Learning to Love

It has been one week since the mass shooting in Connecticut. An untold number of words have been spilled in response to that event. I am under no illusion that I can add heft to the already unbearable weight of what happened, but I have my own take on the matter, and an urge to offer it into the mix.

I am in awe of the selflessness and sacrifice that all 28 of those beings showed by taking on the task that they did.  To come into this world as a team, a group of life-teachers and way-showers, in order to dramatically focus the world's attention on "everyday" violence was a tremendous service. But what else would you expect of such highly evolved beings?

In the system of belief that I have cobbled together during my time here, this makes complete sense to me. I can picture these "entities" in the between space, having incarnated together in various constellations many times before, planning this lesson. The world, as we perceive it, is a classroom, a series of lessons from which we are able (or not) to learn and evolve. Karma is not a punishment, it is a completion. We are at liberty to choose our path, choose to engage or play hooky, choose to prolong our separation or move toward the light of oneness. And always, ALWAYS, it is a game, a play, a school, an illusion.

So there they are ---- I'll use human images because we're so familiar with them ---- hanging out in the ether, reviewing that last go-round and designing the next. They're not children, they're not adults, they're not troubled or pure or saints or sinners. They --- we --- are seekers and learners. They're concerned about the Earth's children, their compatriots, who are struggling so much with separation and violence and cruelty and shame. They know, because there is no us and them ---- everyone has shared that experience of alienation. Some have moved beyond the necessity for playing it out over and over. Some have even reached the point of being able to transcend the illusion of death and use corporeal life to teach a startling lesson. And what could be more startling than the slaughter of innocents?

They develop the scenario and agree to play their parts, incarnate with that exact intention, though once in the heaviness of this world, those memories disappear. Each entity has, as we all do, the ability to back out, make a new decision, use free will. But this band of brothers and sisters have stuck to their agreement and in due time the horrific events of last Friday take place. Word spreads with lightning speed across the globe. Men, women, children, leaders and mothers, fathers and followers, stop and watch in horror as they imagine themselves and their own precious children taken away in a gruesome, wholly unexpected manner. It defies comprehension.

Blame is cast in all directions. Voices cry out in bewilderment, fear, righteousness, piety, sorrow, longing. When will the carnage end? they ask. Where is God? they wonder.

Gradually, in bits and pieces, through all the many mechanisms that human beings have developed, a new consciousness begins to grow. It has been here always, but held down and weakened by a belief system that gives much more weight to darkness than light. A spark here, a feeble flame there, disparate people come together to learn from each other, to teach and learn another way, a peaceful, life-affirming way. And the lesson for which so much earthly agony was endured, completes itself.

Will this be the last time? It could, if the will is strong enough. Love is a powerful force. It remains to be seen.

No, all of the people in this tragedy did not remember that they had taken on the solemn task of riveting the world's attention. Not until they moved into the light, beyond the reach of pain, remorse, shame or fear, did they remember. Perhaps they huddled together, amazed at what they had done, struck by the enormity of it. Maybe they were jubilant that their lesson was taking hold, at least in so far as getting the needed attention to cruelty, violence, innocence and love. Maybe they gathered in a talking circle, reviewing the parts they played and how that would inform their own spiritual development.

I know this is an unorthodox view. To some people it may sound trivializing, minimizing the horror of what happened and the effect on families, community, individual lives of those who remain on this plane to deal with the after-effects. For me, it is completely the opposite. These twenty-eight individuals gave themselves over to the lives of others, gave up the joys that this physical life has to offer in order to help heal the world. It is the only way in which it makes sense to me, the only way to hold not only the lives of those 28, but the untold number who live and die in hunger, pain, misery and fear every day.

There are many lessons to be learned, to be held in the hearts of unknown, distant others who hear the stories, see the pictures, imagine or remember the losses in their own lives. If there were any more evidence needed, cannot this be yet another way that we remember, that we know in the depths of our being, that we are all one?

Luddites Unite!

I have heard Luddites defined as people who eschew technological change, but I didn't really know the origin. Turns out that there are several unreliable stories about a fellow in the late 18th century named Ludd or Lud or Ludlum or something else altogether, who broke a stocking frame to pieces in a fit of rage. Thereafter, when people would emulate his behavior they were said to be doing a Ned Ludd. But it wasn't until about 30 years later that the Luddites became a more organized group of unhappy workers who called on an apocryphal "King Ludd" to justify the destruction of machines that were taking away their jobs.

I was originally thinking of this in terms of myself, and my seeming inability to adjust to my new smart phone. I have been sorely tempted to destroy this stocking frame of a device, and have used some rather coarse language in its presence. I have even told a couple of people that this phone and I are locked in mortal combat. So I began to think of myself as a modern day Luddite, with only a vague knowledge of what Luddism actually was.

The phone and I are going to part company. It's all over but the details. I'm going to return happily to my previous device, which is much better matched to my needs and capabilities. It has given me pause, though. Have I risen to my level of incompetence? Anybody remember the Peter Principle?

Of course, now that I looked up Ned Ludd and the Luddites, I'm struck by the timeliness of their struggle. I'm by no means a student of the labor movement. Most of what I know has been gleaned incidentally as I focus on other aspects of social history. But it has always struck me as people who were fighting the good fight, looking out for their fellows, tending to those who must work in difficult and thankless jobs to keep their families together. The one time I found myself in a (short-lived) job in the offices above the shop floor, I was acutely uncomfortable. My allegience will always fall with those who eat lunch on the loading dock.

I have watched the assault on the labor unions, and on workers in general, with growing dread. I take some comfort in knowing that there have always been workers, male and female, who will only be pushed so far before taking matters into their own hands. History has proven that. But the current consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of so few is alarming to me. And it makes no sense.

I know I'm a Pollyanna and usually try to extract the positive in almost any situation. At the same time, I'm not immune to the suffering of others. How is it possible for people to be oblivious to the transitory and equalizing fact that we are all "fellow passengers to the grave", as Dickens said? Do those who are greedily raking in all the chips while regarding the other players as marks and chumps, think they're not equally vulnerable to the limitations of life? Name one leader, despot, dictator, oligarch or boss man who has managed to elude sickness, decline and death. We are all made of the same stuff.

I know, I know, that's not the point. The Power Elite will not end their days in a refugee camp or a cardboard box. Probably. Nothing is certain. I guess it's just hard for me to imagine being so divorced from one's own humanity and shared destiny not to discern the humanity of others.

My own brushes with poverty ----- yes, I've been on welfare and food stamps before ----- are nothing compared to what millions, probably billions, of human beings on this planet experience daily. Yet somehow, there is likely to be joy, however fleeting, even in the most destitute, if they have connection to themselves or another person. When I was on the skids, what held me together was my baby. He kept me on this side of the dirt because he didn't know anything except warm milk, cradling arms, and life.

There are no new questions, no new concerns, no new cries for justice, no new grabs for power. The "Right to Work" euphemism seeks to veil the destruction of workers and their claim to a fair wage for necessary work. When it comes, the demand for decency, fairness and a piece of the prosperity will once again swell into a movement that cannot be ignored. Both sides, from their own perspective, will demonize the other, opening the way to bloodshed, heartbreak and tragedy. And the cycle begins again.

Is it human nature, inborn and immutable, for some to dominate others? For some to feel superior and entitled to take all the big cookies, leaving only crumbs for the 'undeserving'? Perhaps, since we are simply organisms that occupy a biological, ecological position on the earth, an animal among all animals, that is to be expected. But my Pollyanna nature leads me to believe that we can rise above savagery and wish for others what we wish for ourselves: the necessities of life, as well as serenity, peace, joy and most of all, love.

Pollyanna, meet Rebecca --- she's from Sunnybrook Farm.

Say, did you hear the gossip?

This quote bothers me. I don't remember precisely where I first saw it, but even then it struck me wrong. See, I like ideas as well as the next gal, but when's the last time you knew anybody who spends all their time deconstructing Shakespeare or theorizing about neurological breakthroughs? This quote, Miss Eleanor, sounds kind of pissy to me.

I have spent the better part of my 62 years thinking I was supposed to know things before I learned them, and feeling like a failure because I didn't. Nobody explained to me, back in the squishy years, that you only know what you know until you learn some more, and that the adventure is to be found in the learning. I've got some decent, acceptable gray matter, not off the charts by any means, but the ol' neurons are still firing pretty well. So that lands me solidly in the events category, according to the above rubric.

See, that's the trouble. I see something like this quote and, given my general hierarchical thinking and penchant for comparing myself to everyone else, I just don't measure up. Again. Especially because what I really like is talking about people. And that is the real rub here.

With all due respect to Eleanor, I think this is upside down and inside out. Talking about people is where it's at. I'll go you one further, and come out solidly in favor of gossip. No, not the Bad Girls kind of gossip portrayed in the teenage movies. Not the gossip that is malicious and intended to destroy another person. I'm talking about good old-fashioned over the back fence news gathering. We didn't always have the internet, you know.

Human beings are relational critters. We get all up in each other's business, and that's for good cause. It can be annoying and destructive, but it's really what kept us alive long enough to invent candy bars and washing machines. We talk about each other because it is the most interesting subject there is, and we talk about ourselves because we need to know who we are and why we're here and what we care about.

I heard part of a story on NPR recently about how tea drinking among women in Ireland was railed against as a scourge not unlike alcoholism. This was a good while ago ---- turn of the last century? ---- and there was an effort to discourage it as a waste of time and resources. The very idea of those women getting together for tea! They were probably just gossiping because that's what women do, right? They get together and they gossip about their neighbors and they neglect their children and don't get their work done and waste money on tea, which is obviously addictive and will probably ruin the family unit as we know it. 

Women. Gossip.

I'm not even going to go into men and gossip. Not being a man, I don't have direct experience, so I would only be able to perpetuate stereotypes. But I've been a woman for a long time, and I can tell you that yes, women's conversations frequently center on people. That's because people are important. Human behavior is important. We value our relationships. We talk about our own families, our own relationships, and other people as well. We pass along news of sickness, trouble, break-ups, but also joys, new babies, love. Gossip? I suppose you can call it that. But it is the thread that weaves us into relationship with each other and our wider community. If I don't know you are down with the flu, how can I call to check on you or bring you chicken soup? If I haven't heard through the grapevine that your son has been arrested for drugs, how can I offer my experience, strength and hope? 

Women have been dismissed because of "gossip" for centuries. Men do the important thinking. Women just sit around and gossip. The very idea that relational thinking and talking is what holds society together, gets little traction. And with more and more women intruding into the public sphere of ideas at the very highest levels, there seems to be a feeling among some people that men are being submerged, sidelined, diminished. However pejorative the "gossipy old woman" image has been, it seems to have been necessary to define the contrasting role of men as strong, silent, and logical. So now we have a war on women, and a war on men, and a war on fatherhood, and a war on the family.....

Human beings have developed language in order to convey ideas, to recount and plan events, and to bind people together in their joys and sorrows. We all, male and female, young and old, need all three, Eleanor Roosevelt notwithstanding. And there I can rest, with the assurance that I'm not striving for something unattainable or falling into a pit of hopeless inadequacy, I'm simply another human being sharing the planet. Yay me.

Chestnuts roasting?

First of all, there's the weather. When you can wear shorts in December, it's hard to get psyched about Christmas. The house is decorated within an inch of its life, as always. I've not only gotten used to this annual quirk in my wife's personality, I actually like it. Never in this lifetime or any other would I subject my living space to this amount of seasonal display, if I were on my own. There have been years when my tree was a string of lights mounted on the wall in the shape of a 5-year-old's Christmas tree drawing. Hey, it worked and even looked kind of artsy. I'm fortunate that Jill has developed tolerance for my grinchiness, which is really just laziness. She continues to let me top the tree with a Barbie doll.

We got our family Christmas present unexpectedly this week in the form of a little five pound furry puppy that our neighbors had rescued from an unsuitable home, but couldn't keep. They've been subjected to the exhuberent barking of our other dogs long enough to know that we're suckers for strays and rescues, so little Nana Lu has come to occupy a very large playpen in the living room and is worming her way into our hearts. Since there as been very little resistance from the existing 4-legged family members, 2 dogs and 2 cats, we're taking it as a sign that this was meant to be. Tomorrow she'll make her first trip to the vet and maybe we'll get a clue about her breed mix so we can be prepared for what's likely to come.

Everybody has their stories about holidays. When you hang out with a bunch of recovering drunks and addicts, you hear a lot of tales of woe, especially around the holidays. And that's to be expected. It's a family disease, and this time of year, when family with a capital F is being depicted in the media as perfection itself, it can be difficult. Most of us didn't grow up on Walton Mountain, after all.

But for those of us who did have pretty decent families, it can also be hard. This is the first year that neither of my parents will be with us. Three of the four kids in my family of origin live here, and we'll all be together, but I'm the only one married, all of our kids except one don't live here, so it will still be small. We go visit Mom in the Cottage, but she doesn't really know us and doesn't understand why we're there. I'll get to see my own grown kids after Christmas, which is a rare treat. I'm focused on that more than the actual day of the 25th which will be so different this year, but still laden with familiar ritual.

Maybe this is why it's good to get a puppy. She's a new life, she represents the future. She makes me get up and go outside every hour or two, since I'm housebreaking her. Her jealous big brother needs his play time too, so I romp with him. Playing with dogs, bringing up babies, reading new information on the internet about dog training, all can keep me from sliding into those tales of woe.

And really, there's nothing woeful going on. It's life continuing to move forward, and taking us all with it.

Adult Development 101

The other day I was talking about families and kids with my daughter-in-law. They have chosen not to have children which, even in this enlightened century, goes against the grain. It is interesting to me to hear the pressures, subtle and not, that are directed toward a couple who are well-educated, prosperous and don't want kids. She says they find themselves being odd-man-out all the time. They also reap a certain amount of envy and resentment from people who are raising children.

Our conversation got me thinking about choices in a new way. Every new baby represents possibility at birth. Who will this new being turn out to be? If you are a parent, or involved with babies and kids in any capacity, it's natural to speculate about the child's future. When my son was 15, I wondered if he was going to turn into a misogynistic serial killer. He wore black, listened to terrible, violent music, and wouldn't come out of his room. It didn't happen. He's a caring, careful physician now and he loves his mama, and adores his wife.  As for my daughter, she seemed destined to a life of disorganization and chaos, judging by her school career. Yet here she is, running a museum, supervising people, researching and learning. And she keeps me in stitches on the phone several times a week. We have conversations I couldn't have with anybody else.

As a teacher, I reminded myself that every class of 22 was a sample ---- which kid would turn out to be gay? Which would die before growing old? Which would become wealthy, go on food stamps, go in the military, go to jail? Even in first grade, they had some very established personality and nervous system traits that would affect their eventual outcomes. But they were also developing, malleable, open to suggestion and influence. Actually, teaching ---- and parenting ---- are pretty awesome responsibilities for nurturing the next generation.

But my conversation with Aury also made me think about adult development. Everybody knows that children are under construction, but what about adults? What makes us become the people we are by the end of life? Because I know that I'm not the same person I was at 25 or 45 or even last year. So there is still development going on, thank goodness.

I think about the people I know who have attained ages in their 80s and 90s. There is a perception that once people are adults, they pretty much keep the characteristics they already have. But that's not true. Every stage of life has its own unique challenges, and people change in response to them. Yes, maybe there is a baseline --- someone who has been introverted and withdrawn since infancy is not likely to become a party girl at 70. There's even some evidence that optimism/pessimism may have a neurological basis that is acted upon by life.

But I'm thinking mostly about people I grew up with. Somehow or another, we're all getting older at the same rate, but we're not aging the same. You know the stereotypes about the elderly: the sweet little old lady, the curmudgeonly old man, the complaints, the stinginess, the childishness, the difficulty learning new things, the CRS (can't remember shit) ---- all with some seeds of truth, but none with universal application. There is much variation in how we age. So what causes that?

Just as we look at a child and wonder who they will become, we can look at our spouses, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, friends, and wonder who they will become late in life. I have two former husbands and I can look at each of them and see who I would have been living with, had I kept following those paths. I have some friends I've known since we were children, I can look at my cousins and my siblings, and I sometimes shake my head in wonder. Would I have predicted 50 years ago who would turn out to be a hermit, holed up and having to be coaxed out? Who would still be singing and dancing onstage? Who would jump out of an airplane or climb a mountain to celebrate a late 80s birthday? Would I have predicted my own arrival at this waystation --- not the end, by any means, but moving down the track with more wonder and delight than I've had since I was a little girl?

I love to see the adults my own two children have grown into. It fills me with satisfaction, pride and a great deal of love. At the same time, I also wonder what kind of old people they will be.

By now, I have a new perspective. It's very different to promise to love, honor and cherish someone when you're 18, or even 31, like I did. It's another thing to do so at 50 or 60. I can't see into the future, I can't predict events or illnesses. But I have a clearer picture of who I am continuing to grow into, and I have the joy of being part of Jill's journey, as well. Together, we get to step into the future and become the distinctive old broads we're meant to be. Pretty damn good, if you ask me.

Geezers, pass it on!

I get it now! I understand why old folks like to wallop the youngin's with tales from ancient times, like 40 years ago, before the world was really even settled yet and they didn't have modern inventions. So you better sit down for a minute, because I'm about to launch....

Once upon a time it was the 1960s. What just popped into your head? Love beads and hippies? Strike that. Love, peace and LSD? Strike that, too. I'm not saying they didn't happen, just that tv and movies have romanticised and mythologized that part of the culture, just as they have the WWII 40s and the flapper 20s and the big daddy of them all, the Civil War ----- (or the Late Unpleasantness, as we say in the south).

Back to the 1960s. There was a war going on, with several fronts. One was in the streets and backroads of the south, as Americans who were the descendents of enslaved people rose up and claimed full citizenship. That's not how it was perceived by many people at the time, by the way.

Another front was the aforementioned Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll uprising. It was fought in large part within the confines of living rooms and basement rec rooms, as well as on college campuses, being essentially a generational battle.

Then there was Viet Nam. As the leading edge of the post-war baby boom generation became draft age, more and more were being plucked out of the herd and deposited in the jungle to fight a war with real bullets, the kind where very young men, boys really, die.

Coming as it did after more than a decade of what appeared, on the surface, to be peace and prosperity (shhh, cold wars don't count, just go play outside and let the grown-ups take care of everything) the unrest that popped up everywhere at once, it seemed, was divisive, disorienting, and entirely uncalled for in the eyes of the powers-that-be. After all, wasn't the US of A the greatest country in the world? Hadn't we just proved it by beating the hell out of all the bad guys on the planet and setting off the most awesome explosions known to man?

Whenever I hear people talk about the Culture War, I have to think back to those days. People weren't just shouting across a divide, they were killing each other in the streets. The national guard was marching on campuses and actually shooting students. Dead. Forever.

It is not that I think this recent election was not important, or that the issues being raised now are of less consequence than those from 50 years ago or 150 years ago. Each generation has to find its own way, and it always involves pitting new ideas against the old. It is axiomatic that young people view the world differently than their elders, and that older generations see the young as too inexperienced to understand the complexities before them.

Personally, I take comfort from reading history. Cultural changes occur regularly, cyclically, along with everything else. Guess what, old folks, we're gonna die first and leave everything to the youngsters. And they will be fine, or as fine as anybody ever is. They may even do a better job than we have ---- I tend to think that's true.

And it happens just in time. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm starting to get tired. My body is not what it used to be and my phone is way smarter than I am, which drives me crazy. The banner is getting heavy. Marching in the streets doesn't hold the allure it once did. Sometimes, I'd just rather meditate about it, sit on my deck and relish the wonders of nature, feel my rootedness to the earth and experiment with the idea that someday it will all go on without me. What happens when all the baby boomers are too pooped to move off the deck, huh? It sure doesn't mean that the world will stop turning. It might just mean it's a new day. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Full Moon

As a primary teacher, the general wisdom held that kids were more likely to act out and be a little weird when the moon was full. I've heard people in other caregiving professions make the same claim. Whether there is anything to it, or it is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy, I don't know. What I do know is that everything seems to run in cycles.

I've never lived right on the ocean, but I have lived not far from the beach a couple of times. Ocean tides rise and fall with great predictability ---- after all, tide schedules are published in newspapers and online. It's no secret that the moon waxes and wanes, the seasons come and go, our hearts beat steadily and our lungs require no consciousness to expand and contract.

With all the evidence of rhythm and cycle, it is no wonder that an event which falls far outside the norm makes humans and animals edgy. Where I live, we see it every year during hurricane season ---- and also during the winter if a bold meteorologist breathes the word snow. Anticipation rises, an excitement that needles the nervous system and causes unusual behaviors. Kids twirl, squeak, jump, giggle and clutch each other. Adults would do the same, but that's unseemly, so instead they stock up on essentials like bread, milk and beer, lay in a supply of batteries, and hit the social media sites.

Status updates! Exclamation points! Photos! Rumors!! And the sense that the unexpected is just around the corner, danger lurks and life is unpredictable. Anything could happen!!!

Never mind that life is always unpredictable, that anything could happen on any given day. We rely on the rhythms we know and understand to keep us safe and going forward. If I had to assess the risk of getting in the car every time I did it, I'd wind up cowering in my house. If I consulted actuarial charts (or even just the obits) every morning with an eye to my planned activities, I might never get out of bed.

Someone in our city was hit by a bus this week, and unfortunately he was killed. I often say, when drawing an example of an unexpected event, that "I could go out and get hit by a bus tomorrow!" It struck me as strange, and really sad, that someone actually did.

One week away from the "cataclysmic" election, we have a storm of unpredictable proportions. It's like a ready-made metaphor from heaven. It is making landfall right now, according to news reports. Millions of people are in the path it is expected to take, hunkered down and hopefully safe, but some folks will inevitably lose their homes, their livelihoods, their lives. Life stories are being altered right now; forever after, for them, time will be divided between 'before the storm' and 'after the storm'. It is out of rhythm, out of sync, and random in the way that natural disasters always are.

We here in the center of North Carolina have been spared the worst of it. Others will suffer. This is the type of event that causes physical changes, financial changes, and most of all, spiritual change. It is hard to survive destruction and not come face to face with the big questions: Why them? Why not me? After a lifetime of hard work, why is one person wiped out and another left intact? What is my response in the wake of such despair and destruction? Who helps? Who hinders or cheats? What is the Right thing to do?

There will weeks and months, if not years, of responding, rebuilding, renewal. Stories will emerge of heroism,  tragedy, luck and cruelty. Leaders of all stripes will bend the narrative to fit their own purposes ---- religious, political, social, educational. It will bring out the best in communities, and the worst.

What ultimately comes out, along with cockroaches, rats and diseases, are human beings being human.
As a writer, it's bonanza. As a person, it's another perspective on life.

Now I'm a taker, not a maker

Oh, don't get your knickers in a knot ---- this is not a political rant, despite the title. At least, I don't think it is. You know the old saw about a fish not being able to perceive water? At T minus 12 days until the election, it may be that everything is political and I'm just in denial, but I'm not intentionally trying to raise hackles or pit family members against one another.

My taking, at this point, is internal. I am once more in the place of being entirely "give out", as we say in these parts. Every day I wake up to the brilliant sunshine and deep blue of a Carolina sky in October, and think that this is the day I will feel good, have energy, not fall in the pit. Some days, I almost make it. I live in fear that I've almost used up my allotment of taking, and the people I love the best will back off and leave me to wallow in the hole. That hasn't happened yet, but since disaster-thinking seems to be my metier these days, I fully expect it.

Who knows what brings this stuff on? I can list the circumstances and get some pretty good agreement that some things suck right now. Top on the list, and seemingly the trigger, is putting my dying mother in "the home" a couple of weeks ago.  Of course it's sad when you are watching your mother die by centimeters, fading away like an old photograph. But doesn't that happen every day to people all over the world? Do they all become struck with the inability to function like normal human beings?

I have one task on the agenda for the day ---- pay bills. I've kind of been waiting until all the 3rd week payments get deposited ---- Jill's check, pension, social security, royalties. It's usually better not to take out more money than the bank says we have. But the funds have arrived, and still I stare at a towering stack of unsorted mail, some of which is emblazoned with bolded and highlighted due dates. That's what happens when you're a taker. You live off the dole and don't pay your bills. Ooooops. Sorry. I just couldn't help it. I'm a 47% kinda gal.

I'm not without resources. I have friends, family, professional help, even medication. I can't quite figure out if I'm being stalked by my old pal, depression, or whether this is a perfectly understandable and transient reaction to life. But that's what shrinks are for. Me, I just have to do at least a little of the stuff I know is good for me (I found a new AA meeting yesterday that I like!) and, as my ever-lovin' wife keeps telling me, go easy on myself. Easier said than done.

Maybe, just maybe, there are seasons for taking and seasons for making. Perhaps the cycles of ebb and flow apply even to me. Resistance is futile, and probably detrimental. Hasn't it been true, so far, that even the most painful losses later bring forth sweet fruit, as long as I don't harden my shell, hunker down, become immobile? Can I trust that it will happen again, that after the darkness, light will come? It seems, this day, this minute, so far away. But maybe just a spark, a tiny flame, a quickening of life, is all it takes to keep lifting my eyes toward the sky.

Dare to be happy

Since I have another sleepless night going, I decided to add some poetry reading to my usual remedy of chamomile tea. We heard a cascade of Mary Oliver poems and quotations this morning at UUFR, which reminded me that the perfect antidote tonight could be found in a reprise. So I've been browsing the web, reading poems and letting my mind swim about.

You know that saying: "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!"

Well, my mama ain't happy, not by a long shot. She's been in "the home" for 5 days now and is not adjusting very well. And why should she? She may be demented, but she knows whether she's around family and people who know and love her, or whether she's not. She may not remember my name, but she knows who I am. She told me first thing that she was mad because it took me so long to get there.

In truth, this goes against pretty much everything my motherly heart believes to be right. I don't let babies cry for fear of "spoiling" them. I don't say of a child who's acting out, "Just ignore him. He only wants attention." I have the romantic belief that humans read unspoken communication far more fluently than the spoken. And I can't bring myself to believe that leaving my mom, in her uncomprehending state, in a strange place with nobody she knows is actually "good for her". Necessary, maybe. Certainly it is safer, considering how much she has been falling. But good? That's not so clear.

I've never believed that the most vulnerable people in the household should be made to sleep alone in a dark room while the grown ups, who have a firm grasp on both object permanence and time, get to sleep together. In much the same way, the confusion and disorientation of dementia should not be something a person must grapple with alone.

At the same time, I do know that the strain of being a home caregiver was rapidly becoming too much. I should probably be impervious to it, should be stronger, show some true grit, but I was beginning to lose my grip. The horrors of Alzheimer's Disease occur on many levels and affect far more people than the patient herself.

Knowing that my mother is suffering, do I dare to be happy? Do I allow myself to breathe in relief, shake off the grinding responsibility, patter barefoot through the house with the dog at my heels and sing along with the music? Knowing that my Mama hurts, can I stem the tears, mine and hers? Find solace in watching her morning birds, take comfort in rationalization and platitudes?

This is it. In my life here and now the sun does shine, I can hear the songs and feel the tender kisses. If I wrap myself in guilt and grief, the days will trickle away until I suddenly see that the night is closing in and I can't bring them back.

Mary Oliver reminds me that the pond and the lilies are there, lavishly, every morning, whether I ever dare to be happy, whether I ever dare to pray.

Wake 'n Worry

It seems like you no sooner bring a baby home from the hospital than insensitive people start asking if she's sleeping through the night yet. New parents, especially breastfeeding moms, become intimately acquainted with the post-midnight hours. Sleep deprivation and exhaustion cause a haze of delirium to settle over the household. But that's all part of the picture. Tiny, new people are not designed to sleep through the night and in most cases they don't. From my status as Crone and Metaphorical Grandmother I will tell you there are two questions NOT to ask a new mother: Is the baby sleeping through the night? and When are you going back to work? Believe me, she's working. So don't be an idiot.

I was lying awake at 3:30 this morning thinking about all this. When my first baby was born, I used to sit in the rocking chair in the bay window of our upstairs bedroom and nurse him in those dim, early hours. The streets were utterly quiet. It was November and snow was already on the ground. Much as I missed my sleep, there was something amazing about those times, a stillness, as though the earth and I were breathing in sync.

Now, nearly four decades later, I am once again up in the middle of the night, this time with my mother, who is on the other end of life. It's not quite as easy to feel that sweet solace of the night; she's not as little and cute as a baby. But sometimes, I've had a similar feeling once she's back in bed and has drifted off to sleep.

I'm taking a poll here. Raise your hand if you always sleep through the night. Raise them high. Uh-huh. Just as I thought. As crazy as we are to have the most vulnerable people in our care sleep through the night, most of us don't do it ourselves. Getting up to go to the bathroom is maybe the number one motivator, often more than once during the night, depending on what we've been doing and how old we are. No getting around it, it's better than the alternative. Or maybe the dog barks, a storm comes up, the bed partner is snoring, a dream catapults us into wakefulness. Women of a certain age spend much of the night throwing covers off and on due to temperature fluctuations, which seem to slide right into intractable insomnia.

And how many of you stay awake for awhile after being awakened? Hands up. What do you do then? Probably don't think about how grateful you are to be awake in the middle of the night, especially if work beckons in the morning. It's the wake and worry time. Money, kids, money, health, family members, job, burglars, pets, money, job,  and performance anxiety. Oh yeah, and the car. And the house. And, on a really bad night, death.

I talk to so many people who say "Oh, you should have called me" when I say I've been up with Mom. It makes me wonder if there is anybody who really sleeps through the night all the time, or if that's one of those closely held secrets that people don't talk about much. Which gives rise to the myth of the baby-who-sleeps-all-night.

Mom is moving to an Alzheimer's assisted living place tomorrow. My nighttime foraging and worry-fests will be reduced, but I don't expect them to disappear altogether. I still have plenty more diseases to conjure up in the night, lots of financial crises to tend to (which always involves a great deal of mental math at 3am) and as the days tick away, the old standby, Grim Reaper.

Should I give you a call the next time I'm up in the wee hours?

Is it really hate?

I survived the Amendment 1 battle this spring. Many hurtful things were said during the months leading up to the day that 62% (I think) of my fellow citizens of North Carolina voted on my marriage with a resounding NO SAME SEX MARRIAGE ALLOWED! I remember coming home from working the polls that evening, and seeing the early results on tv. It was like getting hit in the gut; I just started crying.

I recently read an article in which an archbishop said that the proposed amendment in Minnesota, which is on the ballot this fall, isn't meant to hurt anybody. That struck me as a very strange thing to say, but I'll even give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he really means it kind of in the way a parent with a belt in his hand might say "this hurts me more than it hurts you." I don't agree, and in my opinion it is willfully delusional, but I expect his self-rationalization depends on believing that he's not intentionally hurting a large swath of the population.

I've been troubled through all of the rhetoric surrounding civil rights about the use of the word "hate". I do know that in the household where I grew up there were two phrases that were completely off limits: "I hate you" and "Shut up." Every family has its taboos, and those were ours. So I come from a lifetime of not using the word hate to describe my feelings for any person. Things, yes. I can hate my hair, a movie, a hideous chair, getting out of my warm bed on a cold morning. But people? No.

I was not born a Unitarian-Universalist, but when I first came into the fellowship and read the principles, they resonated with me. I could definitely "affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all people". That doesn't mean I love and want to hang out with all people everywhere, or that I agree with and have respect for everything everybody says. Not by any means. But the inherent worth and dignity of every infant born? That's a no-brainer.

If I truly hold that affirmation, it requires me to try to see things from another point of view. Who are the people who would commit atrocities against other people in the name of their religion? How can anyone beat a child to teach her how to behave? Why does the idea of black people voting freely, or gay people getting married cause such strong, and often violent, resistance?

I'm not very good at it, seeing it from their point of view. And I run the risk of inserting my own arrogance or judgments. But when I try to put myself into the shoes of the lady outside of Chick-fil-A with a handful of waffle fries and a mouth full of slogans, it most often feels like fear. Fear that the world is changing too fast. Fear of those people who seem so different. Fear that her own child could become one of those others. Maybe even fear that if she doesn't personally do something to stop it, she will be held accountable by her God and be condemned.

I really think that most people, unless they are clinically insane, justify their behavior, no matter how bizarre or unreasonable it might look to others. The embezzler is just borrowing the money and will pay it back before anybody misses it. The car thief needs this car more than that "rich" person who owns it. The student who cheats on the test didn't have time to study and needs this grade to graduate. We all rationalize and justify our behavior, usually in small, inconsequential ways. As the behavior moves up the destructive scale, the justifications become ever more unusual, but they're still there. Even terrorists who kill people have their own reasons and justifications.

Hate is a strong word. I don't think the lady outside of Chick-Fil-A hates me. She doesn't even know me. It is easier to hate an amorphous group or an idea than it is an individual person you interact with. Sometimes hate is the appropriate word and describes a very real feeling. But to refer to entire groups of people as HATERS seems counter-productive to me. It simply perpetuates the stereotypes and generalizations that give rise to violence in the first place.

Maybe we can celebrate the International Day of Peace by not calling people haters.

The Good Ol' Days

Jill has very clear rules about food. She'll eat something for supper, she'll take the leftover for lunch the next day, and then it becomes poisonous. No ambivalence. No shilly-shallying. Straightforward, no need for judgment calls or decision making. Moving right along. For me, it's not so simple.

It might be because of our half-generation gap. It shows up now and again, highlighting the ten year difference in our ages. I was raised by actual Great Depression parents, the kind that don't throw anything away if there's still some use left in it. The kind who used to say, "But you just got a new coat two years ago. Why do you want another one?" In that household, throwing away food was a sin just short of grand larceny.

For ten years now, Jill and I have had these related discussions:

me - "What happened to those mashed potatoes from the other day?"
her - "I threw them away."
me - "But I was going to make potato patties tonight!"
(She smiles with secret satisfaction, knowing she just saved herself from eating poisonous potatoes.)

me - "Are we out of sweet pickles?"
her - "I threw them away."
me - "What? Pickles don't go bad. That's why they're pickles, to preserve them."
her (shrugging) - "They were past the date."
me - "Don't you know that's just a marketing ploy? Why, Aunty Ann made pickles and we used to get them      from the basement for years."
(Same smirk.)

or this one:

her - "Is this milk still good? The date is ok, but...."
me - "Of course it is. That's the sell-by date, not the expiration date."
her - "But it smells funny."
me - (taking a swig) "Nah, it's fine."
(She wrinkles her nose and puts it back in the fridge, never to touch it again.)

Just like everything else we've encountered, this took awhile to iron out, and I think what we have today is an uneasy truce. I still have covered dishes of leftover dabs of things I think I might eat for lunch while she's not home, and she ignores them. I've come to accept that she will ALWAYS open the new jug of milk or juice, even if the other one is still not empty, and she will use the new one while I use up the old one. It's not perfect, but it works well enough.

I've been thinking about this, among other things, because I read an opinion piece online this morning about nostalgia as a political issue. It was this pundit's opinion that each of the major parties is suffering from Nostalgia ---- wanting to go back to the Good Ol' Days ----- but each focused on different parts of those ephemeral days. Now, I don't know if it's a function of age, or simply part of the human psyche, but I can relate to some of that pining for simpler times, even if I know that it's based on very selective memory.

Change is not an easy thing to embrace, a lot of the time. Of course, you don't hear anybody complaining about some changes. There might be a few, but the vast majority of people don't want to go back to having no electricity, no running water, no transportation except shoeleather or horses. (Keep in mind that there are still innumerable people for whom that is present-day life.)

So really, I think it's more the feelings than the actual reality that people long for. And that probably IS an indelible part of the human psyche. It is the warmth, security, and safety of early childhood that we long for. We don't want to be children again ---- Heaven Forbid! No autonomy, no adult beverages, no love life? Hell no! That's not what the advertisers and politicians are trading on when they evoke Mom and Pop businesses, families around the dinner table, Main Street, school and church, Little League and flag-waving. Oh, and don't forget apple pie. They're calling out our babyhood feelings, but placing them in grown-up situations. We'll get rid of the bad people, don't you worry. We'll make sure you're safe and secure and put a   chicken in every (deserving) pot. Vote for us.

I suppose there are folks who long to recreate the world they think they remember, where you didn't lock your doors and everybody knew your name. But that was never a universal experience, and even for those who lived it, the entire facade was dependent on other people NOT being able to live that way. There were no openly gay couples raising children on Main Street. In that America, the grunt work was done by the socially, if not legally, segregated non-white people who were never going to live in the big houses on Main Street or own the banks on Wall Street.

I expect it was pretty sweet to be able to simply ignore the unpleasant realities that were right under your nose, if you were white and male and middle class and at least moderately educated. The world WAS safe and ordered and predictable. But there's not a lot to be nostalgic about if you weren't.

When she was a kid, my daughter used to refer to historic times as "back when men ruled the world".  She grew up to be an historian.

These are the "good times" for kids being born in this decade. While the adults and all us old geezers are freaking out about how awful things are, they're just opening their eyes and discovering that the sun comes up and goes down every day, that seasons follow one another, that a hug is warm and sometimes things hurt, but the hurt stops after while. They won't all grow up feeling safe and secure --- that's never happened since the beginning of time ---- but enough of them will, that in 50 or 60 years, the Teens and Twenties will be soft-lens sweet, and folks will be saying "Wouldn't it be great if we could just go back to the Good Ol' Days?"

Quarter of a Century

25 years ago, we trooped into Wake Forest on Labor Day, looking for hope and change. Two vehicles, loaded with everything we owned after the marathon yard sales in Illinois, it was my husband Skip pulling the U-Haul trailer, the two kids 12 and 4, and me at the ripe old age of 37. My father drove his broken down little pickup truck, loaded to the gills with our stuff. We looked like leftovers from a John Steinbeck novel.

I've lived within 20 miles of that first rented townhouse ever since. Twenty-five years.

You have to realize that until this time, I never lived anywhere very long. My first big move was from Cedar Falls, Iowa where I was born, to Evanston, Illinois at the age of six weeks. That set the stage for me to move 32 times in my first 30 years. I not only never put down roots, I barely broke the surface. So staying here in the Triangle and only changing domiciles 4 times in a quarter century is pretty amazing to me.

Yesterday, I accidentally took a trip down memory lane. It was not my intention. I had to be up that way to drop Mom off at Barb's house, and she suggested that there might be a new coffee shop on White Street in Wake Forest, so I swerved through town just to see. No coffee shop, but something about the gloomy day and the actual anniversary made me cruise through the streets looking for my old self. So much has changed. I left Wake Forest nearly ten years ago and it has been following valiantly in Cary's footsteps ever since. When we moved there in 1987, there were 4500 people, two places to eat (The Fountain and Shorty's), one take out pizza place (PTA) and plenty of churches. The churches have burgeoned, as have the eating establishments. It's a veritable emporium of big box stores and slick-looking shops these days, and thousands more people with cars.

The two houses where I lived are still there, though one, a sorry-looking shack on a main road, has a For Sale sign in front of it. I expected it to be torn down after I moved out, but he's squeezed another decade of low rent and no maintenance out of it.

Twenty-five years is a pretty long time, though it doesn't seem so as I look back over it. I moved there younger than my older child is now. That's a little startling.When Dad helped us load up and move, he was the age I am now. That's even weirder. The generations are collapsing.

1987. Did the world feel as breathlessly precarious as it does today? Probably. Were the politics as venomous, the citizens so divided, the way so uncertain? When I sift back through the decades, even the tumultuous years of my youth at the height of the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement, those are not the things that spring immediately to mind. Andrew was born shortly after the long, hot summer when Nixon resigned, but what I remember was living in that trailer, being way too hot, building projects for one of my classes, spending time with our best friends Michael and Cristi.

I marched in the war protests, I met with my women's collective, I agitated for legalizing abortion. I worked on local and gubernatorial campaigns in the seventies. I was passionate about the rights of women, improving the lot of children and public education. But those are not the things I remember now when I look back from my perch so many years later.

When I look back it's family I remember: my children being born, being toddlers and school kids. I remember the excitement when my parents would fly in from Europe during the summer and we'd get to spend time together. Vivid are the trips to Albia to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I think about starting my business on a $100 loan from Mom, and then keeping it going for almost 15 years. I remember friends and love and tears and divorce and love again. I don't remember politics.

I'm glad I've lived here in the South for twenty-five years. It was like a foreign country when I first moved here; I couldn't even understand what people were saying in the AA meetings in Wake Forest and Youngsville. But it gradually became home and if I spend the next twenty-five years living here, in this town, in this house even, that will be ok with me. The public life rages on and on, and always will. I'll pay attention and I'll sometimes get involved. But my real life, my true north, lies here in the dogwood trees and gentle cadences of the south, with my home, my wife and my family.

Powerless over ice cream

Last night I was feeling very stressed and self-critical because of a story I read on the interwebs machine, and especially the harsh comments afterwards. It's enough, that I already chastise myself constantly and feel physically debilitated because of putting on an excessive amount of weight in the past year and a half. To read the horrible comments that suggested everything short of suicide as an appropriate punishment for obesity, the scourge of all human conditions, the worst possible thing that a person can do to herself, put me in the frame of mind for great self-flagellation while trying to go to sleep. That was interspersed with repeated protestations from the tiny, squeaky voice rising from somewhere in the vicinity of my pancreas, saying "I'm not that bad, I'm not hopeless, I'll do better, really I will, just don't beat me anymore."

A modest breakfast of yogurt and fruit, with a cup of stout English tea, followed by a brisk walk through the woods, up and down hills with Buddy boy, gave me a great start to my 8,794th new life of moderation and good health. I can even look forward to the delivery of my farm-fresh produce box this afternoon.

Straightening up the front room, I pick up a magazine from several weeks ago that I hadn't read yet. It was early. I still had plenty of time to do laundry and get to the writing I'm going to do. I could flip through it while I had a mid-morning snack, maybe an apple. An hour later, I had read the magazine and eaten a good bit of ice cream and polished off Jill's uber-healthy, expensive whole food potato chips. Really? REALLY?

It's not that I didn't know what I was doing. It's that I didn't interrupt the impulse. And that ----- that is how addiction works.

One would assume, but one would be wrong, that having almost 32 years of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction would give a person every possible tool, desire, impetus and strategy for sloughing off other troublesome addictive behaviors. Alas.

Were the consequences so much greater all those years ago, that I was willing to go through the inevitable withdrawal and very steep learning curve, in order to stop drinking? I had tried many times before, but one day it worked and I never picked up again. Over the years I've been troubled by other self-destructive behaviors that I have since been able to put to rest. But this ---- I don't know what it will take.

Nobody ever got "better" about anything by being yelled at and beaten. When I had kids who had learning problems, I didn't stand over them telling them they were stupid and hopeless and would never learn anything. But I don't seem to be able to stop yelling at myself and launching into yet another cycle of seeking relief in the very thing that is most likely to kill me in the end.

Someday, unless the pols succeed in banishing science altogether, the brain scientists may get this all figured out and work hand in hand with the behavioral scientists to develop effective treatments for such stubbornly resistant subjects as I. I hope they do, and I wish I'd still be around to reap the benefits. In the meantime, though, it is not helpful or effective for me or anyone else to view this as anything but the vicious addictive cycle that it is.

I've got will power. I've got knowledge. I've got desire. What I don't have, is any defense against that first mouthful.

No wisdom here today. No humor, either.

Garden of Solitude

I had a friend who used to say that he had moved from the "desert of loneliness to the garden of solitude". While he has since moved on to the garden beyond, I hold those words very close in my heart. That description was a lasting gift from Julian to me.

It's been a week of being busy outside of the house for me, and today I am steadfast in my resolve to spend time alone. I took Mama to daycare early so that it would be cool enough for a walk in the woods with Buddy. We've been missing our walks for the past six days.

For me, there is always the danger of becoming unmotivated to do the things that are best for me, if I go on hiatus for awhile. I don't know what that is ---- some internal bent toward self-destruction, or just plain laziness and sloth ---- but going six days without walking was right on the borderline of saying what the hell, and giving it up entirely.

By 8:10 Buddy and I were parking on North Hills Drive to try another link of the Ironwood Trail that we hadn't walked before. I knew where it would end up, but we were starting from another point. Buddy has missed his walks terribly and was positively jubilant when we got on the trail. He didn't know what to sniff first, and couldn't stop prancing back and forth across the path. To my surprise, I felt much the same way. We were no sooner out of sight of the road than I felt like I could breathe deeply for the first time in days. There was a ferocious wind and rain storm last night, so the trees were dripping in the early morning sun, the usually quiescent stream was out of its banks and careening toward Crabtree Creek. The damp earth and clean air combined to give the forest the sense of having been freshly scrubbed, ready for whatever adventures the new day would bring. And that is how I felt as well.

The first three decades of my life, I spent a fair amount of time outdoors. My mother was of the old-school in believing that children needed to play outside whenever possible. Since there were no toys outside, we devised our own games and star-studded theatricals. We could take a few things out with us --- toy dishes, tricycles, dolls. But for the most part we used what we found ---- sticks make admirable guns and swords for pirates, cowboys, cops and robbers. Jumpropes were good for everything from defining boundaries to tying up bad guys. And there's really no way to cook up a three course dinner without plenty of flowers, grass, seeds, and mud. If the sky hadn't provided water lately, there was always the yard pump or the garden hose.

Somehow, playing outside, even though I was scared of bugs and spiders from an early age, was the memory that has survived the longest. Perhaps that's because it was so sensory laden. Perhaps it was the level of attention I gave it; I was absorbed completely in whatever I was doing.

The need to be outside in order to feel whole carried over into adulthood, to some extent, though it started to be extinguished during my twenties. I still went for long, solitary walks by riverbanks and through parks. Whenever I was overcome with feelings that needed to spill, I sought the out of doors. More than once, I literally hugged trees. There were also escapades aplenty as I grew older, the ones that necessitated secrecy and subterfuge. Where better than a lonely beach or abandoned farmhouse, neglected walled garden or secluded forest to indulge in activities that were off limits? Skinny dipping in the river, smoking pot in the old barn, and let's not forget parking in the corn fields. I didn't get sober till I was thirty, so there was plenty of opportunity for scrapes and scrambles with illicit company in the great out-of-doors. Did I mention cemeteries? Nighttime on the golf course?

From thirty to sixty I was busy, too busy for all that messing around in the mud. Even taking children to the park seemed like an imposition on my very busy life. It's amazing that they got outdoors at all. I haven't ever talked to them about their memories of indoor/outdoor life ---- that will be an interesting conversation or two. I do know that both of them enjoy plenty of outdoor activities now, as adults. Making a living and raising kids, trying to run a business, stay sober, tend to everyday family life, kept me indoors and on the run for most of my middle decades. There were exceptions: some camping here and there, visits to state parks and lakes, trips to the beach. But somehow, when my life already felt so chaotic, nature did not feel restorative, it felt untamed, unpredictable, dangerous. There might be enormous, scary bugs in the woods, or murderers and rapists on the greenways. And anyway, I just didn't have time.

So now, once again, I'm back full circle. I haven't made any mud pies, but I've certainly been floating sticks and leaves in the creeks and running along the bank to watch them float through the rapids. I don't stay out playing in the long grass till I'm covered with sunburn and mosquito bites, but I smell the trees and flowers and listen for birdsongs, watch the fledgling cardinals in the backyard and hold very still to see the doe and her fawns cross the stream close by. Maybe one of these days I'll fling myself down in the grass to watch the clouds, or roll down a velvety hill to make myself giggle. I've been known to make a snow angel, winter before last.

What I hope is that the child of wonder who still resides within and the natural world that never stopped rocking along without, will continue to converge. For me, that's the best of all worlds.

Clarion Call!

First of all, Greenland is melting. Yes, really melting in a big way in just the past few weeks. It astounds me that nobody is talking about that very much. It seems like some of the biggest news out there, and I'm not being an alarmist. All of a sudden something like 97% of the ice has melted. What in the world??

All I can say about that is, it's a good thing the North Carolina legislature decided that a rise in ocean level is not a problem we need to plan for. Pretty soon, I'll have beach front property without even having to move. We can rent out our Raleigh beach house and make a lot of money and buy a place in the mountains!

Ah, the Mountains. Jill and I just spent 3 nights in a 100 year old fishing cabin above the New River. It was great! When you walk in the door, it smells like 100 years worth of fires in the huge stone fireplace. The cabin's logs were hand hewn. Of course it was updated, a kitchen and bath added (very tiny) and it even had internet. And there was the hot tub out back in a little covered gazebo. I don't believe that was original to the property.

We went to the mountains for "respite" ----- that's a big word in the caregiving business. I've been learning a whole new vocabulary since taking Mom in to live with us nine months ago. We definitely were in need of some respite. It's one of those situations where you don't know how much you need it until you do it. Though Mom had spent a couple of weekends with my sister Barb, we had not been away by ourselves for the whole nine months. When we're at home, even if she's asleep, there's never a sense of being alone. She's always popping up and when she does, she requires constant, though subtle, supervision. It's a tricky dance we do, keeping a watchful eye while letting her feel like she's independent. You never know what she's going to do next.

People with little kids are thinking, yeah, yeah, whatever. Try a three-year-old, a five-year-old, and an infant.  And that's certainly true. I've raised kids and I remember how relentless and tiring that is. They're every bit as likely to hurt themselves and be unpredictable as a demented old person. The difference is, that they learn (hopefully) from experience. Mom can't even remember what she did or said 5 minutes ago. There is no learning taking place, there are no memories being created. Every moment is in the now and when it's gone, it's gone. She can't explain what she was thinking or how she's feeling.

The past few days at daycare, she's thrown hissy fits over nothing that anyone can figure out. She's been destructive and mean, cussing at the staff, trying to break things, trying to escape. It's entirely out of character for her. I've had to pick her up early and she has no memory of what happened. She says, sorrowfully and sincerely, "I don't want to do that. I'm sorry." and I know that's true. The mother who raised me, who taught me right from wrong and how to behave, would be mortified if she could see herself now. It is truly heartbreaking to watch.

While we were "respiting" in the mountains, I left it all behind --- the stress, sadness, exasperation, confusion, anger and fear over my mother's condition. I was able to be in the moment with Jill, to reconnect with my wife, the woman I love to love, and felt immeasurably grateful for everything from the beauty of the countryside to the luxury of a king-sized bed. I left the worry behind, but not the awareness. I found myself haunted, as I am so often, with thoughts of  how immediate and precious all of life is to me now. Will I be my mother in 10 or 15 years? Will Jill have to do for me what I do for Mom every day?

It's not a worry so much as a call to attention. This day is well and truly mine. How do I want to spend it? Will I work myself up into a lather over Chik-fil-A and electoral politics? Even Greenland, that really and truly feels like a canary, no, more like Big Bird with a megaphone, in the coal mine for our planet --- even that is not something I will allow myself to lose serenity over.

I can't control what happens in the big world, but I can keep tabs on my inner universe. And my choice today is to be here now and breathe.

You believe what?

At our Unitarian Universalist fellowship yesterday, we had the first of two messages about belief.  It's been rattling around in my head ever since. This week was a defense of the notion of belief and the part it plays in the life of an individual and a liberal religious denomination. Next week will be a message entitled "Beyond Belief". I won't be there to hear it, but I hope I'll be able to read the transcript.

Years ago, there was that series on radio called "This I believe". It's been revived in various formats from time to time, most recently that I'm aware of, on NPR a couple of years ago. It's an exercise in defining core beliefs, and I always find it interesting to listen to other people's thoughtful declarations. I have never yet attempted to write one of my own, and I'm not going to start now ---- so don't worry.

At this moment, I'm more interested in the construct of belief than the content. To that end, a definition is in order: (from dictionary.com)
1. a conviction or opinion
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof
3.confidence; faith; trust
4.a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith

The underlying principle that ties those together is the invisibility of the thing believed in. And that, my dears, is what catches my attention.

There are those among us who are die-hard realists. They want everything to be measurable and provable. If it's not, it's not real.

On the other hand, there seem to be many people for whom the so-called real world is more of a backdrop, the scenery before which the actual drama of life is played out. Life takes place in the realm of the unknown and unknowable, the ineffable, the spirit.

I suppose I fall somewhere in between. I really do like to know what I know that I know. I am usually ready to ask for references or some sort of documentation, and have a healthy skepticism about solemn declarations of fact that sound a little too pat or a lot too self-referential.

But I also harbor some fancy. Maybe it's the creative writer in me, the one who goes into plays and books with a willing suspension of disbelief in order to experience an emotional connection.

I will tell you flat out that I don't believe in ghosts, but I also believe in reincarnation. Not as something I would defend, but as something that helps me make sense of my life and the world. I wouldn't say I believe in magic, but I do think there are some things we don't yet understand how to explain, having to do with energy or magnetic fields or some property not yet named.

I won't limit myself to only objects and phenomena that are provable. And really, I don't think anybody does, at least on a conscious level. But what about those unseen influences that shape our thinking? You're having a conversation with someone you care deeply about (unseen - who measures the degree of feelings?) and you anticipate that it will be an upsetting conversation. You will read tiny, probably unconscious signals in voice, body language, or breath, to gauge how it's going, and then adjust what you say by what you perceive. Those are unseen and probably not conscious signals from the other person. You will come away from that situation with a number of beliefs about it ---- how she is feeling, whether she told the truth, what she'll do because of the conversation. Those beliefs will then influence your own behavior and be incorporated into the ongoing active file of memories and experience of the other.

If that micro level of belief, which occurs countless times every day, gives rise to evaluation, belief, and action, based on unseen and largely unmeasurable observation, how much more powerful could be the Beliefs that underlie religion, politics, nationality, ethnicity and the whole host of identifications we all carry around?

When I think of it that way, maybe 95% of life is belief-driven!

The things I believe about myself are the most powerful, and often predictable, motivators of my behavior. I don't have a degree in it, but I do believe I am a good listener and can help people find their way out of their own problems. I don't have anything but a little anecdotal evidence to back that up, no quantifiable data. I believe that I was/am an effective, good mother. Yeah, my kids are grown up and doing well, but that's not actual evidence to support that assertion or belief. Sometimes my beliefs run counter to my well-being. I can measure my body weight on the scales and get an objective number. I can read numerous articles with statistics that tell me the potential hazards of continuing to make that scale number go up. But I believe that it's a hopeless situation and I'm just stuck with that number no matter what I do or think to alter it. All the data would point me otherwise --- isn't there cause and effect involved in eating, exercise and weight? But my belief in the hopelessness and stuckness of it all seems to trump any kind of objective reality.

We have come to a time in which beliefs seem to trump everything else ---- logic, reason, facts, common sense, tradition, even rule of law. The voices of people with opposing viewpoints continue to get louder and more strident, drowning out most everything else. Facts have become irrelevant in the face of conviction---  confidence in the existence of something that cannot be rigorously proven. My belief in helping the poor regardless of how they came to be that way is dead wrong in the eyes of your belief in the righteousness of hard work and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Your faith in the inerrancy of the Christian Bible trumps my faith in the right of an individual to search for truth and meaning. Those folks believe it is murder to perform an abortion, while those other folks believe murderers should be shown mercy and spared the death penalty.

It is certainly the right of citizens in a "free" society to choose their own beliefs, and base them on whatever makes sense to them. Jesus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Zombie Apocalypse, or Transmigration of the Soul ---- they all have their adherents and that's fine. I celebrate the plethora of divergent views in the people around me, even though I don't necessarily understand or agree with them. But we are all on this little blue globe together, and it seems to me that it is far more fruitful to accept that others have different beliefs, than to try to annihilate them. Until the world is populated solely with clones, and probably not even then, there will be different, unprovable, unexplainable, invisible beliefs.

It doesn't hurt you a bit if I believe I have already been on this plane many times, learning lessons, and will continue that cycle until I'm through. See? You can read that sentence and nothing has been pinched, cut, stomped, pounded or assailed in your belief system. You might think differently about me, but YOU are still the you you've always been. So if my invisible life-helpers don't affect you, yours won't affect me, either.  Unless either one of us is hellbent on converting the other. Whoa, Nelly!

You might tell me one of your beliefs, for instance, that girls shouldn't wear pants because it makes them too masculine. I might think you're wrong, stupid, archaic, impractical and out-of-your-ever-lovin' mind. But you having that belief doesn't affect me, and my belief that girls can wear whatever they find comfortable doesn't hurt you. Unless you use that belief to make a law that women must wear skirts at all times. THEN what you once "believed" was right has become coercive.

So that's the sticking point. When beliefs --- our convictions about things unseen and unknowable ----- become codified into law or public policy, then we're in a whole different ballgame.

Do me a favor. The next time you get all het up because somebody just stepped all over your pet belief, stop and take a breath. Ask yourself "How important is it?" Maybe give your own opposing belief (imaginary construct) a little hug, and walk on. We don't have to defend. We don't have to impose. And everybody doesn't have to believe in the same brand of unmeasurable reality.

To quote an old Unitarian, "We don't have to believe alike to love alike."

We're all worm food

Jill and I had the great good fortune of being visited last week by one of my oldest friends, John, and his wife of 42 years, Anneli. It turned out that we were all compatible and had a great time laughing, talking and excursioning around the Triangle, visiting friends and touring gardens and looking at outsider art. I even introduced them to Eastern North Carolina BBQ. They may not have been as taken with it as I am; it's an acquired taste.

It helps to have visitors from far away in order to see my own home through new eyes. The internet helps, too. John had identified a few things he wanted to see, especially the whirlygigs by Wilson artist Vollis Simpson. Had I ever heard of him? Well, yes, in a way. That enormous whirlygig installation down at the NC Museum of Art is one of his. But I sure didn't know what we would find down in Wilson, and never anticipated the delightfully slow, friendly conversation with the 93-year-old artist in his hilariously cluttered and junky-looking workshop, way out in the piney woods.

John and Anneli live in Sweden; Anneli is Swedish and John is a Navy Brat, which is why we were in high school together in Rota, Spain back in the stone ages. He is one of the few friends I've really kept up with from high school.

So what does all this have to do with worm food? Well, it goes like this. Anneli is a smoker. She's also a teeny, tiny, petite little person who a good wind would blow away. She apologized a couple of times for smoking out on the deck, even though neither of us has a problem with it ---- that's why there are ashtrays on the front and back porches. She even assured me that she was well aware that it's bad for one's health, but . . . (shrug of the shoulders). It made me think about the things most of us do that we KNOW are not good for us. I couldn't help but think about that, about me that is, because I felt like an elephant beside her and was acutely aware of my own indulgences that are bad for my health, but . . . (shrug of the shoulders).

Don't we all have them, almost everybody? It might be smoking or overeating, drinking, drugs, cheating on spouses or taxes. Could be uncontrollable anger or stress, inactivity, overspending, gossip, bad decision-making. There are so many colorful ways to self-sabotage and this is just the obvious stuff. What about reckless driving? risky sports? setting fires for fun and profit? Anything that momentarily takes attention out of the humdrum here and now and has even a minimal bit of risk or excitement to it, qualifies.

So if everybody has their own little (or big) ways of cheating death, does that mean it's simply a human trait and not something to be condemned or feel guilty over? After all, nobody is going to get out of this alive. Which brings us to the worm food.

After mentally slapping myself around for awhile, I shook myself off and came back to ground zero. This journey through life is plenty perilous without using myself as a punching bag. Yes, I have some self-sabotaging behaviors/obsessions/compulsions/habits. That puts me in line with 99% of the rest of humanity. I'll allow for the possibility of 1% sainthood. Could I do better? Probably. Should I do better? Probably. But when you get right down to it, just exactly how healthy do I want to be and what's the trade off?

My mother, who counted every calorie and never met a chocolate bar she didn't long for, did it almost all correctly. She did smoke lightly for many years, but she quit 30 years ago. She ate obsessively right, exercised regularly right up until she couldn't reliably stand up anymore, walked two miles a day rain or shine, drank moderately and really put a lot of effort into staying healthy. Now it's all paying off ----- her healthy body has far outlived her mind.

Given the choice, I would easily pick the major heart attack (number 1 killer of post-menopausal women) over spending the last 5-10 years of my life chugging along without my wits. I'm carrying more weight than I'm comfortable with, probably putting myself at risk for weight related health problems or a shortened lifespan. I may change my tune if the doc says look, you're fixin' to check out really soon. But for now, I settle myself with thoughts of probability.

These are the odds: The chances are 100% that I'm going to die. Just like everyone else. No matter how utterly fit you are, how completely you follow every rule of good health and sensible living, your odds and mine are exactly the same. It's just a matter of when and how. And as far as I know, getting hit by a bus or run over by a tornado is just as deadly for an Olympic athlete of 25 as it is for an ice cream lovin' 61-year-old  couch potato. I walk my dog, I hang out the clothes, I take care of my family and I sit and read and write and savor the smooth, creamy caramel crunch. So sue me.

We're all worm food in the end.

Ailment of the Day

I get cancer on a regular basis. It's the nocturnal variety that starts with a funny bump or a lump in my throat. It grows as the hours pass until, by 3AM, it's full blown. Fortunately, by that time I've already made some decisions about seeking medical care and what my memorial service should be like, so I am finally able to go to sleep. It usually disappears by sunrise.

I don't want you to think I'm a hypochondriac, because I am not. I certainly don't burden everyone around me with lurid accounts of all my aches, pains and terminal illnesses. No. I bear them in silence, bravely facing an uncertain future, with only the occasional wince or murmur, to indicate to the discerning observer my true condition.

I took my latest carcinoid complaints to my primary care physician yesterday, very casually, with much self-deprecation and laughter. I am not unaware of my healthcare foibles. I know I self-diagnose and usually only go to the professional for confirmation. Once again, I dodged a bullet, but I did come away with a just-in-case order for further testing.

Here's the problem. I have health insurance, but by the time I pay the deductible (starts July 1) and the enormous co-pay as well as my 20%, there goes a couple months or more of my retirement pension. Do I really want to do that for something that is most likely stress and/or allergy related? And what ever happened to being able to go have something checked out ---- proactive, preventive self-care ----- without breaking the bank? It's a fine mess we've got ourselves in when doing the sensible thing, like catching an illness or treatable condition before it becomes major, is out of reach EVEN WITH INSURANCE!

It reminds me of the situation with Mom and Alzheimers Disease. In order for her to have financial assistance, first she has to bankrupt herself, then go into the most expensive level of care, whether it is what she needs or not. Now, I do not object to using her money to buy her care. That's what it's there for, that's what she and Dad worked hard for. The trouble is, once it is gone and she needs assistance, she must go to a facility that takes Medicaid, and those are not always available or desirable or even sanitary. How much more reasonable it would be for the money to go toward letting people age in place, at home or with family, whenever possible and bringing care to them. Isn't that what you would want? I don't know anybody who just can't wait to get to a smelly, gray-colored nursing home and hang out with all the immobile people in wheelchairs and be cared for by an ever-changing cast of strangers. Oh Boy! Sign me up!

Do we need healthcare reform in the United States? Hell yes, we do. The Baby Boomers are coming down the pike as fast as our creaky knees will carry us. Even though we've been the bulge in the python for 60+ years, it is as though policy makers are suddenly waking up and rubbing their eyes and wondering where in the world all these old people came from. The numbers are out there. It's not a surprise. But the numbers don't convey the situation in a meaningful way. It is not until it happens to you or someone you love, that it truly hits home. And by then it's too late to overhaul the system.

I've lived most of my life with the completely unfounded notion that I'm going to live until I suddenly drop dead and nothing too terrible is going to happen. Life will go on as it generally has until it doesn't. Maybe our politicians and policy-makers are the same way.

 Tra-la, Tra-la. Ain't life grand?

Wait, what? Heart failure? Diabetes? Alzheimers? That's not for me, that's not for my friends, my siblings, my spouse. That's old people stuff and I don't think about old people stuff. I'm a Baby Boomer, emphasis on the Baby.

We're not ready as a nation. We're not ready as a society. We don't have the compassion, the financial structure, the worldview to embrace the tsunami that is coming. Selfishly, I'm glad I'm toward the leading edge. It's the tail end of the boomers who are really going to suffer. But I'll be dead by then. I hope.

Who's the smarty-pants now?

I got behind a pickup truck this morning that had a bumper sticker that read:

 MY BIRD DOG HAS MORE SENSE THAN YOUR HONOR STUDENT

I didn't see the driver, actually I didn't want to. If I had, I would have urged my dog to growl and bark at him ---- it had to be a him. Of course, Buddy growls and barks at any man he sees while we're in the car. Very protective of his mama.

I like to think of myself as an open-minded, take people as they are, kind of gal. Easy does it, you know? No sense getting my knickers in a knot over things that don't matter. But something about that truck and its bumper sticker and its probable owner, just stuck in my craw and I can't let it go.

What the hell? We don't need honor students? Our country is in such fine shape that all we need are guys with hunting rifles and dogs? That's what it sounds like. It's such a stupid statement that it makes me go all wiggy and want to slap somebody.

I know that we have a deep, abiding undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in this country. One has only to look at the movies, the television heroes, and the tea party, to see its current incarnation. But it has also been around for a long, long time, this notion that all you need is grit, rugged individualism, and the willingness to destroy all obstacles in order to be successful. That was probably a pretty good mindset at one time. People without fortitude didn't last long on the frontier. But it wasn't an unmitigated good, and it did not preclude thinking, organizing, planning and inventing. And in case you haven't noticed, it's not 1867 anymore.

The search and destroy method of civilization not only allowed our "pioneer forefathers" to fulfill the country's Manifest Destiny, it also led to the destruction of untold numbers of human beings and their societies, plus ecosystems that will never be recovered, and natural resources that have been wantonly used up or left for dead.

After I pulled around this truck and on to my own destination, the daycare where my mother goes every day for stimulation and tender care in her demented state, I thought about how different that bumper sticker would sound if it said "My bird dog has more sense than my honor student."

Now that could be funny. It probably would have made me smile. Oh, teenagers. They can be troublesome, even the really bright ones. And who wouldn't think that the dog sometimes has more sense than a kid? If you want to say that about your own kid and your own dog, it is amusing ---- as long as it's a joke and not something you really believe. But to say that my dog ---- clever as he may be ----- is smarter than somebody else's honor student is not funny. It's just not. The owner of the truck might think it is a chuckle, but it's mean-spirited and it labels him as an intolerant yahoo who has a chip on his shoulder. At least that's what it said to me.

I know. Intolerant yahoos gotta live too. I just sometimes wish that the really smart, educated kids got as much acknowledgement and acceptance as the just-us-folks "Real Americans" with the gun racks and conviction that their God-given right to be wrong is more important than thinking things through and being reasonable.

Ouch. I must be channeling my 8th grade self today. Being a smart kid always makes you feel like you've got a target on your back.

Treasures or Trash?

One of my father's favorite jokes:

"This is the  hatchet that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. The handle has only been replaced five times and the head has only been replaced twice."

I thought of that when I heard a story on NPR the other day about an art exhibit featuring things seen and not seen. The artist described several installations, one of which was an ordinary podium that he had taken to a witch to be cursed. He was interested in how that story affected the way people were willing to interact with the podium  ---- would they be hesitant to touch it? Be afraid? Be brave? Scoff?

The meaning of objects is always of interest to me. Our house is a virtual museum ---- or curio shop, depending on your point of view. We have one room dedicated to the preservation of family antiques. The chairs and marble topped table belonged to my great-grandparents and are about 150 years old. The secretary was one that mom and I found almost 40 years ago in a used furniture barn in England. Two sets of dishes occupy the corner cabinet, several shelves contain books dating as far back as the 1830s.

Now "antiques" ---- bona-fide old stuff --- have some intrinsic worth of their own. These pieces have the added layer of family history. I have photographs of these chairs in front of the fireplace at Edgewood Farm on the west end of Albia, in the house that my great-great grandfather built. Photos, books, paintings, furniture, dishes, all have the meaning invested in them by the stories that are attached. If we were to abandon this house today POOF! just like that, someone might come in and find monetary value in some of it, but they wouldn't know the people, the stories that make them come alive.

And it's not just the antiques. In fact, I'm almost more interested in what happens to things that I attach value to, that nobody else would. I spent the day cleaning the upstairs room which I refer to variously as my writing room, my studio, my refuge, the guest room, and lately as Buddy's room. He's pretty much taken it over.  It is filled with things that have meaning for me, but probably would be Goodwill truck to somebody else. I know where the hideous clock came from and why it's there. I know why there's a tin ear horn on the bookshelf. Those are the Tarot cards I bought in San Francisco, the cat statue that Ashley gave me, the broken silver-plated bank that was a baby gift from a special friend. Four shelves full of books would likely not be of more than passing interest to anybody else, but some of them I've had since I was a kid, some were instrumental in my awakening as a young radical feminist in college, or spoke to my longing for beautiful prose or pure entertainment, or professional development. For me, they have meaning beyond the words they contain.

A lot of this makes it difficult for me to throw things away. I know that the very ordinary cup in the kitchen was the one that Jill made me coffee in every morning when she was still living in the duplex. She has a barrel glass that belonged to her grandmother. It would fetch a dime at a yard sale, but for her it's priceless.

I know my years of owning things are diminishing. As I grow closer to the end of my life, I'll try to find worthy homes for the most valuable of my possessions, the ones that carry not only a dollar value, but family history. We'll inevitably have to downsize more than once over the next fifteen or twenty years. I hope I can be graceful about letting things go since I obviously can't take them with me. I've seen my grandparents do it, then my parents ---- that's how I wound up with a lot of this stuff. I guess I'm a conduit for passing these things along. But nothing lasts forever does it? And someday, some descendant will pick up my grandmother's collection of photo postcards and say "I don't know who any of these people are." and they'll all wind up in the trash, right along with my AA chips and the Christmas ornaments I made when I was too poor to buy any.

A cursed podium? George Washington's hatchet? The baby basket I bought in Morocco? All moving down the chute, meaningless in the end.

Off the couch and into the woods

It is odd to think about the little turning points in life. When I was out engaging in some retail therapy a couple of weeks ago, after a pretty nice little royalty check, I decided to buy Buddy a new collar. Doesn't everybody go to Pet Smart for retail therapy? So I splurged on a Gentle Leader, which had been earnestly recommended by several friends, but I hadn't paid any attention because it was too expensive and I didn't see how it could actually work.

See, I have this dog love going on, a new experience for me. Ever since this pup showed up on our doorstep 18 months ago, straggly, cold, hungry and kind of snarly, my life has not been the same. I've grown unreasonably attached to him and also done what I always do in a new situation: learned stuff. I've checked out books from the library, watched training videos, talked to friends, tapped Jill's many years of experience with dogs, watched tv shows and most of all played and interacted with him every day since Christmas Day 2010. Now that he's almost 2, he's grown strong and single-minded. When he wants to chase a squirrel, that's what he's going to do, and being on a leash is no deterrent. It had gotten to the point that we couldn't even go for walks anymore because it was too much of a struggle. Hence, the Gentle Leader.

It works. I went home and watched You Tube videos, one after another, before I realized that it came with its own instruction video. All the claims, even though they were right in front of me in video, still seemed too good to be true. But when I put it on him, exactly as instructed, within 5 minutes we were trotting down the street having a good ol' time. Squirrels? He stops to look, but a slight tug and a command of "Let's go" and we're walking again, loose leash and all. I'd do a commercial for them any day!

And why is this a turning point? Well, you don't actually know a turning point till it's behind you, but I will say this. Ever since Buddy has been able to take enjoyable walks, we've been walking. Now, I've lived here for 25 years, here being Wake County NC. In all that time, there have been a couple of parks that I would go to with kids and family for picnics, but I really didn't have time for such things. I was busy working and raising kids. I heard there was a Greenway system, but all I knew was that occasionally there would be a report in the news about a flasher or a mugging on a greenway --- not often, just once in a while. I decided never to go on a greenway because it was dangerous.

But now, Buddy and I can go for walks and I am retired. I'm no longer too busy to get outdoors for the joy of it. Every morning during the week, we drop Mom off at daycare and pick a park or greenway to explore. As soon as we get into a wooded area, Buddy starts to whimper and jump around in the back seat, anxious to get into the new scents of grass and trees. Jill has one day a week off work, so she gets to come with us on those days. We got ourselves some expensive all-terrain shoes (real retail therapy) and  now I feel ready for whatever we find.

This is what I've found. Even at my all-time highest weight, I love my body. I love the way I feel when I'm using my arms and legs, eyes and ears. Memories are awakened from long ago. Raleigh is not hardcore urban living by any stretch, but being surrounded by forest, hearing birdsongs and running water, feeling sun and breeze, smelling soil and flowers and vegetation, all bring childhood back to life for me. Back then, I played outside a lot. I used to lie in the grass, roll down the hills, run through fields and wade in creeks. I dug in the mud with sticks, scratched hopscotch into flat dirt and used stones for playing pieces. I took my beloved books outside and read in the shade of a tree.

In those days, before I hit the age of self-consciousness, I did love myself exactly the way I was. I loved the feel of sun on my skin, wind in my hair, rain on my face. I had no fear of what others would think of my too-small shorts, my uncombed, crooked-bangs hairdo, my protruding tummy or short, stubby legs. I loved myself from the inside out, instead of reviling myself from the outside in.

Being a full-time caregiver for someone with dementia is a difficult task. As my mother regresses, I see my teenage self reflected in much of what she says and does, and it makes me sad for both of us. She's stuck in a world of needing to look right, even though she will put on unmatched shoes and not tolerate having her hair washed. She pines for a boyfriend, mourns the loss of self that the admiration of men has always brought her. Her sense of self-worth was always fragile, dependent on the approval of others, but now it is almost non-existent, and she doesn't know why. Through all of this, I watch and see parts of myself that need healing, that actually are being healed. It's utterly painful at times, but strengthening as well. I still have time for a salvation, of sorts.

I'm off the couch these days, thanks to a four-legged trainer and the Gentle Leader collar. The self that I bring back to the house, to the couch, is a much more centered and available one ---- ready to be caregiver to Mom and loving wife to Jill. All on account of a little ol' collar ---- that is not too expensive anymore.