What will you do with your short long life?

I have long had the practice of creating a list of "Goals and Intentions" during the week between Christmas and New Year.  I pull out the old list, tick off the ones that came to fruition, and look ahead at what I'm aiming for next. I started doing this after (dare I say it?) taking the est training in the mid-seventies. Hmmm. That's forty years ago. I set it up as a game, not a rigid list of must-do projects. The year-end review was a chance to see how strong my intention had been. I never looked at the list from one December to the next.

The past few years I've been spotty about it. The list, when I do it, is much shorter. I think that reflects my focus on what's important as much as a narrowing of what's possible. Of course, I could be fooling myself.

The fact is, at the ripe old age of 65, happily married, gratefully retired, living comfortably on less, many of the items that made the list back in the day have already happened. I don't know that it had anything to do with listing out my goals and intentions. I think maybe they just occurred in the process of life.

So what to put on a list this year, 2016? I always tacked on an addendum called Outrageous Goals and Intentions, the things that I would love to see happen, but couldn't imagine any way for them to come about ---- mainly in the realm of fame, fortune, and travel. Now I consider myself fortunate that they didn't happen. I love my quiet little life, though I could do with a little more travel.

It has been one year and 11 days since my mother, Nancy, died. I have taken this entire year off. Oh, I did what had to be done ---- the legal finalities for her small estate, daily and weekly chores in the house, 6 months of being a produce fairy, delivering veggies for a local farm. I even accomplished becoming certified to teach the Qigong set I have been practicing for the last three years, and lined up 5 classes per week. But actually, I was pretty much on auto-pilot all year long.

Losing my mother, even though the Alzheimer's had taken her mind long ago, fundamentally shook my foundation. It was not simply that we were close, which we were. It was that since childhood I had trouble knowing where she ended and I began. Sometimes I had the odd sensation, when we were together, of looking at her and thinking it was me. I'm sure there are shrinks who can have a heyday with that. It's probably got troubling diagnoses and is the reason I have spent most of my life in and out of therapy. Nonetheless, that's the way it has been since before I can remember. I once wrote a short story in which the teenager who was pregnant and living with her in-laws tried to starve the baby out of her until she finally made the choice to keep and love it. When my mother read it, she cried and asked me how I knew. I don't know how I knew, except that I had lived it. 

Now the world is a different place. I don't know if I'll ever quite adjust to it, but it's getting easier. In some ways, it's even better. There's more of me available now. And in my imagination she is free and wild, a kind of sparkling energy let loose in the universe, unconfined, uncontained.

As for me, I have a new freedom and a new happiness as well. I miss her ---- the old her ---- every day. At the same time, I'm developing a new perspective on lifespan. Even though I have had a love of history through fiction and non-fiction, museums and living history, when I was younger I didn't quite realize how short a time we have. Even the longest-lived among us can only claim a little over a century. Once upon a time, that felt like a very long life. Now it seems like the blink of an eye. 

I personally knew my great grandparents, born shortly after the Civil War. The farmhouse my great-great grandfather G.W. built has now been torn down, I discovered this past

summer. My mother and her siblings grew up in that house, Edgewood Farm. The past is not that distant. I have known people who lived during what we think is long-ago history. The "kids" I grew up with and I are becoming the keepers of the past, the tellers of stories from when the world was different. It all happens rather quickly.

This has been my year of reckoning. A time to look at the present and prepare for whatever is coming up next. It's unsettling. Occasionally, I'm afraid. But the overwhelming feeling is satisfaction. I haven't done so badly, no matter how many things never got knocked off of my lists. Sometimes, the best thing that can come of a goal is to not meet it. 

My intention for this year? Curiosity.

Life without Parole is a long time for Joanna Madonna

No police officer has ever stopped me on the street and frisked me. I've never been singled out by authorities because of how I look or who I am. My few encounters with law enforcement have been uneventful and non-threatening. But I have to admit, I see the justice system with new eyes after Joanna's conviction for first degree murder. 

It all feels arbitrary and unpredictable now. 

There was plenty of forensic evidence about the case. The prosecution presented every last item and photograph, with hours of testimony by professionals in one capacity or another. That's as it should be. Science. Facts. 

Underlying all the visible, measurable evidence lay interpretation and innuendo. In that realm, the prosecution was relentless. For a case in which two people were the only ones present, one of whom was beyond telling his story of what happened, the prosecutor relied on not just physical evidence, but calculated prejudice and character assassination. 

Jose Perez died in 2013. In order to make her case, the prosecutor was eager to point out that Joanna, though sober for 23 years, had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. That this was her third marriage. That each of her three daughters had a different father. That the trauma of three rapes in her teens and twenties were never reported to authorities, implying that she made it up. That she had had two abortions.

I don't repeat these because I want to cause Joanna or her family even more pain. The pain is out there on Youtube and nobody in this case escapes it. What struck me throughout the testimony, and especially during the closing arguments, was that Joanna was on trial for not meeting the feminine ideal. It was "slut-shaming" in its most hideous form. She might as well have been stripped naked in the courtroom and branded with a scarlet letter.

Was the fact that she had been raped germaine to this case? Yes, actually it was because it long ago set her up for PTSD. Unfortunately, that was not addressed by expert testimony, so the jury was urged to think that she was simply a "loose woman" with irrational behavior.

Much of the narrative of this case involved the ins and outs of addiction and recovery. As the jury was selected, each potential juror was questioned about their familiarity or experience with addiction. Most claimed to have none, or only tangential knowledge through friends of friends or distant family members. 

A jury of her peers.

The case also revolved around the difficult topic of intimate partner abuse. Not the kind that puts people in the hospital, the subtle kind. The psychological, controlling kind that often is found in a relationship between people with troubled pasts. The kind of abuse that arises from "chronic, habitual, pathological lying" as one of my exes used to call it, in reference to himself. It's a perfect dance until it escalates. Then it can turn ugly, or deadly.

None of the potential jurors said they had personal knowledge or knew anyone who had experienced intimate partner abuse. 

A jury of her peers.

In the end, the jury had a menu of choices. It wasn't all or nothing. They had 4 choices of a verdict, with diminishing consequences attached. They chose First Degree Murder in three hours. Joanna was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole and whisked off to prison.

I suppose you can take the Pollyanna view that at least she's not on death row. But the death penalty wasn't an option in this case. This is a sentence which satisfies the need for revenge, not only for the terrible death of Jose Perez, but for his wife's failure to be June Cleaver. It leaves the jurors with a clear conscience that justice has been meted out and they didn't have to be responsible for anybody's death.

Life in prison without possibility of parole is a death sentence. It just takes longer for it to play out.

Joanna, my friend, took another person's life. She told her story at length on the witness stand. She told of fear and blind panic as she felt like she was going to die. She claimed self defense and the jury didn't believe her. She has had trouble in her life, not unlike the trouble that millions of people have as they grow up and navigate adulthood. She overcame much of it. She had no record. No one claimed that she was a violent person, a danger to other people. 

We have a justice system based on retribution and punishment. It's not surprising. We have a society awash in violence, anger, and victimization. The "justice" system is an out-picturing of our collective id.

I'm learning about the movement for restorative justice. You can too.

Read about it here.

I Never Called it Rape

Fifty years ago today I was raped. I had just turned fifteen. It was my first sexual experience. 

We didn't have the word for date rape at that time. I thought it was my fault. I lived with not only the private shame, but was pilloried at school when my "boyfriend" of a few days bragged about it to all his friends. My father was called into the principal's office (he was a teacher) and told to get control of his daughter, or the whole family would be sent back to the States without him. I had publicly disgraced myself and my family and it was ALL MY FAULT.

I believed that, through two marriages and umpteen relationships. I believed that, through an addiction to  alcohol and drugs. I believed it through bouts of depression, years of therapy, consciousness raising and fist-pumping feminism. I lived with shame and defiance, bringing to all of my intimate relationships a need for power and control. I rarely let my guard down. I couldn't really trust that I wouldn't be hurt or left or held up to ridicule, so I simply closed off and held myself apart. I didn't talk about it for years, because I was too ashamed. 

The prevailing myth 50 years ago was that girls were in charge of NO. But (wink, wink, snicker) NO didn't really mean NO. It might mean maybe. It might mean sweep her off her feet and don't give her a choice. It might mean go ahead and push the limit and see what happend. Whatever the outcome though, it was the girl's fault for not enough NO. I hope it's not still that way, but I fear it is.

My 14-year-old self was awash with hormones and feelings. Aren't most teenagers? I was tantalyzed and curious, sizzling with fear and excitement. I loved the attention and affected a worldly persona I'd picked up from the movies and watching adults around me. I thought if boys liked me, it was because I was attractive and exciting and smart and sexy. I was very young. 

Those are characteristics of young adolescents, boys and girls alike. It plays out differently, but people of that age don't know what they're doing. They are, though they would protest long and loudly, kids.  By the time I turned 15, I wanted everybody to think I had it all figured out, and sometimes I even believed it myself. But I didn't.

The boy-child who got drunk and wouldn't stop was bigger than I, stronger than I, full of hormones and brashness. Nobody had taught him that no means no. Nobody had taught him that another person was involved, that he didn't have the right to use his strength to force himself on me. And I thought that since I let him in the door and kissed him, I had led him on beyond his control. If he disregarded my protestations and cries that he was hurting me, it was my fault for ----- what? Flirting? Wanting a boyfriend? Kissing?

I finally dealt with this rape and its long-lasting effects with a trusted therapist only three years ago. It's appalling how long it took for me to forgive my teenage self for being a kid. It's sad how many years I spent messing up one relationship after another, seeking a sense of self in other people.  

Rape at any age is a transgression that has repercussions far beyond the incident itself. I still find myself wanting to minimize it sometimes, even though half a century later I can follow the threads back and see what happened. I don't regret my life. I do regret that I spent most of a lifetime beating myself up for somebody else's actions.

 I don't dwell there. I don't relive it or keep the memory fresh. But now, at last, I acknowledge that it happened and it was not my fault. I have nothing to be ashamed of. 

Court is in Recess

Recess time!

I'm familiar with recess --- I used to be a teacher. The kids love recess. Time to jump and run and holler and play with friends. Time to talk to whoever you want to and make things up and test your skills or even just sit on top of the monkey bars and talk to your best friend. Wait! Strike that last one. Not too many monkey bars left on playgrounds these days.

No, recess from the courtroom is not the same. Every interruption to the proceedings is prefaced with instructions from the judge to the jury not to talk about the case with anybody, not even each other. There's a whole list of DO NOTs ---- recess is probably not much fun.

As a matter of fact, there's been nothing fun about this brush with our system of justice that I'm experiencing with my friend Joanna's trial. I've written about her here and here. Nothing alters the fact that one person is dead, one person killed him, and many, many lives have been shattered. But it does seem, from a friend and observer's point of view, that our method for sorting the whole situation out is almost as messy as the incident itself.

I've been to court myself only twice, once to get a divorce in 1975 before no-fault was invented. Once to testify in a friend's custody hearing. The rest of my courtroom experience has come from the teevee, starting with Perry Mason. It might not be the most accurate learning environment.

My biggest surprise with Joanna's trial has been that, despite my best intentions and repeated attempts to attend, I've been excluded from the courtroom at every turn. Somehow, magically, without my knowledge, I was included by the prosecution on a list of potential witnesses. That meant I got summarily removed each time I showed up. Not courteously, either. 

So I wound up watching the trial on the livestream broadcast on my tv at home. Couch. Snacks. Dogs. Jammies. It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't how I expected or wanted things to be. I fully expected that "open court" meant what it said. There was apparently no intention of calling me or the vast majority of other people on that list. But it certainly had the effect of removing any support for Joanna in the courtroom. See how bad she is? Nobody even comes to see her.

What's my take-away so far? I have come face to face with my own privilege. I'm a well-educated white woman, over a certain age. I walk in the world with privilege I don't recognize ---- until it is challenged. My encounters with people in power who showed me no respect, no courtesy, and in fact left me feeling bullied and helpless, were a slap in the face to my complacency. I'm someone who weighs my words, who constantly seeks to expand my perspective, listens to the experiences of others, puts myself in another person's shoes. I have acknowledged the privilege I have because I thought it out; it's an intellectual construct that I recognize. But not until someone speaks to me unnecessarily harshly, as though I am both slow-witted and without value, backed up by the hulking presence of a uniformed officer of the court, do I experience the inverse of my assumptions about who I am. It is a startling, humiliating moment. 

In my world, grown people speak to each other politely. I naively assume that everyone will do that, unless there's extreme provocation to behave otherwise. But that's not true. For a short time, I felt helpless in the face of power, unable to assert anything that would change the situation, and I was indignant, outraged, bewildered. 

Privilege means that I go through life assuming that people I meet will be reasonable, if not polite then at least civil. That I will usually get my way because I am also a reasonable, civilized person. 

I won't say it was good that this ADA felt she had the right to be mean and hiss at me. (That's what it felt like.) But it was good to be able to later think about what happened and realize that, for one thing, this is Joanna's life for the last two years and three months. If she is convicted and sent to prison, it's her life for the forseeable future, a life in which she is not valued for any of her accomplishments or who she is, but judged and categorized, labeled a convict and devalued accordingly. 

It's not just inmates, is it? It's anybody who encounters the diminution of their humanity based on superficial characteristics. It's the conversation that never truly starts and cannot ever end --- race, color, religion, gender, nationality, on and on and on. 

Recess will be over on Monday 9/28/15, 9:30 AM. The closing arguments will be heard. The jury will be instructed and dismissed to their deliberations. The wait will commence and sooner or later, judgment will be delivered. Guilty? Innocent? Either way, she is still a worthy human being, a person, not a label. Just like all the rest of us.

They call my friend a murderer; Joanna Madonna

Today her trial begins. It's been two years and three months since he died. Two years and three months since she saved her own life, at the expense of his. Two years and three months in county jail, with no fresh air, no sunshine on her face, no smell of cut grass and earth. 

Today the next phase begins.

I'm haunted by the word. Murder. It's familiar, all too familiar. It appears every day in news stories, in fiction, in tales of horror and on tv. It holds a special fascination, a sense of awful otherness. It could not apply to someone I know. 

Murder is a concept, the killing of another human being within specifications defined by law. But that's not what the word brings up for most of us. It's not a matter of preconditions and legal parameters, the dry language of law books. It's fraught with midnight danger, the stranger in the bushes or under the bed, the nightmare of blood and lust and revenge or greed. And the murderer is the ultimate bad guy.

Joanna is an alleged murderer. That's her charge and there's the body of her husband to prove it. But she's not a murderer to me. She's not a threat that will rob you of sleep, or haunt the dark corners of midnight. She's my beloved friend.

She's the person with a ready laugh, a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on, a sheltering presence. She's the woman who looks for the bright side and resolutely seeks silver linings. The person I know is not unkind, not rageful, certainly not a murderer. And yet . . .

This morning at ten a.m. the judge will pound his gavel and the trial will begin. Her fate is unknown, though the death penalty was taken off the table six months after her arrest. The news cameras and reporters are at the ready. It's not your run-of-the-mill murder trial. It's high profile in this neck of the woods; she a former teacher, he a disabled veteran. The newly elected District Attorney is coming out of her bureaucratic office and prosecuting the case herself. It has all the trappings of good theater.

Joanna and I talk on the phone every week. We discuss, not the case, but what led her to this point, what could have been different, what will be different, no matter the outcome. She could be acquitted. She could get life in prison. Or it could be anything in between. It's not often that any of us comes to such a stark turning point in life.

I've learned many things while Joanna has been locked up. We've had as deep discussions as possible in ten minute monitored phone calls, occasional "visits" by video at the jailhouse, and rambling, speculative, thoughtful letters, also shared with anonymous strangers in the mailroom. We've explored the pitfalls of false pride, secrets, fear and codependence. We've shared strengths to be found in honest inquiry and sobriety, in faith and doubt. We talk about parenting our children and education and the challenges faced by her autistic daughter. We've each lost a beloved parent during her incarceration and been able to comfort each other through the following grief and helplessness that knows no boundaries of lock and key.

I will be there today, and all the subsequent days. The jury will hear testimony. Attorneys will present cases based on evidence. People at work and at home, with no stake in the case except opinion and emotion, will debate and defend and attack based on nothing more than 800-word news articles. I'll try not to read comments.

Her daughters, her family, her friends and acquaintances will all watch closely as the woman they know will have her life dissected in the public eye, entertainment for the 6 o'clock news, morality tale and horror story. Will truth come out? Will justice prevail? Is that even possible?

I guess we'll see.

School Bells

This time of year I get a little antsy. As a longtime student and educator, the beginning of the school year is a high-water mark for me. I also have a birthday at the start of the academic year, often on the first day of school. So nowdays, when I'm not going to school, not teaching, don't have children getting ready, I find myself a little bit at loose ends.

 It's dangerous for me to enter stores right now. I can hear the notebooks and pens calling to me. And do you know, they have more do-dads and cooler colors every single year! So far I've resisted --- almost. Okay, so I bought a completely unnecessary package of colored pens and a set of sticky notes of varied colors and sizes. That's not excessive, is it?

  The truth is, I miss it all sometimes. It's easy to forget how much bureaucracy there is, how much time is spent on recordkeeping rather than actual teaching. And in memory, all the little darlings were well-behaved and on task. But I really do miss the kids and the excitement of learning. When a classroom crackles with new skills and ideas, there is nothing like it!

One of the buzz words in the ed biz is "lifelong learners" ---- that's supposed to be a goal. I happen to subscribe to that idea for myself as well as the kids I taught. I still like learning new things, I still get excited about modifying what I thought I knew, in light of more information or a different perspective. My daughter, Ashley, and I have long, passionate discussions over the phone about the books we're reading and the ideas we're discovering. Perhaps that's why I'm back in yet another learning situation.

What's that? More school?

Of sorts. I have embarked upon a certification in one particular set of Qigong, so I can teach it to other people. I've had this in the back of my mind for a couple of years, but just started in for real.

I know I said I'd never go back to school after I finished Montessori teacher training a decade ago. And the very idea of me, the girl who had a thousand excuses to get out of PE and never met an organized sport that didn't bore her to tears, teaching something that's listed in the catalog as "Fitness" is nothing short of ludicrous. But there you are. Life takes some strange turns.

After two and a half years of incorporating the 24 Postures of Therapeutic Qigong into my life, I've benefitted so much that I want to pass it on. Isn't that what teaching really is? We're all learning and teaching, all the time. Some people just do it more formally than others.

I've wondered what was coming next, now that I feel like a new stage of life is opening before me. For this moment, I'm taking a step that's difficult and challenging because I truly am a lifelong learner and it's time to go back to school. Sharpen the pencils, limber up the body. I'm plunging back in.

Too Self-Evident For Words

How is it that for the year 2015 I've only been able to squeeze out one blog post a month? Not too long ago, words tumbled around in my head with such ferocity that I had to let them out --- blog posts, journal entries, novels. Now it seems I resemble the waif pictured above. Where have all the words gone?

It's a truism that you can't get perspective on things until you've passed through and can look back with the clarity of hindsight. It seems like an odd way to order the universe, though. It means walking through each day with limited understanding and maximum vulnerability. If it were up to me . . .

I'm coming to believe that not only is there nothing new under the sun, but there is also nothing new to talk or write about. Even the book I'm halfway done writing has gone silent. I know these characters. Some of them I've been living with for nearly three years, since they first popped up, full of energy and falling all over themselves to tell me their tales. Now, I scratch at the door, stand on tiptoe outside the grimy window to peer into a dusty room, cluttered with cast offs and trailing vines, that creep up through the floorboards, going no place. Do I shrug and walk on? Do I park myself on the front porch and wait for something to happen? 

The headless cherub sits in our front garden bed. Her head is perched serenely nearby, not macabre, merely resting. It's the way I feel today, many days. 

Languid? It is unreasonably hot.

Detatched? More like wrapped in cotton.

Fatigued? Resigned? Content? Solemn? All of the above.

When all else fails, it can be chalked up to a developmental stage. Life is chugging along and carrying me with. People in my compartment are reaching their destinations and waving good-bye. That's the way this works. 

                                                                                     

They say to pay attention to the journey, not the destination. I try to do that, but sometimes I just want a rest stop. A brat and a beer. (I know, I know --- that doesn't mean I can't think about it). Stretch my legs and take a nap and look around before climbing back on board. But that's not in the travel plan.

I have great companions for the trip. The car is crowded with people I love. I know they won't let me bail out or wander off. 

What's too self-evident for words?

 We're here for a time and then we're not. It's the here that counts today.

What do you mean you can't sing?

Jill and I have been watching some "American Masters" documentaries on PBS lately. They're informative, entertaining, thought-provoking, and so far there hasn't been a single car chase nor anyone getting shot. Just my kind of TV.

Last night we watched one about Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger songs played heavily into my growing-up playlist. The folk revival that he was so much a part of, was going strong when I was in my teens, along with the protest songs he introduced and spread far and wide. I hadn't realized, until I saw the film, that his roots were in classical music and it was in North Carolina that he discovered bluegrass and the wealth of mountain music. I also had missed his involvement with the labor movement and communism, which got him blacklisted for so long.

What struck me as I watched this doc, was how sincerely he wanted to incorporate singing into everyday life, harking back to a time before electronic media, when people made their own music and songs accompanied many of the daily rituals of life.  This rang a bell with me.

Growing up with a musician and music teacher who was born in the 1920s, singing was a way of life in our family. Not like the von Trapp singers, more like what Seeger was talking about. We sang, often with harmonies, in the car, around the house, around the piano. The games we played as children were often sing-song. We started singing as soon as we could talk, so it never felt strange or out of place. Conversations often devolved into show tunes when someone said a triggering word or phrase. That still happens when my siblings and I get together. Jill thought it was weird when she first joined the family, but now she's right there with us.

Because we had a piano bar in the living room, and lots of parties, all four of us kids grew up singing and listening to the old standards. They are still lodged in my head and when I'm home with the dogs during the daytime, I sometimes sing to them or to myself or to the Goddess ---- who knows? What I do know is that singing, once a part of the daily weave of my life, has fallen away to a large degree as the years go by.  My voice has suffered from age and it never fully recovered after surgery a few years ago. I no longer sing in choirs, as I did up until a decade ago. I often rely on streaming music to fill my house with tunes when I feel the need, though I do still like to sing along.

Right now, we're planning a graveside service to inter my mother's ashes in the family plot back in Iowa. As I plan a simple ritual, I automatically think of how to bring music to the cemetery --- a couple of her favorite songs ---- and get quite tangled up in my own ignorance about how to do that, what device to use, what app, whether it will work out in the middle of nowhere, etc. Of course, we could sing. Singing? But . . .  but . . . what would we sing? We need recorded music, don't we?

This morning I sang "Dona nobis pacem" to Nanalu, who thumped her tail all through, in appreciation. Huh. If the dog likes it, maybe we're onto something. And maybe it's time to bring back singing to daily life and the rituals by which we mark the passage of time.

A not-so-perfect ending

No, no. I'm not at the end yet, or even contemplating such a thing. Still trekking. But I am anticipating my 65th birthday coming up this summer.

I gave up my post as Queen of the Universe some time ago. It may still be vacant, if you're interested. Now I think I'm getting ready to take the next step. In fact, it may have already happened and I'm just now noticing.

It may have been the pedagogic aura of the times, or growing up with a perfectionistic music teacher, or being the eldest of 4 kids in 5 years, and therefore the Junior Mom and Self-Appointed Commandant ---- or maybe just my own idiosyncratic self. Whatever the origin, my life's efforts have been toward striving for perfection and simultaneously knowing it's not possible to achieve that goal. Now, if that's not crazy-making, what is?

All those quizzes and tests and papers that proclaimed 100% in bold red ink were mere strokes to the ego, not some sort of objective truth. I was well schooled in the Law of the Universe that says there is no such thing a perfect paper --- or anything else. There is always room for improvement, and my course in life is to doggedly pursue it, even knowing it is impossible.

I don't have a memory of being told that explicitly, but I also don't remember a time when I didn't know the answer to the question "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"  (Practice, practice, practice.)  I have been haunted by the conviction that if I were left to my own slovenly devices, I would sink into a sea of sloth with nothing but the bubbles to show for my unlived life. 

As many of you know, I spent hours and years and a small fortune in therapy. I had a lot of trouble figuring out how someone as patently privileged as I, could be enmired in so much anxiety and psychic garbage. Therapy and all the other pursuits have helped over the years. At least I'm still here, sober and breathing. I think hanging out on the planet long enough to get what people of an old-fashioned sensibility used to call wisdom, helps too. 

I believe I am a full-fledged member of the "I'm Sixty-Five --- Fuck Off" club. My wardrobe consists almost entirely of comfortable, stretchy clothing. It's hard to tell the pjs from the work outs from the going out for sushi clothes. I've definitely reached the point of hopping in the car when I suddenly need raisin bread and chamomile tea and not even thinking about whether I'm wearing a bra or real shoes. Best of all, I'm as likely to say no as yes to invitations, proposals, and suggestions, rather than cursing myself for making commitments I don't want to keep. I can even change my mind without feeling guilty. The world keeps chugging along with or without me, so I might as well do what I want.

It's all a great relief, this not having to chase impossible goals only to chastise myself when I fail. I settle into my life in such comfort these days, paying the most important attention to things that really matter to me and letting the rest slide away. Jill and I were talking this week about all the things we don't spend money on because they just don't seem important anymore. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to know this thirty or forty years ago, how much less anxiety and fear I might have experienced.

65?  Bring it! I ain't skeered.

Hit the Mute Button

It is all just too noisy out there. Sure, I know I can turn the sound down -- and I do. But sometimes I simply want to cover my ears and close my eyes and make it all go away.

What's that? Why, the world of course. The world on my screen.

See, now that I have so few concrete responsibilities, I can spend entirely too much time flitting around the internet or listening to NPR --- or both at the same time. I get bombarded with videos and outrage and injustice and conspiracies and every single day, THE SKY IS FALLING!

Tonight, once again, I want to run away. We can sell the house and move someplace out of the US where people aren't armed to the teeth, trying to turn the country into a theocracy, letting children fall through the wide cracks in the educational and social foundations. You know, someplace serene and beautiful, like Camelot or Shangri-La or . . .  now where would that be again?

I know that "news" is really theater. That "current events" are SSDD. That human dramas have played out along similar lines throughout history. I know that. But sometimes I let it get to me.

So I believe I need a break. If I turn my attention to what is right in front of me, things are pretty good. Very good, in fact. If I saw roaming hordes of demons outside and flung the door open and invited them in for tea, it would be no different than what I've been doing online. So STOP already!

Curiosity, some sage once said, killed the cat. It's time to divert my curiosity into more productive channels and get back down to writing. New research materials are on the way in the form of actual, hold them in your hand books. I can read. I can hang out with Jill and the dogs and friends. I can soak up the sun on the back deck. And I can use my computer to do what I love, create stories, instead of scaring myself to death every day. It's all a matter of choice.

Hello, Morning Birds

Maybe this is what a bear feels like when waking up from the long winter nap. Outside my kitchen window, the trees are in flower and birds hop gleefully from feeder to feeder. Sure enough, the robins are nesting in the bathroom vent again. And Carolina Blue is not just about basketball.

I've been in never-land for awhile, and still pass back and forth every day. But the renewal of life draws me out. I blink and look around, smell the earth and the icky scent of a subdivision full of Bradford Pears. They look so good, but EEE-EWWW. It's disorienting to find that life continues, with or without Mama, or me, or anybody else. Comforting, too.

I got a button on a Christmas present that says EAT SLEEP READ. I must have thought it was an instruction manual, because that's pretty much what I've done for the past three months. Oh, there are plenty of tasks --- more than I want ---- but I find myself taking cover in the self-soothing method I developed as a child.

My mother told me that I taught myself to read before I went to school. Ever the overachiever, I thought. But actually it was probably a ready defense. By the time I was five, I had three younger siblings. We were read to, but I don't imagine it was as much as I wanted. Anyway, when I was able to read on my own, I could get away from the chaos for a bit. I remember, as a kindergartener, curling up in a little window on the landing of the stairs to read by myself.

It was through books that I formed my dreams of who I could become, where I could live, what I could do. I was gifted with the ability to be transported into the story and share the adventures and perils and happy endings of the characters. I wrote, too, though precious few of those early pages still exist.

Part of the mourning process for my mother is going through the things she left behind. She had downsized considerably, giving away or selling a lifetime's worth of clothing, furniture, dishes and collectibles from all the places they had lived. Jill and I have many pieces in our house and they are part of our daily lives.

Recently, I've taken up the more intimate task of sorting through her papers. The grinding paper shredder confounds the dogs and cats, who regard it as yet another intruder in their domain. Much of it is routine and uninteresting, but there are also the letters, professional papers, fifty years of travel orders and her medical records from military hospitals. No earthly use to anyone, but I can't seem to throw them away. So back in the box they go, after a good look-see and floods of memories. There are Christmas Letters going back decades, documenting the highlights of our family's growth and change. Perhaps the strangest thing she kept was the folder of Christmas Wish Lists from all the family members for the last 20 years, along with hand-drawn spreadsheets documenting what gifts she had given everyone every year.

Then there are the notebooks, her journals or diaries or whatever you would call them. Now understand, I'm a compulsive journaler, too. I have a collection of notebooks going back fifty+ years that are filled to overflowing with astute observations about the nature of life, and plenty of whining. Nancy's? Not so much, at least not so far. She, like her father before her, jotted down events, weather, prices, destinations and who she saw during the day. She was not given to reflection about her own or other people's feelings, did not process her place in the world, neither opined nor suggested solutions to the problems of public life.

Still, there are several spiral notebooks and as I read them, I'm reminded of so many ordinary days that have slipped from memory. I'm grateful for her note-taking on the days of her life. She only started writing after retirement; the really juicy stuff came before and went discreetly unrecorded. But these pages are what matter to me now, the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday life.

Well.  Now I've gone and done it. I wrote a blog for the first time in a couple of months. I've written nothing but an obituary for quite awhile, and wondered if my writing days were over.

 Spring has sprung. Warmth returns. I'm shaking off the darkness of winter's night and coming back to life as well.

Color me Quiet

In another incarnation, I performed history programs for a living. I called it Travels through Time. Sometimes I enticed my daughter, Ashley, to accompany me. One of our joint ventures had me in mourning, entreating listeners to foreswear the demon rum, and Sign the Pledge. Her part was singing an old song, "My Father was a Drunkard" --- a plaintive little piece to drum up sympathy and temperance sentiment. 

It has been one month ago today since my mother died, and I've been thinking about mourning. During my living history days, I developed a program to take into schools that taught kids about death and mourning in the Victorian period. It was always of great interest, and I have to admit I liked doing the research for it. 

Mourning is no longer in style. While the formalized rituals from 150 years ago wouldn't work well today, I do wonder if we're not missing something. Death, in that era, was not hidden away in hospitals and nursing homes. It was acknowledged as a matter of course, an all too common occurrence in homes and workplaces.

I have spent the last month being rather quiet and slow. It is an intentional withdrawl from society. Victorian widows withdrew completely for a year after their husbands died. That was deep mourning. The entire mourning period for widowed women was four years, with variation in dress and activities to mark a gradual emergence back into society. For other relationships, the formalized mourning practices were less stringent, but no less ritualistic. (For more information about mourning dress check here.)

Obviously, not everyone followed those dictates. Not everyone was able to, or could afford to. But the underlying expectation was that a period of mourning was valued and respected. It was not expected that life would proceed immediately as though the deceased was simply erased without a trace, within a week's time. It sometimes feels that way now.

I decided to follow my own path, let the process unfold as it will without either pushing or prolonging. I wanted to see what it feels like. Almost unconsciously, I mark the days --- Mondays have crept up on me each week without my knowing it until I realize that another week has gone by. Each Monday brings its own thoughts and emotional pitfalls. 

I knew from prior experience that the first couple of weeks were likely to be marked by difficulty with concentration, periods of inattention, lapses into sadness or memories. It was only after 2 weeks went by and I was still sometimes wandering around the house not sure what to do next, that I knew I must set expectation aside. No time limit, I was told. I shouldn't impose one on myself.

So today is one month by the calendar. I have to attend to some business. I must get organized, so I made a folder and a log. I've looked online and talked to people for guidance. I've made some necessary calls, as the executor of her will. Each day, more of the outside world intrudes on my reverie and beckons me back into "real life" ----- a life that still feels prickly and otherworldly without my mother. 

I don't want to be some sort of neo-Victorian tragic figure. That's not my intention at all. What I continue to do is wend my way through the netherworld of life and death, the mystery of the smallest details of life and the enormity of loss. And all the while, I do my best to stay conscious.

Nancy is far right, front row ---- @1936