The Next Reinvention

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."

I am happy... My first thought with waking today

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.

It does not stop

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.

The water curse

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?

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

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!