Finding What's Missing

I just got back from spending a couple of nights and a full day in Maine.  I s.Spent most of my time sitting on the glider rocker on my friend’s sun porch getting my feet licked by Macie, one of the two dogs that provide companionship to Joyce and Roland.  Some people like to sit on the beach and stare at the ocean.  I like to sit on a chair and gaze at the mountains.  I was well rewarded with a beautiful sunset last night.  I also like to walk in the woods, but the mosquitoes in Maine are well known for being blood sucking denizens and the couple of times I ventured a few feet away from the house I ended up flailing my arms wildly in the air trying to keep them away.  We took the dogs down to the lake for a quick dip, but before I was able to take my sandals off and get in the water, one of those freakishly persistent insects had flown up my nose.  It was best to stay indoors. 

This past week was pretty hectic.  Besides the usual stressors of working with domestic violence and sexual assault survivors and their advocates, things had gone awry on a conference I am planning.  Thanks to team work it is going to work out, but for a few days I was feeling a little pressure.  At times like that I tend to think that there is something missing in my life and try to fill whatever that space is with whatever is available.  Mostly food.  Used to be beer, wine, cigarettes or unhealthy relationships.  This week, however, I stayed more present with my feelings and was able to keep from diving into a pint of Chocolate Therapy ice cream. 

I thought about how I had managed that while I was gazing at the mountain.  I realized that when I think there is something missing in my life, what’s missing is me.    Stress puts me in the past, the future, but rarely in the moment.  I was more in the moment this week.  I stayed the course through my feelings.  I didn’t push it all down with food. 

Sometimes I talk about the committee in my head and the difficulty I have in making decisions.  One of the committee members is all about the quick fix.  Another likes to structure me within an inch of my life so that I can’t mess up.  Then there is the committee member who doesn’t play well with the others and prefers to run rampant until things get too scary and then she defers to her best friend, the one who likes the quick fix.  There is another who resists structure and prefers to go with the flow.  Fortunately, I also have a wise inner woman who manages to get them all to compromise or allows them to take turns in appropriate ways.  None of these committee members are the real me.  That’s a good thing.  But they all exist and if I am not present, the wise woman has a harder time managing the malcontents.  That is when I feel like something is missing.  When I feel like that it is an alarm letting me know that the wise woman is about ready to let the wild things run amok because she can’t do it all herself.  Glad I was there to help her this week.  I think it also helps that I have friends who are available to keep me grounded. 

Some Thoughts on the World

I have not been able to stop thinking about a post a friend of mine put on Facebook yesterday. 

“When the Obama 2012 sign appeared on our street, so too did the Confederate flag in short order.”

This is just two miles down the road from me, here in New Hampshire.

I used to say that the racism here was subtle as opposed to the in your face racism of the south where I lived for 26 years.  However, it seems that the hateful rhetoric of the past four years has encouraged people to use their freedom of speech in threatening ways.  As a liberal pacifist, the last time I felt threatened was right after the start of the Iraqi war when everyone but a few were believing Bush’s claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  My values were considered traitorous at that time.  There were actually a couple of times when people tried to run me off the road and the only reason I could ascertain was that they didn’t like my bumper sticker that simply said “Peace.”

I feel more threatened now.  The far right wing has become more verbal, engages in less critical thinking, and has guns.  There are certainly many conservatives with whom I could engage in open discourse who have not been spoon fed their politics by FOX news and the Tea Party.  I think that we could agree that we are of different opinions and would be respectful of each other’s viewpoint.  However, when I see Confederate flags and hear of calls to do unspeakable things to our President, and see bumper stickers and comments on news items (i.e. the death of Andy Griffith) that are spewing hatred I retreat further to the left.  When did this minority of the far right become so loud? 

I was born a liberal.  How do I know I was born this way and not indoctrinated?    I remember early on questioning the teachings of the Catholic church I attended from first to fourth grade. Also, my parents did not discuss politics so there was little chance to be indoctrinated. My sister and I were dismayed to find out many years later that our father voted for Richard Nixon.  I think I understand his decision, though.  My father was a Korean war vet who firmly believed in the cause of fighting against communism even though a lot of his thinking would have fallen into the ideals of socialism.  Like many people of his generation, he did not grasp the difference between the two.  If he was alive today, I hope he would do everything he could to understand Obamacare so that he could defend it and would not be hindered by the socialist label that so many conservatives have tagged onto it in order to raise fear. 

That is where the dividing line falls for me.  Not between conservatives and liberals, but between people who choose to carefully study the issues and make their decisions based on fact rather than the sound bites of FOX news and the color of a person’s skin, the origin of one’s name or their immigration status, and whether or not one has a vagina or a penis. 

If you are willing to stop yelling at me with your rhetoric, I am glad to listen.  Those of you who prefer to wave your Confederate flags and hide behind your guns – well, you make me fear for this country.   It doesn’t matter, though, because you probably aren’t reading this. 

In the end, whenever I am feeling discouraged, I remember what Anne Frank wrote in her diary shortly before being found by the Nazis:

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death."

Summer Has Arrived!

Summer arrived this past week and it was hot.  It was almost 100 degrees for two days and in the 90s on the third.  I complained a lot!  It only lasted 3 1/2 days but I was miserable.  The cold front came through yesterday and it is now in the low 80s with blue skies.  I decided  to use the oven for a bit.  Just long enough to roast some sweet potatoes for a salad.  Here is what I did:

I peeled and cubed 3 large sweet potatoes and tossed with olive oil and chopped rosemary.  I roasted them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, tossing halfway through.
While the roasting was going on I cooked one cup of lentils in two cups of water.  They were just about done at the same time as the potatoes.

While those cooled I sauteed a lot of garlic, some scallions (in lieu of onions), and a chopped large organic red bell pepper in the last tablespoon of garlic flavored olive oil that I had bought in New Mexico.  I am going to miss that oil.  I tore up three large leaves of kale and put those into the sauteed veggies.  I tore up the leaves small enough so that they would wilt but still have some crunch.  Most recipes call for spinach, but I went with what I had.

I tossed that all in with the potatoes and lentils and put in the fridge to cool while I made the dressing.

Dressing:  2 tablespoons of maple syrup, 1 tsp of dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar *, and 2 tsps of lemon juice.  Salt and pepper to taste.

I mixed it all together with the veggies and took a taste.  Even slightly warm it was very good.  I couldn't wait until it was cold to taste it and I wasn't disappointed.  It can be served warm or cold.

* If you are ever in Keene, NH, stop in Your Kitchen Store.  The store has the best balsamic vinegar I have ever tasted.  You can buy a bottle and then return and have it re-filled.  If you aren't in Keene very often I would suggest buying a large bottle.  It is very good.

http://www.yourkitchenstore.com/

Looking Up My Back Door

I will be cursing at my mother for the next two days.  I will be suffering great indignities in response to my mother’s fears.  Yes, in keeping with my tradition of telling everyone my business, I am letting ya’all know that tomorrow I will be refraining from all solid food and drinking a nasty concoction that will require that I stay close to my own bathroom so that on Monday perfect strangers will be allowed to enter a place just north of that which cannot be named in Michigan.

Why do I blame my mother? I understand that I am being irrational.  It has less to do with blame than it has to do with being reminded of why she died.  If she had been willing to go through this same indignity she may still be here.  She may have been able to take that boat to Paris with my sister.  My mother feared, yes, feared, colonoscopies.   In 2006 she had a colonoscopy for which she had not prepared correctly due to her revulsion of the preparatory cocktail.  Combine that with the fact that her blood pressure skyrocketed during the procedure and they weren’t able to travel to the far reaches of her intestinal galaxy, they failed to find what eventually killed her. 

When she started experiencing abdominal pain, she refused another colonoscopy, stating that she had one the previous year (but we know how that went) and that she refused to drink the Go-Lytely (isn’t that the most ridiculous name for something that works like industrial strength Drano?).  My head still shakes at this.  Yes, I have issues.

My mother is also the same woman who let an ulcer on her leg go untreated for a year because she knew that it meant she had Type II diabetes and she didn’t want to deal with it.  I miss her, I really do.  I just wish she was here so I didn’t have to miss her.  Because of her refusal to get things looked after I don’t have a mother.  I feel jealous when I hear someone talking about their feisty 80 year old mother.  I miss the Sunday afternoon phone calls.  I wish she was here so I could fuss her out!

So, yes, I may sound like a hypochondriac at times, but having had four important people in my life die of four different forms of cancer in the past seven years, I get a little cautious about symptoms.  Three out of the four were women and they all died before the age of 70.  At 56 years old, that just seems a little too close to me.  Death doesn’t scare me.  I see that as a great adventure.  What I don’t want is cancer or any other condition that incapacitates, causes great pain, or reduces my ability to think, get to the bathroom, or take care of myself.  I don’t want my body pumped full of chemicals to kill something that shouldn’t be there and possibility destroy things that should be. 

If drinking a couple of quarts of nastiness and spending a lot of time reading on the toilet means that I can avoid all that, then I say pour me another and get me a another issue of People magazine (I think the bathroom is the perfect place for reading trash).  On Monday, I will be okay.  I like the drugs they use and I have an excuse to sleep for a good portion of the day. 

In lieu of photos of the event, I offer this video and song in honor of the occasion.

Thank you, Patricia Raymond and B.J. Liederman!!

An Open Letter to My Granddaughters (or any other young girl)

Dear Granddaughters,

I know that I can’t do anything to stop you from being hurt.  I know that life is going to be a series of ups and downs for you, that your hearts will be broken more than once.  It is what it is.  If I could guarantee that every relationship will make you happy, I would.  But I can’t.  And I know I am not the relationship expert.  But out of all the women in your life I am the one who has probably had the most experience with unhealthy relationships.  So let me give you some pointers.  Take them or leave them.  I just know the following to be true for me and maybe, someday when you are crying your eyes out over some man who did something stupid, you will remember that your grandma told you that this was a possibility and only because she had experienced something similar.

So here are my little words of wisdom.  And, no, these do not all pertain to your grandfather.  Believe me.  That’s why you need to listen to me.  I have had more experience than just being married to that one man.

1.       If a man doesn’t treat you with respect while you are dating, it only gets worse if you marry him.  That includes lying to you, hitting you, cheating on you, calling you names, making you feel bad about yourself, and so on.  

2.       If he cheats on you once, he will probably do it again. 

3.       If he cheats with you on someone else, he will cheat on you, too. 

4.       If he cheats on you, the woman he cheated with is also to blame.  Don’t go getting all mad at her and not at him.  That makes no sense.  Neither of them deserves your time. 

5.       Forgiveness is healthy.  Forgetting is not healthy.  Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean you allow them to hurt you again. 

6.       If you have to edit what you say around him because you are afraid he might leave, give you the cold shoulder, get mad, not like you, criticize you, talk bad about you, etc., then he isn’t for you.  Find the person with whom you can be yourself, not someone for whom you have to change or for whom you need to pretend to be someone else.  If you are a completely different person around him than you are around your friends, then something isn’t right.  

7.       You can’t make someone love you. 

8.       Just because you think he is the only one in the world for you, it doesn’t mean it’s true. 

9.       If you don’t know what kind of day you are going to have until you find out what mood he is in, then run for the hills.  You should be able to dictate what kind of day you are going to have.  His attitude is his, not yours. 

10.   In most arguments, there is no right or wrong, just a difference of opinion.  You can choose to make it a war or a respectful discussion followed by compromise.  Winning an argument means that someone loses.  No one should be a loser in a relationship. 

11.   If you find yourself worrying and wondering who he is with and what he is doing, then you need to find something interesting and exciting to do on your own.  If he doesn’t like that you have an interesting and exciting life when he isn’t around, he needs to get over it and you may need to find someone who thinks it is great that you have a life. 

12.   A partner should be the topping on an already well baked, delicious cake.  He shouldn’t be the whole meal.  

13.   Sometimes, when you don’t get the person you want, it is a very, very good thing.  

14.   Short, chubby guys can actually be quite fun. 

15.   If he doesn’t make you laugh he isn’t worth your time. 

16.   If he isn’t there when you need him to be, he had better have a good reason – like maybe he is dead or in the hospital with a broken neck. 

17.   If your friends or family don’t like him, then take another look.  There may seem something they see that you don’t. 

18.   There is a song that says “don’t advertise your man.”  It means that you shouldn’t let other woman know all the good stuff about your guy because then they will want him.  Well, it works the other way, too.  If you tell your friends all the bad stuff and complain about him, then they won’t want you to have him because they always want the best for you.  So don’t be surprised if they are upset with you when you take him back after he has done something disrespectful.  It’s also not respectful to talk bad about someone you care about.  That works for both you and your guy. 

19.   Don’t put your future on hold because you are waiting on someone to make a commitment.  All you are doing is wasting time. 

20.   If he doesn’t call when he says he is going to or doesn’t show up, that is disrespectful.  See number 1.

I made this list because I love you.  I am looking forward to watching all sorts of wonderful things happen in your life, but I also dread the broken hearts and the tears.  Know I am always here for you, through the good and the bad. 

Lots of love,

Grandma

New Mexico Musings

I have just come back from spending a week in New Mexico.   I have been there four times and each time has been an adventure.  I have covered some of the Albuquerque area, a good part of the Turquoise Trail east of the Sandia Mountains, Santa Fe, the Los Alamos area and Bandolier National Monument, and the Taos area including Taos Mountain and Arroyo Seco.  The New Mexican landscape is expansive and truly breathtaking.  While I was there I wrote some prose poems.  Not only do they reflect the mood and landscape of the Land of Enchantment, the poems also carry an undercurrent of emotion that still runs through me.  There has been a rash of deaths by homicide in New Hampshire over the past month that have profoundly affected many of the people I know.  Being away was only that, being geographically removed. 

Saturday Morning Santa Fe One

It’s not easy to change one’s pace

from here to there to the moment.

Time spent looking at sky and trees

seems like living in slow motion

away from all that causes me to question,

to take stock of what I do.

Expectations of great revelations

become time just be-ing,

reduced to simple self,

no need to question.

The answer is as still as the stones,

as fleeting as the breeze.

Saturday Morning Santa Fe Two

Is there hope when a small child is

witness to death in its harshest from,

a bullet that stops the heart of the woman

Who held him, the vessel where he began?

There will never be anything that can touch that pain.

A path of retreat will be sought

at the sight of other children with their own,

nothing to fill the hole greater than measure allows.

Sunday A.M. Santa Fe

Winds cross desert to mountains,

sweeping dust from the cracks of my mind,

leaving behind wanton lust for the landscape,

Ever changing, colors move from brown to orange,

Green and blue.

Whatever darkness or hideous deeds

perpetrated in nature are swallowed by the

sun’s gaze.  Wide open spaces grant  

room to breathe, to expand, to forgive

human belief in his own dominance.

Nature smiles at our foolishness and

Sends the rain.

Sunday a.m. Two

Painted red start crosses my view,

red on white and black startles me,

delights me.  A gift, a greeting from bird

I will never see north of these mountains,

my personal greeter into the land of enchantment.

The Gem Store in Taos

“Welcome.  Where are you from?”

Gentle soul with arthritic hands and weathered face

tells of his time in Boston, how the fast pace of the East

almost ruined his interview in slow talkin’, slow movin’ Texas.

He smiles, wraps my purchases carefully,

two obsidian, a sand cast from the Four Corners region,

bracelets and carvings for grandchildren.

Then he asks, “Have you had any green chile yet?”

“Why, no.  What do you recommend?”

He gives directions to the best green chile on

Shrimp enchilada I have had the pleasure to know. 

Rio Grande Gorge

I walk across the bridge spanning the Rio Grande,

imagining my mother’s ashes in a flurry.

Grasping the rail, looking down, I know she would

have rather napped in the trunk than view such a height. 

I turn a full circle, knowing this is the most land I will ever see

In one gaze, and the most blue sky. 

The Box

I talked to a survivor yesterday.  She is a survivor of everything that could possibly be thrown at one person starting from the time she was a child.  She is now just short of sixty and continues to deal with the impact of her childhood and the consequences of her alcohol use on her family.  Her children are fighting their own demons of drug use and life threatening illnesses.   She worries for her grandchildren.  She takes care of others on a daily basis.  Her kindness, compassion and faith are evident in how she is living her life now.

She has been clean and sober for quite a few years.  Given the battles she fights each day I can imagine that the thought of taking a drink or an extra pill has gone through her mind on more than one occasion.  I asked her how she holds it together.

“I have a box,” she said as she held her hands in front of her, shaping the box in my imagination.  “I don’t put any more in that box that I can handle.  It doesn’t have room for regrets, should’ves, or blame.  It also doesn’t have room for worries about the future.  If it gets too heavy, then something has to go.  The box is only so big and I have to watch every day that I don’t let anything get in there that shouldn’t be.”

I thought about her and the box while I sat on the side of the river tonight watching the water move by.  I can’t worry about what was around the last bend or what is coming at the next curve.  I can only deal with what is in front of me right now.  That is the key.  I tell someone this at least once a week.  It was nice to have someone tell me for a change using different words.  I always need to hear it and I don’t often hear it when I say it.  I am glad I was paying attention.