Stanley

Mom and Brother, Stanley

I have purposely not mentioned my youngest brother much in this blog. He is a thorn in my side, a pebble in my shoe, most of the time, and so I leave him out of the discussion, perhaps in that way to make his looming presence fade a little. But he is a fact in my life and my mother's life and because of his proximity to my mother, very much a fact of life right now.

This blog is not worth anything to me if I can't be honest in it, as if it was my personal journal. It won't be as brutally honest as my hand-written journal, as I suspect there are people who are reading it and they don't really want to know ALL my warts, read all the curses. Since my brother is paramount in my mind at this moment, I am going to lay it out here.

Stanely was born when I was twelve. Because of family circumstances at the time, my Dad's new business, Mom away from home helping Dad with it, I became like a second mother to my little brother. When he was three years old and I was 15 my Mom would go help Dad out as soon as I got home from school, and I was Stanley's "Mom". He was an odd duck, even then. He became "little bird", "little airplane", "little car"--he had a vivid imagination which we all indulged because he was the baby. At 15 my maternal instincts were in full gear and I was even making dinners for the family, always the little helper. After a few years my Dad's business failed and I became a normal teenager with dates and highschool to think about, but Stanley still seemed like more of a son to me than a brother--my first experience with a child.

I got married early and started my own family and Stanley tried to succeed in grade school and didn't do well there, and then tried to succeed in junior high and didn't succeed there and dropped out at 16. He took up drugs, probably as a way to deal with being "different", which he certainly was. He was an artist and a musician and that personality that caused him to be little car and little airplaine made him take up numerous other personas along the way. It was difficult to tell who he really was. at one point in his life he affected being a black man with white skin. He adapted the black swagger, speech, mode of dress. Because he didn't know what else to do with himself and something was expected of him, he joined the Army. He was still in his AfroAmerican personality and the real black men in the Army didn't take kindly to that. He found out the hard way that if you are not black, you do not try to BE black. He was discharged for fighting. He came home, lived with my parents for awhile, tried to live on his own, took more drugs, came back home, tried to live on his own again, painted amazing pictures, came back home.

I guess Stanley came back home again for good when he was in his early 30s. He is now 52. He continued to paint until my Dad died in 2001, exhibiting at Metropolis and Amy Burnett's gallery a few times over the years, but he lacked the ambition and drive to go any further. He sank into mental illness of a type that is managed by taking anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety medications. He also smokes pot. He lives upstairs in my mother's house, makes motor-cycle models, doesn't paint anymore, lives mostly at night, sleeps during the day, watches television, goes out to a movie occasasionally with his one friend, Pat, who is also an artist but, unlike Stanley, a working man with a family. He gets a small income from Social Security Disability Insurance, which he spends mostly on pot and take-out pizza. Up until recently I have seen him about once a week, if he happens to be downstairs when I have been visiting my Mother. We talk about television shows and movies he likes. He is intelligent and an entertaining conversationalist for a short period of time, but the television obsession can be too much after awhile. Once a week visits are enough.

When Mom fell and broke her arm and her kneecap I knew I was going to have to ask my brother to step up to the plate and take on some responsibility. He had done it before, when Mom broke her ankle two years ago. I had asked him then to sleep on Mom's schedule rather than his own, to sleep downstairs, rather than in his rooms upstairs and to help Mom get from her room to the bathroom in a wheelchair. He also had to make her meals. He did a decent job of it. It was stressful for him, I knew that, but he did it.

So I expected him to be able to do it again this time. I might be wrong about that. I brought Mom home Tuesday evening, after an afternoon fraught with tension while my brother waited at home for the wheelchair to be delivered and I waited at the nursing home to get confirmation that the wheelchair was there, ready to transport her into the house. Stanley nearly folded under this small pressure, calling me three times to report that the chair had not yet arrived, in a fury because he thought he saw a van going back and forth on the street and maybe that van was the wheelchair van and why weren't they stopping?! When the chair arrived and I got Mom home finally, Stanley was in a frenzy, hair flying in all directions, trying to tell me about a program he'd seen on television while my husband and I tried to get Mom in her bed and take care of other details that had to be done right then. He would not shut up or calm down. I did my best to ignore him. Before I left, I made a list of chores I needed him to do--empty the dryer, take the dishes out of the dishwasher, give Mom her pain pill at 9:00. Then I went home hoping that he could take care of these small things and his Mom. I figured it was his duty, after all the years she had been taking care of him.

Wednesday, after getting groceries for Mom, I arrived at noon to learn that she hadn't had any pain medication the night before, that Stanley had given her Tylenol PM instead, which is what she has taken at night for several years in order to sleep. He had not fed her yet, she was still in bed. Okay, I thought, this is the first morning, he's tired and tense, he hasn't gotten his act together. I spoke to him firmly but gently about the importance of food and the pain pills and about getting Mom in an upright position. I went back into the second-mother mode and he seemed to respond. He helped me cut back the wisteria that was hanging over the sidewalk, though keeping up a constant monolog about his television shows. That night I called him to make sure food and medications were being administered when they should be.

Thursday was better. I arrived in the morning to get Mom ready for her doctor's appointment. She had eaten her toast, had her pill and her daily medications and was ready to get up and have me help dress her. Stanley was calm and seemed on top of things. He helped get Mom down the steps and into the car. It was a pretty good day, all in all. Good news from the doctor, Stanley got a break, Mom got to get out into the fresh air. I left that day feeling pretty good about things.

Friday I started slowly, watching my recording of the Democratic Convention, cleaning the bathroom, answering email. I got to Mom's at 12:30, with a new pain medication prescription, a new bag of licorice and hope in my heart because today was the first day of Abiding Care. We were to meet the aid that would be helping Mom twice a week. As I came in the front door, Stanley rose up from the couch in a start--he had been asleep. When I remarked that he'd better get going as he had his own doctor's appointment in a couple of hours he started to whimper about what a "bad night" he'd had, his stomach upset, in the bathroom many times. I ignored him but tensed up because I didn't want to hear complaining from him when we had an 86 year old mother with two broken bones, who was bedridden. I checked on Mom--she was in pain, she hadn't had lunch, she hadn't had her daily meds, she was in disarray and looked so helpless and in need that I nearly broke down crying. I got Mom's lunch ready and got her out of bed, put a shirt on her (she was STILL wearing the slacks she'd had on the day before when I'd left her) and made some coffee. I wheeled her out into the livingroom to eat.

Again, I began to tell my brother how important it was to feed Mom and get her pain medication to her on a regular basis, not to mention getting her out of bed and in an upright position. This time the lecture was met with hostility--"I'm going to tell you one more time and I'm not going to tell you again, I had a bad night!" Well, second-mother, big sister, whatever I am to him, sane person to crazy person, I don't know what relationship I have to him anymore, whatever it is I came back swinging. He got the angry speech I've been wanting to give him for years: "You had a bad night. Poor you! How would you like to have a broken arm and a broken leg and be helpless in your bed and in fierce pain? Your mother has taken care of you for 52 years. It's time for you to take care of her now! She can't walk, she can hardly feed herself, she can't go outside without help, she can't drive a car, she can't get out of bed, she can't even get to the bathroom and you are complaining because you had a bad night?!" He came back with, "Well maybe I should just leave!" I said, "Go ahead. Go out into the big world and see how far you get". He knows he could never leave, that he couldn't make it in the world.

In a sense this is very sad. I would love to have a brother who has a wife, a family, a job, a life. But I don't and that's a fact of life and has been for decades. There is nothing I can do about the way he is. I told Bookworm that I can't be angry with him all the time, I just have to work with what I have. Trouble is, I'm not sure it's workable.

The Abiding Care aid started yesterday and she is like that white tornado in the commercials from long ago. She helped Mom and when Mom napped she tackled the kitchen and cleaned it until it shined. She put laundry in the washer and I'd bet she remembered to put it in the dryer and emptied the dryer before she left. She was making dinner when I left at 4:00. She is 22, she is tall and strong, she's smart and interesting, she will be wonderful for Mom and when she is there 4 hours a day, two days a week I will have confidence that Mom is well cared for. But what about the other 5 days a week? I know Mom wants to be in her own home, but would she be better off with me? I know she would get better care from me, more consistant, more constant. Part of me wants to bring her to my home and part of me wants Stanley to take his turn, to be a man for once, to take responsibility. I may be asking more than he is capable of. I am going to give it a little more time. If he can get into a routine, like he did two years ago during the broken ankle time, then it might be okay. Maybe he will want to impress Alyssa, the aid. Mostly I want to have some relief myself and live my life for at least part of every day.

Six weeks more in the leg brace, 4 weeks more in the arm brace. It sounds like such a small space of time. It's only been one week and two days since Mom fell. It seems like so long ago. As some comedian said in some movie years ago, "There's been so much stuff under the thing".

Challenges!

In the previous post I seem to have left out a few important things.  Perhaps I was trying to be nice, as seems to be my instinct most of the time.  I think I get that from my plucky Mom--she wouldn't dream of complaining about her treatment at Bremerton Health and Rehab.  But yesterday as she watched me fly off a wheelchair that I  tried to sit on next to her bed, I think she might have changed her mind.  There was not, and has never been, a chair next to my Mom's bed.  There is a chair next to the other bed in the room, but it's Frances's chair, so I've never pulled it over to the other side of the room to use.  Yesterday, the wheelchair was there, there was a pillow on the seat, and I sat on it.  The brakes were not on and there were my Mom's books underneath the pillow, so it shot out from under me and I went down hard on the floor.  I am as happy as I can be that there was a nursing aid in the room to see me hit the deck, because she can testify to it when an investigation is done based on the complaint paperwork that I completed, with tears streaming down my face. 

 I had a few other complaints, too.  Mom had one pair of underwear on her body when she came into the nursing home and I brought another pair the next day.  Now, both are missing.  I had filled out another form that stated I would take her laundry home with me, having heard stories from friends about clothing and other belongings going missing during nursing home stays.  And then there was the issue of my Mom's broken arm immobilizer, which was not attached as it should have been, leaving her poor, broken arm hanging down at her side.  When I asked to have it put on properly, the nurse (who I've liked very much) was unable to do it and felt a part of the brace was missing.  She ran off to look for the missing piece.  A half hour later a PT fellow came in, looked at her brace and put it on correctly.  There was no missing piece.  The nurse did not know how to attach this type of brace.  All of these things went into my complaint.

I feel as though I have been angry for 5 days now and it's not fun to feel that way.  Just below the anger is sorrow and just below that is fear.  I'm not sure those emotions go in that order, but all are there.  The sorrow is for seeing my Mom in this predicament, where she is absolutely helpless, except for her voice, and as I said before, she would not dare to complain.  The anger is because I don't know how to make myself heard except by yelling--it seems the only way to get anyone's attention.  The medical system rules are unknown to me--I am having to learn as I go and the learning curve is very steep.  I feel helpless, too, but at least I can walk and find the person that needs to be talked to, I can drive my car to get the prescription or to "get in the face" of the nurse who isn't responding.  But it makes me angry that I have to do these things and glad that I have the balls to do them.  A more passive person would have a very hard time.  

The fear is of the future.  In the years since my father died in 2001 I have learned that my habit of projecting my fears into the future, in other words, trying to figure out what is going to happen so that maybe I can control things, does not work.  After my Dad died I was extremely concerned and fearful of what my brothers would do to each other (they hated each other), what would happen when Mom would die someday, what kind of horrible battles would occur over Mom's healthcare and ultimate death?  I was so tied up in knots over these potential hazards and crises that I ended up in therapy and on anti-depressants.  The therapy helped and the Paxil helped and during the 7 years on the Paxil I was able to see my behavior and learn in a calmer way.  And my other brother dies in 2002, something I could never have predicted, even in my wilder attempts at prognostication.  So I'm trying not to play this out too far into the future, but the fact is my Mom has fallen twice in two years and both times she has broken bones.  Two years ago she fell on her porch and broke her ankle in 4 places.  And this time it's her arm and her kneecap.  I can't help but wonder what will happen next.

I have cried in my husband's arms many times in the past 5 days, I have cried on the phone with my best friend, I have cried at the nursing home, and I have sent SOS emails to my friends.  I think that's a better way than trying to stay adult and mature.  Adult and mature works well when you are in offices, but I, at least, have to let down that facade when I am at home, and give in to all the fears and sorrows of this new challenge.

Let me say one final thing about the word "challenge".  I have noticed in the past few years that the word has been lovingly adopted by the "caring" professions, including the education system and the managerial professions.  No, it's not a problem, dear, it's a challenge.  We don't have a crisis, we have a challenge.  Well let me tell you, I can think of a bunch of other words that start with C that more appropriately describe problems:  crap, crisis, corruption, catastrophe, calamity, cheerless, cheesy,chilling, choleric,circuitous, clamor, crash, cloddish, clumsy, coercion, combat, curse, cry --I have no time to keep listing C words, but I imagine you have some of your own.  It's time for me to go pick up a pain killer prescription and go participate in my Mom's doctor's appointment.  Wish me hope.

In An Instant

It's incredible how the course of life can be changed in a blink of the eye, a flutter of the eyelash. My best friend has described life as a river. I think that's very apt, because, since Wednesday night I have been trying to navigate the white water of the medical system.

My 86-year-old Mom fell in her driveway on Wednesday evening, on her way to get in the car with her 89-year-old sister-in-law. They were going to choir practice. Now Mom is in a nursing home. She broke her left arm and cracked her right kneecap and lacerated her forehead above her left eye. She was in the emergency room at the hospital for seven hours while they SLOWLY decided that she would not be admitted to the hospital and therefore we had to get her out of there. Our options were ugly: take her home and try to maneuver her into her bed without the use of a wheelchair or several strong men OR admit her to a nursing home. The ER doctor and social worker were pushing heavily for the nursing home. I was trying to convince them, and myself, that taking her home would be the better idea. I was in a state of confusion and anger already because, as part of the decision process, I was told by the social worker that Medicare would not cover Mom's nursing home costs if she had not been in the hospital for at least 3 days. I was not only trying to make the decision about what to do based on my mother's welfare but on her financial health, as well. She is like many 86-year-old widows who have always been housewives: she has a pension from her husband's civil service retirement and a tiny amount of social security each month, a savings account that I have built up in the years since I took over her finances and a small account at a brokerage.

This post makes it sound as if I was rational and only trying to pick the best of two rotten alternatives. The reality is that the minute I was put in the position of having to make this awful decision my innards turned to water and I reverted to the little girl in me and all I wanted to do was go home and hide under the covers of my own bed, in my own warm house, next to my husband and cry. But I was in the garishly lit emergency room, in cubicle #6, with my Mom on an unforgiving sheeted platform euphamistically called a bed, with 6 stitches in her head, a 2 foot brace on her leg and an "immobilizer" on her broken arm. (I could have used a superhero called The Immobilizer at that point. He could have swooped in, immobilized everyone in sight with his immobilizing super-stare and swooped us both away to a safe place with all the wheelchairs and bedside commodes we needed.) Alas The Immobilizer did not appear, so Me/Little Daughter was left to make the big decision.

I hemmed and stalled and finally asked the social worker if I could speak to the "person" at Bremerton Health and Rehab on the phone. Bremerton H and R was the ONLY nursing home that would admit a person, no matter how in need, at 2:00 a.m. They had two empty beds and they were ready to take our money. The horrifying equation was 2 weeks at $4500, paid in advance, out of either Mom's pocket or mine. In my 30 minutes on the phone with Kristy from BHR, I told her I couldn't get my hands on that money until the next day and she finally understood that I wanted Mom to be home within a few days to a week and agreed to a lesser amount up front. I think she was willing to have me pay for only 3 days, but I ultimately decided to pay for a week. It is nearly a week later and Mom is still at the facility, so it was a decent decision, though it kills me to take that much money out of her savings. One of the truly stupid and unforgettable things the social worker at the hospital said when trying to convince me that the best route would be a nursing home, was, "You'll be using up that money soon anyway". That may be, but Mom should be able to use that money on a nice trip to see her granddaughter in San Diego, instead.

The nursing home has turned out to be okay for Mom. She is getting a degree of care, not fabulous care, but on-call care, three meals a day, people around to talk with her. My Mother happens to be an extremely upbeat person who takes each day as it comes and "tries to make the best of things", as she says. She likes it when the young aids and others come in to see how she is. She reports that they are all very nice and helpful. She has a couple of books, a big NY Times crossword puzzle book, some magazines and the newspaper every day. She likes the food, but then she also likes Denny's and Shari's and Dominoes Pizza and most middle of the road food--she's a housewife of the fifties, so a dish of frozen strawberries, or lime jello or a sloppy joe on a Langendorf bun is alright with her. I've felt so much anxiety over having to put her in there, but she has been cheerful most of the time and thinks it's for the best on a short-term basis. I can rest at night because of her good attitude.

My bigger problems have centered more around getting a response from her doctor. Both my Mom and brother have used this doctor for several years now. My Dad saw her for years before he died. She was my doctor before I had to change to Group Health after retirement. You would think there would be some level of caring or concern shown because she has been so involved with the family, but that has not been the case. It is as if Mom is a stranger to her. I have been promised that phone calls will be returned and they haven't--I've tried to speak with her nurse and haven't been able to get to her. I wanted Mom to be seen at the nursing home but was told the doctor "doesn't go there". On advice from friends I went to the clinic where she has an office and demanded to speak with her nurse. Her nurse came out, tersely told me the doctor had written the prescription for the wheelchair and other medical appliances we'd need at home and that if we wanted an appointment I should make it with the appointment desk and then she swished out, all dispatch and dispassion. Should I expect more or is this the way it is in the medical profession now? When we see the doctor tomorrow I am going to throw away any caution I have about ruffling anyone's feathers and let the doctor know just how many of MY feathers have been ruffled. It seems to be the only way to get results and I have been told this same thing by many friends recently who have had sick relatives in the past few years.

My son remarked that if we lived in Canada or Cuba or England none of this would have happened, that Mom's care would have been paid for. If you've seen the documentary, Sicko, you would agree. My experience in the past 5 days has taught me that ER doctors, nursing homes and family doctors are not in the business of taking care of people in need--they are in the business of paperwork that protects their asses. I have signed so many forms that claim to be protecting my Mom's "rights", but which actually protect the hospital and the nursing home. The medical system in this country is terribly, terribly broken and I don't see either one of our presidential candidates promising anything other than "insurance for everyone". Well, Mom has insurance and it's not doing her any good at all. The insurance doesn't mean her doctor will answer the phone or provide a prescription, it doesn't mean that her nursing home care will be covered or that she will even get GOOD care while there, it doesn't insure her safety or sanity or my sanity, either.

Tomorrow, one way or the other, Mom will go home. I am hoping that her doctor will write the order for her to "release her to home" immediately. If she hesitates to do it, I will bust Mom out of there without the blessing of anything but my good instincts. And you can bet that I will have to complete a form that covers the asses of everyone involved, except for my Mom.

Bikini After Baby

My daughter-in-law, Irene, taking care of her babies

I was at my Mom's house on Wednesday and while waiting for her to get something I picked up her July 28th People magazine. On page 108 I found BodyWatch--Bikini After Baby.

I know you and I don't know HOW THEY DO IT, but People magazine does:

Jennifer Lopez
Gave birth 5 months ago
Gained 50 pounds
Accompanied with picture of Lopez in bikini


How she lost it: Prepping for a Fall triathlon since late June, Lopez, 39, has been alternating 35 minute runs with swimming and 50 minute bike rides up to six times a week. "This is not vanity inspired," says trainer, Gunnar Peterson.

HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!!!!

This is not vanity inspired, or money inspired, or next role inspired, or tabloid inspired. No, not at all. Please read this with the heaviest of sarcastic tones.

This is NOT NORMAL! My daughter-in-law is lucky if she can grab 15 minutes in 24 hours to do anything for herself, let alone at least 85 minute workouts 6 times a week. And the bike rides must take Lopez away from where the baby is, so who takes care of her precious child?



On the same page:

Jaime Pressly
Gave birth 14 months ago
Gained 40 pounds
Accompanied by picture of Pressly in tiny bikini

How she lost it: Jaime, 30, relied on daily hour-long runs and 90 minute weight-training sessions. Since taking it off she trains 2 hours a day with her personal trainer.

Is there really anything left to say? Except, who is taking care of the babies????!!!!!

My daughter-in-law thinks money is behind all this training, and sweating and dieting and extreme effort and she is right, but I still have to wonder how this affects all the new young mothers out there who are watching and taking notes.

Post-Baby Bodies?!#&*

Katie Holmes Cruise--Post-Baby Body

From the title of this post you may be able to guess what I think of that phrase, so much in the pop culture news these days, "post-baby bodies". For those who manage to avoid pop-culture, which is probably better for your health, what is being referred to here is the taut, hard, flat stomach, no hips, lean bodies that young actresses who have just had babies display to their friends/enemies, the Paparazzi, the fans, the public. Proudly they walk to their cars, babies in the most expensive strollers and or front packs and or nannies arms, bellies bare, their new, larger breasts are showing mondo cleavage, and they look just the way they were 9 months ago or possibly even better. People, Us Weekly, Entertainment Tonight, E! cameras are clicking away and the reporters from all of the above are shrieking at viewers about the incredible, mind-boggling, magical, fantastical fact that the actresses "post-baby bodies" are better than could ever be imagined!!!!!!!! "How do they do it?", they rapturously implore.

I am tired of hearing about PBBs because my experience was drastically different. My post-baby body was at least 20 pounds heavier with the first child and it went up exponentially with each successive birth. After the first baby, 45 years ago, I lost about 15 of those pounds. After the second baby, 2 1/2 years later, I lost 10 of those pounds. (Can you see the pattern emerging?) After the last baby, 32 years ago, I lost maybe 10 pounds. If you can do elementary math you can see that I never returned to my pre-baby weight. No fans, magazines, TV entertainment shows or paparazzi would have been agitated in their desire to extoll the virtues of my ability to return to my fabulous, taut, hard shape!

The thing is--I was a regular person, who had regular child-raising chores to do in a regular suburban household with a regular husband who required regular meals and regularly washed clothes and a regularly vacuumed and scrubbed house. And the other thing is--in my time of child rearing, the 60s, 70s, 80s, the figures in the public eye who had children did so behind closed doors. They did not emerge until many, many months after their children were born and they did not wear midriff baring fashions in those days, therefore we didn't see whether they had achieved pre-baby tautness or not, nor I think, did we care. The magazines showed pictures of them IN BED with their newborns, swathed in lacy bed jackets, cradling their adorable infants, looking down at them lovingly. In those days I think we would have been okay with Elizabeth Taylor or Debbie Reynolds or Sophia Loren being a little heavier than they were before. After all, we were. In fact, we were ALL heavier, rounder and softer than the crop of actresses now in the public eye.

I wonder if young mothers today, watching Nicole, Angelina, Gwyneth, Madonna, Katie, et.al., think that they must achieve this same level of firmness within days of having their babies. I wonder if they understand how these star mothers do it. I am not in on all the details of the diets, purges and other intra-intestinal fat burning iradications these girls go through, but I am sure there are hundreds of them, not to mention the hours sweating at the gym.

What is it in our rabid pop culture today that wants the young new star mothers, to look exactly the same as they did before gestation and birth? What is it that craves a much less than mother-like physique? Why is it that the only curves allowed these girls are breasts and that those breasts be augmented and not be used to suckle the infant that has just emerged from that same woman, who just months before was flaunting her "baby bump". Is it a matter of "Look at me! Look how incredible I am that I can have a huge pregnancy and then bounce back into shape with a snap of my fingers! Am I not Superwoman?" Not only is it not true that it happened with a snap of the fingers, it is also not true that it is normal. I speculate that if these young stars did NOT bounce back that they would become fodder for the media in an entirely different way.

Witness what the media jackals did to Britney Spears when she didn't come out of pregnancy with her abs intact. How did they treat her when she said she wanted another child right away? Did any of you miss the pictures that were taken of her belly hanging over the tops of her low-riding jeans and the nasty commentary that went along with it? How could you have missed it in the line at the grocery store with the tabloids, and pseudo-reputable magazines right next to them, all showing Britney looking like a regular person who has just given birth. Can you imagine what it must be like for these girl/mothers?

So here we have the media demanding that our new crop of star mothers come out of childbirth looking as though someone else carried their babies and we have our young women in this country watching all this on their iPhones, computers, magazines, online. What kind of body image problems are we going to see? When women cultural icons became extremely thin we saw teenagers falling into anorexia and bulemia. Those were teenagers, not yet having babies. What is going to happen, what kind of pressure is occurring right now, that will impact new mothers that aren't stars? How much depression, added onto the normal post-partum depression, will follow if young women believe that they must achieve their pre-baby bodies?

I don't envy either the star mothers or the non-star mothers. There is so much pressure in this world to look young. There are so many body image problems that all people grow up with. Media is becoming so all-pervading in all our lives. It is only in my 60s that I finally can say "screw it" to cultural ecstasy about thinness and youth. But can these young women stop listening, stop watching, stop emulating? It's doubtful and it's dangerous.

Nessun Dorma, Jessie Cullum and Mamma Mia

The great aria, Puccini's Nessun Dorma, is playing in the background, being sung by the most wonderful tenor of all time, Luciano Pavarotti. I can imagine him, a stout little man who seemed anything but little and stout, in a black tuxedo, white shirt, handkerchief in hand, black hair and beard, head facing skyward, mouth so wide open all his teeth show, while these incredible, inhumanly beautiful sounds escape his throat and float out into the air where we can hear them and where they enter our ears and our hearts and our stomachs and our arms and our legs and I am sitting here with tears streaming down my face and a lump in my throat as big as a boiled egg, because of the other-wordly beauty of the song and the voice that is singing it. This happens to me every. single. time. I hear this aria, sung by this man and I crumble.

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J.J. Abrams, who has given those of us who love inpenetrable mysteries, LOST, is about to give us another delicious TV program, titled FRINGE. I'm looking forward to it, but the reason I bring it up here is that he is quoted as saying:

"This(Fringe) was really about saying, 'What are the things we love? How do we make a show that lets us play with these toys?' "

I think that's exactly what we should be asking ourselves, all the time. What do we love? How can we construct a job, a life, a retirement that lets us play with these toys???

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Here is a quote that's worth repeating (I think I used it in another blog post way back when):

Jamie Cullum in his song Photograph says:

"As I look back at my ordinary, ordinary life

I see so much magic, though I missed it at the time."

Look back at your ordinary, ordinary life and find the magic. It's there. Trust me.

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Jamie Cullum is worth listening to. He is very young--British--sounds a little like Paul McCartney and he has a wonderful way with lyrics. Sometimes he sings his own compositions and sometimes he sings old songs like "I Only Have Eyes for You" and that means, to me, that he has great respect for the old music as well as what's new. "Photograph" and 13 other songs that I love are on Jamie Cullum Cathing Tales http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Tales-Jamie-Cullum/dp/B000AXWHRG/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1217459359&sr=8-2

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My Mom and my best friend and I went to see Mamma Mia on Monday. My Mom loved the movie unreservedly, absolutely, happily. When I asked her what her favorite part was she said she couldn't name a best part because she loved the whole thing.

Well, best friend and I had different reactions. The first thing I said to her, in the darkened theater after the movie had started was: "This could have been a good story, maybe, without the MUSIC." The second thing I said was: "I hate ABBA music". She liked Christine Baranski who she said made a bad song better. I agree. Baranski was THE ONLY ONE who looked relaxed in this movie. All her years on the stage prepared her for this movie, all her work in musicals allowed her to let her body move normally with the music, plus she has a big voice. I think Streep's other friend, Julie Waters I think her name is, has had lots of stage experience, too, but still, she didn't look comfortable either. And Streep? Oh baby, she should not have done it. She should have had second, third and fourth thoughts about this. She can sing, but she can't sing big. I leaned over to my friend and whispered: "It makes me long for Streisand when Meryl sings." And I really haven't longed for Streisand in a loooonnng time. Even Celine Dion, whom I pretty much can't stand, would have been better. She would have SOLD the songs, but Meryl, I'm sorry, no. And she flapped her arms and legs around in a way that was nearly spastic! What was she thinking???!!!!!

I liked the guys better, because they weren't supposed to sing that well. I like the Swedish actor, Stellan Skarsgard, best, and I liked the other two, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan, too, because they were in an uncomfortable position, plot-wise, and they looked and acted uncomfortable, as they should have. Pierce was the worst singer and people in the audience, besides us, laughed when he began to bellow like a sick bull, but I kind of liked that he isn't perfect, because he is awfully good-looking and it's not fair to be that good-looking and a good singer, too. Firth has a pleasant, folksy voice and Skarsgard was okay vocally, too, and my friend and I agreed, the most attractive of the three.

Greece was the backdrop for this movie and somehow the director, cinematographer, or someone, made Greece look bad, too! I've been there four times, to many of the islands, and the islands are breathtaking--I can't explain what they did, but it was as though they took paints and intensified and neonized the colors. The colors of Greek islands are already pretty intense, so what was the point? There were also lots of red, orange, purple printed fabrics and shiny costumes which distracted from the beautiful blue, white and green natural surroundings, so that Greece itself actually faded. Very strange. If you ever go to Greece you will see what I mean. The colors of nature are so lovely in themselves that people don't try to compete with them, they only compliment them.

Here is one of my favorite review phrases:

"Unless you buy into this ersatz jubilance and its grim determination to make you feel good, you're apt to long for a tranquilizer gun by the 20-minute mark."

Ken Hanke on Rotten Tomatoes

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So much for today and music! Long live it, but don't let Meryl sing outside her own shower.

The Time That I Thought Would Last

Me and The Crow at our 50th/60th Birthday party--Over my left shoulder.

Everybody says, "time flies", but I think time disappears. Time has been on my mind, because it doesn't seem there is a day, a week, a month, a year, a life long enough to do everything that I want to do, now that I am retired. Maybe retirement should happen lots earlier--maybe work could be less than 8 hours, maybe the Pope isn't Catholic and bears don't crap in the woods. Paul McCartney has a song on Memory Almost Full with the lyrics: "I've got too much on my plate, don't have time to be a decent lover, I hope it isn't too late, searching for the time that has gone so fast, the time that I thought would last, my ever present past". You don't have to be Paul McCartney to feel that way. Yesterday I was listing, writing in my head, a blog about passions and trying to figure out how to include them all, when there is a finite time in each day, or week, etc.. How? This morning I imagined asking my dear old friend, Jim, about this. He is gone now--I can't really ask him, but I imagined it.

"Jim, how can I figure out where to start? You've had a great retirement. How did you do it? I love doing so many things but I can't do them all and I need to try to fit them all in somehow. Any advice?"

Jim said: "Why are you worrying about it? That's a waste of time. You can't do it all at once anyway. Just do whatever is the most important thing to do right now." He would have said it in a witty way. He would have made me laugh and see how silly I was being. He could do that easily, put things in perspective. And right now, from that place he is, whether it's in that bag that Bookworm keeps so close to her or some place none of us will know about until we die, he would say, "Hey, it could be worse--you could be dead!" He really would say that.

So I looked at how Jim led his life, because I don't think he had any angst about all the things he wanted to do and the time he had to do them in. I could be wrong, but the way he seemed to do it was by doing one thing at a time. He loved digging for bones and became a highly respected amateur paleantologist, digging in Eastern Washington in the summer, discovering new bones, cataloging and writing about his findings, publishing in paleontology journals. He wanted to learn how to bind books, and so he did. He made beautiful little books that he covered with splendid illustrations he found in books and magazines--he filled them with special paper and gave them to friends--they were of excellent quality. He decided to learn to make pottery and he threw himself into it and once again produced excellent results. He wanted to take photographs. He became a brilliant photographer and enlarged and framed some of his work. Two examples hang on my walls. He began a blog after I encouraged him to do so and it turned into one of the most interesting blogs I have ever read. He was interested in geneology. Do you even have to ask whether he got good results? And then he had grandchildren. That might have been his most important avocation. And he went at it just as he had with all the other passions he had. He was the best, most excellent grandfather there was; ask his granddaughters and his grandson, they'll tell you. As it turned out, he died at the age of 74, much younger than he or any of us thought he would.

Is that why I am in such a panic to try to figure out my priorities? 74 is only 10 years away. Sure, I might live into my 90s, but I might not, and if I do, who knows who many brain cells I'll have left. This will have to be my mantra then--one thing at a time. Do it well. Dive in. Don't delay. Take it seriously, but don't stress over it. Don't imagine fame and fortune ahead, just do it because you love it. Do it now.

Does that answer your question, Roi? The question about what more we can accomplish after we've been a wife/husband and a mother/dad and ridden out that career/job? For me, it is all about my passions and how I will conduct myself from here on out. I wish I didn't have so many passions, but there you are. I made a list yesterday and there were 10 items/passions on it! Ack!!! All I can do is pick one or two and GO! I guess at 64 I'm not really concerned about making a mark, or accomplishing something Big. It will be enough to do it well.

I will probably consult my Guru, Jim, dead or alive, to see if I am on the right path. Our circle of friends all read the Carlos Castenada books way back when and Jim also talked about the symbolism of crows which sort of became the symbol of Jim and so I can picture Jim over my left shoulder like the fellow in Castenada's books pictured death, squawking at me if I am not diving in or taking what I am doing seriously, but not taking myself too seriously, or if I am having too much angst. He won't let me BS myself as he never BSed himself or anybody in his vicinity. And he never took himself too seriously, either. Crow on, Cowboy.

That's what I am thinking today. That's where retirement has me at the moment, almost a year later. Still trying to figure out what to do next. Squawk!!!!

Archeology

Lavonna Rubens, Vickie A. Holt, Marty Mclaren and Stevie Kemp

Sunday, 1:15 a.m.

When you wake up at midnight and thoughts are crowding your brain and making reservations for insertion somewhere in a blog post that you MUST write, you know you have to get up and get them down on paper before they are lost.

****
“We were foolish. We were young, more than we knew.
Yellow gingham on the bed—remember?
And the canopy in red…or was it blue?
The funny little games we played—remember?
Ah, how we laughed,
Ah, how we cried
I think you were there—remember?”

From A Little Night Music—Stephen Sondheim

****

The other day, Thursday, at our co-ed lunch, the phrase of the day was “who are you?” At Saturday’s six hour alumni event at Joyia’s beautiful lavender-ringed house on the hill, it was “Do you remember when (fill in the blank)?” We filled in that blank all day long. I wish I could have heard every conversation, but had I tried to eavesdrop on all the exchanges taking place, I wouldn’t have been able to instigate my own memory conversations—Do you remember Jen Southworth and how aggressively she came after couples holding hands in the hall? Do you remember Mr. Myrvang’s algebra class? Do you remember our slumber parties, Johnny Mathis, the picture of Elvis inside my locker door? Do you remember Darwin Moen, the boy with the ever-changing hair colors? Carole Mann’s beautiful skin? Bud Hawk? Mr. Baldwin? Mr. Quirk?

Every single beautiful 64-year-old woman who came to the first ever Central Kitsap class of ’62 Women’s Get-Together was bursting with questions. Rosanne Carlson wanted to know if anyone who went to Tracyton Elementary remembered when the original log part of the building was torn down, the new section built and the roof tarred. Did we remember how awful it smelled? She recalled that she and Toni Agnesani soaked handkerchiefs in perfume and put them to their faces to keep out the stench. I didn’t remember that particular thing, but I remembered Congressional Medal of Honor Winner and teacher, Bud Hawk, telling us about the steel plate in his head. I will never forget Mr. Peterson asking us all to push our cuticles back to promote healthy nails. I remember the day Pete Bachelor brought a black ceramic panther to class for a sixth grade show-and-tell. How exotic and artsy it seemed to me. I remember doing my required long research paper on Grace Kelly’s transformation to Princess Grace of Monaco, complete with pictures cut out of my mother’s movie magazines. Bless Mr. Peterson for letting me do it! I remember singing, “I’m Wishing”, from Snow White, in a fourth grade talent show in Mrs. Theis’s room. And this was only grade school! There are so many memories still waiting to be shared with only those of you to whom it matters.

“Did he die? I can’t believe it! How?” I heard this question, with shocked exclamations, plenty of times during the day. How can it still shock so much to hear of one of our school friends dying? Is it because they are still 18 years old to us? So many are gone—and more to come as we begin to push 70. Only a couple of weeks ago, Doug Garland, a man who had an amazing life, unknown to most of us until we read his obituary.

This time we women got down and dirty: “Okay”, I dared, “who’s had a face lift? Tell!” To my surprise four women in a small group of ten in an outdoor tent with a view of Mt. Rainier, admitted to having eye lifts.
“I couldn’t see without opening my eyes like this!” one of them said as she demonstrated a bug-eyed stare. When a camera trained its lens on us, I taught everyone how to do THE INSTANT FACE-LIFT:
1. Lean elbows on table
2. Hold hands at sides of face
3. Subtly pull the sagging jowls and neck skin back before the camera shutter clicks.
4. Result—taut skins, while appearing to be in a nonchalant, relaxed pose.

My friend, Kay Greaves Morgan and I used to do it whenever anyone had the temerity to approach us with a camera. Remember when?

Being a group of women-only we had brought pictures of husbands, children and adored grandchildren—so many beautiful, young people with brilliant futures ahead. Judy Benjamin showed pictures of her four sons and youngest daughter. She and Lavonna Rubens told me their grandsons (or sons?) were in Iraq. They couldn’t hide their fear. Billie Ann proudly brought out pictures of two model-perfect granddaughters who are entering serious careers. We recalled our limited expectations as young women with resignation. The Eisenhower years were not a good time for women to be ambitious and by the time Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan came along, most of us had children and homes to keep. Nancy Goit wondered if we had accomplished anything we were proud of aside from our children. Our families, though, were what we women expected of ourselves in the sixties and if we felt we’d done a good job of raising our children to be blossoming adults, and hadn’t let the crud build up in the corners of the kitchen and had made the bed most days and learned to cook and had sex with our husbands, too, then we were proud. Those of us with at least one failed marriage, or who had children with serious problems, might not have felt as proud. But we all tried.

Some of us found careers, or more often long-term jobs, after we had happily accomplished domesticity OR failed to appreciate a clean floor and a well-made Jell-O salad, suspecting and hoping that we could realize something larger. Now that I am retired I am rediscovering just how pleasant it is to have a tidy house and clean laundry, and time to go to Alumni Lunches.

Nobody at Joyia’s dared to venture into the tricky area of politics, but I wore my Obama for President button and was heartened by a nearly 90% approval rating. Can’t do much better than that. We barely scratched the surface of who we are now. We are decidedly not just who we were in high school, though what we were then is still in us somewhere. We’ve loved, hated, grieved, worked, raised kids, built houses, constructed our lives around what we thought was important, in some cases watched that life crumble, picked ourselves back up and we went on. We’ve lived through the Doris Day/Chevy BelAir 50s, the marijuana/free love/Jimi Hendrix 60s, the Mod-Squad/Black Power/Laugh-In 70s,the big hair/huge shoulder pad/Madonna 80s, the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs/Computer Age 90s, The Millenium and here we are in 2008, “still crazy after all these years”.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a huge slumber party at Joyia’s house? What a great place to put down a sleeping bag on the floor, listen to Johnny Mathis, eat popcorn, drink Coke (or something stronger, after all we’re older now), watch a chick-flick and talk into the night? In the morning Betty Nelson could make us her Tea Room scones, women who love to cook could help her make breakfast, Nancy Goit could wash the dishes because that’s what she likes to do, I would take pictures and mental notes, we’d drink strong coffee or lovely tea, pad around in our slippers and watch the morning sun light up Mt. Rainier. Trouble is, if I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag, I wouldn’t be able to walk for days!!!!

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?”
Sixty-five? Sixty-six?

Ladies I offer a toast in champagne or gin tonics or wine or beer or iced tea to you. I love you all. The toast: Here’s to survival, to laughter, to remembering, to more of the same.


P.S. We found out that Sandy Harkin’s hair is still its natural color and thickness, naturally. She told us she doesn’t color it. She counts on the kindness of the sun to lighten it in the summertime. We knew you’d want to know.

Addictions Great and Small

Tis hard to tell which is best: music, food, beer or rest. - Anonymous

That about says it for me! I love all those things--the only thing that's left out of that quote is reading. Last night 5 beautiful women were talking about addictions to drugs and alcohol, because we either have had these addictions or have someone close to use with them. After a long, sort of depressing but fascinating talk about addiction we started to fess up to our own addictions. 4 of the 5 of us stated that food (which we were eating lots of), wine/beer(which we were drinking lots of) and reading were our obsessions of choice. One left out the wine/beer but listed food and reading and the 5th admitted to being a video game player--she is an engineer and has a 13 year old son and all three game systems and she told us all about Spore. But reading, boys and girls, is so much an addiction for me that if I don't get to read "my book" during the day at some point, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with an insatiable need to read. I have a light I can use that won't disturb husband sound asleep at my side, called a Book Wedge, which I highly recommend! I get it out and my book is always at the ready and I get my fix in. And then I can sleep. Oh, and I almost forgot about my addiction to GOOD coffee with freshly ground beans, black, no sugar.

Yesterdays

Ralph Erickson in 1962 Senior Class Picture

Ralph Now

Let me set the scene:

Poulsbo, 11:00 a.m., Thursday, July 17, 2008

A grey, moistly foggy day after five straight days of summer sun (only in the Pacific Northwest)

Poulsbo is busy, regardless of the fog, with "boat people" and touristas jamming the sidewalks, obviously having dressed that morning expecting warmer weather. I am heading toward a restaurant I have never been in and to an event I am hoping will not be uncomfortable, though it has all the potential to be.

***

The Bayside Broiler, up a strange, steep set of stairs into a dimly lit, rococo style, probably once cigarette smoke-scented set of illogical rooms, is not jammed but at the end of a hallway are people milling around, almost a reception line of vaguely familiar faces. I go toward this light at the end of the tunnel to be asked, "Who are you?" This question, in different circumstances, would be off-putting and a challenge to my right to be there, but on this occasion it is the question of the day, for the event beginning to take shape is a reunion lunch. The reunion lunch is for high school alumni from Central Kitsap's Class of '62. Some of the faces in front of me show traces of the eighteen year olds I knew, but some seem to be absolute strangers.

***

"I'm Chris Eddy" I respond to that first challenge, "Who are you?!"

"We were just looking at a picture of you on the steps with Beau in the old school paper!" says the stranger. Obviously, he is way ahead of me! He knows who I am, has been looking at a picture of me and knows who Beau was (is). There is a surrealism creeping in.

***

Then I look to my left, where the "old school paper with you and Beau" is indicated and there is my dear old friend, Marty. An incredible surprise because she hadn't told me she was coming. Her I recognize! And my comfort level zips up to maximum. I have an anchor! And next to her is Linda Greaves, another anchor. Then I see Ralph Erickson, who has taken on the position as Class Crier--hear ye, hear ye, come to the lunch--the next reunion--here is news. He is keeping us connected, sending emails to a big list of old grads, informing us of the fun news and the sad news, helping us to find old friends. My first hug is for great big, bearded, bear of a man, Ralph.

And then the faces--vestiges of 18, evidence of time. I am introduced to Stevie Kemp and cannot find the Stevie I knew in her face. How can this be? Later, when she is taking her high school annual around for autographs, I begin to see the Stevie I knew back then, energetic, smart, friendly. Someone says, "that's Nancy over there" and I think they mean Nancy Kvinsland and there is no trace of Nancy Kvinsland in her face. I look and stare and gape and finally I go around the table to her and give her a hug. I think I'm hugging Nancy Kvinsland and then this Nancy reports that she is Nancy Goit and lo and behold it IS Nancy Goit and I can see the Nancy of 1962 and I am so relieved that she is not Nancy Kvinsland because that would have blown my mind too completely. We've all changed, but NOT THAT MUCH! I spot Terry Scatena, who looks exactly like 18 year old Terry, but with a mustach. I see Jim Peterson, a guy who I enjoyed great, silly conversations with in school, and he is THE SAME! How can that be?

***

Nobody recognizes me except Linda, Marty and Joyia, who I saw last year at the place I used to work. Joyia is another who I would recognize anywhere. My old friends Jeanette and Billie Ann come in together and because I saw them last year at our 45th reunion, I have no trouble figuring out who they are. Jeanette pulls me to her and whispers, "You look like your Mother". I know I do, except that my hair is white and my Mother never let hers go white, always dying it and now wearing a wig. It's a compliment from Jeanette, who I used to play War with on her bed, and who knew that my Mom and her Dad dated seriously in high school and could have married. I would have been Jeanette or she would have been me.

***

Sandra Harkins appears and all heads turn, because somehow Sandra has kept her hair beautiful and blond and wavy and has kept her figure fit and curvy. There is no question who Sandra is and there is no question when John Sleasman walks in either. He also is fit and assured, as he always was.

***

What I like best, though, is the people who were on the fringes in high school, who I didn't know very well, who have become themselves over the years. In high school they were subdued, nearly invisible, but now they have led lives, sometimes successful in society's eye and sometimes not, but still, 46 years of living and surviving has shaped them into substantial beings with history on their faces. I sat next to Larry McConnell, who told me about all the cruises he'd been on and how he'd given a cruise to his kids for their honeymoon, who promised to give him a grandchild in return. I talked to Margy Reis, who nobody remembered. She seemed exotic; tanned, jeweled, blond, surely she just flew in from New Mexico or somewhere hot and artsy! It turned out she had lost her husband not long ago and was living in Allyn, far from everything and everyone, but staying in the house she and her husband had loved together, not ready to move on in order to be closer to security and family. Roseanne Carlson was an amazing surprise. I remember Roseanne as being a quiet person. She was one of the few of us who wore glasses already. But that's not the person I spoke with yesterday. She lives alone, she was once married and clearly, clearly will never make THAT mistake again. She was outspoken, delightful and surprisingly, so far from the image I had of Roseanne, wore a diamond-studded, golden wristwatch! And except for the glasses, I didn't recognize her at all in personality OR visually!

***

I talked to Nancy Goit. It is hard for me to remember exactly how I viewed Nancy in high school. She was smart, she was fun-loving, she may have been a little wilder than me. She wasn't a member of our slumber-party group. But she had a presence; she did not fade into the background. Now she is gray-haired, verging on grandmotherly looking because of her sweet, soft features, with remarkable energy and wit and the most wonderfully alive blue eyes! She could be my best friend--it is one of those feelings you get when you meet someone, or re-meet someone--I KNOW her, I am like her, we could have fun together. It was a revelation to reconnect with her. I hope she is in my future.

***

All of us at the long table are 64 years old, and we talked of arthritis, bad memory, frustrations with our bodies. We compared swollen knuckles and stories of clumsiness, surgeries and ingury. We related stories of ex-husbands, deceased husbands, current husbands. We spoke of deaths becoming more frequent in our lives. Nancy spoke about her friends retiring and moving away. Most of us are retired but many are still working or are working part time. We all look forward to being 65 and getting ALL the Senior Discounts! Linda told me how to get a Senior ferry ticket without having to show an ID! We talked about one of the truly important parts of our lives:

***

"How many grandchildren do you have?"

" We moved back to Washington because of our grandchild."

" I travel to other states to see my grandchildren."

"I wish my grandchildren lived next door."

***

Surprisingly, none of us pulled out any pictures of our precious grandbabies. I think we were there for memories and more. That's why I went. For decades, since the 20 year reunion, I have avoided all the reunions. I had divorced again, I had remarried again, I felt fat, my face was sagging, I felt unsuccessful, I was afraid, I was not interested, it didn't matter.

***

But when you are 46 years away from being a senior in high school, you are nearly 65, your peers are dying, you are getting old and your body proves it every day, there is some need that takes over. These are the people you grew up with. They may be closer to you than your cousins. They are important in your history. They knew you when. They know what you are going through now. They lived in the same town. They knew the same people you did. They knew your parents. They have had 46 years of living to share with you. They have learned lessons and they are often wise.

***

Going to a reunion doesn't recapture youth. A person shouldn't go to a reunion for that, because that expectation will be disappointed. What a high school reunion does do is show us who we were then and where we are now. It bursts images of ourselves and those images we've held of others. Reunions show us evolution. I believe these reunions are going to make me a better person. I know that is a hifalutin' thing to say, but I do believe it. If I open my heart to see all these people as they once were and as they are now, that's what will happen.

***

In closing, I would just like to say I HAVE to find out how Sandy Harkins keeps her hair so nice! And now I know my arthritis is not unusual and everybody ages! Except for maybe Dean Johnson, Linda Greaves, Terry Scatina and Jim Peterson.

***

And thank you, Ralph, for instigating, encouraging and gently nudging us to overcome our fears and jump right in. You are a Prince.

Big and Little Sisters

Don't Big Sisters love to DO things to their little sisters? Granddaughter Ali certainly does and this picture is an example. It cracks me up to see that yellow ring balancing on Zuzu's ear and the blue and green rings on her ankles. I would bet that younger siblings develop LOTS of patience. For now, Zuzu is a wonderful platform for Ali's creative and silly play and they both seem to be enjoying it, though there is a little look of resignation on Zuzu's face.....She may be thinking, "At least she is playing with me."

Insights in Odd Places

The NYC Writer's Agent is on the left--You could have spotted her, I'm sure

Maybe this doesn't happen to you, I've never asked. Do you ever see a scene in a movie, read a sentence in a book or hear a line on a TV show that throws you for a loop, sends your brain to places it's never been before, clarifies an issue you've had in the back of you mind? It happens to me sometimes and it happened last night in the oddest way.

Michael had to go to bed early because he was so tired from working overtime and so I decided to watch an episode of "Men in Trees" that I had recorded. This series is sometimes pretty silly, but it's nice, light entertainment and I like to look at Jack, the hunky, handsome boyfriend of the main character. For those of you who haven't seen it, the story is set in Elmo, Alaska (fictional town) and the premise is that Maryn (Merrin? Merin? Meryn?) is a writer about relationships who has gotten herself stranded in Elmo and then ends up staying and putting roots down with Jack, a naturalist. The program is winding up because it hasn't been renewed. A little too silly to catch on, I guess.

Anyway, there is a relationship on the program between an outdoorsy Alaskan man and a New York City agent (Maryn's writing agent). Their relationship is one of the silliest and most unbelievable ones on the show; at least it seemed that way until I watched the episode last night. They have been going back and forth about where to live--Alaska or NYC--and can he live in a city and can she live in an extraordinarily wild and unsophisticated Elmo. He went to NYC, where they actually got married, and got a job as a garbage man. But in last night's episode they are heading back to Elmo in an RV. All along there has been conflict between the characters because they are opposites. Last night it was conflict and different attitudes towards money, one of the Big Three Issues, as we all know, in relationships. The Alaskan was thrifty, planning a route to Elmo that stopped only at "Potatoville" restaurants along the way. The NYC agent wife was snobbish about the baked potatoes at every food stop, though she was trying to go along with his plan. Finally, though, when he had loaded per purse with rolls and butter from the restaurants, she blew. "We have plenty of money! We don't need to eat at these cheap places! We don't need to be taking this RV, we could have flown first class! Do you realize how much money I have?!" He gets perturbed with her and instead of clamming up, which non-
TV character men might have done, this guy pulls over, gets two slips of paper and asks her to right down her worth and he writes down his. They exchange the papers. The look on her face tells us she thinks her worth is much larger than his and the look on her face when she looks at his paper tells us that she is wrong. She is incredulous and says, "How did you get this much?"

This is the "insight moment" for me, because my husband and I have had many, many confrontations about his "thriftiness" and what seems to me like unreasonable economy. I have gotten used to the beef sandwiches at Arbeys, but understanding it is hard for me when I'd much rather go to the Waterfront Bakery and have a piece of quiche. I've gotten used to the obsessive researching before buying anything with a tag over $50 when I'd much rather make a snap decision.

To the question, "how did you get this much?", we all knew the answer. "I don't have to economize, but I CHOOSE to. Let me show you the picture of this house I've always wanted to buy." He showed her a gorgeous, rambling house with porches all around it. He said, "And now I can afford to buy it for you". Ahhhhh, sweet. But for me, it was the lightbulb turning on. Perhaps I couldn't HEAR my husband saying almost these exact words to me, because I know he's said them. Maybe it had to be someone else, a character in a silly show, or a therapist could have said them to me. Whatever the case, no matter how I heard the words, coming from another source, they got into that part of my brain that changes behavior--that part that lets me open my eyes a little wider. My husband is very frugal and some poeple look at that and wonder how I can stand it. They've said so. But the fact is, he gives me incredible presents vacations and his worth is high for a civil servant--a worth he could never have attained unless he was careful and saved. We will have a successful, easy retirement because of him. I knew these things but I didn't KNOW them, I didn't accept that the results had to depend on the means.

How odd that a breif part of an entertainment series could have grabbed my attention in the way this program did. Boing! Understanding flew in like a bird through an open window. I got it.

Jet Stream

Okay....So....I woke up at 4:30 this morning, on a Saturday, and I'm retired. So what's up with that?! I know! I start my traveling today, another trip. This time to meet my mate in Florida. He has been there, in the hot, sweaty sunshine, for a week. I have been here in the cold, drippy clouds all week. I cannot wait to get some of that hot into my chilled bones.

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Yesterday, I had lunch with the group I call The Ladies Who Lunch, which I stole from Stephen Sondheim's song of the same name that Gwen Verdon sang with such pizazz, a glass of booze and cubes in her hand. This group isn't Sex and the City; for one thing we are in Bremerton, not New York, and we are more apt to wear clogs than Jimmy Choo's, and we're either married or too old to still be in "the scene", but we do have a good time together. Yesterday we ate at a terrific little cafe', The Hi-Lo, on 15th street. It's like a 50s musuem with food. It's exactly my favorite kind of place. You get to choose your own coffee mug from 4 rows of old mugs--I chose the Cowboy Kitties mug--and get your coffee at a bar that is the open back of an old VW van. There is a great collection of lunch box thermoses, an inspirational framed bunch of cassette tape boxes (I have to do this!), a picture of Elvis, a painting of Ziggy Pop( I think it was Ziggy), a small picture of Bowie, a frame with 8-tracks inside! And just 3 doors down is an Italian Bakery, called Luigi's! I bought a big, round perfectly fresh loaf of Whole Wheat Bread with Walnuts and a cinnamon roll. That cinnamon roll was not your usual goopy, sloppy frosted roll ala' that place in the Mall that smells so good. This cinnamon roll was lots of cinnamon and only a little sugar surrounded by a wonderful sweet bread. I'm telling myself it's really a guiltless cinnamon roll and it tasted fabulous.

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The previous makes me think about the way I eat when my Mate is not here to cook for. All my great nutritional aspirations go right out the window. There are no menus, no grocery lists, no well-balanced meals with 4 or 5 servings of vegetables, a small amount of starch and a piece of meat the size of a deck of cards. Here are some of the things I ate for dinner this past week:

• One cinnamon roll/1 piece of toasted wheat-walnut bread with no butter/1 whole bunch of popcorn with a little butter/chocolate chip cookie
• One tuna fish sandwich with lettuce and Kettle potato chips
• One-half a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich with an apple
• One big salad (I was feeling a little guilty on that night!) and later, some crackers with hummus.
• One avocado, halved, with tuna fish in the middle and pine nuts, walnuts and pecans on the side. This was a good one!
• Tonight I plan to finish the two boiled eggs and the tuna fish in the refrigerator--probably mix them together and eat them out of a bowl. I also have half an English cucumber to get rid of. Wait a minute--this sounds like a nice tuna salad! Put a few pine nuts on top and some Paul Newman dressing and ta-da! Oh, and maybe a little dusting with Romano cheese.

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What do these three jobs have in common?

Finish lettuce

Charge phone

Wax face

These are things I have to do before I leave for Florida tonight.

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I just tried to get on Alaska Airlines website--I want to preprint my boarding pass. Guess what?! The site is not available. I bet they are rewriting the whole thing in light of all the changes the airlines have decided they must make. Crapola! Best laid plans and all that. I'll try again later. In the meantime, let me rant about the airlines.

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? If they cut flights and they increase fares and they make it worse than riding on a bus to take a flight, who will fly? And won't that mean that they'll have to cut flights and raise fares further and then WHO will fly? I think only the wealthy will fly--and the wealthy will require things that we who flock like lemmings into the coach seats have learned not to need. We've given up our peanuts and now even our dry, awful pretzels. We've learned to live with that blood clot thing in our legs, with the unsanitary pillows that are as fluffy as hard-tack, with the blankets they probably just stuff into another plastic bag complete with cooties, for the next unsuspecting lemmings. We've learned to live with the not-so-polite attendents who are getting closer and closer to surliness--wouldn't you be near to snarling through your clenched teeth if you had to serve unhappy lemmings all day and night? We've learned to bring our own food, which we try to eat while keeping our elbows tightly at our sides and our feet wedged between our under the seat carry-ons, trying not to spill or drink too much because, heaven forbid you should want to get OUT of where you are sitting to clean up or pee! We've learned not to attempt to bend over to reach anything on the floor if we don't intend to get our heads stuck against the seat in front of us half-way down. We've learned, that if we can get OUT to the miniature cubicle called a restroom and we can get INTO it, we had better lose weight before next time, because that damned miniature toilet in that damned miniature "room" doesn't seem to accomodate so well anymore as our asses aren't MINIATURE! (although with the food they are NOT serving anymore, we might be miniature before we reach our destination.)

But those wealthy fliers are going to want MORE. Won't the airlines find themselves in a miniature pickle?

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I have gotten so annoyed with the Bremerton Sun, oh, sorry, the Kitsap Sun, lately, that I have subscribed to USA Today. The Sun had so little national news for the past many years that I felt isolated in a backwater and the nightly news on the TV wasn't doing it for me. On every trip I take I buy a USA Today because it's so interesting. Now it's delivered to my mailbox Monday through Friday. I am in newspaper heaven. It's serious enough, but not too serious, colorful, good entertainment news, pretty good book news, GREAT internation news and national news, a wonderful weather map and if you were into sports I bet you'd love the fat sports section. I love to read about the most expensive house on the market today. In Friday/Sat/Sunday edition this week there is an article titled "What is your favorite food memory of a Specific Destination?" This is in the TRAVEL section! On page 1 and 2 of the main section are huge articles about McCain and Obama. I am in heaven! On page 6A is an article about "Blacks optimistic and anxious about Obama". On page 11A the article "Pop culture vies with conservatism in Afghanistan". I don't think the Sun even HAS an 11A! It's gotten so tiny, if I had a bird I'd have to buy two or three Suns to cover the bottom of the bird cage!

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Some friends are asking me to blog more about Greece and I will later. Let me just put this in for now. It's a list I made near the end of our 2 1/2 week most recent trip:

Things I Wish I Could Take Home With Me

1. The birds that sing so loudly I can hear them

2. The train--convenient!

3. The sun

4. The ice cream

5. Mary and Lambrose and Eliza and Pan (cousins) Mary and Lambrose are movie loving intellectuals, Eliza is their 7 year old daughter and Pan is 38, a computer nerd like my Mate.

6. The marble floors

7. The refrigerators--the freezer on the bottom has 3 drawers in it, like a dresser! Ingenious!

8. The c'est la vie attitude (litter-oh,well. Striking worers-oh, well. Grafitti-oh, well-what can you do? Let's go have ice cream and Kaffes!)

9. Frappes (made with Nescafe' and ice, shaken to make a foamy head)

10. The friendly dogs--all were friendly. Michael was anxious of them at first, but learned they were harmlesss, even when barking.

11. NBN-translated Evie-soda--orange or lemon, less sweet than any soda I've had in the US

12. Fresh vegetable markets open all year long

13. The fresh bread bakeries (bread, butter, marmalade and coffee for breakfast every day)

Things I would not bring back:

1.The litter

2. Rude Greek men--I ran into them, or rather they ran into me, more often this time than during any previous visit. Maybe they are mad at Americans more than ever.

3. The Greeks love of liver and other organ meats. Yuck!!! Kokoretsi for Easter looked wonderful, barbecued over the same coals as the lamb, but ACK! Nasty!

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Last post for a week. I'll tell you about Orlando and the hot humid heat when I get back. My wish for you is good weather in the coming week, maybe a surprise or two and a discovery of a good show on the TV.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

Dad and me at my 49th Birthday. Dad was 71.

Me and My Dad in 1947. He was 26, I was 3.

I woke up thinking about Dad’s today. There aren’t many Dads in my life anymore. My Dad died in 2001 and my husband’s Dad died in 2005, and my third husband isn’t the father of any of my children. The only Dad in my life is my son.

I had a love/hate relationship with my Dad. I think that’s true for lots of people. I heard someone on the radio say it just this morning. As I look back on all I learned from him, the influences he had on me, I can see that our relationship was more positive than negative and this may be the first day in my 64 years that I’ve realized that. For most of my adult life I couldn’t see past the rages that scared and angered me. It is true that my Dad was a moody person and that rage was his weapon of choice. There was no telling what mood he would appear in when coming home from work. We kids learned to assess his mood before we would say or do anything, just in case. If the mood was bad, we would walk on egg shells, if good we could be more carefree.

Dinner was always a place to be on our best behavior as it often turned into a battlefield, especially between my Dad and my brother. My brother was picky about his food and stubborn—two qualities my Dad had little patience for. I, on the other hand, learned to clean my plate and, when not chewing, to keep my mouth shut. Actually, one major rule was to eat with your mouth closed, not an unusual rule in American households. Other rules were: Don’t sing at the table. Don’t whistle at the table. Clean your plate. No dessert without cleaning your plate. No elbows on the table. Most of these rules were common to most households in the fifties, but the consequences of breaking them may not have been as common. I recall one long night when my brother sat at the table well into the night, a victim of his stubbornness and my Dad’s conviction that his son must finish his dinner before he was allowed to leave the table. I couldn’t understand why my brother didn’t just eat the food. It didn’t occur to me that my Dad could have relented. He never, never did. I think on this night my Mother intervened. Somehow, my brother was allowed to go to bed.

There were many, many rules in our lives and many times when I was frightened of my Father and his Temper. He didn’t hit us or my Mother, though he did believe in spanking. He didn’t use a belt or a wooden spoon or any other implement other than his hand and, since it was the Fifties, my Mother used the “wait until your father gets home” threat on us. She was small and didn’t know the first thing about disciplining children. He was big, strong and knew how to spank. I wonder how many times the spankings my Mother asked him to perform were hard for him to do. I’ll never know. I wish I’d asked him when I became an adult.

Dad’s most effective weapon was his anger. It could be huge, overpowering, thunderous. As a child and young person I was frightened of him, as an adult his rages angered me. One evening, as my husband and my two little daughters visited my Dad and Mom, Dad went into a rage for a reason I’ve forgotten and picked up a dining room chair and threw it across the room. I became extremely angry and told him, as we were leaving, that we would never visit again. I believe my ultimatum had an effect on him. I don’t recall a scene like that one ever happening again. Of course, he asked for my forgiveness and I forgave him. I didn’t want to stop visiting.

And finally, somewhere in my Dad’s later years, he relaxed. He stopped being frightening, he laughed more, he showed affection more. As I think back, I believe it was around the time he retired. Could it have been that after he retired the pressure was gone? Was he one of those people who handled stress with anger? Whatever the reason, his last 20 years of life were easier for all of us.

I began by saying that my Dad’s positive influences outweighed the negative ones. For some reason I decided to emulate him. I might have chosen him, rather than my Mother, because he “put her down” often. She was an artist/singer and didn’t have the common sense that he esteemed. (I’m sure that’s exactly why he chose her. She was beautiful and vibrant and lively.) I wanted to win his admiration (and not get insulted or spanked) and so I became the good daughter, the girl who got good grades and had good sense. No matter why I chose this path, it has helped me get where I am. Perhaps I was hard-wired to be responsible, to be a leader, who knows? They say ¼ of your character is in your genes, the rest a product of your environment. If so, then my choosing to be more like Dad than Mom was important in how I turned out.

Even during the raging years my Dad was a funny and silly man. He used to come out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and his dark, wavy hair combed up into some crazy “do”, which made us all laugh. He used to imitate Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks and Milton Berle. He told jokes constantly, some that wouldn’t be politically correct these days, but were still corny and funny. He was good at it and could ALWAYS remember the punch line. He loved to fish and to bowl and to golf. He was what was called A Man’s Man. He watched football, baseball and basketball and the Friday Night Fights and I watched all of them with him, learning all the rules, because he was happy to share them with me. He tied flies for his fishing trips and let me watch and explained why he was putting this blue feather, in addition to this little red one, on this small hook. I still have some of the silver reflectors he used when he fished for salmon. One year he made my brother and me a sled; on it he had painted in script: Chris and Dan. He liked to take my Mom and us kids to the drive-in theater in the summer and made a game out of it. “Get in the back seat and close your eyes and don’t open them until we get there”, he’d say. He’d have to carry our limp, pj-clad, sleeping bodies into bed when we got home.

He wasn’t the conventional Dad of the Father’s Day cards, or at least I didn’t think of him in that way. I always had a hard time finding a Father’s Day card that fit his and my rocky relationship. He would try to do the right things, try to teach us how to fly a kite, but then get mad at the kite or us. He’d try to play board games with us and then get upset because we hadn’t “told him ALL the rules”. He took me fishing once and I caught a fish, but he never took me again. He tried to teach me to drive, but I nearly hit a stop sign and he didn’t take me out again. He did not have the patience of what we would consider a “good” Dad. But nearly everything I learned as I grew to be an adult, I learned from him and apparently, it wasn’t all bad. I say “apparently” because I have made a modest success of my life. I have had children and kept jobs for long periods of time and have many friends. People seem to like and respect me. You could say that is a testament, at least in part, to the parent I decided to emulate.

I got my wit and love of comedy and joking from him. I am tidy like he was and love organization. He was a fastidious dresser; I try to be that way, too. He sang and played the saxophone. I am musical, too. Anyone who knows my Mother will ask, “Didn’t you get your musical ability and love of music from her?” I will answer, yes, probably, but it didn’t hurt that my Dad revered those things, too. I used to have good penmanship (before arthritis), copying my Dad’s beautiful handwriting. I believe my Dad was helpful in leading me on the path of being a life-long reader of classic literature. I will never forget the thrill I experienced when he gave me his Robert Benchley book to read. I was 12, I think, and already read lots of books, but his sharing a book he loved with me, meant everything to me. Robert Benchley was a British humorist; my Dad loved humor. My Mom loved movie magazines and mysteries, but I chose to go a more serious route.

As I said, Dad tried. He especially loved mathematics and so when I struggled with a math homework problem, he would help me. The problem was that he always went on too long with his help. I felt later that he might have enjoyed being a teacher, but the temper would have gotten in his way. I love Math, too, and was always good at it. Another positive Dad-gift.

I wish I could write about my family like Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris. They make it all seem so wonderfully funny. I’m sure my childhood was funny, too, if only I could get that perspective. It wasn’t tragic, it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t sad; it was a childhood with all the emotions that entails. Yes, I was scared of this big Dad, but I loved him and I wanted to be like him in lots of ways. I hope I managed to distill the good bits, even as I absorbed some of the bad bits, too.

Okay....so....If I was going to make a Father's Day Card for my Dad right now, what would it say?

To My Dad

You are dead now

and way too late,

I realize that you gave me so many gifts

I can barely count them.

Thanks, Dad. I love you. I hope you knew that.

Love Always, Your Daughter