ReinventedVoices

Pneumonia and the Safest Place

2012-02-10T16:35:00.002-05:00

Betweet 2000 and the end of 2001, my friend who is like a sister to me, and who had two very small children, was struck with kidney failure several times and fought to keep her life. I lived half the time at my house and half at hers. My sister and I had decided to hang onto our home in case G died, which she nearly did six times in a year and a half. We knew we might be raising two children because, by his own admission, C was no kind of a father to raise kids alone. Then my minister, a friend who had helped me through my husband's desertion and daughter's death, whose wife was a dear friend, hanged himself. And my brother was diagnosed with terminal liver disease one month before his older son hanged himself. Then Jack died. Then my voice teacher and choir director and friend of ten years died.

It was not a good eighteen months.

And at the end of that time (G is STILL with us), my women had an inkling that I would fail if I did not get the hell out of Dodge for a bit. So Nancy, who was going to take a professional photography course in Santa Fe, consulted with my sister about sending me with her. They colluded, this bunch. And for Christmas of 2001, I had a ticket to Santa Fe and a hotel to stay in and ten days to call my own!

Perfect. And it was. Only on the plane ride home, I contracted an odd strain of bacterial pneumonia. Four days after I was home, my fever spiked and I was terribly, terribly ill. I saw the doctor and he gave me two choices. "The hospital today, or you do absolutely NOTHING for the next three days, let other people take care of you, do your breathing treatments religiously and find some way to keep your breathing deep and even. I will see you then, and if you are better, you may continue that way. 2/10ths of a degree higher temperature, you are in the hospital. And do NOT lie down to sleep at night."

Painting My Way Home
I painted. I remembered, in my counseling, yes, I DID do visualizing when the flashbacks started to come. I learned to keep them from coming by a strong, strong visualization of the safest, most serene spot I could imagine. I had two. One was at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. I gave that painting away. The other, my fifth painting ever, is this. I am sorry about the reflection. I gave it to my sister when she was having a particularly rough time two years later. I worked on this every day, played Handel's Watermusik in the background and focused on breathing. It is just watercolor. I surrounded myself with New Hampshire pictures. Water. Granite. Pine. Mountains. The Flume. The Basin. Roadside rushing water. The Lake. You name it. At the other end of the room I did the same with pictures from my Runaways to Red Bank. Nothing but Sandy Hook, West Long Branch, the ocean, rocks. sand. I would move back and forth between paintings, then the couch, paintings, the couch, for about eight or ten hours. I had a gallon of ice water there as well, and a cooler with more ice.

By Still Waters, Peace

From this painting everything else has sprung. I am a woman of granite and water. Mad rushing water has smoothed my edges. Pools of calm reflect the colors of ages. I am a woman of pine and birch, of seasons and extremes, of dark and light. (Well, and I'm just plain nuts to boot, lest you think I've gone all mythical mystic goddess on you.) Northern writers have just as many layers as the southern writers do. It took me until I was about forty-five to know that for sure.

I guess I'm blogging more than I thought I would. Oh, well. Here is the mother painting for me. Again, apologies for the reflection's muted color and lines, but perhaps you can get the feel of it. Oh. I finished both in nine days. On the tenth I rested! No hospital. I was very close to well.

And whenever I look at this painting I seem to automatically breathe more deeply, and I disappear there to rest.

An Old Memory, An Old Blog, Another Painting...

2012-02-09T10:58:00.000-05:00

Not only did I complete a sketch with a gameplan of how to render it with my preferred artist media of watercolor, tissue paper, lace paper, and pen; I also worked on the painting I began in...

"Excerpt from "Finally-translating-inspiration-into a Painting"

The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting -- the one I began on my retreat --upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.

So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.

And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.

And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.

When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at, by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.

"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.

I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.

This first gives a close up so you can see how it is I layered the water. There are about four kinds of paper in the collaged water, each torn strip had been previously painted, then new layers of blue washes were applied. A hint of white caps is done in white acrylic. The leaves were done with three layers of craft weight tissue paper, pre-painted in various shades of yellow and flame, each painted separately, glued together, then glued to the painting. Details were then painted so that I could make them as realistic as possible.

I have done it this way to replicate my little girl wonder at the water and the enormous leaves, as I would position myself so that I saw absolutely no land.

The second gives the beginning of how the whole will look--I've not yet done the single white pine bough that intruded on all views from the left. That bough nearly kissed the window in my mind, but perhaps you can get a little of the feel of the water. The way I work, this painting is perhaps a little over halfway completed. Regardless of when it's completed, this is directly from, as Bruce Coltin so precisely described it, a conversation with one of my ghosts!

The leaf will go off the frame, as will the water. The whole painting is taped to a board, so I won't get the full effect of a white matte until it is finished. I do want this painting matted white, because the screen frame was bright white. At least that is how I remember it vividly, and how I felt. The leaves are actual size of the largest maple leaves.

This is the first painting where I've finally been able to get a digital image that shows the layer upon layer upon layer that goes into much of the work. The mountains in the painting that is my permanent banner reflect approximately twenty layers of paper, all in different variations of white, some toward the top with the irridescent pearl white, some with tinted white washes. I get lost in some odd zone when I am layering papers. It is a free sort of activity, painting sheets of paper, tearing into approximate shapes, gluing with intentional folds, painting again. Most of the time it is almost entirely right brain, with the sporadic left brain--fold this one here. No. Re-angle that one before it dries. Take that one off and put it there. Almost rhythmic.

Okay, so I lied. I cam back already. Today is the day I have a meeting--spiritual stuff--at 3, dinner with the wackos I love at 5, song circle at 7. Painting or doing a lot of sitting activity is not possible if I want to have fun this evening. How I missed singing for five years--it feels like a miracle to have found a group where it does not set off the trigeminal nerve. Where the sound is about hushed harmonies!

That's all for now, though! I do love it when people yell at me to shut up and run with it. More than one person has told me to stop thinking so hard and simply paint, sing, or write as the mood hits. I'm not a good listener...

Thanks.

Three Photos, an Old Poem, a Painting in my Brain...

2012-02-08T12:47:00.001-05:00

... and another ramble from a memory. In the seventies and early eighties, I had an "aunt and uncle" who built a dreamhouse on Cape Cod. Joy was actually my mom's first cousin, but they grew up around the corner from one another in New York (Flushing), so felt the relationship was more like sisters. She was about ten years younger than mom and we always thought of her as Aunt Joy. It was to her place in Paris my sister and I went during the summer of '74, when I was graduated from college.

My aunt designed and had built a wondrous home at the Cape, to which my sister, my best friend G, and I would run for a joint birthday celebration of G's and mine. Joy was a gourmet cook and would make us fabulous meals. She was estranged from her daughter and I was the surrogate. Or so she said.

You know what? For now I will cut to the chase. Four years after I was married, she called one day and told us Jack's "Ship had come in." He was a brilliant man--ultimately part of the group that invented the early voice recognition for telephones. A computer scientist who put himself through school playing, as he called it "cocktail hour piano." He relocated from his position for ITT (Then) International to form his own research company and he said that he had sold at long last, one of his patents. Joy was ecstatic and immediately they called me and told me that I would never have to worry about Mark's and my kids' education again. They had a big dinner for all four of us kids and our children to tell us they were setting up college funds for the kids and were giving every adult in the group an income GIFT of $10k a year! To us, it was something.

And if I could not trust my surrogate parents, the aunt who had been there for me during my twenties, when my mom's drinking had overtaken her more than half the time, well...

And they called me especially, telling me that they were sending me fifteen thousand dollars to get a GOOD CAR and pay for the added auto insurance, title fees, etc. The check did not come, but they insisted there were glitches. In the meantime, I called G, who was newly out of law school, that she should plan on a vacation.

One of G's shots related to
where this ramble's headed

She and I were renting a place in New Hampshire to take a long dreamed of vacation together so she could have autumn shots of New Hampshire. She had an affinity for shots in the mist, taken through foliage, and of reflections. The Lake beckoned. I kept putting off getting the car, though, wisely thinking it was best to simply pay, not get a short-term loan. But I made our reservations.

Finally, Jack called and said, "I just mailed the check. Why don't you get the car."

Mark said, "Honey. Let's go get that car you picked out and just take the loan and pay it off in a few days. It's the only one on the lot."

We got it. It was the color of my skin when I got a tan. Back then I had only lately given up tanning...

I called Joy and told her, then drove to my folks' house later in the day so that they could see I no longer had the breakdown king of cars. The phone rang. My dad got off the phone.

"It was a lie. Jack was picked up by the police, drunk, trying to buy a gun and shoot himself. He didn't sell a thing. He refinanced their paid for house and made it look like they were rich. He is penniless."

And I had a car we could not pay for.

There is far more to that story, but that is enough. My parents helped us out. And my husband said that we would FIND THE MONEY and to just go on vacation. We had lately found out that my dad was dying...

part of the image G gave me for my wall

G and I went and it was wonderful. I would park my brand new, comfy car, and she would get herself into contortions to take pictures. And in the course of our adventures, we found this One House Island (that may be our name for it) on, yes, Golden Pond.

When we got home, of course, all hell broke loose for year after year after year, it seemed.

But along the way, I wrote poetry. I do not say it was good poetry, but it helped me. And one night I dreamed an image, and the next day wrote a poem so that I would not forget.

The other shot she took

Dream Witch of Holderness
In the mist, a castle-cottage
Rising silent from the water
Like the Loch Ness Monster --
You startle.

Un-turreted, but towering;
Alone, on small island nestled,
Where no safe harbor welcomes --
Only rocks.

Does your dock draw up at night?

Does your long-necked, pine-crowned bough
(So still and silent serpent
Over now day-misted lake)
Snake further still in the dark?

Turning gently to its queen,
"Dear Sorceress within,"
Does it whispering to you ask
"Where do we wander tonight?"

Then silent as owl's flight,
Does my Innisfree arise,
Unfurling gold-scaled dragon wings,
And vanish?

Do you color these worlds I dream?

In my head I took the dock in the background and combined it with the memory of a giant fallen tree you cannot see from this angle. It snakes into the Lake a good ten feet, but it is from a direction where she could not get a decent picture. There rocks in the right background jutting out to the left. G took many photos of misty still waters, brilliant foliage breaking through it. She has a painting I did based on her work hanging next to the two inspiration shots at her house, in fact. We used to be like that, working off of each other's art. The image in my head had more the mist of the first painting.

I dreamed that poem once again. Last night. I have to work on it now. I don't know whether I yet have the skill for it, but I have to try. Eventually I will get it, I know. Plus I have to finish the painting "Snow on October Fire" too. This means I'll not be writing for a bit. Not long, but probably not more--except on comments, of course! Joy died before Christmas. Jack's senility has made him kind... such a gentle surprise. Many difficult memories reside with these two as well--I may or may not write of them. But I remembered the Joy who was there for me, and tried for thirty-five years to find her again. She left when she lost that Cape House. She never came back...

But has so often been the case, out of a time of pain and turmoil, came nuggets of great beauty and wonder for me, and a simple children's poem, and an image that haunts me still. I had to wait until I could BEGIN to paint it, until I could feel Joy's death as LOSS, to find my way back to it again.

In Arnold's words, "Ah'll be Bahck."

PS
I just finished a sketch that has promise! Kinda excited now.

Memory, Memoir and ... Just a Bunch of Rambling

2012-02-06T13:58:00.004-05:00

I realize I've gone longer than I want to without posting. Why? I have been working on a new post and I want to cut some of it, and I have needed to let it percolate a bit.

On the other hand, I always find it interesting reading about the process of writers or artists of any medium. I include the "practical" arts, making little distinction among artisans, artists, writers, what have you. I mean there are cooks/chefs who are artists in my book. ANY time engaging in the creative process is a large and important part of a person's life, I feel artist is good generic word. I so often see that the process is very much the same. We are inspired to create and we start to act on that inspiration. Sometimes we get all tangled up and must start again. Or we must "edit" our finished product, or it can change along the way. Potters, quilters, cooks who stray from recipes, writers, painters, photographers, metalworkers, sculptors--you name it. I call it art.

I learn from the process as described by others. I feel less alone. And I feel supported just by reading how other people wind up changing their focus smack in the middle of a project!

But, all this remembering is sure getting in the way of this memoir-writing stuff! It's a total pain in the hoo-hah, I can tell you.

As I started to look at my 300 pages (no exaggeration there) of memoir material and began to choose material where my mother and our relationship were more of a focus, well, then my dad leaped out and said, "GAWDAMMIT! I have something to say." He will not brook SHUT UP from anyone--it was true in life and quite clearly is true from the Great Beyond.

The Demon Was a Boy... Darn it all
And now? Much to my confusion and sometimes distress, the humanity of brother Jim is leaping into my brain. This is hard, yet necessary. It is not so much that I blocked those memories, but for years I had to focus on what I had blocked and simply put them aside. Now HE won't shut up, either.

The theme broadens then, and I wonder what I want to say and I wonder whether my story will have meaning beyond an interesting read. I find it presumptuous to begin a project and feel that MY handling of life would be any kind of inspiration to follow. Yet what I still find miraculous is the mind that tucks so many wondrous memories in with the horrors, when I blocked out the pain so long ago. It's as if I wrapped the pain up in a whole lot of packing paper, but tucked prisms in there along with each horrific memory. And as I try to figure out where to put the one who was most monstrous, damn it all... turns out that, yes, he was just a baby once upon a time. And a small boy. And a ten-year-old who practically carried his little sister home one day, so she would not burn her bare foot on hot tar. And a teenager capable of showing me true tenderness.

And then, where two of the men start yelling, the third's not far behind.

Jack starts yelling at me, too. "Yo! Jetty. What about when we went to the lake with Feej and sang on the dock. And how I wouldn't let you go in the back room at The Depot when someone was singing up front. And what about when I thought I'd be a minister and you would not hang out the clothes ... and..." Yeah. Right. WhatEVER. So Jack had his dark side even when we were kids.

I look at all the stories, and, believe it or not, I have not told them all in here! I look at them and over and over what I see is a collection of people whose personalities themselves were rain forests of wondrous light and terrifying darkness.

I was the heroine of light, right? Not so much. Inconveniently, I remember my darkness as well.

And Our Heroine Had Her Demons, too ... No Surprise, I'm Sure
When I was twelve, I was asked to baby sit for a teacher's little girl who was four. When I was there, I kept having images of pushing her down the stairs, of pushing her off a swing, of things that terrified me. I did not do anything to hurt her, but I told Mrs. Richardson that I felt I was too young to care for her little girl. She thanked me for my honesty. I cried through most of that night, believing I must be some sort of demon straight out of hell. I refused to EVER baby sit through my teens. By my twenties, however, no such visions came to me in the presence of small children.

The lesson was there, though. And I had many demons of my own, biting at my heels. I was hell-bent to self-destruct off and on until at last I sought professional help. And I'm thinking that I cannot leave it out or the book will not state the truth. Truth, as opposed to the facts. Honesty without hiding, without leaving out what is not pretty about me, not just them. (I hate that. It is just so much nicer to stay aloof, to imply that I was pure. But that's also boring, so what the hell.)

So what is the thing I want to say? And do I need to know before I put it all together? The "books" say I should. The "experts" say I should be able to state my theme in a sentence or two--clearly, concisely.

And So It Goes...
And I say, probably I have to simply ramble and THEN see what route I wound up taking. AFTER that, the editing with a HATCHET will be needed.

Unless, of course, I change my mind!

There is something about the men in the house. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--those tee-shirts from Jim's girlfriend at the time. The women did not tend to speak up without risking the sarcasm of the Holy Ones. My mother took the brunt of the derision, and that is part of her pain, as well. My sister absented herself from most of the competitive bile from "the boys." She was judged by them, regardless.

I leaped in with both feet, mouth a-blaze, and held my own when I could. I learned to slice people to ribbons at an early age. It saved my skin in junior high, when I was so often the target at school.

Daddy said I came "out the chute going 'Oh, YEAH?' and never looked back." Interesting metaphor... Nevertheless he is right. And I have been struggling for a week with the new stuff that keeps gushing from deep inside, like a geyser from the middle of the sea. And I am not sure but that this is the thing about it all. My story reads like a novel. A sweeping southern saga with layer upon layer upon layer.

My mom told me I could NOT be a southern writer, which made me very angry. I was drawn to them. They could tell the scariest, most painful stories without ever losing the beauty of it all.

So I'll just dive in and see where it goes, for all my trying to find focus. I will allow the Carson McCullers and Harper Lee inside run wild. Maybe there are two books in one. I have no clue. But you are all along for the ride, so ...

Now I will delete the old draft, because I've covered it all here! Undoubtedly, you'll read some of the story in here, but I know I have to keep some of it for the book now, not the blog. So I'll write about other things.

PS
I'm not looking for words of support or comfort. It isn't that. However, if you all have some story of your process--preferably the part that makes you NUTS, that would be great! And by the way, long comments are ALWAYS welcome. And it can be all about you. That's fine with me. I learn from comments-- A LOT sometimes.

My Dad: Another Parent, Another Promise

2012-01-29T00:06:00.003-05:00

A while back, one of my commenters pointed out that there are worse things than living on the edge of poverty. That reminded me of the story I wrote several entries ago about my dad and me, and how he would show me exactly how the money was handled and where it went. And all sorts of memories have been tumbling into my mind--new and old, alike. It has been two weeks of confusion, joy, and pain. But my dad clamors to be heard, so I write more. This is unedited stream of consciousness today because I want to quiet at least ONE of the cacophonous voices in my head!

Ostensibly, so many talks began around money...

When Dad finally got ahead, back in 1969, it was because he collected a pension in early retirement from the State and then started a new career in Education Administration as the Registrar of a local university. I think his example is another reason I have never been able to subscribe much to the idea that it's too late to start fresh after fifty. Even when he retired as Registrar at 67, he became an administrative consultant to the President of the university. He felt change was usually a good thing, not bad.

My Parents and Their Idea of Wealth
He and my mom faced potential poverty all the time. Sometimes they dipped into the wrong side of that line, but when they were financially secure, what did they do? Turn around and start helping other people when they could. Dad said, "Money is only as good as what you do with it. We have been helped along the way, so it's our turn to help others as we were."

They befriended a waitress at a local restaurant, helping her and her son as they could. Those two were with us for five Christmases, and Dad paid for her education at a local community college, then got her into the university on a scholarship two years later. We had strays at my parents' open house on Christmas Eve nights and we never quite knew what sort of person would appear next. I think they helped about a dozen people before they died.

I remember he asked my opinion about that. He wondered whether I thought he should give the money to the charities that helped people and explained to me that he and mom were a little selfish in wanting to do it this way. "We get to see the effect. But do you think we waste our money?"

I was shocked that he asked my opinion. He said, "Why wouldn't I? You have been through more than the others have and are more mature than any 32 year old I've known. You work in non-profits." That was when I felt like a grown up. I had not thought my parents had noticed much of anything about what my life was really like, or how I had coped with having three operations while I raised two stepchildren and tried to develop an opening for a career. However, I still did not care for the question.

I felt that it was entirely up to them and, in fact, I told him that if this was being selfish, then the world would be better off with a whole lot of selfish people like them. I did ask, "Daddy, I only worry about your getting into trouble spending the money. I know how tough things were when we were growing up."

He looked troubled. "We won't spend away your inheritance." I remember tearing up that he could think that's what I meant.

"DADDY. It's your money! I don't care if you leave us not one dime, don't you know that?"
He had the strangest look on his face, and rare tears were there, making his eyes shine dark, like Jacky's. "How is it that you and your sister have such different perspectives than your brothers? They talk about how they had nothing. You and your sister talk about how your mother gave up her comforts for all of you."

I think the boys never bothered to look; I don't know why. They saw the flaws, as did we all. They just didn't want to see the rest, I guess. Jack wanted to "out-Daddy Daddy" and deliberately went into education. He was mad when he was dying because he would never finish his book and he wanted to beat Dad at that. I suspect being boys in that family was harder in some ways. When my friend dated Jim (pre-memories, mind you) she bought t-shirts for all three: purple, with fancy white printing that said "the Father" "The Son" "The Holy Ghost." Funny. Each one knew which was which and they were PROUD of them; they were proud of their own egos.

Still, it bothered me that the boys never could see the sacrifices both parents made, just for us.

Spinning Gold Into Love
We talked about many things that day. He was was driving me to Boston for one of my "blood-lettings," as we called them. I used to get massive hematomas on my back after surgeries and would go to Boston every three days for a couple of weeks, so that the doctor could aspirate the surgical site and draw out all the old blood. It kept me from getting infections. My husband didn't like to take time off from work for my illness. It wasted too much time, he said. But Dad would sit there and hold my hand, and would grow very pale at the sight of the enormous needle and tube into which blood was literally sucked from the swelling.

We both knew those trips saved my life. It cemented a unique bond between us, as well.

My parents had no desire to be wealthy. Dad wanted Mom to get some things for herself, yes, when he changed jobs. When she'd finished her binge, though, they wanted mostly to "give back." Friends had helped them sometimes and all the friends had said was, "When times get better, don't pay us back. Just turn around and do it for someone else."

I realize that this was the prototype for how my friends and I work as well. There is about five thousand dollars total that seems to float around my circle of 10-15 women--sometimes in a thousand here and there, and sometimes the whole wad. My family and friends who celebrated Christmas Eve together would pick the person with the roughest year for the "Spoiling target"for the year. We would give them an outrageously large Christmas then and spoil them rotten. I learned from my parents that THIS was the REAL fun of the season, and of life.

Spinning Pain Into Love As Well
Why am I writing this tonight? It has been a difficult couple of weeks for me. I do not write that much about my back. I have had bizarre and terrifying experiences in the 1-2 month hospital stays. Lately, I have dreamed about the worst ones. And we are now in the season when I lost both parents. The final weeks of their lives. Mom died on February 16, and Dad died on the 26th. January was full of poignance. And two worst hospital stays were in the winter. I may write about those; possibly not.

But as I think of my parents and remember things to put in my book, I remember Daddy as well. We had an unusual relationship, I think. I was lucky enough to hear both of them talk about their own fears, their disappointments in themselves, not each other, and to hear about parts of their lives I am not sure most kids of my generation got to share.

My father was a womanizer; those of you who have followed my blog a couple of years know that already. He was famous for his business trips... We knew. Well. I knew. The boys remained blind until it was out in the open; denial was always their preference. Most mornings my dad sang one of two songs in the shower: Many Brave Hearts Are Asleep In the Deep or Ah Sweet Mystery of Life at Last I've Found You. On February 1st, when I was giving him some ice chips because eating was so awful for him, he took my hand.

"You know about the women, Jetty. Your mother could have left me. She should have, really. But don't think I did not love your mother. I DID. I DO. But you are too much like me. Don't learn everything the hard way."

I said, "Daddy. I have made big mistakes, but..."

"You are not happy with Mark. I see it all the time. He is not right for you. I know it. I just know it. Jetty, what are you going to do? Oh..." He was so agitated then, all I could do was stroke his forehead and the still thick and silky, silver hair.

He was quiet, but his cheeks were wet and his eyes were glossy, and almost black. "Why did it have to take me DYING Gawddamnit? Why couldn't I have listened to the Gawdamned WORDS, instead of my own voice? 'For tis love and love alone the world is seeking.' Jetty. Promise me you will hear those words. 'Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all of living.' I learned it all too late! Don't you, Jetty. Don't you."

Ah! Sweet Mystery Of Life
Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life
At last,I've found you.
Ah! At last I know the secret of it all.
For the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning,
The burning hopes,
The joy and idle tears that fall.

For 'tis love and love alone,
The world is seeking.
And 'tis love and love alone,
That can repay.
'Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all of living,
For it is love alone that rules for aye.

(LAST STANZA REPEATED AND CLOSES WITH);
For it is love alone

I hear his basso profundo still; or, as I preferred to call it, his basso buffoono. I see his face, the tears. I feel his hands on my face, and see him looking for an answer. I am not sure he knew who I was in that searching.

All I said was, "I know, Daddy. I know."

He smiled and nodded, let go of my face and he slept.

And the Question and the Answer Were the Same
He and my mother, both. In the dying, turning to me to give me something all the while begging for a promise. The telling. The listening. To me. I was the writer. Of course it was to me.

Regardless of what came from moving lips, the sound from their souls was simple: love.

What more could any parents leave?

On Writing My Memoir

2012-01-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

I am finding that some truly beautiful experiences are coming back to me, the more I write. I find that my mother's sweetness knows no bounds, now that I remember the rest. That is such a gift, but I realize it is a gift I will need in order to address the worst of her. It was not liquor. It was psychotic breaks. And I am at a loss as to how to write of them, yet I will have to.

Writing ugly is not easy when you lived a life of oh-so-lovely denial. When I was in college I painted a picture of beauty about my home life, except for the fact that my mother drank. I did not speak of any dark times in childhood, however. My story with her always began in high school, out of thin air. All was beauty and magic, if you listened to me talk about my childhood. The only horrors were at school.

We do that. I also spoke of my relationship with my older brother as special and tragic. He was the whipping boy, the innocent too often blamed for everything. I was his defender. And I was, as it happens. Again, this is so often the case. I tutored him in French for all his high school years. He was fifteen and I was ten! It was after the rape, after he tried to sell me so he could by some "buck" shoes, like Pat Boone's. I had no memory of that. After all, by the time I was fifteen myself, I had turned instant burial into an artform. If the memory was not to my liking I simply denied its existence, like some reject factory part on an old-time conveyor belt. I was afraid for him, and bought into the family line when the New York police were looking for him on drug charges. He was framed, my parents said. They got him to hide out in New Hampshire.

Every holiday season for three or four years, the police would stop by. It got so I would be the one to answer the door and invite them in for coffee or cookies. A standing "joke." Finally, when my brother as married and wanted to come out of hiding, my parents took him with their lawyer to New York and the charges were dropped. He was terrific at posing as a good, reformed family man.

Only he was guilty. And years later, I found out that Jim's discharge from the army was dishonorable. All those bouts of illness when we had not heard from him? The brink. He was court-martialed for bribing an officer.

My family, like so many others, simply acted on the premise that if you say everything is perfect often enough, then everyone will believe it to be so. This was never clearer than the years I tried to tell the truth about my mother, during high school. She primed the school with the "fact" that I was a liar, prone to fantasy. While that was not entirely false, it was not the truth when I tried to get help to deal with Mom. By then her bouts were every morning, before I went to school, and by the time I got home, she was often so drunk that she was barely conscious. Then she would, for no apparent reason, have several months of sobriety, just long enough for me to hope, but short enough for me to be wary at the same time.

I could not begin to look at the whole truth as I knew it, until it impacted my own children. Until I had to, to keep from repeating the tale in my own life's story, too.

Ugliness and great pain is an underpinning for our love story that has to run through the whole. I have spent a great deal of time writing of the many gifts she gave me, and that's the truth. And you know she drank, but sometimes we have to show not tell, as the cliché goes. I know that, too. The funny thing about moving beyond the pain to the beauty is that sometimes I just do not WANT to remember what happened! While this is not a bad thing at ALL in how I lead my life, it's not as good for the writing of the tale.

Mom wouldn't want me to leave it out. I know that for sure. In my core. In my soul. How do you tell the story of a small child, too young to bathe on her own? How do I relate the moving blur of the NOT Mommy face as she tipped my head beneath the surface to rinse the shampoo out? I see her eyes go dead and cold just as the water closed over my own entirely. I see the moving glare of the light and feel myself struggle beneath her hands. I can feel the pain on my heel as I kicked and connected with porcelain, and feel the struggle not to breathe, feel the pain as the light grew dim.

Suddenly I am sitting and I hear the sucking as she pulls me out too quickly and she misjudges and my head just catches the faucet. I see the pink creep through the water as I cough and cough forever, and I hear my mother. "Oh, my GOD, oh NO, oh, NO! Oh, GOD. My Jetty, oh, NO! I'm so sorry!"

She is crying and pulls me to her, but I pull back just a little, to see her eyes, but she is there. Her sweet sky eyes full of tears and she holds me and we cry.

And later she is in her chair, unable to speak, the bottle of amber on her table. Jean Ellen puts me to bed. Mother will not rise until too late for church on Sunday. Daddy is away on a "quick business trip." I remember Jean Ellen tucks me in and she has her worried puppy face. Her brow would pucker instead of wrinkle. She reads a long story and already the horror has dimmed, and all I know is my mother's eyes when she held me close to her.

***
That is the story, too. And it is every bit as much our story as the elves and the drinking and the summers and Christmases of joy. It is my story with her, and my ultimate joy that we had our truths with one another at the end.

And so I write it all for the first time. As I remember it. My truth, which I know was hers. Ironically, alcohol numbed her in a way that did not allow the psychotic breaks. She never raised a finger to us when she drank. She said most of her pain left her when she drank.

And what I feel at last is the pain I know as a mother myself, and how it must have felt when she snapped out of the break and saw what she had done. No one loved a daughter more than she loved me. She hated the monster she could not name, this illness no one could name back then. I know how hard she tried to fight it, to fight an illness over which she had no control at all. I know how much she hated herself.

As I move forward with the book, it is so hard to find the balance in the work. It hurts to write her dramatic and sometimes horrific failures. Yet without them, her magnificence and her strength are lessened. She succeeded more often than she failed, and I cannot under-value the strength she had, nor the toll her tortured life took on her most of all. So I try on the pain again, now strong enough so that it cannot stick any more. It cannot offer more pain, though it can scratch an old wound to discomfort. I hold all her beauty on the other scale, and its weight is ten times the pain. The wound will not open; only the love.

How I miss her still.

***** DIFFERENT Note, for now: Please check out Waystation One, for 1/23/20122's poem

Running too Fast and Forgetting to Breathe

2012-01-18T15:29:00.000-05:00

I have been using this month to begin the process of developing some structure for myself. While I was a pretty disciplined and successful copy writer for more than a decade, I had a few regular clients and I knew their needs and schedules. My back had its own schedule and I knew it by heart, by feel, to my core. Everything fell apart three years ago.

Now, as I start my new life with new parameters, new brick walls to avoid, and free of anyone's deadlines but my own, well, I find myself a little unnerved. I have been reading some books on the new publishing world--on my Kindle, of course, which is only fitting. It would seem I must develop a platform; yes, I knew this already but I didn't know it, if you get my drift. This home blog of mine, this testing ground, this home base for some internet relationships that matter to me ... well, it won't cut it for a platform. Again, I know this in my mind, but it is unlikely I will abandon it. It serves a deeper purpose for me.

I just read an article in this month's Poet & Writers' Magazine about the Internet and how it can interfere with a writer's creativity. I could cite it more carefully, but what I read was more of a jumping off point that is combined with the three books I've read in the last two weeks about marketing a book in today's world. The message is clear in all of them; I must build a platform long before the book is even written. I must join networks of people who share my interests, who are likely readers of a memoir I would write. I must write SHORT.

Oh. My. God. Help me.
I have to re-enter the world of Twitter. I do not LIKE Twitter. This does not mean I don't appreciate its uses; it means simply that I hate Internet/text/chat speak. So much room for misunderstanding, for lazy communication. On the other hand, I know that I am often lazy in my meandering trips to nowhere on my blog. I am lucky that some of you enjoy the ride without particularly worrying about the side trips and the fact that there may not be a particular goal. But I have to start finding things to write about on a regular basis, things I can put into 500 words, or perhaps 750.

I have to tweet, post status updates, comment, write, connect. CONNECT. CONNECT.

And I have a wonderful compendium now of ways to do this, most of which I kind of understand, despite my protests to the contrary. I just don't know which of them will help my actual writing. Which will contribute to the act of getting the thing done? My blog right here does that. Reading the blogs I do help my writing. So I know I must keep this going and I have to incorporate reading YOUR words, thinking about them and commenting on them.

I have seen some of you do a fantastic job of building substantial followings and, when I think about it, I realize how you do it. Part of it is your frequency and the variety of your work. Or the fact that you connect with people who do what you do. Linda Lou is a marvel to me! And I watched Donna take off. I read blogs which have thousands of followers and I wonder how you all can write so often and so well, about so much. (Naturally, in this frame of mind, I see only my shortcomings. This ain't about logical thinking today!)

But my goal was never about how many followers I have had. My goal was to have followers who wanted to come back, even though I am sporadic here. My goal was to find my own voice and to use it; to learn how to write what is painful or horrific, without making people want to run away screaming into the night. It's cool to see the number grow, when I publish every week, when I explore new blogs and comment. But that's not the object for me.

The article I just read talked about how the social networking can also divert us from the very thing we started networking FOR! To create a welcoming platform for the book we want to write, or have begun to write. It talked about how we have to walk AWAY from all the networking and unplug ourselves in order to produce, to give our creativity time to percolate.

Well, then I hit my brick wall this week and got the shakes and put myself into a dither.

Visions of Hell
This is a talent I have; perhaps it is an artform for me. I'm not sure.

I have about four upright hours in every day. Occasionally I have as many as six, as long as they are spread out with many long breaks. By upright I mean sitting UP. I have to lie down a lot, and I DO mean lie down. I can one day perhaps get one of the Dragonspeak programs and do more. But for now it hit me that I have a great deal of work I must do online to lay the groundwork for being able to publish this book I am also working. And I have FIVE paintings in the works. Suddenly, it all became overwhelming to me.

How do I give time to it all, every day, and still have a life with the people I love, and do my laundry, and my grocery shopping, and, well, leave my apartment? Not to mention go to the gym nearby for about four hours a week so that I can KEEP WALKING?

I began to sob, not just cry. I threw an all out hissy fit. I got scared. I am sixty years old in June and I have only JUST adjusted to this new and frail body I do not like, to the point where I can consider starting the program to perhaps make it stronger and maybe add another half hour or hour to the productivity.

And then I began to laugh. How come AlAnon still helps me? ONE STEP AT A TIME. One DAY. One Hour. I let it all gang up in my mind. I must do all things on every day. I must build a network of thousands by next Tuesday? And I must start my hour and a quarter workouts THIS week THREE days a week immediately. And I must twitter, begin a new blog, write on this blog, read ALL the blogs I've missed, develop a webpage, compile a list of existing contacts, AND read the three memoirs waiting for me--in the coming week.

There is no time. I must also complete at least twelve paintings by 2013.

In four hours a day.

Or I am a failure.

It's good to be a grown up...

Step Back and Breathe
My brothers and sisters all called me in the same twenty-four hour period after one of my mom's most infamous binges after my dad died. I had almost the same conversation with each.
Sibling: Mother is drinking. Did you know she drank like this?
Me: No shit. [sorry. In this case, the word fit. I'd been screaming about it for twenty years.] I've told you she was an alcoholic for years.
Sibling: Well. Yes, but I never knew it was this bad.
Me: silence .... then, What's your point?
Sibling: What are you going to do about it?
Me: Get the hell to AlAnon.

I went to my first meeting that Wednesday and got me an ODAT book (One Day At A Time). I sat at that meeting and listened, then went home and read all 365 days that very night. Like so many before me, I figured if I did it all at once, I'd be cured real fast. They reminded me to slow down.

And so it has been as I've been doing my research, as I have been allowing myself to actually take my dreams seriously and lay the groundwork.

Mommy, I am telling them what we had. Honestly, I am. And I am shining as hard as I can for you.

But I sure do wish you were here the way you were when I'd run so fast I'd fall; to lightly tip my chin up toward your face and say, "Jetty, Jetty. Breathe. Life is not a race. Sweetie, catch your breath and try moving one foot at a time so you don't get all tangled up and keep falling down. You'll get there in your own time." And then kiss me on my nose.

I guess maybe I'll just breathe. And write. And get there in my own time now, one word at a time, so I don't get myself all tangled up and fall down.

OOOOHHHHHHHMMMMMM.... Oh. Wait. I'm not supposed to be saying that with clenched fists, huh.

Here's to those baby steps I was writing about!

Just for fun...

2012-01-02T14:27:00.003-05:00

Five of my best friends--the Christmas women--pitched in together and got me a Canon digital camera. Bear in mind I have not taken any pictures with any camera at all in about six years, and I've never touched a digital camera. They also got me a Kindle...

SLOWLY but surely I am getting into this decade. I'd made it into the millennium, yes. I won't put myself down that much, but I really am avoiding texting; I LOATHE Twittering, which I think they should call Squawking; and I do not own a computer game of any kind. None. Zero. Nada. I spend my writing time on here every day, and sometimes I do do digital image manipulation, as well as some graphics commercial stuff. The last thing I want to do is spend more time online. But I am going to have to learn how to market a blog or website, and interconnect my work and, well, lots of other things. That is the part that will be tough for me; I am expected to have a market long before I try to publish a book! Some of it will be fun, but some of it will not. C'est la vie. I think I'll live.

Anyway, no one has grabbed good digital images of my artwork, and no one has ever taken decent close ups of my Christmas trees, so the gang decided to get me a camera already. Now, to those of you who are professional photographers, or who simply are wonderful, please be kind. Yes, Carl, that means you! Baby steps, baby steps. I need to remember what I just wrote yesterday, don't I ...

I have already read two books on Kindle. That was a snap. The camera, however... I dove in today just to show myself I would not break anything, and I took a few detail shots of my tree, imported them, and played with them in PhotoShop to make up for the overexposure problems with taking pictures in dim light of a lighted tree.

What I really wanted to do was to give you a glimpse of the magic--for me, it's magic--the decades of gifts and inherited bits of Christmases past from my parents' and grandparents' trees. And I wanted to learn a bit about my new toy while I did! I collect musical instruments and toy transportation, as well as beautiful glass ornaments that are not particular objects. My glass horse is just a mass of brilliance in one of the shots, but perhaps some of you will make it out. And the brass thing on the bottom of the middle picture is an old Victrola, which we count as a musical instrument. Actually I have no rules... I may edit this entry, if I can capture pictures of the Dr. Seuss high heeled boot, Santa on a Chicken and everyone's favorite traditional hooker flamingo... Or maybe even the rocking cow and strange Ostrich with a hormone problem...

This won't count this as one of my fifty-two entries, but that's fine. Yesterday's counts. As I said, today's is just for fun. Am I not the luckiest princess on the block? My son gave me a huge Amazon gift certificate so that I could get things for my Kindle as well. They all plotted and schemed behind my back. Life is good, but my pictures can use some work! I'm leaving my tree up until February. It took five hours to put up and decorate, so I'm leaving it up one week for every hour, and an extra because I wanna!

New Year's Path; Old Year's Victories

2012-01-01T22:51:00.004-05:00

I think I have written before about what I try to do every New Year's Eve, but what the heck. I will write about it again...

Last Year Is Done: Let Go of Missteps, Keep the Grace
I take a serious, long look at the year that is ending, reading the goals to move toward a more desirable path, and trying to honestly see how far along I have moved in that path and whether or not it remains a valid guide for what comes next. I also write down every single misstep I believe I have taken with somewhat brutal honesty at times.

Then I read those missteps aloud, pausing after each and I systematically tear up the list into as tiny pieces as I can and I throw them away. Sometimes I put the day's coffee grounds on top of them, just so that I feel I have thoroughly obliterated them.

Finally, I write what I feel I have accomplished on the left side of a piece of paper, as well as all the good things that I feel have happened TO me--the serendipitous gifts, or points of grace. Some years I have had a terrible time finding either, but more often I find that it's easier to list points of grace than accomplishments. I tend to minimize my role in anything good. I have noticed this in the last three years, most particularly; I had far less trouble finding my flawed acts than giving myself credit for anything.

Bit by bit, though, I got better at that. In 2010 I managed not to blame the house not selling on me. I gave myself credit for readying the house for market, for making some progress in some self-destructive obsessive behaviors, and for forgiving myself. Never before had I listed that as a positive accomplishment, but I finally saw that I would have appreciated this in other people--why not myself? But enough about 2010. It was a terrifying and painful and difficult year.

2011 began differently. The list of graces was enormous, but I saw that I felt I had accomplished a lot as well. I had returned to my blog, exceeding my target of 26 entries for the year. I had finished two more paintings and have five in the works. I let go of worrying about how much money I would have after paying off all my debts if the house sold. I changed the dynamic of a relationship that was truly codependent. I found the core and the structure for my book. I began to exercise again, if somewhat sporadically so far. All of my baby steps had added up to something.

Baby Steps Matter! From Broad Strokes to Filling In the Details...
I have overlooked the baby steps so often in my life, not recognizing that they added up to moving along a path I valued. The path? To live more creatively and closer to the bone of Jeannette. Who I am, rather than someone I think other people will approve of or like. Living my life out of loving rather than being loved. (That's a kicker, and I cannot say that I come close to living that way, but it's a pretty worthy goal I think.) That little girl who kept company with the mice in the traps, who talked to them and loved them who somehow got it that loving things was an answer to something scary ... she was only three and understood how to do that. In some ways, the path I wrote down to work toward in 2012 is hers. The path is the elementary school girl who wrote her first poems in free verse. The girl who saw a foster child with scanty clothing and asked her mother whether they could do something to help, and then helped her. My path is the same as the middle school girl who completed her first "real painting" of three faces of women, crying out for help in her art, crying out through the false smile, the anger, the scream--but no one heard. They saw the skill but ignored the voice. My path is to write and to paint my soul, to do my best to be felt and seen and heard--but to do it for the act of the doing.

Those were the broad strokes I wrote for moving forward. I do tend to find writing some specific steps helps me to get started in every year, though I don't label them resolutions. While I put the broad strokes as the start of the right side of my paper, I always follow it with specific actions. That's all I call them, rather than telling myself they are resolutions.

I recognize that taking care of my health issues must be included, or I won't be able to do a damned thing. I start with them because they are the least interesting to me--this year, just getting to the apartment gym once a week and to ride my own recumbent bike at least an hour a week are enough for someone who has been bedridden for so many hours a day.

I want to have at least 52 blog entries this year. I don't say once a week, since that would set me up for failure if there is a week I don't get to it. But this year I DID get ambitious, for once. I simply put WRITE THE BOOK, yes, in BIG lettering. I did not put write the finished product, nor publish it. I just have to write it now. (Bruce, you are so right. Most of it is written in my head or in my blog, but I have to put it in a compelling, readable form. The whole thing. Period.)

Finally, I wrote "start and complete at least three new paintings." That may not seem like many, but since I also put "Finish partly done paintings," that means I would wind up with ten completed paintings, at least. I keep finding partly done paintings that I had forgotten about entirely, from 2009 and early 2010. I had had to dismantle my studio early in 2010 because I was readying the place to sell. They remained packed up and hidden until I moved. When I put up my Christmas tree, I found another nest of them!

Age, Schmage (or Old, Schmold, if You Like)
I had begun this year's list with the intention of giving myself a schedule, but I cut to the chase instead. I may have the same list next year, or I may not. But in reading the list of accomplishments and graces of last year aloud, I realized that I felt like having myself shoot for the stars. Why dream little?

I will be sixty this year. I did not think of my parents as old at sixty. My mom hit that age when I was twenty-five, so it was not unreasonable for my friends to think it was old. What I saw in my parents, though, was that they both had minds like steel traps and, when she was sober, my mom had an insatiable curiosity about just about everything--except things that had to do with popular culture. Dad became Registrar of a university when he was sixty, after changing careers five years before. They were not over. When my health took such a terrifying turn in January of 2009, and so many dreams blew up in my face, I had started to let those thoughts of "getting old" and being "washed up" creep in through the cracks where my soul had been bleeding.

I allowed myself to start to believe that the best years of my life were behind me. Why? Because I was in acute pain? Because an old love had been used my heart then thrown it and me away, like garbage? Because I was poor? Because I had lost my career or any hope of regaining that particular career I'd built over ten years? Because I had to go through the humiliating process of applying for Disability? Because I knew I had to lose my home? Because my son had become increasingly withdrawn and depressed, and there was not a thing I could do? Well, yeah! Because of all those things.

Fine. I had reasons to be depressed, to be fearful, to be stuck. So what? I realized at the end of 2010 that none of those things had anything to do with being old, or being done. I have no idea what snapped me to attention, but I do know that something practical and tangible--winning my disability hearing and having the judge lambast the board that denied me turned me around. How crass, one might say. Well, when you are penniless and have to rely on a credit card and the kindness of your friends to put food on the table, having an independent income, no matter how meager, changes your life.

I got unstuck in 2011. I made reachable, small goals for myself last year. I met every single one of them, and have you any idea how good that made me feel last night?

Why Dream Little? My Mantra, Perhaps...
So I am dreaming BIG this year. And I actually yelled at a friend who talked about our being old and how we had to accept that from here on opportunity is for the young. It made me angry because I feel as if, once again, I am just getting started. I had to start from scratch when my husband took off when I was forty. I was on disability and had been for almost a decade. I had to start to build a career from almost NOTHING. I did it. And here I am, twenty years later, having to start from scratch in a different way, so I will do it.

It isn't about the poverty; it's about having a sense of purpose. I have that now, and I have some financial security for a couple of years, at least. Who could ask for more than that? I am a lucky woman; I keep writing that, I know. But I feel it all the way through, and I think it is a healthy way to feel. It's up to me not to squander this opportunity I have.

An old friend, told me that all he wanted for me was to be able to get up each day and choose whether I wanted to write or to paint, or whether I needed to simply rest because of my back. He said he wanted me to be able to choose how I lived my days without having to be so worried all the time. Well, his wish for me has come true, and I did not think it would.

I have an exciting year ahead to look forward to. I find the thought of being sixty kind of freeing. I am not sure why yet, but undoubtedly I'll babble about it at some point. My "other big sister," Nancy will be seventy. She's not old, either. She volunteers in two organizations, works part-time because she wants to, travels to marvelous places--in another year, she's going to go to the Polar Bear town in Alaska... My Aunt in Alaska's 97. Yes, she IS old, but I love listening to the wanderings of her mind when we talk.

She begins on one topic about a friend, then skips all over the place, but if I wait long enough, she always returns to the place she started... and it's always a marvelous ride along the way. Hmmm... I think that's the whole point to living creatively, perhaps. The ride's as important as the destination, maybe more so.

END of this ramble. Happy New Year! (I may revise this three or four times after I publish, but I just want to put it out there and start on my goals NOW.)

I am so excited!

2011-12-30T14:03:00.000-05:00

I found my hook for the memoir, inadvertently. I was going to put an entry on this blog about this Christmas, which was over the top in every wonderful way I could imagine. As I wrote it I began to think of my mom again and of this magical world she created for us, which I took to more than the others. I began thinking of our relationship through the years and it was hitting me in waves that I experienced the rain forest qualities of this extraordinary woman more than the rest.

I did not sugar coat her drinking and psychosis. She did not sugar coat her words to describe me, most especially, when she was drunk. I had the very best of her, when I was four through when I was about nine. Then I experienced her very worst.

And my mother was her worst at Thanksgiving, but her best at Christmas. Our spiritual celebration was secular, but we did not ignore our Christian roots entirely. I have had to defend my excesses at Christmas, when I was criticized as materialistic, silly, supersticious, or just completely impractical. I was tolerated sometimes by those who felt above such childishness. I shut up when other adults around me wanted to discontinue all adult gift-giving because, as we all know, Christmas is for children. I have listened to ministers advise us to think of others less fortunate, to remember "Christ's humble beginnings" and to put away crass materialism.

And inside, all along, a voice in me was clear and strong that told me to ignore those other voices. A voice that told me to celebrate to my soul's content, to enjoy, to give, to love, to decorate, to keep my head up without apology.

And there it was ... the hook that grabs me about my mom, about the gifts she gave and the pain she endured and spread sometimes, despite her sweeter voices. to understand my mother and me, to understand my family, one has to understand that my mother irrevokably proved the existence of elves. You cannot write our story without knowing this and without knowing that Santa was not even a jump from that, since he was no more than a really BIG elf himself. One has to understand that life in our home really was a rain forest: lush or rotting, with nothing in between ... and that the lushness did not exist without the rotting, no matter how much I might have wished that the rotten had not been quite so painful, nor quite so sick.

It was my family. When I look at those two holidays and the intervening times. ... when I look at the time between Christmas and our escape to our lake island, it is simply more of the same. Those summers were the vacation version of Christmas.

ANYWAY, I am excited because I have my framework. Perhaps I've not explained it well, but that isn't the point. You know how it feels when all the bits and pieces and flotsam and jetsam of stories fall together in a moment? That's how I feel.

So I had to run into my room here, and sit down and tell you all how excited I am! I have been working on the memoir, but it has been hard to find the stem, the TRUNK from which all branches stem. I know it was my mom at the center, but what about my mom? Her magic was at its core all along. And I was the one who received the most of that magic, or who was most tuned into it. I'm not sure which. Perhaps I will learn as I go along; more likely it really does not matter at all.

But I am back. And I'll be writing entries again more regularly. I've lost a few followers, which makes me a little sad, but it can't be helped. And I'm not in here for the numbers, after all. I am in here to practice my craft, to share it, to share my art ... and to have the fun of drinking in all of yours!

May we all have a wonderful 2012, and if we do not, may we continue to find comfort with the support that never seems to falter in this general area of the blogosphere!

Have a wonderful Holiday week

2011-12-20T16:36:00.001-05:00

I have been beyond busy, which is fine. I remembered another story about my mom. I had forgotten this for many, many years.

My childhood home had a backyard which ended at "the woods," a narrow strip of woods with a brook running through it. When I scampered up the small bank at the back end of the yard, it was perhaps fifty yards to the brook, which, very conveniently had a fallen tree across it. I could scamper across, then climb up a steep bank for another fifty feet or so, to the corner of two streets. In the winter you could see that corner from my bedroom window. I ran up there year round, and was three houses from my best friend's house.

It was also the convenient path across town for what we then called "hobos." Mom would not call them bums, and we did not talk about "the homeless" back then. A few times in my early-ish childhood, I came out from under the willow tree canopy when I heard my mother loudly yelling at some man at the edge of the woods who seemed to be approaching Nancy and me, playing in our ground-tree house. I do not remember being afraid, however.

Mom had a social conscience. I was with her on the steps of the library for the town's "sympathy march" for the big Washington Civil Rights march. We all sort of had a to-do there, with speeches and food. But we all listened together to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. because about five people had radios tuned in to the same stations. I don't know whether there were transistors or what. I was too busy looking at the people's faces. Mom made us look at the hosings by the police, and the attack dogs. She felt we should know what other children had to endure. I remember crying and she said, "Honey, you SHOULD cry for them. It is a terrible thing." I was crying because they seemed to MAKE the dogs bite people, but I felt it wise not to say anything. Besides, I DID know she was right.

Which leads me to Christmas. There were three of them--three men with slick-combed hair and chinos and shiny belt buckles. Men who looked, as some Beatrix Potter book said, I think, as if they had dusty corners. I remember one dark green shirt with frayed edges, but it was very smooth. The other men were generally wrinkled. That's what I remember--wrinkled faces, wrinkled shirts, wrinkled trousers. But shiny buckles. Smooth, shiny hair. And clean.

They came together to the back kitchen door from the first Christmas when I was five, and two more after that. My mother handed out cookies and a $5 bill to these "hobos." I remember it vividly because my parents felt we should see people who were not doing well. We should know about it and understand. We ourselves were one minor catastrophe from poverty, but my mother would point out "That catastrophe hasn't happened for us. And we're having a wonderful Christmas. And we have a home with a bath and a half, and they have none."

That was a lot of money to my parents, and the men knew it. They were respectful to her and they did not come around at other times--at least not when I saw. They stopped coming, though, by the time I was nine--the town had done a "sweep" in the fall, and did another one in November so they would not bother people any more. My parents talked about that one morning when they didn't know I had been up before they sat down to breakfast before Daddy went to work. Sometimes I didn't go in and bother them; I sat on the couch, still half asleep, listening to their voices, catching bits and pieces of conversations that swirled far above the head of a child.

"They don't hurt anyone. I don't CARE what they say. Those men were never anything but kind. I ASKED them to come up so I could help, Jim."

"I know, dear. But times are changing. It isn't like when we were kids. Some of these men are dangerous."

"I know, I know. But not our hobos. They were just down on their luck." And that's all I remember.

A year later my mother got a letter from one "to the Lady at 274 Parker Street" and she cried. He had a job and lived in an apartment, but he'd wanted to thank her. All she said was, "See? I was right. He was a perfectly find man."

My parents invited strangers to our home on Christmas Day sometimes. There was a single mom who was a waitress at their favorite restaurant. She brought her little girl one time when I was about eleven, and we gave her a doll. And my dad sat down with some young man from the shoe store, and they worked on something one Christmas afternoon in his den.

My parents wanted us to celebrate, to party, to revel on Christmas. We all did, but it was not out of greed. I think for them it was out of some enormous sense of gratitude and a recognition that so far we had been lucky. Mom hated the word "blessed" because she felt it sounded as if we might think we were specially chosen or something. No, she and dad felt we were simply lucky. And our Christmas was the family's Thanksgiving.

To tell the truth, she was never quite sure about where Jesus the Christ fell into things. She was candid about that, but on Christmas Eve, she would read the story, and we would put the "star in the east that led us" in the scene last thing. Her set had the baby in the manger already, so we decided to put the star up last

When I was a teenager, she would stand there looking at the Créche and say, "Well. I just don't know about God's only begotten son. You may be right, Jetty, that he tried some begotten daughters but they were killed at birth. You are right, honey. People didn't care much about daughters. They didn't when I was a girl, either. But I don't know. There is something about this magical time. I think I would rather believe the story than not. Doesn't it seem wonderful to think that God sent us a BABY to straighten us out? Maybe we can try believing anyway, just the way we believe in other things." And she would sing "God so loved the world..."

She would ask if I believed in Santa and I would smile and say yes. I LIKED believing in elves and fairies and Santa.

"Well, then," she'd say. "Jesus the Christ it is. Where the HELL did I put that North Star?"

***
My friend and I were talking about how to celebrate when we see so many people in need around. She can't and I understand that completely. For me, though, I am celebrating how lucky I have been in the past three years to have people who reached out to me to help me feel grounded, who actually supported me while I waited eighteen months for Social Security Disability, who linked hands beneath me, a living net of love to keep me from falling. I honor the beauty that was in both my parents. I honor the gift of love, I guess, hokey as that may sound. Our minister mentioned that revelry is part of our heritage as a species, and perhaps setting aside what amounts to survivors' guilt is okay. That doesn't make us greedy or insensitive.

I have much to think about; much to be grateful for. Without these people who will be here Saturday night, I could very easily have been one of those "hobos" by now. Literally. And without some of you, as well, who sent messages, sometimes gifts, who read what I wrote and made me feel that it was worth going on.

(And, well, besides ... there are cookies. And best of all? there are wind up toys. How can I NOT revel?)

I hope you ALL have a healthy and wonderful holiday season. I will be back in the New Year.

Christmas as A Child: YES, Norman Rockwell for Real

2011-12-01T20:00:00.007-05:00

I am busy actually STARTING my Christmas Eve preparations and I am also painting. I'm hoping to get back into my blog world before Christmas--I have several pieces started--but I am not really sure I will. But it is NOT for any bad reasons. I miss writing and I miss reading! Still, sometimes I have to oh, go ahead and LIVE my life so I fill the well, so to speak.

I first published this one in 2009, and it explains why I really am an all out, absolute, completely wacko Christmas nut. Not in the sense of buying new decorations or oodles of presents; I love the peace, the music, the silliness, the love that has always been mine for the giving and receiving. My family did it right. Sorry to bore those who read this, but I enjoyed reading it again because all of it flooded back and put me into the mood again.

I also know I referred to this in October--I think I published this again now for my own sake! A relative who was less than kind to me sometimes, but very kind at others, has died... and it has brought up some, well, disturbing memories. They may find their way into another entry, but I think I wanted to focus on something joyous... on a time when I got to be nothing more or less than an excited, happy child.

It is not meant to replace my entries--I realized tonight, as I revisited this post, that it was "birthing" a new one. The hour is late now, as I add these last two paragraphs, but reviewing and editing this piece did the trick. Joy is the woman who died, and I like visualizing her here, at Christmas, with my mom.

Lately I have been returning to this blog myself, just to bring that feeling back--how lucky I am to have such memories! So, have a wonderful holiday season! I'll READ some blogs, but somehow, even though I mean to write, I get side-tracked.

Here goes... no pictures, no more apologies... just my family at its very best!

Norman Rockwell Ain't Got Nuthin' On Our Christmases
It's hard for me to choose a Christmas from childhood. Two or three may be mixed together here, but I don't care. To me, it was idyllic. Jim did not torment us. Jacky and I were small children together, even up until he was about eleven. Jean Ellen was a keeper of magic and secrets to rival our mother. And Dad and Mom? Well, they had to be experienced.

So the Roots of my Love for the Season Grew Deep and Immortal Here...

My mother not only looked like Mrs. Claus, she acted like her. And it always began the day after Thanksgiving.

Jacky and I, and sometimes even Jimmy, Would race downstairs on Friday morning to see five presents perched on the top shelf of the extra tall white bookcase in the dining room. The Five Foot Shelf fit on one shelf, that bookcase was so wide... And the books on the top shelf reached the top of Daddy's head, so it was six feet tall. I grew up in a home with a bookcase in every room. It was just not a room without books, even in the bathrooms. And we had a BATH AND A HALF!

At this point, the books were still on that shelf, too, so the presents were annoyingly out of reach. We would climb on chairs, wondering how it was that Mommy had managed to pile the presents so that just enough of each tag was visible, so we could read the name, but we could not move a single package without the whole pile's tumbling to the floor. Inevitably we'd blow it and the pile would fall.

Mom would come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her first of seven Christmas aprons, and say, simply, "Good thing nothing was breakable. Go ahead and open them and ruin your surprise. I don't much care..."

Then, as she was heading for the kitchen, she would toss back, "Not quite sure how Santa would feel, but that's your problem." We would feign our disappointment and put each one back, rattling them, squishing, doing our best to know what was inside, but Mom was too smart. We never could figure it out. It took until I was about twelve to be bothered that there never was something for Mommy there. Jean Ellen and I took to wrapping something for HER the morning after Thanksgiving, because it just felt all wrong. She was in college and it was a ritual we enjoyed together. I think it was the first of many she and I developed around the holiday together.

Let me reinforce this; until I was about 20, my mother never drank between Thanksgiving and Christmas. NOTHING. She would empty the huge "Silver Satin" port jug and there were never stray rum and cokes around. In fact, she didn't buy Coca Cola® at all until just before the holiday.

From then on, every day held a surprise. She didn't do a lot that Thanksgiving weekend, but wrap a new present or five each day, and the pile would grow more precarious until, by Sunday, Daddy took the books from that shelf and put them in a box tucked in the footwell of his desk. "GAWD knows none of you will let me have any peace between now and that day. MY life is over now. Nothing but shelling out money, having to run around to get GAWD knows what. Bah."

Tiny Tim in Scrooge Clothing
He never said humbug until the day. He also was the least convincing Scrooge alive, since he read us the Christmas Carol and checked with Mother every single night, asking her whether maybe ONCE she might come up with something on her own list that didn't involve her doing more work around the house. The truth was, my dad spent more on Christmas presents than anyone else, and would get scolded at by my mother constantly, often punctuated by a wet dishtowel on his head, which sat there for at least fifteen minutes, at whatever angle it had landed.

My parents were in love. That was the miracle of them. For all his womanizing, for all her drinking, for the myriad fights in between? They loved one another with a passion that would have been embarrassing if it had not been so wonderful to see. They liked to talk late into the evening, just about books, about politics, about philosophy. About their days. My father said that Mom was the most highly educated person he'd ever known and she never went to college. He would walk up behind her in the kitchen and simply put his arms around her sometimes, and they would stand there, singing softly, saying nothing.

(That's what I wanted in my life, and knew I could never settle for less than that, that alone would be better than less. I do not regret that choice at all.) I will not spoil this by moving into the present, though. I will return safely to that time, as a child, through my early teens, when I saw that my parents were clearly lovers at every age. I felt, though would never have said so, that I was lucky to witness those private moments, and that my parents did not find it wrong to let us see them.

Their love was palpable at Christmas. And the house was full of the good kinds of secrets. This Christmas brought us the birth of the "Christmas Spider," As Mom and Jean Ellen dubbed it. A hanging thingy made of glitter gold paper, on a large hook. When you draped it from a chandelier, pointy tentacle/leg things draped in many layers from the center and it seemed alive in a particularly grotesque way.

It moved around the house, from dining room, to kitchen, to a curtain rod, to the lamp next to Mom' chair--wherever Jean Ellen or Mom chose. the damned thing lasted for 25 years! And there was the wrapping of the "spoon rest" if it was Mom's turn. She and Grandma LeSure, Dad's mom, had an ongoing exchange with that. Granny'd gotten it for her donation to the Navaho Indian Tribe (back then). It was pale pea green, with three spoon rest depressions. Made of plastic, it was a "French" artiste in the center with his paintbrush, surrounded by his palette spoon rests. Half his moustached was missing from the get-go. The ugliest thing I ever saw. Granny gave it to Mom, then Mom gave it back for Mother's Day, then Granny gave it back on Mom's birthday, and here it was being re-wrapped in the same box, same interior tissue, same tag with all the cross-outs, for her.

We had traditions coming out our ears in our family. Most of them had to do with laughing.

But some had to do with the season. In late September, for instance, when I was little, Mom took me for a walk and we brought a pillow case. We'd go into the wildflower field and fill it with drying grass. Then Mommy would hang it in the attic and, along around December 20th, there was hay for the manger. She and Jean Ellen would put the crèche (nativity--we are French) together on the little table by the front door. We did not do the British custom of leaving the baby Jesus for Christmas morning, but that's okay. Mommy wanted us to have one thing that would remind us of the day's origin. When I was big enough, she let me sound out the words of the story--we were born reading, so that was fine. We knew it by heart anyway. So Jack or I would tell the story while they put the crèche together. Jean Ellen always made a star that covered the normal painting there. Sometimes silver, abstract on black paper. You never knew. Sometimes a big star in a cluster of smaller ones in a field of blue.

And the baking. I would sit cross-legged on the counter and "help" with the doughs, hand mixing in the chocolate chips. Or I would sprinkle the sugar cookie stars. Mostly I licked the bowl because it made it easier for Mom to clean. I think that Jean Ellen and I learned to bake through osmosis. I don't measure much, to this day. Mommy baked by feel, she said. We had six kinds of cookies, and the butter cookies without leavening were made two weeks in advance, and other doughs were frozen. She never froze cookies.

"They never taste quite the same," she said. I think she was right. And we NEVER used margarine. Margarine was a sin in our house.

We went shopping for presents for Mommy on their double bed, Jack and I. Daddy would have a miraculous display of things my mother wanted all around the perimeter, with price tags on every item--price tags he had made himself, to suit our budget. He as fair, though, because he had certain items out of our range--they were his presents. And he trusted US NOT TO TELL, and we never did. Through the year Mom thought of ways we could earn money for Christmas. We'd get paid and she had little jars with our names on them, NOT TO BE TOUCHED. Some things were practical, and some pretty, but there was always enough so that Jack and I could truly choose up until we were around nine. There were often twenty items there--all bought by Daddy, all re-marked. And then he helped us wrap them in tissue papers, and he had a stash of glitter and star stickers and ribbon so that we could make them "special." My Scroogey Dad.

****
I am the youngest. The miracle for me? Christmas Eve. By then, there was a ham coming out of the oven by 1:00 and a turkey going IN, for a late buffet at night. The trimming party was that night! While Jack and Jim were rooting around for a missed present or whether or not Santa REALLY was out there, I sat cross-legged on the living room floor with my dad. I wish I had a picture. I was not more than five or six. I was tiny. He six one. And we tested the bulbs, consulting over how he might plan which should have reflectors. Counting sockets and bulbs. Sometimes the count was wrong and he'd say, "Road trip, Jetty, get your coat." We'd run to Wallach's grocer and get some bulbs of the color we needed adn somehow or other, Daddy's find something that someone just HAD to have, just to even things out you know.

But I would hand Daddy the bulbs or reflectors and he would string the tree, from the bottom up. He didn't even bothe with the spire until the end. We knew it would get tipped. We worked quietly and fast, for guests arrived by 4:00 and we had to also unpack the ornaments, so people could decorate when they came. I loved unwrapping the blown glass ornaments. Mommy never hid breakable things from us. If we broke and item, she's say, "Did you mean to? Will you be more careful next time?" And that was that. We didn't mean to, and we WERE more careful and very little got broken.

That Christmas, when I think I was six, Grandma and Grandpa LeSure were there for BOTH days and were staying in a hotel! And Aunt Joy was coming. She wasn't married then, and was ten years younger than Mommy and was GLAMOROUS. The tree-trimming party mostly had friends of my parents when I was little. I loved sitting in a corner and hearing the adult conversation. Grandma LeSure told me I could go INTO her purse and try her lipstick. When I did though, Grandpa SLAPPED me and I yelled at him for it.

When Grandma explained, he had the oddest smirk on his face and said, "Well, Missy, I guess no one will push you around in this life. Excuse me." I found it a wholly unsatsifactory apology and avoided him all night.

Slowly the beauty of the tree emerged, amidst the singing and the laughing and the stories, the ham, the turkey, the spilled drinks--not Mom's, other people's ... she had me TASTE hers even--the boys nearly tipping the tree over from an over-rambunctious game of throw the dish towel around...

As the night lengthened, it all blurred for me. It seemed to me that our tree glittered more than anyone's. Then Mom and Joy had the obligatory fight over not having garland tinsel. We had the long, leaded icicles then. And Mom and Jean Ellen would not let ANYONE help with that. Every piece had to drape free. Grandma LeSure got that, too, and so did I, but when I started to help, suddenly, Daddy said, "Santa comes soon, Jetty! You have to run to bed!"

Run I did, and so did Jack. Jim and Jean Ellen stayed up later, but I didn't mind. I never saw the thing done. For me? For me, the last glimpse of Christmas Eve was a room full of people laughing, JE draping tinsel over Daddy's head, the boys NOT fighting, but playing cards, Mommy talking with Grandma, Grandpa standing back, holding his stomach, smoking his pipe, but looking happy. Joy working on the tree and clucking at the lack of garland, and two to six other adults laughing, singing, or talking. We always sang "Lullay thou Little Tiny Child" when I went to bed.

***
That early Christmas I leaped out of my bed though, pretty late and looked at the roof below our window. It was the roof to the den and there were HOOFPRINTS. "JEAN ELLEN!"

Now, my sister HATED to be wakened. We were not allowed to rouse her OR Jim until 7 for stockings, but I JUMPED ON HER. She opened one eye and grunted, but she got up and came to the window and said, "Oh, Jetty. Honey. Santa must be HERE right now. Quick. Back to bed." She went to bed, I flew into the hall, STRAIGHT into my dad.

"WhAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"Santashereisawtheprintsontehroofandiwanttosayhiand go---"

He had a huge turkey platter in his hand. It was NOT one of the presents we'd seen."DADDY?"

He simply squatted down and said, "Jetty. Santa is so frazzled this year, he's asked ME to wrap this for your mom. See? He already had me put the stockings at the top of the stair. Now, don't you think he might be a little upset to have to carry on polite conversation with a little snigglefritz who is supposed to be in bed NOW?"

"YOU are helping SANTA?"

He looked so solemn with the weight of this honor. "Yes. And I need to do a good job, so off to bed."

No problem.

***
The morning between 7 and about 8:30 was a cacophony of stocking openings and playing games until Daddy allowed us to get him up. On this ONE day, he insisted on showering first, just to torture us. Jim would dig out his slippers--again worn once a year--and his robe and we'd wait. UGH.

Then HE woulds schlump downstairs, grumbling and turn on the lights and this was MY FIRST look. Presents from one wall all the way to the front window, presents as high as my chest, and the most beautiful Christmas tree EVER. And we were allowed ONE PRESENT before breakfast. Only one. It was okay. We learned very early that our Christmases lasted longer than anyone's because we took turns and we took breaks. We had to PLAY with our toys. WE read our books. We watched the grown ups. We all shared the jokes.

If it sounds like Heaven, it's because it was. Sheer Heaven. This Christmas was all about trains, though. JACK GOT his Lionel trains from Grandpa, and five billion miles of track and little houses and trees and, well EVERYTHING. I had good stuff too, but it was the trains.

When Daddy's last present was opened, along around TWO--he HOARDED them under his chair and we had to watch him open his all at the end. Rotten man. And he won at the can you unwrap tissue without ripping it game. Excruciating. Mommy was festooned in bows and she and Grandma and Jean Ellen were busy with dinner plans. Jim wanted to listen to his record albums and call his friends.

Jack, Grandpa and I went into the basement and built a city. We had hills and had to measure the angles--Grandpa was a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And engineer... WITH A REAL ENGINEER'S CAP! He put it on and he we built our railroad route, complete with a mountain, a skyscraper we could drive it THROUGH and a cave and tunnel. We only had four crashes before it was complete at Five.

And Grandpa looked like a little boy, when we threw the switch and the train began to run. He ran around the tables with us as every obstacle was successfully managed. I threw the switch correctly--we had TWO trains--and they avoided one another neat as can be.

When it was done, He threw his cap in the air and DANCED. It was the only time I remember seeing him smile, let alone dance. My grandpa, my brother, and me, we danced a jig and sang a railroad song on Christmas.

***
There were no pictures taken or home movies. Grandpa died the following summer. But I see him in his cap, I hear him and I remember forgiving him the slap for the call, of "GREAT JOB THERE, LITTLE ONE" when I threw the switch for engine number two.

Grandpa was a railroad man. And for one Christmas morning, so was Jack and so was I. Three guys on the tracks, just doing our job.

On one magic Christmas when I was only six, and the world was new, and Santa landed on my roof.

***
The tree held presents and gave them up at night, after we were all in our nightclothes again. Mommy doled them out and all were labeled from the tree. They were always special--jewelry, a matchbox car, something special to the particular child. That year, mine was Santa in a Snow globe, only it was about three inches tall, with a tiny note affixed that said, "Thank you for not bothering me. It was a busy night. You are such a good girl. Love, Santa"

***
There is no one left from that time but me. Even Grandpa's hat is gone. But I hear him still. the magic of that Christmas, of many others, remains with me still. But that one Christmas, Grandpa let us see his back yard, the boy, the man who loved trains, the man who loved us. And I see the tree shimmering as I glanced at it over my daddy's shoulder as he carried me to bed, humming so that his chest rumbled and tickled me. I see the tinsel on his head, and Jean Ellen slapping Jimmy's hand as he looped the stuff in a clump. I feel my heart speeding up at the memory of almost seeing Santa.

I see it as clearly as any movie could bring it. It shines there for me to run whenever I need it; there, just by my heart, with Mommy close by, laughing.

So forgive me if I indulge myself in festooning and laughing and singing my way around my new home, making cookie dough to freeze, ordering some gifts, putting up my tree, repeating the story of every ornament. And planning my own Christmas Eve celebration with nine of my family, here. In my home. And there will be stockings from TWO Santas under my tree Christmas morning. And there will be toys. There will be singing deliberately off key.

And there will be more love than any one woman could possibly hope for. Here. In my home. You all are invited. Just let me know by the end of next week, so I know how big a turkey to order!

Just popping in for a... quickie? (That doesn't sound right)

2011-11-25T12:37:00.000-05:00

I had what was, for me, a perfect Thanksgiving. (Those of you who do not know how I feel about that day, there's an early entry that has the words "Norman Rockwell Redux?"in the title.) I fixed a regular Thanksgiving dinner while I had the day entirely to myself until 4:00, when a friend who had nowhere to go managed to TELL me this on Wednesday night and I told her to get her butt here. She brought the Monty Python Holy Grail movie with her. All we did was laugh together until about 9:00 pm.

Was I thankful and mindful of blessings throughout the day? Far more than I have been in a long, long time. Now I am rested. Everything waiting for me in the freezer for me to make homemade soup after I get home on Sunday.

I am off to be with the friend who is more a sister and my "niece and nephew" for their annual Saturday after Thanksgiving tree trimming party. Since I am a Christmas nut, it kicks off the season. Gail absorbed my parents' tree-trimming party as her tradition, only having it early specifically TO kick off the season. Mostly her friends and the kids' friends pick on Gail for the day. And Gail throws things at us. And she moves all the ornaments we place; and we pick on her more. We eventually get pizza, and then Gail, one other friend, and I are there, usually alone, after supper to adorn the final touch of 250 glass icicles. It is spectacular. We have a silly kids' movie on and everything is dark except the tree.

Yup. It's wonderful.

I will have another writing when I come home. I hope all of you are having a good American Thanksgiving weekend.

I have a lot of catching up on all your blogs, too, to do when I come home. The painting is truly coming along now, once I got through the "mean people" voices.

I count my blogging friends as blessings, too. All of you.

Finally! Translating inspiration into a Painting

2011-11-13T08:56:00.006-05:00

Again, this won't be a long entry. Well. For me, it's not that long. Oh, who am I kidding? It's long.

Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week. I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.

I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.

The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.

"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you." This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."

Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'

"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."

That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.

And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.

Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a surf board with wheels to get around.

And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.

That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"

And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)

Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.

We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"

Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?

Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.

Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.

Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice. "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.

I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...

When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again. And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.

I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"

Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.

The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.

So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.

And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.

And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.

When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at, by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.

"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.

I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.

But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...

My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.

But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.

Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.

I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.

What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?

I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?

Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.

Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.

What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?

Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.

Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.

Let it Snow... Huh? Nothing at all profound today.

2011-11-07T17:24:00.003-05:00

Yes. Well, some of you may know that Connecticut was in the dark for all of last week. I exaggerate. Only about eighty per cent of the state was dark, and I live in one of the towns that was hardest hit. As I write this Monday night, big chunks of my town and two of the towns adjacent are still dark. This is a situation we will have to sort out--negligence and apathy. I live in what some call the "quiet corner," which has often translated into the "Backward pore folk" corner.

In the late 1970's I worked at a university library way across the mighty Amazonian Connecticut River. One must understand that, in Connecticut, if you lived on the west side of the river, my side was seen as some foreign world of nothing but woods and farmlands. No one actually said outright that we must be uncivilized, but they came close. I was in a play and invited my colleagues to come and see me. They arranged an expedition, thinking they could see some quaint old-fashioned stores and perhaps take in the buccolic scenery.

When I saw them after curtain calls, one woman said, "Well you actually have a SageandAllen's store here. And a Stop and Shop!"

"Yes, Clara, and we got us indoor plumbing just t'other day."

"Well, I thought that this was all country out here. I didn't realize you all had..." Her voice trailed as she suddenly realized just how condescending and insulting she was sounding. "No, but you have regular stores and everything and... I'll shut up now."

Thirty years later we still are the forgotten towns when it comes to prioritizing funds or aid. We have the flagship of our university system, but people seem to think that other than that, we are a vast wasteland, except, of course, for our mall. Connecticut is the land of malls. If you do not live within twenty minutes of a large one, you are considered underprivileged. My town has three huge malls within twenty minutes. Truly, just how lucky can one woman be.

I hate malls. Sorry. I just do.

Anyway, my power came on late Saturday, thank goodness. My apartment complex is located in an area that has at least five other large complexes within about 3/4 of a mile, square. It is the most densely populated area in the town, yet we waited six days for the power. I could not get out of the complex for two days. For all six of those days, one of the streets had no exit at all, except by winding through our complex. There are still trees HANGING across roads. Poles partly fallen. Big branches blocking roads. One of my friends could not get out of her street until Friday. Fortunately she and her husband are campers and had a gas stove as well.

In this day and age we expect our electric companies to be able to get us back on the grid in short order, but our company is far behind the times. And if I had had to listen to the president say that the company exists to serve its customers, I was ready to throw a shoe at my tv. It exists to serve its stockholders. The president got a three million dollar bonus--for cutting 20% of our crews, I guess. And not paying bills. And having antiquated lines and transformers.

I am grateful to the Canadian crews who came, some of whom are still here--from Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec. We have crews from Kentucky, Massachusetts, the Carolinas, Tennessee. I don't know what other states sent us help--I think they said it was TWENTY states. I am so grateful to them all.

Last week was a lost week in some ways. In others? I now know my neighbors. We watched out for one another, making sure things were okay for each other. I had FIVE friends show up at my door, panicked because they could not reach me, worried I had fallen. I stayed six days with one of them and not ONCE did she complain. She gave me her room, so I did not have to use the stairs. I made dinner and brunch for a crew of our friends on night and one morning. We played games. I read five books.

Friendships were deepened. Acquaintanceships were solidified.

I am home and never have been more grateful to be here. The management team had generators here by Friday morning, because it was to be cold Friday and Saturday nights. We did not know when we would be on the grid again. I know they all worked well into the evening all week, making sure all the tenants were okay. They listened patiently to tenants SCREAM at them to fix things... as if they could. They showed up every day, working in jackets, sometimes wearing gloves to work in the mornings. Their generators gave them power to work, but not for heat. I stopped in every day, as did two other of the FIVE HUNDRED tenants, to let them know we knew it was not their doing, to acknowledge that it must be a hard time for them, too. They were without power in their homes, too. Two women had to bring their children with them each day.

It has been a hard time, but not without its blessings.

I missed my connections in the blogging world. I missed my connections to friends who live far from me. I missed my studio and my beautiful paintings and photographs on my walls. Just things. But ALL my things are gifts. Every piece of pottery, every picture, every little doodad... gifts from friends, from my sister, my parents, or handed down bits of family history. I have bought very little--the couches, two chairs, two tables. I have antique oak chairs that were my great grandfather's, and my great great grandfather--the traveling quack-- I have his desk. A bit of cut glass from my sister's best friend's grandmother. A dish from my mother's mother.

I missed my things because they live with stories, with the richness of family ties. I see the people, not just the thing.

I am rich beyond measure. I am home.

I won't revise this. I don't particularly care about the quality of writing today. I write simply because I am filled with gratitude today. Never have I felt so keenly the joy of being home. Never have I been more aware of how UNalone I am in this world. I am poor when it comes to income, but that's all. It's NOTHING in the light of the last ten days.

I am home. And tonight I will curl up on my couch, writing and working on my book. And tomorrow I will begin the painting I had just taped down when the power went out. And I will look online for images of snow on fall leaves... it was beautiful. To see yellow and flame maple leaves on snow... a once in a lifetime sight. Thank you Carl for the quick pic you sent!

Thank you all for reading what I write, and thank you to some in particular, who have reminded me that even in this "virtual" world, I am not alone. And I am not forgotten. Neither are all of you, as will be evident as I periodically blog hop to catch up on your lives.

I am such a lucky woman.

Headed to the Studio for a Bit ... Some Background Blogs in the Meantime

2011-10-29T00:15:00.001-04:00

I actually am working on a book, and trying to figure out the thread of the focus. It won't be a litany of hurts, that's for sure; it won't be Pollyanna Grows Up In Hell but is GLAD, either. I'm not good at perky. I think that essentially it is The Prince of Tides without the tiger. And it may be that I wind up having to fictionalize, for the sake of some innocent relatives, and, well because the sociopath is alive. Then, too, that might be kind of fun. While I would love to write a memoir, it might be that to talk about my personal journey, it should be fictionalized; to talk about my mom, however, might be something I could tackle. We'll see.

Regardless, painting dreams seem to be taking over for now, and it's time I paid attention. Often the two forms--writing and painting--feed off one another.

But I've been so lucky to get about thirty new followers in a short time, and some of my entries might make more sense if you look at earlier ones. They might illustrate more of who I am.

I dance on the edges of things, skating the curve between the yin and the yang, the dark and the light, where life and death touch. But the only way I survived all the pain was to cling to the beauty and try to let go of the horror, swinging toward that rainbow on these slender vines of whatever beauty I could see. Sometimes they broke. Sometimes they took me to somewhere safe for a time. Sometimes they took me directly into a pile of ... not good stuff. I have lived between the extremes, but early on, it taught me to live BY extremes. Too much so often. 'Matt' once told me, "Your love, our love, this love between us was so big it scared me to death. You scared me to death. I had to run away."

SO... I did my best to kill myself off by inches in my twenties, until my broken back saved my life. It was a real, tangible problem to fight, to overcome, to conquer, instead of demons just out of my reach. And conquer it I did, for twenty years longer than they gave me to live or to walk, so far. T I'm here. I walk. I stand. But mostly, I live. And as I have said in previous comments, I use the elves and fairies, the wildflower days and the Lake, the beauty and laughter of Christmas, to cut the demons down.

Blog Entries for While I am Painting, not Writing--for those of you who are so inclined
For any of you newer followers who are interested, I've included some early entries--Losing Dad was the latest and about nine of you were around then, perhaps. I did not remember a thing about the abuse and violence until I lost my dad--Losing dad, finding therapy . This entry talks about him in a little more depth than the Slayer of Monsters under My Bed.

I could not really start the process of having the distance to write about it all until after my mom died. I was far too closely entwined with her, her struggles, her failures, her victory. HER life story. (Hence, I am kicking around tackling a memoir that focuses on her and on our relationship.) I could not separate myself properly. I include the following entry, which shows most clearly so far, the wide swings of feelings about her.
Losing Mom, finding my way

When I had lost both parents, then I opened up and began to write about it all, a bit at a time. But I let no one see. I let very few in that deeply even in talking. It took years to truly have it lose the power to hurt me. But I had my breakthroughs, and life changed. I got new tools to use to actually enjoy pastels in life. Grays even. Balance without boredom was a brand new concept to me at 37, after she died.

I think one such breakthrough came when I stopped blaming Mom for everything, that was a huge step.
Underlying Premise--I cannot blame my mother, dammit.

This next is the beginning of it for me, and it is pretty horrifying, I think... Where the terror and the sociopath were born, but also where the love was born. This was the one story that made my therapist cry, but it is pivotal to the gift I was given to cope, through the Robin Hood Days, and through the days of jumping at the too small sounds in the night, when my other brother came. Bear in mind I was perhaps a year and a half older than the me in the picture of my window box elves entry -- three and a half! I don't know that I had more than two followers when I wrote this one. Grace by Any Other Name

I blocked the incident out entirely until I was about 36, just as I did the sessions with Jack, and the rape that made me start carrying a steak knife to my room at night. No one ever said a word about the knife, a small fact that makes me wonder still. I never tried to hide it. In fact, if Jim was in the living room, I made sure it was very visible... Still, my memories were only of elves, until my father died, and Pandora's box flew open, and the demons were let loose for good.

Out of that little bitty girl came a solution for most traumas, most pain. Love. Agape, not emotion so much as the gift. The gift of love.

It was what I used over and over before each of my nine back operations--I would say the names of the people I love, over and over and over -- it was far more powerful than thinking of people who loved me. After all, who would love a woman like me anyway? They all left so fast, and it was so very hard to believe back then that there was anything in me to love ... But there was nothing hard about my naming the ones that I loved, whether or not they loved me back. It helped me get through many situations which scared me. Cover the fear with love

Funny thing is, most of those people DID love me back, and have loved me ever since. It kept coming as a shock when these women united so often, catching me before I hit the ground, over and over again. The Women

***
I think losing my daughter in 1994, just two years after her father left, broke the final dam of some sort of resistance to share my core with others. I did not think anything could ever be worse than this. (That will undoubtedly be an entry one day--one of the most bizarre experiences, aside from the worst moment of my adult life. Hearing that she was dead.) I moved to Pennsylvania six months later, learned to paint, and simply breathed. Between 1987 and 1994 I lost both my parents, had my ninth back surgery, went through psychotherapy for post traumatic stress, bought a house with my sister, had both kids leave for college, had my husband leave me for his student teacher who was Jessie's age, and finally lost my daughter.

When I wrote the poem to her in 2005 that is in the next entry, I had lost three best friends and my nephew and my brother as well. I was worn out from losing people and starting over, but I also knew I was going to lose my sister, too (I wrote about her in January of this year). (From 2000-2006 I lost my minister -- and dear friend--to suicide, two close friends, my nephew who hanged himself, my brother and finally my sister. I was kinda tired. And I was losing my ability to walk. I was starting over for the sixth time in my adult life, I felt.)

This is just a bit of a tribute to my love for my Jessica. She is inextricably entwined in my path to wanting to write again, in wanting to fly if I cannot walk. My Jess

That's enough of the hard stuff. I understand if you don't want to read any of those. I am so grateful for the support you all give me in writing, in letting me know that you don't think it a crazy idea for me to write a book. Of course, I'd have to write it anyway, because writing is what I do. I could not stop it, one way or another, if I tried. Like breathing. Like praying, singing, painting. Like loving. So if I write a book no one wants to publish or read, I'll keep writing anyway.

If I do not just go down into my studio and get started on those paintings, I will lose my brain altogether, howver. I thought I could create a schedule where I would, oh, paint in the morning, write in the afternoon. Nope. I'll do both in spurts... but as long as I do one or the other every day, then it's fine.

Okay, for those of you newer followers who don't really want to just read the heavy stuff about me, I have other entries that show something else!

NOW About Fairies or Faeries, and other Kinds of Magic
What More you Really Should Oughta Know
For those of you who want the silly and the magic, Birthing Fairies: the Honest Truth, not the Fake truth is self-explanatory. Some of you may have not had this in your education and if you have small children or grandchildren, you might need to pay attention to this factual account. Jo over at Majority of Two can corroborate that this is how they are born. She found this out in Canada, so it isn't just me.

Beyond the magic of my mother, I was also given our summers. Huckleberina Finn is a sample of that. Then of course, there was Christmas....

Those three entries are some of the shiny parts of my life.Hence my comparison of my family environment as a rain forest: lush or rotting, with little in between.

As for me, one of the pictures I've dreamed is birthing fairies... a spot on the lake that shines so clear for me still. I finally think I know how to get what I want on paper--the overbright sparkles that get larger as they come to shore. We'll see. And I finally have the right fish for my coral painting... and--Well. I just have to paint is all.

I can't walk away for two months again. Undoubtedly new things to write will start nagging at me softly, then louder I will have to come back and finish them, if only to shut them up. Do you find that, too? That a work of art yells at you to get over there and DO it? That a story weaves into your dreams and mucks them all up ? Or paintings arrive unannounced and fully blown?

Sometimes the muse is downright rude. Oh. And I've recently begun to write music for the Thursday night group of which I am a part. I never wrote music before in my life. THAT is calling to.

But the thing is? Now I am free. Free of the house that was too much for me, of having to consider anyone else in my days. I am free to fly. And that's WAY easier than walking. My friends dubbed me the Phoenix. I like that, as I said. It's mythical enough, and I am slowly working on a painting of that. Each feather is being cut individually. I work on it when I DO feel weak, when I feel that I cannot take any more pain or loss, or have one more hope placed in my hand to look at and cherish, only to have it taken away and thrown beyond my reach the moment I believe. I mean, really. Who doesn't want to be the center of her own myth? It can be useful when the darkness visits.

The demons rarely stay for long any more. And when the fires come, I FLY. Fly straight up and free.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks, but I will be following your blogs. It's how I start and end most days.

Then, too, I may be back writing sooner if new entries interfere with my dreams and then start yarping loudly at me as the paintings did!

In the meantime, as Carl would say, keep makin' art. I am so very lucky to have made blogging friends here... and I think it all started with Carl at Artistic Balance and Jo at Majority of Two. And built from there. If the blogs I follow are not familiar to you, I'd also suggest you root around among them, and give some a try! I know that reading such fine words and seeing such beautiful words have made me think more, feel more deeply--and have lifted my spirits when I needed it.

Runaways to Redbank Part III: Whiffle Ball and Pictures of Dirt

2011-10-26T09:00:00.008-04:00

Lest you think that yesterday's entry indicated some inner loneliness or sliding into a funk, here's Runaway III. I love traveling alone, and this is partly why--the northern Jersey shore. And I am afraid there will be a Runaways to Redbank IV, because, well, there is my fiftieth birthday trip and the guy on the beach. And, did I ever get to Redbank for more than a pit stop? We'll see... I mean, there was the internationally know rock star, but where? And if I lump them all into one trip, oh well. Tough....

Please note, once again, any photos are included for fun here--they are from various easily accessible websites I found from googling the kind of pictures I wanted. Except the patterns in the sand... those are mine. MINE I tell ya!

If you are new to my blog and have no clue what I'm talking about, and want to have a clue, see Runaway I , and Rnaway II. This is continuation of my two days ... (You may also find why I love traveling alone if you root around and find Deliverance I and II)

(And with this entry, I'll be on hiatus for a little while--and I do mean a little--to start a painting or two that have been haunting me for a week.)

Which Way Will She Wander?

I headed back north toward Red Bank from West Long Branch, NJ. My dear, dear friend David (a professional drummer and brilliant computer scientist I'd known since I was 22) had told me about an old-fashioned music store called Jack's, that famous musicians from all over frequented. And there were what looked to be a wonderful natural foods place and a couple of artisan type shops...

Only there was also Sandy Hook. And it was a blustery, perfect day to walk another beach. Really. I mean, music store .... miniature Cape Cod. Food store ... marvelous sand bar formations. Gee. What won? And, of course, West Long Branch had offered such interesting characters, I felt as if I were on a roll. Sandy Hook it was.

The peninsula juts up quite a few miles toward the city. You can park the car to the right of the road, to stand and facet the ocean, then simply turn around to see the bay. Remains of WWII missile sites hide in among dunes so old that they were more pure white hills with alien dwarfed forests laced by pure white paths to guide the way. Unlike Cape Cod,Sandy Hook is too small for towns--there is just a military base at the tip. So for miles, all there was to see were bay, ocean, dunes and sky.

And living things, of course, including people.This time around, once again, the Jersey spirits had come out to play.

Barefoot Navigation...
It took perhaps ten minutes to get past the initial cluster of people. I do not move easily over dry sand. One little boy, perhaps ten, saw me lose my footing a little, cane notwithstanding, and offered me his arm, gentleman style. Just his open-faced smile steadied me. You know that kind of look they offer when the world has given them no reason to expect less in return? Well, I could not disappoint him and accepted his arm. When we reached packed sand, he bolted, barely saying good bye, as was right.

An obstacle course lay before me, however, that held potential for decapitation; unmanned fishing poles. The poles stood oh, between 8 and 47 feet tall, stuck deeply into the sand, with nearly invisible lines angling into the sea. When monsters of the deep pulled, they bent to their own tune, performing a beautiful, if dangerous dance--but only when the fish were running. The dance was wild today, but no one seemed to care but me.

All the men belonging to the poles sat about fifteen feet back, sleeping or drinking their beer, occasionally glancing at the lines, or gawking over mirrored sunglasses at any stray woman who came by. Let us simply say that today they did not even see me; there was a bikinied trio nearby and rumor had it they were about to turn over. I stared at the chorus line of bodies turned in their chairs, heads turned further still over right shoulders, beers halted in mid-route. They waited, breathless. The women turned, the men smiled, the poles danced on.

Anyway, the navigation trick was to find the space where one could easily walk along the hardened surface of packed wet sand far enough from the water to avoid the lines, but close enough to the water to find interesting, well, stuff. I couldn't look down, though, because I had to walk in such a zig zag path that I got a little dizzy. (No, this was something beyond my normal state.) Finally I gave up, moving to the dry sand, which was far harder for me. Pulling each leg up, loaded with sand at every step very soon caused throbbing pain. Still that beat slicing an eye or worse.

I saw a dune and driftwood log and made for it. At this point, I realized the cane was slowing me down, so I pretended it was a baton and I was performing in the circus, and only dropped it four times. When I reached safety, with my accustomed grace, I fell more than sat down. "Ladies and gentleman," I said to my adoring crowd, undoubtedly moved by my twirling, "with grace, she moves. Nay, verily like a doe doth she walk in the world."

OMG, a Family of Living Elves!
Unfortunately, a laugh from behind some scrub disturbed my soliloquy, and a small curly-headed gnome was giggling at me. I bowed to him and he scampered off toward the protected side of the dune. Through the brush was a family on which I could spy so easily, it was sinful. A dad, my 3 or 4-year-old sprite, and another little boy about my internal age--six or seven at most--were getting up from what looked like a feast. Both looked more like Garth Williams' illustrations than real boys, and, since nothing so far that day had felt much like my real life, that seemed just about right.

Dad wore khaki knee-length pants and a tank top, with wide apart blue eyes on a face that was crowned with unruly, curly light hair. The boys had bright colored, droopy bathing trunks and the same hair. So far, so good. They had piled together the remains of the major food groups: fried chicken, potato salad, chips, cookies, cake, pie, soda, and--what was that? There among the plastic ruins: one Blue Willow china plate, precisely crossed with pistol-handled pewter knife and fork, one cobalt crystal wine glass, a folded sea blue cloth napkin and a silver bucket with a wine bottle in it.

They clearly belonged to Grandma: knee-length skirt, a long-sleeved white blouse with a peter pan color fastened at the neck with some sort of shiny pin. She was barefoot and turned before I quite saw her face, but she, too, had short curls that could not and would not be tidied into submission. Wild curls seemed an oxymoron on her. Dad was on his cell phone. Grandma was smoothing her blouse and patting herself as she started to clean up, occasionally seeming to yank her curls into submission. It did not work. The china and curls said Queen of the Fairies, but the clothes? Aha. 'Incognito,' I thought.

The thing about Jersey so far that sang to me, that sang clear down deep in my soul, was that exaggeration was redundant here. The place was one walking, talking, lounging whopper of a fish story wherever I rested.

Sandy Hook Whiffle World Series Champion
"Grandma, let's play ball! C'mon Grandma, I won't pitch hard. PLLLLEEEEASE." The older elf had the family mass of honey hair that stuck out at all angles like new wood shavings, with one long bit he was perpetually swiping at. Dad snapped the phone, sat back on his heels, and smirked at his mother.

"Yeah, Mom. Show them how it's done," he said as the smirk widened into an outright grin. Suddenly he must have seen me watching and he kind of jerked his head as if to include me in on the joke. I simply smiled, relieved to be accepted, but at this point it would have been moot. I'd come to this theater and dammit, I was gonna see my show!

"Now, Daniel, I have not played ball since I was a child. I don't remember how." Grandma looked down, but she was facing me now and I'm sure her mouth was turned up at the corners. Her hair suddenly seemed to loosen and grow a bit. It had to be a fairy was lurking behind those buttoned down clothes. It showed in the curled toes. Perhaps I am mistaken; she was not that close.

"I'll show you how," the older one said. "And we won't keep score. Tommy can be the base. Tommy go over there with your shovel and pail so Grandma will know where to run."

"Kay, Danny. I do that. Run to me, Gamma, okay? I have to dig now." And that was almost all we heard from Tommy. He squatted there with his pail and shovel, face focused and body contorted as only a small child can manage. I think he'd found a shell, or perhaps a magic stone.

Danny got an enormous bright red bat and electric blue whiffle ball from a beach bag the size of Milwaukee. "Okay, now watch me, Grandma. You hold the bat like this and then you swing like this and hit the ball." He was so serious, he almost had a little scowl as he tossed the ball up and swung. He missed the first few times, but then connected. Unconcerned he said, "See? Just like that."

Grandma smiled and nodded. She untucked her blouse and practically glided toward the "playing field," rolling up her sleeves. She shook her head once and the curls grew some more ... I felt myself sitting forward on my log, and I gripped the straight up stub of a branch beside me.

"Okay, so I won't stand too far away so you can hit the ball," Danny said, and moved perhaps two feet from his grandmother.

"Young man, I will hit YOU with the bat, instead of the ball and I do not think you'd care for that. I might hit YOU clear over the dune," she said, as serious as he. I liked her. I think I liked her a lot. The boys and their dad were clearly in the family of elves with those eyes, so my guess had to be right. This explained the clothes. She had to pass. I wondered at the strain it must have been. She was curiously at home with a bat.

Daniel danced as he backed up, yelling, "Grandma, COME ON."

"The more you yell, the slower I get, so you might as well stop, dear." Something in her voice ... He stopped. Immediately.

She stepped to the sea turtle plate, gently tapped it three times, and she and that bat were one. 'Uh-oh,' I thought. 'Danny, Danny, Danny.'

"Strike one, Grandma," he said. "It's okay. Just keep trying."

I glanced at her son and he was leaning back, smiling broadly. Tommy looked up a moment, but she wasn't running yet, and went back to his shovel, humming tunelessly, but very loud.

After strike two, I held my breath, but no. She gave the ball a tiny tap and trotted -- yes, trotted is the ONLY word -- toward first base. Danny tagged her out. "Too bad, Grandma. Maybe next time."

He quickly struck out.

When Grandma had her next at bat, she smiled as sweetly as could be. I thought of that poem from childhood, "How doth the little crocodile" ... was that how it started? ... But it ended with " and welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws." She motioned for Danny to move away, but instead he wound up like a pitcher. "Watch THIS one Grandma, then I'll pitch it nice to you, I promise."

Oh, how Grandma connected. Danny ducked as the ball shot past his ear and it was still headed up when it flew far above Tommy's head. The wind caught it and it danced wildly in the air a moment before the downward arc. I clapped. I cheered. I couldn't help it. She turned once toward me, eyes crinkling at the corners, as wide apart as the rest, and gave a slight nod.

Dad was laughing as he went after the ball, Tommy jumped up and down and then ran in circles, Danny stood sort of clueless with lower lip beginning to grow, and Grandma?

She simply trotted to Tommy, picked him up and kissed him, whirling him around a few times, then trotted back toward turtle home, giving it a little kick with her toe, long before Dad came back. She began to readjust her collar, then stopped, and she left her hair alone. She smiled broadly and opened her arms toward Danny.

He still seemed caught between his ego and pride in his grandma, on the verge of a dramatic pout. His dad pat him on the head as he passed with the ball, and said, "Most valuable player, girls' softball, 1950-1954. Danny, she had a 310 batting average. Your grandma is a star, kid."

The boy wheeled and glared at his grandma. "YOU CHEATED Grandma! You really cheated!"

"Yup" was all she said, smiling still. Then she shrugged and turned to saunter back to the picnic ruins, when Danny ran and threw his arms around her waist from behind, burying his face in her back.

I know my cues; I picked up my stuff and moved on.You can safely spy on the Queen of the Fairies just so long ...

Pictures of Dirt
The fishing lines ended about five minutes further down the beach. I headed toward wet sand, and began to notice bits of interesting things that had been dragged in by the tide which was now receding. Without the poles I could look down, and I came on a formation that intrigued me and I started to snap pictures from every direction.

I loved the patterns in the sand that something else had made, and that lone stone in the middle. I walked all around trying to figure out how the tree pattern had been made when, not too far away, I heard it.

"Bernie. Bernie! Whaddyou think that woman is doing? Bernie, go ask her what she is doing. Bernie, do ya hear me? Guhwan! Ask her."

Now the Jersey accent's not quite Brooklyn, though it's close. "Ing" ends with a hard 'g.' And 'er' is pronounced almost, but not quite like 'ar.' It is harsh, and almost bursts from the mouth." All in all, it is an amalgamation of the most distinctive parts of a New York and Philadelphia twang that jars one into full alert.

I do not believe there is any other sound so harsh as a Jersey woman yelling.

I looked up and there they were, the antithesis of sprites. Sitting in their folding, webbed chairs. She was in a housecoat. The kind that have those metal snaps, short sleeves and are often in bold floral prints. For some reason, she had two pink rollers on the top of her head, with almost no hair left in them, so they sort of bounced in the breeze. (I bet she also had a bathing cap that had all those little colored bits of rubber sticking out on the top. You know, the kind that flutter with every move and are especially disconcerting in a pool aerobics class.) She also was wearing fuzzy pink mules, not sandals or flip flops. Her hair was bottle-black, which made her skin seem gray. I have no idea how old she was--somewhere between 55 and 93, I'd say.

Bernie was built like a bull. Sitting there, he seemed about as wide as he was tall, from the waist up. He had a very tan, very large and hard belly covered with gray fur, and his head was sort of a tanned bowling ball atop a neck that had tan lines in the creases. He was gripping a beer that was on his left knee. There was some sort of grayish lawn sparsely distributed on his head, with An Oscar the Grouch face--vaguely annoyed with bushy eyebrows that crossed his eyes in an unbroken line.

I tried not to stare because he was also wearing boxer shorts with large hearts that had faces on them. I tried. I really did try. I did not succeed. And I do believe my mouth was hanging open to boot.

"Miss!" he shouted, to appease his wife.

"Yes?" I jumped.

"Waddaya doin?" He did not move.

"I coulda done that, Bernie. Go talk to the woman, fergodsake."

"Shaddup, Gladys." Of COURSE it was Gladys. What else could it be? Gladys and Bernie go to the beach. I should have known. This was pre-reality shows, or I would have looked for a camera crew.

"I am taking pictures here. There is a beautiful formation in the sand," I said, somewhat lamely. I just knew the laughing heart shorts would stand up and...yup. He got up, first bracing a hand on each knee as he straightened. Standing, he still seemed about almost as wide as he was tall. His legs were bowed and he was wearing tennis sneakers with holes so large his big toes stuck out to the knuckle. And the shorts screamed at me. I could hear them. I looked down and away, but I could feel the giggle well up. I don't think he heard.

His sigh was audible from fifteen feet away. He lumbered to me and looked down.

"See how pretty that is?" I asked.

Bernie looked back up at me, his unibrow unevenly twisted. He was shorter than I. He glanced down again and up. "You a photographer or something?" Again with the hard 'g."

"Noooo... But I like taking interesting pictures, that's all." He looked down and up again, simply shrugged, Jersey style, bigger than life.

He grunted and turned toward his wife. "Gladys, she's taking pictures of dirt! She says they're interesting!" And his arms opened wide and he managed to shrug his entire body. I swear in Jersey, shrugging is a dance form of its own.

"Taking pictures of dirt?"

"Yeah, that's what she's doing. Taking pictures of dirt. Where you from anyway?"

"Connecticut."

"Oh. Well, then, that explains it. Gladys, she's from Connecticut! That's why!"

Gladys nodded, ducked her head as she raised an arm and with a flourish of the hand, said, "There you go!"

He plodded back up toward his chair, silent but with open arms, palms up. She was nodding. I was done.

Character Overload. (A little known, but somewhat scary syndrome. It involves an immediate need to rock back and forth while mumbling) Red Bank would have to wait. Debriefing time was needed. Besides that night David and I were heading for some place where it was wholly unlikely we'd run into any characters: a bar on open mike night, and he was in the back up band ...

Why I am Done with Dating: How Fondue Changed My Life

2011-10-25T07:00:00.005-04:00

I keep getting, every now and then, messages from friends that go something like this:

I was just skimming through xyz online mate hunting [that's what I call it] and I "happened" to look at Connecticut in your area and I found these guys.

After which I am sent the pictures and bios of one to three guys that they think I might be interested in. Up until the reappearance of 'Matt' into my life, this happened every couple of months, from probably four women. Since then it is far less often, but I happened to mention that as I age, I realize sometimes I do get scared. I have cash and I am very frugal, so it will last me at least four years right where I am living now. But I am 59, not 85. When the demons bite deep, well, I get scared. Two other women and I frequently remind one another that we will find a way to hook up and join forces, but a lot can happen in four years.

And once in a great while, I am simply lonely, until I remember how NOT alone I really am. Nevertheless what sticks with people are those few times I express the fear or loneliness, not the 98% of the time when I kinda LIKE being alone, and realize that when I want company, I have it with my friends.

Regardless, they try to "help" me. Furthermore, I did read an interesting piece in another blog about how it should not be put down if a woman treats finding a mate like any other dream, where she goes after it systematically and all out. After all, isn't this one of the most important things you would ever do with your life? Why would you think, especially after a certain age, that it will somehow come to you?

The thought of doing that makes me want to toss my cookies. Besides which, until Matt came back, men were entirely off my radar. I frankly had no interest or time to worry about dating, small talk, dealing with strangers because maybe I might want to live with one. Nope. The one reason I sometimes wish I'd never let him in the door is that it woke the woman up entirely and now she has nowhere to go. But the trade off still doesn't seem worth it.

Besides which, I have a mirror. I am not someone any man would go ga-ga over. He might grow not to care about the imperfections and over-abundance, if he found me funny, interesting, and smart; still, we'd have to get over that initial first impressions stuff. And, then, too, so would I.

But I find it interesting what these women think I will want. The men all love walks on the beach. Okay. I can't walk. One wants a fit woman who loves the outdoors. Yeah. Well. So much for that. I love the outdoors, but mostly I have to watch it from a porch or a window. Another guy--and I really love this--wants a woman between 45 and 55 "who enjoys long walks and has no baggage."

Long Walks and No Baggage Issues: Small Talk at 59
Let's look at that, shall we? I'm 59. Both friends who sent this particular guy to me, said, "Lie." Uh huh. "They all do that." Oh, goodie. This makes what really amounts to slicked up blind dating extra special. I then point out that if a woman that age has no "baggage" she's lived in a cave, in which case she most certainly does have baggage because she would have had to avoid living life! "Oh, you know what they meant."

Yeah. I do. Dear Readers, if you have read the last four entries in this blog, how on earth could I be a person without baggage? In my background we have alcoholism up the wazoo, and older brother who may or may not be alive but we do know was in prison for three years and has been gun runner and drug dealer, two suicides, sexual abuse, divorce, losing a child -- you name it. Something for EVERYONE in my life.

"So don't talk about it."

Okie doke. Piece of cake. That would presume I'm interested in casual dating or relatively casual sex. I'm not. I'm more interested in pursuing creativity than a man. But let's just look at that, in case I wanted to know someone. In case the fear of the future outweighed my faith that things will work out.

We have a first date and go out to dinner. He sees clearly that I don't look as good as the photo I may have put together for the online dating hoo-ha. But, then, neither does he. That's okay. We both get over that and laugh. But he also sees that, as we are walking to our table, I got the dragging one leg thing going for me and I keep having to straighten up because I tend to lean more and more forward as I walk. It's really pretty.

He's a good guy, though. We sit down. I quickly ask him the first question because, like, I don't want to, like, let him know who I actually am. And besides, I know that the strain of walking through the restaurant has brought beads of sweat to my forehead, and my eyes are kind of shot. Fortunately, all that disappears quickly, so I'm okay in a minute. He talks about his two grown kids and that he and his ex-wife are on speaking terms as long as they are not in the same room for more than an hour, with the kids and grandkids. I get him to keep talking for fifteen minutes, but, as I said, he's a good guy.

Long Walks
"So what about you? I noticed that you had some trouble walking there. Are you okay? How did you hurt yourself?"

I don't know how to field this. Do I minimize it and, well, lie, just so maybe I have a second date where I'll have to explain why I lied? Okay, you can just tell him about the back and be strong. "I had a lot of back surgery a long, long time ago, and now I have the problems that happen later in life. You know, some arthritis and nerve damage, but I'm working on it every day. I just have trouble walking is all."

Lame. The words sound so lame. He is quiet a minute and says, "Well why did you have all that surgery?"

"I fell down the stairs. Slipped on black ice." I've fielded this one before, when I didn't want to say that actually, I have had back trouble all my life, but I thought everyone did ... that it started when my brother used to push me down the stairs and then would go, "Mommy, Jetty fell!" Baggage. So I hope he does not pursue the back stuff.

"So.... how many back operations?" Oh, GOD no. So much for small talk there.

OR, he doesn't ask about the back. He really doesn't feel like he wants to know just yet about the limp. Already he is, in his head going, 'She's really overweight. She can't walk across a room, let alone on the beach. Well. She is kinda pretty anyway. She's funny, too. I'll ask her about her family. That's safe.'

Got Kids?
"You have any kids?"

Inside my heart hurts. My Jessie. My Jessie. And I know that this just is not a topic for a first date. But I cannot leave her out. She was my daughter. Okay, I have to be honest, because when people find out that she was my Stepdaughter, lots of times they get annoyed that I was not clear from the start Of course that always makes me really mad, because when I love someone, there is no step-ANYTHING. But do I lay this on someone now? There is no graceful...

"Hello...." he might say, little laugh. "I didn't want this to be a trick question."

I blurt, "I had two. I raised my ex-husbands two kids. I had a son and daughter." And there it is. That silence that I know so well, from a man or woman.

"I'm afraid to ask. Had?"

And there we go...

Let's try a third angle! Surely there is a safe area. Even if we start with books and movies and things like that, and it's okay. Somewhere in that conversation will come up family. And the second area of family questions is...

So. You have brothers and sisters?
"Do you have brothers or sisters?" "Are your parents still with us?" Things along that line. And somehow it will get to They are all dead. Granted, many have lost their parents by now, and possibly a sibling if they are the youngest. But most haven't lost them all. Most didn't lose both parents when they, the kids, were in their thirties. Most haven't had their siblings die and get the bonus of a gun-running, drug-running brother who has had two contracts on his head. It's dramatic, but my guess is it also qualifies as baggage.

Bottom line? There is no small talk for me, when it comes to my health or my family, that will not devolve by the third round of back and forth into baggage.

Baggage--We All Have Baggage, and Shouldn't We?
Maybe the guy has had a life full of baggage too. Well, of course, to some extent, and that's a good thing. I don't really want to date a man who is younger than 55 or older than 64. Why? Because, quite frankly, we wouldn't have some crucial sensibilities in common.

The teenage and college lives of most people I've met who are more than five or six years older than I are far more like people of the generation up to ten years older than like the kids who hit their teens in about 1962 - 1972, give or take. The Beatles. The Stones. Viet Nam. The Kennedy assassinations. Martin Luther King. No curfews in college. Wearing jeans in high school. Marijuana. Acid rock. Work shirts. Fraying your bell bottoms--not buying them that way. Ironing hair. Afros. "You look like Jesus." Post Elvis. Just after the height of the Detroit sound, and moving into folk rock and James Brown...

So many things like that, that were part of my sensibility. And a woman's being a little uncomfortable at the chivalry of past generations--I like simple courtesies. And I enjoy being pampered, but I also like to pamper. There is a feeling of condescension sometimes for me in chivalry, which puts me on edge. I don't like it when a man gets annoyed that, on a first date, I want it dutch. And far too often I have found, even when I was much, much younger, that we just had such different experiences that it's too hard to get through. I like the idea that there will be that generational shorthand that comes with generally shared experiences.

The point is that, my generation, like any, will have had baggage unless we have lived in a tree--a really boring tree at that. If some of it is shared already, where it's a given that we were award of protests, feminism, a guy's fear of the draft lottery, the way vets were mistreated when they came home, the rise of divorces, so MANY things--if we already know all of that, we can have more relaxed conversations.

And if a man does not want a woman with baggage, he ain't gonna want me. Period. And if he has none, I don't want him.

But do I want to learn and deal with a man's baggage from scratch, at our age?
That is a question my friends and I have been addressing now. And, for all the mess, and as short as his re-entry into my life was, I still miss Matt. I will always miss him somewhere inside, just as I did for thirty years. But it is not even near the end of the world. And even if I was out of balance for a time, I found it again.

But the thing was, I knew his baggage. I knew him. I knew his flaws, his strengths. I knew where he stumbles. I knew where he flies. And I already had intimacy there. And he remembered me when I was young and, well, yes, pretty darned good-looking. I remember him that way as well. It took half an hour and one kiss for me to simply see him young again. I really do not care about the years of living that changed his appearance. And he behaved at least as if he didn't care either, and the truth is, he knew my stuff, too. Our small talk lasted half an hour and we were in synch again. And I allowed myself to be that vulnerable, inappropriately, because I knew him, because it was so very easy, so very quickly.

The truth is I do not want to try to get to that place with someone new. I don't care enough about having a man as my companion to bother. I prefer the company of women. The male/female intimacy and that sense that I was fully safe for all time, that I had with Matt... hey. I kissed a multitude of frogs before and after him, and they just didn't fit. Had I stumbled across someone back then, within a few years of my divorce, before another twenty years of living, failed relationships, serious health issues, and profound losses? SURE. It might have been fine, even though different.

NOT NOW. I am at a different point, a different beginning now.

But why is it that some women and men, for that matter, refuse to believe? Why must people tell me that somewhere out there is just the man for me? Well, yeah. there is. But he is not available and no one will know me as well as he. It's done. There is not time. I have too much to do with the time I have left to devote dinners to small talk. It's time for my personal, artistic soul to fly and do whatever dance it may. Solo. Why won't people understand that? Must we be coupled to be happy? No. Any rational answer is "no." Love comes in friendships, too. As do companionship and support.

The final straw was when one of my friends sent a match.com picture where the guy was a born again, fundamentalist Christian who plays guitar and sings the gospel, and wants a good, traditional Christian woman to be his "help mate." I said, "You have known me for fifteen years now. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this man's ad. He's far more straightforward than most, and I think that's great. HOWEVER, you know me. Let's see, fundamentalist Christian, wants a helpmate?? What on earth made you think he and I would have anything at all in common, and, frankly, that my meeting him would not be a waste of HIS time, let alone mine?"

"He plays the guitar."

Flash back to 1979: Up "Psycho" Theme
Which took me back to the only blind date I went on, right after Matt dumped me the first time, and I was 27 and had pretty much decided that being single made more sense than dealing with men. I'd lately been dumped by Matt... so I was being fixed up or encouraged to date anything that moved. It was the 70's as well: so for a time, I sort of "goed with the flow" anyway, despite what I felt inside. Yeah. I was 27. One of my best friends insisted I have a date with this guy, at her house. She even made the dinner. I figured, if this couple thought we might hit it off, well, hey. What the hell?

He was about thirty and sort of pasty colored, a bit heavy, which wasn't a particular problem except that it supported his comment of, "Nature is over-rated. I like being in a dark movie theater with a horror flick bigger than life, and a bag of popcorn. There's nothing like being so scared you pee your pants."

For some unknown reason, picturing him that way was not that big of a turn on. I told him I loved to hike--back then I was extremely strong and could walk just fine, despite the pain I often had--and preferred films that made me laugh, not scream. I kept it light and partly thought, maybe it was a joke and he was just trying to break the ice. An odd approach, perhaps, but after all, my friends knew me really well.

He leaned in toward me, "But really, EVERYONE should experience a good scare now and then, you know?"

Okay. My life. I looked at him and blinked twice. I smiled my best "YOU asshole" smile and said, "Life holds enough of those without going to look for them."

He leaned back and had one of those self-satisfied looks that sometimes evokes thoughts of violence in me. Forget about the movies. "You're one of those women with baggage, right? Man, why the hell would they stick me with you... Right. We're a great match."

"You are absolutely right, " I said."Well, this dates over. Let me give you a doggy bag to take home. You can eat it while you watch a movie." And I did, and he left.

When I asked the COUPLE why they had fixed me up with him, the husband said, "He's single?"

Tableware Trauma
Jean Ellen was having a friend over for dinner the next night, and persuaded me to join them because he had a friend visiting. Yeah. Well. Whatever. I said, "Okay, sure, but please do not consider it a date."

She said, "Well what would you call it then?"

"FINE. Call it a date. But it's tomorrow, and it it will be done with, and I really don't care." (Clearly, I was a very evolved, mature 27.)

I worked at a university library in the early days of Library of Congress electronic filing and inter library loan. I was part of the cataloguing department and a good part of my job involved computer research for the catalog librarian. We received a great many text books that had no official classification yet, and so we had to develop the call numbers and the correct research card classifications. It was as nerdy a job as one could have back then, which suited me. Besides which I got to meet an awful lot of faculty, and I could take free courses.

As turned out to be the case for every job I had outside of my freelance career, I was the ear of the director, and I was also in charge of developing and writing training materials for the department of which I was part. Mrs. C., my boss, was from Korea and was, by her own admission, old school. She was uncomfortable with other people's emotions and would inappropriately laugh with an old-fashioned machine gun rattle (Not as loud a sound as today's automatic weapons sounds) at people who were in pain, or who were emotionally distraught. She also had a habit of dragging me into the conference room to vent at the top of her lungs, forgetting the gap at the top of the walls, that allowed every sound to escape into the surrounding walls. And she would slip into a clichéd version of a Korean accent, forgetting her tenses, articles, and pronunciation. She would lose control, basically, because she trusted me.

Lucky me.

The date night was to be Wednesday. At work that day, Mrs. C. had begun to chastise me for some error on the research slips I had given her. We had enormous catalog books that weighed about 15 pounds each and were 30 inches tall by 12 inches wide. I had looked up the obscure composer's name, and then the various works this new book discussed, and created several citations for her, but they were not enough. When I balked at her, she screamed, as she dragged me into the conference room.

"You cannot take Criticism! Do you think I like it here? Don't you think I would like to work at exciting place? You do not belong here any more than I. You are Renaisssance woman, taking Spanish and French, writing poetry, singing, acting in plays, taking education courses. You do NOT BELONG HERE. Just like me!" It never ceased to amaze me that her tirade was almost always not about my bad work, but about feeling trapped. "I have son and husband and I am stuck here with this so SMALL JOB. I should be in New York. In California. Some place where I meet international people. And you should be too. You should go to school and get OUT OF HERE!"

But I transgress. What a shock.

I drove home that night knowing she was right. I was full of my own frustration, mostly because I could not figure out what I truly wanted. I thought that adult education was the direction I cared about--helping adults who wanted to climb up in the world to do it. But I knew this meant grad school, and a whole lot of work to figure out how to get there. I wanted to forget about it for a while, and just breathe first. It was in this frame of mind that I came home to find the entire kitchen a mass of sauce pans and smelling of hot peanut oil. Jean Ellen was in a nightgown, drenched from making I don't know what.

"We are having fondue. Beef fondue and I have made six sauces for us to dip in. The ice box cake is in the refrigerator. They will be here at 7 and I have to shower. Will you help me finish up?" It was only about 5:15, but it also was not my favorite thing to do when I walked in the door--clean dishes. The "boys" were coming at 7:30, also not my favorite time to start dinner. It was a work night. And she had to be out the door by 6:30 tomorrow herself. One night. Who cared?

Fondue. I think it's a waste of time, having to skewer some tiny bit of beef, hold it in boiling fat, then dipping it in a sauce. All those little dishes to spill, all that effort. It was "the thing" back then, so whatever. The guys came and were very nice, but something seemed odd. It was as if Norm and Ron had some shorthand language at all, and really, Norm was not the least bit datish toward me. None of that shyness or anything.

It occurred to me, when the three others were talking, that I might do better to put a couple of hunks of beef on the fork, thereby making the process more efficient. The only sauce I liked was teryaki anyway. I stuck an extra one on... cool.

Wait. Norm and Ron were talking about their place. Hold it. "You two live together?"

"Yeah, we've been dating for more than a year and Norm--"

"Jean Ellen? Why didn't you tell me?" I was kind of pissed. I would have been totally relaxed, but no. She insists it's date?

She looked down and said, "Well, I wasn't sure you'd say yes. I figured it had to be a date."

"YOU IDIOT" I said, and laughed, thinking, oh, GOOD, I could relax.

With which I stuck the third piece onto the fork as I laughed, but had to use a bit more force. Success! I skewered the meat and my left hand, both at once!

There I sat, facing my sister, who was at the end of the table. She went, "Oh, no! oh, no!"

I was looking down at the odd effect of a long fork, a few pieces of meat on it, jiggling back and forth.

Ron went, "Pull it out! Pull it out!"

Norm, next to me and unable to see, went, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"

I pulled it out, forgetting it is barbed. It made a peculiar sound and I felt ill. My hand was covered with a comingly of beef and Jeannette juice. I found myself thinking, "Thank God it's NOT a date."

When Norm realized what had happened, he put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Jeannette, when was your last tetanus shot?"

"Huh?" (See, I was articulate, even back then.)

"Raw beef juice and metal? Shouldn't we get you to the ER?"

"Shit. Yeah, I guess so. But you guys can finish dinner first," I said, as the two blue spots on the front and back of my hand, straddling, YES, the middle finger, really began to let loose.

We went to the hospital. I went to the check in lady, hand bound and held UP the whole time and had to tell her, "I stuck a fondue fork through my hand."

She moved her eyes up, but not her head. "Really? I mean, really? You stuck a fork in your hand?"

"Yes. well. You see, I figured if I could get two pieces of beef on the thing, why not three? And I did, but I sort of got my hand, too."

"Uh huh. I see. So, clearly you pulled it out, but oh, yes. Well. This is a first. On the other hand," She looked up at me and smiled, "Last night I was here and you should have seen the man who had used the attachment to the Hoover Beats as It Sweeps Vacuum..."

I paused, but said most politely, "I think I am glad that I did not."

She smiled at me and ushered me into my cubicle. In what seemed like a second, an extremely handsome, oh, twelve-year-old-intern stuck his head between the incidents and asked in a revoltingly cheery voice, "Is this the forking incident?" and came in.

Inside I went, gay or straight, never again. NEVER. AGAIN. I don't care if it is a match sent from God, never again. "Yes."

"I see. Oh, my, look at how that finger is dipping. That's going to be a problem for you for a while, I am afraid. There looks to be some nerve damage. Oh. And it went all the way through. You were hungry?" And the thing is, though the corners of his mouth twitched, he did not crack a smile. And he didn't even look UP, the coward.

"Am I going to live? May I please just have my shot?"

When he gave that to me, he said, "Seriously, if you have to use your hands a lot for work tomorrow, you will have a problem possible. You may find you have a serious reaction in your right arm, since you haven't had one of these since childhood. You may not, but be prepared."

He bandaged the left hand so I could not really move my fingers, but, yes, the middle finger was not moving at all, and dipped below the others, which, when relaxed, curled. It remained straight. Lovely.

As I left, he said, "Really, Ms L., there are more effective ways to ingest your food than shooting it up," and his laugh was really a rather engaging one. I did not set foot in that hospital again for at least a decade, just in case.

Well. Picture the next morning, when I could move NEITHER hand well. My right arm throbbed, and my left hand as well. I had to call Mrs. C and tell her what happened. Let's just say the following day I had to show her both the wound, and the ER slip. She could not stop laughing all day, especially, when I went to wave good bye to a friend while I was writing something, and flipped her the finger, instead.

***
The night after I told Jessie and Jay this story, I asked her to set the table for dinner. I sat down and saw a spoon at my place. We were having pork shops. She smiled sweetly and said, "I love you, Jeannette. I don't want you to hurt yourself."

Eight years ago Jean Ellen and I had yard sale, to clear out junk. We laughed about the fondue set I was tagging. Well, let me warn you about something. My four friends who "helped" us are my witnesses. We put out one set, with the original avocado green lettering. When the sale was over, there were three sets.

They reproduce. (Up Psycho music once more...)

The Existence of elves, Revisited (July, 2009)

2011-10-17T17:15:00.004-04:00

My family life was pretty much about living in a rain forest: lush or rotting, with little in between. I've said that on many occasions. Lately, I've been writing about the hard stuff, and I know that both Robin Hood, from yesterday, and When I Awoke to the Notion of Being a Writer from a couple of weeks ago are two such entries. I have been given so much support for them, that it has renewed the impetus as I move forward with my book.

However, I wanted to revisit an early entry here. I had a whole lot of magic in my early life, and when I started writing the blog I began with some of them. I had almost no followers. Not that it's a crowd now, but quantity hasn't been my goal. I simply wanted to work on my writing--the craft, the art, and the notion that one can convey pain without graphically sticking to horrifying detail! However, more people have decided to stay and perhaps you might be getting a skewed view of what my childhood was!

One commenter felt he could not live my life with all I have gone through. I put this little piece in here once more, for those who have never read it, to remind you that I LOVE my mom. And that Jack and I had some magical times. That our world held every single color imaginable, and, yes, to lighten up.

NOTE: I have scattered a few Garth Williams illustrations because THIS is the image of elves I had as a child, from the book Elves and Fairies. I just thought it might evoke memories for boomers, and give others a feel for the fifties, when my memories were the living events. At one time I asked my mom whether I could grow up to be Garth Williams and she told me that I would have to work on growing up to be Jetty. I sulked for easily a whole fifteen minutes.

Enough intro ... Onward... From July, 2009--moved to today

... [There] were moments of pure joy and absolute beauty in my childhood. In fact, they took up more time and space, and as I explore this art form of memoir in my blog, I think I would rather start here. I would rather begin with the magic that was my mom, Jean Margaret. We'll leave the darkness for other times...
***

Me, around 2
in ecstasy over a feather

Flying Lessons: Proof of the Existence of Elves

Spirituality is a strange thing in the heart of a child. It has wings sometimes; it flies up from the leaves, the grass, through water, from everywhere at once. More than half a century later, I feel it and taste it, hear the echoes of that day. Grown ups call what children feel so deeply “magic,” then try to teach them it’s God. They don’t seem to ever get it; children need no teaching. We know it is all the same, whatever name we give It. The Keeper of all Magic is God.

On the other hand, when I was not yet four and my brother was already six, for us, the Keeper of the Magic was Mommy.

Especially on sunny mornings, when the light threw rainbows all over the kitchen, and she'd wipe her hands on her apron, not even finishing the breakfast dishes, turn to us and whisper, "picnic!" Out would come the hard-boiled eggs ever-ready in the fridge, for deviling. Jacky would make the chocolate milk. I would rinse the grapes. Before you knew it, Jack's enormous red wagon appeared, the thermos was full, picnic packed, and we were gone.

This particular day, Mommy had said to me, "Always remember, Jetty, there is always something more compelling in life than housework."

***

We always stopped on the dirt road beside the hole in the bridge. She’d let us look down at the water rushing miles below. It was on our picnic that particular day that we learned about elves.

“Lie on your backs and don’t make a sound,” said Mommy, doing this herself. “Just look at the clouds and listen.”

At first I didn’t hear much, but gradually I heard it. Soft rustlings, small feet, rushing sounds that had no familiarity.

“Now look at where you hear the sounds,” she said. “You can’t see anything, can you, except a few ants. They are much too small to make such sounds.”

We were stumped. We waited, looking at our mother with full confidence that some new axiom was about to be shared.

“Elves,” she said. “Well, and fairies, too, but primarily elves because fairies tend to fly. It’s the only explanation. They are invisible to us, but they make sounds. What else could it be? If it were birds or animals, we’d have seen them. We have them all around here.” She waved her arms, encompassing the whole woods, it seemed. “And we have them outside the kitchen window, too. Jean Ellen saw them yesterday. We decided you two should know about it, because we want you to help us make them some furniture.”

“In the window box, Mom?” asked Jacky.

“Precisely.”

We sat up and opened our sandwich cookies in solemn wonder. Elves. At our house. First a picnic, now this. Lunchtime drifted lazily into early afternoon, as we named cloud shapes, studied three ants trying to move one large crumb to their home. Mommy wouldn’t let us squash it.

“Only in the house. Outside, this is their spot and we’re guests.”

And so it came to pass that Daddy came home for dinner to find four of his family painting folded paper furniture, and stringing twig bows for a family of window box-elves with whom he wasn’t even formally acquainted. My older brother Jim was watching T.V. He was nine and too old for this “junk.” Jean Ellen was twelve and it didn’t phase her in the least. It was all right, though, because Jim wasn’t much into anything Jacky and I cared about.

Daddy said, “Elves. I see. I’ll go read the paper for a while.” He didn’t even grump about dinner. Just got a beer from the fridge and wandered, chuckling, into the living room. We put the furniture and three bows into the window box and tried not to look for signs of life more than ten times before bed.

I was in the kitchen by 6:00 the next morning, when Mom was putting the water on for hers and Daddy’s tea. I dragged a chair to the window, knocking into washing machine and the mop bucket.

“Hold your horses, Jetty, just hold your horses,” Daddy’s voice was his laughing voice as his hands lifted me onto the chair.

The furniture had been moved and the bows were gone.

“Jacky!” I shrieked. Fortunately, he was on his way down the stairs.

A small, bumpy blue bag was on the edge of the box by the house, in the left corner, the spot most accessible from the kitchen. I let Jacky pick it up and he let me unfold the small note inside, as he emptied out a small mound of marbles of every description. In the tiniest printing that ever was, Daddy read, 'Thank you for the furniture. It’s very comfortable. And the bows work great. Yours truly, the window box elves.'

Later that summer, when I was four, Mommy said we were moving to a new house in someplace called Manchester a whole twenty minutes away. I started crying because there would be no elves.

The very first thing she did, when she got me out of the car at the new house, was take me to our side yard. There was a tree with twisty branches and giant leaves, as big as plates.

“This is a catalpa tree, Jetty. I prefer to call it an elf’s tree.”

I looked hard at the tree, expecting to see a tiny pair of eyes look back.

“Elves use these leaves for clothing, for their bows and arrows, to make their homes, and they use the catalpa beans for food and the pods for boats. It’s the perfect tree for them. Just last week, I believe your father saw an elf or two right on our back porch. Next week, we’ll have to make some gifts as a sort of housewarming, okay?”

Years later, I found her talking to my soon-to-be stepdaughter at the picnic table beneath that tree. All I heard were the words “What else could those sounds be? Catalpa trees are elf trees, actually…” and I went back into the house. Jessie started calling my mother grandma that very day.

***

That was one type of punctuation to bracket regular life. Most days we told her we were bored and had nothing to do, to which she would absently pat our heads, kiss us, and say, “That’s too bad. I’m not.” And she’d leave us to find something to do, not knowing how to be mad at her exactly. She yelled at us when we were bad, shooed us when she was busy, was impatient more than was probably right at times. She was the rule-maker and the sun at the center of our lives, like most Moms. She also held a terrible darkness that could block out the brightest day.

Most of our days, though, as small children, were the stuff of everyone’s childhood in the 1950s and early 60s. The difference was the magic of a Mom who would drop everything to give us pure joy, to find the adventure in an ordinary moment. We had elves. We had rainbows. And we had lazy, deviled-egg picnics that supplanted housework on the priority list for living.

This morning I saw a dust rhino gallop across the living room floor. I thought I'd best vacuum. The sun hit the prism in my window and I went out into the garden instead. I am not sure, but I may have seen an elf leap off the six foot tall lily by my front door.

Small Addendum

How many people got a mom like that? Or ever really KNEW about elves and fairies? Or knew there was something more important, more compelling than housework. Like blogging, for instance? I miss my mom. On the other hand, I DID teach Claire and Adam all about Santa Claus and how I knew about him through my dad. Yes, and of course, they did not have an elf TREE, but they had a birdhouse with a magic garden around it, and ultimately the elves found that... There is no garden or catalpa tree. I guess next spring, I'll have to make an elf planter because I am really not sure I want to live somewhere they cannot be, you know?

Robin Hood and Maid Marion: and All My World Grew Still

2011-10-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

Be prepared. This memoir draft is neither funny nor light. It was difficult to write, and my guess is that it will be difficult to read. I understand if anyone chooses to wait instead for Runaways to Red Bank III, which I will put online in a couple of days! Thank you, all of you, who somehow keep choosing to read what's uncomfortable.

It is my story, and I have to be able to write "ugly," as I used to say when I could not write anything that was darker than Anne of Green Gables meets Pollyanna. As always, though, the power for me lies in the beauty, the beautiful power of my brother Jack in the face of evil. And the power of a little girl's love.

My brother's and my journey together is in bits and pieces of other blogs, but primarily in Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love -- "I move to Robin Hood" well down, across from my Blog list. That entry holds pieces that can shed light on more about our years between childhood and his end.

'Tis I, Robin Hood!

When I was three, my brother Jack got a Robin Hood outfit. My mom and Jean Ellen made me a Maid Marion cape with genuine fake diamonds all along the bottom. Together, he and I would listen to our Robin Hood records with the books. You turned the page when Friar Tuck sang. Then we would run into the front yard where the ancient ... magic tree with roots that were above the ground, not just below it, stood.

We had adventures. Sometimes I got to be Friar Tuck or one of the Merry Band, but mostly I was Maid Marion. She was not a wimp, so I got to ride away with my Robin Hood to foil another plot of the bad Sheriff of Nottingham. We had sacks of acorns from the woods to throw to the poor in the village below (our neighbor's three horses in a corral). We smite the mighty smoke-belching Tractor Dragon one evening, sneaking out of the house just before bedtime.

Just as we were about to revel in victory, "John Harvey and Jeannette Louise, YOU GET HOME NOW!" My father's voice could be heard three towns away, we thought.

A typical ending of our days -- mostly running home.

I followed him like a puppy, and not once in my memory did he shoo me away.

I had the measles when I was four, right after we moved, and nearly died of kidney failure and double pneumonia. Jacky was by my side more often than not. A head would pop in my door. "Tis I, Robeen Hoooood!" he would cry, and bow before his lady in her room-darkened bed.

"You sound like an owl, not a hero," I'd say. And he would wing around the room "Hoooooooting" for me, making me laugh. Then I would start to cough and he would stop, a study in worry. He would sit on the side of my bed and hold my hand, stroke my forehead. I was deathly ill, but I don't remember that; I remember how kind everyone was, especially Jacky.

"Jetty, get better, now," he'd whisper. "We have to build that city for my trains, remember? You promised. You know I stink at making the trees and all the little stuff right. I just break everything. I need you." That was the thing, you know; Jacky needed me. I got better.

Our dragon-slaying days had ended, though; we had a greater fight.

The Monster who Lived in our House
Our older brother Jim was the Sheriff of Nottingham. I will never know how Robin Hood truly fared in the tower he shared with Jim. I had Princess Jean Ellen in mine; he had Jim. I was protected until she left the house when I was in third grade, at least at night. But daytime was a different story long before she went away. The Princess was seldom home in the afternoon...

Sometimes the queen fell into a deep, deep slumber, with her royal glass of amber on the table by her throne. Worse still, sometimes she went on royal errands and left the Sheriff in charge. Those days Jack's call held urgency, "Jetty run and hide! He's coming!" Wherever I was in the house I ran like hell for my daddy's bedroom closet. The back had a slanted floor for the bathroom plumbing, but there was a little ledge at the top. I could just crawl behind Daddy's Old Spice clothing and tuck myself in tight, wrapped in a sports jacket, and simply wait. To wait and wait where no one ever came.

I would hear the muffled cries, the sounds of a chair scraped over wood. Other sounds. The laugh, a barrage of staccato explosions. I tried to cover my ears. There were other sounds I could not name. I would wait in the safety of my father-smelling dark. I would wait. Wait for the only sound I wanted to know.

"Maid Marion, the Sheriff has gone!"

Out I would fly to Robin, to my brothers' room. I'd look out the bathroom window first, making sure the sheriff was headed down the road, whistling usually. Then I would go to the boy in a chair, just a boy no more than six or seven, tied up and silent, with dark eyes and long lashes heavy from trapped tears. I would untie his hands and let him be, while I fetched the cotton balls, the iodine, and held a facecloth under the cold water. I did not rush. Robin Hood did not want me to see him cry. Heroes are like that.

Our ritual was silent. Full. Maid Marion dressed the tiny wounds, and turned the dampened, cold cloth on his forehead. I would kiss the places where blood was drawn, but there never were many. The sheriff grew quite skilled at leaving no marks beyond pin pricks all over his skin. He hurt the places that never showed; it was a mission for him.

Sometimes Jim found me, but only when Jacky was not there. Besides which, Jim preferred to find me at night...

And the reign of terror did not end until I was in seventh grade, and Jim moved out for good.

Those years held too much darkness, and so I learned to forget; to forget all but the fairy tale, to forget the reasons my brother's light simply dimmed, and finally went out. I became expert at forgetting the moment something happened, keeping only what I chose. And yet, somehow we know. I began to remember in 1987, after my father died. I wrote this poem after waking from a "nightmare," however, in 1980.

Brotherssong

A hole fills my heart where a childhood should breathe

and a blood-dripping moon floods my dreams.

The bats start flying

In the house of my death and the songs of my night spin to screams.

There's a blank at the table where my brother's face should feed;

his hands in my night sprout to claws.

Then the bats start biting while my brother grins on

while the moon drips blood from his jaws.

A newspaper breathes where my father's face should see,

a dead wind rattles at the door.

While the bats bite deeper and my other brother screams

the half moon's bleeding on the floor.

There's a dead mouse in the dark where my other brother cries

and Mother grows drunk on the tears.

While my father keeps reading and my brother grins on,

while my other brother withers with the years.

Too Soon Gone...
He was only 50 and I was not yet 48. His son, John, had hanged himself in February and I had not seen Jack for several months when I saw him at the cemetery. He had aged at least a decade and could not walk without a cane. Jack seemed shorter, smaller entirely and his hair and beard were white now. But he eyes were there, the eyes that got to me always, darker brown than the deepest wood, with thick long lashes that made them stand out all the more. And they were so very large and lost that day.

He was surrounded, though, by teenagers. Teenagers with piercings and tatoos. Teenagers with pink hair, purple hair, no hair, black hair. Punked out, gangsta'd, of all types. So sweet, so tender to him. When they found out I was the baby sister of his stories they surrounded me and I saw what the real Jack's life was all about. I will not take away from the love for his children, but in the love Jack gave these emotionally bereft, hurt, abandoned, throw away children, I saw that Robin Hood lived for them. And they loved him back. His colleagues knew me, too. I was surprised, since I had been non-existent in his adult life.

When I walked to him, he opened his arms, but when he held me, I knew Jack was leaning on me, this time. And he was as nothing in my arms. I pulled away a moment, looking him straight in those grief-haunted eyes. "You're dying," was all I said.

"I'll call you," was all he said. But I knew.

His liver was shot and the only answer was a liver transplant. This was now April and he was at my house. It was late. His visits were always at night. His banjo was in his hands, because it was easier for him to talk that way.

"Why don't we test mine?" I asked. "Jean Ellen's not a possibility because of her diabetes, but I don't have diabetes."

He smiled and reached his hand out as Daddy had always done, stroking a wandering strand near my face. "No. Not a possibility. You need your liver."

"I KNOW THAT, But they can take just a lobe and--"

"NO, Jetty. NO." His voice was harsh. "No. Don't you get it? I told you. I'm not going to stop drinking. I'm not a candidate for a transplant. I don't care what they do for celebrities. It's wrong. I did this to myself and I know it. Just the way Mom did, I did this. And I have NO desire to stop drinking." He stopped a moment, and registered that I was shaking. He took my hand, again with the familiar Daddy gentleness. "Jetty, the fact is, I really don't much care about living. I've had to retire. My back is worse and pretty soon I won't be able to walk at all. I won't be able to take care of my family; they'd have to take care of me. Jetty, you gotta let me go."

And it just burst out of me, "But, Jacky, I just got you BACK!"

And we cried ...

In May, he was admitted to intensive care, where he stayed for the next two weeks. He could not run away from me. I was editing catalogs for Northeastern University at the time, and Jack's wife was still teaching, as were all his friends. So during the day I got to see him. The first day he could still talk a little and he said he' would never go home. I saw tubes coming out of him in all directions. I knew what came next. The hepatic coma, where he could sense everything done to him, but would not be able to speak, where he might come in and out of it, but would slowly become someone who did not resemble himself. I knew the swelling in the feet, then the hands. I knew, I knew, I knew.

I said, "But why do you have to be hooked up? Why can't you just GO, Jacky?" I was sobbing. I was useless to him like this. He looked wildly at me, but speech was so hard for him.

I heard "Family" and I realized. I held his hand and said I was sorry at least a dozen times. I told him I understood and would never mention it again. I promised. He was letting his family prepare; he would let his wife pick the time. It was his last act of love--an overwhelmingly selfless act of love. We both became calm and we simply held hands in silence.

I asked whether I could come back every day and work beside his bed, if I promised not to be maudlin. Jack usually disliked company in the hospital. I awaited the answer. His eyes filled with tears and I felt him squeeze my hand. He nodded. He did not stop nodding for the longest time.

Maid Marion's Turn to Rescue
The ritual became a staple for his longest days. I would get there at about 11, after the cleaning and the poking and the prodding were done. By then there was a tube down his mouth and he was on total life support. The sound of the respirator gave us privacy. I was given permission to untie him every day for the durations of my visits. His hands danced, just as Mommy's had, only they grabbed at the wires and the tubes--randomly, not with purpose. They grabbed at the sheets resting against over-sensitive legs. I knew what to do. I was more experienced than they knew. I would create a tent of the sheet over his legs, so they would not touch the calves, so swollen and mottled purple now. I combed his hair as HE liked it, so the follicles could rest from over-stimulation.

Sometimes he got angry, because I had to grab his hands to keep him from pulling out the wires or tubes and his angry eyes were like Rasputin's. My eyes would fill; I couldn't help it. Robin Hood NEVER looked at Marion so.

I had to raise my voice to reach through this lightest of comas. I don't know why they even called it a coma, but it really doesn't matter. He had slipped into it before his mind was gone, so I could bring him back just enough, at times. "YOU HAVE to STAY ALIVE, JACK. You promised yourself. JACK. I have to keep your hands from dancing there, dance them over here!" And I would point to somewhere safe.

And suddenly, after what seemed like hour-long seconds, something would click and the eyes would soften. On the two occasions when he reallized he'd hit at me, he started to cry and I had to get him to stop by threatening to sing "Muskrat Love" to him.

Gradually the eyes would soften, the hands would drop to rest at his sides, and usually by noon he was thoroughly relaxed. I would sing softly, the songs we both knew, while I'd work for an hour or so. By around 1:00, he would drift into what looked like sleep, and I'd stay awhile longer, watching him when he looked comfortably at rest. When he could not see me cry.

The nurses saw, and would usually come over in another fifteen minutes or so and ease me out of the room so they could do their afternoon care. It was all right then, because I knew his family would be there by 3:00. They did not know I came every day.

I was his only visitor. And all I could give him were those minutes when his hands were free.

Singing Our Way Home
The day came at last; the nurse told me that his wife had made the call that morning. She had asked that they wait until after she had visited at dinner time. I asked how that could work so he would die alone, and the nurse said they expected he would be able to breathe for a little while but that the effort would be too much for him within a few hours at most. I didn't get it; I didn't have to. But I knew it would be the last day.

He was looking for me and I asked him if he would like me to sing the entire Wildflowers album. He blinked and his eyes seemed to smile. I untied his hands, but he seemed almost present there that day.
I began to sing and forgot to sing softly; a nurse came in and I began to apologize.

"No, no," she said. "May we open the curtain a little longer, so we can hear?" It made me shy a moment, but Jacky took my hand.

I knew it all by heart. We had so many songs and I could hear his guitar in my heart as I sang. He began to drift away it seemed, but, well, I AM his baby sister. I got to "The Sisters of Mercy" and deliberately botched the words and his eyes flew open, glaring at me.

I know my grin was evil. "Oh. Gee. Let me see. Squeeze my hand once, for Jetty I love you so. Twice for you colossal little bitch." Two squeezes and all was right with the world; I finished the album without further incident.

By the end, I knew he was resting, and I sang my final song, changing the words just a little. James Taylor's Close Your Eyes. I often sang that to him. Only this time I ended with my own reprise,
"Darlin' close your eyes.
You know ... I'll always love you."

I got up to go, but he grabbed me and squeezed my hand just once. I kissed him and left.

***
His wife called me at 11 and said he was going and I could go to the hospital if I wanted. I took off. I raced to the hospital, but I was too late. No, I probably was exactly on time for Jack. The doctor was removing the stethoscope and the monitor was turned off. His eyes were open.

I shooed them out and said, "Let me do this." Both had seen me before and the nurse touched my shoulder gently as she left. I slowly removed the restraints for the last time.

"Robin Hood. It's Maid Marion. Sheriff Nottingham's gone for good and no one will tie you up ever again." I smoothed his johnny and washed each hand, then gently crossed them over the sheet I tucked it around him, as if he were sleeping.

And I began to sing "Close Your Eyes" again. I heard a gasp from somewhere nearby, but I kept going. It got so quiet. I brushed his hair as I sang. His silky, pure white hair .. and I combed his beard. Robin Hood lay there so very still. And I finally got there,
"So I'll close your eyes
'll just close your eyes, cause it's all right.
I'll sing you this last love song.
But I won't sing the blues any more.
Cause we have sung our songs.
And I'll still sing your songs, now you're gone.
I've closed your eyes.
You know I'll always love you."

As I walked to my car, making this one last trip, all I could think was this:
Robin Hood slept; Marion wept. Now all the world is still.

My Love Story: Nearly Without Apology

2011-10-09T10:30:00.009-04:00

I've read more than a couple of bits in our little blog world about love in the last couple of weeks. I've read things about bullying and kindness. And somewhere in, as my mom used to say, my pointy little head, my thoughts run back to him. Three years ago I'd have said I really didn't know what it was to be loved, or perhaps even to love the way other people who commented clearly knew they were loved. But, then well, the man I'll call Matt came back into my life.

Some of you know that my old love kind of leaped into my life, flamed, threw me off a cliff and ran away in a matter of weeks. It was horrendous timing for us both. This is not about endings and blame and who hurt whom when or how. None of that matters. We were and are both flawed; we both made mistakes long ago and not so long ago.

I reached the place where the endings just don't matter. (I know, I know. About damn time, huh. I'm not zen. It's a struggle for me.)

Both of us were far too vulnerable and bleeding I think, to have met face to face again without a mess resulting. Yet the truth for me came leaping back because we did; my love for him was and is unlike any other. When there is a tie so powerful, if the reconnection is not timed correctly, it cannot end other than badly, I don't think, especially with a couple of overblown, bigger than life saps like us! We are--we are musicians, writers, artists, actors--we tend to the melodramatic. Both of us.

It was he who said, however, that I should simply write from my heart and not worry about what anyone else thinks. He was right. I should.And I think I'd rather give him a name than an initial. I don't know any Matts.

Reflections on This Obsessive Question of the Ages
The question has been raised since God knows when about what is "true love?" Or is there a "love of one's life?" Is there "THE love" for anyone? Honestly, I'm not sure why on earth we keep asking that, except that those of us who ask it probably have tasted it and have been left ... and have been left wondering how on earth could our one and only have left? We wring our hands. How can this be? We are so very dumb-founded at the thought that something so profound in our hearts could be returned in any lesser degree. Does this mean, oh God, oh, no, oh horror--did he really love me at all?

???

God forbid we see it as something as mundane and simple as the timing was off. We were not in the right places in our lives at the same time. Our flaws misaligned at the time. Oh, well. That's life, kiddo and get a grip.

No, no! It must be more dramatic. This is my heart, damn it! He threw away my heart! (Up the big music now, a full orchestral score in my head.)

Feh.

The melodrama of it all. And yet I felt that way at 27, and again at 57. Why? Because the very simple truth for me is that I have given to him what I gave to no other man. And I was able to give this to him because of who he IS. It felt big to me; it was and is big for me.

But the ending need not be. No unhappy endings can change the memory of the sweetest night in my life as a woman, loved, and as safe as I should have been as a child. Nothing actually touches that time ... so why the hell give so much drama to bad timing? Save it for the beauty. Well, duh.

Our love burst prism-clear in the tiniest, enormous acts of one moment from each of us: the smallest act from him counter to his wants, a widening of my eyes to silence my fear. A refusal to give in to unnecessary shame from me, a tender action from him, to let me let go of my struggle and rest. Small acts that threw light everywhere around me, and that shine for me still, even in their memory. Grace born in an instant. Love I carry still. And perhaps that's why definitions elude us. The love lies in the little things--perhaps in a night and, if we are lucky, in a lifetime. But even a moment can last as long.

When Matt truly ended it for real and cruelly so long ago, in an instant I blocked every moment of that night out, until he came back again thirty years later, and together we remembered it all...

So once again, in my writing I leap into the deep end, and find myself still apologizing inside as I do it--what, someone might know I was not virginal in 1977? Someone might find out a personal story in my life? Stop the presses! I write so I may fly I guess. I write so I can let go. I write because it's what I do.

Where do I Begin... To Tell the Story...? (Up music and Feel free to Wretch at That. I Couldn't Resist)
We met in Junior High. It was not middle school then. And that time was ALL capital letters for me. It was a time when my dad was having an affair with his secretary, but pretending he wasn't. Mom was, therefore, mostly drunk at the time.

Jack had moved on to high school by the time I hit seventh grade. So in eighth grade, he and I were not as close as we had been or would be again. He'd tried to get my mother to get me new clothes that made sense, but Mother was not in her right mind. She vacillated among three states (is that possible?): occasional sightings of herself, drunk, and psychotic. When she was drunk she had bought me three of the most outdated, priggish, horrible outfits imaginable, the worst being a giant two-piece sailor dress. She would not let me wear nylons or shave my legs.

The worst, however, was when I had begged to go to a beauty parlor to have my hair cut. In the middle of the night, she woke me up with shears in her hands, and she yanked me up, put my hair in a pony tail, and hacked off the tail. She was laughing.

When I came down the next morning, in the sailor outfit, she looked at me once and blanched. And promptly reached for the "Silver Satin" gallon of wine under the sink. I went to school. The only thing I could do was roll up the skirt a little bit as I rounded the corner away from the house, and take off my socks. It was hopeless.

That afternoon, the gang cornered me at the end of an upstairs hallway, in that little area where ONE classroom extended beyond the stair well, and the corridor window ended it all. I remember sliding down to the left of the window, where a shadow made me feel I was even a little bit hidden. I do not remember the words, just the fear, the humiliation, the desire to be dead.

When they left and the laughter had disappeared downward, I slowly tried to pick myself up, but I didn't seem to move. I just looked at my books, wondering where I could wait for another fifteen or twenty minutes, just in case they were there, before I had to walk the mile and a half home.

He was there when I tried to get up. Matt. My best friend's boyfriend was standing there smiling a little, looking down at me. He reached out his hand and said, "Let me take your books," but he picked me up instead. He looked directly into my eyes, and I knew without a doubt he realized I had been crying. It was the first time I noticed how dark his eyes were. He simply looked away a little and began to talk. But he kept my hand for a moment or six. Maybe more, before he grabbed all my books from the floor.

I'd been the substitute girlfriend at a school dance until P. got there a little later. It had been all arranged. And Matt and I danced and laughed and had great fun, but I had not noticed his eyes back then. I wasn't looking to be his girl, but I did feel wistful and I envied P. I wondered what it was like to have an actual boyfriend. But at least this had made Matt and me real friends. He got his share of bullying from a teacher we had, but he was a little bigger than a lot of the boys, so I didn't suppose he was picked on--but I was. He knew I was. Everyone knew I was. The only thing that saved me from being lumped in with the other outcasts was my mouth.

Hold onto your chairs here. Make sure you are sitting. This will come as a shock. I was kinda mouthy. I could talk the bullies under the table and onto the FLOOR, one on one. This gave me minimal creds, but the group assaults still did me in.

Anyway, Matt walked me down the hall, carrying my books. He chattered on about music, about things we had in common. He made me forget for those minutes, that I was heavier than was the fashion, that I had the worst clothes, and that my hair was an abomination. He made me forget that my middle school teacher had paraded me in front of the class as an example of bad dressing and not knowing how to make the best of what assets I had.

For about fifteen minutes I was just an ordinary girl, talking, walking, laughing with her friend, an ordinary boy. In that extraordinary--to me, but ordinary to him--act of friendship, in my mind he was my buddy for life. But I also did admit to myself that he had eyes as dark as Jack's, only they were not as sad when he looked at me. When Matt looked at me, his eyes were the softest shiniest eyes I'd ever seen and it warmed that cold, scared part inside. I didn't name it; I didn't dwell on it. I simply felt better. Somehow that sweet boy stands clear to me in all of this.

Yes, THE Love of My Life, Then and Still
We were friends through high school, though nothing more. And I was given new clothes that fit and had long, long hair in high school. (Thank you, Jack) Life at school got kinda normal for me. Rumor has it Matt had always had a thing for me, but he never told me that... not until many years later, when we met again in our twenties, in a community theater show.

It surprised me as much as him, when I stayed one night after a party. I simply did not go home. I sat there smiling, on his couch, while everyone left. All I remember really about why I stayed was that I felt kind of off-balance when he looked at me with those glittery dark Italian eyes. I was and am a sucker for brown eyes. So I refused to leave; not that he tried to make me go.

We both knew what would happen next. No, that wasn't THE night. It was a fine night, but not THE night. I did not know how much he would mean to me after that night. We began to go out, but I was not at all certain I wanted to date only him.

He wanted to own me and, another shocker here, I would not be owned. And the more he acted as if he had rights to me, the more I showed HIM who was boss. It was really rather silly. I don't know when we truly got serious. It may have been Christmas. I know it touched him a little that I gave him a picture of a certain railroad of which my grandfather had been one of the VP's. Matt loved and still does love railroads, trains, the yards, riding the rails. One of the things that had made me wary of him was that he seemed to give up his passion for trains around me. I gave him the picture so he'd know he didn't have to. So he would know I wanted Matt to simply be Matt and that I didn't think his passions were stupid. I didn't know then that this meant a lot to him.

We did not communicate well. Who does at 26?

As we connected more and more through music, though, I realized I was falling very hard and so was he. Hey. The boy could KISS. I mean really kiss. We spent hours kissing just for the joy of it. We sang together, laughed together. We did other things, but that's private. Still, I wondered whether he loved me or the idea that he had the wild child. That he was dating a young woman who had tan lines, as he put it, and wore bikinis pretty well. I had cheekbones, too. I was thin. He liked getting the girl. But I wasn't sure he saw the girl. He was in a rush to marry, but I didn't feel he wanted to marry me, so much as simply to be married.

And he wanted, as young men do, to watch me. Watch me dress. Take a shower together. Those things people do, naked... with the lights on. (No, I am not about to get x-rated. But I've been thinking about love, and why I believe him to be the "one" in my life. What did he do to earn that? Why can one simple memory mean so much?)

I did not remember my own past then. I did not face my first flashback until I was in my thirties. I had completely blocked the memories. I had been raped twice in college--date-raped, as had so many been. I blithely attributed my shyness to that, but I knew it was more. I knew. (You always know; you just can't see.) I was terrified when he wanted to watch me dress or undress. He wanted to SEE me, and in being insistent I felt he did not see ME at all. It was a real division between us. We were in our mid-twenties. We did not yet know how to talk about such things. He wanted what he wanted. And I did NOT want what I did NOT want. It hurt him that I was afraid; it hurt me that he pushed this. Everything feels too big at 26.

At the same time, I could not see why I was terrified. But I felt since I was terrified, that he should let me be on that score. Why did he have to push so hard?

Youth...

I loved him. Yet I knew that something happened always, with every man I had been with. At the beginning of the critical time for the man, I simply went away. I closed my eyes and in my mind, I flew to a place where all was quiet, all was serene, deep into the woods of New Hampshire I flew myself away, while this animal me did what it wanted, and the animal in me did what it wanted, so I would not have to know. And I supposed that no one ever knew but me... It was how I could honor my own biological self, but protect my already violated soul.

I simply went away. And I had this feeling that other girls did not. It was so hard for me to keep from seeing my past, but I could not look. And the fear became worse, the more I loved him.

But some time during the end of our first year together, I knew it was not right. Always there was a bomb ticking in the back of my mind. I did not know what it was. Faceless dreams of touching and groping and... I almost always went home when Matt and I were done. Not right away. I would rest awhile, but then get dressed and leave. I hurt him with the leaving, but I wanted to sleep. I learned to stay on weekends, even though I rarely slept; I had no reason that I understood to feel to afraid to sleep. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to make it stop. But I was still afraid to sleep beside him; what might he do while I was sleeping?

I wanted to trust him; but I didn't. I wanted to stay with him from start to finish; but I couldn't. And he could not understand what I didn't know myself.

My Definition of Love
Finally, I had had enough. One night I decided to let him see, to let him watch, to give to him what he wanted, damn it. No matter how afraid I was, I wanted to trust this man not to hurt me. He was NOT a boy (what did THAT mean, I wondered); he was a man, and I knew he did not want to hurt me. I simply got up from the couch and walked away from him, depositing clothes as I went, and I smiled once over my shoulder. Let us simply say he followed.

... and I refused to leave my body at all. I stayed put the whole time, and I fell in love. I stayed with him and at that time I always left, I opened my eyes wider still; I saw him start and look back at me, his eyes as full as my own. I knew what it was to make love with the only man I never left again. Not when we were together, not for one moment did I allow myself to leave my body again.

That night, as I lay beside him, after that first time, he put on Crosby, Stills, and Nash's "My Lady of the Island" and curled against my back, stroking my hair with the lightest touch I'd ever known. I felt him looking at me again, and as I leaned back against him I realized that I was still exposing part of my body to him. Despite my blushing, I resisted the urge to pull up the sheet, and raised my arm instead, to touch his face. I relaxed in his gaze and let go of something that hurt too deep inside to see.

I felt his tears as he kissed the top of my head, and tenderly pulled the sheet up to cover me.

I slept all night, with him around me, as I have slept with no one else-- absolutely safe and sound, an innocent child once more.

***
He remembered that night; we remembered it together two years ago almost to this day, but we did not act it out. We simply gave each other the truth of that memory as neither of us had before; he held me and stroked my hair, I tipped my face up toward him, eyes wide open still.

We are human; we are flawed. We both screwed up. But we were not flawed that night. I will hold that memory close, and smile through the tears as long as I have breath; it's enough.

And I don't think any poet has known one bit more about love than Matt and I did.

... and do.

Runaways to Red bank, NJ, Part II: Do I Look Like I Gottittagive?

2011-10-02T15:18:00.005-04:00

(I'd suggest reading Ruanways to Red Bank, NJ, Part I first. And maybe both of them when you have food and beverage to take you through. As always, I have run off at the pen. I can't help myself. My mind wanders, and I feel compelled to force you to wander, too.)

Breakfast was silly. Truly. It was like the day Jean Ellen and I went shopping in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. At the shop with the gorgeous shawls, the shopkeeper realized we were the Americans and she just had to know about our country. First of all, you gotta understand that Europeans back then, who had not traveled could not at first grasp the size of the USA. Oh for Heaven's sake, until I went to New Mexico then California, neither could I. I could simply pretend I did. The shopkeeper asked whether we had been to someplace called Mendocino, CA "in the recent."

We tried to explain that we'd never been and she looked confused. Apparently, in Italian, she asked my sister how we could have come to France and Portugal, but not been to all of our own country? I told Jean Ellen to tell her it would have been like their traveling to Moscow, it's so far. When Jean Ellen told her this, her eyes grew so wide I thought they would pop. Still, we managed to communicate in Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She put the closed sign on the door and we drew, laughed, talked and finally understood that her daughter was in Mendocino, and they had never been. I think that was the only store we got to that day in Viana.

All of this I tried to tell the Da Silva's, and they just wouldn't let me leave, plying me with more food than I'd eaten in a year. The Da Silvas were like that. The men who had long since gone off to fish, and this was their time; they sat down with me for their breakfast and plunked the baby in my lap, while a four-year-old named Stefan ran around then would come back and look up at me intently and kiss my knee. And one of the relatives had been to Viana do Castelo and seen Santa Luzia at night. She understood completely what I meant about the magic. She was from Oporto.

I had ... ummm... ovos estralados (The non-accented first and third "s's pronounced with "SH") Fried eggs. It's all I could order in Portuguese and I told them I'd wanted to impress them. The rest of the time I said, in Portuguese, that I didn't speak it. This endeared me, so they only spoke in English, fluent or choppy. BOY, were they easy. We spoke of Portuguese embroidery and I told them I owned five shawls, and then we got to the men men--Portuguese men. We all blushed. Never mind. That's another blog, perhaps. When I am drunk. Oh. Wait. I don't drink any more. Still, another time, perhaps. What we all recognized was that we had something to blush about.

I spent a completely carefree hour and a half. The baby slept, Stefen climbed on my lap, too, and I folded him a swan from the placemat. Life was good.

West Long Branch, N.J. -- a Shabby Sort of Heaven
It was just about 10:00 when I finally left in search of adventure. Naturally, they would take no money. My car headed south from Sea Bright, so I went with it. Fifteen minutes later, there appeared the boardwalk of West Long Branch, calling loudly to me to the left. Partway down was an old diner, and some older men outside, lounging, drinking coffee and smoking cigars. This looked promising.

Having learned the joys of flying solo, I knew that grabbing a table two tables from the men, tucked away under the overhang, they would probably forget my existence within a minute and a half. One of the men looked like Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams. He was long, lean, wore a snappy vest over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was not in sneakers; no, indeed. He had on highly polished brown shoes that went with his cocoa pants and muted paisley vest. And he had on a jaunty cap. He had stepped directly out of the thirties, I think. And handsome, in the way that age cannot touch.

He tipped his cap to me, winked, and nodded. Yes, I blushed. I'm not the kind of woman anyone bothers with, really. Middle aged, heavy, with a pronounced and floppy limp. Still, for that moment I can tell you I was acutely aware that I was a woman being noticed.

His gaze shifted as a man about half his age began to become a bit agitated over something. "I'm tellin' ya, I ain't got it ta give, Lou."

Lou apparently didn't believe this, but I could tell only by his body language. Burt's buddy, a stocky bull of a man, kind of snorted, jerking his head toward the younger pair. Even his smile was bullish. I thought of Rod Steiger in Oklahoma, playing Judd. No class, a little pathetic in his attempts to flirt--he smiled at me when Burt did, but it just wasn't the same--and the look of a man who probably had hairy toes and liked to stroke his own chest hairs when he was alone with a woman, as his brand of foreplay. (Maybe I've been alone too long. Oh, well. The women will know what I mean.)

The discussion clicked up a notch. "Yeah, but Tony, I gotta have it," said Lou. "Ya told me you'd give it this week, and this week was last week."

"Yeah, but I DON'T GOTTITTAGIVE!" Tony turned to Burt. "Pop! Help me here. Lou, do I look like I gottit ta give? If I haddittagive I'd give it, but I DON"t Gotitta GIVE. Pop! Tell 'im."

Burt stretched his legs out straight in front of him, unrushed, unrattled, slowly crossing them at the ankles. He shrugged and clasped his hands behind his neck, "Lou. He don't gottitta give. Look at 'im. He don'tlook like he gottit, does he? No, he don't. But IF he haddittagive, he'd give it, yeah."

He turned to me suddenly. "Look at 'im. WhaddaYOU think?"

I could not stop myself. "He don't look like he gottitta give, but I think he'd give it if he hadditta give, but he don't got it. ... I think."

There was absolute silence for the longest three beats of my life. They all laughed, Burt stood up and bowed to me, then sat down again and motioned our waitress --whose name WAS, no lie, Bella. Furthermore, clearly she had forgotten to shave that morning so she had a stubble, and her slip showed below her uniform, but she also adored Burt. She came over with the coffee pot and said, "Breakfast's on him. Ain't he a doll?"

I nodded. But after I smiled at Burt, I looked down, and started to read like crazy. As I finished my coffee and fumbled for a tip, Burt began to sing some song that started "Just because you are mine, I love you..." I can't remember the rest, because Rod and he stood and sang in harmony to me, while Lou and Tony grinned.

I curtsied and ran to the car. I could hear them laughing, but it was the okay kind. And for once in my life, I didn't feel old and invisible.

Before I got in, still blushing, I turned to stare down the nine billion steps to the deserted, stony beach. Nope. Couldn't leave. I got out my camera, my backpack, and my photographer's vest. (It had come in handy shooting Pennsylvania holiday parades and festivals. People thought I was a reporter.) I gritted my teeth and headed down. I walked and walked. Then I walked. New Jersey was near the end of the process of eliminating stone breakwaters that had no gap from the buildings (usually hotels) to the sea. AS I said in my earlier post, their goal was to make every beach in the state accessible--no one could own the shore. Too bad Connecticut never followed suit.

Anyway, after an hour or so, I kicked off my shoes, took my journal out of my backpack, sat on a log and wrote. And I wrote. And then I wrote some more. This photograph is the only tangible thing I have from that day.

It was somehow close to 4:00, by the time I climbed back into my car, exhausted, in pain, and contented down to those sand-filled shoes. 'And,' I thought, 'I still have tomorrow! That's it. I'll go to Red Bank tomorrow.'

When I Awoke to the Notion of Being a Writer

2011-09-25T15:12:00.007-04:00

Last week I unpacked a box that had my very first short story, written when I was in sixth grade. My mother had kept it. She didn't keep everything each of the four of us did; she kept the things that stood out. "Rita" was the name of the story, and there was a picture of a dark-skinned girl with long dark braids and clothes that were too big for her. When I read it, a memory flooded back with such pain, that I had to stop.

Then I marveled at what I had done, and I remember that this was the year I thought I would be a writer. My first poem was there, too.

Loneliness
The old man walked out of his shack.
Surveying land and sky
He smiled.
A lone eagle circled into view,
Wheeling and soaring with joy.
It dove out of view.
The old man stood still for a moment.
Scanning the sky again,
He sighed.

And sighing again, he walked in.
(1964)

I remembered our teacher had assigned us to write as many different poems as we could in two weeks, and to include them in a booklet of poetry we liked. I thumbed through and found I had written seven more, but they were mostly an exercise in learning how to use a Thesaurus. My teacher had written "Oh, my Jeannette. This is special" below that poem. And Mom had written "It is, honey" under that. She must have written that when she stored it away with my short story.

"Rita" was about two little girls in third grade. Our heroine, Annie, had befriended Rita when she entered school in November, wearing a thin skirt and blouse. She had no coat. Annie helped her when other kids laughed at her, worked with her on spelling and reading. Rita had trouble speaking English because she was from Mexico. Annie helped her all year, and gave her some of her own hand-me-down winter clothes because Rita's parents didn't have money. Rita moves away at the end of the story, and Annie says, "I always missed her after that. It was the one year where I wasn't lonely."

I had gotten an A+ for the story. No one ever asked me how I came up with such uncharacteristically somber stories, or questioned whether I was sad or anything. But that story struck home, and to this day I remember vividly the true story... Susan Hoyt was the new girl. And it was, in fact third grade.

***
She stood in front of the whole class that November day, with Mrs. E telling us we all should feel sorry for Susan because she had foster parents whom she would talk to and set straight about sending her in with proper clothes.

"Now, Susan lift up your head and for Heaven's sake, get your hair out of your face." She got a barrette out of her desk and, not particularly gently, fastened Susan's bangs out of her face. So now, Susan not only had on a very large puff sleeved blouse untucked, with a skirt that had slid to her hips, but she also had a wing of uneven hair sticking straight out of the left side of her head. The class giggled, but stopped with one look from Mrs. E.

I swear Mrs. E could have stopped a police car in the middle of a chase with that look.

"You know how it goes. I need a buddy to stay with Susan for lunch. Someone she can get along with. Jeannette, you seem a good match." Mrs. E did not like me, and not many kids did, either. I didn't fit in anywhere, but mostly it was okay. Except when she had weighed me on a cattle scale with G. We were so big, she said, it's what we should be weighed on. In front of the whole class.

That had backfired, though, because three girls thought that was so mean, they actually started hanging out with me again. They had in first and second grades, but in third grade, when I got kind of big, and mostly I didn't have clothes like them sometimes, they stayed away. But not now. Now they remembered I'd been their friend before, and they would play with me sometimes. The only girl who never deserted me was Paige and she and I played lots of times.

Still, sometimes at school--well, I knew what it was like a little bit for Susan. I didn't really mind being her buddy. That was the beginning of a relationship that stayed with me the rest of my life. Susan was from Kentucky and her English was very odd. She hesitated when she spoke, and kind of hunkered down when she talked to adults, like dogs do when they are not used to people. I got assigned to work with her for spelling, for reading, and for arithmetic. I think it mostly got me out of Mrs. E's sight and she liked that.

I know she didn't like me because even though I got good grades she always wrote things like, "Jeannette just doesn't seem to play with the girls properly. She plays with the boys, playing kick ball instead of jump rope." or "Jeannette must remember she cannot be the leader for everything. She must learn her place." Huh???

My mother didn't care for the comments and told me not to pay attention to them and just be myself. That was okay by me.

So Susan and I would work in the back of the room for the last hour or hour and a half of every day. It kind of made me mad sometimes because that was when we had art or music, so we missed it. After a few weeks, though, something changed and I decided that Susan and I were sisters at the soul.

My mom and Paige's mom had put together winter clothes for Susan and they FIT. Her foster parents, which my mom told me were parents that the government assigned for children who were alone, did not buy her anything it looked like. And along the way, five moms sent lunches in with their kids, for Susan, one for each day of school. Susan took to smiling sometimes and she was kind of pretty. I was jealous of her thinness, but one day she told me SHE wished she wasn't so thin. She never said more than a sentence at a time. It was too scary, I guess, but I wasn't sure why.

Until one day.

We were working on a story about a big brother being mean to his little sister and how he had to learn to be nice. After the usual struggle to learn the words, I had Susan read it aloud one more time and she did it perfectly. At the end it said, "And Timmy gave the puppy, his very favorite puppy, to Mary and said, 'Here, I think you should have this one,' and was never a bully to her again."

Susan started to laugh a little. I looked up at her quickly. "He wouln' do thet." And she gave a short, bitter laugh. I said, under my breath, "no kidding." We looked at each other straight in the eyes for the first time, sort of wide-eyed, like deer, and we both laughed until Mrs. E told us to shush.

And I began to pay attention to her more. Things were easier between us and we would joke once in a while, even. Kids stopped picking on her. They ignored her, but, as I told her, "That's way better than when they notice we're different, you know? First they get used to you, and don't worry, eventually most of them get nicer."

About two weeks after that first story, we were deep into arithmetic. I was trying to show her the fast way to understand how to know the answer to her 9 + table, when the door opened with that nearly silent motion of air that said someone was sneaking in. Susan and I both jumped and turned to the door at the same time. Susan dumped her book on the floor.

Our principle said, "Girls. It's just me, for Heaven's sake. I didn't want to disturb the class, but I guess it didn't work."

Everyone laughed but us. That's when I knew it. Neither of us liked that sound, the barest click as the latch button went into its part of the door, and that minute when the air enters just before trouble. Susan looked down and she was shaking.

I wasn't shaking on the outside and I just said, "no, Susan, it's safe here." She looked up at me and smiled and I smiled back, but I was sad. Sadder than when she'd stood in front of the class. Sadder than when the kids had teased her on the playground and Paige and I had brought her over with us to play our imaginary dinosaurs game, far away from the crowd. Sadder than when I realized she never had lunch.

When I went home that day and up to my room, I saw that the pull lock I'd put there had been taken off again. I sighed and went to see how Mom was. She was in her chair, half asleep, the glass of golden liquid on her side table. Dinner would be inedible again. "Is Daddy coming home?" I asked.

"No. He's away on business again." Right. That accounted for her, although sometimes it seemed as if there was no accounting for Mom.

Jean Ellen was at college, so I had my room to myself. A couple of my friends would say how lucky I was because they had to share with their baby sisters. Lucky. I guess.

Jack was as sad as I was at dinner and we looked at each other, lost. Mom had burned dinner but we always had to eat it anyway because "food didn't grow on trees." I think that year it may have been starving kids in Biafra, but I am not sure. I managed to avoid going to bed for a whole half an hour past my bedtime, but bedtime came.

About an hour after I was in bed, eyes wide open, the tears filled my eyes and I wondered if Susan was thinking of me, too, as I heard the too-quiet sound of the door opening, and felt the air attack me just before Jim did.

***
Susan moved away that year. My mom told me that she had been put with other parents because she had been hurt in that house. She sputtered about how anyone could hurt a child, and I remember just getting up and walking away.

By summer of that year I had forgotten all about opening doors. My sister came home. And the following year, for some reason, I took to taking a steak knife to bed with me, but I had blocked out the why of it all. For a long time, that door did not open again unless I opened it. Which was pretty much the case for my memories of that year at home. I remembered only what I chose.

And in sixth grade I poured out the harmless part of the memory, but kept the loneliness I felt that was visceral and always there. It truly was the time when I decided I simply had to write. I had to. And I never stopped.

What about you?

Was there a pivotal moment you turned to your art to express something deep inside? Was it a sparklingly beautiful time? That would be wonderful to read about. I do not assume one has to suffer to write or paint or sing or dance or ANYTHING. But it was my moment.

I don't jump at the too small sounds of life any more, though. For which I am grateful beyond all words.

The Next Reinvention

2011-09-24T00:10:00.052-04:00

I was pouring coffee for one of my dearest friends the other morning. She stays over at my place sometimes to save herself a forty-five minute commute from her second shift job. Sometimes she stays over just because we're like a couple of teenage girls who want a sleepover so we can talk all night.

Regardless, I took the coffee to her and realized I had started to cry. I had been thinking about the day ahead and it hit me; I don't have to do anything. My bills were paid; for the first time in years I was out of debt. There were no contractors to talk to, nothing to fix. I had all the groceries I needed for another ten days. The agony and terror of the week before was gone. For ten days I had had trouble walking from my bedroom to the kitchen. I had shooting pains up my spine, down both the insides and outsides of my legs, as well as down my right arm; both feet were about 80% numb, so that I had to walk barefoot just to be able to feel them hit the floor--and with every hit to the floor there was pain.

I think those ten days were the farewell pitch of the previous two and a half years. The last hurrah of chaos, failing health, financial instability, emotional turmoil.

In that short walk from kitchen to the couch where Martha was sitting, all those things went racing around in my brain and, like a beautiful sunrise, two words rose from somewhere inside of me, from that life-feeding force some call God, 'gratitude' and 'hope.'

Often, I've mentioned my back. I wrote very badly of the last dance with romance I had a couple of years ago. And I talk about the struggle to find my way to balance, to learn how to dance around the pain, in spite of the pain, in spite of the inability to even move my legs at times. I try not to touch too much on the terror. When I want to write in my blog, I want to be exploring the "what's next" aspects, or the parts of my life that saved me; that kept the torture, the abuse from killing me figuratively or literally. It's those things I was given that saved me, not some sort of super human strength.

My strength is real human and fails me often enough.

We do not do it alone. If we rise like phoenixes, usually I truly believe it's that somewhere along the line we were offered examples of the rising. So I write of my mother's and father's graces more than where they hurt me. I rarely write at all of the brother who was so sick. I do not yet know how to handle that, or even whether to handle that. If I want to write the book, he has to be there, but until I know how to write of him with grace, a blog is not the venue.

And I want to write the book; I have already begun the book for real.

I tend to write when I have mostly processed, so that I am comfortable with exposing my heart--long after the fear and anger have left. At least, that's when I write my best. But these last two years have leaped in here anyway sometimes. How could they not? And reading other people's blogs, looking at your artwork, marveling at your wisdom has helped me believe that I could still write, and reminded me that I should still write. And paint. And sing. That if I kept even sporadically returning to the page, either online or in my journals, one way or another the latest hell would leave.

Thursday morning, in the little act of pouring coffee for my friend, I realized I'd made it home again. A new home, true, but home nonetheless.

And for the fifth time in my adult life, I am reinventing my life.

The difference is that, for once, I am aware of the whole process as it is happening, not in retrospect. I am alive. I can still walk! I am in my new home and do not ever again have to deal with contractors, leaking roofs, bad septic systems, sewer hook ups, co owners who do not share the responsibility, tenants to evict, mold in the basement, and neighbors who sabbotage my livelihood. I am here, in a lovely apartment, with room for my studio. I have a studio again!

On that long coffee walk, I realized that all is well at last. I felt flooded with something overwhelming, as I realized that finally I really do not have to worry about a thing for now. Who gets that in their lives? Perhaps lots of people; I don't know. I simply know that it was a novelty in my adult life. For now, for at least a couple of years, I truly have all I need, to allow me the time to create a body of work and build my health back as far as I can, without really thinking about much else. I have no one I must take care of and no home for which I am responsible, and I have the money to care for my needs for probably MORE than two years.

Who gets that? I don't think a whole lot of people have that these days. So that flood of gratitude was real. It was mixed in with a relief or release that I have never known. I've never been in this position!

And I admit, this weekend I may just revel in it a little. I am safe. I am free.

And that's the thing I had not even dared to think, let alone write or say. I am free. Even now, as I write, the tears are beginning. I have never felt this way in all my adulthood. I remember approaching this one February morning. My dad was out of intensive care and my older brother (this is pre-memory of all he did to me) was going to survive the car accident he'd had the night of my dad's surgery. Dad had had a complication and Jim was in a coma and Mom was drunk. So my sister gave money to my other brother to drive to New Hampshire to give to Jim's family while he was in a coma, and everyone decided I should be the one to tell Dad that he was not expected to live! Yes, well. Imagine the scene with my mother slumped over, drunk in a chair in the corner. Daddy asking me if Mom was okay from all the stress, because, after all, she couldn't keep her eyes open.

"No, Dad, she's drunk. THAT is why she's asleep. She couldn't cope."

"Well, don't say it like that. She is just under too much pressure."

"Yes, right. Whatever. But, Dad, I gotta tell you something."

So that February morning, I was going to go to the hospital to tell Dad that Jim was okay AND that I had been accepted into Boston University's graduate school, to get my degree in adult education! I could not believe how great life suddenly was, and was marveling how everything could change in a matter of hours, when my foot hit black ice and I fell down six concrete stairs on my back. That was 1980, and my life changed in thirty seconds, let alone a few hours. My first of nine operations was six months later.

Thirty-one years later, my spine is far worse, but I am far healthier in a dozen ways. I have lived several lives since that morning.

And now, at 59 years old, I am starting yet another. I haven't any idea where this new one will lead, or whether the goals and dreams I have now for it will come to fruition or change along the way. I know only that Thursday morning something inside awakened the phoenix yet again. The last two years have been two of the most difficult I have ever known, but they have also been two of the richest as well.

I know I am loved; when I do not believe in myself, there are all these women who do it for me, giving me the chance to heal, to rest, to revive. I know that I am safe; I know I have all I need. I am lucky beyond belief in such a time of uncertainty for so many, to know that I will be okay for at least a few years now.

The rest is up to me, isn't it. No one can reinvent my life for me, and I don't want someone to. I did not spill the coffee, even. I sat on the other couch, looked at Martha and said, "I'm free. I really am free."

She just smiled and said, "Welcome home."

The slayer of Monsters Under My Bed

2011-09-11T13:10:00.002-04:00

It was the fifties and early sixties, and, well, let's face it: most dads were not hyper-involved in the child-rearing. "Wait 'til I tell your father" or "Wait 'til your father gets home" were really the main references to dads by my friends' mothers. On the other hand, my friends' dads took them on family picnics and family outings on the Mohawk Trail or to the Big E (Springfield Mass's agricultural regional fair--a HUGE deal for people who lived within an hour and a half of the place). My dad?

"Gawd, I hate togetherness."

Yeah, but he also taught us to play tennis and never seemed to lose his temper. He built us little cars in the sand. Launched us from his shoulders into the Lake. He did more than his share of one-on-one things. Plus, I could sit in his lap when I was little, nestling into his chest and feel the gentlest hands in the world stroke my neck and shoulders. That was the thing. His voice scared me, it was so deep and rumbly, sometimes. But my daddy never harmed a hair on my head. If anything he touched me more as if I were some little miracle that might break.

He also was the one who came for every nightmare, telling us to chase those monsters away. "Tell 'em, 'BOO, Go away!' and it works every time. Under-the-bed monsters are well-known to be cowards. Otherwise, why would they wait until dark and only scare children?"

It worked!

And if the fear was nameless, he simply took me in his arms and stroked my hair and said, so very softly, "I'm here, Jetty. It's okay. You are home. I'm here."

And when he did bother to be home, he was very much there. It was just that he was away "on business" too much for a man who worked for the State. Somewhere far too young, I registered what sort of business he was away on. But, naturally, we did not speak of it with Mom, just among ourselves.

The thing is, though, my dad slayed the daymare monsters, too. For me, that monster was the "poor house." On several mornings, because I got up so early and would catch them enjoying breakfast alone, I heard them fighting about money before they knew I was there. One time it was really bad, and Mom said, "Jim, you can't drive us to the poor house! We can't live like this! I'm TIRED OF THIS, living from month to month, one disaster away from ruined! I can't." She was crying.

I walked in and simply looked at them, not knowing what to do. I was about six and had gotten up before my sister, even, who was in high school. (I loved how quiet it was first thing in the morning. I had Mommy and Daddy all to myself. Of course, I didn't think then that they would be anything other than thrilled to have me crash their only alone time!)

To make my long story longer, Daddy spoke first. "Well, snigglefritz, it's not as bad as it sounds." He sort of smiled, but his eyes didn't. And Mommy was standing at the sink.

"Where are you driving us Daddy? What's a poor house? I like my house!" I was worried.

"Your mother was using a figure of speech. You know what that is, right?"

"Words that don't mean what they sound like."

Dad shrugged and went on. "It was a grown up discussion, honey, and sometimes we just lose our tempers a little. You do that, too."

I wasn't convinced and a particular tendency I had when I felt someone was lying to me popped up. I tilted my head and looked angry at my father. "What is a poor house, Daddy, and why is Mommy crying?"

He smiled for real, which made me mad. He always did that when I was mad at him. "Daddy, it's NOT FUNNY!" I wanted to cry. The kitchen felt like the air pieces were bashing into each other.

"Honey, it's okay. Really. Tell you what. You know how I stay in the den every Saturday morning for a couple of hours with my yellow paper?"

I nodded because a couple of times I'd crept in, just to sit in his chair and be quiet. He'd let me, but I could see him writing numbers with a pencil, long columns of numbers, with words next to them. I could not read the words because he did not print. All of us could read before school because, well, I don't know. We just sort of knew how to, the way you learn how to walk or something. I had been in trouble at school in Miss Clafflin's class because I found Dick, Jane and Sally boring and said so. My friends did, too, but they knew enough to shut up.

Anyway, my dad told me he would show me what the numbers were for, so I wouldn't have to worry. Daddy always kept his word.

I still was scared, though, when he called me into the den and he had a high stool next to his desk chair, and all those papers spread out. He talked to me about numbers first, telling me to look at the farthest left number and then count how many numbers there were up to the period. "Daddy, that's a decimal point. It's only a period with letters."

He started. "How did you know that?"

"Mommy taught me."

"Then you can tell which are the biggest numbers?"

I was insulted. "Of COURSE. I am NOT a baby." Right. After all, I was in first grade now. I had projects to do for school, like the others. I could add and subtract. I knew a LOT, I informed him.

"Pardon me, snigglefritz. My mistake." He went over what the numbers meant, so much for clothes, for food, for the lights, for something called a mortgage. All of it. And when he added them up, it said how much was spent in a whole month. Then we had other figures for his income. Just two though, and they were the same. That meant he had that much money to spend.

Well, he said it was a great thing when the two figures together were bigger than all those other numbers added together.

"But they aren't, Daddy. Not this month."

"Aha, but here's what we do, Jetty." And he showed me other months, when sometimes he had more money at the end of the month, because they didn't spend it. And he could add it on. And he talked about something called credit and interest and things I really didn't get. What I did get was that he wasn't worried. That the numbers always worked in the end, and he would never ever drive me anywhere away from home where I couldn't come back again. Ever.

"There isn't a poor house?"

"No, honey. And it would be nice if the figures could match up every month, but sometimes they just don't. But that's how lots of people have to do it. And plenty of times the numbers are just fine. You can ask to look at the numbers any time and I'll show you. That's the best way not to be scared. Just know as much as you can."

For the rest of that year I asked every couple of weeks, and he started showing me how he did his taxes and that all the numbers for a whole year went onto the white papers and he had to pay those things called taxes. By about third grade, I rarely asked, but still went over the taxes, just to be sure.

It calmed me down because this was a persistent daymare for our family. Mom and Dad frequently forgot I was around and fought about that poor house a good bit. No matter what, though, Dad fought off that dragon of poverty and he allowed me to understand the fight. I was insistent on seeing those taxes again sixth grade, when my sister and brother were BOTH in school, and the fights were building weekly. He was weary of the battle, and this time he was a little scared.

"Well, this year's harder, honey, but we'll be okay. The numbers are a little worse than you're used to, but I think I've got it covered, and your sister's got a job at school, so I think..." But his voice trailed off, and I saw the worry in his eyes.

... until I chased it away with a sudden, "Dad! LOOK! You added wrong. REALLY wrong, right here!" He didn't have an adding machine. We all did math the long way. I was right. "And it makes the numbers look WAY better!"

"Good Gawd, you're right." He stood up suddenly, marched to his big chair, pulling me with him, and plopped me onto his lap, though I was a tad large for that. I didn't care. All he said was, with tears making his eyes shine, "Who's slaying the monster under the bed this time, snigglefritz? Thank you."

I breathed in the Old Spice of him and I was small again, and safe. I suddenly laughed and sat up and went, "Boo! Go away!'

And ran off to play football down by the church.

In Praise of Pluots and Other Sins--revisited

2011-09-01T13:39:00.000-04:00

This was published in September, 2009. I just had one for lunch and decided to republish it. They STILL drip down my chin and make me smile.
******

I just ate a pluot and I don't care if it's not green of me. I do not care if they are a cross breed conceived in the furthest point of Australia, flown by six jets and trucked by an eighteen-wheeler cross country to get to my highly air-conditioned energy guzzling super store.

I tell you I don't care. I just ate a pluot and the juice dripped down my chin and onto my forearms. I had to eat it over the sink and I savored every wonderful slurpy, sensual, sweet, magnificent bite. My arms are sticky and I do not care to wash off the scent. It isn't pretty, this product of someone's fertile mind. Whoever invented the pluot knows about eating ripe peaches. Whoever conceived that the best of a plum and an apricot would create this speckled gem knew something of the goopy, marvelous mess of unbridled sex.

I just ate a pluot and my day got sunny.

I did. I ate a crossbreed, a fake fruit. I don't know whether or not it's organic. I don't know now whether they grow on their own. Under the spreading pluot tree, the couple...

Never mind. They waited, forgetting their passion, praying the fruit would drop.

Pluots are like the juiciest red plum you ever let ripen on your window sill... with a kick.

Sometimes I really don't care what happened to whom in my past, or did what to me; and I really do not care whether tomorrow I get up and fall down. Sometimes I just have to savor the moment with abandon.

I just ate a pluot. Even the name's a kick. May your weekends hold moments like this.

The Studio is Set Up

2011-08-22T21:08:00.001-04:00

Last night I dreamed another painting and I can't wait to start it this weekend. I have some things to tend to first, drat it all. It had to do with the South of France and a dream I have had for about five years. When I am panicking about the future, when I feel alone, I dream this dream of a big yellow house. It is probably best described as a Victorian farmhouse, with a deep wrap around porch. The trim is white. I am almost always in the kitchen, the sunroom hallway leading to the old barn, which is now a four car garage with a studio above it, or in the sun room. There is a country kitchen with two ovens and a huge table that seats eight without the leaf.

The house always smells like oatmeal bread fresh out of the oven; that's my specialty. One winter when I was shut in almost all the time, I learned to bake bread the old-fashioned way. I would make the sponge, and then add my salt, oatmeal, remaining flower, and sometimes finely ground walnuts and pecans. I loved kneading the dough because it gave me an upper body workout. I always made enough for three large loaves. I especially loved punching down the dough.

People say it's a good way to let out aggression, but something in me always thought that putting negative energy in my bread was not a good thing. I try to name people and things I love when I knead and punch the dough. Silly? Probably, but who cares.

Anyway, in my dream, I live with at least three people. Rarely are those people actually in the room with me. Sometimes I hear a guitar in the background. Other times I see a familiar body bent over the flower garden that fills the U made by the corridor, garage/studio, and a wing of the house. Sometimes someone has just come up the gravel driveway and there is the sound of bags of groceries being put on the floor by the front door.

Always, always I am content. I am getting ready for company. I am singing. I am wiping my hands to go out to the garden. I am calling to someone that dinner is ready. Always the dream is in the middle of some activity that represents a full life, one of absolute contentment. I am never aware of whether or not I am romantically involved with anyone--it is irrelevant.

The other night I dreamed my house on a hillside in France, when the sunflowers are in bloom. I looked out at distant rolling hills striped in yellow and azure, and the walls of the room I was in were French blue. There is no other blue like it.

I had not dreamed my yellow house dream in months, so I saw it as a sign that I truly know my next phase of life has begun, and that I see it as good. And that is ironic, because I am coming out of three days of being quite literally bedridden for all but about three hours of the day--broken up hours. Even that didn't matter, once I paid attention to what my body was telling me.

This will come as a surprise, I am sure, but I had pressed myself a tad too much, trying to get everything done, wondering why I could not do what I did at forty-two years old. I'm only fifty-nine and have four more destroyed disks than I had then. What's the problem?

The non-word "duh" keeps springing to mind.

In my dream, however, I looked through a window that had hanging plants at the edges, to these beautiful hills, and one, lone tree that came across the scene from the right. One branch of some delicate small leafed variety, dancing at the edge. And for the life of me, that picture screamed joy to me and I have to find a way to translate it to my paper, don't you think?

Whether the dream is France or Pennsylvania or central Massachussetts, whether it is near a river, a lake, or the midst of the mountains, the house holds a family of women, with an occasional man floating through. The house holds light, and safety, and laughter. And this time the outdoors was the same, and as far as my eyes could see, I saw nothing but harmony, color, and light.

It isn't often we get to feel that way, I don't think. Or perhaps we can, and we forget to hold onto the center of our souls. We drift too far into the static of life, maybe. Or perhaps it's just me.

Regardless, this weekend the paints come out and I will paint my way home inside.

Again.

Woo Hoo -- My New Life Has Begun

2011-08-18T05:52:00.000-04:00

I am in my apartment and, just yesterday, got my studio/guest room fully functional and set up so that it looks like home to me! This entry will be short because I want to go downstairs to the space and select the two paintings that I want to finish first, then unpack my paints, tissue papers, glue, and lace papers.

Then I want to paint. I want to officially begin my next phase of life. And I will put out one blank 400lb sheet of smooth paper. I will start the painting I dreamed the other night.

Moving was harder than I expected; leaving my home of twenty-one years a little more emotional, as well. Everything takes longer than I want because I over-estimate what I can do in a day. At first, this was upsetting to me, as well as frustrating. I am an instant-gratification kind of woman more often than I would wish. Last week, however, I finally got it through my noggin that there is no rush; rushing is antithetical to my goals, in fact.

My back is what it is, and I must learn to accommodate what I must, and to push judiciously. Judiciously is not a word with which I have more than a passing acquaintance ...

Art cannot be rushed; it is created in its own time, but completed with perseverence and often with quiet patience. The frantic, tortured soul who works frenetically through the night is not the model that has ever worked for me. I do my best work when I am calm and content, in fact.

That feeling came over me about the fifth night I was here. I realized I was home. I was where I had been aiming to be; I was at peace all the way through, for the first time in several years. I knew that it didn't matter how quickly I completely unpacked; it would be fine if I took a day here and there simply to rest and to be.

So. It is nearing 6:00 a.m. I shall go put the coffee on and make myself a lovely breakfast. I will take my hour to allow my body to adjust to gravity and being semi-upright, and to welcome the day. Then I will paint.

Whatever else I'm supposed to do with my day will present itself as I go along. I am a lucky woman, and I am happy. Truly happy. And at long last, all the disparate parts of me are gathered together and on the same schedule with me, on this new path, in my new home.

Fortunate indeed.

Sewers being hooked up, packing like a crazy woman

2011-07-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

I will be offline for a couple of weeks as I try to figure out what is the best way to come back ONline in my new home. The noise around my house is horrible today, as they dig up fully two sides of my yard to remove our septic tanks after they finish installing the enormous grinder pump and hook both sides of the house up. Backing trucks, heavy equipment. PLUS my neighbor across the street is having tree removal done today.

SO, I am busy packing. I shredded 300 pages yesterday for recycling! Amazing the unnecessary paper I had. I didn't finish, but I am sorting at least.

I am moving Monday and Tuesday. The closing is Thursday. My son moves Thursday and Friday. I started taking notes about this process, this letting go of 21 years here. The good memories I will hang onto, but there are many, many losses incurred while I was here: my nephew, my siblings, my daughter, my husband, the love of my life... and my health. Still, it was here in this house that I found my writing voice and my painter's vision. Here, that my sister and I found our true friendship on equal footing. Here, where I DID manage to unite ALL branches of my children's family at the holidays, so they could know that feeling of being surrounded by the people who loved them. Here, that I confronted the worst demons of my childhood and killed them. Here, where I found my own spiritual path. Here where I dared to dream again.

There is so much good to take with me, as I leave my garden for others to tend. I will not return to check on that. Did I tell you all that my home will be a group home for early adolescents who were abused as children and were abandoned by or taken from their parents? There is an organization here that has handled orphans in the system for decades, and when I applied for work there a few years ago, told me their dream was to start group homes for the kids who had no foster parents, but who did not belong in the high security facility on the organization's campus. My home, ironically, will be their first!

The group had been ready to offer on another home, but the woman who toured her saw my front yard and said, "It's a meditation garden, here." And she took one step into Jay's living room and saw out to the woods in back and said, "This is the place."

My neighbors will flip out. They thought my having four cars leaving here at once no more than twice a day, three days a week, would be risking their children's lives. They said that this house was used in ways counter to the spirit of the neighborhood. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when they realize this is a group home. It is against the law here for anyone to block such residents, thank GOD. My own brother was instrumental in fighting for that to be so.

As one of my best friends said, "Maybe they will learn something and realize that the coming and going of a few cars detracts from nothing. And maybe they will learn compassion."

One can only hope so. But I tell you, nothing would make my sister happier than to know our home will be a healing place for kids who've endured a kind of hell we endured... and far more. I was not abandoned and neither was she. And we did know that our mother loved us, but was ill. And our brother left home at eighteen and never lived there again. So I had many blessings of people who loved me early enough.

My home will be their refuge. How wonderful is that?

I will be starting over, yet another life in my life to enjoy, to learn from, to grow in. I have a lot to learn about how to work around my poor spine, but I can and I will. And the next two weeks will be exhausting--debilitating temporarily. Then I can begin yet again in an environment that is less stressful and where I can focus on my future without the distractions of owning too large a home.

It is an exciting time, yet a time that is full of mixed emotions. That's okay. I mean, really, what would I be without my emotions kicking into hyper-drive? Oh. Rational. I might be rational and centered. What the hell would I do with myself THEN?

I hope you are all doing pretty well. And if you aren't or if you've had a major life change, feel free to leave me a message here or email me to check out your blog before I move, okay? I've not given myself the time to have a good read, so I am out of touch.

May the coming weeks, however, hold peace and joy for all of you who visit my sporadic blog!

Off to Montague, MA!

2011-06-24T22:23:00.002-04:00

Saturday is my fifty-ninth birthday. I am running away for the afternoon with one of my dearest friends, Paige, with whom friendship stretches back full fifty-four years. We met in kindergarten and have been close ever since. We have always had one of those friendships that has been easy to step back into, even when we have not seen one another for years. She and I wrote my first stories together during what we called junior high back then. Middle school had not been used as a label yet.

These years held much terror and pain back then, much as they do for kids these days. We were poor and I wore hand-me-downs from my sister who was far heavier than I, and I was a bit overweight then. Furthermore, when I had dared to ask my mother for a hair cut, in one of her psychotic episodes, she dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night, yanked my hair into a pony tail and hacked off a chunk of hair with pinking shears. Let's just say I did not set any fashion trends that year. And let me also say that my mother was absolutely devastated the next day that she had done this to me and she tried to even it out. She was so guilt-ridden she drank for two solid weeks to drown out her guilt. She was difficult when she drank, but she was not psychotic; she was rarely a mean drunk at all back then. She was a tortured soul is all...

Needless to say, I was bullied quite a bit, as were some others. I think that the middle school age is the most brutal age. We are all scared and do not know how to cope with raging hormones, constantly changing bodies and urges. And to have the wrong clothes and hair and to be the "wrong" size? What saved me sometimes was my mouth. I had a quick wit and could turn a crowd sometimes. I try not to think of those two years much. They were lonely and terrifying.

Yet Paige did not desert me, even though she even had a BOYFRIEND. She did not like the cliques, the pressure to conform, any of it. We learned to create a wonderful game that filled the hours with an entire world of our own. The days before instant ANYTHING except pudding...

We were both Beatles fans and all things Brit. So we would call one another and create our own soap opera with a complete cast of characters. We would have British accents and assume the characters and have adventures on the phone. When we tired of the Brits, we invented a cast of California kids as well, and invented beach and our image of California hills, mountains and desert stories. We would sneak into our parents' bedrooms where the spare phones were and stay on the phone for hours, until one or the other was discovered and end our adventure du jour to the tune of some mother screaming at us.

And in the summers, when she was at camp and I was at the Lake, we wrote to one another. We wrote twenty page letters--scripts really. Full of intrigue, deception, pain, humor, and all sorts of things of which we knew absolutely nothing. I'd get TWO fat packets and run down to our little ledge by the water, where there were two Adirondack chairs, and I would read them aloud. I know she did the same. By the end of each of those two summers, we had literally hundreds of pages FULL of our imagination, on BOTH sides.

She was my salvation.

We have never lost our joy of creating, side by side. I taught her to paint and we spent eight to ten evenings, creating in the studio I had here for about four months. We once spent an entire afternoon in Pennsylvania saying almost nothing to one another while she worked on her book and I worked on a painting, played the piano, and worked on some writing. We have both felt that her three day runaway to me in PA was one of our closest times. We also went exploring and found a raptors' rescue place in the middle of nowhere. Let me just say that central PA has more middle-of-nowhere spots than anywhere I know. You drive through a tiny town that is five buildings on either side of the road, drive over a farm hill and suddenly enter a forest, round a bend and the road opens wide to a divided highway and you are in the middle of a magnificent mountain range, then find yourself once again lost in the farmlands, with huge bales of hay tied as the Ammish do, so they look like giant women bent over so all you see is the outline of their bottoms and a flowing skirt of gold flaring around them.

It is mythic sometimes. And on that day, after the raptors we found middle earth just down to the right of the road, in the sun-dappled forest. Water pouring down the far bank which was nothing but a coal black wall reaching straight up until it was lost in foliage that seemed to grow sideways. But the rocks in the stream were completely coated in moss, and the foliage around us had no undergrowth. The effect made the very air slightly green and glowing, and the rushing water seemed hushed, as it fell and danced around completely cushioned rocks. Paige and I simply wandered along the stream, saying little, until she said, "Now THIS is really Middle Earth."

Of course it was.

And it is with this pure gem of a woman that I will escape packing boxes and the business of moving, and suburbia for an afternoon of nothing but books and laughter. We once sang the entire "Ladies of the Canyon" Joani Mitchell CD... without the CD, as we drove home from PA.

It cannot help but be a perfect day. I am one of the luckiest women on the planet in the friends I have. All is well. All is NORMAL. It is so wonderful to be able to have a whole week of simply living. Plenty of little highs in the week, but absolutely not a low in sight. One thing about my life; I have learned to absolutely savor the times of "average" days. Hum-drum is under-rated, I think. I am LOVING hum-drum.

Tomorrow, however, will be special. It's all I have planned for my birthday, and that came as a surprise when Paige called in the afternoon to suggest it. So you all have a stellar weekend. I'm gonna go play.

I am happy... My first thought with waking today

2011-06-20T09:01:00.001-04:00

I don't know where to start. The retreat was Heaven. I returned and we had to lower the price of the house, but then immediately had five showings.

My closing will be July 29th. All the inspections are done. All the 'i's are dotted. Everything is now a matter of waiting for that date. I will live in limbo for ten days because I cannot get into my apartment until August 6th.

Did I take a huge loss? Yes. Will I be okay for more than a year? Absolutely. I did not need a cosigner and my credit rating was super. And I have complete financial security for at least three years. How many people in this economy know that, even if there is an emergency, I'll be okay. I have insurance. I have a buffer. I HAVE SOME TIME!!

I have the luxury of the next year, to focus on learning how to work and to move AROUND this back of mine. I have the luxury of focusing on how to make some money again, without having to make home owner decisions, without having to consider the ramifications for ANYONE but myself.

I woke up this morning, refreshed and happy. Actively happy. I think for the last ten days I have slept most of the day away. At first I felt scared, then frustrated with that sense that I was drugged and could NOT do anything but sleep. Then I realized that this was probably just my body's reaction to having withstood two years of almost unremitting stress. It simply shut down.

This morning it woke up when I woke up.

I do not know where to start. I do not know what to write about first, or even what to say about a retreat in a place where a waterfall poured its music not a hundred feet from my window. Or what to say about the fact that my home will be a haven for children who were abused and abandoned. Children who have been in the system, but should not be in an institutional settin with children with severe behavioral and emotional issues. Children who need to be in a home setting, even if foster parents have not been there for them.

My home will shelter children who are lost. What better use could this place I have called home and shelter be put to? The woman who came for the first viewing said, "This front yard is like a meditation garden! This whole place feels like peace."

What better compliment to my home could I ask for? And the garden she talks about is the fruition of twenty years of planning, digging, planting, and nourishing. It came out exactly as I had planned and hoped. the front yard in front of the longest part of my home is a place where you can sit and no one can see you from the street. You look toward the house and see my perennial gardens and the walk to the main front door. It is quiet. It is five degrees cooler than any place else on the street. A high canopy of green and Japanese maple red above the bench. No undergrowth and the smell of evergreen mulch. And across the yard, the cacophony of a cottage garden of daisies, wild roses, lilies and hostas.

And today I woke up and realized that, for the first time in my life, I will be living in a place where my decisions need not take in anyone's needs but my own. Even in PA, I still owned this home with my sister and when anything went wrong, I had to make the final decisions and advise whom to call and what to do. I lived with others until I was married.

I am free and alone. But I have security for now, and I am focusing on that. I am lucky and know it. I cannot worry about down the road. I have NEVER made a long-term plan that did not need to be changed within two years. So I will keep myself in the present. I have a lot to do before I move, but that's okay.

I will be able to LEAVE my work on the table and return to it each day. No more putting up and taking down. I can leave out up to three paintings at a time, and be able to work twenty minutes and simply move to a couch to rest a time. I will have my studio again! I will be in the town where I began adulthood and where I raised my children. The building that once housed the theater group I joined my first year out of college will be a brand new arts center next year! It is only two miles from where I'll be living. I will come full circle. This is where I met the pivotal men of my life, where I met the friend whose children were my future children's best friends! This place held my future then. Perhaps it holds my future now, once again!

But I am finally truly living on my own. Scary as that may sound at times, for now? For now it holds both adventure and peace. It is temporaray, this living alone, but that's fine too. I have it NOW. A new chapter is unfolding and I am allowing the excitement and happiness to take over.

This is why I've been absent. ONLY for good reasons! No depression. No catastrophes. Just the NORMAL chaos of selling a home, and the stuff of trying to settle a contract. Now, it will be the packing. This has been home or home base for twenty-one years. That is long enough. I will be fifty-nine this weekend. My sixtieth year will be one of NEWNESS.

How wonderful is that? More whenever I can, even in snippets.

Running away, but not to Red Bank

2011-05-15T08:59:00.001-04:00

The never-ending water story will not end until I find about fifteen thousand dollars or sell the house. Well. One way or another, I must find the money. I have tried to come up with an amusing way to write about all this, but, as we who are royalty say, "We are not amused."

Not even a little.

We are, however, running away to a retreat center up in Rowe, Massachussetts--in the Berkshires. My friends have pooled resources to send me as an early birthday present. I will have my own cabin with bath, queen-sized bed (of COURSE) and kitchenette. The center, however, offers all three meals in the price. I have access to their kitchen to grab breakfast and lunch food, and their vegetarian chef prepares dinner. I will be the only guest in the whole place and I will have the use of part of the dining hall for a studio for all three days! I can leave my stuff set up and simply paint.

It is a writing and painting little getaway. I need to be away from the house, and be able to put the ridiculous little blow ups that are occurring here on hold for three nights. I've chosen two paintings in progress to take, and will begin a third while I am there. I am putting some of my things on a flash drive and am taking my poor old laptop which must be plugged in to work--and I have to duct tape the cord onto the laptop for it to stay in. However, then it works.

I think that the dancing and the incantations and the good wishes kept me from drowning in the muck, so this is good. I worked on the Red Bank and West Longbranch entry, but could not locate my comic timing. I think I left it in Hoboken by accident.

I DID join a singing group at my Unitarian Meeting House. A women's singing circle. The room is very large, but our group is not, so the sound does not set off my trigeminal nerve. This is wonderful, because for about fifteen years, singing was my main form of meditation. I sang in three choruses, and sang at house jams in PA, when I went out there. Sometimes it's a little too "women who run with wolves and channel their inner goddess while their inner children dance" for me, but mostly? Mostly it's a marvelous group of really smart, funny women who are learning not to worry whether the notes are "wrong" and dare to play with harmony. A voice jam, sometimes. Harmony is my thing, not solo work.

As for the spirit stuff, I think that this is MY problem, not a problem with the group. I'm just not comfortable with it is all. I am wary of goddess talk, just as I am wary of god-talk. My spirituality is my own, which is why I moved toward Unitarianism. I think, though, that this is something like a twelve step program--I take what resonates and leave the rest alone. ALL of it leads to music, so I thin I should simply get over myself and be grateful we have such a group!

Lifelines. I am surrounded by lifelines and it is a wonderful thing. BUT, I need to get away from here and envision once again what I want my path to be, and how it can be when I am finally unencumbered by roofs and sewers and plumbing and electricians. Even though I will have about two thirds of the money we hoped I would have from selling the house--two thirds of just enough to get me through five years--if we sell, I know I will be better off than many are. I will still have a few years to find a way.

For now? For now I will enjoy every moment of my retreat. I don't care whether or not it rains. I will be in the mountains somewhere by a waterfall. What more do I need than that? Ironic, huh. Water has been less than friendly here, but I want to be by a waterfall. Perhaps I'll do an incantation. No. Better not.

Regardless, I am excited at the prospect of Tuesday through Friday. I will write about it when I come home. I have sent for my sense of comedy and I hope it will be sent back. Perhaps I can tell you the lovely story of how I was rejected for food stamps for not giving information for which I was never asked... I am filing an appeal. Or how my lawyer is trying to prevent the town from penalizing us for not paying off a sewer lien on a sewer hook up we were told for fifteen years that we did not HAVE.

Ah, but that all is for another time. Today I tutor. Tomorrow I clean and pack. Tuesday I get in my car by 7 a.m. and wander north... meander is perhaps a better word.

Dance, pray, chant, laugh--all of it is good. I Hope you all are enjoying this spectacular May--New England in her Spring splendor. I do not think I could really live all out and to the bone in a place that had no Winter. I HATE Winter a good bit of the time; but unquestionable, for me, it makes May all the more spectacular.

Take care, those of you who read my blog. Before I write, when I relocate my voice, I think I will need to listen to YOUR voices in your blogs.

... when I come home again.

New Painting finished

2011-04-20T10:47:00.001-04:00

Water or no water, stress or no stress, I find I have to paint to calm down and reconnect with myself. Sometimes even humor doesn't work for me. Bruce, I trust you and your wife are dancing up a storm. No. Scratch that. NO STORMS!

Anyway, here's another painting.

I realize it may not be to some folks' taste, but that's fine. The yellow shows up brighter on my screen than it does in the picture. If I wanted to take the time I would tone it down--it is more of a pale lemon, like the yellow in the upper right edge and toward the bottom. And everyone's screen looks different, so it doesn't matter. I just kind of like putting my pictures here, too... just to remind myself that when I am not writing, I am still pursuing art and something that satisfies me way down deep where I live. This one is Heaven's Garden 1. Once again, I dreamed the painting and then dreamed another that is all the fire, summer colors of the garden. I'm working on another spring painting that involves daffodils and scilla--I think I will be painting dreamlike scenes for some time.

So. For better or worse, that's what I was working on during the last ten days. I am wishing you all a wonderful Easter weekend, if that's a religious holiday that is important to you. If not? Well, just happy APRIL. Spring for REAL.

It does not stop

2011-04-14T18:48:00.003-04:00

I ran outa laughing... Well. Not entirely, but for now. The septic tank filled in three weeks. I saw and heard my ownself. Water streaming into the thousand gallon tank through the seams. So I have to have a grinder pump and hook up to the sewer which is uphill from my house and will require, oh, about 110 feet of hosing. NOW.

So. If someone. I mean, WHEN someone buys this house, they will have a brand new roof AND one half the house hooked up to the sewer for them, though they will have the lien with the purchase. Still. We'll have done the hook up.

I want to hide. Good thing I got all that back disability pay so that I could pay for a roof AND a sewer hook up. Just how, precisely I'm going to LIVE if we do not sell the house in the next five months, now that is another problem.

So I guess the water gods are still displeased. I have rattled ice cubes in their honor. I sprayed myself with the kitchen sink sprayer and sang, "I love the rainy nights..." I ran around in the pouring rain and danced, playing my tambourine, and singing, "I'm SINGIN' in the rain."

I painted my "Heaven's Garden" painting in WATER COLOR.

So now I am washing dishes in my dishpan and emptying that into JAY's sink. (Different, fully functional tank for that side of the house.) I will do my laundry in his machine when he is at work, and then use my own dryer.

I will rock back and forth making random baby babble sounds.

And I'll simply hope I have the money to cover this and someone will want our wonderful 2800 square foot home with a beautiful bedroom plus office 580 sq. ft. in-law apartment. And tiled/hardwood new ground level family room with sun nook behind it, plus laundry and full bath. With my gardens that I dug all by myself over the last twenty years. Someone. So. All of you please do your dance to the water gods dances, or, yes, go ahead and pray to Yaweh. Or cross your fingers... maybe your toes as well, though that can be uncomfortable. Or just laugh along with me and hope I keep finding ways to laugh.

And I'll plug along. I don't think I will have to announce in the blog if the house sells. I think you will hear the whoops clear across the world. Maybe I should go the gym pool this weekend... Or the desert? Maybe I should work on my desert painting?

Oy.

PS

2011-04-01T11:37:00.002-04:00

It's raining. We had slush. Yet we are hopeful... ?

I spilled a glass of ice water on the couch last night. Somehow I thought someone there might find that amusing. It also spilled down my shirt, which might be MORE amusing to MORE of you!

I shall now swim back into my reality. Have a lovely weekend. Again, thank you all for your comments.

I think.

I was actually telling a story and gesturing at the time and I forgot I was holding something. I know. It IS a bit scary...

The water curse

2011-03-29T22:52:00.003-04:00

Now, see, I have a theory. I have been painting water. I wanted to write about VISITS to water. So somehow or other water has suddenly gotten the idea that all I want to do is deal with issues around water. It is mistaken. I need a medium or someone who specializes in communicating with water to set the record straight.

Water is a nice place to visit but I don't want to live there.

We had the leaks around the windows and people on the roof eliminating frozen varieties of it so the liquid would get the bleep out of Dodge. At that time, as I changed containers and towels, I sang, "You and me and rain on the roof..." (Or maybe THAT'S it. I Sang to water it mistakenly took that for worship. hmmm.)

We discovered from that that we, in fact, must put down a new roof on that side of the house in order to sell. Cha CHING, $4200. Good thing I got that disability settlement, huh. Okay. I'm chill. I'm cool. I'm a grown up after all, and accustomed to chaos what with my rediscovered sense of humor and all.

Then we have the "Old Black Water" ten days. The failed sump pump and wet vaccing. I Called the chain of cleaners cutely named after a child's locomotive, when the rug was fully dried, proud of myself and of Jay because there was NO mildew or yucky smell. We kept on top of it all. I explained the situation and they arrived THursday. The guys asked me about it, looked at one another and said, "Oh, ma'am, we can't touch this. There might be mold. You should have had the mold remediation people here within forty-eight hours."

"What good would that have done when the water table was still rising? Have them come every day to use the fancy wet vacs?"

"Well, until this environment is certified as mold-free, we will not do the carpets."

"Why didn't your person who asked me all these questions and set up the appointment tell me this? She asked whether we'd had standing water for forty-eight hours and the answer is NO. EVERY day we wet vacced three or four times a day and at night there was no standing water, and in the morning I vacuumed it up."

"But you and your son are not professionals. And the phone people are not trained the way we are. Sorry to have wasted more precious days for you, but you need someone out here right away."

Okay, so I call the mold folks and tell them all about it, after having kicked pillows around because of wasting this "precious" week and entertaining visions of dampness behind the sheetrock and fungii and horrible things that grow in old water. They said, "So. You had total mold remediation in 2007 and that part of your basement had none. You had water for a week to ten days and wet vacced at least twice--no, THREE times a day every single day?"

"Yes."

"Does it smell bad or something? It's all damp now?"

"No."

"Well, why would you think there is a problem for a professional cleaning?"

"Because the company won't touch it."

"But you wet-vacced three times a day."

We went round and round and finally this company said they would come and give an esitmate of whatever work might need to be done, but that it would probably be just a cleaning. I said, "Fine. You have the job, as long as you will sign a report that says it's fine and clean my carpet."

"Sure. We charge for an inspection, but not when you decide to use us even for a straight cleaning."

Which brings us to the septic system... Yes. You guessed it. Shot. Supposedly. Although, I have spoken to four men with four different opinions, two of whom seem to think they can come on a weekend and fix the problem and I won't have to hook up to a sewer that is above grade. They ALL agree I'll have to shell out the seven hundred bucks to have the septic guy use his spyware little camera scope thingy to find out what the problem IS. Sludge I believe is the word.

There is no song for that.

And so, dear readers, the further adventures of Jeannette tries to sell her house continue. One of my friends had said the other day, 'Well at least you have a roof over your head."

I just stared at her and she blushed. "Well. I mean you'll HAVE a roof over your head soon." We both laughed. "AND you have a brand new toilet!"

Today she called and said, "Somehow even the toilet comment doesn't set right today."

I am watching my disability settlement slip away so fast. And these are not glamorous changes that make most people buy a house. BUT they are the last BIG things that were on the list of stuff a homeowner might have to address within a couple of years. Yippee.

Sludge rhymes with Fudge. Now that's just NOT RIGHT. I leave you with that thought for now. ALTHOUGH, maybe if I start painting pictures of fudge and of money, things will change.

Right.

I'll get a gold mesh bag of chocolate pirate coins...

What now you may ask?

2011-03-18T23:09:00.003-04:00

Water, water everwhere, nor any drop to drink.
Water, water everywhere, and MY how it doth stink!

Yes, dear readers, I have been wet vaccing in the basement, three times a day. Ah, the glamor of it all. But the song "Workin' in a Coal mine, goin' down down down" Keeps floating through my brain, which sort of takes the onus off.

And moving furniture to polish my wood floors and my kitchen floor. Climbing on stools, reaching above my head to get books off the shelves so that I could Murphy's oil then lemon oil all the wood. Hey. I mop n glo'ed with a TOOTH Brush to get around the wood of the banisters. Somewhere in the last two weeks, the nasty little demon in charge of turning perfectly sloppy women into anal housebodies who walk around with Swiffers singing, "Wake up your room!" (Sorry to you who are younger, it's a line from a simply horrid commercial from the sixties where a bedazzled housewife sang as she dusted, "Wake up your room, wake up your room, with natural wood-scent Pledge.)

Anyway, this disgusting demon told me that I must do the corners. That I must be on my knees getting that waxy build up from the floor, that nameless gray goop that accumulates. And I did.

AND rode my exercise bike.

I would sit at the computer to write and my mind quite simply went, "Duh? Arrr?" Think confused Scooby Doo. Then I had to tutor Adam about rhetorical devices in two essays, by Elie Weisel and Alexander Solzhenitzen. And then come home early from his house to wet vac the basement again.

My house is once again officially on the market. I look over the last year and realize that nothing has changed except me. My financial situation remains precarious, but the fight for social security is done. That brought me a peace I cannot measure. I go through weeks like the last two and continue to accomplish what should be impossible for my back to bear, but I do it... and my back cannot bear it so I pay dearly.

However, then I come out of the payback and there is humor. THAT is the change. I rediscovered my sense of the absurd and my sense of proportion and perspective. And somewhere or other, I've lost the ability to worry about it all. A loss for which I am grateful beyond words.

Truth be told, the last two weeks have been simply horrible. I could not walk yesterday more than about five steps at a time. When I say I could not walk, it is a literal comment. I had to hold onto things or I collapsed. The pain has been beyond my ability to cope at times. I could not stand up straight no matter HOW I tried.

I finally took this as a sign that perhaps it was time to lie down, although I did not read the sign until I'd been up stumbling around with a Swiffer and my can of Pledge for an hour. There is no twelve-step program for stupidity. Not really. I've been looking... obsessively of course.

All I wanted to do was write a little story about my travels to Red Bank. My part two of what could be a freaking novelette, probably. But those words do not come just now. Too much sludge and not enough metaphor just now.

Hey, but I DO remember the winter after my husband walked out. It was the only other time my basement flooded. Only then it was so bad that we had lovely little waterfalls falling out of the fireplace, glistening in the light. The water was deep enough so you could hear the splash. I had thought of turning the heat off altogether and perhaps having an indoor rink. I had a sign on my front door that said, "Welcome to Cliffwood Falls." (Cliffwood Drive is the street.)

I was determined to succeed, however. I had survived the hundred year old oak falling in the middle of the night three days after Mark left. I didn't ask for his help then. No. I was mighty. I would handle this on my own. A shop vac. I can just vacuum this stuff right up. I'll get me one of them.

Now, ya gotta understand that on those dumb tests where they determine what your aptitudes are, I was in the bottom twelfth percentile for mechanical ability. When I went off to college it took me FIFTEEN minutes of experimentation before I gave up and asked someone to show me how to use one o' them old-fashioned hand held silver can openers. To this day, it takes me two tries to use my nice slick Scandinavian black hand-held can opener to remember how it works.

So for me to go to Sears and buy myself a shop vac, come home and put it together all by myself? Please. Applaud. Bow before me. I did it. I READ the directions and laid out all the little pieces and put it together without a hitch. I broke for dinner, but had it done before the eleven o'clock news. And it WORKED. And I think I had to put together at least eighteen, maybe even TWENTY moving parts.

After the fourth day of using the thing three times a day, and hauling it out the garage to dump it, Mark happened to call and ask whether I could use some help that night. His mom had told him about the water. I was going to say "no" but for once in my life, realized that pride is just, plain, stupidity sometimes. He came over and went downstairs and did a long stint. I went down after an hour to ask if he wanted some supper, and he was busy swearing at the machine because he could not move it over its own wire.

I said, "Mark, it's super full and is sloshing out the top, you gotta be caref--"

He tipped over the sixty gallons and it flew all over the only parts of the carpet that had remained dry. Black, stinky water. It also got me in the face as well. I started to sing, "Old black water, keep on rollin'." And then I wailed, "Well keep on Shinin' your light, gonna make EVERYTHING, pretty mama, gonna make everything all right. And I ain't got no worries, cause I ain't in no hurry... at all!" (Doobie Brothers, some time in the early seventies)

Mark looked at me, silent, my giraffe of an ex husband, a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his straight lips. "Well. My work here is done. I always have known JUST what to do to make things right. Care to throw the Hoover upright Beats as it Sweeps at my head again?"

The memory of my heaving that at his head, there in that very spot in the basement, when I got him to admit he was NOT considering staying but had been waiting to leave until the kids left... the memory of my having the strength to do it, the look of surprise on his face.

The laughter came, to the point where we sat on the steps and held one another until the tears came. At which point I got up and said, "NO MORE WATER!"

***

And these are the things that leap and cavort through my brain as I slog on through this business of "getting the house ready to show."

It is not a tsunami in my basement. It's annoying yuck.
I am alive, and my home is fine. And my back is better today, so I was able to pretend I was born to polish again today.
I rode my bike for an hour and a half, singing rock and roll the whole time.
I have money to pay my bills.
In these times, in this country? I have everything I could possibly need.

Well. Except, perhaps, a brain capable of coherent thought. I wrote tonight because I was sick of NOT writing. It's what I do, how I enter the world. And bad or good, specious or profound, I write what happens in my little teeny world. The sign that last year is behind me for real is the fact that I am willing to blither publicly, to share how I DO process this life.

Today I move through sludge. Tomorrow I fly. One day I throw a vacuum cleaner at my ex's head. Another I stick a fondu fork through my hand. One never knows.

***
That's what I loved about the Jersey shore. You could run into someone who looked like Burt Lancaster one day and sounded like a dockworker, and then be approached by someone who clearly was stuck in "Stayin' Alive," wearing speedos, gold chains that glistened here and there, lost in the fur blanket of his chest, with the short-sleeved shirt buttoned by one button, straining over the not-twenty-year-old belly ... the man who would walk the forty yards to where you had clearly removed yourself to draw and sit on the rocks, who huffed and puffed his way there to say, "Youse look like ya need company. I got a porsche wit cher name on it."

And I would think, "Why me? Am I wearing that sign again?"

I just wanted to write about my adventures, but nope. For now, my life is wet vaccs, mops, and chasing dust rhinos around my house.

Just wanted you all to know I am here and I Miss my blogging and others' blogging. Sometimes real life--SURREAL life will intrude.

Forgive this entry, if you can. Perhaps tomorrow I can write about the forking incident--although, perhaps I already have. I'll check.

If you celebrated St. Patrick's Day, I hope you had fun. If you did not, I hope the same. For now? I think Jeannette needs to sleep. Perhaps, in the night, the tooth fairy will, since she has no further business with me, find my brain and leave it under my pillow. One can hope.

Working on Part 2

2011-03-03T23:22:00.001-05:00

I'm here. I've been painting, getting the house ready to go back onto the market. (Oh joy, oh rapture.) AND I have been working on Part 2. I think I have to break it into two parts. It would seem that I am rambling.

Wait. Control your surprise. I went off on a Portugal tangent. Then I meandered into some other thing about traveling alone and how freeing it is. Clearly I was a tad too free as I wrote. I found some pictures I took.

What I need to say is that nothing is wrong. Not even remotely. Just busy being my butterfly-attention-span Jetty.

Did I tell you all how I got my nickname? When I was about three or four, I could run around UNDER the dining room table, as well as tearing in circles through the dining room, into the kitchen, around the fridge and washing machine, into the living room, PAST the 9000 foot long couch, sharp left through the arch, back into the dining room, quick tour of the den, back under the table, and do the circle in the opposite direction.

There was a cereal called Sugar Jets, and in the commercial a little girl would put her arms out and run around going, "I'm jet-propelled!" I thought that sounded nice, so that is what I would shout while I did this.

I was a charming child. Easy on my mom. My dad watched me one day, and I was beginning my fourth or fifth tour of duty, from out of the sky came the long arms of GOD and I swooped up to the ceiling, squealing. My father brought me down to his Old Spice chest and said, "Slow down, Jetty, slow down. The world will keep spinning fast even if you don't."

And that was that. I was Jet and Jetty from then on...

SIDEBAR...

Part 2 of Runaways to Redbank still doesn't say much, if anything about Red Bank. I simply TOLD everyone I was headed to Red Bank when I left home--either from PA or CT.

It's more about West Long Branch, where there was a wonderful, long boardwalk that had a row of those marvelous old places--a diner, arcade, fudge and candy type store, and gee-gaw place. All of the places were boarded up the last time I went there. I had lost my brother by then and was feeling rather lost.

Here is a picture and a poem I wrote back then.

I'm not going to include the poem!

It DOES express something of what women over fifty often feel, when the beauty men found so irresistible has nearly disappeared, blurred by wrinkles, weight, and, in my case, the debilitating spinal disease that had taken hole. But, you know what? I just don't feel all that BAD.

I love this picture, though, with my clogs all alone there. I was free, unencumbered, and just beginning to find my eye, to realize that I HAD an eye for art. I had so little confidence seven years ago.

So. Dave. Does this answer your question for now? I love to ramble, but there are limits. I have mentioned to a couple of friends a comment made by you and someone else, picturing me or some other woman onstage, telling my tales. The woman who followed your comment imagined that I must use my hands when I speak.

Two days ago I was telling my best friend some ridiculous story and forgot, when I got to the climax, that I was holding my coffee cup... I'll leave it at that. I DO use my hands. When I was in high school, I was in the drama club.

AGAIN with the control your shock. I played Katrin in Mother Courage and Her Children by Brecht! Our new, very young drama adviser had seen that we had done only plays like "Corliss Archer Goes to the Prom," "The Mouse that Roared," and "Mousetrap." He told us that the play WAS a real stretch, but he wanted the seniors to have a real acting experience. I tried for Mother Courage, but got the mute who dies. He said, "Trust me. Challenging as I know it will be for you to shut up, you will steal the show."

I learned to tell a story without words from him. I never did learn to shut up, though. I'll be back!

Quick plug for new blogs

2011-02-19T12:45:00.000-05:00

People have been kind to me, and all my followers have come because I visited links to their blogs from other blogs. I have had the pleasure of rooting around on people's blog lists and have added more than forty to my list here. If you enjoy looking at new things, some of these blogs may make you smile or cry or both. And to my newer followers of the last two months, anonymous or otherwise, my old stand by blogs give me every bit as much joy as ever.

That's all I am writing for today. I won't single anyone out -- each blog offers me something unique. Have a wonderful weekend. Gotta go figure out how to paint my fish. I'm stuck, but I'll get there.

Why Part 2 is delayed--a GOOD reason

2011-02-17T15:57:00.003-05:00

I was distracted. TOTALLY distracted. I am about two/thirds done with a coral painting and I decided to give you my work in progress. As you all know I do not have a camera, and the original is about 18 by 22 inches. I had to scan it in seven sections, then tile and blend, and LORD. Anyway, here is a rough idea of what it looks like. Let's see if I can get this inserted properly.

Well, I am not sure how to insert the picture in the right place, but it doesn't matter. I want to put in a particularly lovely coral called a gorgonian fan. It is large, very lacy, and has distinct veining. I have some more subtle touches for othercoral as well, to get the soft coral contrast to hard coral, but perhaps you have an idea. The detailing is left out in some areas because I had to reduce the size of my file. Life with computers. Anyway, I got so excited when I figured out how to get the effects I wanted that writing flew out of my mind. I bet you all understand.

Oh! There. I fixed it. Simple enough and good enough for my needs.

EXTRA NOTE about the pieced together scan: the water is different. It does not have the puffs effects, but, instead, looks like water instead of sky. The scan bothers me that way. I got tired of tiling in scans that ALL had different color intensities and the sea was just AWFUL in my scan, but i see that in trying to just throw sea in there, it's not right. Oh, well. I am writing this when three people have given me wonderful feedback on it, but it's bothered me since I made the document! Okay. Enough. AND, now I have the gorgonian fan corals on there, and have started placing "orange basslets"--a golden orange fish that is longer than it is wide. I may put a couple of the butterfly fish in it. By the way, the particular colors and corals were inspired by a picture of a Red Sea coral bank. Apparently they go nearly to the surface, and down as much as a thousand feet! Why I have the fascination, I don't know--the gardener I think.

In the meantime, back in "Runaways to redbank" mode....

You will be meeting the Da Silvas, who remain a cacophonous, marvelous blur, as well as a gentleman on the boardwalk who looked like Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams, a buttoned up grandma with perfectly precise pixie haircut, playing whiffle ball in her pleated skirt and blouse with the Peter Pan collar, a couple who found both me and my penchant for taking pictures of sand formations somewhat odd, and a furry gentleman from some country that borders the Mediterranean Sea, who thought I should spend my fiftieth birthday with him because he was just such a durned stud. I don't know... they FIND me. Plus, I'll throw in whatever flies into my brain. I am undoubtedly blurring my trips into one endless adventure, but I'm sure I really don't care. The incidents live as if they were yesterday's vacation. I doubt you all care, either.

I also started writing plans for running storytelling techniques for nonfiction workshops out of my home... early on I know I referred to my friend's book. I'll get to that another day as well. I don't want to make my fortune doing that... I think it would be fun, and I would like to have it be something that has the potential to be ongoing and pay me enough for the planning, the hosting and, well, thinking to do it. And I would not compete with published authors--it would be a discovery opportunity for all of us, perhaps. We'll see.

As you can see, though, I've not been absent because of some sort of relapse into morosity... I KNOW the word is "moroseness," but I prefer my word. I did, however, decide that my one big gift to myself from the back Disability money would be a GOOD recumbent bike. It is the one vigorous exercise I can do now, and when I can get to the gym, I really work at it, riding at levels 16-20 for a full 50 minutes. I love the adrenaline rush. Oh, hell, it seems ironic in the extreme that a woman with the heart of an Amazon was put into such a fragile body. On the other hand, I may just have the strongest back on the planet, to have withstood so much and STILL support me enough to keep walking... albeit a tad oddly at times, and not for long periods.

Non-Sequiturs R Us
I am rambling, aren't I. I have never been diagnosed with any sort of bipolar disorder, but I find, when I am truly myself, when my body gives me the most trouble, my mind gets manic. The painting I have included has been done in fifteen minute stints over the course of ten days, with only one day off... and I have probably painted 12-14 times a day, with breaks in between. PLUS I made a homemade shepherd's pie--cooking the lamb ahead, boning it then skimming off ALL fat, caramelizing vadelia onions in sherry and garlic with shitake mushrooms, layering the casserole, making mashed potatoes to put on top... it's a long process to do it the old-fashioned way my mom did, so it would never be greasy.

What else did I do? Tutor. But mostly paint, cook, draw up a little business plan and research and order my bike. Sorry I have not written, but ON to reading what YOU all have written. Did I say before how great it is to be back in here? I have an ongoing argument with a friend who just loathes computers. She feels that all connections that are made and remain online or virtual are not real. I've given up arguing but have told her that I'd have felt hopelessly cut off from the world without my computer. Blogging, to me, is the modern equivalent of old-fashioned letter-writing and correspondence friendships. We can do it all faster, and there are "social networking" venues and business networking venues. And there are blogs, which, for me, are satisfyingly rich and varied. Words from people who think and write differently from me--this is SO important. To think, to wake up, to learn. And if here and there someone has pretended to be from a country he or she is not from, oh, well.

That's all for today. No. Really. I promise.

Runaways to Red Bank, NJ: Part I, of Portugal, the Old World, and Drunks

2011-02-07T12:08:00.001-05:00

In the late nineties through about 2003, I used to go down to the area around REd Bank, New Jersey and wander the shoreline from West Long Branch north to Sandy Hook. It was like visiting a foreign land.

In the first place, New Jersey made all the hotels ditch the stone causeway walls where they went from the water to the huge banks that led to the roads and boardwalks above. One can walk from one end of the shoreline to the other, with free access to ALL beaches. Coming from the land of This is MY beach and YOU don't pay the dues to be a member—the anti-riffraff state of Connecticut—I found this populist policy refreshing and right. Connecticut's beaches are primarily owned by individuals and private neighborhoods, so that there are few beaches to enjoy for us inlanders, unless we know someone. True, there are some lovely state parks, but on a hot Saturday, those places are blanket to blanket, with occasional foot-wide mazes to reach the water. No, New Jersey had the right idea, I thought.

Most important, though, get this! They PUMPED my gasoline. There was no self-service. I got to say "Fill 'er up," just as we did when I was a kid, and it did not cost more. I was totally beside myself when the guy cleaned my windshield.

I had stepped into another world and back about forty years. Fine with me. One day I walked from the "Town Beach" directly onto the beach of some Hiltonesque hotel and sat right in front of someone on a hotel chaise. Yes, it's true people; I am a rebel.

Anyway, back to some sort of background to what took me there. I am friends with a drummer/scientist who lived across the street from a rock icon's mom. And I would go to see David play and catch up a couple times a year. In between our visits I'd stay at a hotel and wander during the days--LOVED it. His mom still lived in Red Bank and he told me I would enjoy kicking around there.

Another woman's blog reminded me of a particularly magic weekend when I was mostly on my own, as well as other times. I've jumbled them all together because, well, I feel like it! One weekend or six, does it matter?

Motel Portugal — Looks are Deceiving

I made the mistake of not making a reservation, so I got to the shore and had to search. I found a Casa Del something or other, which clued me into the fact that it was a Portuguese establishment. I had spent nine days in a place called Viana do Castelo in Northern Portugal after six weeks in Paris with my sister. THAT is another tale. Let's just say I was predisposed to think this might be fun.

It had a little café behind the motel. I walked in because I was truly starving, since it had taken me until 7:30 to even find somewhere with a vacancy, and I'd been driving since noon. I did not notice the bar, or the young man at it. I did notice that three sides looked out over the docks toward the see. On one side was a river, however... a LITTLE river, true, but a river. In Portugal, we'd eaten every night at about 8, sunset, in the top level of our six floor hotel, which was all window on three sides: one side looked to a river, one to the mountains, and one to the sea. I was lost in memories of sunset, being 22 and having all the waiters cater to the two American ladies... of wearing full length dresses to dinner and having bratty waiters hide the dessert cart from me unless I butchered their language trying to order. Handsom men, half of whom had the last name of Da Silva... I remembered dancing with a man with dark eyes and curly hair who--

"Hey, honey. You got a great chest there going."

I looked up with my best college look that said, "I don't care if you DO have a water bed. I don't care if you are a millionaire. You have bad breath and make me want to run screaming out of the room." That kind of look.

"The face isn't bad. You booked near here?"

"I don't care if I were booked next DOOR to you, as far as you are concerned I am booked in Milwaukee. Got it?"

Naturally, he took this as a yes and sat down beside me No one else was in the room. Have you ever smelled old dead fish, beer and scotch blended? New cologne. Eau de Sludge. He was tall. I thought of my deliverance flame-haired man and suddenly thought gap-toothed grins and hopping lice were quite handsome. (See early blog "Deliverance") In some delusion or perhaps another life, he fancied himself a rafe.

"I'm John and I'm a fisherman. Will you be my catch of the day?"

I am not often left speechless, which no doubt comes as a surprise to you all. I was speechless. All I could do was choke on the leftover soda I'd brought in. I tried my famous "You are a foreign spec of some disgusting germ on my microscope specimen and I must flick you away with a finger nail" look.
He winked and then really grinned and I leaned away. Only it was a booth...

Finally, in those two minutes or hour and a half, a woman came in and promptly slicked John in the head with the tip of her dishcloth and spoke to him sharply in the loudest version of the shooshing language I had ever heard. He leaped up and swore. I know it was swearing because my sister taught me to swear in three languages, one of which was Portuguese. "You never know," she'd said.

Where was I? Oh. Right. He did leap up as he swore and I believe I heard the internationally understandable version of, "Ma, I was just kidding around with her. She liked it..." and blah, blah, blah, as he stumbled out of the room, presumably to another bar to cast his line.

His mother looked at me and said, in English. "You are tired. We don't have nice ladies check in here much, so we make sure you are comfortable, not to worry." Slight accent, and the inevitable tangle of tenses that foreigners make in most languages, I think. But her voice was like music to me, and she pronounced aver single syllable precisely.

She called me a lady.

The place was dingy and I was clearly more than slightly nervous. She gave me ice water, silverware and turned to me and asked, "You ever had Portuguese soup?"

I grinned and said, "As a matter of fact, yes, and in Portugal." Her face was beautiful when it lighted up. Cheekbones and the delicacy that I'd noticed in so many Portuguese women. Her features were delicate and while she looked worn, I think she was about my age. That thought made me smile, since I realized I must look pretty worn myself.

"Where?"

When I told her, she suddenly called out a string of names, and seemingly from the woodwork, four people materialized, all with the Portuguese ample, dark hair, fair skin, and slight frames I remembered so well. The man looked like one of"my" waiters, my special waiter in fact. Unfortunately he was the hostess's husband. I reeled in my brain.

"Soup. Someone bring her soup and bread now. I am sitting." She sat across from me and I found out she had grown up in Oporto, the town my second flight out of Lisbon had landed at. I told her about being driven to Viana and having been delayed by a cow accident, and then another. "Ah, yes," she said and laughed. "This happened all the time. I think there were many stupid farmers near town. The best men were fishermen." She looked up at her husband who smiled back and something in me hurt.

The northern Portuguese serve soup just above summer air temperature. And it had a potato base with some wonderful blend of meats and vegetables and places unknown and I was transported once again as the family shooshed among themselves, allowing me to rest, to eat. For those of you who do not know, in Portuguese, the "s" at the end of each syllable is pronounced "sh," which gives the language a beautiful quality unlike anything else. If you can read Italian or Spanish, you can understand much of written Portuguese. I loved the sound.

We began to simply talk about their country and about my home, until Mrs. YES, Da Silva (Portugual's Smith) took me to my room. The room was clean but terribly shabby. Two of the lights did not work and she looked embarrassed and sent her husband to get extra pillows, light bulbs and something in Portuguese. He came back with two down pillows with embroidered covers, as well as two lamps, not just bulbs. I looked up at her with tears in my eyes. These had to be her pillows. "I want you to sleep. You are tired. You have pain. Something I do not know. I see you at breakfast. We start serving the men at six, but you come at about eight and meet my daughter and grandchildren and we'll eat."

And she was gone. I did have pain. I was tired. I would not see David until tomorrow night and I had all day tomorrow to explore by myself. I could hear the water, and somewhere off, I heard a voice trying to say Connecticut and laughing and I was gone ... I was back in Viana do Castelo, the town where river, sea and mountains met. The town where you looked up to the mountains and saw a glowing castle, seemingly in the clouds. When you looked down to the town at night, it was a pool of lighted marble (limestone, but who cared) nestled below.

Morning dawned in my window, bright, way too early, and completely rose-colored. I was on yet another adventure on my own...

Weeding to the Music of Lilacs

2011-01-28T19:47:00.007-05:00

"In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary." Aaron Rose

This quote was used as part of Pauline's Writing Down the Words: January 28 entry   That particular quote made me remember the role that gardening has played in so much of my healing time of the last twenty years, the years of home ownership, and visiting without words.And it reminded me of the extraordinary friendships forged around ordinary routines.

When I was in my twenties I did a great deal of visiting over toddlers and folding laundry. I was single; my friends were not. (See   "Laundry Eagles" for an understanding of what I mean.) I was a thoroughly obnoxious sort of friend. I'd watch their children for an hour or two when they had errands to run, hang around to help unload the groceries, the laundry, whatever and, when the little ones began to implode along around 3:00, I would smile so sweetly and say, "Ha ha ha, ha HA HA, I think I'll go HOME now." They all threatened me with much future suffering, but continued to allow me into their homes nonetheless. NOt only that, they fed me, listened to me, and held me close when my heart was broken and my body followed.

During that decade we visited with talking. Endlessly deep, profound and mundane conversations over coffee, stolen lunches out, when one child or another invariably slumped into her soup, sound asleep. When my parents went off on vacation, I would overrun their home and entertain the lot of them, husbands, wives AND children. I would make some Julia Child wonder of a meal, insist on no help and have everyone at the table together. The children would be bundled en mass onto my parents' bed, and the adults had hours to laugh, watch bad t.v. and discuss everything from politics to the dangers of the new something on the horizon called "Total phone" and the clunkiness of mobile phones. The best night was watching the Miss America Pageant and feigning disagreement over whether or not Miss Oklahoma's singing "I am Woman" while dressed in a ridiculously frilly apron and riding a tricycle trumped Miss Nebraska's attempt to sing "Send in the Clowns" while dressed as Bozo. I had served coq au vin with a magnicient four layer Boston Cream Pie (Made entirely from scratch) and flopped onto the couch, saying, "Someone peel me a grape." I was ignored.

Ten minutes later Andrea appeared with my mother's hexagonal silver tray with one peeled grape in its center.

It's the little things.

But our friendships were loud. We danced and had parties. We lounged by the pool, watching with one eye, the endless games of Marco Polo as toddlers grew to double digit children. I was the neighborhood silly mobile aunt. I loved it. I knew I should not have children with the back I'd been dealt. I did not have my first surgery until I was twenty-eight. I was diagnosed with severe problems at just 23. So I exercised like a fiend to avoid surgery. I did weights when it was not fashionable, and tried the weights machines, only to find that it made a difference that they were designed for men. I hurt myself. My PT guy said I was the only woman he'd ever met who overdid it in the pool to the point of injury.

What's this nonsense anyway about moderation being good? BULL.

I dreamed big. I Mean BIG. I would write the best novel ever and Oprah would have me on. I would be "Discovered" at a poetry reading by Coventry Lake. I would go to grad school and become an expert on Adult Learning, and write the definitive light reading books for adults--compelling and interesting, not glorified kids' books. So many dreams. My friends had them, too, and they were not so big. How was it, then, that my friend who spoke English as her second language got her masters in international accounting, and another became a nationally known and respected program director for Public Broadcasting, and another went to law school at thirty? I talked about the big dreams, and so did they, but when it came down to it, after all the talking and laughing and sharing, in my thirties I watched the others run after their dreams while I spent five years in hospitals, raising half-grown children in between the four to six-week stints? I felt my life slipping away, I thought. The noise seemed to die down, but not the chaos.

I did not lose these friends at all. On the contrary, I was the stay-at-home mom for my daughter's best friend. I was the one who would suddenly show up at whichever home "the gang was hangin" with a tray full of Slurpees® and a bright smile. As my son said, "It was impossible to, like, be that mad. I mean, you didn't stay. You sat down and you asked us about our days, brought the drinks and sometimes cookies and smiled and then left after fifteen minutes. And come back later because you forgot your wallet or something. You always forgot something."

I would smile at his recollection and then he'd say, "DAMN. You didn't forget, huh. But we NEVER knew if you'd come."

"Exactly."

The life was mundane and my pleasures were tiny, mostly. An unexpected hug from my son. Dinner time laughter that included Mark AND the kids. And, of course, hanging out with my friends for cookouts. Still, mostly we talked. And, sad to say, mostly I envied them their marriages, their vacations, their big homes. I felt that not only had I disappeared, but my family was not likely to move forward. Of course, it was my fault. I was disabled and brought in almost no money. I banked all of the kids', and used my own for necessities. I had no right to buy luxuries. The money was Mark's, not mine...

But somewhere along the line, I realized that I was not seeing my life. I had not held up the proper light to it. Others seemed to see me as a success. (Not my family, of course. There, my Aunt Joy summed it up when they were dissecting me as if I were absent. Joy said, "Well, Jean, she IS a wonderful mother. Let's give her that much.) My friends saw more, for which I am beyond grateful, but they told me I was either seeing myself and my life in a funny mirror, or I needed new light bulbs in my brain.

It began after the eight operation, when I was confined to bed because I had gotten up on my own to use the loo, and had lost my mind in a sea of blood in the bathroom. It was a new procedure, trying to avoid my normal hematomas. The fourteen inch incision was sutured very loosely so the pressure would not build, and blood could escape in a controlled way, but I went into the bathroom and, well, the thing exploded, splattering blood all around me and I had a flashback. My first. Right there and then, blood on porcelain and I was gone to another place. The sound. The sight. The fear. I remember nothing more.

I awoke tied to my bed, and life changed immediately. I did not then confront the flashback; it was too soon for that. Yet at last I knew that there was something to confront. As I looked next to me at my drug-addicted, far older roommate, a woman whose husband would come into the hospital and say, "Why don't you simply DIE, Annie, and help us all out?" .... as I looked at her, and looked back at my panic-stricken husband beside me, my life took on a new sheen. Our marriage felt strong and real. And I remembered something about Jessie.
One day she had come home with a papier maché daffodil from middle school art class. "I can't even show this to Mom or Dad. They'll laugh at it. I can't laugh at it. Jeannette, it's pathetic." Well, yes, it truly was. It had a stem the size of a Grecian column and a blossom the size of a thimble. It was lopsided and one leaf was fat and squat, the other tall and leaf-like. "She gave me a B out of pity and for the good leaf." There she stood, hair to her butt, one arm behind her back, the other holding this monstrosity toward me, eyes pleading for help.

"Well, Jess. I can't throw it out. My guess is you worked hard on it." Her tears were falling and she nodded. "I know, I'll put it on MY shelf in the closet and I'll think of you every day." She brightened up enormously, but every time she saw it in the closet she'd come out and look at me, shaking her head.

A couple of years later she said, "You really don't have to."

I always said, "I love it. Especially when I knock something near it and it falls on my head." She would laugh and kiss me.

But when the ceramic vase came home, lopsided and unevenly glazed, she begged me not to put in the living room. "No, REALLY Jeannette. You can't do it. There is nothing that you can make look okay in this. Nothing."

I'd said, "Trust me, honey. You wait." Jess ran into her room crying because she thought it would be humiliating.
I found some beautiful silk flowers and dried boughs of who knows what? I put it in the corner of the shelves, and you saw only the ruffled line of the lip of the shining forest green vase, and the curve of the base, and a profusion of delicate color, there in the center corner.

She looked at it and began to tear up and smiled, "You made something beautiful out of something ugly. You always DO that for me." And she hugged me, holding on longer than I did, and I was never as whole in my life. It was the sweetest compliment I'd ever known. An ordinary act of motherhood, I thought, seen through the eyes of an extraordinary child who did not know her power yet.

I lay in my hospital bed, tied down, thinking of her and a dozen other little sweet things that suddenly felt huge, and how I'd nearly blown up my marriage. And I apologized for the billionth time for the pain I had caused Mark, only this time he looked at me and said simply, "I want you home. I want you not to hurt so much. I can't reach where your pain is, Jeannette. It's always out of reach."

But he kissed it away just the same and I remember it as a series of the best kisses of our marriage.

Something changed. I was thirty-five and was about to learn the heaviest of life's lessons, but I began to listen to silence and look harder at the small things of my life. I stopped paying so damned much attention on the big successes of my friends, and looked at my small successes. I could stand when they told me I'd fall down. I was not an addict. And I was determined to stand STRAIGHT. I was able to do the laundry within two weeks, and for the first time in three years—I started dancing around like Rocky for the accomplishment. There, with no one to hear or see the mountain I had climbed, I danced.

Sometimes simply tying one's shoes is an extraordinary act. That's what I was showing Dad--that I could tie my shoes--while quietly and slowly the subject drifted away. I was always quiet with him toward the end. Noise confused him. But because I was happy to simply BE with him, I had the opportunity to meet the man behind the FATHER, even more than when we'd commuted together. He gave me the journal of his last months, a revelation of pain, selfish arrogance and humble regrets. Anyway, on this particular day, I'd told him how hard it had been to learn to do and how much harder it was to appreciate an act I'd done thousands of times, and he nodded. Then he said, "I've sung Ah Sweet Mystery of LIfe at Last I've Found Thee easily a thousand times. Why did I have to be dying to listen to the words? Love was next to me all my life, sweetie. Don't be like me. Mark hurt you. I know that. We know that. He isn't the man we thought he was. Dear, you can do anything. Listen to your words when you sing them. Listen to your life as you live it. Listen. I never listened." There were many small moments with them both, while they were consciously preparing to go. I'll save them for another time, but when they were gone, and we had bought our house, I began to garden.

The quietest thing I know, gardening. My friends gardened, too. Sometimes we would work together and say nothing, yet felt we had visited all the way through to our cores. Perhaps we had. We would be filthy, sweaty, make-up-less and aging. Yet sometimes I thought that Andrea was most beautiful with her hair unruly, her unmatching eyes glittering, her pale skin still shining from her sunblock. There seemed nothing ordinary to me about many of the flowers, especially peonies.

I mean really. Every peony is its own statement of life -- no, of LIFE, with flourishes of trumpet as well. Their coloring is as delicate as Dresden, but the flowers themselves? A subtle peony is an oxymoron. I was weeding in my lilac island when I thought about that one very early morning. I liked to weed when the sun still cast gold in the sky, there on the far side of my yard.

I was laughing at myself because I love their showiness, revealed only through the never-ending ordinary march of ants to soften their buds. Ants. What is more ordinary than an ant? The lilac island was my first garden, designed, planted, dug with my own hands out of the twenty-year-old perfect turf. My mother's and sister's favorite flower is the lilac and, since Jean Ellen lived here, I wanted to have my first garden be for her and for Mom, whose soul I had clearly channeled, against my will I tell ya, against my will! (I loathed gardening as a child, as I stood by her holding the trowel, the watering can, and some worms to put in the holes. Worms, it appeared, were the key to every garden success. They were the best thing about it all, because the rest of gardening seemed the most boring thing in the world. Put in some nameless tiny green thing and when you were done? It looked like a limp clump of weed. And a clump of junk we had to be careful not to let the kick- soccer- foot- or baseball get into.)

So I chose four different lilac varieties, then found the Miss Kim, and realized that I could have a whole month of lilac blooming with one of those, if they did not all bloom at once because of a hot spell. And I had to admit that subtlety had not been what I was going for here, either. The double blossom shrub was nearly bent to the ground from the weight of the eight-inch long pregnant blossoms.

That season we had had a hot spell, though, and I saw that every single bush was budded, from the doubles of the deepest violet bush to the white. None were in bloom, but they would be any moment. Oh, well. I shrugged and decided how beautiful our enormous vases would be with five shades of blooms, if only for a few days.

I shook my head a moment because a decade before I had planted them too close together, and had actually put a peony plant in there, not realizing how big both got. A common mistake for new gardeners. Furthermore, lilac island across from an open field, so nameless horrid weeds invaded all the time, including the Chinese vine I SHALL NOT NAME. I call it KUJO, for the killer dog. I had just finished wrestling one 20-foot obsenity out by its roots from the very center of my "grove", and had removed, painfully, no fewer than EIGHT thistle plants when, as I unbent my body to breathe, I heard the rain. I looked up and the sky was blue with the barest hints of rose and gold on the horizon.I stood very, very still; stunned, in fact. Gentle rain engulfed me, yet all was dry.

"A miracle?" I asked aloud.

No. An ordinary act of nature, the sound of lilacs blooming.

Clearly, though, I should have answered, "Yes."

A Room of One's Own Redux...

2011-01-26T17:36:00.004-05:00

I have linked the title to The K...... No Longer Silent, Kass's blog, because her entry inspired this one. (Yes, another long, wordy ramble that took me somewhere I did not foresee...)

For the ten years of my marriage I had no space of my own, let alone a room. I had a little t.v. cart on which I had one of those early word processors that my dad gave me because he knew I loved to write. Let's try for a little background color here on the situation of my marriage, since it would be really easy to blame my family, my husband, my back--anyone or anything. The truth is, I opted for the lack of privacy sometimes. In fact, I hid from myself in it all. What? Wait a second, this cannot be. I must have someone else to blame. Scratch that. It's all Mark's fault. Yes. Of course. Let's blame the ex!

Not that I was every particularly traditional in my choices. I got married in a body cast, wore a red dress and said my vows in front of my folks' fireplace. Mom's brother had given her an American eagle which she placed over it, though she HATED having it there. She didn't want to hurt his feelings. Most of the time, however, an obnoxiously bold white sign with a chain hung from the bird's neck and read, "Don't just sit there; nag your husband."

I had to take it down and HIDE the damned thing on my wedding morning, since my dad or brothers kept putting it there. So. I had on my bright red dress over the body cast, which gave me the svelte figure of a linebacker, and I had the Pacabel "Canon" playing. (Back then, it wasn't everyone's choice.) I managed to walk down the stairs without tripping or having a leg collapse, and got to Dad, by the front door. Unfortunately, the nextdoor neighbor's were painting their house to a boom box, and my Dad stepped out and screamed, "Shut up. There's a Gawdamned wedding going on!" Perhaps I should have known. My favorite pictures were one of Jessie looking up at my sister, Mark and I gazing into one another's eyes, and Jason looking away from us all to look out the window at our neighbors.

I spilled a bloody Mary all over the only woman in white and was shut off for the rest of the day. BEST wedding in history, and I remember every moment, but... (wait for it. A point is coming. Really. .. or not.)

My husband and I opted to have four kids come to our apartment for the wedding night. I was in a body cast, so let's just leave it at that. Besides which, I love kids and I loved having people over. I was not sure about my being married. I had also lost my engagement garnet in the backyard, so I was wondering whether I'd done the right thing. I thought perhaps it was an omen, though I had not lost my wedding ring, so... Yet I wondered whether I'd married for the right reasons and whether I loved Mark enough. I had made so many mistakes before, and I wanted to be right in this case. I SO wanted to be right. Yet inside I freaked at losing that ring and by the time we got home, I was genuinely scared. When in doubt, I hide among people. I do not have to feign happiness if I am among people I treasure, so the fear dissipated with the laughter of children.

Close quarters also helped in this.

We turned our two bedroom apartment into a three bedroom apartment because the dining alcove was so big that putting up some tall bookshelves as a wall left my son with a 10 x 11 foot room of his own. The seven foot desk was in Mark's and my room so we could both work at it together, only somehow his schoolwork took over the whole space. And naturally he needed quiet to correct papers at night. Then his mom had a "nervous breakdown" and we had his dad for three weeks--three days after the wedding. So all day I was with his dad, a lovely man, but one who had had a massive stroke the day Mark went to Nam, and was left needing care for the rest of his life. Jessie claimed the living room. I had the dining table which was in the living room where the only t.v. was located. And starting that first week, Mark started coming home from school at around five--he was part of the union negotiating team. Starting that first week of our marriage, he opted out.

Forget about a room of my own. I went from being single and a free spirit to a body-casted married woman with two children and a father-in-law to care for.And a husband who was not there.

They say that if you REALLY want to write, you write. And I did write at first, with many interruptions. I was recuperating from my seven week stint in the hospital at that time and was scheduled for more surgery in a month after my father-in-law left. My sister gave me A Room of One's Own. I did not read it so much as inhale it. Then a friend gave me Journal of a Solitude and I knew that I was in trouble. I highlighted these books and underlined passages. I felt they were my friends, not books. During the day I had to rest up to take care of child-rearing business in the afternoons because the kids' mom, on her nights, didn't come until close to six or later. I was the go-to parent. I did the carting and the listening and the homework helping and the dinner-fixing. Usually, by the time I sat down to write, vapidity filled my brain. Somehow I gave up.

And it seemed to me, when I spoke to my friends, they all agreed--nothing much had changed for women since Virginia Woolf's time. None of us had an office, though one had a sewing room. A couple of us wondered whether this had been our mistake. Had we asked for a "craft room" or a sewing place, perhaps someone would have seen validity. Before I was married, my husband loved it that I wrote. Afterward, not so much... He wanted me to wear my blouses buttoned up to the neck, and my soul as well.

Along the road it seemed as if every ounce of creativity was drained in the business of eight surgeries, raising two stepchildren with my husband usually in our room and their mom coming as late as possible to pick them up. I used to describe myself, by the third year of marriage as a panther in a tiny cage, locked in a crate in a closet in a room without windows. (Why use the one word "trapped" when eighteen words will do?) By the sixth year of our marriage, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was thirty-six. When I was thirty-eight, both my dad and mom were dead, and I was in counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder due to memories of abuse from a sociopathic brother...

And on my second copies of both A Room ... and Journal of a Solitude. Let's be clear, however; I was a lousy wife. That is the simple truth of it. I was a really good mom, but the wrong wife for Mark. The traditional role was alien to me, but I kept trying to learn the steps of a dance I did not like. And when it was too much, I rebelled by hurting him as badly as I could. I tried to do better, but he never was a forgiving soul. Doesn't excuse how he treated me or the way he chose to handle things, but marriages don't end just because of one person. There. And THAT is all the fairness I intend to extend toward him! Well. For now.

After Mom died nearly two years to the day after Dad, Mark and my sister hatched a plan that we could all buy a house together. It seemed a perfect plan. He was pretending that we were fine, but, as I later found out, it was pretense, part of a plan. He was already looking. Mark chose not to share with either of us that he was miserably unhappy with me. He decided that if we got a house--as he explained later, while informing me he was leaving me for his student teacher--that Jean Ellen would then be there to take care of me!

Anyway, we got a wonderful house, with a rec room downstairs for the kids who were of an age to be away from us, a real dining room, and an extra bedroom for a study. At long last I would have a peaceful place to write. Not just my own, but I had already chosen a desk for me, a space in the room for my stuff.

Nope, true to Virginia Woolf's prototype of the household, Mark claimed the room for his study. He put his clothes in the closet and his recliner in my corner and some weights under the window. Lo and behold, my office was, once again, the dining room! The pathway between the rec room and the kitchen, from the front door to the bedrooms and the rec room, the room off of which was the deck. The center of the home was my room. Nothing changed, I thought.

On the contrary, I had changed. I had overseen all the caretaking of my mother and father in their last months, despite a ninth operation six weeks before Dad died. I had done all the work to find and finance our home, overseen the moves of both my apartment and my sister's, and overseen all the contracting work for my sister's in-law space. I had been trying to get everyone's focus onto the growing eating disorder of Jessica.

I was angry, and found my voice.

I wrote with chaos all around me. I wrote as my husband made excuses to be gone. I wrote through my daughter's mushrooming eating disorder and alcoholism. I wrote while waiting for my son to appear with his friends at about 3:00 a.m., shutting off the light when I heard them stumbling to the downstairs rec room and I'd lay in wait for the inevitable raid of the fridge and simply say, "Boo!" and laugh as they scattered.

I wrote. I wrote the pain, the fear, the frustration at asking my husband the hard questions only to have him lie to me. I wrote about my fear for my daughter's life and the frustration of having her mom and dad tell me I looked for -isms under every rock. "I outgrew it," her mom said.

"No, you didn't. Since I've been part of the family, you have tried four different types of all-out changes of diet, and told me that you threw up when you overate!"

"Well, I'm here, so she'll be fine."

I wrote out my screaming to God to save my child. I wrote out my screaming to God WHY?

I wrote to forget, to record, to figure things out. I began a novel when Mark left. When he left, Jessica and Jay were both away at school at first. And I wrote in the dining room still, the center of my home, my big echoing, empty home. I wrote when my daughter was in treatment but lived with me, when I knew she was not going to listen. I wrote when they finally told her that Mark was not her father, that she was conceived in an alcoholic blackout.

I wrote.

When her mother sat that day they told her, when she sat, rocking back and forth in the middle of my living room floor and Jason called me and said, "I can't find Mom, but you're the one who will tell the truth, is dad really my dad or do I have some other dad, too?"

I wrote and I wrote. There in the center of my house, I wrote, with all those rooms from which to choose, I chose to stay in the hub. And I wrote when the funeral was over, when the children had all gone on with their lives, but my daughter's light was out, I wrote. I stopped the novel because her voice took over, but I wrote nonetheless. The poet emerged instead. I simply wrote.

And I learned about my own journal of a solitude and found my room at last.

The room of my own is inside my soul. I wrote to save my life.

And here I sit. And I write.

Time, Memoir, and... I have absolutely NO clue what this is about!

2011-01-12T18:34:00.002-05:00

I saw a Facebook thread which loosely talked about time. A friend said something to the effect that we might consider that the moment we experience as now holds many other moments in it. He was trying not to talk about past or future because thinking of time so linearly might not be the way to go. (Forgive me, David, if I have blown my paraphrase.)

I have no clue where his mind was running, but mine ran to memoir. To this blog and why I have schizophrenically included another. I may eliminate the blog, but fold the old entries into this. I am not sure. I was trying, at one point, to figure out where my past could end and my next path start--as if they were separate in any way! In fact, I think the point of the memoirs I love the most blur any sense of time, really. One writes in terms of events, of experiences and growth. We blur the sequencing in memory and often the details. And, truly, does that make one iota's worth of difference? I don't think so. We try to preserve the broader truths, and the enormous truths contained in details, but few of those have much to do with linear time.

Before I remembered events from childhood, I clung to a myth and to a bogglingly detailed memory of each school year, what I learned, who my teachers were, what the weather was. I had no gaps of time, I thought, because I knew the chronologies, events that surrounded the big events. I could reconstruct things in every year. It was the way I could surround the terror with detail and tell myself that I had nothing more to remember.

The healing came when I wrote the rest of the time line, in truth. What I called "Time line of Terror: Time line of Grace." In fact, I had HUGE gaps and blanks. I remembered almost nothing that happened in my home except at Christmas for probably ten years of my life. The trivia found its level, like water, filling in the cracks. So I had to let go of my ridiculous chronology by writing a different sort of chronology. There were not years listed. I had experiences, eras of pain without dates attached. On the left were the punctuation marks of pain in my life, and it was chillingly long, I thought, as I began. In fact I would not and should not subject readers to such a lengthy mess, I thought.

On the right, however, was a list easily four times as long. For every single atrocity I made myself list the graces that got me through. THAT was and remains the sheer wonder of my life.

I remembered the people, the Christmases, the little kindnesses and overwhelming love of some. I remembered silly events that made me laugh. My list of graces took up four times the space, but in numbers? I think they outnumbered the terrors six or seven to one. To me, to this four-year-old and eight-year-old heart, the graces were as tiny as a feather I found on a beach. They required little explanation.

What has this to do with time? I think that when I let go of worrying about what happened when, when I let go of this fear that I misremembered things, that I was not journalistic enough, the real growth began. Like Louise, these other pains held the yin/yang of my life. At every turn we can choose light/love/feeding life or the Other, whatever that is. Sometimes, if you are as lucky as I, you are given markers, nudges toward that love and forget to even LOOK at the other part of our circle. That's the thing; at every turn someone or other pointed me toward beauty.

I live on the edges of things. I've said that before. In the old days, Olympic skaters had to do compulsory exercises, one of which involved skating an eight on one blade over and over and over, repeating that same line. I think I aim toward that line in the yin/yang sign. I think I see life that way, and experience my own life that way. I want to skate on that edge, leaning on the side of the blade toward wonder and the things that feed our lives.

When I hit fifty I tasted my first fresh fig. Rivaled the pluot, I must say. It's not the time, it's the alliteration ... It's not my brother's foot on my tiny hand as I tried to protect a trapped mouse when I was four --the foot coming down on the hand, murdering a mouse. It was the choice presented like a gift to me, to guard future mice in traps so no foot would ever again end their days. I sat by the mice in the traps and I sang to them. It doesn't matter what happened before or after--it's the experience and what that teeny girl drew on to cope. Love. A gift. A gift that has never left me.

When I finish my book, I want it to be about flying and wonder, and my true goal is take my readers on a joyous, if somewhat terrifyingly beautiful flight with me. And I want it to be abundantly clear that none of us is strong all by ourselves. Those of us who survive the most appalling abuse, who have had to cope with pain and perhaps overcome many odds--to say we were just not quitters, or that we were somehow better than... I think that teaches nothing. It simply makes those who are floundering feel less than... as if we do not ALL flounder at times? Oops. Time. That word.

I was taught to look for the magic, to expect to find it everywhere. I was taught that love is a gift we give and may receive. It is not an emotion and we do not take it from someone. I was taught that the lessons were in the giving more than the receiving; in the receiving we found joy and laughter and wonder, sure. But to give the love when it was not easy? My parents believed that this was what made it love.

How do I say, then, that my parents are gone when their voices live so clearly in my heart and mind? Where does that past end, when its lessons still live? I named the pain Louise. That was easy. Embracing my mother was easier after my time line. Over and OVER, even when she was the terror, she was the grace as well.

And she still is. Jack, Jean Ellen, Jessie, Daddy, Mom, so many people not walking on this earth live inside of me. The years are meaningless. In the act of writing I don't let go of the past; I hug it to me and reveal its power. In these last few months, what I see is that I have let go of WANTING it to be "in the past." I let go of wishing I were someone else.

I don't; I would rather have had my own life than another's. I do not think things happen for a reason. I think the free will lies in whether or not we stand up and decide to use the horrors to create beauty or to enrich life, or whether we choose to hold onto our identity as ACOAs, or "Survivors" or something that sets us apart from all humanity, from this earth. We choose to continue on paths of self-destruction or bit by bit, we learn to choose life. But I don't think God or Anything in particular sends us pain, abuse, abandonment, loss, or even hurricanes for a reason. Whatever God is, or whatever Energy feeds and sustains life? It sends the magic and the joy to find ways to ride or even fly out of and above the rest. It's what allows us the capacity to be a phoenix.

Mind you, I have not arrived on that Tibeten Mountain Top there, with the great Zen masters. Not hardly. I'm simply thinking that past, future, where I'm going, how I thought of the future as "starting over," it's all bunk. I start over one way or another every day... don't you?

Memoir is self-involved, but somehow or other, the best ones have reached to all who read them. We search for what we all can share, regardless of the "niceness" of our families. We take our little teeny lives and find what resonates, we HOPE. That's the goal anyway. To find something beyond the littleness of ONE life, to touch and perhaps help or support or validate other lives.

Of course, then we can eat a pluot or a fig and simply live in the joy of juice running down our chin, and to HELL with reaching for anything more.

And if you can make sense of any of this ramble, you are "a better man than I am Gunga Din," as my mother used to say. It was fun to write it anyway!

***
This is unedited or reviewed stream of consciousness dribble. I just need to make writing my habit once again!

WOO HOO

2011-01-04T14:07:00.003-05:00

I have been awarded Social Security Disability. I am eligible immediately for Medicare. The first hurdle toward my reconstructed self has been CLEARED.

I have dreamed of coral reefs two nights in a row now. Time for a new painting, I guess, while I work on the two unfinished.

Such a New Year's gift. The judge wrote her decision BEFORE the Christmas break, only a couple of weeks after the hearing. She was clear and, well, it validated a good deal, this judgment of hers. I will be able to be financially okay for at least ten months and, hopefully my house will sell before that time is done.

I find myself hoping only to move forward, to not just reconstruct myself as an artist and writer, as one who creates solely what is in my heart and imagination, but to feel that I can tutor as well. I LOVE helping kids unlock their curiosity, finding the words that help them over their own hurdles. It is challenging and fun, too. I am only eight in my brain, so it seems a natural fit, no?

I want the new year to propel me toward simple peace, toward loving my friends better, toward more productivity and choices that keep me on the planet a LONG time. I want to write the wonder of my life, which was the gift that got me through the pain--the gifts of my mother, my father, and my sister, really. Each had their own whimsy and sense of the absurd that they gave to me. And the wonder that was my brother Jack's willingness to protect me the best he could from the violence of the other brother. And of our friendship as children and teenagers. In his own disease, he committed one horror, but ONLY one. Mostly, as his birthday draws near, I remember Robin Hood, calling to me as I hid in the closet. Calling to me when his own torture was over and the monster had wandered off, losing interest in causing him pain. "Maid Marion, Maid Marion. The Sheriff is Gone. It's safe to come out."

And I would untie him and bathe the cuts or the bruises myself. Jack gave me my very life, I think.

It is a new year. Some of the limbo has suddenly ended. I am acutely aware that I was given more gifts than my share, I think. I called my friends who had been long awaiting good news. It took three hours of laughing and crying and just being happy.

I have virtual friends in here, many of whom have reached out to me beyond the blog. I have thanked you all before, but I simply must again. The progress on the book is slow, but it has to be. I have made peace with many things in these months of chaos and pain.

Long ago, in the early days of biofeedback pain therapy, I named the pain Louise. My middle name and my paternal grandma's name. I may have mentioned this elsewhere. I did this because my grandma taught me many things as a small child, and I adored cooking next to her, eating lunches she made for Jude and me at the Lake on rainy days--we sat at a lace-edged tableclothed card table, on the screened in porch, eating egg salad sandwiches cut on the diagonals with the crusts off, off of special plates with a spot on them for the chocolate milk-filled glasses. And we had M&M's for dessert. Grandma would serve her two little wild girls as if we were grand ladies. It made us giggle, as we sat in overalls and t-shirts, barefoot. Huck Finn girls with Lady Louise. Grandma mourned the demise of whale-bone corsets. She showed me how to dip candles for fun and we churned butter.

But when I hit puberty I learned that Louise was mean to my mother. She spied on us. She was bitter. A vicious gossip sometimes. Louise was not likable, barely lovable, in fact--but she was my grandma, part of my being, part of who I was, part of my life.

The Louise of my body, born of spinal disease, has tamed my tendency to self-destruct. Pain is not something we want. I don't want it. But it's here. It is part of my life. Louise is here and saved my life and made it hell and I cannot discard it. I must live with it and use my heart and soul to find the ways to use it to FORCE me into going after the dream.

I never gave myself permission to paint, to sing, to write simply what I WANTED. To create from my own music for the sake of creation. Well, I can't do it on deadlines any more. There is no path left for me but to do what I want!

So, tell me. What sort of irony is in that? I mean, talk about a dope learning things the hard way!

I will be getting the first step of financial respite. I have accepted what IS in relation to my spine. I KEEP ON STANDING UP. But I know enough to sit down or lie down when I have to.

It IS a happy new year. Thank you to any of you who keep no looking for me to write. There will be more.
Woo HOO.

Some art, such as it is

2011-01-01T23:35:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year one and all. Still looking to get a friend to try to photograph some of my work. I have had to do these two by scanning sections on my little flatbed, opening them in Photoshop and tiling the best that I can. The winter scene shows particularly that I did not adjust the rotation--tweak it so that the bottom of the cloud is at an angle. NOT SO IN MY PAINTING.

Enough of you have asked, that I at least wanted to offer a clue about my work. Both A Glimpse of Peace and the mountain scene were dreams. I once was at that crater lake in New Mexico at about ten in the morning after a February snow. My friend and I wondered what it must be like at dawn. There is NOTHING subtle about dawn on mountains. Once I flew into dawn, going to Europe. I was fifteen and remember being dumbstruck at the fact that there was an actual line between night and day. Somewhere in my little mind, the image of that endlessly mountain ringed lake and flying into dawn were mixed. The real picture's lighting changes depending on the time of day. While I use tissue and water color, primarily, I have some paints that offer irredescence. The waterfall and the mountains, when struck directly by any light, shimmer.

My Glimpse of Peace is a bit personal in origin. One person generated an overwhelming sense of peace, strength, and beauty in me. It is what I hold onto rather than anger. And I have ALWAYS loved Asian art, so I combined love and Water and some chinese work I have seen somewhere or other and woke up with that painting. Again, it is collaged.

I really do feel that the work in person is far better than what I've put here, but I guess you've all been so loyal in looking for my writing, I kinda wanted to show that, YES, I really HAVE been putsing along with the painting.

I await the ruling for my hearing on disability and once again we will try to sell my home. BUT, I am far more at peace with uncertainty again. I rebelled against it last year, I'm afraid. I had tried SO hard to build some sort of financial stability, to keep my home, to keep my legs moving. Everything fell apart at once and it took me a good long time to find my internal footing, so to speak. I have, though, regardless of what else may happen. I've lost my insurance yet again, and wrestle with whether or not it is worth shelling out the money for another month or so with coverage that is abysmal. High risk pool insurance is horrible now. Practical matters blowing up are the norm these days, but I've acquired an "Oh well" shrug at it all. Panic does NOTHING.

My back, as I mentioned stabilized finally in the late summer. I'm beginning to understand what makes it suddenly not function so that I fall down, and the very, VERY subtle warning signs. Do I always listen? Oh, PLEASE. This is ME. Jetty. Jeannette. Learn all lessons by bashing into walls, Jetty. That's me. Still, I'm doing better at not bashing into the same wall more than three times.

This whole process of adjusting downward in terms of mobility and lifestyle because of money has been interesting. I have the best friends in the world and they truly are my family. My wealthy aunt called me because her husband asked her to. She told me that her home health care aide has cost them all their extra money. I asked whether she had new meds. Nope. Or whether she was coming more than twice a day. Nope. Or whether she needed the visiting nurse more or had been in the hospital. Nope. Amazing how fast 4 million dollars can go. Then I asked, "Did Jack tell you to tell me this?"

"Yes, dear. The reason we cannot help you is all my fault. I have run us into the ground."

"Joy," I said. Yeah. She CHANGED her name to this!!! "Joy, I am never asking you for a dime. Nor do I expect the trust fund Jack promised. You know him. He doesn't want to feel he has to help me and he knows I am in a bad way. He has made you feel it's YOUR fault. It isn't. Listen to me. Don't worry about it any more. You are ill. You are dependent. He is lying."

"Well. I wondered. But you know him. And I can't... I depend on him for everything."

"Right. Let go of it. I'm fine, dear. I love you."

"Well call me please. No. Not often. I know you will never get better so I really can't take hearing that. So call, well, maybe every three, three, what is the word, three or four..."

She has Parkinson's. I gently said, "Four weeks?"

"Oh, N O. The longer one. MONTHS. OH no. Not weeks. I don't want to hear your voice that often. Just a few times a year. That's fine. Just so I know you are alive and where you move when you lose your home."

And there you have my family. A year ago, this sort of thing hurt to the quick. ALl the phony calls about my welfare. Now? I know she is trapped. And I was even able to talk to Joy for the only time in my life about how she's always run away from what made her uncomfortable, and like my mom, she was able to say, "We deserted you when your father died, when your mother died, when your husband left, and when Jessie died. We were angry at them all and we just didn't want to have to hear your unhappiness. That was weak of me, Jet. And I fear it was cruel."

"Yes, it was both. But I love you." And I do.

We all find closure in odd ways. Her husband is a truly cruel and cold man. But Joy? More a tragic figure who could not get out of her own way, who could not rise above her compunction to appear to be the Lady of the Manor. The appearance of affluence, sophistication, class. It mattered to her and now she is trapped in a chair in a room with a view. The most beautiful lake view I have ever seen! She looks back over Lake Champlain to the mainland mountains and can see the sunrise every day. She has her own beach. I told her this and she said, "It isn't the ocean... but it's all I'll ever have now."

I hope I do not grow to be so embittered, so afraid. I am technically alone. And I am poor. But I am so very, very wealthy in friends and in the two family members left--my son and my aunt in Alaska. And I can still walk. And write. And paint.

Mostly, I laugh... and my friends and I do all we can to make each other's lives as sweet as we can. Perhaps this year will yield some financial relief for a year or two and I can work like crazy on finding a way to make it a nother few years after that... WITHOUT letting myself forget to live in the current moments. Many of them are wonderful.

Again, happy New Year. I hope you'll look at my two pictures here and know that whether or not they are good, they give me pleasure--the process AND the product. I wish I could reproduce them here a bit better, but that's okay. This is a blog, not a gallery. Good health, happiness, and much laughter to one and all.