View from the back deck

My grandfather, back in Iowa, used to sit out on the kitchen porch after dinner and chew on a sprig of parsley that he picked from the flower box. Good for digestion. Of course, not in the winter time. Winter in Iowa is not conducive to either porch sitting or parsley.

I used to notice older people doing things like that, sitting on the porch or a park bench or, most amusing of all, in the open garage doorway since so many houses are built without porches these days. It always looked kind of sad to me as I raced by in my car on the way to somewhere, to do something. How sad it must be to be old and have nothing to do but sit. Especially in the garage.

Nothing in my life encouraged me to relax and contemplate. If I had occasion to sit and wait, I usually had a book to read or a notebook in my purse so I could plan or make notes. I had kids with me, or the radio to listen to. I had places to go and people to see.

I'm starting to change my tune and guess what---- it's not sad. Maybe what's sad is all the time I've spent rushing through the world not really seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting much of anything. Until I was 30 and changed my ways, fun revolved around intentionally changing my perception as much as I could, trying to find that fine line between euphoria and oblivion. Once I put that behind me, I still wasn't ready to be present to myself or the world around me. I was busy. I had responsibilities. People expected things of me. I didn't have time.

It's only been in the last couple of years that I have been able, with any consistency, to slow myself down to a pace that allows me to simply be for longer than a few minutes. It wasn't that I didn't see any value or try to do that before, but it's hard to still a racing mind. What I discover now is that sitting and being is not sad. I don't have to always distract myself with music or a book. And most startling of all, it's not boring.

So I'm on the back deck doing the old person sit. It's the same view as it's been for the past ten years--- except it's not. The pine trees that used to come up to the first floor windows of the houses across the way now tower over the rooftops. I can't even see the houses anymore. A few days ago, the silver maple had lots of seed pods, but almost no leaves. Now the leaves obscure the seeds. The ash tree was bare, but this morning there are tiny leaves, the butterfly bush has its first hints of purple. The mockingbird--blue bird wars are in full swing.

The view may seem the same at first glance, but it's never the same way twice. The wind shifts direction, the clouds blow across the sky, the sun angles differently with each season and time of day. The corkscrew willow that dominated the yard is now gone. I've erected a bottle tree in its place, and sunlight dances through the colored glass.

I have a baby portrait of myself hanging in my study. I was about 6 months old when it was taken. It's large and framed in gold-painted wood. I've seen this photograph all my life. When I look at that picture I know it is me 62 years ago and, strangely enough, it looks like me. I haven't changed a bit, except for the growing up and growing older part. I still look like me.

So if you walk through my neighborhood and you see me sitting on  the glider out front, doing nothing, don't shake your head and feel sorry for me. I'm not doing nothing. I'm smelling the scents, just like the dogs do. I'm feeling the air move across my face and arms. I'm listening to birdsongs and relishing the first bright pink azaleas. I'm noticing the sun as it descends to the horizon and yes, I'm greeting people and dogs as they walk by.

Someday, I hope you'll have time to sit on my porch, too. We'll have a glass of tea and talk a little bit. We'll watch the evening gather and keep an eye out for the first star. And maybe we'll just sit in companionable silence for awhile. But you'll have to bring your own parsley.

Out of the House and Into the Streets

Stadt Theater, Bremerhaven, Germany

So this is it. This is how it works in the real world. I've spent most of the past 5 months hibernating, squirreled away in my house, surrounded by all the things I love, battling demons and scratching out words, trying to make sense of something, anything. And then the sun shines for a few days, and the temperature warms up and what? I shake off the lethargy and stretch and yawn and drink some coffee and next thing you know, I've got car keys dangling from my index finger. 

I could never figure out how a person could be agoraphobic. I have been on the go since I got my first permission to ride the bus by myself. I wanted to be with my friends and go places. If I was stuck in the house, I was on the phone talking about future plans. I was the girl, 50 years ago, who would put on a nice dress, flip my hair and put in the little clippy bows above each ear, smooth on stockings ---- yes, with garters, because pantyhose hadn't been invented yet ---- and go downtown on the streetcar, with my best friend, to that upstairs restaurant kitty-corner from Karstadts department store, and order coffee and pastries, just like grown-ups. Then we would stroll down the street admiring the window displays until we reached the Stadt Theater, where we would attend a matinee performance of an opera or symphony concert. How very ladylike can you get at 13? Okay, this was in Bremerhaven, Germany. I doubt we would have done it in the States. But it was emblematic of my passion for being out and about with friends.

Fast forward five decades and here I am, glued to the couch for an entire winter. I don't want to go see friends ---- I don't want to answer the phone. I make myself get out for a few meetings, and once a month or so push myself into the nearly overwhelming company of a couple dozen women and a table full of potluck food. It doesn't help that Jill is a congenital introvert who depends on me to blast her out of the house in the best of times. And the longer I stay at home, the harder it is to get out. So now I see how that fear develops. Even today, when the sun is shining and my countenance is cheerier, I have to assure myself that I can always leave, I'm always at choice, I don't have to stay, it's okay to come home.

This morning, I joined up with a couple hundred of my closest friends to be educated about the pressing issues being presented in the North Carolina legislature, now that it has changed hands. There were some people I actually know, and most I did not. I went to the wrong church first ---- and didn't use that as a reason to turn around and go home. I allowed myself to catch the spirit, to remember my convictions, to rekindle the connection I have with others who feel, as I do, that there is injustice afoot that must be stopped. I even leaped up from my seat and went to the front when the call went out for volunteers from the throng to be the visual representation of diversity in this movement for fair play and justice. I didn't veer off to the parking lot when we moved two blocks to the legislative building. I found the offices of my representatives and spoke my name and left my concerns, and yes, I felt good afterward.

Will it make a difference? I don't know. I believe that efforts like this make more of a difference than sitting on the couch forwarding cartoons on facebook. What I know for sure is that it makes a difference to me. And I guess that's really what counts.

Is it real or is it ..... chemistry?

This is my mother, Nancy Lou Ewers Bundy. She was born in 1930. She doesn't know that anymore, not even her name. I visit her several times a week, but I don't know who she thinks I am. Sometimes she calls me Margaret, her big sister's name. I consider that a compliment. Most of the time she just seems to know that I'm someone familiar, like the women who are her caregivers at the Alzheimer's Unit where she lives. I'm the one with the chocolate mint in my pocket.

Every visit is different. Today she was not very alert. She moved and spoke as though she were underwater, very slowly with a WA-WA quality to it. It took her 15 minutes to drink 2 ounces of orange juice in teeny, tiny sips. I read her a new book, an oversize children's picture book. Sometimes she can still read words, but today all she did was point to the pictures and look away. Whenever I touched her, she startled and cried out.

As I watched her sit in the wheelchair looking around, her lips moving in small, stuttering words that only she knew, I wondered for the millionth time what it is like to be inside of her, inside her addled mind. She used to read everything she could, she had a wicked sense of humor and unbounding good cheer. Most of the time, her good cheer is still in evidence, but since she can't express herself, she can't really share the things that amuse or perplex her.

At one point today she fastened her attention on something only she could see. She touched it and talked about it, rubbed it in her hand and finally handed it off to me and grinned. I have no idea what gift she gave me, but you can be sure I said thank you.

A long, long time ago I used to attempt to expand my consciousness with chemicals. I discovered that different substances produced different effects, some of which I liked and others which I didn't. I wondered today if the place where mama lives is similar to the places I induced by artificial means, 40 years ago. 

I scare myself by worrying about my odds of following in the footsteps of my demented parents.  From the outside it looks like one of the worst things I can imagine, and it takes SO LONG to reach the end of that path. But what if it's not all that bad? What if it's like the pleasant oblivion of a really long acid trip ---- without the scary stuff? I know it's a crap shoot. Dad's dementia seemed to involve a lot of visual and auditory hallucinations, many of which scared him. (These days he might have been diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia.) But mom, even when she's interacting with people or things that I can't see, doesn't seem to be disturbed or afraid. In fact, she spends an inordinate amount of time giggling to herself. Maybe she's flooded with dopamine and seratonin and oxytocin and whatever other happy brain chemicals there are. 

It doesn't HAVE to be tragic, maybe. I hope. For her sake. And mine.

Blue Marble View

 

March 19, 2003

This is the banner I made and hung on my porch in Wake Forest, NC when the Iraq War started. I decided at the time that I would keep it out there until the war was over, a statement of protest consistent with my belief, then and now, that the war was unjustified. Patriotic fervor ran high at the time, as it always does when war is in the offing. It was not prescience or politics that positioned me against the tide.It was my fear for the mothers and fathers and children of the country we attacked. It was my grief for the inevitable lives that would be changed and lost in our own country. And it was the cavalier manner in which we, the USA, bypassed diplomacy in favor of death. Mainly, for me, it was the mothers and children. I pictured them huddling in the only home they had, the place where they had felt safe to live out the daily dramas of family life --- preparing meals, doing laundry, playing, talking, singing, sleeping. No longer safe from bombs and sirens and sudden death, life would come to a halt and never be the same. 

I was skeptiacl of war, but still naive enough to believe it would be short-lived, that perhaps the destruction would be curbed, that this country where I live would remember itself and pull back. I wasn't proud of my country's propensity to throw its weight around like a schoolyard bully, to retaliate on an order of magnitude many times greater than the perceived original offense, the excuse for executing an all out attack to destroy another land. I wasn't going to tie a yellow ribbon around my beautiful old maple trees out front, but I wanted to show support for those who would suffer, here and abroad. 

Collateral damage. Civilian casualties. Soldiers. Enemies.

The words of war make no sense to me. I have never in my 62 years been in a physical fight. I expect my  life to proceed in much the same way until the end. I'm not always peaceful, by no means have I avoided conflict, argument, betrayal, pain. But just as, on the individual level, fighting is not a clear option for conflict resolution, so it seems wildly incongruent for nations to engage in ritualized mortal combat as a way to settle differences. Is it mass psychosis? Is it the many who suffer for the egos of the few?

I grew up in the role of observer on US military bases in foreign countries. I was the daughter of teachers, perhaps one of the most peaceful and forward-looking professions, who taught the sons and daughters of warriors. It was only much later that I wondered if, in actuality, I was part of an occupying force. Why were armed, uniformed men (mainly) living, drilling, working, and guarding beyond their own country's borders? 

Whatever the political and military ramifications, I was fortunate to live in countries outside of the United States. I was able to learn other languages, meet other people, learn firsthand about customs and attitudes different from my own. I learned from the inside out that all people experience love for their families and their homes, that we are the same in many, many more ways than we are different. I learned with certainty that borders are artificial --- I never saw lines on the ground when I crossed through those checkpoints. I realized  that countries, nationalities, races, ethnicities, were all constructs invented for division, not unification and wholeness.

Ten years ago I hung my handmade banner with pride and hope for a quick resolution. It would hang outside my house until the gunfire ceased. I've moved twice since then. The banner, being only made of cloth, began to wear and fade as the years went by, so I brought it inside. We placed it with other items that denote peace, to form a place in our home devoted to peace, an altar to love.

Ten years and counting. The United States is still at war. My hope has not died, but is subdued these days. 

Ennui or Aren't We?

Depression, they say. But really? Is that just one of those post-modern, first world reasons to dip into the medicine chest or pull the covers over your head? You want to talk depression? Grandma Bundy, my father's mother. Completely rigid, paralyzed by Rheumatoid Arthritis for the last 32 years of her life. I never knew her except in a hospital bed in the dining room being tended by her older sister, Aunty Ann. All her food put through the blender to drink through a bent glass straw. She had no teeth. Periodic calls for the bedpan, as needed. Crank up my knees. Crank down my head. Please move my pillow.

That's depressing.

Or how about my mother? Deep into Alzheimer's Disease. Life slipping away day by day. Unable to remember herself, her family, her life. It's a long, long good-bye, a centimeter at a time. And depressing.

So maybe I'd just rather trade in the label for something a bit less demanding, a bit more romantic. Like Melancholy. Disconsolate. Ennui. Blue.

After all, the very mention of the word depression brings on the eye-roll, the sneer, the unspoken need to slap someone and say "Quit Whining! You think you got it bad? I know a guy ----- a woman ---- a little kid---- some people ------"

But that's kind of the crux of it, isn't it? I don't think I've got it so bad. I know I've got it good, as a matter of fact. And just in case I forget, I've got an entire array of internal voices ---- the whole committee ---- to remind me of just how delusional and wrong I am. "Sit down and shut up!"

This is not a plea for sympathy. You got that? NO SYMPATHY. Simply a description of the moment. Any recognition? It's not the same for everyone, this undefinable gloominess, this enervating dispiritedness. Your brain chemistry is not mine, so it looks a little different. Hard to even recognize, sometimes. Jumbled thinking? Too much sleep? Too little? I feel, a lot of the time, like I'm wrapped in bubble wrap. Good thing, since I also run into doorways and trip over dogs.

Sunshine. Birdsongs. Rainbows. Butterflies. Unicorns. Keeping my eye on the prize.

Perhaps it's the vapors. I think I need a fainting couch, preferably red brocade.

Traveling down the weedy path

I've had a week of enforced downtime now, with thoughts and observations chasing each other around like squirrels in the fallen leaves. Since the world was spinning out of control --- literally --- it was hard to read or write or watch tv for awhile, and that made me revert to an old favorite from childhood: listening to stories. Thank goodness for a public library with audiobooks.

I also had more than enough time to simply think. Stories have been a staple for me my whole life. I had parents who read to me every day, complete with voices and gestures. I also collected stories from life. I was one of those kids who would sit on the backstep or up on the stairs while the grown folks were talking. I was blessed with excellent hearing, and tried not to miss a word or inflection, even when I didn't understand the significance of their speech.

As soon as I learned to write, I delighted in writing stories. Most of them are mercifully lost to the sands of time, but a few examples lurk in boxes and files. I can remember following my mom around reading her my creation while she was fixing dinner or folding clothes. Every so often she would respond with "mmmhmm" or "oh my" and even I knew she was only half listening. But the fun of it for me was not the audience, it was hearing the words I had written spoken out loud, like a "real" story.

I became more self-conscious the longer I went to school. My writing usually got good grades because I was careful and knowledgeable about the mechanics. I have my father to thank for good grammar and wide vocabulary. But to have my work judged and given an A,B,or C (I never got lower than that!) was distinctly uncomfortable and limiting. I began to worry about criticism. I began to tailor my words for teachers. Just as, in art class, red cows and blue grass were not okay, writing that was too imaginative or too personal would not be acceptable.

The schism between public and private writing became fully delineated when I was 11 and started to journal in earnest. My early journals still contained stories, but they were tales that nobody else was invited to read, especially teachers. The main character was lonely or afraid, hiding from a thunderstorm because she couldn't get into her house. Couldn't turn that in because I knew a teacher would march that straight down the hall to Daddy's bandroom.

Now I am once again in the netherland between public and private writing. I still journal and nobody reads that stuff. Believe me, you wouldn't want to. But the novels I've written and sent into the world, my public writing, represents only a tiny fraction of what I want to say. They were the easy ones, the ones that could garner approval or at least acceptance, and if they didn't I would probably not know about it. But I'm over the newness of seeing my work in print and on kindle, and knowing that people I don't know would actually read it.

I stand at my crossroads. Hello Robert Johnson. (I wish!) Do I continue to keep it easy and light? Or do I go into the murkier places? Do I try to write for a particular slice of the reading public or do I write for me? I've been wrestling with this for months now. The current book is at a turning point and is tugging me in a direction I didn't intend to go. But these characters have been more insistent, more direct already, than any others I've written. I could easily follow the general outline and live happily ever after, and follow it up with another and another. Maybe I'd even find an audience and augment my retirement pay. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, is there?

Or maybe I follow the muse down into the labyrinth. I might end up with nothing to show for it. I might decide in the end, that it truly was just for me. I don't even know where it is leading, but I can tell already that it's not Hollywood.

I know the answer, of course. In order to preserve my personal integrity, I have to go full tilt. It's not an either/or forever. But for this moment --- and however long it takes --- the path that beckons is the one less traveled. And standing at the crossroads, it looks just a little bit scary.

Old folks, queued up

                                                                                 
This morning I am using my mother's cup. She doesn't remember this cup. Shoot, she doesn't even remember me. I took it out of the back of the cupboard this morning because all my usual oversize cups are in the dishwasher. I've never used it before.

I'm not sure where it came from or why. It's been around almost as long as I can remember. There used to be a matching Father cup, but it's long since gone. My mother used this cup for years. It's cracked and chipped; I was a little afraid to pour hot coffee into it. And now, because she no longer needs anything but clothing, it rests in my kitchen cupboard.

Until I took on the Mother-cup today, I had a thought in mind for writing ---- witty and political and ironic. Perhaps, I still do. But it is tempered with the reality of what it means to pass the mantle ---- or the goblet ----or the Mother-Cup.

There is a lot of head-swiveling change going on, it seems. Future Shock is well underway. Just look around you, consult the interwebs or watch the talking heads on tv. Not only is there change, it's happening relentlessly, all at once, AND ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS!!!

One of the things you might hear people say ---- I've even said it myself ----- is "Just wait. All those old white people will die off and things will be ok."  Same-sex marriage. Immigration. War. Racism. Technology. Gun control. Grrrrrl Power.

All very well --- I can hardly wait. That is, until I stop to realize that ----- I AM THEM.
Oh-oh. I'm waiting for my own demographic to die off? That's another tune.

It's tricky stuff, aging and all. We don't all do it the same way. I look at those old guys on tv, with the balding, white-fringed heads, and I don't recognize them as my schoolmates. They're OLD. And too often, they're STUPID. We weren't like that, were we? What happened?

I've been told that I'm stuck in the Sixties. That's probably true. There's no reason for me to watch the Grammys or even the Academy Awards, because I don't know the players. But there are things I do know. Things I learned in the sixties.

MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR

PEACE IS THE ANSWER

DO YOUR OWN THING

QUESTION AUTHORITY

Then there's the old favorite, Turn on, Tune in, Drop out. But we'll save that for another time. 

My Mama's cup reminds me that every age has its learning, every generation has its challenges. I used to envy her the glamorous cocktail dresses, live jazz, drinking culture. That's what being a grown-up looked like to me. I didn't see the underside of alcoholism and broken relationships that went with it. I didn't witness lung cancer, unwanted pregnancies, conformity.

Those old folks I so cavalierly consign to the graveyard have faced their own barriers and emerged into a world they don't recognize. It's not the Sixties anymore, nor the Seventies, Eighties, Nineties.... 

Not everyone in my generation embraced love and peace, and it looks like many still do not. Yes, all the old white guys who are giving everyone fits in congress are gonna die out. Of course, that's also someobody's grandpa. 

My Mom didn't actually pass this Mother-cup on to me, she left it behind. I'm leaving things behind as well, material things (way too many!) as well as ideas, influence and love.

When all the old guys die off and it's a different world, take a breath and look around, because the next newest thing will be right behind you. And guess who will be the old guys then?