbors two doors over, had come to our country during WWII, and, while he was a little scary, he still knew all our names and what we liked best for candy, and when we'd come to the store looking for milk and bread. But Grandma would buy us stuff. My favorite was the plywood plane with the elastic-driven prop, and my very first kaleidoscope ever.

We cut home through the field and I kept falling into holes because I was busy  looking at the vetch through my toy. Grandma kept talking about daisies, Queen Anne's Lace, and "verdure." God forbid she said something like "all the green" or even "greenery." No. Verdure.

I once told her, "Grandma, you speak in crossword puzzle words."

"Yes, darling girl, I do. But isn't it more fun than just using the same old words all the time?"

I shrugged, but I kind of thought she was right. She and my  mom fought constantly. Dad said, "Jean, the truth is  Helen just isn't all that bright."

Mom would  hold her palms out and just go, "AAAAAAHHHHHRRRRRR."

My favorite fight was this one.  I have no idea what the fight was about, but my mom was in the kitchen and Grandma was at the table, eating her obligatory soda crackers in milk... this means it was around 3:00. I walked in from school, and I was around 12.  I had recently realized I'd outgrown Grandma, because she had been on and on about trains the last time I'd seen her. Mom had taken me with her to Grandma's little efficiency flat and she'd dragged me into her bedroom, shouting, "Darling GIRL! Look at this!"

I waited and waited. Suddenly, there was a train. Yes. A train went by. Her hands went up in our familiar gresture of delight, "Dighdy dighdy DOH!" She would sing her arms abover her head, twisting her hands and arms from the elbows. I could not figure out why she loved the trains, but I managed to go, "Yeah, Grandma, that's great!" while humming the Twilight Zone music in my head.

She did that, though, over her soda crackers and whenever we had string beans. I just didn't get the thrill, but that was Grandma.

I walked into this fight, however. And Mom went, "MOTHER! You KNOW I am right, why MUST you persist in arguing with me."

"JEAN. I am your MOTHER. I don't care whether or not I'm wrong. Even when I'm wrong, I'm RIGHT."

And she got up in all the mighty dignity her 4'10" allowed and stomped out of the room.

I stood there just looking at my mom, who stared, mouth agape, back at me, until we both started laughing so hard we had to cover our mouths.

But this was Grandma.

***
I grew back into her, though. When I was about 31, I went to see her in the nursing home, one town away from us. She was in a full-care facility by then, and was 92. Her one eye had little vision, she'd had a hip replacement, but was pretty well lame. I know she was in pain, but something had happened when she hit 85.

We'd thrown her a big party, and she turned to my mom at the banquet and said, "Dahling girl, everything else is just gravy. I think I better make up to you now, while I can."

I was sitting across from them, and I felt I was watching part of movie, shot through one of those hazy filters--the kind that used around movie stars before you could simply touch up their faces in editing... Everyone else seemed preoccupied with their own conversations. Mom was looking at Grandma with an expression close to shock.

"Mother, it's all right.  I know you--"
"No, Jean. It isn't all right. I've mistreated you your whole life, making you  not go to college, but sending your brother. Always fighting. Always angry with you. I love you. You're my Jeanie. My girl. Right now, today, I'm changing. Dahling girl, it's never too late as long as I'm breathing and I'm not going to do that to you any more."

My mother cried and grabbed her mom. And Grandma never fought with her again.  They had another nine years of something very special.

But I knew she was fragile seven years later, and I had an impulse to visit her one May, because it was lush everywhere, and because the lilacs were in bloom. I grabbed and armful from a neighbor's yard, because she called me her "lilac girl."

I found her in the rec room, bowling. Yes. Table bowling. I stood at a distance, while four people cheered her on, shouting, "Come on Helen. Just one pin. Come on, you can do it."

She missed the table, forget the pins, which sent her into "Dighdy, dighdy, DOH." And delighted laughter.

"Grandma," I said, thinking dementia was now hardcore. "What are you DOING? I thought you didn't like bowling anyway... and--"

"I HATE, bowling, Dahling girl, oh, LILACS! My lilac girl, oh, pretty."  And she handed them round and looked at my confused face, squinting her eye, trying to focus. "What's that you are wearing? Purple and blue. What a pretty blouse. Oh, dear, you just make my heart dance."

Now, really. Who gets to hear that from anyone? But I was on my one track. "So if you don't like bowling, why do you?"

She simply shook her head at me and said, "Because that's what they HAVE. They have bowling, so I bowl. I sure as hell am not going to sit in my room and die. They have bowling, I bowl. they have rhythm band, I clop.  They have ring toss, I toss."

She saw I was not smiling. She did not see the tears filling my eyes.

Suddenly, she whipped something out from underneath her lap robe. A large trophy. "Besides, where else could I get this!"

Engraved on a brass plaque,  no less, were the words, "World's worst bowler in the history of time"

And we laughed. She wanted to walk to the courtyard that day. This meant it was a very good day for her. Mostly she leaned on my arm, but since she was, by now about 4'8" and weighed only 85 pounds, it was no trouble. I don't think it would have been any trouble to me if she were twice her size.  She used her cane mostly to point out the flowers, daffodils, scilla, and a few peonies were coming out early. It was one of those springs that had come in a jumble, when suddenly the temperature jumped to 80 degrees for five days in a row, so the plants were confused. No gradual spring, this one. It was more like a Beethoven symphony--all the stops were pulled out. Or perhaps Vivaldi.

When I took her to her room, I helped her onto the bed and she asked that I open the drapes. Her roommate liked the dark, but she was home for an overnight. Grandma drank in the light, turning her hands in the warmth of the day. I sat beside her and something made me start to cry and I rested my head beside her there. I felt her hand stroking my hair, like a breeze, she was so gentle.

"My lilac girl, my little girl. Your mother ... she's  not lilacs. She's peonies. She is all bright colors and so ripe she cannot bear up under the weight of her beauty." I started at such a description. I didn't know Grandma knew my mother so well.

Then she sighed, and I looked up at her. She was crying herself. "Grandma? Are you all right?"

"Of course, dear. Of course. I'm old. You know I'll have to leave soon.  But the hardest thing of all? To leave all these colors. How can I leave all these bright shining colors behind?"

And this was Grandma.

***
If I am to be poor, if I am to live at the mercy of others' care, if I am to find that my world grows smaller before my time? I will do it like Grandma— with unbridled joy, and clinging to all the colors she saw through her one half-functioning eye. Her eye was the truest of any I have ever known.

At last, Deliverance, Part II.. (7/24 is Part 1)

IN ORDER TO HAVE A CLUE, READ "DELIVERANCE, IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE" from July 24. At long last, you shall find out the fate of our fair maiden, in her black flowered sundress and her orange cardboard camera...

....There was a loud sound of brush breaking and I stopped cold, in the middle of the road, heart pounding, more afraid than I'd ever been. A bear?

From the woods appeared, rather than emerged, a man about six foot three — my ex-husband's size. Flame red hair and a staff easily a foot taller than he. He had some sort of rumpled hat that looked like a Confederate cap, nn army shirt with the sleeves cut off, ripped off filthy jeans, and large muscled arms as glistening as my Mythic Man's. A gap showed between his brown teeth as he slowly grinned at me.

I had a different thought in mind when I said to myself, "May Day, May Day."  (Up "Deliverance" banjo and guitar duel.) He stood as still as a buck sensing danger, and lifted his head just a bit and looked down at me from the bottom of his eyes. I could not look away, and there we stood. His smile was close-lipped, but lingered, but he did not move toward me.

I'm renowned for my ability to slice a man off at the knees with this mouth. Many  a man who came at me armed with, "Hey, babe. I got a water bed," has left limping. I gathered my wits.

"Hi," I said.

He started, like an animal and, catlike, I sprang for my car, losing my pink shoe in the process, and slammed the entire side of my body against the side of the car as I tugged at the locked handle. The man stood there, laughing. Not chuckling, not snickering, no. Hyena like, with one of those shrieky machine-barrage laughs.

And there I was half shoeless and bruised, still clutching my camera.

I stood up straight and glared at him. Marched to my shoe and scooped it up in one deft motion, which would have been swell had my pocketbook stayed on my arm. At least when it fell, the keys revealed them and I crablike scooped up everything and scuttled to my car, not wanting to look back.

Once safely in, I hazarded a glance, because the laughing had stopped. He stood so tall, looked me straight in the eyes, clicked his heels together, then performed as graceful a bow as an Jane Austen gentleman, to complete my humiliation. He melted back into the woods, without seeming to move, and like the Cheshire cat, the last thing to disappear were his teeth.

And the damned laugh.

***

When I finally reached Charlottesville, I wanted nothing so much as a cool drink by the pool. The little pool was entirely rimmed in azaleas of every description, and I lost myself for at least half an hour in the humming of the bees and the beauty of magenta against the black wrought iron fence. It was a beautiful little world and I decided I  needed to walk around before dinner.

The sidewalks were pavers and narrow. I remember that they were, in my section of town, well above the street, but barely wide enough to fit two. I had just noticed my second hand-written cardboard sign "We do not support the KKK" in a shop window when I approached an African American woman coming toward me and smiled. She looked down and stepped into a doorway until I passed, and I felt my heart sink.

I was a full block from an African American man approaching when he crossed the street, and by then  I was noticing which stores did NOT have signs.

My walk was short.

Still, Monroe and Jefferson awaited for tomorrow...

And Monticello was a mass of tulips of every description. A note however, about grits and scrapple.

I once asked a young lady about scrapple. She said, "Oh, no. You need to not eat them. I was raised on a farm and... every nasty thing you imagine? They in there."

Since then, I just could not deal with scrapple. Then there's this thing with gravy... I thought it was just Pennsylvania, but not so much. And it's pale gravy. On waffles. On potatoes. On stuff I cannot describe. But I was not there for the food. I'm a Yankee, what do I know? Fortunately, in the south, I never had steamed ice berg lettuce served to me with some sort of yellow sauce. Really. All I can ask is "why?" Who dreamed it up and why?

But I digress...

My life was made when I saw the clock whose weights went through the floor because it was a twenty-four hour clock!  It's ten years later, and I should remember more, I suppose, but I mostly remember the grounds. I left the house and walked through the formal front courtyard , admiring the tulips, taking panorama pictures of them. People smiled at me and I thought, how friendly, until I realized mostly they were enjoying the woman who had her shirt on inside-out, intently capturing images through the cardboard camera. I wondered why the tag didn't tickle...

As I wandered further from the house, I began to hear a humming, very low and insistent, but it grew louder as I approached the giant shade trees. I don't know what they were really, but it didn't matter. They were heavy with wisteria vines... and they were a symphony of bees. Why bother with tulips when they had their feast in the sky. I stood paralyzed.

I am terrified of bees. I told myself they are not yellow jackets. They are honey bees. Be still. And I saw people on the benches near them, happily relaxed, even eating sandwiches, undisturbed. They were sitting beneath canopies of purple, white, blue, it's a blur to me now except for the light. Beneath the trees the light was blue, like sitting before Monet's water lilies paintings when I was in France. Except it was deeper.

I dared to sit beneath my fear, and drink in all that blue. And the sound blocked out all thought. And the sunlight found gaps in the vines, so I began to drift as the light shifted. And I began to dream of the magic of the humming trees. It starts with a single song... I fell asleep.

"LADY!" I jumped. And three pigeons took off. Apparently one had lighted on my shoulder, I had been that still. And the little girl turned to her mommy, "That homeless lady had a pigeon on her head."

I hoped she was exaggerating and I needed to fix my SHIRT.

***
I was going to Ash Lawn next. I heard the call of the peacocks as walked into the kitchen garden. Monticello was magnificent, but Ash Lawn was my favorite. It had the feel of a cottage, though it was  not small. But it was lower, seemingly part of the grounds themselves, and the kitchen garden was more the tumble of herbs and edible flowers and beauty I tend to prefer. With two peacocks that wandered freely and perched in the trees, screeching down at us. There is nothing like their call; it makes me shiver. It is a lonely, wild sound.

Below the garden were the slave quarters, and Ash Lawn offers and exhibit of what the slaves did for the plantation, from cooking to making candles, spinning, to black smithing to preparing the edible flowers.  There was a tour just ahead of me, so naturally I decided to approach from the opposite end. There was only one African American. He was tall, with skin almost as deep as obsidian, but softer. His voice was as deep as his skin and his hands were the size of dinner plates ... yet he was at the edible flowers. He was last on my route, so I wandered and listened vaguely to the lectures, especially at the lace making and spinning--only because I had seen other exhibits of smithing and cooking on an open fire. I came to the edible flower table just as the man was sitting to have his lunch.

I asked whether I could sit and join him, forgetting where he was. He leaped up and said, "No ma'am, but I'd be happy to answer your questions."

"Oh,  no, sir. You just eat your lunch. I can just sit and talk, unless you'd rather be alone."

I had made him uncomfortable and he wanted to show me his job, so I simply said, "I'm sorry. I'm not from around here."

"The North?"

"Yes."

"D.C?"

"Connecticut?"

He smiled and said, "Oh you really ARE not from here."  Then he relaxed. He was from Mississippi, he said and he supported his family by going all over the south with these demonstrations and he got good money, too, because he was Black. And he talked about how some didn't like that he did this but he looked up at me from his demonstration, straight in the eye. After one day there, it already startled me to have him do that. "I am not ashamed my people were slaves. It's nothing we did wrong. We built this country on our backs. Why shouldn't I be proud that we survived?"

I will never forget the look on his face and I said, "You should be proud."  There was an awkward pause, then I said, "Your family must miss you."

The moment passed, but he spoke about other things he did, making shoes, belt buckles and he was "studying on buttons. No one does that."

I was tired when I ended my tour day at a tavern that had been transplanted near these places.  It was an off-hour, but I hooked up with yet another tour and they let me join them. They had a long trip back to West Virginia and had booked the place. I sat between two women around my age.

They were from a garden club and I realized that I was ... well... I didn't match. I had on jeans, my Indian print blouse (right-side out at last) and a photographer's vest. The women around me had on... what my grandmother called "lawn dresses." They were all wearing dresses. I felt I had stepped into one of my nightmares as a ten-year-old child. A women's tea party. I had read about them, and heard of them, but they sounded like hell to me. I played football and liked hockey back then, so lady things scared me to death. My mother assured me that tea parties had gone the way of whalebone corsets, but I reminded her Grandma L still OWNED a whalebone corset.

I made do. The woman to my left, who had looked at me more askance than head on, visibly relaxed when I explained I was from Connecticut. And she kindly asked about my children and what had brought me to the South, and didn't I just love how friendly people are?

I looked at her and the hairs on my neck rustled.  "Well, I've found most people everywhere are friendly when we travel." She was tight-faced, with lips that must have grown thin from pinching them. And when she smiled, her face exploded in a fine network of creases that had nothing to do with joy. Severe bangs sliced her forehead and her chin-length perfectly smooth hair ended in two points, jutting forward. The delicate flowers of her dress did not suit her. I pictured her in high-buttoned sweaters covering shirts with peter pan collars. I doubt an earring ever dangled freely near her. Probably the first one in the church to bring food, kindness, and sustenance to the poor. But I wondered what it must be like to put the shoes on the other side of her bed. I shuddered.

My thoughts must have read; the woman to my right looked down.

"Well, yes, dear, I suppose they are..." I looked down at my food, which seemed to have that gravy again.

The sigh of the ages came from her soul, and she said, "My family has been in the same county for five generations, and our roots are proud.  I suppose your people are all from the North?"

"Well, yes. The Mayflower, in fact." I felt my hackles rising. "I see you are married. Do you have children or grandchildren?" I noticed she was older than I thought,  more likely in her mid-fifties.

"Why would you think I am old enough for that?" The tone was biting. The woman to my right snorted. I had no time to even try to apologize. "You Yankees do take liberties. No civil lady would say such a thing to a stranger, but you ARE a Yankee. You all ... well.  Let's just say that you all have been privileged to live with more ease that we have."

Still retaining my rapier wit from the previous day, I said, "Huh?"

Her lips had essentially disappeared and I was a little afraid of that hair.  "Well. We never did have a chance to recover like you all, after the war. After what happened."

Okay... I looked at her. Maybe she was older than my sister, and remembered more about the War than my sister did. "Did you have some sort of munitions plant in West Virginia? Or fighter plane factory or something? Did everyone lose their jobs?"

I got a furious stare for a moment, with which helmet-hair lady began to assiduously decimate her food with the tip of her knife.

I silently pleaded for help to my right, and  "The Civil War" she whispered.

All I could think of to say, was a ten-year-old's comeback. "You sure don't look that old." Fortunately, I didn't. But I'd had enough, ate in silence, avoiding the woman's glare, and I bolted as soon as I could. I'd had enough verses of this particular Song of the South.

 ******
Antietam was the next day's appropriate destination; I don't think I had ever appreciated that war more. You cannot see that place without being grabbed in the throat. Row after row after row of crosses.

... after that? North toward home — no matter what lay ahead — was my sudden, unexpectedly longed-for star.

Where We Head When We Heal

Prism Women ©2002
Tucked in dark corners to collect dust
What are prisms but broken glass?

Yet strung gleaming, spinning in the light?
    Sun-dancers
    Diamond-catchers
    Rainbow-throwers.
Every shining cut casts the spectrum,
Each twirl offers a rainbow dance.

Then our gray days spin wonder.
Each polished cut hordes our light
To toss, teasing with every turn.

The trick to being a prism is to face the light,
Polish all the cuts,
Then let the magic happen.


†††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††

This may be kind of short tonight.  It's strange when the old ways no longer work. I have allowed my heart to be completely accessible for the first time in my life, having saved some part of it to come out again when  I thought I would be safe at last.  Turns out that I was mistaken, and that my heart was even less safe with him.  And with having every corner of my life vulnerable, this particular misstep on my part has taken a toll.

We can, as I said, reach a wall and feel there is nothing left.  And I don't know that I can find a way to keep my home. And I really have no idea how I will make a living at all, and the disability application process is appallingly slow--I've been through it twice before. I worked my way off it twice before. Not this time.

I think that this is where it is all so hard. I've reached the end of my back's getting better.  And losing my home ... I can't even talk about that fear.  And losing the career that I worked so  hard to create, the career that my central nervous system could handle for so long.  At this time of life, it is hard to create another. To have no retirement. To have no health insurance within the next three months. Possibly to lose one's home.

This, my friends, is why this man's desertion, his betrayal hurts to the core and has had such an impact.  It was the hope he created that is the hardest to lose. No hope is better than false hope. I was foolish; he was worse. But it's the timing of the thing, that has made it so very hard. It's done; he's gone. Faster than he arrived he's done. And I have to get on with this life.

Then I thought about my friends, my "laundry eagles" who are hovering around me now, closing ranks. The flock is here. They call; they send notes. They let me know I am better than any man who would betray and leave me. They tell me all the things to make me remember I'm whole. We talk about Christmas and children and chocolate. We laugh about nothing at all. They make me remember to shine, these women. All by myself, to shine.

The strength of their love begins to sink in. They tell me he's stupid to leave, that he's weak and he's blind if he cannot see he's left the best woman behind. And I smile. These are not things that I say to myself, they are things I find hard to believe. They tell me I'll find a way to fly, to earn my own way, to do anything I want. My friends think I will soar. They think that I am better than I ever believe of myself.

That's what women do, when the men feed and just leave. We close ranks. We lift one another up, put her on a pedestal and unabashedly worship while she heals. I turned 50 in 2002, and it was a difficult year... among difficult years. One of my friends, when she read this poem said, "Well, that's the thing Jetty. You have so many cuts, you are the brightest prism of the bunch." Lucky me ... or maybe I am. Too soon to feel that just yet.

My women friends are busy polishing just now. This newest cut is so sharp and so new, they are busy polishing the sides, smoothing the edge so that I stop cutting myself in all this pain. They won't let me go back into hiding, I'm afraid. They keep drawing me out, reminding me that I will always have a home, or perhaps I'll have twelve and just move from place to place. The Gypsy Jet, they call her. I offer to take my tambourine. We laugh and for moments at a time, I forget the ache, and just be.

And here is this heart of mine, that he so carefully drew out, looked at from every direction, kissed, held, promised to cherish for life... and kicked to the side of the road. Here it is. And now I have written about putting it away. Tying the whole mess up in a box and throwing in a closet. I did that with the horrors for years, the ones I have only hinted at yet. I did it before, like an artist. I could reduce a memory to a bit of tissue and stuff it where I could not see or feel or hear or taste the pain, where it was dead to me. I am an expert at stuffing the pain.  And that's what I'd done with this man before, this love of my life. I stuck him far away so I barely remembered his name. And here I am again, ready to put it all away.

Only now I don't know how.

I have lost the ability to hide. I have lost the knack with turning the phrase to make what is poison palatable. I think to put all those parts back in a box would kill something more precious still. He woke up all this love in me, all this sparkling faith that life could be good.  He said he wanted just to make it so I would not have to worry, so that I could get up every day and CHOOSE to write or to paint, without having to worry about keeping my home. Such a pretty wish from him. Yes. There is bitterness here... but there's something else I've not named.

Perhaps the only way I can salvage my soul from the damage is to keep that sparkling heart. I loved without conditions, without artifice. For once in my life I did not hold back, I did not pretend, I lived in each moment with him.

The cut that he made is so deep in this newly revealed heart, this child's soul who finally came out to dance. He cut her; I bleed. But the women work on just the same. She is not doing too well, but I think... I think perhaps ... she has a name to me, a child in me, the part I would let no one see. I think I must let her stay here.

Little Rita has come out at last. The quiet, somber, big-eyed child who sat up with the dying,
who turned on her brother when he did his worst,  and simply asked him, "WHY?" So he ran.
who dropped the knife, choosing not to attack her attacker,
who closed her sister's eyes.

This child came out for this man who is gone. She slipped her hand in his, one sunny afternoon, certain of his love, of his honesty, certain that this man was her home. She had waited for him to come back; and he did. Never once did she think he would leave ... again. And this tiny child, with the strength of the mighty has, for the first time in my life, been walking through my life with me for six weeks. Since the first time he was here, when she came out only twice, she's appeared only when I needed strength to walk with grace through times when I had none to give. She would come. But mostly she stayed in the shadows, rarely daring to come out just to breathe. I have loved having her out. She does different things with paint. She takes no crap from him or anyone at all. Rita dances without moving at all.

And now she's been ripped open again.

But something's changed; I tried to start putting her back into that box, to that cold, gray place, she shouted me down. She clung to my dress. She begged me to stay with the lights. I told her I didn't want her to hurt any more, that we just can't take the pain, but she made me turn and look.

"LOOK AT THE LIGHTS!" My little girl screamed and I turned and I saw and I cried.

Paige, Martha, Judy, Andrea, Laura, Sue, Linda, Sue G., Nancy, Ann, Gail, Martha L.,

Came the Dozen, Dancing
Twirling, laughing, throwing rainbows every where...
skipping toward us
with tea and with cookies,
with puff quilts and stories,
with hairbrushes and pillows,
coming toward us with nothing but love.

I think I need Rita with me now. I think I need to not stuff one single thing anywhere at all. For the first time in my life, there are no secrets left.

And I am terrified.
And I am heart-broken.
And I am weary to beneath my core.
I am revealed.
I cannot allow his abandonment to cover this newest light.
The women will polish,
But we are finally whole.
No matter what the pain ahead, or loss.
No matter where we make our home,
The women will help us heal.
 ... and we will dance rainbows at last.

Lessons from Dehydration, stress, and exhaustion

When your electrolytes get whacked, so does your personality.  When you have been emotionally battered, you do not function well.  When you do not sleep, you probably should oughta just pack it in.

It is only a day later, but some of the fluids and electrolytes have been replaced and that is helping.  Thanks for the messages of concern. It has been a very scary week, and, while the corner's been turned in terms of immediate concern, it will still be a while before I can put more than, oh, four coherent thoughts together.

So far the lessons learned are not pleasant. And I want this blog to be more about what happens AFTER you learn the nasty stuff.  It isn't my nature to be bitter. Or to scream. I've done both this week, so I think I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other and root around the house until I uncover my brain.

I think, though... I THINK that the back's stabilizing again and that is wonderful news. Later

Illness: Temporarily down

As any of you may have realized from the last two deleted entries, I am not well.

Have become worse and will return when and if I can. Thank you.

Today is Better

Phoenix  © 1992, 2009
No room for desperation in the ruins of my heart;
I must be strong.
I am strong from my core that holds my infinite flame;
I have a flame.

It holds passions beyond desire.
Beyond ruins of tortured body,
I am more beautiful than Hippolyta;
I have the Amazon soul.

No room for desperation in this soul where burns my flame;
Only love.
From love born in faith in beauty beyond mirrors;
I see only light.

My soul has no need for mirrors.
It spreads joy,
without begging for a feeding of the flame.
My soul is no stranger to waiting;

It can dance by itself.

I am the patience of mountains;
with my flame, from my soul, I can wait.
I have seen this soul; it is worth the wait.
From the ruins it rises, whole.




Born July 25, 1992, She rises again, today.




I wrote this the day after I confronted my ex-husband about the fact that I had figured out that he was leaving me, not thinking about it.  He was busy running around fixing exterior lights.  I had asked him to go to the Home Depot to get an indoors ladder the day before. He fought me about it, saying I would kill myself on it. I looked at him and half-smiled, saying, "You won't though."

He came home without one, saying, "They didn't have any."  Our son was en route to Indiana, to go back to school. Jessie was still working, still home for another two weeks.

I went into the basement and saw him busy trying to fix something I'd asked him about for weeks--and replacing ALL the ceiling lights.  "Fixing the lights will not keep me all safe and Fine when you leave. You ARE leaving, right?"

He turned and blanched. He began to shake. "Yes."

"You had no intention to stay, to work on things."

"No. But I'm moving into Jay's room down here, so you can get acclimated."

"ACCLIMATED?" I screamed. Next to me was the Hoover Upright, Beats as It Sweeps. Mind you, I was fresh out of the hospital for my tenth round of back crap. I picked it up with one hand, and then with both, I THREW It at him.

He looked so surprised when he caught it.

That was the one moment of laughter in two months of hell, but laugh we did.

And then I went straight to a friend's house, with the words, "Be sure you've figured out where you are going to live when I com back." Not a problem, since he'd already  moved his girlfriend into her own apartment.

But I wrote this poem when I came home the next day. I turned some sort of a corner and was resolved. I felt I was stronger in my pinky finger, than he was in his whole being, and I started to plan. I enrolled in the classes I'd wanted, regardless of my circumstances.  I took steps to make sure I'd be okay for a while. I was determined to succeed, to fly despite the SOB.

And I did... I flew.

Yesterday was difficult, beyond words. Primarily I felt afraid of where I may wind up. Of whether I will find financial solutions in time. Of whether or not my latest DOWN-tick with my back will level off for some years. Afraid that the beginnings of an awakening for this woman's heart (Dormant for ten years, hiding for far longer) would fizzle into nothing again. Oh, hell. Fear is fear is fear.,

I was simply stone-cold, paralyzed with fear. I am not going to make it pretty or worry about the sound of that. It was numbing and horrible.

But by midnight, so much was better. So much. Words from friends. Words from a couple of readers. And some strange resolve inside. I found the poem at 2:00 a.m. This poem from another time, another era. Yet it has been something I have returned to at other times, the losses of Jessie, my nephew, my brother, two of my dearest friends, and my sister. When I have once before thought I would lose everything and a friend gave me enough of a lifeline to be able to breathe, to think.

I return to the Phoenix and Hippolyta. Rising from ashes, whole... and the strength of a mighty woman. I never longed to be a sylph, even when our image of  beauty was a model named Twiggy, all bone and eyes. Nope Not for me. I wanted to be STRONG. I wanted to stand tall, but be, most definitely, a woman.

I read this poem aloud, there in the dark, perhaps three times. Perhaps more. Don't know, don't care.

Today is better.

There are no answers today. All that has changed is me.  Perhaps that's all that needs to change.

Jeannette's Wild Life: Part 923.7

I was going to say that here and there life takes a new turn, but when I look at my life, that seems a tad absurd. For me? Here and there life moves straight forward...

I am inserting something here, so you realize that I DO love life. I have learned along the way... And I will continue to learn. Without writing, art, music, friends? Yeah, all this would be bleak, but this entry is about learning to write WHILE I process, not just afterward. And I hope that more than "Ain't it awful?" comes through. It IS awful, but life is hard sometimes. And what I want more than anything is to burst through, like a phoenix, on the other side.


Thank you so much to those of you who have written to say you missed my writing. When you read of what is going on for me, you may realize, I hope, just how grateful I am to know that my writing and my heart touch some people out there.  That my style of expressing myself resonates.

I will write again that my blog is not so much about trying to gather a following as it about trying on my voice. My dream is to write my memoir. (Okay, so one of my 150 dreams, but who's counting!) My passions are writing for "myself" --the blog, poetry, and even working on some fiction again--and painting/drawing. And singing. I don't think I have mentioned that  I sing. I was in three choruses at one point, and I also have always loved singing folk/folk rock/country rock... Oh, seventies stuff, basically. I am lucky that I love so many things, but sometimes it has felt that obstacles were overwhelming.

I'm sharing the story of my health here to simply talk about how things truly are. I am so tired of pretending I'm stronger than I am. Part of my story is who I am now, not just my past. There may be suggestions for work, for opportunities, or simple words of support, just as you have already given.

You all have been wonderful to me; my friends know my health and where it trips me up and where, now it has slammed me upside the head with a plank.

Indulge me, if you want. Feel free to stop half way through and run screaming into the night!

The Long Road Here – the lesser of ten evils

About five years ago I got the shingles on my auditory nerve, right where it touches the trigeminal nerve to my face. It set up a response that never went. Certain frequencies set up vibrations which overstimulate the trigeminal nerve in the right side of my face. I will get horrifyingly sharp pain in my face that makes it twitch and it looks to others, as if I am having a seizure or a stroke. Then my face goes numb and droops. When sopranos sing I run for cover. I cannot listen to live orchestra music. It ended the part of my life that had given me the most joy--becoming part of the greater whole, that ONLY being part of an ensemble brings. Blending in a chorus allows us to lose our sense of self and become something that simply soars.

And just like that, the music I had was gone. I knew no one with whom I could sing the other stuff, but that's a different joy. Until the last few weeks, I thought that was the only one of my passions, however, at risk. And I had found a way to replace that loss with painting...

The Big Stuff

Then there is my back. I had eight back operations in four years, back between 1980 and 1984. I have spinal cord damage. I had scar tissue and disk fragments in the spinal canal. Once you need to actually intrude on the canal? It's all a crap shoot. I had one of the top five surgeons in the country do the last five operations. His replacement was in on the last operation, the ninth, in 1986, two and a half months before my dad died. I was told I'd likely be dead or wheelchair bound by forty. I am fifty-seven. I walk... kind of.  I walk enough, let's just say. NO. I walk AT ALL. It is everything.

I have been on disability twice, and both times I worked my way off of it. I created a career from scratch when my husband left me in 1992, one month after a tenth procedure...

I learned to use a computer and was a computer graphics/layout artist for about eight years.  I learned how to draw maps and convert CAD drawings. I did pen and ink thumbnail sketches for brochures and special tourist catalogs, would scan them ... and I had the opportunity to write FOR MONEY. Woo HOOOOOO! I wrote the history of the area in which I lived for a visitors' guide and did about seven or eight pen and ink illustrations for it. I was able to work partly at home, partly at an office and gradually found a way around a body that, basically functioned in one to one and a half hour "upright bites."

When I wrote or drew, I set an alarm at home for an hour, after which I would wrap up what I did, then literally lie down for forty-five minutes before I began again. That way I could put in an eight hour day over the course of twelve or fourteen hours. Mostly I worked no more than six hours that way.  On the days I went into an office, I did my best to work four hours straight. It hurt. Once in a while I could do more. But it was okay because I could rest most of the next day. The trick was to command enough money per hour, eventually, so that I could earn a living without working full time.

It took me until 2002 to succeed fully. I was thrown off of Disability before then, but when I finally got to work for Stanford? When I got my first big contract from them, while I was still doing a bit of design work here and there, I felt as if the world was opening up for me. I was paid to go to California, to do consultant work. And I wrote. That wound up being all I did. I got the commitment because, in a crisis, I was able to dive in and take over the graphics component and do the layout for their print catalog, at a distance of 3000 miles. I was fine about just pitching in when their graphics artist took a vacation at a critical time. Stanford saw that I didn't think of them as a client--that I treated them as if I were part of a team, and I began to get huge contracts. Huge for me. At that moment, too, I realized that I was a writer who could design, rather than a designer who could write.

That's crucial. It tells you about who Jeannette is. I am a science geek. A groupie. To me, interviewing Donald Knuth, Bob Twiggs, Dan Boneh--giants in their fields of computer programming, aeronautics, and computer security--and writing about their work was like writing about rock stars. So I got to write about other people's passions, indulge my inner geek, AND get paid? Wow. I was living an old dream, earning my living as a writer. How proud my folks would have been, particularly my dad... the one who knew I was not destined for nine to five.

Okay – Here it Is, the Unforeseen Toll

What I did not see? Through the years, inch by inch, that alarm clock had to go off sooner. It went from an hour and a half, to an hour, to forty-five minutes... When I stood for more than ten minutes, somehow or other I had to find a wall to lean against, a table to hold onto... When I grocery shopped, I would lean fully forward to support myself on the cart as I walked, and the stores seemed to get awfully large during just one shopping.  The pain increased.

By 2004, though, my contracts fully supported me. And I was singing, which mitigated the pain.  I felt something was missing, but I didn't know what, exactly... and then things turned. The shingles hit in March of 2004 and nothing was the same again. I had vertigo. I could not even hear a phone ring without setting off the facial nerve. Yet I continued to work, writing and writing for Stanford. I could not sing. I stopped my poetry. I could not listen to any music at all. My sister was getting stranger and sort of drifting off, but was pretending she was well. And I couldn't figure out why my legs would get shaky.

I wrote it off to stress. Ever notice how easily we can say, oh stress makes me nuts. I mean, it DOES. But sometimes we need to give ourselves some attention beyond that. I'm a good one for feeling that I am not tough enough. In 2005, the autumn I had three things happen at once. I like this in life. I believe if it's all going to hit the fan, hey, throw it all at once. Why lose the opportunity for the drama? I had chest pains, I started falling for no reason, and I had blood appearing in odd places.

Oh. And my sister had started staying in her room in the other half of her house, for days on end, speaking to no one, and coming out of it only to use the kitchen, or walk through my half to go to the store or to her friend's house to do laundry. (Had to get to the garage by going through my house.) We thought I had heart problems. My heart rate was out of control. Fortunately, my doctor thought to check my abdomen and we found that my gall bladder was shot. And I had the precursors to ulcers.

And my spinal canal problems had shockingly deteriorated in the three years between MRIs. And the problems of trigeminal neuralgia and the vertigo from the shingles? They never went away.

We fixed the gall bladder and I made changes for other digestive situations through that autumn and up until Two weeks before Christmas. I was in PT to go through my second round of training new nerves to move my right leg, to learn how to walk. This set of nerves really doesn't like it all that much, but it works enough.

And I realized that my sister had done nothing for Christmas. Just as I had when my dad was dying, I took over to make our traditions happen. And after Christmas my sister fell apart and was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Okay, Your path is winding,
but where the bleep are you going here?

Why am I saying all this? I never was able to work regularly again. Sporadically, yes, but I had to put myself on medical then  the kind of leave where you take care of a dying parent. My sister died on August 31, 2006. My son moved into her part of the house the following year. It took me nine months to clean up the mess. It was not her fault. Not even remotely. Her cancer had infected her brain and we'll leave that story for another time.

I had some more work from Stanford, some isolated illustrations, but I had a lot to look after and had to recover from the roller coaster that began with shingles. And I had had no time to truly understand the problem in my spine.  I have bits of calcified scar tissue and disk fragments floating in the spinal canal. They move around and rest at horrible places. I had been in pain for decades, but nothing like this. And various parts of me will suddenly not function properly. I also got bitten IN THE HAND--left--by a dog and have some minor residual damage in that hand. And I have the pain in my face that can be set off even today by a backfiring car, the microwave, occasionally the phone. I had to figure out what to do.

Why the detail? I think it's to eliminate the notion that there is anything medical left to consider, to make it plain that what is happening  now is the best that things physically will be. I must accept it, then find my ways around it.

You all know I created the studio. And I had planned out my wonderful art workshops, but the neighborhood blew that. THEN, miracle of miracles, Stanford called. They NEEDED me. Well, of COURSE I could do that. And I dove in, feeling I had been rescued. it was my lifeline, I thought.

In the past three weeks, I had to face the painful, terrifying truth that I cannot do this any more. That alarm clock? I really should not work at the computer for more than 25 minutes at a time now. Sitting or standing, it's the same from my back's point of view. I can stand for about a minute before the throbbing and swelling set in. If I have support I can go further and longer. When I walk on a hard surface, after about 100 steps, the foot begins to flop and I walke around swinging the leg, saying, "ARRR, maties." One day when I was "running" into Walgreen's to grab a few things, the leg didn't work and I realized I was singing, OUTLOUD from a sixties series, "They call her FLipper, Flipper, slower than honey..."

Yeah. Well. I think in television theme  and seventies hippie songs, and that's life. Deal.

It never occurred to me that more than my legs were affected. But I found that pain set up a neurological haze through which I just could not focus for long... not and access the right brain. I found that because that alarm clock of pain for sitting was so compromised, I spent too much time resting, then had to catch  up. I forced myself to focus those forty-five minutes at a clip and for the first three or four pieces, I was great. And I still had a talent for interviewing. People relax and, after about twenty minutes, the really cool stuff happens. They get off the PR line, their set ways of presenting themselves. But the toll was building. I try not to take my medication when I need to write, because there IS that half hour window when I am a touch loopy. It is best to be lying down, and to let it do what it is supposed to. After that, though I'm fine and I paint, I often do my best poetry and right brain work.

But for the work that has supported me, I found I could not organize the thoughts well. It took me a long time to get back INTO where I was going. And the pain was building. And suddenly, because of blasting and work that made my house literally vibrate, the calcified fragments moved. One day my right hand got tingly and went numb. I had trouble moving my two last fingers... Now, mind you, because of the dog bite on my left  hand, every ten minutes or so, I will suddenly raise my left arm and shake my hand. The last three fingers get super tingly and when I do that, and flex them and such for no more than thirty seconds, then they are fine again... for ten minutes.

But it didn't work on my right hand. And the pain...

The fragments shifted again and now my arm is okay, but it took nine days for it to return to normal. The horrifying truth was that I no longer could be relied on to meet my deadlines. The problems in my spine are too unpredictable. the pain is too severe. I had to let go, yet again, of something that might have supported me.

There are no solutions for my back. I have beaten all the odds the doctors know. As the last one said, "I think you know your body better than any of us. You are a walking miracle and if any surgeon tells you he or she can fix this? RUN, limp, or CRAWL out. Don't let anyone open up that spine again, unless it is life and death. I am serious."

What Now?
Haven't a Clue, Except I Have to Write

That's why I haven't written. For a few days I couldn't. Then I just did not know how to deal with it. I don't know how to, still. It is all too raw.

Why tell you all? Why not? If my blog is about writing from the heart, writing the truths of my life, well, why not do it? I haven't the objectivity to edit this all, yet, but so what? For once, right here, as I am today, I can share all of it with you. There is no shame, no guilt to this. There's nothing that I have to worry about saying because it is  public.

Sometimes simply writing it down makes it real. To move into full-blown hope, first we have to understand our reality. I process all things by writing. This time I am experimenting by doing that with all of you. This time I am trying to fold it into what I already do.

I hope you will all hang with me on this blog.  I still want to paint, to tutor and to write my memoir. A lot that has happened in my life has made me strong, has given me hope, has made me know that life is something onto which you grab and really hang on. It is a wild, roller coaster ride through a jungle, into space, under the sea, and around again. I wouldn't miss a moment.

Only just now? It sucks. There. How eloquent. How refined. It does. I need to find a way to support myself, but I also want to write my story. My mom's story. A story about a family that was big and loud and completely dysfuntional and overflowing with equally boisterous unconditional love, joy and magic. THAT is my life's work and I need to find a way to do it. My parents' story, our family seen through the eyes of Jetty. Jetty was my family's nickname for me, the baby.

I am all who is left.

The Blog, for ME
This blog is my way to bridge my life between the struggle and the dream.  I usually try not to write about my crises while I am in them, but I could wait a long time before this one's done. And, while you will not see me writing much about this again, I can write about other things. I have perspective on my family, on my history in childhood. And I have not lost my love of... pluots? And all things visceral, messy, juicy, and joyous.

But I hurt. I hurt a lot. And I am afraid. Why wouldn't I be? To deny that it is scary to be without work, without new funds, to be facing possibly losing this home I love? Yeah. That's big stuff. I finally have a studio and may lose it within six months. Yet I have to focus elsewhere. I need to believe that the writer and the painter and the woman who loves life and all it brings will find answers.

But I will tenaciously cling to the hope that I can write my way out of the rest. Love my way. Paint my way. Tutor my way. ALL of them

Okay. this long ramble is done.

And I'll be running around looking at and commenting on your blogs soon. Bless you all for giving me your support, your concern. It means more than I know how to say.  We are strangers to one another, yet we all speak through words or pictures or both, to one another in intimate, profound ways.

In the meantime I will do my version of prayer. I will still the cacophony in my head and I will breathe. I will ask only for the calm, and for the wide open heart, ears, and eyes to feel, hear, and/or see solutions as they are offered to me.

And I will see whether or not this first for me, helps... It's standing  on the edges of things and opening my arms wide and trusting that I will not fall. Simply trusting.

Small PS

One of my closest friends told me I should simply write from my heart and offer it here. He said that I just don't know what good will come of it. He is prejudiced, of course, but just because he loves me does not mean he is WRONG! Thank you. Already, just putting it out there, helps. You were right.