give you all a sense of what matters most to you in this life...
give you some joy--that balanced place where there is an awareness of what is not right with the world, but which lets you feel the wonder of what IS right.
offer you love, both in the receiving of it as well as the giving, in whatever way YOU choose to observe or NOT observe the holidays of this season.
let you know that who each of you may be as an individual in your own right is appreciated and cherished--not for what you have done for people or bring to them in the form of gifts, so much as simply because you are who you are walking and breathing in this world.
And to those with whom there has been friction in my life, if you still read this blog, please know that I don't much care about that friction. I don't much care about our mistakes. I care that you know you are loved and appreciated for all that you are. The flipside of our strengths often hold our weaknesses, mine included.
... for some it is far too soon for healing. May you know in Newtown and the Connecticut and New Jersey and New York shorlines, that you are in myriad hearts this year, and you will continue to be for a very long time to come.
Thank you to all for your support and your wit and your humor and your own blogs.
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Monday, December 24, 2012
Saturday, December 15, 2012
I need to Think of Christmas Today...
It would be easy to sit here and talk about the massacre in Newtown, on the other end of my state. I won't do that, however. Sometimes I think it is important to focus on the wealth of people I have in my life right now. These women of whom I have spoken for so long.
Many of them will be with me this Christmas Eve, in little more than a week. One of them will be picking me up to go out to breakfast on Monday. I've written to or spoken with others since yesterday afternoon.
Regardless, did I ever talk about Jean Ellen's and my tradition of Christmas Eve Eve? These women have all been a part of that, too, back when my sister was alive. It began in 1976, I believe, when I was 24 and unmarried myself. Jean Ellen was 32. We had many friends who were married and frantic that time, or who would be off to family elsewhere for Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day.
Along around the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, Jean Ellen and I were talking one morning about how relieved we both were to be free of Thanksgiving. We lived together at the time and took turns cookie baking for the excess of the coming season. I would start. You see, you can make Russian teacakes and Spritz cookies a month before Christmas, seal them tightly, and they taste fresh whenever you open the container. They have no leavening, and it turns out that this is the crucial ingredient that makes most cookies have a shelf life of a week, and only then if they are sealed very tightly. We also knew that we could freeze doughs ahead and the cookies would be fine, but we were picky; we never froze baked cookies themselves. They change texture.
I hope you all have written that down; it's terribly important.
I started talking about how I felt bad for Andrea, Solange, and Carol because they had all three SO much to do and so little time to actually enjoy Christmas as we did.
Jean Ellen agreed and then pointed out how we so seldom got to enjoy other single friends at Christmas because they went to relatives.
I said, "There should be a Christmas Eve Eve just for women who never get their own time."
Jean Ellen said, "Let's DO IT. Let's bake cookies enough to give to all of them because they say they never get to bake... and have our own Christmas for our friends."
"Yeah, and we can make them wear hats and white gloves, like a Victorian ladies night," I said, kidding. But I saw the evil glint in my sister's eyes. "I can get the gloves..."
"We can leave out the hats, but I will make invitations."
And so it was born. That first night we lined the chairs along the walls and Jean Ellen made the most hideous cake I have ever seen. It would taste perfect, but it was a hideous swirl of green, yellow, purple, and GRAY buttercream frosting. We baked thirteen types of cookies, storing them in their separate tins. Another reason our cookies reigned supreme in the season. We NEVER made up the mixed plates until no more than two hours before the event. Even then, we separately wrapped the spice and ginger cookies, and the more cake-like cookies. The flavors and textures remained true for longer that way. It took an HOUR to prepare the ten plates of cookies.
We also offered liqueurs. Our friends told us it was the first Christmas they had had in at least five to ten years where they felt like kids again. The white gloves came off when we served the grotesque cake. It was fun; we play-acted our Victorian roles for at least fifteen minutes until ANDREA got the giggles and blew the whole deal.
For the next thirty-two years unbroken we did this. When I got married, it remained at Jean Ellen's apartment, but when my folks passed away, Christmas Eve moved to my place. Somewhere along the line they ongoing saga of "Kangarella" was born. A stick Gumby-like bendy kangaroo was given to me, and the most revolting handbag to my sister. Hers was a picnic basket that looked like the victim of a mad child's camp project. Straw that was sprayed with gilt, festooned with equally gilded vines and rosettes. It had a gilded wooden top, and the handle was made of frayed intertwined vines, guilted so that even the frayed threads were solid prickers. My present had been wrapped in bubble gum pink grass paper wall paper with pink gauze for ribbon. Why? Because I LOATHE bubblegum pink.
The true Christmas spirit always prevailed. My sister was an artist, and her pocketbook was an assault on the senses. If the present turns up this Christmas Eve, I shall photograph it... AND include... Oops. I'm ahead of myself.
I immediately wrapped Kangarella, as I named her, in the gauze and Jean Ellen shouted, "She has a home!" And we popped K. into the pocketbook, and thus a tradition was born. I wrote an involved tale about the dear creature, and found a tiny Barbie handbag as hideous as her home. I believe I had a small picture of Paris, too, and wrote of her trip to that city in the year that followed, and gave the whole thing to another friend--the giver of the bag, with love from Jean Ellen and me. Mary gave it to someone else, with additions to Kangarella and her home, as well as an addition to the story. From then on, it's been given from one woman to another in our group, complete with the story. When Gail was married in the 1990s, she no longer came for Christmas Eve Eve, just on the Eve itself. So she did not know the story. But when my sister passed away, we who remained could not cope with doing the Eve Eve.
I asked whether everyone would come to Christmas Eve instead, and they did. And on that Christmas Eve, we gave Kangarella to Gail. She and her daughter continued the tradition together, adding to it all. The story is four pages long now, in the various handwriting, all in its original form. I don't know who has her. I don't care. It will pop up again when whoever has it is so moved.
Some of the women are gone: Solange, Mary, Andrea, Carol, and others. Andrea is the only one of those four who remains extremely close. But there are new women now, and we join together here for Christmas Eve. And my tree is full of other silly ornaments--a hooker flamingo, Santa on a Chicken, a blown glass blue hippo given to Jean Ellen, A wooden flamingo with legs that were hung backwards. When Gail found this on vacation, the clerk said to her, "Oh, dear! This seems to be made wrong! Shall I get you another?"
"Oh, no, it's PERFECT. It's for my best friend," said Gail, gleefully, as she tells it.
The clerk looked at her horrified. "You say this is for someone you like?"
"I LOVE HER!"And she laughed maniacally, as only Gail can.
"I see," said the clerk and Gail said the woman could not look her in the eye.
"I DO get her other things, really. Lovely things. She'll love this."
But the woman wouldn't look at her.
At my house, Christmas Eve is mostly about laughing with each other. It's about being together after another year of whatever troubles we've had to endure. My son comes for a while, to laugh AT us, to be with Adam and Claire, and to hug me before he runs off to be with his dad. But mostly, for the main part of the afternoon and evening, it is a group of women–and my nephew Adam, who simply need to be together. I feel for Adam sometimes, but he says he wouldn't be anywhere else. He and Claire often go to the "family room" (my studio room) to be away from us, but they float back. And Paige is married now and Don's a good sport to come, too. In fact, he WANTS to come. He is Jewish, and he hated Christmas with his first wife. It just felt like greed to him. But he feels that he understands more about the joy of it all because of our Christmas Eves.
That makes me remember that my family did some things very, very right. And I miss them around now, but I bring them back in the season. I bring them back at their best to cope with the tragedies, or the poverty I've had at times, or the pain. I bring them back at their best for the good times, the Christmas Eves when none of us have had to endure some calamity or other.
I need those memories this year all the more. And I need to love all these wonderful women--those who are near, those who are not--out loud and with excess. As I need to love those few men in my life as well. I wish that I had more male friends. I have my son, I have Adam, I have my nephew Justin. I have David, my scientist-drummer who introduced me to the Jersey shore. I never see him, but we remain connected. And I have Jeffrey, who was my sister's dear friend, who gave me two years of a personal trainer and saved my back and legs. Jeffrey, who, after my sister died, discovered that he and I could become closer friends than he and my sister were. She was more like a mother to him, he said. But he and I? He is the little brother I never had, and I the big sister he wished he'd had.
One day financial poverty will return. I know this. For now, however, all is well economically. How can I NOT be grateful. And one thing I know, as I look at my tree and finish this: I am a multimillionaire in the friendships I have been given. In the friends who are now family to me in all the good things that that word SHOULD conjure for us: unconditional love, loyalty, generosity, comfort, and joy.
What happened yesterday is horrifying. Yet I MUST keep my heart and my eye on the beauty that is all around me. I can keep that community in my heart and my thoughts/prayers. But I need to remember what is good, what is joyous, what is sweet beyond reason in this life.
I hope all of you--you who for whatever reason keep visiting me when I post, have reason to find joy through the sadness, too. That, whether or not you celebrate or like Christmas, you have people you love and who love you.
I know I never seem to blog on a regular basis. I'll never have a blog that breaks records for anything but wordiness! But I think I have a life that breaks LOTS of records for wealth that has nothing to do with money, and beauty that has nothing to do with mirrors or what we can see.
Til next time...
Many of them will be with me this Christmas Eve, in little more than a week. One of them will be picking me up to go out to breakfast on Monday. I've written to or spoken with others since yesterday afternoon.
Regardless, did I ever talk about Jean Ellen's and my tradition of Christmas Eve Eve? These women have all been a part of that, too, back when my sister was alive. It began in 1976, I believe, when I was 24 and unmarried myself. Jean Ellen was 32. We had many friends who were married and frantic that time, or who would be off to family elsewhere for Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day.
Along around the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, Jean Ellen and I were talking one morning about how relieved we both were to be free of Thanksgiving. We lived together at the time and took turns cookie baking for the excess of the coming season. I would start. You see, you can make Russian teacakes and Spritz cookies a month before Christmas, seal them tightly, and they taste fresh whenever you open the container. They have no leavening, and it turns out that this is the crucial ingredient that makes most cookies have a shelf life of a week, and only then if they are sealed very tightly. We also knew that we could freeze doughs ahead and the cookies would be fine, but we were picky; we never froze baked cookies themselves. They change texture.
I hope you all have written that down; it's terribly important.
I started talking about how I felt bad for Andrea, Solange, and Carol because they had all three SO much to do and so little time to actually enjoy Christmas as we did.
Jean Ellen agreed and then pointed out how we so seldom got to enjoy other single friends at Christmas because they went to relatives.
I said, "There should be a Christmas Eve Eve just for women who never get their own time."
Jean Ellen said, "Let's DO IT. Let's bake cookies enough to give to all of them because they say they never get to bake... and have our own Christmas for our friends."
"Yeah, and we can make them wear hats and white gloves, like a Victorian ladies night," I said, kidding. But I saw the evil glint in my sister's eyes. "I can get the gloves..."
"We can leave out the hats, but I will make invitations."
And so it was born. That first night we lined the chairs along the walls and Jean Ellen made the most hideous cake I have ever seen. It would taste perfect, but it was a hideous swirl of green, yellow, purple, and GRAY buttercream frosting. We baked thirteen types of cookies, storing them in their separate tins. Another reason our cookies reigned supreme in the season. We NEVER made up the mixed plates until no more than two hours before the event. Even then, we separately wrapped the spice and ginger cookies, and the more cake-like cookies. The flavors and textures remained true for longer that way. It took an HOUR to prepare the ten plates of cookies.
We also offered liqueurs. Our friends told us it was the first Christmas they had had in at least five to ten years where they felt like kids again. The white gloves came off when we served the grotesque cake. It was fun; we play-acted our Victorian roles for at least fifteen minutes until ANDREA got the giggles and blew the whole deal.
For the next thirty-two years unbroken we did this. When I got married, it remained at Jean Ellen's apartment, but when my folks passed away, Christmas Eve moved to my place. Somewhere along the line they ongoing saga of "Kangarella" was born. A stick Gumby-like bendy kangaroo was given to me, and the most revolting handbag to my sister. Hers was a picnic basket that looked like the victim of a mad child's camp project. Straw that was sprayed with gilt, festooned with equally gilded vines and rosettes. It had a gilded wooden top, and the handle was made of frayed intertwined vines, guilted so that even the frayed threads were solid prickers. My present had been wrapped in bubble gum pink grass paper wall paper with pink gauze for ribbon. Why? Because I LOATHE bubblegum pink.
The true Christmas spirit always prevailed. My sister was an artist, and her pocketbook was an assault on the senses. If the present turns up this Christmas Eve, I shall photograph it... AND include... Oops. I'm ahead of myself.
I immediately wrapped Kangarella, as I named her, in the gauze and Jean Ellen shouted, "She has a home!" And we popped K. into the pocketbook, and thus a tradition was born. I wrote an involved tale about the dear creature, and found a tiny Barbie handbag as hideous as her home. I believe I had a small picture of Paris, too, and wrote of her trip to that city in the year that followed, and gave the whole thing to another friend--the giver of the bag, with love from Jean Ellen and me. Mary gave it to someone else, with additions to Kangarella and her home, as well as an addition to the story. From then on, it's been given from one woman to another in our group, complete with the story. When Gail was married in the 1990s, she no longer came for Christmas Eve Eve, just on the Eve itself. So she did not know the story. But when my sister passed away, we who remained could not cope with doing the Eve Eve.
I asked whether everyone would come to Christmas Eve instead, and they did. And on that Christmas Eve, we gave Kangarella to Gail. She and her daughter continued the tradition together, adding to it all. The story is four pages long now, in the various handwriting, all in its original form. I don't know who has her. I don't care. It will pop up again when whoever has it is so moved.
Some of the women are gone: Solange, Mary, Andrea, Carol, and others. Andrea is the only one of those four who remains extremely close. But there are new women now, and we join together here for Christmas Eve. And my tree is full of other silly ornaments--a hooker flamingo, Santa on a Chicken, a blown glass blue hippo given to Jean Ellen, A wooden flamingo with legs that were hung backwards. When Gail found this on vacation, the clerk said to her, "Oh, dear! This seems to be made wrong! Shall I get you another?"
"Oh, no, it's PERFECT. It's for my best friend," said Gail, gleefully, as she tells it.
The clerk looked at her horrified. "You say this is for someone you like?"
"I LOVE HER!"And she laughed maniacally, as only Gail can.
"I see," said the clerk and Gail said the woman could not look her in the eye.
"I DO get her other things, really. Lovely things. She'll love this."
But the woman wouldn't look at her.
At my house, Christmas Eve is mostly about laughing with each other. It's about being together after another year of whatever troubles we've had to endure. My son comes for a while, to laugh AT us, to be with Adam and Claire, and to hug me before he runs off to be with his dad. But mostly, for the main part of the afternoon and evening, it is a group of women–and my nephew Adam, who simply need to be together. I feel for Adam sometimes, but he says he wouldn't be anywhere else. He and Claire often go to the "family room" (my studio room) to be away from us, but they float back. And Paige is married now and Don's a good sport to come, too. In fact, he WANTS to come. He is Jewish, and he hated Christmas with his first wife. It just felt like greed to him. But he feels that he understands more about the joy of it all because of our Christmas Eves.
That makes me remember that my family did some things very, very right. And I miss them around now, but I bring them back in the season. I bring them back at their best to cope with the tragedies, or the poverty I've had at times, or the pain. I bring them back at their best for the good times, the Christmas Eves when none of us have had to endure some calamity or other.
I need those memories this year all the more. And I need to love all these wonderful women--those who are near, those who are not--out loud and with excess. As I need to love those few men in my life as well. I wish that I had more male friends. I have my son, I have Adam, I have my nephew Justin. I have David, my scientist-drummer who introduced me to the Jersey shore. I never see him, but we remain connected. And I have Jeffrey, who was my sister's dear friend, who gave me two years of a personal trainer and saved my back and legs. Jeffrey, who, after my sister died, discovered that he and I could become closer friends than he and my sister were. She was more like a mother to him, he said. But he and I? He is the little brother I never had, and I the big sister he wished he'd had.
One day financial poverty will return. I know this. For now, however, all is well economically. How can I NOT be grateful. And one thing I know, as I look at my tree and finish this: I am a multimillionaire in the friendships I have been given. In the friends who are now family to me in all the good things that that word SHOULD conjure for us: unconditional love, loyalty, generosity, comfort, and joy.
What happened yesterday is horrifying. Yet I MUST keep my heart and my eye on the beauty that is all around me. I can keep that community in my heart and my thoughts/prayers. But I need to remember what is good, what is joyous, what is sweet beyond reason in this life.
I hope all of you--you who for whatever reason keep visiting me when I post, have reason to find joy through the sadness, too. That, whether or not you celebrate or like Christmas, you have people you love and who love you.
I know I never seem to blog on a regular basis. I'll never have a blog that breaks records for anything but wordiness! But I think I have a life that breaks LOTS of records for wealth that has nothing to do with money, and beauty that has nothing to do with mirrors or what we can see.
Til next time...
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Why It's Personal as Well as Wanting to Help
I used to run away to the Joisy shore. I love Sandy Hook, Red Bank, West Long Branch, Sea Bright. I met interesting people. I soothed my soul from terrible losses there.
So I am offering my three little blogs on the area here.
Red Bank I
Red Bank II
Red Bank III
And that will be the end of it for now. I am hoping that there will be a way for us all to figure out ways to help in the long-term. Federal, state, and local funding cannot possibly cover everything that will need to be re-built and re-bought for schools, community centers, mom and pop businesses and homes.
I only wish I had the know-how to form an enormous nonprofit. One that would be able to raise a whole lot of money up front and then continue to receive donations over the next year at least. I wish I could convince the nightly national news show to, in another three months, give a weekly update on rebuilding the devastated areas of the five or six states with the WORST damage. I wish that such an organization could have the "text this number for an instant ten bucks donation." An organization that could partner with various big stores that would give matching funds even for big gift cards that would be distributed to, oh, I don't know--schools and community organizations, or even individual families that are in long-term temporary houses.
I wish I had the money, the know how, the health to do something grand, but I don't. I am just Jeannette, living here in an apartment in the Land of Malls. I have my wonderful handful of readers who seem to find me even after I disappear for months. And my income is way below the poverty line--I'm just lucky because I sold my home and have some money in the bank. NO, I should not say that this is the only reason I am lucky. I am far luckier than that: so many dear friends both here, in person and now, out there in cyberspace, connections through my church community, a wonderful place to live in, and I am STILL walking, and I have GOOD healthcare through, yes, Medicare. I was without insurance for almost a year while I waited for disability. The ONLY insurance I could buy cost $1500/month, just for the premiums, and my out of pocket cost for appointments was $50.
So I am lucky. But how I wish I knew how to help beyond my small, small part. And I'll bet there are people all over who wish they could, too, just as we wanted to help with Katrina, with earthquakes on the other side of the world, with monsoons and hurricanes elsewhere. Now the USA needs help from all her citizens and anyone else.
And I do not know how to make more happen. I hope someone else WILL.
May you all be safe, have homes that remain in tact, and hug your loved ones REALLY close. Oops! My phone rang and my son is coming over to use my shower. Well, I can help there, can't I...
Love to you all.
So I am offering my three little blogs on the area here.
Red Bank I
Red Bank II
Red Bank III
And that will be the end of it for now. I am hoping that there will be a way for us all to figure out ways to help in the long-term. Federal, state, and local funding cannot possibly cover everything that will need to be re-built and re-bought for schools, community centers, mom and pop businesses and homes.
I only wish I had the know-how to form an enormous nonprofit. One that would be able to raise a whole lot of money up front and then continue to receive donations over the next year at least. I wish I could convince the nightly national news show to, in another three months, give a weekly update on rebuilding the devastated areas of the five or six states with the WORST damage. I wish that such an organization could have the "text this number for an instant ten bucks donation." An organization that could partner with various big stores that would give matching funds even for big gift cards that would be distributed to, oh, I don't know--schools and community organizations, or even individual families that are in long-term temporary houses.
I wish I had the money, the know how, the health to do something grand, but I don't. I am just Jeannette, living here in an apartment in the Land of Malls. I have my wonderful handful of readers who seem to find me even after I disappear for months. And my income is way below the poverty line--I'm just lucky because I sold my home and have some money in the bank. NO, I should not say that this is the only reason I am lucky. I am far luckier than that: so many dear friends both here, in person and now, out there in cyberspace, connections through my church community, a wonderful place to live in, and I am STILL walking, and I have GOOD healthcare through, yes, Medicare. I was without insurance for almost a year while I waited for disability. The ONLY insurance I could buy cost $1500/month, just for the premiums, and my out of pocket cost for appointments was $50.
So I am lucky. But how I wish I knew how to help beyond my small, small part. And I'll bet there are people all over who wish they could, too, just as we wanted to help with Katrina, with earthquakes on the other side of the world, with monsoons and hurricanes elsewhere. Now the USA needs help from all her citizens and anyone else.
And I do not know how to make more happen. I hope someone else WILL.
May you all be safe, have homes that remain in tact, and hug your loved ones REALLY close. Oops! My phone rang and my son is coming over to use my shower. Well, I can help there, can't I...
Love to you all.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Shameless Plug to Help the Northeastern USA
Literally millions of families have been affected by Sandy. I don't know of any special relief efforts just yet, but I do know that The Red Cross needs donations, and will need blood donations as well. Because the damage is so severe and wide spread, blood drives in some populous areas are being canceled. There are shelters that are being set up throughout New Jersey and in New York City, and in areas of Connecticut along the shoreline that will be fairly long-term concerns. This has hit five or six states particularly harshly. There is a blizzard in West Virginia. Ohio and Pennsylvania have been hit hard.
So, yes, for whoever reads what I write, I am shamelessly plugging for Red Cross donations. And, if you've a mind to, perhaps you could just feature the link above on your own blogs. It is too soon to know how many homeless people were caught in this. When I think of the subway tunnels flooding, and the flooding UNDER highway overpasses, it gives me great pause. I do not think we know how many were killed yet.
I'm fine. This year, my part of the state made out fine. Some people have lost power, but, by and large, we have simply been inconvenienced. I need to find a way to be involved myself, in whatever capacity I can. As you all know, I've been trying to focus on my real life, away from this lovely world inside my head.
I've made great progress in building strength and have at long last started to drop some noticeable pounds. Every single part of my body is stronger. It is difficult for me to do this, but I am such a stubborn--I mean tenacious woman, that the moment there is some implication that this is the slow slide to the wheel chair, I rebel. And, yes, please sit down for this--I overdo it a bit sometimes.
Still, all in all? I am a very lucky woman, and we were very lucky to be spared the brunt of this storm. And it seems to me that I had ought to do my part as others did for MY area of the state last year, with the October blizzard.
That's it for now. Back to the real world with me. I hope you are all well and safe.
So, yes, for whoever reads what I write, I am shamelessly plugging for Red Cross donations. And, if you've a mind to, perhaps you could just feature the link above on your own blogs. It is too soon to know how many homeless people were caught in this. When I think of the subway tunnels flooding, and the flooding UNDER highway overpasses, it gives me great pause. I do not think we know how many were killed yet.
I'm fine. This year, my part of the state made out fine. Some people have lost power, but, by and large, we have simply been inconvenienced. I need to find a way to be involved myself, in whatever capacity I can. As you all know, I've been trying to focus on my real life, away from this lovely world inside my head.
I've made great progress in building strength and have at long last started to drop some noticeable pounds. Every single part of my body is stronger. It is difficult for me to do this, but I am such a stubborn--I mean tenacious woman, that the moment there is some implication that this is the slow slide to the wheel chair, I rebel. And, yes, please sit down for this--I overdo it a bit sometimes.
Still, all in all? I am a very lucky woman, and we were very lucky to be spared the brunt of this storm. And it seems to me that I had ought to do my part as others did for MY area of the state last year, with the October blizzard.
That's it for now. Back to the real world with me. I hope you are all well and safe.
Monday, October 29, 2012
To friends up and down the East Coat, PA, OH, Canada, Vermont, NH
I wish you, your families, and your homes to remain undamaged.
May we weather this weather with no more casualties. And, if you pray, send energy, or just stay mindful sometimes-- do this for the homeless in our cities: Washington D.C, Baltimore, New York, New Haven, Bridgeport--so many; and all along the Maryland, Delaware, and Jersey shores, and along the shoreline cities on Long Island Sound.
I' sixty and have not seen anything like this up here. I am safe. I'm in a big apartment complex with fantastic landlords. My electricity and phones will go. SO WHAT? I will have a friend here and we'll be fine. Others need the focus.
Take care, one and all!
May we weather this weather with no more casualties. And, if you pray, send energy, or just stay mindful sometimes-- do this for the homeless in our cities: Washington D.C, Baltimore, New York, New Haven, Bridgeport--so many; and all along the Maryland, Delaware, and Jersey shores, and along the shoreline cities on Long Island Sound.
I' sixty and have not seen anything like this up here. I am safe. I'm in a big apartment complex with fantastic landlords. My electricity and phones will go. SO WHAT? I will have a friend here and we'll be fine. Others need the focus.
Take care, one and all!
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Don't faint: Return of the Wacko
It's funny. I have tried to complete a couple of more entries about two pivotal incidents in my life. What, you say? MORE? Unfortunately, yes, there were two other bizarrely disturbing particular incidents.
You know what? I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. They will go in the memoir, in one way or another, but I think I am done with that for a good long while. It would appear I have set a course for myself at last. Mind you, when I set a course, I am always award that I may very well find myself on an unplanned detour, but that's what is so intriguing about life. Goals can so often simply allow us to choose a path, to start a new leg of a journey.
It's, for me, having the goal and starting that matter. I have rarely found myself meeting the goal in the way I chose. Just as often I've found myself detoured in such a way that I change the goal entirely. Who cares? It's fun. Yes, I did say fun. I think I got this from my dad, who was talking about how living life had very little to do with whatever we planned, LONG before John Lennon sang about it. And when my childhood plans were so often squashed and I'd climb in his lap or sit on the floor, leaning against his knee, I would feel his long fingers in my hair.
"What is it this time, Jetty?"
"Life isn't FAIR, Daddy."
"That, snigglefritz, is an irrelevant observation. Try again." He'd say it with affection, but he brooked no talk of fairness. Again, long before I heard it in church, it was he who would point out that no one seems to say life isn't fair when something GOOD happens.
True enough.
Have you ever noticed that it takes me about a year and a half to get to my point? That is, when I even have a point to get TO. I have one. Honest.
I seem to be writing about my future now. And living very much in the present. I mentioned that I was having a terrifying time with my back. While there is no new damage, there are new symptoms that are due to the longterm severity of the existing issues. The new developments have forced me to develop what is a very grueling exercise/PT regimen. I did this when I was about thirty-three, after the last of my eight major surgeries. I had to train all the peripheral muscles of my foot, calf, and, well, entire leg, to take over. I had to become extremely strong below the waist, so that when my foot muscles gave out, I did not fall. Now I have to do that for my left leg and foot. I must become as strong as I possibly can, below AND above the waist. If I start to fall, I MUST be able to catch myself, if there is something to hold onto. I must be able to have other muscles click into overdrive when both feet suddenly start to fail. I have to learn every shade of a warning signal in the left foot, just as I did in the right. And there is no particular pattern for having both go at once. And, naturally, the warnings of the left are not quite the same as the right.
Still, the commitment must be the same. It was how I stayed walking before, so it will be how I stay walking this time. I am certainly NOT going to write about the regimen or I will bore myself and all of you--any who still read my blog when I write--to tears!
What I will write about I think, is my plan. The plan I have with two of my best friends. Approaching old age together, all of us with incomes around the poverty line and less. All of us with some fairly nasty health issues. All of us artists of one sort or another. All of us needing solitude as well as company. I think a lot of boomers are developing coops and mini-communities and, as we are going to be doing, semi-communes. We dream out loud to one another, knowing that this will not truly be off the ground for another year and a half or so.
I find myself looking more and more at the future, in GOOD ways. In the terror of not knowing why BOTH legs were failing me, I saw only the possibility that my future was about to be taken from me.
AGAIN.
I stared that wheelchair in the face and more pain and dependency. And wouldn't you just know that the myriad women came running. Once again I could not hit ground from all the outstretched, loving hands. NOT just women. I have one man friend, too, and he was there JUST as strongly, just as lovingly. We waited together. They took me to tests, grocery shopped, helped me to find the center, the calm. Helped me ready myself for whatever might come. We were afraid that within two days I would be on an operating table.
NOPE. Didn't happen. What happened was excruciatingly painful. And I am afraid that this development will continue to be so when it hits me full on. However, you see, and here is the beauty and the kicker.
When I wait it out, it goes away.
I need no more than that knowledge. It is not paralysis. It is not severed nerves or a broken fusion. It is not, it is not, it is not. And what it IS, I know how to deal with. Once again, just as I had when I was in my late twenties, I have a tangible present enemy to fight. I have something I must conquer because I want to live. Not survive. I want to live... no. LIVE, with a capital L and a capital IVE!
So I can set my concrete goals, which I am meeting, which I have met now for more than a month, so they are habit. And I can at last start finding the way to schedule creativity as well. For a time, pain and exercise were all that I could cope with in each day. Now?
Now I am free again, like a phoenix. Once more to the flame and ashes, only to fly up and free once more. Did this change my dream a bit? Well, yes. Of course. But not entirely. What I did, what WE did, we three friends, was come up with a better dream together. I call it the "yellow house" dream.
For over a decade I have dreamt various versions of a big yellow house where I live with some friends. In the dream I never know who they are because I see them. I know who they are because, well, I know who they are. I feel them. Sometimes the people have changed. Funny. These two women are among the strongest people I have ever, ever known. And creative, and smart. Perfect for this dream. But in the dream there is a flower garden and a solarium. Yes. NOT a sunroom. It has a marble floor with a high, high ceiling of glass. It changes; but it is a solarium.
The house is not the point; the joy and contentment are the points. The house smells of my homemade oatmeal/nut bread and turkey soup. Sometimes together, sometimes just one. Always in the dream I am singing, getting ready for company. The energy in the house is light, excited, welcoming. I love this dream.
So we are planning it. We don't care what color the house is, but it will be full of light and laughter and, yes, love.
And for now? My writing is in my dream book. Lots and lots of dreams, and how to make them come true. I live in the present because I MUST. And I think that my priority should be my back and my physical strength for now. It is my job. That's what I'm calling it. My part-time job on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the least is forty minutes at the gym and at least 80 minutes on the bike. I stretch and I rest for at least an hour and a half in between. I must. It is the only way it works. But that eats up the bulk of my upright time. And that's okay. I think seeing it as my job, giving it the weight of a job is important.
The secret, I've always thought, to making physical therapy work the most, was to approach like a professional athlete. It is an all out commitment or I am wasting my time. Sometimes it's okay to do more, but not to do less. Not now. Not yet, and frankly? For the rest of my life, as long as I am able. On the days I do this, I am spent. Not a creative thought seems to wander into my brain. So I NEED to give myself Tuesday and Thursday for creativity. The other part time job I must offer myself. And that I need to approach as if creativity itself is my career. Whether it's writing songs, writing on my book (my other one. The novel I never EVER talk about!), or painting, or sketching.
So you see, the last six weeks have been very full, but have left me little room for blogging as I've blogged. It is not about "letting go" of the past. The past is integral to who I am. ALL of it. However, there is no room for now to take the memoirist's look at it, to remind myself of how I've had to do all this before, or to remind myself of how many dreams have been grabbed from my hand just as I was feeling their heft, and marveling at their beauty. No, now is not the time for bitter thoughts, or even, perhaps, particularly introspective learning.
Sometimes living in the present is hard enough. And sometimes carving out a dream or six makes living in the present more palatable. There is much in my past that I cherish. You all know that from some of the earlier blogs about my mom, my sister, gardening, pluots, even, for heaven's sake! But I am going to try to write about this new life I'm carving out.
I mean, never in my life have I written ONE song, let alone two in a week! And singing, getting to my song circle through the winter. Singing is opening up my soul to let more light IN, and to throw maybe a little bit more OUT. I want to look into, perhaps a way to help inner city or poorer kids closer by with things like SAT preparation. They don't have the money for what other kids do, but I KNOW how to help. Surely there is something I can do.
Watching this election has made me want to do more... to do something beyond my infinitessimal self. Sorry, to any of you who are Republicans. Feel free to drop me like poison, if you will. I do not want to be part of a nation that does not want to help the poorest among us, the least advantaged, the "invisible people," if you will. I AM one of those invisible people now.
No more. So I may be kicking around these ideas. What would it be to organize the retired and retiring boomers to be the boomers on the go FOR OTHERS? Tutors who need money only for the supplies we must buy and the gas we must use. I could use more money, but not on the backs of people worse off than I. I need to root around to find a way to put my abilities to good use, even if it IS for just a few hours a week. IF that is what I have, I MUST give it. I do not see people who feel they are ENTITLED to having us all care for them, any more than I feel entitled. Yes, I put money into Social Security. You know what? If I could find work I can do that pays, I would and will be THRILLED to pay my self-employment tax--social security. My rate is about 11% out of my gross pay. I did it before.
But Governor Romney is correct; I will never vote for him. Do I think bleeding from every pore liberals like me NEED reality checks in financing things? YES. But I have the philosophy that Jesus did teach. If I have more than my neighbor, and do not try to help? Well, what does that say about me? And if greatness is measured by how we treat the least among us?
By all means, cut Medicaid. The process of qualifying for disability is humiliating and degrading. It hurts. It takes a year and a half. Living without an income for six months was terrifying. Not knowing whether I would even be awarded disability added to the pain of that time. Very few people see welfare as anything other than a last resort.
I have been following the campaign, riveted. Scared. Revolted. Inspired even. I have not drunk the Koolaid for anyone, but I do believe that I cannot vote for anyone other than my President. He ain't perfect. Neither am I. But I do believe his vision of what this country is, at its best, and what we can help make it become.
So I know that I have to put the memoir stuff aside. This blog helped me find my own voice. Now this blog will help me become a better person, I hope. This blog can be where I put my dreams, how I make progress toward them. It can be where I celebrate these friendships that I've been lucky enough to have.
I don't know what that means. I return to my daughter's voice when I began. I am not reinventing mySELF. I am simply using this voice of mine, I hope, in a new way. Simply using the voice that I did find here, using the gift I STILL have of my legs, using the gift of being a wide-eyed wack-a-doodle dreamer--using my gifts in new ways.
At least that is what I hope I can do here. Winter is coming, and that is my season of LIFE, oddly enough. I paint more. I write more. I dream more. I have trouble with the light thing, but I know what to do about that now.
I miss reading blogs and writing in mine. So slowly, as I begin to feel more IN the dreams I'm hatching, I will return to this blogspot place I love. I love it because of the people I meet. So many of us drift away, then drift back, write a flurry of entries, then become silent. We each have rhythms that are a joy to witness, I think.
Happy October... ALMOST. Soon.
You know what? I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. They will go in the memoir, in one way or another, but I think I am done with that for a good long while. It would appear I have set a course for myself at last. Mind you, when I set a course, I am always award that I may very well find myself on an unplanned detour, but that's what is so intriguing about life. Goals can so often simply allow us to choose a path, to start a new leg of a journey.
It's, for me, having the goal and starting that matter. I have rarely found myself meeting the goal in the way I chose. Just as often I've found myself detoured in such a way that I change the goal entirely. Who cares? It's fun. Yes, I did say fun. I think I got this from my dad, who was talking about how living life had very little to do with whatever we planned, LONG before John Lennon sang about it. And when my childhood plans were so often squashed and I'd climb in his lap or sit on the floor, leaning against his knee, I would feel his long fingers in my hair.
"What is it this time, Jetty?"
"Life isn't FAIR, Daddy."
"That, snigglefritz, is an irrelevant observation. Try again." He'd say it with affection, but he brooked no talk of fairness. Again, long before I heard it in church, it was he who would point out that no one seems to say life isn't fair when something GOOD happens.
True enough.
Have you ever noticed that it takes me about a year and a half to get to my point? That is, when I even have a point to get TO. I have one. Honest.
I seem to be writing about my future now. And living very much in the present. I mentioned that I was having a terrifying time with my back. While there is no new damage, there are new symptoms that are due to the longterm severity of the existing issues. The new developments have forced me to develop what is a very grueling exercise/PT regimen. I did this when I was about thirty-three, after the last of my eight major surgeries. I had to train all the peripheral muscles of my foot, calf, and, well, entire leg, to take over. I had to become extremely strong below the waist, so that when my foot muscles gave out, I did not fall. Now I have to do that for my left leg and foot. I must become as strong as I possibly can, below AND above the waist. If I start to fall, I MUST be able to catch myself, if there is something to hold onto. I must be able to have other muscles click into overdrive when both feet suddenly start to fail. I have to learn every shade of a warning signal in the left foot, just as I did in the right. And there is no particular pattern for having both go at once. And, naturally, the warnings of the left are not quite the same as the right.
Still, the commitment must be the same. It was how I stayed walking before, so it will be how I stay walking this time. I am certainly NOT going to write about the regimen or I will bore myself and all of you--any who still read my blog when I write--to tears!
What I will write about I think, is my plan. The plan I have with two of my best friends. Approaching old age together, all of us with incomes around the poverty line and less. All of us with some fairly nasty health issues. All of us artists of one sort or another. All of us needing solitude as well as company. I think a lot of boomers are developing coops and mini-communities and, as we are going to be doing, semi-communes. We dream out loud to one another, knowing that this will not truly be off the ground for another year and a half or so.
I find myself looking more and more at the future, in GOOD ways. In the terror of not knowing why BOTH legs were failing me, I saw only the possibility that my future was about to be taken from me.
AGAIN.
I stared that wheelchair in the face and more pain and dependency. And wouldn't you just know that the myriad women came running. Once again I could not hit ground from all the outstretched, loving hands. NOT just women. I have one man friend, too, and he was there JUST as strongly, just as lovingly. We waited together. They took me to tests, grocery shopped, helped me to find the center, the calm. Helped me ready myself for whatever might come. We were afraid that within two days I would be on an operating table.
NOPE. Didn't happen. What happened was excruciatingly painful. And I am afraid that this development will continue to be so when it hits me full on. However, you see, and here is the beauty and the kicker.
When I wait it out, it goes away.
I need no more than that knowledge. It is not paralysis. It is not severed nerves or a broken fusion. It is not, it is not, it is not. And what it IS, I know how to deal with. Once again, just as I had when I was in my late twenties, I have a tangible present enemy to fight. I have something I must conquer because I want to live. Not survive. I want to live... no. LIVE, with a capital L and a capital IVE!
So I can set my concrete goals, which I am meeting, which I have met now for more than a month, so they are habit. And I can at last start finding the way to schedule creativity as well. For a time, pain and exercise were all that I could cope with in each day. Now?
Now I am free again, like a phoenix. Once more to the flame and ashes, only to fly up and free once more. Did this change my dream a bit? Well, yes. Of course. But not entirely. What I did, what WE did, we three friends, was come up with a better dream together. I call it the "yellow house" dream.
For over a decade I have dreamt various versions of a big yellow house where I live with some friends. In the dream I never know who they are because I see them. I know who they are because, well, I know who they are. I feel them. Sometimes the people have changed. Funny. These two women are among the strongest people I have ever, ever known. And creative, and smart. Perfect for this dream. But in the dream there is a flower garden and a solarium. Yes. NOT a sunroom. It has a marble floor with a high, high ceiling of glass. It changes; but it is a solarium.
The house is not the point; the joy and contentment are the points. The house smells of my homemade oatmeal/nut bread and turkey soup. Sometimes together, sometimes just one. Always in the dream I am singing, getting ready for company. The energy in the house is light, excited, welcoming. I love this dream.
So we are planning it. We don't care what color the house is, but it will be full of light and laughter and, yes, love.
And for now? My writing is in my dream book. Lots and lots of dreams, and how to make them come true. I live in the present because I MUST. And I think that my priority should be my back and my physical strength for now. It is my job. That's what I'm calling it. My part-time job on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the least is forty minutes at the gym and at least 80 minutes on the bike. I stretch and I rest for at least an hour and a half in between. I must. It is the only way it works. But that eats up the bulk of my upright time. And that's okay. I think seeing it as my job, giving it the weight of a job is important.
The secret, I've always thought, to making physical therapy work the most, was to approach like a professional athlete. It is an all out commitment or I am wasting my time. Sometimes it's okay to do more, but not to do less. Not now. Not yet, and frankly? For the rest of my life, as long as I am able. On the days I do this, I am spent. Not a creative thought seems to wander into my brain. So I NEED to give myself Tuesday and Thursday for creativity. The other part time job I must offer myself. And that I need to approach as if creativity itself is my career. Whether it's writing songs, writing on my book (my other one. The novel I never EVER talk about!), or painting, or sketching.
So you see, the last six weeks have been very full, but have left me little room for blogging as I've blogged. It is not about "letting go" of the past. The past is integral to who I am. ALL of it. However, there is no room for now to take the memoirist's look at it, to remind myself of how I've had to do all this before, or to remind myself of how many dreams have been grabbed from my hand just as I was feeling their heft, and marveling at their beauty. No, now is not the time for bitter thoughts, or even, perhaps, particularly introspective learning.
Sometimes living in the present is hard enough. And sometimes carving out a dream or six makes living in the present more palatable. There is much in my past that I cherish. You all know that from some of the earlier blogs about my mom, my sister, gardening, pluots, even, for heaven's sake! But I am going to try to write about this new life I'm carving out.
I mean, never in my life have I written ONE song, let alone two in a week! And singing, getting to my song circle through the winter. Singing is opening up my soul to let more light IN, and to throw maybe a little bit more OUT. I want to look into, perhaps a way to help inner city or poorer kids closer by with things like SAT preparation. They don't have the money for what other kids do, but I KNOW how to help. Surely there is something I can do.
Watching this election has made me want to do more... to do something beyond my infinitessimal self. Sorry, to any of you who are Republicans. Feel free to drop me like poison, if you will. I do not want to be part of a nation that does not want to help the poorest among us, the least advantaged, the "invisible people," if you will. I AM one of those invisible people now.
No more. So I may be kicking around these ideas. What would it be to organize the retired and retiring boomers to be the boomers on the go FOR OTHERS? Tutors who need money only for the supplies we must buy and the gas we must use. I could use more money, but not on the backs of people worse off than I. I need to root around to find a way to put my abilities to good use, even if it IS for just a few hours a week. IF that is what I have, I MUST give it. I do not see people who feel they are ENTITLED to having us all care for them, any more than I feel entitled. Yes, I put money into Social Security. You know what? If I could find work I can do that pays, I would and will be THRILLED to pay my self-employment tax--social security. My rate is about 11% out of my gross pay. I did it before.
But Governor Romney is correct; I will never vote for him. Do I think bleeding from every pore liberals like me NEED reality checks in financing things? YES. But I have the philosophy that Jesus did teach. If I have more than my neighbor, and do not try to help? Well, what does that say about me? And if greatness is measured by how we treat the least among us?
By all means, cut Medicaid. The process of qualifying for disability is humiliating and degrading. It hurts. It takes a year and a half. Living without an income for six months was terrifying. Not knowing whether I would even be awarded disability added to the pain of that time. Very few people see welfare as anything other than a last resort.
I have been following the campaign, riveted. Scared. Revolted. Inspired even. I have not drunk the Koolaid for anyone, but I do believe that I cannot vote for anyone other than my President. He ain't perfect. Neither am I. But I do believe his vision of what this country is, at its best, and what we can help make it become.
So I know that I have to put the memoir stuff aside. This blog helped me find my own voice. Now this blog will help me become a better person, I hope. This blog can be where I put my dreams, how I make progress toward them. It can be where I celebrate these friendships that I've been lucky enough to have.
I don't know what that means. I return to my daughter's voice when I began. I am not reinventing mySELF. I am simply using this voice of mine, I hope, in a new way. Simply using the voice that I did find here, using the gift I STILL have of my legs, using the gift of being a wide-eyed wack-a-doodle dreamer--using my gifts in new ways.
At least that is what I hope I can do here. Winter is coming, and that is my season of LIFE, oddly enough. I paint more. I write more. I dream more. I have trouble with the light thing, but I know what to do about that now.
I miss reading blogs and writing in mine. So slowly, as I begin to feel more IN the dreams I'm hatching, I will return to this blogspot place I love. I love it because of the people I meet. So many of us drift away, then drift back, write a flurry of entries, then become silent. We each have rhythms that are a joy to witness, I think.
Happy October... ALMOST. Soon.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
The Long and the Short of It
I gave myself my hissy fit time. As expected, I got bored.
Here is what I am faced with: neuropathy in both legs--severe; periodic numbness in either or both feet; permanent weakness in both feet and ankles, with the classic "dropped foot" from decades of lumbar spinal injury and degeneration. None of it is reparable. More medication for the pain is not something I am going to entertain the thought of. Period.
What I did last night and this morning is reawaken the young woman who went through ALL of this with my right leg. I remember every exercise, every single thing I did to mitigate and minimize the repercussions.
I approached my physical therapy like an athlete and I was lucky enough to have a therapist who saw this in me and developed a workout regiment and therapy routine geared specifically to me. I maintained that regimen for two years, so it is imprinted on my brain. I lost weight quickly by creating a diet based on the foods I loved that were good for me and just three foods that were treats. Period. I developed my own meal plans, schedule, EVERYTHING.
In the last month, a relative passed away who had been a source of almost nothing but broken promises and behavior intended to make me feel incapable and weak. Three times in my life he has promised financial support then broken those promises, offering absolutely nothing. I had given up entirely on his fourth promise and expected nothing upon his death. I received a letter from an attorney on the day of his funeral, telling me he had died... and left me a substantial sum of money. It is enough to assure that I am okay for seven years instead of two. This is HUGE to me. Two friends and I plan on joining forces in three years, so the worry is off my shoulders.
For the next year, my job is to chart every detail of the behavior in my left leg: what, if anything triggers the symptoms, what makes those symptoms worse and what, if anything, alleviates the pain and some of the numbness/paralysis/weakness. My job is to lose weight QUICKLY instead of gradually. While in the long-term I never see this as the strategy for me, given the circumstances, I want to remove as much stress on the legs as I can, as quickly as I can--without endangering me, of course. I will do it as I did when I was younger. And, my job is to train--on my bike, in the gym, and in the pool. My late "uncle" has given me the means to join a place that has a pool with a deep end of seven feet, so at LAST I can do my deep water PT routine. That routine strengthens while I do an aerobic workout. This way I can mix things up and develop the regimen that I MUST if I expect to have any success.
I am older, so it takes MORE, not LESS effort to attain the results I have to. However, at one time in my life I adored "training." I jumped rope or worked out on every lunch hour. Went to the gym AFTER work. I loved the burn and getting stronger and stronger. I still love the burn, as I have found out through ninety-minute rides on my recumbent bike--rides that put my pulse at its peak rate, where I managed to average over 20 mph, by the last four times.
This is not something where I am simply guessing what I will be allowed to do. I know what I have to do and what will hurt me and what won't.
But I know that it will take most of my upright time to accomplish what I must. So I may be far more sporadic than I was through June. It has been a terribly painful and scary couple of weeks. The two weeks before that held disturbing moments that I tried to ignore because I just did not want to face a downturn in my back. It felt like a cruel blow to believe that it was NOT my back because there was so little degeneration, only to find that it IS the aftermath of all the surgery and the initial traumas to the spine.
And I DID wallow for a couple of days without regret. I truly DO believe that a good old-fashioned hissy fit and railing to the gods HELP. ONLY, however, do they help if I then stop. I give myself a definite time period in which I let myself feel completely sorry for myself, after which I DO look at where I am lucky.
Here's the list of being lucky:
That's not a bad list. I hope to schedule in time for ALL my artistic loves over the coming few months, but probably for a while, what I NEED to do is put all my focus on getting as strong as I possibly can. I won't give a blow by blow update. It would bore everyone to tears. But I will check back to read YOUR blogs, because reading what you all have to say about your own lives, or reading and seeing your artistic creations gives me inspiration.
Wish me luck and strength.
Here is what I am faced with: neuropathy in both legs--severe; periodic numbness in either or both feet; permanent weakness in both feet and ankles, with the classic "dropped foot" from decades of lumbar spinal injury and degeneration. None of it is reparable. More medication for the pain is not something I am going to entertain the thought of. Period.
What I did last night and this morning is reawaken the young woman who went through ALL of this with my right leg. I remember every exercise, every single thing I did to mitigate and minimize the repercussions.
I approached my physical therapy like an athlete and I was lucky enough to have a therapist who saw this in me and developed a workout regiment and therapy routine geared specifically to me. I maintained that regimen for two years, so it is imprinted on my brain. I lost weight quickly by creating a diet based on the foods I loved that were good for me and just three foods that were treats. Period. I developed my own meal plans, schedule, EVERYTHING.
In the last month, a relative passed away who had been a source of almost nothing but broken promises and behavior intended to make me feel incapable and weak. Three times in my life he has promised financial support then broken those promises, offering absolutely nothing. I had given up entirely on his fourth promise and expected nothing upon his death. I received a letter from an attorney on the day of his funeral, telling me he had died... and left me a substantial sum of money. It is enough to assure that I am okay for seven years instead of two. This is HUGE to me. Two friends and I plan on joining forces in three years, so the worry is off my shoulders.
For the next year, my job is to chart every detail of the behavior in my left leg: what, if anything triggers the symptoms, what makes those symptoms worse and what, if anything, alleviates the pain and some of the numbness/paralysis/weakness. My job is to lose weight QUICKLY instead of gradually. While in the long-term I never see this as the strategy for me, given the circumstances, I want to remove as much stress on the legs as I can, as quickly as I can--without endangering me, of course. I will do it as I did when I was younger. And, my job is to train--on my bike, in the gym, and in the pool. My late "uncle" has given me the means to join a place that has a pool with a deep end of seven feet, so at LAST I can do my deep water PT routine. That routine strengthens while I do an aerobic workout. This way I can mix things up and develop the regimen that I MUST if I expect to have any success.
I am older, so it takes MORE, not LESS effort to attain the results I have to. However, at one time in my life I adored "training." I jumped rope or worked out on every lunch hour. Went to the gym AFTER work. I loved the burn and getting stronger and stronger. I still love the burn, as I have found out through ninety-minute rides on my recumbent bike--rides that put my pulse at its peak rate, where I managed to average over 20 mph, by the last four times.
This is not something where I am simply guessing what I will be allowed to do. I know what I have to do and what will hurt me and what won't.
But I know that it will take most of my upright time to accomplish what I must. So I may be far more sporadic than I was through June. It has been a terribly painful and scary couple of weeks. The two weeks before that held disturbing moments that I tried to ignore because I just did not want to face a downturn in my back. It felt like a cruel blow to believe that it was NOT my back because there was so little degeneration, only to find that it IS the aftermath of all the surgery and the initial traumas to the spine.
And I DID wallow for a couple of days without regret. I truly DO believe that a good old-fashioned hissy fit and railing to the gods HELP. ONLY, however, do they help if I then stop. I give myself a definite time period in which I let myself feel completely sorry for myself, after which I DO look at where I am lucky.
Here's the list of being lucky:
- The things I love MOST to do, do not require a strong back, or particularly well-functioning legs
- I happen to love working out
- I've done this all before, so I know how to begin and what to expect (yes, that is unlucky, too, but I have to turn how I look at that around)
- I have easily four times as large a support system now
- I am not having to care for two kids and I'm not married to a man who put me down while I tried to build UP my strength
- I have a fantastically supportive, caring doctor IN MY HOMETOWN, not up in Boston
- This is not a degenerative condition--it is what it is already
- There ARE things I can do by building up peripheral muscles to ameliorate the repercussions physically of this
- I know how to slip into the proper frame of mind to do this BECAUSE of the experience (again, I NEED to look at this as a plus, not a minus from now on)
- I do not have to focus on anything else, like making money, but this issue for the next year, which is a luxury I never had before and which FEW people have, when faced with something like this
- No surgery is needed for me to do what I have to do
That's not a bad list. I hope to schedule in time for ALL my artistic loves over the coming few months, but probably for a while, what I NEED to do is put all my focus on getting as strong as I possibly can. I won't give a blow by blow update. It would bore everyone to tears. But I will check back to read YOUR blogs, because reading what you all have to say about your own lives, or reading and seeing your artistic creations gives me inspiration.
Wish me luck and strength.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Glitch in the Road Here
Hi all. I miss being in here but I've had a bit of a glitch in the health. I have a serious problem with my left leg, for a change of pace from the right. We DID find out it is not related to my back, but it's pretty serious, very painful, and somewhat debilitating.
Which means I am a REAL joy to be around, I can tell you!
We did have a real scare with this, however. I was ironing a shirt and felt my left toes go numb and then felt the numbness spread through the whole foot and to the ankle, and then a searing, throbbing, deep pain came. I could not bear weight on my left leg. I was terrified. I saw the doctor two hours later and, while in the office, my knee reflex deadened. My back above the fusion was also swollen.
As was the responsible thing to do, my doctor HIMSELF scheduled an emergency MRI and gave me the news on the phone FROM HIS HOME the next morning. The swelling and leg were not related, and my back has degenerated only minimally in the last three years. GREAT news. However, we were still left with a leg that goes numb and a foot that I cannot move within five or ten minutes of standing, followed by excruciating pain that lasts for hours.
But I have a test tomorrow which we hope will give us answers. I call it the "dead frog" test. Others call it an EMG. All it reminds me of is that old-fashioned bio lab where you zapped a frog leg with electricity and it would jump. Hence the name.
I know. I am gross. Such is life. And, as I said, I'm a little bit, ummm, cranky.
I have written two little pieces for my women's spiritual singing circle. I wrote them as a learning process on Garage Band, and I wanted something both minor and up tempo, something that made ME feel strong at a time when I'm kinda NOT feeling strong at all. So my second song has four tracks--all me. I was going to load the four track piece, but...
WPhooey. I do not know how to insert an MP3 file into my blog from my home computer. I would have thought it would be easy. Apparently not. If it were a video I could. Oh, well. If someone can tell me how to do that I will upload it eventually.
Mostly, however, I am simply sending my request for good thoughts... that tomorrow will yield a diagnosis of a problem that is fixable. This particular one is interfering with my ability to do much of anything for very long. The last couple of weeks have been about marking time mostly. I keep telling myself, however, IT IS NOT MY BACK.
Okay. This is about my limit for sitting.
As always, I'll be back. And thanks to any of you who keep checking back.
But for now? For now, though I DO know the up sides: it won't kill me, is not likely to get worse unless the spinal situation deteriorates, I know how to compensate and strengthen OTHER muscles, and other things like that. It is not dangerous per se, not once I analyze and track what happens when. And the pain is not an indicator of something worsening; it is neuropathy and that is all.
All? I am not quite that philosophical inside...
For now I am upset. And I am frustrated. And I am fed up. And I will take a couple of days and deal emotionally with the fact that there is new pain to learn to live with and NEW physical situations to overcome. And I am sick of it. There is no one to blame and I really hate that!
Oh! Wait! I can blame my mother! She won't mind...
There. No more whining tonight. It is my way to let myself be as angry and upset as I choose for about three days, so I do not bottle it up. Then I can let go of that and get down to doing what I need to do.
Instead of writing the "sh" word, or the "F" word, I'll say Phooey.
Which means I am a REAL joy to be around, I can tell you!
We did have a real scare with this, however. I was ironing a shirt and felt my left toes go numb and then felt the numbness spread through the whole foot and to the ankle, and then a searing, throbbing, deep pain came. I could not bear weight on my left leg. I was terrified. I saw the doctor two hours later and, while in the office, my knee reflex deadened. My back above the fusion was also swollen.
As was the responsible thing to do, my doctor HIMSELF scheduled an emergency MRI and gave me the news on the phone FROM HIS HOME the next morning. The swelling and leg were not related, and my back has degenerated only minimally in the last three years. GREAT news. However, we were still left with a leg that goes numb and a foot that I cannot move within five or ten minutes of standing, followed by excruciating pain that lasts for hours.
But I have a test tomorrow which we hope will give us answers. I call it the "dead frog" test. Others call it an EMG. All it reminds me of is that old-fashioned bio lab where you zapped a frog leg with electricity and it would jump. Hence the name.
I know. I am gross. Such is life. And, as I said, I'm a little bit, ummm, cranky.
I have written two little pieces for my women's spiritual singing circle. I wrote them as a learning process on Garage Band, and I wanted something both minor and up tempo, something that made ME feel strong at a time when I'm kinda NOT feeling strong at all. So my second song has four tracks--all me. I was going to load the four track piece, but...
Mostly, however, I am simply sending my request for good thoughts... that tomorrow will yield a diagnosis of a problem that is fixable. This particular one is interfering with my ability to do much of anything for very long. The last couple of weeks have been about marking time mostly. I keep telling myself, however, IT IS NOT MY BACK.
Okay. This is about my limit for sitting.
As always, I'll be back. And thanks to any of you who keep checking back.
I was WRONG
It IS my back. And it is not fixable. The results of traumas to the disks in the lumbar spine. Muscle weakness and neuropathy, close to what happened long ago in my right leg. I will learn how to live with it, predict and understand its patterns. Do what I must.But for now? For now, though I DO know the up sides: it won't kill me, is not likely to get worse unless the spinal situation deteriorates, I know how to compensate and strengthen OTHER muscles, and other things like that. It is not dangerous per se, not once I analyze and track what happens when. And the pain is not an indicator of something worsening; it is neuropathy and that is all.
All? I am not quite that philosophical inside...
For now I am upset. And I am frustrated. And I am fed up. And I will take a couple of days and deal emotionally with the fact that there is new pain to learn to live with and NEW physical situations to overcome. And I am sick of it. There is no one to blame and I really hate that!
Oh! Wait! I can blame my mother! She won't mind...
There. No more whining tonight. It is my way to let myself be as angry and upset as I choose for about three days, so I do not bottle it up. Then I can let go of that and get down to doing what I need to do.
Instead of writing the "sh" word, or the "F" word, I'll say Phooey.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Mad World... Mad World.
That song ran through my brain this morning...
Denver. I've not watched continuing coverage. I do not CARE to know more about the shooter. I have the sense that this is what he wants--for us to know him. I don't want to honor someone who opens fire on a theater full of people.
Last night I went to my women's singing circle. We meet every single Thursday except Thanksgiving. Year round. We sing songs to the earth, to the power of sound, the energy of music. Yes, indeed, we sing songs that would most definitely seem like earthy crunchy granola songs, and songs of an aging hippie freak. We do it unabashedly and whole-heartedly, with the knowledge that we are powerless to change anything beyond ourselves and one another.
I have never been one to think of group activities as being sacred at all, but this has become for all of us, a time when we put all family, individual, societal details aside. We simply sing. We try very hard not to have conversations between songs. Many songs are chants, and at times, when we hit our groove, even with eyes closed and the four or five-part harmony, we breathe together. We rise and fall in volume together, and we end together with no one directing. If, during the healing song section, you sit or lie down in the center, I know first hand that you can literally feel the sound waves or the energy--I don't know or care what it is. You feel it hit your body like the best massage ever.
When I first went, I admit that I DID have trouble singing "women's" songs. I have my prejudices and, to me, calling to Earth Mother, and deliberately excluding men felt somehow weird. I've always sung in mixed choruses. After the third time, however, I said, "Oh, Jeannette, GET OVER YOURSELF. You are the woman who didn't stop to realize you were singing 'she don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie... cocaine' at the top of your lungs with your 12-year-old son in the car! And you have trouble with singing 'Mother Earth, feel me. Take my body and heal me." REALLY?"
And something unlocked inside and I let it go. How good to find these tangles inside that seem to stubbornly hang onto old and silly preconceptions, to pull them apart and release.
I did not care what we sang, but began to listen to the sound, to focus on blending and to simply let myself go with the strength and spirit of the women who were all around me. I changed. And now I unabashedly go with it, words and all. For now, there are harmonies of such beauty, I sometimes cry. We play with the music, we almost dance to it. No one to judge us, no one to sigh at us or roll the eyes in embarrassment. We are a group of about twenty women who regularly attend, from age 23 to 82.
How does my first paragraph relate to any of this? Our focus is on acceptance of all people, on gentleness of spirit, but strength of purpose. Our focus is on peace, and on the power of being at peace. And this week I wrote my first song ever. Very simple, for many of the women had never sung in a group before this. I wanted it to be a melody that was relatively easy to pick up. And I wanted the words to be simple--I am my strongest, when I'm at peace. I am at peace when I let love fill all my soul. And I feel so much love, right here all around me. So I am strong for I have love and am at peace. And we go to the you and the we of it all, in two verses. And the very Unitarian coda of wishing we all could use our strength to share love and live in peace. Is it corny? Undoubtedly. I don't much care. All I know is that we sang it and learned it enough to begin to harmonize, and it's funny how uncorny words suddenly seem with twenty women singing them in harmony and 6/8 time.
We focused on our songs of peace last night.
And this morning I heard this news and a friend had spent the night. She came upstairs from her sleep, and we sat there, tearing at such horrific violence. And another dear friend had had a stabbing occur in her neighborhood two nights ago, with the perpetrator apparently running through her yard. And I've turned off the television because I am sick to death of the partisan nastiness and incivility in general that is on tv and in the grocery stores, and in so many places these days.
And our circle felt more important, not less so. Because it is so very hard to stay centered, to stay hopeful, to keep believing that we humans WILL do better, when there is such ugliness around. The sheer quiet and beauty of my Thursday nights of music fills me back up.
So this aging, flower-child, sixties hippie freak loves her song circle. Loves the friends who never let me fall. Love the bloggers who seem to keep following regardless of how sporadic the entries. I know I am lucky; my life is one of increasing creativity as I age, and that may be a rarity. I don't know, but I suspect so. The friendships are increasing, not decreasing. There are no monsters under my bed. And the images of cruelty, rudeness, meanness on television cannot erase the goodness I get to experience in the people I have been meeting and gradually getting to know in every facet of my life the last two or three years.
And I'm thinking that, in light of Denver and more, perhaps focusing on accepting one another and supporting one another BECAUSE of differences as well as "in spite" of differences has never been more important.
Thank you. Thank you all, no matter whether or not our political, social or religious views differ, I have stumbled into bloggers who do not see this as a place to be flamers, or mean-spirited. I come in here when my heart hurts from something, and within three or four blogs--reading them, my brain is turned around.
... and I breathe.
Denver. I've not watched continuing coverage. I do not CARE to know more about the shooter. I have the sense that this is what he wants--for us to know him. I don't want to honor someone who opens fire on a theater full of people.
Last night I went to my women's singing circle. We meet every single Thursday except Thanksgiving. Year round. We sing songs to the earth, to the power of sound, the energy of music. Yes, indeed, we sing songs that would most definitely seem like earthy crunchy granola songs, and songs of an aging hippie freak. We do it unabashedly and whole-heartedly, with the knowledge that we are powerless to change anything beyond ourselves and one another.
I have never been one to think of group activities as being sacred at all, but this has become for all of us, a time when we put all family, individual, societal details aside. We simply sing. We try very hard not to have conversations between songs. Many songs are chants, and at times, when we hit our groove, even with eyes closed and the four or five-part harmony, we breathe together. We rise and fall in volume together, and we end together with no one directing. If, during the healing song section, you sit or lie down in the center, I know first hand that you can literally feel the sound waves or the energy--I don't know or care what it is. You feel it hit your body like the best massage ever.
When I first went, I admit that I DID have trouble singing "women's" songs. I have my prejudices and, to me, calling to Earth Mother, and deliberately excluding men felt somehow weird. I've always sung in mixed choruses. After the third time, however, I said, "Oh, Jeannette, GET OVER YOURSELF. You are the woman who didn't stop to realize you were singing 'she don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie... cocaine' at the top of your lungs with your 12-year-old son in the car! And you have trouble with singing 'Mother Earth, feel me. Take my body and heal me." REALLY?"
And something unlocked inside and I let it go. How good to find these tangles inside that seem to stubbornly hang onto old and silly preconceptions, to pull them apart and release.
I did not care what we sang, but began to listen to the sound, to focus on blending and to simply let myself go with the strength and spirit of the women who were all around me. I changed. And now I unabashedly go with it, words and all. For now, there are harmonies of such beauty, I sometimes cry. We play with the music, we almost dance to it. No one to judge us, no one to sigh at us or roll the eyes in embarrassment. We are a group of about twenty women who regularly attend, from age 23 to 82.
How does my first paragraph relate to any of this? Our focus is on acceptance of all people, on gentleness of spirit, but strength of purpose. Our focus is on peace, and on the power of being at peace. And this week I wrote my first song ever. Very simple, for many of the women had never sung in a group before this. I wanted it to be a melody that was relatively easy to pick up. And I wanted the words to be simple--I am my strongest, when I'm at peace. I am at peace when I let love fill all my soul. And I feel so much love, right here all around me. So I am strong for I have love and am at peace. And we go to the you and the we of it all, in two verses. And the very Unitarian coda of wishing we all could use our strength to share love and live in peace. Is it corny? Undoubtedly. I don't much care. All I know is that we sang it and learned it enough to begin to harmonize, and it's funny how uncorny words suddenly seem with twenty women singing them in harmony and 6/8 time.
We focused on our songs of peace last night.
And this morning I heard this news and a friend had spent the night. She came upstairs from her sleep, and we sat there, tearing at such horrific violence. And another dear friend had had a stabbing occur in her neighborhood two nights ago, with the perpetrator apparently running through her yard. And I've turned off the television because I am sick to death of the partisan nastiness and incivility in general that is on tv and in the grocery stores, and in so many places these days.
And our circle felt more important, not less so. Because it is so very hard to stay centered, to stay hopeful, to keep believing that we humans WILL do better, when there is such ugliness around. The sheer quiet and beauty of my Thursday nights of music fills me back up.
So this aging, flower-child, sixties hippie freak loves her song circle. Loves the friends who never let me fall. Love the bloggers who seem to keep following regardless of how sporadic the entries. I know I am lucky; my life is one of increasing creativity as I age, and that may be a rarity. I don't know, but I suspect so. The friendships are increasing, not decreasing. There are no monsters under my bed. And the images of cruelty, rudeness, meanness on television cannot erase the goodness I get to experience in the people I have been meeting and gradually getting to know in every facet of my life the last two or three years.
And I'm thinking that, in light of Denver and more, perhaps focusing on accepting one another and supporting one another BECAUSE of differences as well as "in spite" of differences has never been more important.
Thank you. Thank you all, no matter whether or not our political, social or religious views differ, I have stumbled into bloggers who do not see this as a place to be flamers, or mean-spirited. I come in here when my heart hurts from something, and within three or four blogs--reading them, my brain is turned around.
... and I breathe.
Monday, July 2, 2012
The Keepers of Jetty's Soul
This will not be long.
When I think about how it was that the little girl in this picture, in ecstasy over a feather, came to keep her belief in goodness and in magic for all her life, I think "Mommy, Grandma M., and Jean Ellen."
You can simply read my last entry and the referenced posting to get what my sister did for me. She's woven in and out of other posts, but those two say the most.
A Celebration of my Mom's Mom talks about Grandma Magee, right around when this picture of her was taken, I believe. Grandma was in the nursing home near us at last, and had been there for a few years. She LOVED music, as did my mother. Grandma was singing when this was taken, and the woman holding her hands was the musician who used to come twice a month to lead people in music. Mom had had lunch with Grandma that particular day and started us BOTH laughing as she recounted Grandma throwing her hands in the air, saying, "Oh, Goodie! String beans!"
She had done this when my friend had been at dinner at our house once, when Grandma M. was visiting us. Gail said she'd never seen anyone so excited at string beans. Mom had looked at her and said, "You should see how she acts over jello."
Gail is just under five feet tall. When she met my grandmother, Grandma said, "My God, you're just sawed off and hammered, down!"
Gail did not bat an eye as she looked DOWN at Grandma and said, "Who do you think you're talking to, Pipsqueak?"
They were delighted with one another.
Another thing Grandma did when delighted was raise her arms and wag her hands, shouting, "Dighdy, Dighdy, Doe!" But, that's covered quite a bit in my other post. I look at this picture and I see her shining so brightly.
She never lost her sense of wonder.
And you can see why my friends said Mom looked like Mrs. Claus. Mrs. Claus in polyester pants, overshirts, and saddle shoes. I look at this picture and I realize, she was just 64 at most here. She is, quite simply, everywhere all the time... in so many of my posts.
I end with this picture of my sister as I choose to remember her. She was my age in this photo, fully engaged in telling someone about a pen and ink sketch she'd made. It was shortly before she began to leave us all, hiding from this world, this life ... preparing to flow into the next. She taught me to draw, to drive in search of the perfectly imperfect tree, to accept people as they are, and to be gentle from the inside out. I don't know which lesson was most valuable. She is the one who first pointed out that I curled my pinky whenever I was enraptured. She was my number one fan and always believed that I would one day take the world by storm with either my singing voice, my painting, or my writing ... or all three.
I don't need to take anything or anyone by storm. I do not need to make waves to honor all three women. To honor their importance in my life and in keeping me from losing myself entirely through the craziness, the violence, the injuries and illnesses, I have only to sing, to write, to paint, to love my friends--to do all these things for the pure joy of being alive.
... but oh, how I miss them.
When I think about how it was that the little girl in this picture, in ecstasy over a feather, came to keep her belief in goodness and in magic for all her life, I think "Mommy, Grandma M., and Jean Ellen."
You can simply read my last entry and the referenced posting to get what my sister did for me. She's woven in and out of other posts, but those two say the most.
A Celebration of my Mom's Mom talks about Grandma Magee, right around when this picture of her was taken, I believe. Grandma was in the nursing home near us at last, and had been there for a few years. She LOVED music, as did my mother. Grandma was singing when this was taken, and the woman holding her hands was the musician who used to come twice a month to lead people in music. Mom had had lunch with Grandma that particular day and started us BOTH laughing as she recounted Grandma throwing her hands in the air, saying, "Oh, Goodie! String beans!"
She had done this when my friend had been at dinner at our house once, when Grandma M. was visiting us. Gail said she'd never seen anyone so excited at string beans. Mom had looked at her and said, "You should see how she acts over jello."
Gail is just under five feet tall. When she met my grandmother, Grandma said, "My God, you're just sawed off and hammered, down!"
Gail did not bat an eye as she looked DOWN at Grandma and said, "Who do you think you're talking to, Pipsqueak?"
They were delighted with one another.
Another thing Grandma did when delighted was raise her arms and wag her hands, shouting, "Dighdy, Dighdy, Doe!" But, that's covered quite a bit in my other post. I look at this picture and I see her shining so brightly.
She never lost her sense of wonder.
And you can see why my friends said Mom looked like Mrs. Claus. Mrs. Claus in polyester pants, overshirts, and saddle shoes. I look at this picture and I realize, she was just 64 at most here. She is, quite simply, everywhere all the time... in so many of my posts.
I end with this picture of my sister as I choose to remember her. She was my age in this photo, fully engaged in telling someone about a pen and ink sketch she'd made. It was shortly before she began to leave us all, hiding from this world, this life ... preparing to flow into the next. She taught me to draw, to drive in search of the perfectly imperfect tree, to accept people as they are, and to be gentle from the inside out. I don't know which lesson was most valuable. She is the one who first pointed out that I curled my pinky whenever I was enraptured. She was my number one fan and always believed that I would one day take the world by storm with either my singing voice, my painting, or my writing ... or all three.
I don't need to take anything or anyone by storm. I do not need to make waves to honor all three women. To honor their importance in my life and in keeping me from losing myself entirely through the craziness, the violence, the injuries and illnesses, I have only to sing, to write, to paint, to love my friends--to do all these things for the pure joy of being alive.
... but oh, how I miss them.
Monday, June 25, 2012
From Ashes to Butterflies: a Dancing Good Bye
I wish I had some photos to add, but for now, I don't. I lived in the moment and let someone else worry about pictures. Last week I was in northernmost New Hampshire for three days to scatter the last of my dear sister's ashes. I know, I know. That hardly sounds like a happy thing, but it has been a long, long time in coming.
During the last weeks of my sister's life, while she was in hospice, she thought long and hard about what she wanted. One day she said, "Jetty, I don't want some burial spot. I want my ashes scattered in Lake Winnipesaukee, near the Teddy Bear Inn in Vermont, Pemaquid Point in Maine, off the rock's at the beach near Gail's, and in the source lakes in New Hampshire. And Paris would be good."
I looked at her a moment and said, "Jean Ellen, I love you but not that much. Let's just say that I'll get to some of those spots, okay?"
She laughed and said, "You are so fussy. FINE. Deny a dying woman her last wish." Of course, then she saw my face and my eyes and said, "No, honey! That's a joke! It really is a joke. I forget--for you, my dying is hard. For me, you know it's what I want. You know I have felt DONE with my business in this life for a long time. I'm so sorry. The only point is that I really don't want to be any part of a cemetery. I want to be part of the flow. Water, mostly, just the way I feel I flowed through this life from another and am flowing INTO another."
It was, of course, too late. I was crying, but we had a close hour together then. Well, my health went south before I could do too much, but I decided that when I was strong enough, her best friend (my other big sister of my heart) and I would trek up to the Connecticut River source lakes up near Canada.
Finally, this, the week before my sixtieth birthday, which is today, I was well enough to go. It was a wonderful trip and I took many inspiration pictures, fully replenishing the creativity well. Nancy found the very beach on the third Connecticut Lake where JE took one of my favorite photos--pebbles through water, just ten minutes south of Canada. (I have no passport, but I waved to you Canadian friends.)
It was about ninety degrees, even there. I picked my way through a shore trail, about twenty feet up-current and up wind of the little beach. When you dump ashes, they do not disperse; they remain in a beautiful water-born cloud for quite some time as they drift. I think that doing this six years later made me better able to connect with all the love I feel for her--most of the grief is gone, as is the somber mourning. I miss her living spirit, but I feel her spirit lives through me as I paint. I am surrounded by her--pen and inks, gifts, family treasures, treasured belongings that were hers.
So I looked at the transluscent silver cloud of what were physical remains of a spirit long gone and said, "There. Okay. Fine. It took me six years, but are you happy now? Fly!"
I called to Nancy that I was done, as I watched the cloud drifting toward the beach, and I heard her suddenly go, "Jeannette! LOOK!"
A swirling chaos of pale yellow butterflies flew up, fluttering in a spiral above the ground. They did not leave; they hovered in that one area, dancing in a space no more than five feet square. They lit on a damp patch of earth, I guess doing the butterfly version of drinking water, but then lifted, dancing in and out among one another for the ten minutes we stood there. Nancy's camera was clicking nonstop, but I simply watched, smiling.
Do not speak of science; I am aware of the logical explanations and of coincidence and all.
I don't care.
She sent the energy to hatch the butterflies to dance for us.
Don't bother to tell us differently; we were there.
When we left, the cloud was by the beach and the butterflies were still dancing.
***
If you care to know more about my sister and me, this is an early entry "Flying into Dawn: Memories of My Sister."
During the last weeks of my sister's life, while she was in hospice, she thought long and hard about what she wanted. One day she said, "Jetty, I don't want some burial spot. I want my ashes scattered in Lake Winnipesaukee, near the Teddy Bear Inn in Vermont, Pemaquid Point in Maine, off the rock's at the beach near Gail's, and in the source lakes in New Hampshire. And Paris would be good."
I looked at her a moment and said, "Jean Ellen, I love you but not that much. Let's just say that I'll get to some of those spots, okay?"
She laughed and said, "You are so fussy. FINE. Deny a dying woman her last wish." Of course, then she saw my face and my eyes and said, "No, honey! That's a joke! It really is a joke. I forget--for you, my dying is hard. For me, you know it's what I want. You know I have felt DONE with my business in this life for a long time. I'm so sorry. The only point is that I really don't want to be any part of a cemetery. I want to be part of the flow. Water, mostly, just the way I feel I flowed through this life from another and am flowing INTO another."
It was, of course, too late. I was crying, but we had a close hour together then. Well, my health went south before I could do too much, but I decided that when I was strong enough, her best friend (my other big sister of my heart) and I would trek up to the Connecticut River source lakes up near Canada.
Finally, this, the week before my sixtieth birthday, which is today, I was well enough to go. It was a wonderful trip and I took many inspiration pictures, fully replenishing the creativity well. Nancy found the very beach on the third Connecticut Lake where JE took one of my favorite photos--pebbles through water, just ten minutes south of Canada. (I have no passport, but I waved to you Canadian friends.)
 |
| This is just a quick picture of someone else's--Robert Knapp. Remember, this is not for commercial use! |
It was about ninety degrees, even there. I picked my way through a shore trail, about twenty feet up-current and up wind of the little beach. When you dump ashes, they do not disperse; they remain in a beautiful water-born cloud for quite some time as they drift. I think that doing this six years later made me better able to connect with all the love I feel for her--most of the grief is gone, as is the somber mourning. I miss her living spirit, but I feel her spirit lives through me as I paint. I am surrounded by her--pen and inks, gifts, family treasures, treasured belongings that were hers.
So I looked at the transluscent silver cloud of what were physical remains of a spirit long gone and said, "There. Okay. Fine. It took me six years, but are you happy now? Fly!"
I called to Nancy that I was done, as I watched the cloud drifting toward the beach, and I heard her suddenly go, "Jeannette! LOOK!"
A swirling chaos of pale yellow butterflies flew up, fluttering in a spiral above the ground. They did not leave; they hovered in that one area, dancing in a space no more than five feet square. They lit on a damp patch of earth, I guess doing the butterfly version of drinking water, but then lifted, dancing in and out among one another for the ten minutes we stood there. Nancy's camera was clicking nonstop, but I simply watched, smiling.
Do not speak of science; I am aware of the logical explanations and of coincidence and all.
I don't care.
She sent the energy to hatch the butterflies to dance for us.
Don't bother to tell us differently; we were there.
When we left, the cloud was by the beach and the butterflies were still dancing.
***
If you care to know more about my sister and me, this is an early entry "Flying into Dawn: Memories of My Sister."
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Everything Is Good ... Gone for GOOD reasons this time
Sometimes timing is freaky. I sat down to write this and there was a message from one of my followers. Timing is all. Anyway, I will be online next weekend with studies from the three, yes, count 'em, THREE paintings I am working on. I have been singing a lot. I am not sure that I have mentioned that I sing. In fact, the group of women with whom I sing every Thursday night formed a smaller group that practices before the larger circle. We performed together at a coffee house just over a week ago.
I will be honest. I was hesitant about joining the singing circle. The first two times I went, I was uncomfortable with the GoddessEarthSpiritIsOurMotherLoveUnitesUsIntheInfinite sort of thing. Until one night we all broke into harmonies, and a sound unlike any I've been a part of flew around the room, catching my heart and making me tear up.
We could be singing Blah, blah, blah, for all I care. It's the sound that gets to me. And somewhere along the line I became a clear soprano. I've never been one before. I could sing soprano, but it was never easy. So I can BELT out an alto rock song as well as I could when I was twenty, and that sure is fun. (I sang "White Rabbit" extemporaneously, before the thing started.) But now I can harmonize with a clear, sweet soprano voice that comes from someone else in my body. No. Really. Must be. Can't be me.
And I am leaving for Littleton, NH on Tuesday, to scatter the last of my sister's ashes in the Connecticut River Source Lakes. One of them. We'll decide that on Wednesday. It's long overdue, but I could not have traveled so far until now. Her best friend--my other big sister, to me--and I will go and come back home on Thursday.
ALL three paintings were inspired from my hospital story. It will take a very long time to finish two of them. One is nearly done. As I said, I will put some studies of them in here, so you can see what I have been up to. Whether or not I will publish the last hospital story remains to be decided. Not for a bit, I don't think. My soul's flitted off to different things for now. I tend to listen to that voice.
AND, I've been using my exercise bike three-four days a week for about an hour each time. This requires a two hour recovery, but it is finally helping me start to lose the sixty pounds I have that I should lose. I've lost ten... in six weeks, which is slow. Still, slow is okay. I am not out to win a beauty contest. My goals are clear: to get as healthy as I can get and to keep walking. Period.
There was one week that was brutal, but it was only one out of the last five or six weeks. I was terrified, truly, because both feet were numb for three full days. I could not drive. Walking was odd, to say the least. I could feel the impact of each step when I was barefoot, but not as the sensation of the skin, more as the impact of two solid surfaces. It took a full week for the pain to subside, the swelling to go down, for the feeling to fully return. Didn't want to write about it. Didn't want to talk about it. I simply wanted it to go away. Which it did.
I am struggling a bit with the decision of whether to stay only one more year in my wonderful home, or give myself two years. Money, of course, is the issue. I have limited assets and they will be depleted by half if I stay two more years. I am eligible for enormous subsidy by going into a small elderly or assisted housing place. I don't want to go. And I don't know whether that's a spoiled brat talking, or whether it's a legitimate voice. I have room to paint here. I would not, elsewhere. The wait list is about a year, so I may do it, just in case. I want to stay in my new home. Paint. Have company. Feel this alive.
That's the thing; I am alive in every fiber of my being at last. I have not been like this for weeks in a row ... not for three years now. And even three years ago, it was short-lived. Since Jean Ellen died, I have been partly numb and asleep inside. I was awakened when one man returned. He brought out the Jetty in me again... I have to admit that about him whether or not I want to! He did. I almost lost her again when I lost my health, my career, and my home all at once, but nope. She kept yelling at me to let her come out and play.
And one day last week it occurred to me. He was the one who had said, "I wish you could wake up every day and Jetty could tell you what she needs: to rest, to sing, to write, or to paint ... or all three, without your having to worry about money, without your having to panic." I turned that into MY words as soon as he was gone. And I resented him because HE was going to rescue me.
Blecchhh.... pity pity pity. Since when have I thought I needed rescuing? Ugh.
Well, last week I realized I WAS asking myself that question every day and had been for a month! Only in his words, with the addition of "to focus on getting stronger, to dance" in there. And I am trying to put the money stuff OUT of the picture again for at LEAST six months. But I do ask myself that question. And the answer lately has been all combinations of focusing on getting well, dancing, singing, and painting! AND, without the OR!
Sometimes one steps away from the computer to fill the well. That's all. It is always temporary. I cannot imagine my life now without writing, including my blog, even if only fifteen of you eighty-eight are willing to hang in there with me.
So I will take pictures of my paintings, tell you their stories, and ramble on and on next weekend. Thanks for thinking of me there, all of you. Life is a miracle to me. Truly. How can it not? A couple of nights a week, I turn out all the lights, I put on my gypsy skirt and a tank top and I dance to music from the nineties, the music I danced my way to freedom after my husband ran out of my life. Peter Gabriel's "Us" and Bruce Hornsby's CD with "Fields of Gray" on it. Not all my FAVORITE music, but selections that I cannot stay still for. And they remind my of those years in my forties when I was slim and strong, but in pain and trying to find my solitary strength and joy. No one can see me, including me. All I know is the music, the dark and absolute abandon, while I set the girl free.
See ya!
I will be honest. I was hesitant about joining the singing circle. The first two times I went, I was uncomfortable with the GoddessEarthSpiritIsOurMotherLoveUnitesUsIntheInfinite sort of thing. Until one night we all broke into harmonies, and a sound unlike any I've been a part of flew around the room, catching my heart and making me tear up.
We could be singing Blah, blah, blah, for all I care. It's the sound that gets to me. And somewhere along the line I became a clear soprano. I've never been one before. I could sing soprano, but it was never easy. So I can BELT out an alto rock song as well as I could when I was twenty, and that sure is fun. (I sang "White Rabbit" extemporaneously, before the thing started.) But now I can harmonize with a clear, sweet soprano voice that comes from someone else in my body. No. Really. Must be. Can't be me.
And I am leaving for Littleton, NH on Tuesday, to scatter the last of my sister's ashes in the Connecticut River Source Lakes. One of them. We'll decide that on Wednesday. It's long overdue, but I could not have traveled so far until now. Her best friend--my other big sister, to me--and I will go and come back home on Thursday.
ALL three paintings were inspired from my hospital story. It will take a very long time to finish two of them. One is nearly done. As I said, I will put some studies of them in here, so you can see what I have been up to. Whether or not I will publish the last hospital story remains to be decided. Not for a bit, I don't think. My soul's flitted off to different things for now. I tend to listen to that voice.
AND, I've been using my exercise bike three-four days a week for about an hour each time. This requires a two hour recovery, but it is finally helping me start to lose the sixty pounds I have that I should lose. I've lost ten... in six weeks, which is slow. Still, slow is okay. I am not out to win a beauty contest. My goals are clear: to get as healthy as I can get and to keep walking. Period.
There was one week that was brutal, but it was only one out of the last five or six weeks. I was terrified, truly, because both feet were numb for three full days. I could not drive. Walking was odd, to say the least. I could feel the impact of each step when I was barefoot, but not as the sensation of the skin, more as the impact of two solid surfaces. It took a full week for the pain to subside, the swelling to go down, for the feeling to fully return. Didn't want to write about it. Didn't want to talk about it. I simply wanted it to go away. Which it did.
I am struggling a bit with the decision of whether to stay only one more year in my wonderful home, or give myself two years. Money, of course, is the issue. I have limited assets and they will be depleted by half if I stay two more years. I am eligible for enormous subsidy by going into a small elderly or assisted housing place. I don't want to go. And I don't know whether that's a spoiled brat talking, or whether it's a legitimate voice. I have room to paint here. I would not, elsewhere. The wait list is about a year, so I may do it, just in case. I want to stay in my new home. Paint. Have company. Feel this alive.
That's the thing; I am alive in every fiber of my being at last. I have not been like this for weeks in a row ... not for three years now. And even three years ago, it was short-lived. Since Jean Ellen died, I have been partly numb and asleep inside. I was awakened when one man returned. He brought out the Jetty in me again... I have to admit that about him whether or not I want to! He did. I almost lost her again when I lost my health, my career, and my home all at once, but nope. She kept yelling at me to let her come out and play.
And one day last week it occurred to me. He was the one who had said, "I wish you could wake up every day and Jetty could tell you what she needs: to rest, to sing, to write, or to paint ... or all three, without your having to worry about money, without your having to panic." I turned that into MY words as soon as he was gone. And I resented him because HE was going to rescue me.
Blecchhh.... pity pity pity. Since when have I thought I needed rescuing? Ugh.
Well, last week I realized I WAS asking myself that question every day and had been for a month! Only in his words, with the addition of "to focus on getting stronger, to dance" in there. And I am trying to put the money stuff OUT of the picture again for at LEAST six months. But I do ask myself that question. And the answer lately has been all combinations of focusing on getting well, dancing, singing, and painting! AND, without the OR!
Sometimes one steps away from the computer to fill the well. That's all. It is always temporary. I cannot imagine my life now without writing, including my blog, even if only fifteen of you eighty-eight are willing to hang in there with me.
So I will take pictures of my paintings, tell you their stories, and ramble on and on next weekend. Thanks for thinking of me there, all of you. Life is a miracle to me. Truly. How can it not? A couple of nights a week, I turn out all the lights, I put on my gypsy skirt and a tank top and I dance to music from the nineties, the music I danced my way to freedom after my husband ran out of my life. Peter Gabriel's "Us" and Bruce Hornsby's CD with "Fields of Gray" on it. Not all my FAVORITE music, but selections that I cannot stay still for. And they remind my of those years in my forties when I was slim and strong, but in pain and trying to find my solitary strength and joy. No one can see me, including me. All I know is the music, the dark and absolute abandon, while I set the girl free.
See ya!
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Just Thinking...
...Which is always a dangerous thing. There is, you know, a Part III to the hospital stuff. The next to last operation on my back involved a month long stay that was, well, bizarre. As opposed to what, you asked? As opposed to most anything I've heard of in a hospital stay, but, then, this is me we're talking about, so who knows?
I have decided, though, that perhaps it would be wise to give everyone a break from all that for a time. When I look at the stories that I write in here, on my blog, I realize it makes sense to me that one follower mentioned the need for a stiff drink while reading. I am afraid that sometimes so much bleak is in here that people might not know that I DO see the good. Everywhere. All around me.
Otherwise I pretty much know I'd be dead. Just like Marley in A Christmas Carol. I'd have been dead years before surgery even happened. I was finding a very convoluted path to suicide, but slow suicide it was, indeed. I trusted dangerous men. I put myself in potentially dangerous situations. I ran and ran and ran until I'd hit a brick wall, contracting mono, driving when I'd been awake more than sixty hours straight. I booked myself up so much with activities, I had no time for food at one point. And, let's not forget, I tried to work when I could barely walk. I lost about 45 pounds in eight weeks before my first operation. I would take the highway to work, pulling off once to throw up, then run to the ladies' room when we arrived at work to throw up again. I had migraines that were so severe that I could not see and would be found IN the stacks, curled up on the floor. Still I went to work.
This was not dedication. This was terror. This is someone who did not feel her life mattered at all, to anyone. No one paid attention except to tell me how nice and thin I was. Now, if only I'd fix those teeth of mine, maybe I would be a real looker. My HAIR was falling out, but what they noticed was that I was thin.
One true friend simply took my hand (The mom of my niece and nephew of whom I write periodically) and said, "Jeannette. You're DYING. For God's sake, please go back to the doctor." I was shocked that it mattered. One can get into such a dark place sometimes.
I was so accustomed to the bizarre that it was hard to see that getting help was the thing to do, but I did it. With help. As I mentioned way back in an entry from 2009 Blaming Mom--the Good Old Days we can (and I did) give away too much power when we refuse to take credit for any of the good, just as we do when we refuse to accept responsibility for the bad. I had not thought of that before I got help, more than twenty years ago now. Until my friend, and then two more, reminded me that perhaps I did deserve to take up space on the planet, if not for my sake, then for theirs, I figured I should just keep on slogging along until I dropped.
Anyway, it occurs to me sometimes that I do not write enough of the wonder of my life... it occurs to me even as I look back and realize I've not written about one of the most unbelievably horrible times of my life: my daughter's death. Still, out of each of the times when life was spinning out of control--even that one-- there truly were these times of utter grace, when I do not feel that I consciously made decisions that kept my temper in check, that allowed me the distance to accomplish what I had to, or to endure, that allowed me to look at the big picture of what needed to be done, to be taken care of. Something else gave me knowledge to draw from. We can call it dumb luck. We can call it grace. We can call it really good assimilation of subconscious messages my brain received from events around me. Some may call it God.
I call it Grace. By that I simply mean that the ability to walk or live or breathe through hell arrived from someplace I do not understand, and that does not bear analysis. Grace came to me from the time I was not yet four and my brother stepped on that board on my hand to squish a mouse, and it arrived at uncountable times from then on. Just in time to save my heart from breaking, or the innocence from being destroyed, something would seem to be given to me out of thin air--beauty, a person, a book, an animal, even. That is the biggest miracle of all. Somehow or other, there is innocence in me still, at sixty... That same innocence I had at four.
Is that the best gift of all? I can be transported by snow on leaves, as can just about everyone whose blog I visit. Maybe that's what writers, musicians, artists of every medium manage to keep. Even if we couch it in witty cynicism and sardonic humor, I suspect it lurks there anyway... despite our best efforts to say otherwise. But it is there for me, underlying most of the passages I write that receive the most emotional responses.
The child named Jetty has not once left my side for anything, at any time in my life. She led me to safety when I had to disappear. The wise, older voice came at the hospital. My counselor was afraid at one point, that perhaps I had managed to separate myself into different entities, but as we went along, she did not think so. Even though I have had the sense that there were distinct and sometimes warring voices in my head, I've always had a part that knew it was all me. For the sake of expressing the feeling, I have the voices, the "committee in my head" that sets up a might cacophony at times.
No matter what happened in my life, though, do not suppose for a moment that I want anyone else's life. Odd as it may seem, I want my own. I simply want to do a better job of living it is all. I want to feel that I made a difference somewhere when I leave and sometimes I feel I've wasted the gifts I was given. Perhaps that's how most people feel as they approach various milestones. My life is a roller coaster, yup. But it is also the height of spring and deep summer as well. It's a full moon night and an exaggerated low tide, with treasures just below the surface of the sand. It's standing on a mountain, wind in my face, seeing a world stretch out before me. And in even some of the smallest of moments, it can be the first May sun on my face. My family really was a rain forest: lush and rotting with little in between. Southern in the sense that we had so many layers, but they were distinctly northern layers. Granite. Seasonal plantings. My family had its distinct seasons that were predictable in their beauty and their horror, in their lushness and harshness.
I hope that I give enough of the beauty, and not just the pain. I guess that's why I work on memoir, the symphony, not just the fragments. And I hope that one day it may resonate with other people who struggled with the dichotomies of their own lives... that it can help others as I was helped, to see and feel the beauty abutting all the pain. I want to find the balance in my work, to show that the beauty WAS all around me, even when I hit bottom so very many times. I did not put the beauty there--I simply was lucky enough to see it, to feel it, to be saved by it.
And I was and am lucky.
Anyway, I'm just saying...
Part III is almost ready, but I think I'll let it breathe. Let all of you breathe. And start reading and refilling the well with the rain forest stories all of YOU tell so well. Thank you all so much for coming along for the ride that has been my life, and for supporting me so much as I write that ride!
I have decided, though, that perhaps it would be wise to give everyone a break from all that for a time. When I look at the stories that I write in here, on my blog, I realize it makes sense to me that one follower mentioned the need for a stiff drink while reading. I am afraid that sometimes so much bleak is in here that people might not know that I DO see the good. Everywhere. All around me.
Otherwise I pretty much know I'd be dead. Just like Marley in A Christmas Carol. I'd have been dead years before surgery even happened. I was finding a very convoluted path to suicide, but slow suicide it was, indeed. I trusted dangerous men. I put myself in potentially dangerous situations. I ran and ran and ran until I'd hit a brick wall, contracting mono, driving when I'd been awake more than sixty hours straight. I booked myself up so much with activities, I had no time for food at one point. And, let's not forget, I tried to work when I could barely walk. I lost about 45 pounds in eight weeks before my first operation. I would take the highway to work, pulling off once to throw up, then run to the ladies' room when we arrived at work to throw up again. I had migraines that were so severe that I could not see and would be found IN the stacks, curled up on the floor. Still I went to work.
This was not dedication. This was terror. This is someone who did not feel her life mattered at all, to anyone. No one paid attention except to tell me how nice and thin I was. Now, if only I'd fix those teeth of mine, maybe I would be a real looker. My HAIR was falling out, but what they noticed was that I was thin.
One true friend simply took my hand (The mom of my niece and nephew of whom I write periodically) and said, "Jeannette. You're DYING. For God's sake, please go back to the doctor." I was shocked that it mattered. One can get into such a dark place sometimes.
I was so accustomed to the bizarre that it was hard to see that getting help was the thing to do, but I did it. With help. As I mentioned way back in an entry from 2009 Blaming Mom--the Good Old Days we can (and I did) give away too much power when we refuse to take credit for any of the good, just as we do when we refuse to accept responsibility for the bad. I had not thought of that before I got help, more than twenty years ago now. Until my friend, and then two more, reminded me that perhaps I did deserve to take up space on the planet, if not for my sake, then for theirs, I figured I should just keep on slogging along until I dropped.
Anyway, it occurs to me sometimes that I do not write enough of the wonder of my life... it occurs to me even as I look back and realize I've not written about one of the most unbelievably horrible times of my life: my daughter's death. Still, out of each of the times when life was spinning out of control--even that one-- there truly were these times of utter grace, when I do not feel that I consciously made decisions that kept my temper in check, that allowed me the distance to accomplish what I had to, or to endure, that allowed me to look at the big picture of what needed to be done, to be taken care of. Something else gave me knowledge to draw from. We can call it dumb luck. We can call it grace. We can call it really good assimilation of subconscious messages my brain received from events around me. Some may call it God.
I call it Grace. By that I simply mean that the ability to walk or live or breathe through hell arrived from someplace I do not understand, and that does not bear analysis. Grace came to me from the time I was not yet four and my brother stepped on that board on my hand to squish a mouse, and it arrived at uncountable times from then on. Just in time to save my heart from breaking, or the innocence from being destroyed, something would seem to be given to me out of thin air--beauty, a person, a book, an animal, even. That is the biggest miracle of all. Somehow or other, there is innocence in me still, at sixty... That same innocence I had at four.
Is that the best gift of all? I can be transported by snow on leaves, as can just about everyone whose blog I visit. Maybe that's what writers, musicians, artists of every medium manage to keep. Even if we couch it in witty cynicism and sardonic humor, I suspect it lurks there anyway... despite our best efforts to say otherwise. But it is there for me, underlying most of the passages I write that receive the most emotional responses.
The child named Jetty has not once left my side for anything, at any time in my life. She led me to safety when I had to disappear. The wise, older voice came at the hospital. My counselor was afraid at one point, that perhaps I had managed to separate myself into different entities, but as we went along, she did not think so. Even though I have had the sense that there were distinct and sometimes warring voices in my head, I've always had a part that knew it was all me. For the sake of expressing the feeling, I have the voices, the "committee in my head" that sets up a might cacophony at times.
No matter what happened in my life, though, do not suppose for a moment that I want anyone else's life. Odd as it may seem, I want my own. I simply want to do a better job of living it is all. I want to feel that I made a difference somewhere when I leave and sometimes I feel I've wasted the gifts I was given. Perhaps that's how most people feel as they approach various milestones. My life is a roller coaster, yup. But it is also the height of spring and deep summer as well. It's a full moon night and an exaggerated low tide, with treasures just below the surface of the sand. It's standing on a mountain, wind in my face, seeing a world stretch out before me. And in even some of the smallest of moments, it can be the first May sun on my face. My family really was a rain forest: lush and rotting with little in between. Southern in the sense that we had so many layers, but they were distinctly northern layers. Granite. Seasonal plantings. My family had its distinct seasons that were predictable in their beauty and their horror, in their lushness and harshness.
I hope that I give enough of the beauty, and not just the pain. I guess that's why I work on memoir, the symphony, not just the fragments. And I hope that one day it may resonate with other people who struggled with the dichotomies of their own lives... that it can help others as I was helped, to see and feel the beauty abutting all the pain. I want to find the balance in my work, to show that the beauty WAS all around me, even when I hit bottom so very many times. I did not put the beauty there--I simply was lucky enough to see it, to feel it, to be saved by it.
And I was and am lucky.
Anyway, I'm just saying...
Part III is almost ready, but I think I'll let it breathe. Let all of you breathe. And start reading and refilling the well with the rain forest stories all of YOU tell so well. Thank you all so much for coming along for the ride that has been my life, and for supporting me so much as I write that ride!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Too Much of Spring: The Second Half
Note: This is directly tied to Leaving the Planet, about a seven-week hospital stint in 1982. This is no less difficult than that entry, so I get it if you might want to time your reading, or just skip it. I had to write this all because it is how I breathe through my life. I write. It occurs to me for the zillionth time, though, just how glad I am that I blog, for MY sake. Thank you for slogging through these entries. I learn about writing, about who I am NOW, and the entries are the final let go before I decide whether they go into a memoir or in a file.
Thank you all for helping me remember what I needed to. I am alive. I walk. I love the spring with a passion beyond logic. I am alive. Dr. D is not. Except here on this blog and in my heart. I am alive and I still walk.
Here goes...
"How can you be talking?"
"I opened my mouth?" I was startled by her comment. "What do you mean?"
"Your blood pressure is 65/35! It's not possible."
It would appear that she was right, because when I awakened next, I was in my blue room, my bed table there, in reach, everything on it, just so. I could move my arms and my head!
Only some twelve-year-old nurse named Mandi was looking very stern as she shouted, "Cough! You know you have to cough for us."
I took a deep breath. Oops. No, no deep breath was forthcoming. I could not fill my lungs without pain and enormous pressure, but the cough was a chokey, shallow, pitiful excuse for a post-op cough. Usually I just coughed a couple of good ones and all that had to be cleared was done and that was it.
Mandi, a ranting chipmunk, was yarping at me, when I tried to say that it hurt to breathe. "Well, of COURSE it hurts. You want pneumonia? Do you want to be on an IV for days? You have to cough and move things around so your bowel sounds come back and your lungs do not fill."
"I know that. I am telling you that I can't."
I got the "whatever" sigh I already knew from Mark's kids and other friends' teenagers. I kind of remembered it myself, from my own youth, only we tended to tag the sigh with "groovy."
Funny. I was twenty-nine and thinking my youth was over, remembering it the way my parents spoke of their own youth. Something was weird in that, but the thought drifted off as most thoughts did during that stay.
All that stayed with me was that I could see my legs because I could bend them. The body cast, however, was horribly tight, I thought. Perhaps they could loosen the side Velcro. Normally the things attached in the back. Mine attached on the left side, over my staples. Something about the fitting of it, someone said. Anyway, instead of lying on the flexible flap, I was lying on lined, rigid vinyl with a thin compacted foam rubber lining. I could not see it, but I felt holes, regularly spaced like ceiling tiles. What, so it could breathe? Ironic, I thought.
The Velcro strapping pressed directly on the incision. Staples everywhere, stabbing me. Bone-deep throbbing. Pressure, pressure, everywhere. I reminded myself it beat the hell out of a Stryker bed, like a mantra. I chanted, "It's better than the bed, it's better than the bed."
I was right. It was. Mark was there, but we were almost never alone. I guess he was worn out. He had to leave that night, but his last words were, "Don't ever go away like that again, sweetheart. We need you home. Look at all these cards here. See how many love you."
Cards?
On my bed table were about fifty envelopes, and I decided to sort them by day. Apparently it took time for my mail to find me. Why they had not given me these for those ten days, I'll never know, but I had them now. A wealth of love, all in one cacophony of cards. The next two and half hours the nurses simply let me be. They checked on me, read the cards I showed them, laughed, and let me be.
But my breathing got worse and I felt as if someone were stabbing my chest, just like the staples everywhere else. Sometimes the cards blurred and I would clean my glasses.
Carol came for the late shift that day, looked once at me, frowning, then at the cards, smiling. She disappeared, and around 11:00 pm some maintenance person appeared with a large bulletin board and two nails. She came back in the room and by midnight, I had a field of dopey and pretty cards to look at across the room, and a long piece of string taped on the side wall, holding about a dozen more cards. She rigged up a bag on the side of my table to hold the rest.
"There. Next time you think you're an alien, look at these. Although, you are beyond weird." She left the room before I could find something to throw.
And I was hungry. All I'd had in almost two weeks was broth, so I asked for food. Some idiot nurse gave me some because she did not bother to check the no food order on my door, I learned later. I had had no bowel sounds yet. None. I had only just been given water to drink, to start stimulating something or other. I think. Hell, I was in no position to think about it at the time. I knew only that someone brought me food that I could chew. Bread and butter. Pudding.
Twenty minutes later, I was projectile vomiting. I remember some ten-year-old in my body went, "Cool. I wonder how far I can puke." And the 29-year-old went, "GROSS." Sigh. Groovy.
All that is relevant is that I could not stop it, I could not breathe deeply, and I could not bend at the waist to accommodate the cramping. Carol was SCREAMING at someone outside the door, probably the girl who had brought me food.
"My GOD! What the hell else can we put this young woman through? If she doesn't sue us for just about everything this nursing staff has done, we will be luckier than you know! Damn it!" The yelling faded. Everything faded. I could no longer see or hear. I could not feel. The room blessedly disappeared into a blur of color and bright lights and voices that faded into whispers that came and went. Some of them were Carol and Dr. D., but mostly just strange voices. One of them was not in the room.
"103.5. This is not right."
"But her breathing is shallow. Why can't she just cough?"
You are never going home.
"We need to get the fever down."
You know no one cares if you die.
"104? What the HELL is this? "
Death.
I made it go quiet when I could. Quiet and dark and all alone so no one would bomb me with words I could not find. Pain occasionally ripped through the lights or the dark, at will, along with the voice.
This was four years before I remembered my childhood, before therapy. But something was starting. Here in hell, more hell began.
A familiar face, out of focus. A laugh. One needle sticks me, like familiar needles from a time beyond my reach, a thousand needles, over and over, beyond my control, everywhere beyond an arm, a leg, everywhere, over and over. Something ominous, hiding in corners of a dark mind. My mind. Someone's. Dark. Bright. Dark bright. Quiet. Noise. Quiet. Noise. Screams like me, but silent. Somewhere else. Blurring in and out of Hell.
Then suddenly large blue eyes. A face. Carol. I know the face. I do not want to see clearly. But I know her face. Her eyes too shiny and she's all full of lights.
"Don't you dare go! DON'T you dare go. LEAVE HER HERE! Don't you TAKE HER!" The eyes darting all over the place. Then drilling into me too bright.
Who? Take me where? Who's she yelling at?
Dark. Nothing at all.
Suddenly, sound tearing through, forcing me here. Velcro ripping with Carol's fortissimo accompaniment,a battering trumpet in my brain.
"Get this FUCKING THING OFF HER! How stupid can anyone be?"
Hands everywhere, flipping me. Am I in the bed again? What are all the hands? Jimmy, leave me alone. But no. Not Jimmy. Different. Jimmy? What am I saying? Who? A clatter and my eyes opened as my body cast hit the far blue.
White on blue, Carol on silence.
"They didn't leave room for her DIAPHRAGM! They MEASURED the thing when she EXHALED!"
And I coughed and I coughed and I gasped and I coughed and I vomited and I cried and I breathed and hands held me stiff with Carol at my head, there. Always there.
"It's okay, it's okay. YOU'RE okay."
Ice on the head and wrists. The rhythms of the coughing slow. The woman in the bed surrounded, but only one head shining. Carol's. She is old enough for shiny silver hair? The woman in the bed, so small when the coughing stops at last. I see her clearly there, so small, entirely without colors.
"Thank GOD. 100. She can live with that. Jeannette. Jeannette, come back. Earth to planet Jeannette."
The woman laughs, I fall, crash landing into dark once more. A different dark. I think they call it sleep.
"How many shifts are you working, there, woman?" I asked. I realized that I was all in the same place again.
She simply smiled, but was holding my hand. "You let me worry about that. Listen. You listen to me, BACK in BED B. Look into my eyes and listen! I am telling you you MUST lie still today. Your cast has been sent to cut a hole for your diaphragm." She seemed upset, suddenly. Her voice quieted as she leaned in closer. "Alien dear, you have to be still. We have strapped you in here, but you can move your arms and your head. It's not the bed. It's your bed. See? The doctor said that the anterior fusion is tight, so you don't have to be frozen. But if you don't pay attention, you have to go back to the planet Hell, and you've had enough, don't you think?"
"Yes. Frankly, I am so tired, Carol, I don't want to move. I don't think I can move. I am so tired." I didn't know I could sound so small. I didn't mean to cry. I wanted to be strong, but strong was nowhere to be found. She stayed until the drugs put me back to sleep and in the morning, for the first time in forever, all the me's inside were together, there. In one body. In one place. One very blue place.
Dr. D came in the afternoon, which seemed to shock the nurses.
"Have you had any visitors this weekend?"
I shook my head. He held my hand a moment then asked, "When was the last time your folks came to see you?"
I teared up and told him they'd never come. Basically, no one came except Mark, because I was too scary.
"May I borrow your little address book, Miss Jeannette?" Perhaps I was wrong to let him have it. Perhaps he was wrong to ask, but I didn't care. I really didn't care about anything. Lunch came and there was chicken. Dr. D. came back into the room with a hot fudge sundae and my address book about an hour later. He took me for a stroll, the first since the night before my first surgery, and when I looked out the hall window, I started to cry.
A film of green had covered the world while I was sleeping.
"You'll be out there before the lilacs, dear. I promise you. Before the lilacs."
Lilacs seemed so far away, but he was the kindest man I'd ever known, and he had prepared me for every step.
I didn't believe a word. He was no fool; he knew that I didn't believe him. Funny. He did not try to convince me or tell me to buck up. He did not think that it was odd that I was so detached.
All he said was, "Do what you have to, Jeannette. You still have the new posterior fusion to endure, and all I can say is that if anyone screws things up for you again, heads will roll. Some already have, but I'm sick to death of the mistakes because some people have not done their jobs, and I do not mean your floor nurses. You stay in whatever place you have to be, just like the Stryker bed, honey. Go where you must. But hear me when I say, you WILL see the lilacs bloom."
I did not like my cynicism, but I did not care to try for improvement just then. It was Wednesday and no one had come except Judy, who lived near by. It turns out she'd been there three times last week, but I could not remember. She wisely did not describe what she saw; she simply sat quietly by me, reading, occasionally holding my hand. But we'd been friends since we were born, summers in the same play pen. Our connection reached past words.
The last surgery was a piece of cake. Except for the hematomas. The second morning after surgery, the nurses wanted my blood pressure to build, so they sat me on the edge of the bed. We were going to go for a walk, they said. The nurse took my blood pressure, and went, "Oh my GOD. 50 over 30? Why aren't you dead?"
Irony everywhere. All the hovering over the woman again. Hands, IVs. Bottles. "Preppy blood, she calls it." Rolling machine. Something hurts my heart, makes it jump. I leave the room.
When I had my first transfusion a lifetime before, I'd had a reaction. So I had to have "washed and buffy packed cells." Buffy cells. The only way I could remember to remind staff of this was to say I needed "preppy cells." By the time I had had my eighth operation, a year and a half later, the whole staff called packed cells "Buffy Cells." I'd made my contribution to the medical community.
When I returned, opening my eyes with me behind them, it was dark again, but I had not clue what day it was. One of the regular nurses, Janice, I think, said, "This is getting really old, Jeannette. Will you stop dying on us please?"
"What day is this?"
"Friday, dear."
"What day was the surgery?"
"Tuesday. Mark is outside the room. He's been here since yesterday."
The hazel eyes were tired, but they stayed soft and close, and Mark's hand did not leave me once through the night. They did not make him leave. I had company all weekend, even Jean Ellen. Gail came. Mark went home and came back with the kids. Three of my other friends. Judy again.
It was lovely to be alone again on Monday, but I did not speak that thought. It was too late. The people who came had too much light and too many colors. It was not safe. Nothing was safe. It was time to walk again, they said. I had too much to do to absorb all those colors and the noises of the weekend. I had to walk again they said, so I could go home this week.
Go home this week.
Home? Jean Ellen said she had been painting in my room, but had moved the easel out again, to make room for me. She said that Mark and Daddy had moved my bed in at last, so I did not have to use the foldout any more. Home? It was not my home, not now. I had no home. It was Jean Ellen's home. Before that it was my friend's home. I remembered that last Connecticut operation, living with my friend, her telling me on the phone that her boyfriend had moved in and could they put my stuff in the garage until I knew where I was moving ... My calling Jean Ellen to move back into the apartment, and her saying, "But I just got it to myself last year! Your room is my studio." And Daddy saying I could not live back home with them because of Mom's "knees." He was right; no way I could live there. I was one day out of surgery with nowhere to go home to. Jean Ellen had said yes, but only if I left my stuff in storage. No one had wanted me. Here I was only four months later; it was too late for talk of beds and home.
Alone. Alone. Always a burden, never at home. What do they mean, so you can go home?
That voice again. I shook it off. I had to walk today.
I sat on the edge of the bed. The blood pressure was 104/55. Not great, but okay, they said. I had Carol on one side and Janice on the other. I was taller than Carol now, which shocked me.
"Well, kid, you are standing up straight." I was. We stopped in the bathroom and my face was in the top half of the mirror now. At least I think it was my face. She was pale and her cheeks had caverns beneath. I would not look at the eyes.
Death is not pretty, huh, Jeannette.
I shook it off again.
We walked down the hall. An armchair was by the window at the end of a tunnel that would get longer, then shorter. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Ceiling tiles above again. Familiar patterns. Dark. Light.
We reached the window where I could look out directly into Spring. This is how it looked to me.
I shouted in a whisper, "Too bright."
Carol said, "Breathe. Just sit down and breathe." I looked at her and she was crying. "Soon you will be out in the colors again. It's been too long for you here, in with all this sterile crap."
What is that color? Magenta? Too many lights. Sunny. Too bright. Laughing somewhere not from the hallway.
Then the voice came. Stop talking about home. I'm dying you know. Apparently the voice is jumping out from me, this time. It occurs to me once more that I am the woman in the mirror, but it doesn't really matter.
Carol started, then came in close, blue eyes staring into me straight at the voice. Then only dark again.
I would live. But sorrow wrapped me like my flannel robe. My colors had fled my body, the building, my world. Even the blue of my room was gray. I awakened at peace, in a black and white film. Three surgeries, four near death experiences, seventeen transfusions, hands with phlebitis, wounds like a heroine addict dotting the veins of my arms, like marching white ants.
Carol at my side. I asked for the date, but all I heard was May. I had missed my dad's birthday. Why was that all I registered? When had I come? M. March. The other M month. Lilacs.
Dr. D tried to apologize for something. I looked at him blankly, not understanding why he was saying he was sorry. Somewhere in a place I'd never seen another voice was speaking, You are alive. You are alive. It's done. You are alive.
An older voice. Older than me. Older than Dr. D or Daddy. I smiled at him and said, "I'm here, Doc D. I'm alive. I can walk."
And then I felt something missing inside as well. For the first time since 1979 that feeling at my core was gone. Something weak and sapping at my core. The pain beyond "1 to 10" was gone. I smiled at Dr. D. and said, "I'll be okay." For the first time, I meant it. He simply squeezed my hand.
Wisely, they did not walk me toward windows. I did not care to see. I had lost track of so many days that I did not bother to try to count. Not tiles, not holes, not minutes. I simply breathed through whatever came.
At last Daddy came and Dr. D. pushed the wheelchair piled high with me, and pillows Jean Ellen had brought from home, and cards, and instructions. It was hard to sit. The cast dug in. Something to get used to. Whatever. I was so tired. Carol kissed me on my forehead and said, "Brace yourself. It's Spring for real. It's okay."
I took her face in my hands though, when she kissed me. I looked her full in the eyes, trying to find regular life words, but said, "You were the only color I saw." The chair pulled me away, while my face adjusted to what smiling felt like.
I stood up to walk out the door, then froze. "Daddy, TURN THE COLORS OFF!" This is how it looked to me.
Before I got in I turned to Daddy again and said, "I missed your birthday."
Thank you all for helping me remember what I needed to. I am alive. I walk. I love the spring with a passion beyond logic. I am alive. Dr. D is not. Except here on this blog and in my heart. I am alive and I still walk.
Here goes...
Post-Op Re entry
I woke up briefly in the Recovery Room. The kind nurse was there again. This time I noticed she had soft, hazel eyes with eyelashes that really were unfairly long and thick. "Well, that's just not fair," I said and she was startled."How can you be talking?"
"I opened my mouth?" I was startled by her comment. "What do you mean?"
"Your blood pressure is 65/35! It's not possible."
It would appear that she was right, because when I awakened next, I was in my blue room, my bed table there, in reach, everything on it, just so. I could move my arms and my head!
Only some twelve-year-old nurse named Mandi was looking very stern as she shouted, "Cough! You know you have to cough for us."
I took a deep breath. Oops. No, no deep breath was forthcoming. I could not fill my lungs without pain and enormous pressure, but the cough was a chokey, shallow, pitiful excuse for a post-op cough. Usually I just coughed a couple of good ones and all that had to be cleared was done and that was it.
Mandi, a ranting chipmunk, was yarping at me, when I tried to say that it hurt to breathe. "Well, of COURSE it hurts. You want pneumonia? Do you want to be on an IV for days? You have to cough and move things around so your bowel sounds come back and your lungs do not fill."
"I know that. I am telling you that I can't."
I got the "whatever" sigh I already knew from Mark's kids and other friends' teenagers. I kind of remembered it myself, from my own youth, only we tended to tag the sigh with "groovy."
Funny. I was twenty-nine and thinking my youth was over, remembering it the way my parents spoke of their own youth. Something was weird in that, but the thought drifted off as most thoughts did during that stay.
All that stayed with me was that I could see my legs because I could bend them. The body cast, however, was horribly tight, I thought. Perhaps they could loosen the side Velcro. Normally the things attached in the back. Mine attached on the left side, over my staples. Something about the fitting of it, someone said. Anyway, instead of lying on the flexible flap, I was lying on lined, rigid vinyl with a thin compacted foam rubber lining. I could not see it, but I felt holes, regularly spaced like ceiling tiles. What, so it could breathe? Ironic, I thought.
The Velcro strapping pressed directly on the incision. Staples everywhere, stabbing me. Bone-deep throbbing. Pressure, pressure, everywhere. I reminded myself it beat the hell out of a Stryker bed, like a mantra. I chanted, "It's better than the bed, it's better than the bed."
I was right. It was. Mark was there, but we were almost never alone. I guess he was worn out. He had to leave that night, but his last words were, "Don't ever go away like that again, sweetheart. We need you home. Look at all these cards here. See how many love you."
Cards?
On my bed table were about fifty envelopes, and I decided to sort them by day. Apparently it took time for my mail to find me. Why they had not given me these for those ten days, I'll never know, but I had them now. A wealth of love, all in one cacophony of cards. The next two and half hours the nurses simply let me be. They checked on me, read the cards I showed them, laughed, and let me be.
But my breathing got worse and I felt as if someone were stabbing my chest, just like the staples everywhere else. Sometimes the cards blurred and I would clean my glasses.
Carol came for the late shift that day, looked once at me, frowning, then at the cards, smiling. She disappeared, and around 11:00 pm some maintenance person appeared with a large bulletin board and two nails. She came back in the room and by midnight, I had a field of dopey and pretty cards to look at across the room, and a long piece of string taped on the side wall, holding about a dozen more cards. She rigged up a bag on the side of my table to hold the rest.
"There. Next time you think you're an alien, look at these. Although, you are beyond weird." She left the room before I could find something to throw.
Between the Dark and the Light
What followed starting at about 5:00 a.m., though, were eight hours of nurses yelling at me to breathe and to cough, and doctors trying to figure out why I couldn't give them a deep breath. They worried that someone had nicked something. I don't know. I longed for my planetary pod at that point.And I was hungry. All I'd had in almost two weeks was broth, so I asked for food. Some idiot nurse gave me some because she did not bother to check the no food order on my door, I learned later. I had had no bowel sounds yet. None. I had only just been given water to drink, to start stimulating something or other. I think. Hell, I was in no position to think about it at the time. I knew only that someone brought me food that I could chew. Bread and butter. Pudding.
Twenty minutes later, I was projectile vomiting. I remember some ten-year-old in my body went, "Cool. I wonder how far I can puke." And the 29-year-old went, "GROSS." Sigh. Groovy.
All that is relevant is that I could not stop it, I could not breathe deeply, and I could not bend at the waist to accommodate the cramping. Carol was SCREAMING at someone outside the door, probably the girl who had brought me food.
"My GOD! What the hell else can we put this young woman through? If she doesn't sue us for just about everything this nursing staff has done, we will be luckier than you know! Damn it!" The yelling faded. Everything faded. I could no longer see or hear. I could not feel. The room blessedly disappeared into a blur of color and bright lights and voices that faded into whispers that came and went. Some of them were Carol and Dr. D., but mostly just strange voices. One of them was not in the room.
"103.5. This is not right."
"But her breathing is shallow. Why can't she just cough?"
You are never going home.
"We need to get the fever down."
You know no one cares if you die.
"104? What the HELL is this? "
Death.
I made it go quiet when I could. Quiet and dark and all alone so no one would bomb me with words I could not find. Pain occasionally ripped through the lights or the dark, at will, along with the voice.
This was four years before I remembered my childhood, before therapy. But something was starting. Here in hell, more hell began.
A familiar face, out of focus. A laugh. One needle sticks me, like familiar needles from a time beyond my reach, a thousand needles, over and over, beyond my control, everywhere beyond an arm, a leg, everywhere, over and over. Something ominous, hiding in corners of a dark mind. My mind. Someone's. Dark. Bright. Dark bright. Quiet. Noise. Quiet. Noise. Screams like me, but silent. Somewhere else. Blurring in and out of Hell.
Then suddenly large blue eyes. A face. Carol. I know the face. I do not want to see clearly. But I know her face. Her eyes too shiny and she's all full of lights.
"Don't you dare go! DON'T you dare go. LEAVE HER HERE! Don't you TAKE HER!" The eyes darting all over the place. Then drilling into me too bright.
Who? Take me where? Who's she yelling at?
Dark. Nothing at all.
Suddenly, sound tearing through, forcing me here. Velcro ripping with Carol's fortissimo accompaniment,a battering trumpet in my brain.
"Get this FUCKING THING OFF HER! How stupid can anyone be?"
Hands everywhere, flipping me. Am I in the bed again? What are all the hands? Jimmy, leave me alone. But no. Not Jimmy. Different. Jimmy? What am I saying? Who? A clatter and my eyes opened as my body cast hit the far blue.
White on blue, Carol on silence.
"They didn't leave room for her DIAPHRAGM! They MEASURED the thing when she EXHALED!"
And I coughed and I coughed and I gasped and I coughed and I vomited and I cried and I breathed and hands held me stiff with Carol at my head, there. Always there.
"It's okay, it's okay. YOU'RE okay."
Ice on the head and wrists. The rhythms of the coughing slow. The woman in the bed surrounded, but only one head shining. Carol's. She is old enough for shiny silver hair? The woman in the bed, so small when the coughing stops at last. I see her clearly there, so small, entirely without colors.
"Thank GOD. 100. She can live with that. Jeannette. Jeannette, come back. Earth to planet Jeannette."
The woman laughs, I fall, crash landing into dark once more. A different dark. I think they call it sleep.
Gone Quiet
It was dark when I awoke, so I was not sure whether it was the room or me, but there was Carol, holding my hand. At my head. There, always there."How many shifts are you working, there, woman?" I asked. I realized that I was all in the same place again.
She simply smiled, but was holding my hand. "You let me worry about that. Listen. You listen to me, BACK in BED B. Look into my eyes and listen! I am telling you you MUST lie still today. Your cast has been sent to cut a hole for your diaphragm." She seemed upset, suddenly. Her voice quieted as she leaned in closer. "Alien dear, you have to be still. We have strapped you in here, but you can move your arms and your head. It's not the bed. It's your bed. See? The doctor said that the anterior fusion is tight, so you don't have to be frozen. But if you don't pay attention, you have to go back to the planet Hell, and you've had enough, don't you think?"
"Yes. Frankly, I am so tired, Carol, I don't want to move. I don't think I can move. I am so tired." I didn't know I could sound so small. I didn't mean to cry. I wanted to be strong, but strong was nowhere to be found. She stayed until the drugs put me back to sleep and in the morning, for the first time in forever, all the me's inside were together, there. In one body. In one place. One very blue place.
A Quiet Crash of Spring
With metal. White uniforms, with an occasional jacket of color. New nurses. Mandi again. And there was someone in Bed A. She was nice, but when she said she'd got there Friday, I realized it was six days after surgery, and the weekend was nearly gone.Dr. D came in the afternoon, which seemed to shock the nurses.
"Have you had any visitors this weekend?"
I shook my head. He held my hand a moment then asked, "When was the last time your folks came to see you?"
I teared up and told him they'd never come. Basically, no one came except Mark, because I was too scary.
"May I borrow your little address book, Miss Jeannette?" Perhaps I was wrong to let him have it. Perhaps he was wrong to ask, but I didn't care. I really didn't care about anything. Lunch came and there was chicken. Dr. D. came back into the room with a hot fudge sundae and my address book about an hour later. He took me for a stroll, the first since the night before my first surgery, and when I looked out the hall window, I started to cry.
A film of green had covered the world while I was sleeping."You'll be out there before the lilacs, dear. I promise you. Before the lilacs."
Lilacs seemed so far away, but he was the kindest man I'd ever known, and he had prepared me for every step.
I didn't believe a word. He was no fool; he knew that I didn't believe him. Funny. He did not try to convince me or tell me to buck up. He did not think that it was odd that I was so detached.
All he said was, "Do what you have to, Jeannette. You still have the new posterior fusion to endure, and all I can say is that if anyone screws things up for you again, heads will roll. Some already have, but I'm sick to death of the mistakes because some people have not done their jobs, and I do not mean your floor nurses. You stay in whatever place you have to be, just like the Stryker bed, honey. Go where you must. But hear me when I say, you WILL see the lilacs bloom."
The Final Cut, the Final Wait
I had to wait for the last operation until the incision could withstand the last surgery on the back. I had no clue what that meant. It seemed silly to me, to wait for something to heal just to slash it open again, but then, it kind of seemed like my life. One wound would start to heal and another would land before the process was done. Why not?I did not like my cynicism, but I did not care to try for improvement just then. It was Wednesday and no one had come except Judy, who lived near by. It turns out she'd been there three times last week, but I could not remember. She wisely did not describe what she saw; she simply sat quietly by me, reading, occasionally holding my hand. But we'd been friends since we were born, summers in the same play pen. Our connection reached past words.
The last surgery was a piece of cake. Except for the hematomas. The second morning after surgery, the nurses wanted my blood pressure to build, so they sat me on the edge of the bed. We were going to go for a walk, they said. The nurse took my blood pressure, and went, "Oh my GOD. 50 over 30? Why aren't you dead?"
Irony everywhere. All the hovering over the woman again. Hands, IVs. Bottles. "Preppy blood, she calls it." Rolling machine. Something hurts my heart, makes it jump. I leave the room.
When I had my first transfusion a lifetime before, I'd had a reaction. So I had to have "washed and buffy packed cells." Buffy cells. The only way I could remember to remind staff of this was to say I needed "preppy cells." By the time I had had my eighth operation, a year and a half later, the whole staff called packed cells "Buffy Cells." I'd made my contribution to the medical community.
When I returned, opening my eyes with me behind them, it was dark again, but I had not clue what day it was. One of the regular nurses, Janice, I think, said, "This is getting really old, Jeannette. Will you stop dying on us please?"
"What day is this?"
"Friday, dear."
"What day was the surgery?"
"Tuesday. Mark is outside the room. He's been here since yesterday."
The hazel eyes were tired, but they stayed soft and close, and Mark's hand did not leave me once through the night. They did not make him leave. I had company all weekend, even Jean Ellen. Gail came. Mark went home and came back with the kids. Three of my other friends. Judy again.
It was lovely to be alone again on Monday, but I did not speak that thought. It was too late. The people who came had too much light and too many colors. It was not safe. Nothing was safe. It was time to walk again, they said. I had too much to do to absorb all those colors and the noises of the weekend. I had to walk again they said, so I could go home this week.
Go home this week.
Home? Jean Ellen said she had been painting in my room, but had moved the easel out again, to make room for me. She said that Mark and Daddy had moved my bed in at last, so I did not have to use the foldout any more. Home? It was not my home, not now. I had no home. It was Jean Ellen's home. Before that it was my friend's home. I remembered that last Connecticut operation, living with my friend, her telling me on the phone that her boyfriend had moved in and could they put my stuff in the garage until I knew where I was moving ... My calling Jean Ellen to move back into the apartment, and her saying, "But I just got it to myself last year! Your room is my studio." And Daddy saying I could not live back home with them because of Mom's "knees." He was right; no way I could live there. I was one day out of surgery with nowhere to go home to. Jean Ellen had said yes, but only if I left my stuff in storage. No one had wanted me. Here I was only four months later; it was too late for talk of beds and home.
Alone. Alone. Always a burden, never at home. What do they mean, so you can go home?
That voice again. I shook it off. I had to walk today.
I sat on the edge of the bed. The blood pressure was 104/55. Not great, but okay, they said. I had Carol on one side and Janice on the other. I was taller than Carol now, which shocked me.
"Well, kid, you are standing up straight." I was. We stopped in the bathroom and my face was in the top half of the mirror now. At least I think it was my face. She was pale and her cheeks had caverns beneath. I would not look at the eyes.
Death is not pretty, huh, Jeannette.
I shook it off again.
We walked down the hall. An armchair was by the window at the end of a tunnel that would get longer, then shorter. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Ceiling tiles above again. Familiar patterns. Dark. Light.
We reached the window where I could look out directly into Spring. This is how it looked to me.
I shouted in a whisper, "Too bright."
Carol said, "Breathe. Just sit down and breathe." I looked at her and she was crying. "Soon you will be out in the colors again. It's been too long for you here, in with all this sterile crap."
What is that color? Magenta? Too many lights. Sunny. Too bright. Laughing somewhere not from the hallway.
Then the voice came. Stop talking about home. I'm dying you know. Apparently the voice is jumping out from me, this time. It occurs to me once more that I am the woman in the mirror, but it doesn't really matter.
Carol started, then came in close, blue eyes staring into me straight at the voice. Then only dark again.
The Daddies Get Me Home
A hematoma had burst. I remember absolutely nothing at all from the two days that followed. Nothing. I had finally learned to simply leave the scene entirely. What I know is that I awakened exhausted, but quiet. The voice had fled at last.I would live. But sorrow wrapped me like my flannel robe. My colors had fled my body, the building, my world. Even the blue of my room was gray. I awakened at peace, in a black and white film. Three surgeries, four near death experiences, seventeen transfusions, hands with phlebitis, wounds like a heroine addict dotting the veins of my arms, like marching white ants.
Carol at my side. I asked for the date, but all I heard was May. I had missed my dad's birthday. Why was that all I registered? When had I come? M. March. The other M month. Lilacs.
Dr. D tried to apologize for something. I looked at him blankly, not understanding why he was saying he was sorry. Somewhere in a place I'd never seen another voice was speaking, You are alive. You are alive. It's done. You are alive.
An older voice. Older than me. Older than Dr. D or Daddy. I smiled at him and said, "I'm here, Doc D. I'm alive. I can walk."
And then I felt something missing inside as well. For the first time since 1979 that feeling at my core was gone. Something weak and sapping at my core. The pain beyond "1 to 10" was gone. I smiled at Dr. D. and said, "I'll be okay." For the first time, I meant it. He simply squeezed my hand.
Wisely, they did not walk me toward windows. I did not care to see. I had lost track of so many days that I did not bother to try to count. Not tiles, not holes, not minutes. I simply breathed through whatever came.
At last Daddy came and Dr. D. pushed the wheelchair piled high with me, and pillows Jean Ellen had brought from home, and cards, and instructions. It was hard to sit. The cast dug in. Something to get used to. Whatever. I was so tired. Carol kissed me on my forehead and said, "Brace yourself. It's Spring for real. It's okay."
I took her face in my hands though, when she kissed me. I looked her full in the eyes, trying to find regular life words, but said, "You were the only color I saw." The chair pulled me away, while my face adjusted to what smiling felt like.
I stood up to walk out the door, then froze. "Daddy, TURN THE COLORS OFF!" This is how it looked to me.
It had rained a few hours before, and now the sun shone full upon the world and all I could see was a world too alive for me to know. Too alive for my black and white soul to absorb or to bear.
My father turned me so gently to him, arms holding me, my face hidden. "It's okay, Jetty. Just breathe. Let's get you to the car." The station wagon back seat was lined with pillows. Mommy's afghan was there, pastels against pale lavender.
He teared up and kissed me on my hair and said, "No. Not even close, Jetty."
He drove us up a side street in the town,where the houses were dappled in shade and light, but it was alive with life, growing. Colors, softer, glowing. I wanted to stay lying down, but he had me sit up and climbed in beside me from the other side. "Just take a look out the window, Jetty, for just a few minutes. I'm right here." I leaned back against him and breathed.
The place was the closest place to Heaven here that my father could find.
He sang silly songs the rest of the way home—our songs, not Dr. D's—and when we turned up my street, I smiled. The corner house's lilacs were just in bloom.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
And now a break from our regular program...
If ever there was a day that reminded me of how not alone I am, this is it. Why? Because I was feeling incredibly sorry for myself the last few days. Yes, I was. I went to a fantastic writers workshop/conference Friday night and all day Saturday. It was held at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, CT. Really. What better place? I have only been able to attend three of the eight classes I started. Somehow or other I had thought that payback from three hours Friday night and nine hours all day Saturday would have a payback of a day and a half. I told myself I was okay, Monday afternoon, when I rode my stationary bike an hour. I ignored the post-pain, telling myself I was better.
The power of positive thinking. We, as Americans, are always saying, "Smile. You'll feel better," or "Think positive." I am here to tell you that, sometimes, that is pure hogwash, bull spittle, and nonsense. Sometimes telling yourself that you're fine when you are not is, hmmmm.... let's see .... how shall I say this.... STUMP DUMB. Yeah, that's the term.
This morning I got up and the pain in my right leg was in full throttle. It had been all night. So what did I do? I told myself, "Move around. You'll feel better." I looked in my fridge and realized that putting off the grocery shopping for six days meant that I would be facing a fourth night of turkey thigh. No fruit. One bag of the SAME mixed vegetables I'd been eating all week. No eggs. No spinach. No carrots. No onions. No bread. No vanilla. Less than a quart of milk. Oops.
So I did the sensible thing to do when one leg is numb; I went grocery shopping. Because, truly, when you are feeling oh so pathetic and alone, the one thing you really should do is the one thing that is guaranteed to make things even worse. Yup. But, damn it, I am an independent, stubborn, ridiculous specimen of woman, so out I went.
Hey, but I DID go to the store with the high carriages and the people who take the groceries out of your cart and take them to your car, and put the stuff in your trunk. See? I'm no fool. Of course, when I got into the car, I was so red, so done in, in so much pain that I could not figure out how to lift my left leg INTO the car to drive home.
Now, normally, I am aware of being around sixty, bent over, and well, just not a woman anyone notices. Ask other late middle-aged women about being invisible in America. The transition is not nice, especially when you WERE the kind of woman men noticed just ten years ago. Oh, well. That is life. And then that theory was blown to hell, so I could not feel sorry for myself over THAT. Two very kind men came over from opposite directions to make sure I was okay. They were not young. They were not old. I don't know what they were other than sweet. And neither left the vicinity of the car until my breathing slowed and my sunglasses were on, and I was smiling again.
When they turned away, I am afraid I shouted obscenities at the two men in my life who had promised to be there for me, who had said they admired me, who... oh, YOU know what I mean. That got me back enough energy to drive home and lug the groceries into my apartment.
You'd think that would be enough to snap me out of my pathetic bout, wouldn't you? Nope. I started getting angry at anyone's promising me to be around, at either of them telling me they wanted me to stop worrying about money, about my future, that I would never be alone. NEVER be alone? What was I here? I'm as alone as it gets, grocery shopping. I can't go to the last class and I realized that as I drove home. Risking city driving at rush hour would mean risking more than my own neck.
And, on top of that, now BOTH legs were numb. I started to cry. I almost never cry about my back; that is an exercise in self-pitying futility. Yet I am human. I want to be like other people, as all of us who have conditions that get in the way do from time to time. I wanted the love of my life to be the man he pretended to be. I wanted my ex-husband to be that man in the hospitals before we were married, not the man he became almost the second we said, "I do." I wanted to go to the gym, to hike. It all came crashing in on me.
After five minutes, perhaps ten, I went, "GET A GRIP, JEANNETTE." I told myself to park my butt in this chair and connect with a few of my closest friends on line. They might be out just now, but they would be back--the friends who are here, who pop up in real life all the time. I got online and the tears were returning, when the phone rang.
There was one of my best friends and his daughter, running errands. He knew I wasn't doing well yesterday when I picked him up from his service station and he was just checking on me, reminding me that he was five minutes away if I needed anything at all. And there was a message on my machine from another friend, seeing whether I was okay. And a message from a friend who was at the weekend workshop, checking up on me. And I re-read the simply back and forth from one of my dearest friends in the whole world who is, unfortunately, six hours away... but we insist on checking up on each other every single day, and when we go more than ten days without talking, we get kinda... what's the word now... bitchy. Yes, for me, that's the word. When I talk with her, my world gets right because we laugh. We laugh a whole lot. And I remembered a conversation with the woman with whom I'll probably join my lot in a few years... more laughing.
I haven't had to connect online since I sat down. I've already realized that I am NOT alone as it gets. Why did I think I needed those two men to be bonded with people in a real way? I guess it was a momentary lapse.
The thing is, I tested myself this month. Why on earth would I tell myself I failed, just because I hit my limits? Those limits have expanded from last year's. I have learned something in my course and have had an unforgettable experience of listening to absolutely wonderful writers for about nine hours of bliss.
So the price was a little too high to be doing either again any time soon? There are no regrets for trying. So I hurt. I have all I need for another couple of years... many do not have that.
I was confusing "Think positive" with "Think perky."
All I can say now is, "Well DUH."
And slink off to the couch to recover from my own silliness.
The power of positive thinking. We, as Americans, are always saying, "Smile. You'll feel better," or "Think positive." I am here to tell you that, sometimes, that is pure hogwash, bull spittle, and nonsense. Sometimes telling yourself that you're fine when you are not is, hmmmm.... let's see .... how shall I say this.... STUMP DUMB. Yeah, that's the term.
This morning I got up and the pain in my right leg was in full throttle. It had been all night. So what did I do? I told myself, "Move around. You'll feel better." I looked in my fridge and realized that putting off the grocery shopping for six days meant that I would be facing a fourth night of turkey thigh. No fruit. One bag of the SAME mixed vegetables I'd been eating all week. No eggs. No spinach. No carrots. No onions. No bread. No vanilla. Less than a quart of milk. Oops.
So I did the sensible thing to do when one leg is numb; I went grocery shopping. Because, truly, when you are feeling oh so pathetic and alone, the one thing you really should do is the one thing that is guaranteed to make things even worse. Yup. But, damn it, I am an independent, stubborn, ridiculous specimen of woman, so out I went.
Hey, but I DID go to the store with the high carriages and the people who take the groceries out of your cart and take them to your car, and put the stuff in your trunk. See? I'm no fool. Of course, when I got into the car, I was so red, so done in, in so much pain that I could not figure out how to lift my left leg INTO the car to drive home.
Now, normally, I am aware of being around sixty, bent over, and well, just not a woman anyone notices. Ask other late middle-aged women about being invisible in America. The transition is not nice, especially when you WERE the kind of woman men noticed just ten years ago. Oh, well. That is life. And then that theory was blown to hell, so I could not feel sorry for myself over THAT. Two very kind men came over from opposite directions to make sure I was okay. They were not young. They were not old. I don't know what they were other than sweet. And neither left the vicinity of the car until my breathing slowed and my sunglasses were on, and I was smiling again.
When they turned away, I am afraid I shouted obscenities at the two men in my life who had promised to be there for me, who had said they admired me, who... oh, YOU know what I mean. That got me back enough energy to drive home and lug the groceries into my apartment.
You'd think that would be enough to snap me out of my pathetic bout, wouldn't you? Nope. I started getting angry at anyone's promising me to be around, at either of them telling me they wanted me to stop worrying about money, about my future, that I would never be alone. NEVER be alone? What was I here? I'm as alone as it gets, grocery shopping. I can't go to the last class and I realized that as I drove home. Risking city driving at rush hour would mean risking more than my own neck.
And, on top of that, now BOTH legs were numb. I started to cry. I almost never cry about my back; that is an exercise in self-pitying futility. Yet I am human. I want to be like other people, as all of us who have conditions that get in the way do from time to time. I wanted the love of my life to be the man he pretended to be. I wanted my ex-husband to be that man in the hospitals before we were married, not the man he became almost the second we said, "I do." I wanted to go to the gym, to hike. It all came crashing in on me.
After five minutes, perhaps ten, I went, "GET A GRIP, JEANNETTE." I told myself to park my butt in this chair and connect with a few of my closest friends on line. They might be out just now, but they would be back--the friends who are here, who pop up in real life all the time. I got online and the tears were returning, when the phone rang.
There was one of my best friends and his daughter, running errands. He knew I wasn't doing well yesterday when I picked him up from his service station and he was just checking on me, reminding me that he was five minutes away if I needed anything at all. And there was a message on my machine from another friend, seeing whether I was okay. And a message from a friend who was at the weekend workshop, checking up on me. And I re-read the simply back and forth from one of my dearest friends in the whole world who is, unfortunately, six hours away... but we insist on checking up on each other every single day, and when we go more than ten days without talking, we get kinda... what's the word now... bitchy. Yes, for me, that's the word. When I talk with her, my world gets right because we laugh. We laugh a whole lot. And I remembered a conversation with the woman with whom I'll probably join my lot in a few years... more laughing.
I haven't had to connect online since I sat down. I've already realized that I am NOT alone as it gets. Why did I think I needed those two men to be bonded with people in a real way? I guess it was a momentary lapse.
The thing is, I tested myself this month. Why on earth would I tell myself I failed, just because I hit my limits? Those limits have expanded from last year's. I have learned something in my course and have had an unforgettable experience of listening to absolutely wonderful writers for about nine hours of bliss.
So the price was a little too high to be doing either again any time soon? There are no regrets for trying. So I hurt. I have all I need for another couple of years... many do not have that.
I was confusing "Think positive" with "Think perky."
All I can say now is, "Well DUH."
And slink off to the couch to recover from my own silliness.
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