Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had a lunch and took a walk with a friend yesterday, and naturally we wandered into a bookstore.  We are both avid readers.  I picked up David Sedaris' new book of essays - "Calypso".  I had begun a mystery, but one sentence into "Calypso" and I was hooked.  Several sentences later I was laughing, and soon tears were rolling down my face.  What a gift he has of being the butt of his own jokes, and seeing himself clearly yet compassionately.  And then I got to the part about the suicide of his sister Tiffany, and I felt like a dear friend was expressing my own mixture of shock, disbelief, confusion, and gory details that no sister or brother wants to know.  Hard to process?  Impossible, actually.  He spoke for me during the crazy time I flew to Texas, saw the splash zone in the hallway of my brother's house where he shot himself in the head.  Sedaris discovers from a sister that Tiffany was found with a plastic bag over her head, so not only had she taken pills, but suffocated herself for good measure.  This is haunting stuff, but I'm grateful he had a brother, three sisters and his dad there.  I lost my only sibling, so speculation and apartness is all I'm left with.  No, that's not quite right.  Now I've got Sedaris' book. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend lent me her copy of "Hillbilly Elegy" and at first I wasn't that engaged, but then it dawned on my how relevant it was to some conversations we'd had in the past about our poor background and how difficult it was for us to negotiate going to college, since our parents hadn't had the opportunity and had no guidance to give us.  Both of us, luckily, had two parents and stable households, but we saw our parents struggle with what being middle class might mean and how one could become so.  I'd love to have gone to a small private college, a girl's school, but didn't dare ask.  The state schools were a bargain and in fact the one I went to was excellent.  But I had no sense of choice.  My friend struggled with finances then raising a son alone, and she had little choice in where she got her B.A.
The poor white trash element was present in both our families, and the right wing politics, but we both carved out our lives away from that bent and forged our own paths.  Luckily, we are not mired in a culture of laziness and hopelessness and blame.  But we've seen it close up and personal.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We just spent three days at our cabin, doing spring cleaning, discovering the toliet needs fixing, adjusting to the eight trees now gone due to the drought, and walking along the lake and sitting on our deck reading or playing Scrabble.  I finished the two books I was reading simultaneously:  Overstory, by Richard Powers and The Bright Light at the End of the World by Eowin Ivey.  Both are engrossing and powerful.  I think I prefer Ivey's first novel, The Snow Child to Bright Light, but the history of this book is gripping and the major character an interesting woman for her time and place.  She discovers an affinity for photography, and has her barrenness become the embracing of an art of looking still and deeply.  The Overstory also has scientific details that are factual, and the main characters in this book are trees and the people who try to save them.  I was blown away by Annie Proux's Barkskins, about the history of the decimation of the forests in North America, but this book is about now, and what is happening and going to happen when we lose our forests.  It is a passionate book, as are the human characters who come alive in relationship to trees.  Their own histories are intertwined with trees.  Reading this novel in a forest had me listening for the trees and observing them.  I also allowed myself some grieving for the loss of the firs around our cabin because of  the drought, and I stared at the stumps which  recorded the years of their lives.  The woods are my spiritual home, from the time I was a child in Virginia.  I understand better why now.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I watched "Out of Africa" last night.  We hadn't seen it in many years.  It's ultra romantic and appears to promote colonialism as a way to see exotic places.  Though that was not what Dinesen intended, I'm sure, and it does show the trap women were in who were not married.  Society is closed to them.  The coffee plantation aspect is the most interesting now.  Her hard work, struggle and perseverance  while the men around her were playing at being hunters, despoiling the wildlife for profit.  The reviews say Robert Redford is wrong for the part.  He doesn't even affect an English accent.  But since he is a schoolgirl's romantic dream, not real in any sense, I doubt it matters.  He is Redford.  Enough said.  It is Meryl Streep's performance that enchants.  The range of her emotions is extraordinary.  And now we can see that she's as trapped by colonialism as the Africans.  She has no power, even over the money from her own family, and men treat her like she was designed for their entertainment.  The film is more feminist now than ever. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I went to a matinee yesterday to see "RBG".  It has all the elements of a great film:  heroic lead character, terrific love story, tension and politics.  Justice Ginsberg is tiny but mighty.  And her success is a team effort with her adoring husband.  How refreshing to see the man behind the woman instead of the woman behind the man.  And she had her tragedies:  her mother's death when she was 17, her husband's early cancer, and then his final bout.  She clung to the law like a life preserver, and her faith in the constitution guided her conscience.  She was beautiful, as well.  Her love of opera, shared with Scalia, is legendary, and I see how her life mirrored opera in so many ways.  She's "notorious" now, admired by young women everywhere, and enjoying the fuss.  Her granddaughter shows us how inspiring it is to be witnessing this remarkable woman age, but not decline. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Our younger grandson is having nightmares about bugs.  He wakes up screaming and sees bugs on the walls where there are none.  But it began with a real bug on the ceiling of his room as he was being rocked to sleep.  Our younger son had the same fear of bugs, well, to be exact, spiders and bees.  He's over forty and still doesn't like them.  Our grandson's imagination is working overtime trying to make sense of the overwhelming world he's discovering.  He likes cows, but their heads are gigantic and their tongues intimidating.  Super big and super little.  What a strange place!  When my daughter asked about a night light I encouraged her.  All four of my kids needed night lights, pretty much throughout childhood.  The dark is an ancient fear, and in the dark we imagine things.  I hope the little guy gets some relief from his sensitivity and relaxes, but all parents have been through that powerless feeling that we cannot allay all fears, no matter how careful we are.  We cannot protect our children from the experience of living in a complex, convoluted environment.  It's a big, sometimes scary world out there, and you can't fool even a toddler.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

A neighbor of mine has Parkinson's.  She has an attendant with her now, and must use a walker, and I often see them walking down our street.  I always speak to her, and this morning, as I was complaining about our dreary weather she informed me she just got back from much better weather.  Where, I asked, thinking Hawaii or New Mexico.  England and Scotland, she replied, and we had a good laugh over that.  What is the world coming to if the warm sunny weather is in damp old England?  We discussed what she'd seen:  Edinburough, Bath, Stratford on Avon, and northern England.  She saw Romeo and Juliet at Stratford.  I countered it wasn't fair, I'd seen Cymbaline when I was there.  When we parted, and felt a rush of joy that she was still able to travel and enjoy new scenes.  Probably her daughter and granddaughter went with her, but hopefully there are tours and ways for people with handicaps like Parkinson's to keep active and stimulated.  She's a wonderful woman, and brave, and an ordinary hero right here four houses up from me.  Hurrah for not giving in or giving up.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband had a concert yesterday afternoon.  It's a small chorus and they had nineteen pieces they sang.  I thought the basses were great.  My husband is one.  But only a couple of the songs out of all really had me attentive and engaged.  Most were not polished, which figures when there are so many and they cannot practice anywhere all of the them each week.  The concert would have been more powerful if the conductor had picked only the songs really ready for performance.  My husband said the conductor gets bored and wants the variety, but I believe he hurt the chorus members, who are volunteers and not professionals.  He thought of what he was interested in, not what the chorus could reasonably accomplish.  Conductors have egos, but maybe it's good he's not continuing and the board will have to find a new conductor.  My favorite piece was "Solace" written about and after the Stonybrook school shooting.  It talks of falling snow and children falling and hands held out to help them on their journey.  I had tears in my eyes and my husband says he gets choked up every time he sings it, as do others in the chorus.  I didn't need spirituals after hearing that, or "Beautiful Dreamer" or "Mr. Sandman".  This little chorus is amateur and touching, and I think perhaps the conductor has not appreciated what a gift in them he had.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday was our son-in-law's birthday, and we gathered at a nearby park for snacks and cake.  The children had a close play structure and lots of grass for kicking balls and bean bag toss.  The adults were in charge of keeping said kids alive.  A few close calls, but no disasters.  My two grandsons were there, not knowing exactly what to do with each other, but getting more comfortable each time they are together.  Both stuffed cake in their mouths with pure abandon.  Luckily, there was watermelon and strawberries and cheese and crackers.  Neither likes the veggie sticks, which are supposed to fool them into believing they are eating potato chips.  Then my older grandson, his parents and I walked to the small lake looking for Yortle the Tortle but did not see any turtles at all.  There were fish, and two lovely lilies on the lily pads.  We saw the beach, closed because of bacteria yet again.  The struggle of this little lake to be healthy is ongoing.  We returned to the picnic table for more bungling and socializing and saying goodbye to family until the next outing.  I treasure these get togethers, and know they are the jewels of my life.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I notice as I grow older I'm more disoriented when I return from a trip.  I have a mental fatigue I didn't used to feel.  I'm not quite sure where the bathroom is in the middle of the night, and I need to make lists to pretend to get my life back under control.  My body doesn't take kindly to different beds and pillows, even sounds in the background alert me in a more pressing way.  I plunged into babysitting and cooking and laundry, but I really wasn't quite ready.  Even the environment was a shock.  I'd visited emerald green, blossoming, humid and damp climates and now the greens here seem grayish and the air dryer and the earth harder.  Don't get me wrong.  I live in a glorious place, but I was comparing, I guess, which never does any good.  I can't quite adjust back yet.  It's only been five days, less even, so I'm perhaps too impatient.  It's better to notice my reaction, anyway, and maybe cut myself more slack.  Even a baby trip is wearing, as it turns out!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We've been taking care of our youngest grandson more this week, as the nanny is away.  Today we had a grand time with him, except for the nap.  He's decided not to take it.  At eighteen months he doesn't need it, unless, well, he falls asleep in his stroller or the car.  He's tired, you give him his bottle, zip him in his sleeping straight jacket, plug in the pacifer, hand him his kitty, and when you put him down he stands up immediately and cries.  No question who will win the battle:  today I listened 15 minutes and went up and tried to rock him, but as soon as I put him down, screams.  Monday I tried the routine three times, and it took an hour, and then I waved a white flag and prepared to sign documents on terms of surrender.  Today, we gave up and took him to a cafe, then to a park, where he lined up all the trucks, absconded with a little girl's shoes, and generally ran around like the energizer bunny, then on the way home fell asleep in the stroller.  He slept in our front hall in the stroller for an hour, too exhausted to wake himself up.  He bore no resentment however.  He awoke happy and cuddly and demanding "nak" as he calls snack.  He graciously accepted pear slices and drank some milk.  Mommy soon picked him up and murmured about early bedtime.  I have my writing group this evening, so no early bedtime for me.  Drat!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Pretty quickly and impulsively I bought a plane ticket and headed to see my friend two states away who had knee surgery seven weeks ago and my daughter and granddaughter one state away.  The visits were reassuring.  My friend is not "all better", but coping well and on the road to full recovery.  We talked endlessly and had brief ventures out into the world, without much strain on her leg.  I hadn't seen her since October, so I'd been missing her, and I was needing to see with my own eyes that she was okay.  She is.  Then I took the train to see my older daughter and granddaughter, and they had wonderful news for me.  My daughter's cancer is in remission.  So we celebrated, and the visit was euphoric and we all had glowing smiles.  We ate out, toasted, shopped, saw a women's soccer game and generally hung out.  Even my plane flight getting canceled couldn't dampen our spirits, and I was able to fly out an hour and a half later than planned.  When I returned home, my husband and I walked the reservoir with our younger son, his wife, our younger daughter and youngest grandson, then went out to dinner with our son and daughter-in-law.  We had a delicious, two and a half hour dinner, and I felt like Mother's Day was wonderful.  Did I tell you my husband bought me five pots of plants and a Native American pottery bowl?  Wow!  I guess he missed me!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I met our two grandsons and their parents, plus our in-laws about an hour away from where we live, and the little boys had fun riding the train, the mechanical rides and feeding apacas and goats.  I had brought along two rolls of quarters for the animal food, as my son suggested, and we had a ball trying to feed the apacas without the goats barging over.  It was a beautiful day, there were waterfalls and minature towns and rides that the boys were too young for yet, and then we all ate together at an Indian restaurant, with only one scream, one spilling water all over the table, lots of shuffling of the boys, and finally us taking turns walking them outside while we finished.
Then my husband and I said goodbye, as naps were in order, and we strolled around a historic home nearby out in the midst of grassy fields and roses and shady trees.  I love the place.  I can really imagine a life on this property, and I'm so glad it's been preserved.  We began walking and my husband got an attack of hay fever from the grasses in the fields so we turned back, drove a few miles and had dinner outside beside a river with music wafting from the other side.  Most pleasant, indeed.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I took our grandson to the zoo today.  All three of us are exhausted.  We saw giraffes, elephants, camels, tigers, warthogs, zebras, otters, baboons, hyenas, monkeys and other creatures.  We groomed goats.  We played in the grass.  We rode the train.  We ate outside and watched the train go past.  When we got our grandson back in the car, by carrying him, he wouldn't leave, he took two seconds to fall asleep in the carseat.  We stayed awake for safety reasons and transferred him to his mother's arms without him waking up.  When we returned home my husband ate a huge bowl of ice cream and I put the toys away in the living room.  Tomorrow we see both little grandsons but with their parents, so we should be less worn out.  And the wearing out is definitely worth it.  We always have fun with the grandkids!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We watched two TCM films on TV last night, part of a group of "Maisie" movies from the 1940s starring Ann Southern.  I vaguely knew the name, but was attracted to the title, because my mother was often called Maisie, when she wasn't just May.  These are "B" movies, but fun comedies and they were so successful at the time that eight or nine were made.  Ann Southern is irresistible in the two we saw.  She's opinionated, speaks her mind, tells people "what's what" and so adorably and with so much verve that she's a heroine.  Snappy repartee and pretty good scripts give her the room she needs to take over the screen.  She won't shut up, and gets rewarded for it every time.  Of course she gets her man, and he is putty in her hands.  Ah, the good old days, when women could mouth off and cut their men down to size.  Like Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, Maisie holds her own and teaches everyone else a lesson.  She's an awful busybody, but she's always right.  I'd say she's a better role model than Wonder Woman, and with no special powers, just smarts.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had a lovely walk today with a friend.  We admired peonies, wisteria, blooming fruit trees and encountered a turkey that I'd seen earlier in my own yard.  I was raving about Kauai, but said I got home and noticed all the flowers everywhere here, the iris, roses and dogwood, and felt like THIS was paradise too.  I'm grateful.  My paltry garden is even bursting with color between the azaleas, iris, jasmine, and camellias.  But luckily, some real show gardens are nearby, popping with foxglove, grape vines, hollyhocks and more.  I've always loved white flowers, and I adore tuberroses, white roses, white wisteria and white dogwood; though my favorite flower, the daffodil, I expect to be yellow, and don't enjoy the white version as much.  The only thing I've consistently envied about the rich is their gardens, flowers and fresh cut flowers in their houses.  How I'd love blooms in vases in every room of my house.  That is how I treat myself when I'm feeling splurgy.  But even then, a couple of bouquets is all I manage.  But step outside my door, and a flowery world awaits me, for free, just for the looking!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend and I saw "The Rider" yesterday, and it is beautiful and heartbreaking.  It focuses on a real family, slightly fictionalized, and the young man who is recovering from a horrific rodeo accident and trying to find what to do with his life after the rodeo life is closed to him forever.  He's sweet, compassionate and kind to his best friend, who is severely disabled from his own rodeo accident, and his disabled sister.  But his gentleness is best shown in his interactions with horses, first Gus, then Apollo.  He is like Buck, in that documentary, who is a legendary horse whisperer.  In this film, the people are Lakota, on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.  Their poverty and lack of options are painful to observe.  Yet they persevere, living on the land, interlocked with horses, as were their ancestors.  It's a tough life, but with this young man it is a noble life, and we feel honored to have witnessed his bravery and compassion.