Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last night my daughter took us to see Michelle Obama speak at a nearby arena.  It was packed with women of color and maybe 10% men.  It was women hear us roar, all right.  She was down home and frank, as if she was in a living room with us.  She was inspiring, funny and honest.  We all admire her for her determination to keep her life as normal as possible and protect her daughters.  She didn't pull any punches.  She told us if we didn't like what our daughters and granddaughters were facing in this world, to step up to the plate and fight to make things better.  We can't just sit back and bemoan pay inequity, sexual harassment, few women in top positions in any profession or in Congress.  Because it takes all of us, and especially it takes women to care enough for young women to see that they don't face everything we put up with.  Don't leave it to the men.  They tend to be comfortable with the way things are and ignore the rest.  And if we don't care about our daughters and granddaughters then we are perpetuating the action of not caring enough about ourselves.  We are valuable and necessary in society.  Our perspectives are often different and fresh, and our social skills more fine tuned.  Are we going to sit back and wait to be rescued any longer?  I surely hope not.  We know how that goes. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

The weather has warmed up and we're all kind of bubbly about it.  My husband and I got too hot going around the reservoir yesterday, instead of rubbing our cheeks and hands to keep warm.  The pelicans on the water were happy as well, bobbing in the water and keeping an eye out for the fishermen. 
I had a fun time talking to a friend last night about Calico Critters.  We both have them for our grandchildren.  I began a collection for my foster granddaughter about ten years ago and then she and my granddaughter played with them whenever they were together at my house.  Finally, I bought a house and critters for my granddaughter to have at her house two states away.  Now my friend has introduced them to her two year old granddaughter and I'm about to show them to my two little grandsons.  My foster granddaughter preferred bunnies, so we have a lot of those, but then kitties were added and puppies for me.  I have a little house, a nursery, a bakery.  The silliness is part of the charm.  But we began doing cell phone videos with the kids speaking for the animals (sometimes I would pinch hit) and I treasure these sometimes revealing plots.  They got super creative and it's amazing how speaking for a tiny toy animal highlights the thinking of a child. 
Anyway, my friend and I get a kick out of the play and inventiveness of our grandkids, and such joy, well, it must be shared!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My dear friend who is recovering from knee surgery is two weeks out and feeling better and stronger and sleeping easier.  She's come out of the tunnel and basking in the lighter atmosphere.  She's had a hellish two weeks and I'm so very grateful she's turned the corner.  I felt like only time would really help and so it has turned out.  She's had the loving support of her friends and family, but still, this was going to be a swamp to wade through and she was alone doing it.  Her determination and strength saw her through, not any of us.
Another friend is at the bedside of her son, hoping and praying he makes it through his dire medical crisis and can resume his life.  She's a doctor, but she's helpless except in her steadfast love for him.  He's fighting, but the outcome is unknown and she is powerless to save him.  All of us are praying he recovers, but life is arbitrary and cruel sometimes, and we know that as well. 
One friend is sailing more smoothly and on less rough seas the other is in the eye of the tempest.  And I am powerless to rescue them from their pain.  It's hard to care so much but let go of the illusion of control.  But I'm learning.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Saturday I went with some friends to the March for Our Lives speeches and march.  It was thrilling to hear from kids instead of adults, and these kids are amazingly articulate.  The crowd was friendly and the signs, as always, spot on.  I came home with sore knees but pleased.  I wanted to listen, since so many of our government people are not.  The next day a friend and I went to hear three eighty something African American men talk about their lives.  Again, just listening.  They had been through so much in their lives:  poverty, racism, loss of a parent.  Two of them got PhDs, and ended up professors at U.C. Berkeley, and one became a lawyer and then a Superior Court Judge.  One was the grandson of Ida B. Wells.  Another worked with the Kennedys as a liason with Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers.  They'd all been athletes in college who couldn't find anyone around U.C.L.A who would rent to Blacks.  They persisted.  And how!  Their friendship has survived sixty plus years.  They are retired and each lives six blocks from the other two. 
So, this weekend,  I was inspired by the very young and the very old.  They have a lot to say, and we should all listen.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been busy the last two days babysitting our grandson.  He's good natured and amiable, and basically I follow him around and keep him from injuring himself, and feed him, and read and push trains and cars around with him.  We took him on a stroll today, and he was pointing out trucks and trees and all the ordinary/amazing things he saw.  His vocabulary is expanding rapidly, and we're very close to sentences, I believe.  Our two year old grandson is fluid in sentences, and knowing what's coming is exciting.  I think of these innocent beings, and then think of the Parkland students, and I can't stand the danger our stupid policies about guns have put our children and grandchildren in.  This is not acceptable.  I'll be marching tomorrow, because somehow we must make our representatives think of family values:  the right to live without fear of harm in our schools, where most children spend the majority of their lives until they are in their twenties.  Get down to basics.  Protect the vulnerable.  So that children have a future, and not a terrorized childhood.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

With all the news about Facebook's breaches, you'd think I'd feel vindicated, but no.  I'm very private, so I resisted the entreaties of friends and the fact that three of my four kids are on it.  But I listened to  my friends about how much it means to them to have this daily touch of friendliness, and they are intelligent beings who weighed the risks with the rewards and found the later overwhelming.  I doubt they are worried now.  We are older, and naturally don't put impulsive posts online.  They protected themselves.  But others may get hurt, and that is a pity.  However, I think there is nothing they could have really done anywhere to protect their privacy.  We are in a post privacy era.  We had our credit card number stolen the old fashioned way, years ago, via my stolen wallet, and once recently when we have no idea how the card number was obtained.  We changed the number.  What else can you do?  I know nothing is deleted, and luckily, a lot I've written is pre-computer, so shredding solves the problem.  Clearly my Dad did that before he died, and there is no trace of him online.  My brother lived his entire life without a computer, and was untraceable after his death, but he was also the loneliest person I know.  Private, but erased.  So we all make our choices, and if we do the "wait a day" rule before we post anything, a lot of regrettable writing doesn't happen.  That unscrupulous people take advantage of our desire for connection shouldn't be surprising, as we are in a culture of greed and selfishness, mostly unchecked.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I watched "Lady Bird" by myself last night and really loved it.  The film was funny, truthful, and tender.  Four times I struggled with my kids leaving home and going to college, and the year before they leave is so hard, on both sides.  This separation business is excruciating!  I recognized myself as the daughter and myself as the mother.  I put my parents through agony, then turned around and had to be the recipient four times over!  And the complexity entailed is right there on the screen, irreducable.  The acting was perfect, and I believed in these characters.  If I live long enough, I may see my kids go through this with their kids, but it's not likely.  But there is this movie out there in the world that tells it like it is, to give them comfort.  Wait a go, Greta!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I was telling my friend on the telephone that I had a spontaneous weekend!  On Saturday I texted a friend to walk, and we ended up deciding to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by having dinner together.  She made corned beef and cabbage, boiled potatoes and rye bread, I brought wine and key lime pastries from a bakery.  It was the first time either of us had done anything to celebrate the holiday.  We didn't quite go to the extent of the green beer, but almost.  I've accidentally seen parades, but never deliberately celebrated.  She's Jewish, her partner is Polish, and my husband has no Irish blood and me just a bit, so there has been no big push.  Anyway, we had fun, and the next day my husband and I decided late morning to go to a garden an hour away, and that turned out delightfully as well.  Celebrating is always a good idea.  And I feel like I shored up good feeling, because today I learned my dear friend's son is quite dangerously ill, and she is several states away sitting in the hospital  hoping and praying.  Enjoy the daffodils, because change happens so swiftly and inexorably. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Spontaneously, we got in the car this morning and went to a beautiful garden about an hour away.  There was no traffic, and we love this place especially in springtime.  It's a National Trust; a former private estate now maintained for the public.  There were thousands of daffodils, the white ones, the orange and yellow, every variety.  There were terra cotta pots gorged with daffodils everywhere, but also daffodils among the grasses, in the woodsy areas, along paths.  And a lot of the tulips had come out as well, bright orange, pale pink, yellow; row after row of red ones with small blue flowers between the plants.  And hyacinths, especially grouped together the blue, purple and white.  The smell of them was heavenly.  The fruit trees are just beginning to blossom, and the roses to come to life.  My husband looked on the map and discovered a mile long loop that took us to the farmland and woods, and there we found a little nature center with stuffed local animals, from cougars to coyotes, great horned owls to green herons.  Then we slauntered back through the terraces outside the house, but didn't go inside.  We wanted to be outside.  I'd had to give up streaming my teacher's dharma talk to come, and my husband asked me if I regretted missing it.  No, I emphatically replied.  My soul had soaked in the beautiful of the gardens, and renewed itself through nature.  I'll catch the talk online another time, but today, I just absorbed the joy of spring after a fresh rain.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I love the toddler age, when kids are not so gender bound yet.  We took our younger grandson to the pet store and the toy store, and he loved the pink shopping cart above everything else, even though he'd lingered at the Brio train table for a while.  And the older grandson put on a tutu the other day and said he was princess man.  The whole world is open to them right now, and yet biology closes them in like captives as they get older.  So while they are this young it's fun to see how fluid they are with their play.  Our granddaughter was rambunctious and raced around the house with her best friend, a boy, as a toddler, and yet by school age she settled into dolls and dressup and female friends.  Our younger daughter's best friend was a boy until kindergarten, when after several days of being teased, they never played together again.  I've given each grandson a soft doll, but never seen either play with it.  The younger does have a bath baby I gave him that used to be our granddaughter's for years.  This gender thing is stronger than any of us, and yet, we keep trying to open the doors and let in more light. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My daughter sent a video of my granddaughter singing at her school talent show with her good friend.  They were amazing.  The song choice was wonderful:  empowering, wise, a great message.  Their voices were lovely and the music catchy and interesting.  Seeing her stand on the stage and be so poised and confident was a joy.  I wish I had been there.  Music is important in all my kids' lives and now in the three grandchildren.  My granddaughter loves playing piano and singing her heart out.  Her voice has gotten more controlled and distinctive as she's grown.  She's about to be ten.  The two year old grandson wants to play violin, loves all his toy instruments, and will sing for the camera.  The year old grandson like the older one, loves to dance and play his tamborine, a drum, carachas and the piano.  He's started to sing spontaneously as we stroll him to the part.  I love it all, because music is a spiritual gift that strengthens us and gives us inner resources as well as voicing our emotions.  Whatever becomes of their passion for music, it is in their lives to stay and sustain them whatever their lives have in store for them.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Tonight is my writing group.  I've noticed more and more we are all writing non-fiction.  We are telling our stories, not making up tales.  Over the many years, there has been a subtle change.  I know I was working on a novel when we began, and others were creating children's stories, fictionalized experiences and the like.  Now that we've aged, we wish to be more transparent, perhaps.  We are compelled to tell our own story before it is lost.  And our kids, though they love us, are not really interested right now in our pasts or thoughts or ideas.  They are busy with young children, demanding work and complex relationships that are difficult to maneuver.  We've been there.  We understand.  Whereas we have the luxury of reflecting on our lives and experiences we'd like to share.  And our kids and grandkids won't always be this busy, but we may not be there to answer their curiosity later.  My own parents died young and suddenly.  I thought I had all the time in the world to find out more.  I didn't.  For now we're sharing with each other, in a safe and supportive environment, and later, well, maybe others will be interested in who we were.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Ah, the rain came.  We are having gentle spring rain and the air is so fresh.  I'm grateful.  My friend is having surgery on her knee this morning, and my husband said I had a nightmare last night and told him I was falling off a cliff.  Perhaps I was anxious about my friend.  She's in great hands, and will be home tomorrow.  But I've been buying a lot of get well cards, and I guess my friends and I are at the age when surgeries, little scares, and sometimes sudden surprises, like another friend's going to the hospital in the middle of the night in an ambulance are coming one after the other.  Our age and wear and tear are taking a toll.  I also was anxious about seeing the dermatologist for my checkup.  I'm worried about a spot under my eye, and I was to see her this morning, I thought, but the appointment is two weeks hence.  Having skin cancer three times, and each one a surprise, has eroded my confidence in my ability to spot a problem.  I need Superman's Xray vision, or rather, a doctor.  The joys of aging! 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday I saw both little grandsons.  First I drove up to see the older one, who is two, and he had a fever so all our plans were out the window.  No soccer, or lunch out or strolling.  I read him books I'd brought up:  eight stories featuring Curious George, a favorite of his, a book about a dog going on a dinosaur hunt, a St. Patrick's Day Curious George book that was a wealth of information about the holiday, and all his Little Blue Truck books.  Then he wanted pancakes because in one of the stories Curious George had gone to a pancake breakfast, and his devoted mommy made them for him.  He told me a few stories about his Thomas the Engine trains.  Then we read more books, and finally he was feverish and ragged so I said goodbye so they could put him down for a nap.  Then I drove home and rested until we went for dinner at the younger grandson's house, and though he had a cold too, he had no fever and pushed his carts and alligators around the house at top speed.  It was like being in the middle of a ski run with no where to hide.  The little darling tried to pull out my earrings and take off my glasses, and I tried to corral him.  When it was his bedtime I went upstairs with my daughter and hung onto him while she got him undressed, he took a bath, then I wrestled and read books while she struggled to get him in his pjs.  Then the show was over, and in a few minutes we sat down to dinner with the monitor where we could check on him.  Two little cowpokes, all tuckered out.  And I when I got home I was one little cowgirl, ready for the roundup and bed. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We've taken to walking around a reservoir nearby and we're pretty brisk.  After our dogs died we stopped for a while, and now we exercise ourselves.  We see plenty of dogs.  Today there was a bulldog with a pink collar named Elise, and she was taking a break.  Evidently she takes a lot of breaks, but that's what our female dog used to do as well.  Just seeing dogs is enough right now for us.  It feels good to keep going without a break and get our heart rates up.  We discussed Perry Mason at length, and figured out why we had not seen but a few episodes before:  school, work, kids and travel.  Our lives were so very busy, and now we have time on our hands.  So many years of kid appropriate programming.  Sesame Street and Mister Rogers.  I've seen hundreds of those episodes.  And even the dogs we had before were not doted on in the way the last three were.  We had the luxury of being indulgent.  So there are big shifts in our lives, and Perry Mason is just the least of it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

This morning as my husband and I were walking, I felt heavy, sluggish.  I had my new tennis shoes on and they did feel cushy, but it wasn't enough to lift my mood.  Even the sparkly flowers and plants from last night's shower did not cheer me.  I had this feeling last Saturday, and exercise helped.  Today, nada.  This is the mood I'm in, and there is no way to scramble out of it quickly.  Fortunately, I see my therapist today.  We've been meeting every couple of weeks since my older daughter had a  recurrence of cancer, and though her treatment is going quite well, I need the therapist to steady me.  She has been a support for a dozen years now, and sometimes I don't see her for many weeks, but right now I appreciate our long relationship.  Her daughter is about to have a baby, so we will be doing phone calls while she's away.  What does she do?  Well, for one thing she reminds me of events in my life that have left me with trauma.  So I'm aware of the trigger.  She will give advice.  I trust it, because she holds so much history.  She's a kind of swim buddy.  I will get some clarity from our time together today.  I may even get the slug out of me.  We'll see.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We've been watching Perry Mason the last couple of nights on TV.  The commercials are all about adult diapers, drugs and bathtubs you can step into, so they must figure the demographic is 80plus.  We mute the sound and read to avoid an unpleasant preview of attractions to come when we are enfeebled and incapacitated next year.  Perry is soothing, because in the space of thirty minutes the guilty are found out and punished, and the innocent vindicated.  Raymond Burr has a benign half smile that says he's going to get you in the most tasteful way possible.  When I watch, I always think of his most iconic role as the murderer in "Rear Window".  His bulk is reassuring here, but terrifying in the movie.  He and Della Street are strictly on the up and up.  Today there would be entanglements galore.  The mysteries are streamlined yet full of surprises, and my husband and I rarely get it right.  The motivations are the usual:  greed, lust, jealousy, anger, fear.  But in this artificial world, there is black and white, and in court, justice is serviced.  It might as well be Superman, this fantasy legal world, but it's a relaxing escape from true life.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last night I read that a favorite author of mine, whom I've seen half a dozen times at readings, has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment.  I thought he was a better person than that.  I know the author/young author relationship is fraught with power differential and opportunity to misinterpret and misbehave.  I saw it plenty when I was in graduate school.  Writers would visit and sometimes they thought they were God's gift to women.  I've also seen grad students be aggressively seductive, hoping the author's interest would further her career.  I've seen a few famous old farts with thirty years younger wives who get their poetry read at their spouse's readings.  I knew there was a line that some people crossed and I would not.  I knew it was messy to think that if someone slept with you it meant you were a good writer.  It only meant you were sleepable.  In my generation we were encouraged to marry a professor if we wanted the academic life, not, for heaven's sake, BE one.  I guess I'm eternally the optimist, expecting that great writing goes along with great character, when it so clearly doesn't.  But if it's all the same to you, I'm going to keep assuming the best until told otherwise.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I admit it.  I watch the Oscars.  These days, I do it mainly for the dresses.  I'm torn between my choices for films and performances and what has actually been nominated.  But I did have a thrill this year.  Wes Studi was a presenter, for the montage of war movies honoring veterans.  I'd just seen him in "Hostiles", a film that failed to work but who's heart was in the right place.  I'll see anything with him and Adam Beach.  I liked the inclusion of a Native American actor in the program.  Though we seldom see them, they are increasing in number and importance.  Like Latinos and Asians, they are still woefully underrepresented, but I'm hopeful.  When I see the increasing importance of Black filmmakers and actors, and their garnering more nominations, I am encouraged.  What is even perhaps more important, at least to me, is the few roles of signifigance for women and the dearth of cinematographers and directors.  Let's hope there will be more Greta Gerwigs and Rachel Morrisons in our future, and then more stories genuinely from the woman's point of view will appear.  Not the phony woman played by Frances McDormand in "Three Billboards" or the fantasy mute in "Shape", but more Katherine Grahams and Tonyas and Annas. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I listened to my teacher's dharma talk this morning about impermanence.  This is the truth that Buddha taught.  Our circumstances and lives are constantly changing, as our thoughts and feelings do.  Sadness doesn't last, it comes and goes.  Happiness as well.  The ground of our being is not what goes through our minds or emotions.  It's not even what happens to us.  It's the truth of our human condition that, when we are aware of it, enables us to be compassionate and free of our baser impulses.  I was looking in a catalog yesterday and there were a lot of dogs, mainly labs, in it and I felt acute pain again at the loss of our two dogs.  And I thought that getting another dog would not lessen my loss.  Those two particular dogs are gone.  I might not have a similar attachment to a new dog, even if I picked the same breed and color and size.  Dogs are just as unique as we are.  Then I felt happy that we'd had them so long, and how much delight they'd given us, but I also remembered the worry and problems and all the complexity of loving a being.  It's not easy.  But this is who we are.  We love and lose and risk love again.  We have our memories, which comfort us.  We have the dread of more pain, if we open our hearts again.  But we do, we do.  Because that is who we human beings are.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Boy, was I in a grumpy mood this morning.  I didn't have any plans for this weekend and that snowballed easily into feeling massively sorry for myself.  I criticized my husband at breakfast when he innocently suggested we take a hike around a reservoir.  I huffed upstairs and got dressed, by which time I realized that nothing I had thought of had even the teensyist component of exercise involved.  So I marched back downstairs and deigned to accept the hiking offer.  We got to the reservoir and a downpour had us frozen in the car.  Neither of us had remembered an umbrella.  We listened to a story on the radio about an explorer in the antarctic, and when the rain ceased we got out and made it around the reservoir without precipitation.  I wanted to talk about the radio show and he interrupted me, so tears formed and I wouldn't speak to him for twenty minutes.  Finally, we made peace and we did discuss the explorer, and the time whizzed by.  I felt better simply because I'd gotten some exercise.  We had lunch, returned home and I walked to shops and bought two frames for prints I'd gotten on Thursday.  I felt even better after the second walk.  I still have no plans, but after all, who's fault is that?

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had a nice time with our younger son last night.  His wife is at a conference, and I realized it's seldom we see any of our kids without their spouses or children.  It's a rare treat.  We sat at the kitchen table and heard about his work, quite interesting, and some about his hopes and dreams for the future.  I'm honored when any of our kids shares something deep about themselves.  We try not to cross any boundaries, but it's good to hear how they are thinking and what their goals are.  We've tried hard to respect their privacy, especially as we had problems with our own parents giving us unsolicited advice and feeling certain they knew what was best for us.  I don't even KNOW what is best for my kids, and they've often surprised me by choosing a path I wouldn't have chosen, then showing me what a wise and rewarding choice it was.  They are different than me, and listening is when I can get a sense of who they really are.  They've all been out from under our care for so very long, that we have to keep getting reaquainted again and again.  It's exciting.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm in a kind of spring cleaning mode.  I am trying to clarify what people say to me, and am finding that even best friends and spouses speech can be unclear at times.  I seem to be on a sweep, because I even called our car repair place and clarified what we wanted and needed.  And I did a pretty good job.  With my friend, I discovered she is covered for her surgery and really doesn't need my help, which is good, great, and no rescuing on my part necessary.  With my husband, I told him how I felt when he says certain things, and he responded that he just has been grumpy with headaches for a couple of days and we made peace. 
I think the clarifying began at the beginning of the week when my older daughter gave us the good news which we've been waiting for eagerly:  that the treatment is helping.  A lot of clouds dissipated immediately, and now I feel like sweeping all the cobwebs away.  I wish I could say I literally am cleaning house, but no, this is all strictly metaphorical.  But who knows?  Next, the vacuuming!