Dance, Baby, Dance

I am a Zumba© addict. I’m not very good at it. Actually, I’m terrible at it, but that doesn’t stop me from going every time the doors open.

As a little girl, I wanted to be a dancer, among about a kajillion other things, but in my evolving awareness, I discovered that dancing was against my mother’s religion, so I stopped dancing. (That awareness was the beginning of my suppression of all things fun and started a long list of things I wasn’t supposed to enjoy.) Now, in my still-early 60’s, I have taken up dancing in name of fitness, and it has blown the doors wide open on fun!

If you’ve never seen Zumba© performed live by a bunch of sweating women ranging from size 0 to 20, wearing a variety of garb, dancing at all levels of skill, you have never seen sexy. We are led by a woman who has a cult following, as probably most Zumba© teachers have. When we dance, we watch her and we feel like we look like her. Because her hips are free-floating, we believe our hips are moving in those seductive figure 8 patterns. This would be laughable, except it’s not. The feeling is so strong and so collective, that a man would have to be dead to be oblivious to the primal “womaness” that pervades the gym.

(If you are familiar with the ritual of Dionysus (aka Bacchus), you will understand when I say that Rick Santorum better not step in front of a Zumba© class. Ever.)

Zumba© has released me from what remnants were left of my mother’s religion and given me back my sense of power as a woman.

Here is a poem I wrote for my Zumba© teacher:

            The Six-Thirty Class

She coos, “Come play with me.”

And we do.

She strokes her hair and commands,

“Put on your short skirts, ladies,

and your high heels.”

We slip stilettos over rubber soles

and shimmy our hips

across the floor for her.

She leads us through cha chas

and fierce lunges.

And we believe

we are beautiful and strong

because she tells us so.

We would gyrate to Hell and back

for her,

for the words we crave,

for the words

no man will ever say.

WITNESS

I met a man who was compelled to tell his story about witnessing a suicide. On this particular day, driving past a hospital he had driven past a thousand times, he heard his son in the back seat whisper, "That woman jumped out of the window." When he turned to look, he was staring straight into her eyes as she fell. What he saw unnerved him. He said she looked pleased, satisfied. It was an intimate moment. Too intimate. He could not grasp the concept of wanting to die so he looked away. His mind struggled with what he saw and tried to make her want to live. Now he lives with two discordant images in his head, even though he found out later that this was not her first attempt at suicide, just her best.

I couldn't get his story out of my head. It made me omniscient. I was watching him watch her. I was compelled to write this poem in his voice.

                    Gravity

Somewhere,

between the ninth floor and Earth,

I turn my eyes away,

but not before I see hers,

naked in their desire for death,

fulfilled in the falling. 

Like a photographer’s flash,

the image of her body

develops a memory

of hands seeking purchase

at each passing ledge.

Still she falls, and falls, and falls.

Cain vs Abel

I grew up loving trees. That’s why I’m not a vegetarian. While some people think I have Druidic tendencies, I’m not willing to sacrifice myself for a plant.

I understand people becoming vegetarian, even vegan, for health reasons. I’ve even tried it, but I felt like I was starving. Over the years, I’ve found what works best for me. I eat meat when I’m hungry for meat, and I eat vegetables the rest of the time.

What I don’t eat is sugar or wheat. Unless I’ve had a bad day. Then, I will eat Oreos, a sugar and wheat combination that has my number. Dipped in low fat milk until the chocolate cookie is soft and the creamy center is still firm, this classic cookie is a mini vacation from the slings and arrows of reality.

Until the guilt sets in. Why can’t I remember what it feels like after the Oreo indulgence before I’ve indulged? I’ve tried to conjure that “Oh, why did I eat that?” feeling before succumbing to the siren call of cookies and milk, but thinking a feeling and feeling a feeling just aren’t the same thing. So, occasionally, I give in and have three or ten black and white cookies, a brief, delicious experience sandwiched by past stress and future guilt.

One way I avoid guilt is by not being a vegetarian. People who choose not to eat “anything that had a mother” for humanitarian (carnivitarian?) reasons puzzle me. How is eating a ham different from eating a radish? Both had mothers. It would make more sense for them to say, “I won’t eat anything that came through a birth canal,” but that doesn’t sound altruistic, just creepy.

Through no fault of my mother’s, I grew up believing plants, especially trees, had feelings just like I did. I still do. So, therein lies the conundrum:   If I stop eating meat because it’s wrong to eat fellow inhabitants of Earth, I would also have to stop eating plants. See my problem?

Changing Blog Sites

All blogs posted on February 12, 2012, were copied from a previous blog site I used. I have nothing against that blog site, I just lost my password and couldn't figure out how to get it. That, of course, is my fault.

Also, I am a big fan of Google regardless of the gazillions of dollars the owners/shareholders make. Google gives me choices, albeit superficial choices, which appeals to my independent nature. Google has a better understanding of human nature than any other browser/website company I have used. George Orwell would be proud. Google comes off as a wonderful Big Brother. Can't help but admire that.

From the Bottom of the Political Barrel

I like President Obama, and it disheartens me to hear people speak disparagingly of him. On the other hand, I spoke disparagingly of his immediate predecessor without thought that I was adding to the general negativity of this country. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Bush’s politics (what were his politics, anyway?), I just didn’t care for him as a person.

People at my level (pretty much at the bottom of the political barrel) generally vote for people we like. So, when I compare the two presidents, here is what I come up with:

§  Obama is highly intelligent; Bush is not. I like intelligence. It makes me think, and I like to think. I can listen to President Obama speak for about ten minutes. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t last two minutes listening to Bush before searching for the remote.

§  Obama is enormously energetic; I didn’t feel the energy from Bush. I am drawn to people who are tireless; who can move rapidly from one task to another; who obviously love what they do. I am attracted to them because I am not energetic, but I yearn for it. With a president like Obama, I get to experience that tremendous energy vicariously.

§  Obama believes in what he is doing; Bush didn’t seem to know what he was doing (maybe he did, and I missed it). I don’t have to agree with what you do or what you believe to want to listen to you. I want to look into your eyes and see who YOU are, not see a reflection of myself.

§  Obama has a great voice; Bush, well, do fingernails on a chalkboard ring a bell?

Politcial Correctness

Political correctness has taken the emotion out of our culture. Unless you are a comedian paid to be outrageous, you have to watch every word that comes out of your mouth -especially if you have aspirations of public office. Heaven forbid if you say something to offend someone. This country reeks of righteous indignation, and nothing is more boring than a bunch of holier-than-thou citizens condemning anyone who does not “group think.”

We had an interesting discussion in our local NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) meeting about the use of diagnoses when talking about mental illness. It seems there is a movement among some do-gooders to eliminate diagnostic labels when talking about mental illness. All of us at the meeting, including our resident bipolar, OCD member, thought it was a ridiculous idea. Getting rid of labels doesn’t change the illness. It hides it, just as referring to children with learning difficulties as “special education” students hides the real problems. What an insult! Instead of hiding people away in institutions, we hide them by destroying our ability to talk about an issue that influences who they are.

Instead of changing labels to maintain political correctness, let’s talk about the homeless man who talks to aliens from Mars. Let’s say out loud that he is crazy. That doesn’t mean we insult him or make fun of him. It lays out a major defining factor in his life, which also affects the lives of everyone around him. Saying he has a “mental health challenge” doesn’t make him saner. It sanitizes his situation by eliminating the emotional content of his situation. That’s what political correctness does – it takes the feeling out of life. And all of the humor.

Mother

My mother was a victim of women’s magazines. Pages filled with pristine kitchens and elegant dining rooms demeaned our small farmhouse and made Mother discontent. She had visions of entertaining. Instead, we “had company” – and not often if memory serves me correctly.

What I do remember with certainty is Mother’s anxiety when guests were expected for a meal. A bit of a social butterfly, my mother loved to be around people, unless they were coming to our house to eat. The anxiety she felt at those times was palpable and a total mystery to me. Nothing bad ever happened when people came to visit, so what was the problem?

The problem was those magazines with their glossy pictures challenging housewives to achieve glossy perfection. Mama’s behavior – the sighing, her list of flaws about our house, the apologies for non-existent mistakes – became embedded in my brain, and I carried them into womanhood.

I am not much like my mother. She was extroverted and sociable. I am more shy and reserved, so you would think having company for meals would send me over the edge. It did at first, but the more I “entertained”, the sillier my behavior seemed. Unlike Mother, I learned to organize tasks and make lists. Over the years, the process of preparing for gatherings of family and friends has become second nature and brings me great joy.

It makes me sad that Mother could never recognize and enjoy her talents the way others did. She had a wonderful sense of play and adventure and was a great cook – a perfect combination for any hostess. But, those magazines told her it was all about appearances, and unfortunately, she believed them.

John Daly

John Daly is the first television news reporter I remember. Other than his mellifluous voice, there was nothing spectacular about his presentation of the world’s events. This was long before flashy electronic screens, teleprompters, op-eds, and the need for television companies to convince viewers that their reporting was “fair and unbiased.”

Mr. Daly sat behind a plain desk holding a sheaf of papers which he glanced at from time to time. I still see him in black and white framed in the box of our RCA television. He emanated believability. I trusted him to tell me the truth about what was going on in a world I had just become aware of. He never expressed outrage. I don’t even remember surprise crossing his face.

My memory of John Daly set a standard for all the future news broadcasts I would see. Like a first love or a first kiss, nothing has matched it since.

In fact, watching a news broadcast today is akin to being emotionally assaulted. That’s why I’m swearing off “in-depth” news.

Infinite Rambling

I am always pleasantly amazed when I come across a book that articulates the thoughts that circle in my mind just out of reach of consciousness. My most recent serendipitous find is Bruce Lipton’s Spontaneous Evolution. Since I listened to it while driving, I couldn’t underline as I am wont to do, but I may buy the book just for underlining privileges.

Lipton uses a variety of sciences, quantum physics among them, to present a holistic (why isn’t that wholistic?) view of the Earth as a living organism and humans having as much influence over their own genes as their genes over them. It all makes perfect sense to me. I’ve never understood the need for an either-or/good-evil point of view. Life is not bi-polar; it’s multi-polar.

I love the theory of multi-dimensions or better yet, infinite dimensions. Imagine that there are an infinite number of our Selves living an infinite number of lives with infinite possibilities. Our consciousness moves from one life to another like a fish swimming in a river. Every time we increase our awareness, we move a little farther up the river, leaving an unconscious Self to continue living the life we were once conscious of.

The movement from one of our infinite lives to another is not smooth. It can only be accomplished through struggle and allowing that struggle change us. (This is quantum physics married to Emerson’s Oversoul!) Some people never move through infinity. I really can’t come up with a reason why. Laziness, maybe?

Death may be another way of moving our consciousness. Since all these lives exist in the same place in infinity, we never die because we have never not existed. The belief in reincarnation reflects, to an extent, infinite selves. Psychics seem to be conscious of other people’s consciousness. (I’m not sure how that is relevant, but from a holistic view, everything is relevant.)

All of this makes a very clear picture in my mind, but trying to articulate it makes me doubt my own sanity. Still, I like the idea that there are an infinite number of me out there, and all I have to do is figure out how to move my consciousness into the one that lives on a tropical island.

(I just realized there is no plural for me that doesn’t include someone else. How limiting!)

PERCEPTION

When Mother Earth shrugs, I pay attention (even when it means turning to television news). And Mother has been shrugging lately. Unusual weather, two major earthquakes, and a huge glacier-calving event in Antartica within a month or two of one another denotes some restlessness in our blue-green planet.

But are humans responsible for Her tossing and turning? It seems a bit egocentric of us to believe that we influence nature that much. Our primitive predecessors believed themselves to be an intimate part of the world they lived in. Unfortunately, as humans became more “civilized”, we stepped away from our support system and saw it as something to be dominated and manipulated.

We talk about the world as though our consciousness is responsible for its existence. If all humanity should cease to exist, will this planet dissolve into oblivion? Surely, few believe that, but there seem to be many who believe this marvelous Earth would be worthless without us, that its very purpose is to serve as life support for the top of the food chain.

When we treat Earth as a slave to our wants, how can that not spill over into the way we treat one another?

         Awakening

I slumbered, enchanted

by dreams of blue and green.
Shifting in tranquil sleep,
I exhaled soft spring rain,
Pushed mountains through bare plains.
But aimless children stomped
Through my spider-webbed dreams,
Tearing my gauzy truth.
Annoyed, I blinked awake
And found my long, brown arms
Circled by hard, gray bands;
My wild leaf-green hair shorn;
My eyes blinded with smoke.
I shuddered, and concrete
Ribbons snapped from my wrists.
I shook my bereft head,
And the shearing ended.
I wiped my streaming eyes,
And civilization
Fell away. Once again,
Unfettered by mankind,
I slumber, enchanted
by dreams of blue and green.

Baby Sister

My first memory of my little sister has dimmed over the years. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen table; arms spread wide, singing “Standing on the Promises of God” at the top of her lungs. Her performance evoked a mixed bag of emotions in me. Irritation, first. She was always skirting the edge of the rules. Jealousy, second. She was charming and gregarious and the baby of the family – three things I would never be.
Fifty years later she created another memory, one filled with irony. She stood on the front porch of that same house, gesturing and shouting at me, calling me “sanctimonious.” I knew exactly what she meant, and I had a deep-seated fear that she might be right. This was, however, not the time to explore my own psyche. Hers was imploding before my eyes, and I had to do something while we waited for the ambulance to make the 13 mile trip from the nearest town.

Almost without thought, I gave back some of the control slipping out of her grasp. In a conversational tone so antithetical to our previous shouting match, I asked her what “sanctimonious” meant. Her pride in her intelligence kicked in, and it was enough to divert her attention from drug-induced ranting to explain the meaning to her less intelligent older sister.

The shouting and the four-letter words stopped. I was grateful for that bit of calm since my mother was sitting in the living room totally disoriented by the vituperation that had been spewing from the mouth of her favorite child. (Mother could battle a six-foot, egg-eating black snake with a hoe and win, but the dark side of human nature defeated her without a fight.)

Somehow, my sister and I transitioned from the front porch to a bench in the backyard. Maybe she took off and I followed her, but however it happened, we sat side-by-side with her head buried in my neck, sobbing like child. I rocked her and babbled stupid, useless words to quiet the demons that stomped around in her head. The siren in the background heralded relief from this drama.

I rode in the front of the ambulance, my body tied in a knot. She had fallen unconscious and halfway to the hospital, the driver turned on the siren. Because of her past histrionics, I had a hard time believing that her unresponsiveness was real.

In the emergency room, after having her stomach pumped and regaining consciousness, she flirted shamelessly with the EMTs who had brought her there and ignored our older sister and me. As with that first memory, I felt irritation, but jealousy had long since been erased from the slate of emotions that I felt for the woman lying on the hospital bed, batting her eyes at a man young enough to be her son.

CHEESEBURGER

I consider myself a fairly rational person, not given to drama or impulse (most of the time), but there is one thing that brings out the darker side of my psyche. I am totally irrational when it comes to cheeseburgers.

I love food and will eat almost anything. I ate sushi when it was real and raw, long before the civilized California roll. It was Denver if I remember correctly. I was attending a conference, and my cousin wanted to show off his new-found sophistication so he took me to an Asian restaurant and ordered sushi. I have since learned that that was probably not the correct name for the pieces of raw salmon, tuna, and octopus served on a wooden board. It was okay. The octopus was my favorite, although I can’t say I have ever craved it after that first try.

I have my food preferences. I’m a big fan of anything hot and spicy. As a child, I did not like raspberries or avocados, but I knew I would someday so I kept trying until they made a positive impression on my palate. It hasn’t worked for Brussels sprout. I just don’t like the taste of those nasty, little cabbages.

Disliking something for its taste is not irrational; disliking it for its emotional value is very irrational. And I am thoroughly irrational in my dislike of cheeseburgers – to the point of rudeness (and I am never rude). I have never liked them, and I am determined that I never will.

My intense animosity toward cheeseburgers became apparent several months ago when my dear husband brought one home to me for supper. When I saw the bag from Braum’s on the kitchen counter, I thought, “How sweet of him to bring me a hamburger!” This was a rare occurrence, and I wanted to reinforce his behavior so I was preparing to deliver a warm but not too effusive thank you (he doesn’t like effusive).

I set out a plate and unwrapped the burger. Something akin to shock skittered down my spine. Was that cheese stuck to the wrapper? Oh, dear. I don’t like cheese on my hamburger, but I could scrape most of it off and eat it anyway. No need to hurt his feelings.

I lifted the flawed burger onto the plate and lifted the top half of the bun to scrape off the offending cheese and add extra pickle slices. This time I actually stepped away from the counter. MAYONNAISE, ARRRGH! No way, no how could I eat that thing. This was an abomination, and I couldn’t hold my tongue. I confronted my husband, hoping it was a Braum’s mistake, that he didn’t actually order me a cheeseburger. After all, we’ve been married for 41 years, and I’ve never been shy about my dislike of these culinary mistakes.

It was not the fault of the teeny bopper server behind the counter. He ordered it for me! (What kind of horrible Freudian statement was he making?) When I let him know that in no uncertain terms that I DO NOT LIKE CHEESEBURGERS, his response was, “Well, you always ask me if I want cheese on my hamburger.” What? How is that even relevant to my aversion to cheeseburgers? How does this man’s mind work? I stood between a man whose thinking took him on a circuitous route to believing I liked cheeseburgers (after 41 years!) and a mass of cheese and mayonnaise defiling what could have been a tasty hamburger.

I couldn’t eat it. I didn’t eat it. I left it on the cabinet to shame him. (I doubt he noticed.)

The irrational thing about all this is that I actually like all the parts that make up a cheeseburger. I just don’t want to eat them in that combination. I find it more disgusting than raw fish on a board. I haven’t a clue why.

My Jehovah’s Witness

 

My husband and I live in the country, and we don’t have many visitors who don’t call first – not out of consideration for us, but to avoid the inconvenience of traveling into the boondocks to find no one at home – which means we rarely have visitors we aren’t expecting. So, on a recent Saturday morning, it took me a minute to identify an unfamiliar noise as knocking at the front door.

Hmm . . . it couldn’t be one of my husband’s friends. He was mowing the lawn, and when he is outside, his friends never make it to the front door. The same would be true if it were a utility worker. That meant the knocking heralded either a lost stranger who thought he had turned down a county road instead of the lane leading to our house, a desperate salesman with the deal of a lifetime just for me, or a Jehovah’s Witness to trying to make his quota. As I hurried to the door, I really, really hoped it wasn’t a salesman. Salesmen can make me feel so guilty for not buying anything from them.

I opened the front door to find Walter Mitty and the hero of a Harlequin romance standing with Bibles in their hands. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Oh good, I hadn’t visited with a Jehovah’s Witness in a long time.

I listened politely to their spiel. Romantic hero did most of the talking. He was sincere in his beliefs. I’m sure Walter Mitty was too, but like the hero of Thurber’s short story, he was out of his depth when confronted with reality. Romantic hero was articulate. Walter Mitty was rote. Romantic hero was gorgeous. Walter Mitty lived on the other end of the attractiveness scale.

I must admit to a bit of perverseness on my part. I did not invite them in out of the sun. I stood in the shade of my doorway, holding the door open with the air conditioning cooling my back while they baked. I was very aware of this, but after all they hadn’t called first, had they?

In the course of conversation, I learned that romantic hero was the son-in-law of a Jehovah’s Witness who came to my home several times many years ago. She had had terminal cancer at the time, and we talked about holistic medicine versus conventional medicine, among other topics. She would always lead the discussion back to her beliefs, and I would always find a way back to the secular world. I was very open with her about what I believed, and she never judged me, never worried about me going to Hell. She didn’t believe in Hell, which made her very pleasant to visit with. I liked to think that she enjoyed my company, too, and that she didn’t come by occasionally just to recruit me into her faith. I learned of her death in the obituaries. My heart broke a little. She was my Jehovah’s Witness, and now I would never see her again.

The next time Walter Mitty and romantic hero come calling to ask if I read the literature they left me (I didn’t), I will invite them in to sit in the comfort of my living room to converse on other worldly topics in honor of my Jehovah’s Witness.

STYLE

I have no style. That is, I have no intentional style. The pictures on the walls of my house were all gifts. Each one is very special to me, but there is no unifying theme. It’s not that I don’t appreciate beautiful things. It’s just that, like Thoreau, I don’t have a driving need to own them.

This is reflected in my personal style, which I call “invisible chic.” I dress not to be noticed. I do buy jewelry occasionally but seldom wear anything more than a pair of earrings. I wear my long hair (graying and uncolored) pulled back in an unstylish bun. I gave up the battle of trying to make my hair submit to whatever trend was current. I never won.

Before me, my mother fought the battle.

A beautiful woman, Mother had a real sense of personal style and wanted her daughters to have it, too. Alas, she would look at me, and her shoulders would slump in dismay. I had good features (after I grew into my teeth), but my hair was an abomination. Thick and rebellious, it harbored a resentment toward my mother who fought valiantly until I reached my teen years when she handed the standard over to me.

At first, Mother coped with my unruly mop by cutting it off. That’s not to say SHE cut it off. Mother seldom touched my hair. In fact, I don’t remember her ever combing it. My older sister was responsible for grooming me and my younger sister. (Come to think of it, my hair seemed to behave for her.)

No, Mother took me to a barber. My hair was tamed! Granted, I looked like a boy with big teeth, but my hair stayed put. For six weeks. It grew with a vengeance, and by the seventh week, Mother was defeated until she could get me back to the barber.

I don’t remember how long these skirmishes went on, but I do remember when Mother changed tactics. It was no longer proper for me to sport a boy haircut, so we visited a beauty shop, and there my hair almost met its Waterloo. On the other hand, I thought I was going to be beautiful. I was getting a perm! I now know “beautiful” and “perm” are not synonymous. I went from looking like a bedraggled tomboy to a tall poodle.

Sitting through a perm for several hours was not difficult. I rather enjoyed the attention and, oddly, loved having my hair messed with. What I hated was the aftermath. Permed hair requires a lot of maintenance. I became a slave to curlers and learned to sleep while my head was being tortured. My mother was pleased. I looked like HER child instead of something hanging on a far branch of the family tree.

I hated perms, but Mother was relentless until I hit the teenage years and joined my hair in rebellion. I discovered the pony tail, the precursor of my current hair style. I can’t say that I don’t sometimes wish for a more modern look, a sleek hairdo that frames my face just so, one that says, “Look at me. I am just as stylish as you are.” I swear that’s when I can hear my hair snickering, “It ain’t ever gonna happen!”

Redemption

Recently, I went to visit my best friend, who lives half-way across the country on the East Coast. She picked me up at Manchester airport on Thursday evening, took me to a Vietnamese restaurant in Lawrence (or was it Lowell?) for a bowl of pho. We went home early because she had to work the next day.

She lives in a pretty little town surrounded on three sides by the ocean. She and the town are the perfect de-stressers (de-stressors?) so even though we would miss spending a day together, I knew the town would be calming, and I could unwind until she and I could head out on adventures. It would be just the two of us since her daughter was away at college and her boyfriend was busy.

Friday morning before she left, she gave me a house key and the keys to her daughter’s car. (As if I were going to drive where streets are based on ancient trails, intersections are circles, and parallel parking skills are mandatory!) I printed a map of the town, layered my clothes, and began my walking tour. The fall air was crisp, the colors were riotous, and I hadn’t gone a block before realizing I had forgotten my map. I don’t trust my navigational skills or my memory, so I went back for it and started out again.

Ah, how free and unencumbered I felt. My hair was down and enjoying rare freedom. My spirit sang. How nice of the city fathers to build sidewalks, and thank you, citizens, for decorating your trees with handkerchief ghosts. And look, there goes yet another runner and a couple walking their dogs. (These people love their dogs!) Downtown, I window-shopped, ate a turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich at Foodie’s Feast, and bought a pumpkin pie at a mini version of Whole Foods. I found an ice cream parlor and indulged in a scoop of apple pie ice cream. Could it get any better than this?

I planned to spend the rest of the afternoon reading, napping, and just being zen. I took a different route back, saw different handkerchief ghosts, and read name plates declaring the antiquity of houses built before the Revolutionary War. A block from my friend’s apartment, I stuck my hand in my pocket for the door key. Wasn’t in that pocket. Not the other pocket either. Maybe I had put it in my purse. No, not there. Had I lost it? My pockets were too deep for it to have fallen out. Maybe I hadn’t locked the door. Wishful thinking. The door was locked, and the credit card trick only works on TV. My friend wouldn’t be home for another four hours.

I didn’t feel so zen any more. I felt vulnerable and old. I had forgotten to put the key back in my pocket when I went back for the map. My mind had betrayed me. The feeling washed over me like a bucket of cold water in slow motion. I was old. Soon, I would need a keeper, someone to look after me because I could no longer navigate the world. How was I going to get home if I couldn’t remember how to get around in an airport? Suddenly, my back was stooping, and I felt the need for a cane. I sat on the steps, nearly in tears, steeping in this new and unfamiliar feeling.

Gradually, I became of aware of a new feeling, more physical than metaphysical. I needed to go to the bathroom. Whatever it took, I had to get into the apartment. My bladder didn’t care that I was in the middle of an existential break down. It wanted relief. The sooner, the better.

Urgency kicked my brain out of self-pity and into gear. My friend lives in a semi-basement apartment. The front part is almost all underground, but the back is at normal ground level. Maybe she had left the back door unlocked. No luck. The mind that had forgotten the door key was now in turbo drive. It scanned possibilities. (None of those possibilities included contacting another human, including my friend. That would have admitted defeat.)

The bedroom windows. She always slept with the window open. I didn’t remember her ever closing it. I walked around to the side of the house. The window was fairly close to the ground and open, but the screen was secure, and, thanks to airport security, I had no flat, rigid object with which to pry it off.

I moved down the side of the apartment to check the other windows. At her daughter’s bedroom, there was a window with no screen. I paused and took a deep breath. I pushed; the window slid up with ease. Yes! The window slid down with equal ease. A minor problem. The greater problem was the height of the window from the ground. Even though I was getting younger by the minute, I still couldn’t hoist myself up high enough to shinny through the window. Ah, a bucket, just waiting for such a moment as this. Bucket in place, window propped open, I pushed myself through head first, tumbling onto the bed, then the floor.

I closed the window and locked it. (After all, if I could get in, couldn’t a burglar?) I headed for the bathroom, all the while listening for sirens. I was sure that if anyone had seen my legs hanging out of the window, they had called the police. Let them come. I would have proudly told my story to a policeman. I would have left out the part about feeling old. He wouldn’t have believed me.

Regret

I am not a person to harbor regrets. What’s done is done, and what’s not done could still be done. That’s why I am developing my bucket list.

When I review my life, I find that there are things I haven’t done that I no longer really care about doing. Mostly because they involve long lines, airport security, and tiresome plane rides. If I travel anywhere, I want to stay long enough to get over the trip before getting on a plane to return home. The longer the plane ride, the longer the stay needs to be. I’ve always wanted to go to Italy, but a plane ride that long would require that I live there for six months!

I would like to add a zip line ride through a rain forest in Costa Rica to my bucket list, but there’s that long plane ride preceding a short zip line ride. It doesn’t balance out for me at my age. Besides, I did get the experience of a zip line on Roatan Island. It was short but very sweet. Very, very sweet.

Most of the things I would put on my bucket list require a whole life change – not just for me but for everyone who depends on me to maintain a stability from which they can operate. Goodness knows, we went through enough instability when my youngest sister plunged into that river of no return. Of course, I’m not considering putting drug addiction on my list. No, a life change for me would involve a beach and the equator.

So far, there is only one thing on my bucket list that has a remote possibility of becoming a reality: learning algebra. Yes, algebra. I can’t get the idea out of my head. I am ashamed that I am not fluent in equations and proofs. (I don’t even know what a proof is.) There is something other worldly about using numbers to describe this world. I can’t stand not knowing, not understanding what any college-bound high school student knows – or should know. I didn’t “get” algebra in high school for a lot of reasons, but the reasons don’t matter. What matters is that my ignorance makes me feel, well, ignorant.

Besides, if I learn algebra, then I can learn trigonometry, and that can lead to calculus, and I hear that’s where all the fun is.

River Rush

When Aunt Opal died, she left Mary June very comfortable. Mary June inherited property, stock, oil royalties, and me. I had been Aunt Opal’s favorite niece, and Mary June figured if her mother liked me, there must be some undiscovered potential lurking under my farm girl guise. So I became her Project.

June had shed the “Mary” part of her name in the last half of her life, just as she had shed her submissive wife/homemaker image when she divorced her first husband for the second time. (She wasn’t one to give up easily.) She was a professor of consumer economics (home economics with a doctorate), and an accomplished artist. She had risen from an emotionally abusive marriage and created a Self that was awesome to behold. Now she wanted to re-create me, scrub the dirt out from under my fingernails, and give me some semblance of sophistication.

She took me to Greek restaurants where I tasted falafel for the first time and Indian restaurants that served up luscious lentil soup with yogurt. She hauled me to museums (gorgeous Chihuly glass and ancient Egyptian tombs), art shows (people paint some weird stuff), art parties (old ladies drinking ouzo), and an Oscar Wilde movie (his poor wife!). She gave me my first Whole Foods experience, and we shopped at Tuesday Mornings.

Her driving terrified me. (Who makes a U-turn on a four-lane street in downtown Ft. Worth?) She took a sort of close-your-eyes-and-jump-off-the-cliff approach when she got behind the wheel. I never said a word. Her wrath would be worse than wearing a body cast for six months.

June loved to travel, and she cajoled me out of my comfort zone and into a trip to Costa Rica. She had been once before and seen the volcanoes. Now she wanted to see the beach. Not on the resort-laden Caribbean side. Not June. She avoided anything that smelled remotely of popular culture. She searched out places that reeked of local flavor and hard beds. So we headed for San Juan, Costa Rica, without a single hotel reservation but not without a plan – June always had a plan.

We spent the first night in a hostel and breakfasted the next morning with a teacher from California who assured me that a state lottery would not improve funding for education in our state. (He was right.) June and I spent the morning going to the post office, changing money, and soaking up the culture. That afternoon we caught a bus headed for San Isidro.

San Isidro was a pleasant little town. We ate pizza on a balcony that evening and gave our leftovers to a trio of backpackers from Europe – strapping blond young men without a care in the world except how to get to the next rainforest. We boarded another bus the next morning, bound for Playa Dominical.

Riding with June had tempered my attitude about dying in a car crash, but it had not prepared me for the ride to Dominical. Costa Rica has one main highway that curves across the backs of mountains. It is not a four-lane highway. It’s not even a two-lane highway. Try one-and-a-half lanes. And we were riding in a bus that took up all of its lane and most of the other. It was full of Ticos and two white women. Ticos filled the aisles and the steps, and the bus driver seemed to know everyone by his first name. He talked and gestured during the entire three hour trip, oblivious to the 1,000 foot drop that was two feet from my side of the bus.

Did I mention that this was a local bus? We stopped at every little village and crossroads. We even stopped for entire families at places with no appearance of being inhabited. Finally, we arrived. The bus deposited us on the side of a dusty road. The fact that we had no clue where to go did not daunt June in the least. She took off in the most likely direction, and soon we were sipping watermelon frescas at an open air café. (Café is a euphemism for a kitchen and some tables under a roof.) Nothing has ever tasted so good since.

We stayed in Dominical for three days. Our base was a little room in a complex of cabinas owned by an American whose aim was to make just enough money to stay in Dominical. This was a surfing community and had quite a few expatriates from the U.S. who were seeking relief from a culture of wealth acquisition. June and I provided quite a contrast to the small, brown-skinned Ticos and the tall, tanned Americans.

One of those three mornings, I headed out on my own while June re-organized her multi-pocketed vest for the 39th time. I walked down the beach quite a ways, enjoying the sound of the surf. The ocean was endless. There were no boats to use as reference points. I was very small on a beautiful blue-green planet, but I felt very much at home.
I came to the edge of a small stream that ran out into the ocean. The water was about ten feet across and crystal clear. To continue my walk, I would have to cross it. I took off my sandals and stepped in. Ahh . . . delightful. A few more steps made me little more cautious. The bottom was not smooth. Pebbles of various sizes made walking difficult with bare feet. I picked my way across, slipping and almost falling once or twice. In the middle of stream, my awareness was redirected. The water was moving awfully fast. It was only up to my knees, but it was pushing hard. It would be tricky to get up if I should fall.

Suddenly, adrenalin poured through my veins. I was standing in the middle of a narrow stream with the wide Baru River on my right, pushing its water through this little funnel that led to the ocean on my left – about 25 feet away. If I fell, I would not have time to recover before the water carried me tumbling into that huge, pounding surf. No one would ever find my body.

Well, then. I would just have to be careful, wouldn’t I?

I was equidistant from both sides of the stream. I could turn around and go back. If I continued across, I would have to cross it again. I think I must have laughed out loud. I had not felt this alive since I was a child. Here I was, on the edge of the Earth, just one misstep from oblivion. I stepped forward toward the other side. I would savor this exquisite moment if it killed me.

Wal-Mart Cart Pushers Auxiliary

I am a charter member of the Wal-Mart Cart Pushers Auxiliary. We don’t have regular meetings – mostly because I am the only one in attendance. Once, I attended a “real” meeting, but it was still pretty irregular. It was just me and one other person. I didn’t catch his name, but he was very passionate about his membership.

The meeting took place one Saturday afternoon in the Wal-Mart parking lot. After I finished transferring my groceries from the cart into the trunk of my car, I pushed my cart toward the cart corral. That’s when the meeting began.

The first item on the agenda was “Straightening of the Carts.” Before I could place my cart in the corral properly, I had to rearrange the carts left there by non-members. If the corral contains only a few carts, the meeting is fairly short. On this day, carts were at all angles, inside and outside the corral. This was going to be a long meeting.

As I wrestled with tangled carts, Cart Man appeared of the blue. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I hadn’t sent out a memo about this meeting, but there he was, a young Native American with long hair, grabbing carts and yanking them apart with gusto, shoving them into the corral with a great deal of . . . um . . . strength. The meeting seemed to be progressing nicely, but I felt some discussion of the matter at hand would be appropriate since that’s what people do at meetings – discuss things.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if people would put their carts up?” I offered.

“@#4% people don’t care a *&$% about doing what’s right. They don’t give a %+#^@, the #$*@@&!”

Okay, then. This meeting had definitely been called to order.

He made a few more disparaging comments about human nature, which I can’t remember, nor would I have enough symbols on my keyboard to write. I must have mumbled a few words of agreement. That was the polite thing to do, and it helped me close my mouth which had dropped open in awe of his extensive vocabulary.

The meeting was adjourned as quickly as it had begun. Cart Man disappeared in a cloud of invective.

That was the last (and only) meeting of the Wal-Mart Cart Pushers Auxiliary at which there was a quorum. Mostly, I straighten the carts alone, but I always look over my shoulder to see if anyone will join me. I like to think that young man has meetings of his own, cleaning up the world, one cart at a time.

Funereal Observations

I am becoming a funeral connoisseur. It began with my father’s funeral in 1981. He was a 32nd degree Mason. My mother did not approve, but she relented and allowed the Masonic ritual to be performed at Daddy’s interment.

Having been raised in my mother’s very austere church, I found the ritual wondrous. Masonic brothers stood around my father’s casket and recited a comforting liturgy while folding a carpenter’s apron. Daddy would have been pleased.

I don’t remember attending a lot of funerals for the next twenty years, but suddenly I was spending a lot of time in funeral homes and churches. Most of the funerals were disappointing. They seemed irrelevant to the lives we were supposed to be celebrating. Occasionally, a funeral service would be a little less generic, like the service for a former black student of mine. It was very interactive. There were lots of “amens” and hats. I wish I had worn a hat. I felt out of place, not because I was white but because I was so inhibited and hatless, which was probably because I was white.

I attended the funeral of another student who would have been appalled at the somberness of the service. Granted it was heartbreaking that he was just in his thirties when he died, but he was one of the most talented, creative young men I had ever met. His funeral didn’t reflect that, and it made me sad that most of the people in attendance had no idea who he really was.

When my mother died at the age of ninety, I wanted to speak at her funeral and expressed my wishes to the preacher. He said that was his job. He was an awful speaker and didn’t do my mother justice. He didn’t know my mother when she was much younger and full of life. He didn’t know that I wanted to strangle him and put him out of my misery.

About a year-and-a-half later, I hosted my baby sister’s funeral in my home. My older sister read a poem that our sister had written about all of us cooking together. A little more tearfully than expected, I read the eulogy I had written. Then, according to her wishes, we traipsed out to the pasture behind my house and scattered her ashes. She would have loved it. She was the center of attention, and the people she loved most were there.

I have attended funerals at which the deceased was celebrated with anecdotes, both loving and humorous; funerals at which the preacher saw an opportunity to save souls (those are the worst!); and funerals so generic that I passed the time by planning my own funeral.

I don’t want a standard funeral. I want a party. It would be held in a community building of some sort. Everyone would bring his or her favorite dish and sit around eating and reminiscing. The formalities would include people getting up and telling their favorite memory about me, preferably something funny.

Then one of my children or grandchildren would read my poem:

Cradle

I crawl into the lap of the Universe

And rest my head in the curve of her arm.

She sighs to have me back

And hums a melody filled with stars.

I breathe in her fragrance of whirling atoms

And exploding suns.

I close my eyes in sleep

Forever.

RUNNER

I am a runner. Not in the athletic or running-away sense, but in a joyful, childlike sense . When I see a smooth, clear opening in front of me, whether it be a sidewalk, a hall, or a stretch of grass, I want to take off running. Of course, at my age I don’t. That’s pretty much frowned upon, so I restrain myself – at least in public.

As a little girl, I had plenty of opportunity to run: from the house to the barn to the shop to the corral to the garden to the house; across pastures, pond dams, creeks, terraces. Terraces were fun. Running full tilt across a terraced strip of earth could send you tumbling. Back then a tumble was an added attraction and barely broke my stride. Today, it would break my hip!

Running was a way of life. When my dad said, “Run get me a crescent wrench from the shop,” he meant RUN. When he needed help driving cows to the lot, I ran. He often said, “You can’t outrun a cow. You have to out-think her.” Out-thinking a cow was something I never quite got the hang of. They all seemed smarter than I was, so I ran a lot.

Occasionally, I would achieve a runner’s high, although at the time I didn’t know there was a name for it. It just felt like pure joy. It was as close to flying as I will ever get.

I still run but only in short bursts and almost always in the house. I will suddenly think of something I need to do, and I will hop up and take off. I never really thought about it being odd until my husband mentioned that he thought it was funny when I would sprint down the hall. That put a bit of a damper on my running. What I thought was perfectly natural as long as I could still do it seemed comical to other people; consequently, I am not as apt to engage in spontaneous running in situations where I can be observed.

The other morning, my husband noticed a bruise on my upper arm just below the shoulder. It was of the purple and green variety, a little larger than a fifty-cent piece. When he asked what happened, I explained that I had run into the bedroom and my house shoes slid when they hit the carpet, and I slid with them. The fall was insignificant except for the drawer pull I hit on the way down. Besides hurting almost to the point of tears, it left evidence of my imprudence.

His response was, “I saw on the news last night about how dangerous it is for elderly people to . . . .”

WHOA.

“Elderly people?”

“Well, people our age.”

“People our age?”

No response. Smart man. He already had both feet in his mouth.

Now, I know that I am no longer middle-aged. I would have to live to 120 plus for that to be true. But, I am not elderly. I don’t intend to ever be elderly. Elderly is for people who have forgotten the joy of running. Of course, there may come a time when I have to use a cane. That’s when I will learn the joy of hobbling, but I will NEVER be elderly.

REACTION

When I hear someone tell a story about how he/she reacted in a particular situation then another person, who has never experienced that situation, says, “Well, I would have done this or that . . .,” I have to look askance at such certainty. As for me, I know what I would like to do, but until I actually experience it, I am never sure what my reaction will be.

For example, many years ago when my middle daughter was still small, I was accosted by a strange man in our local K-Mart. Rach and I were looking for an item (I forget what, light bulbs, maybe) in the
hardware aisle. A rather large, long-haired man of questionable cleanliness interrupted our search when he told me there was a spider on my butt. Now, I am not afraid of spiders so he didn’t get the reaction he expected, which was a hysterical woman screaming for someone to “Get it off me!” At which point, he would have happily obliged.

I simply said something like, “It’s okay. I’m not afraid of spiders” and moved up the aisle away from him. He followed me and insisted on brushing the “spider” off my backside. I could have easily
confronted him and probably scared him away, but my reaction still mystifies me today. I grabbed my daughter and almost ran out of the store. I sat in my car unable to get the key in the ignition, much less drive. To articulate what I felt would require an inarticulate howl. I felt violated in the most primitive
way – a violation of trust.

I have always trusted that people will behave honorably toward one another, even if they have evil intentions. To betray that trust by inventing a threat (spider) so you can touch a woman’s butt is certainly not an honorable thing to do on so many levels. My reaction to that betrayal almost paralyzed me. I’m sure if he had directed his intentions toward my daughter I would have smacked him. Mother instinct is so much stronger than self-preservation.

In another incident, not too much removed in time from the preceding one, I had a near miss with a burglar in my home. I had just returned from selling pecans I had picked up earlier, and when I
walked into the house, it took a few seconds for it to register that my microwave was not on the kitchen counter, and that I was not the one who had moved it. Then, the most obvious difference hit me: the back door was open and there was my microwave sitting on the step.
It took what seemed liked ten minutes for me to process information that didn’t jive with my perception of my home, but it couldn’t have been more than a second because I was out that door in a flash.

I saw him running toward the creek. I hesitated. There was a gun in the pickup, but by the time I retrieved it, he would be gone, hidden in the trees along the creek bank. So I used the only weapon I had handy. Words. Loud, unladylike words. I ran after him calling him everything I had ever heard my husband call a cow. I felt as though I could have torn him apart with my bare hands! Fortunately for him, he had a good head start.

I have often pondered my very different reactions to each of these situations. In the first, my life was not threatened, but I reacted as though it were. Fear shut down my ability to do anything but run. In the second, the burglar could easily have been carrying a gun, but the thought never entered my mind. My anger made me feel invincible.

Perhaps my reactions depend on the locale of the threat. Put me in territory unmarked by me, like a K-Mart store, and I am at the mercy of any villain, but attack me on my home ground or attack someone
I love, and you’ll be facing She-Ra, defender of all she surveys!

Feet vs. Wheels

I love running.

Well, that’s not totally true. I love the first 45 seconds of running.  Before my joints start screaming at me and my lungs threaten to shut down. The 45 seconds when I still feel like an eight-year-old girl again, running through pastures and across terraces. The 45 seconds during which my body experiences the exhilaration of self-made speed.

I love the last 45 seconds of running, too. That’s when I congratulate myself on my amazing self-discipline.

Nope, that’s not true either. What I actually think in that last 45 seconds is, “It’s over. Thank God, it’s over. I will be able to breathe again in 20 or 40 minutes.”

I am able to make myself run for the 45 minutes between those two 45 second bits of time because my body has fond memories of running as a child. As a little girl, if I fell, my body simply tumbled back into an upright position, and I continued bounding across the landscape. Falling was only a slight hitch in my forward movement. My body still believes that is possible. It really has no idea that I am much farther from the ground and gravity has increased significantly. And I’m not telling it.

Recently, I have attempted to take up bike riding. It scares me to death. The only fond memory my body has of bike riding is learning to ride. That moment when I wobbled around the house without any help added another skill to a growing repertoire of ‘things I can do.’ With practice, my confidence soared. I traveled round and round the house until I was an expert at going in circles. (Oh my, there’s some kind of Freudian revelation in that statement.)

There was one problem with riding a bike. The only place to ride was round and round the house, which, once conquered, held no appeal. We weren’t allowed to cross the cattle guard and ride on the gravel road. We weren’t even allowed to cross the cattle guard to walk on the road. (Daddy was more afraid of humans we might encounter on the road than snakes we might encounter in the fields.) So, what was the point of riding round and round in a tight circle when I could run in a straight line across 600 acres?

Since my body is not as familiar with biking as it is with running, it balks at getting on top of two wheels in an almost upside-down position (certainly no memory of that!) and trying to remember which of the 32 gears works best for uphill or downhill and how the heck to get in that gear while trying to stay upright on one-inch wide tubes of slick rubber. Makes me love my size nine feet!

Still, I don’t like not being able to do something (except maybe algebra), and I detest being afraid of anything. So, with much encouragement from a friend who dislikes running but loves biking, I have embarked on this on-again, off-again attempt to conquer my fear of wobbling down a highway with huge chunks of hard metal hurtling past my exposed, unprotected body.

But first I had to get the right seat. That’s something calloused bike riders don’t tell you:  bike seats hurt like the dickens. I didn’t remember being uncomfortable on a bike seat as a child, but neither did I remember riding pitched forward with all my weight on my arms and the unmentionable, delicate areas of my body - it isn’t my padded butt taking the pressure on this bike-built-for-speed.

Before I purchased a new seat, I ventured out on the highway with my expert bike-riding friend. My old seat was designed for comfort, not for stability. I fought to stay on it. Add hills and gears and speeding cars and I was a wreck. Literally.  I wobbled and crashed to the pavement. My head bounced. Yes, it bounced. If I had not been wearing a helmet, my skull would have cracked open like a Halloween pumpkin. That’s a memory my body isn’t likely to forget. As it was, I came away with a kneeful full of concrete burns, a hip bruise, and free dermabrasion of the shoulder.

My new seat is still untried. My body keeps finding excuses to keep my feet on the ground. I will venture forth again, and when I do succeed, my body will remember that child-like exhilaration when I first peddled round and round the house.