Waandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I found out yesterday my Zen teacher has metastasized cancer.  My friend from that sangha sent me two photos of her, looking lovely and at peace.  She is exactly ten years older than me, but so indomitable that I'm stunned she is facing this.  She has fought cancer several times, has dementia, and just lost her dear husband several months ago.  Many blows, but she is still standing.  Her wonderful daughter takes care of her, and her partner is as generous and kind.  She has a son nearby also.  Her voice still guides me daily, and I feel enormous gratitude for her teachings and her friendship.  In one of the photos, a little brown curly dog is in her lap.  In the past, she usually had three or four dogs, rescues and Skiperkees.  Now she has a new dog to comfort her.  Her love of animals has defined her.  I once worried about a sad looking horse in the pasture next to her property near the coast, and she later told me she called the owners and the horse was placed in a situation with other horses, so he wouldn't be so lonely.  My heart is with her now, knowing her equanimity will serve her well with this new challenge.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend called me and at 75 she has found love again.  I feel exhilarated for her.  He kids are cautious, but is there ever a time when anything is risk free?  We need, as we age, to feel fully present and alive, not letting go before we have to.  Love at any age is worth a gamble, and reaching for something just for yourself, especially if you are a woman, is unfamiliar and alien to people around us.  But the truth is, at this age we know ourselves.  We've stopped lying to ourselves and only want to speak and feel the truth.  We can finally care for ourselves more than our kids and grandkids, and have the time and space to make fully informed decisions.  Leaping off a cliff is the most sane it's ever going to be.  So I hope she embraces love, taking her time with getting to know him and making small adjustments at first, but she deserves the best.  And as Suzuki Roshi said, it's never too late.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I took a walk with a dear friend and she told me her daughter, a friend of my daughter, has a medical problem that will require surgery.  Her daughter is a doctor, and in the best hands, but I feel her fear about this sudden surprise.  My friend has been so supportive to me and my family over the years when first my younger daughter, and now my older daughter have struggled with serious illnesses.  My heart goes out to her, and I'm praying the surgery goes well and the recovery is swift and easy.  My friends and I now have kids who are old enough to have their own health issues, and it's a hard adjustment to make.  There is always the possibility of random accidents and the like, but pretty much we float on their youth and good health, and have to deal with only our own health problems.  Now, though, the kids are not kids, and the grandkids bring a whole new set of risks and anxiety.  As my Zen teacher Yvonne used to say, old age is not for sissies.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I went to our doctor this morning, and the news was good.  We are both recovering from the flu, and now antihistamines will probably get rid of the nasal drip.  I wanted to be sure we were on the mend before we went to see our daughter next week.  If we do get rain next week that could help dampen the allergy frenzy in the air right now. 
I have the 10 month old grandson today, and he's fun.  I bought him an anywhere chair, as I have for all the other grandkids, and his parents sent me a photo and video last night of him using it as a jungle gym, and just having the time of his life.  Because it is on the ground and foam, it's hard to hurt yourself, though he was trying by standing on it facing backwards, crawling over the arm and basically wrestling with it.  Later he will sit and read in it, watch Daniel Tiger, and carry it with him anywhere he wishes.  Next on the agenda, maybe a wagon or a pretend kitchen.  They've been mighty popular with the other grandkids.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Well, we trudged up the hill this morning and voted.  On our way back, my husband said he felt like he was never sure his vote was really counted.  He had been set to vote by mail, but his ballot didn't come, so they made him do all this rigamarole to make sure he didn't vote twice.  His vote will be held back to see if his mail in ballot surfaces.  I told him all these methods have flaws.  It's so complicated.  It didn't help that the first person looking for our name and address was so elderly that everything flummoxed her and she couldn't find anything.  It did not inspire confidence.  I know, she was volunteering, but still.  The voting, the drought, the coronavirus; what a spring!  I'm going to attempt to put all the bad news to the side and Enjoy the sun, the birds singing and the blossoms.  So what if it causes hay fever.  I'm already sick anyway!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend and I went to a Garden about an hour away, and wandered around looking at pots of daffodils, hyacinth, and blossoming trees and tulips popping up.  Usually, there is a field of daffodils behind the house, but we were too early this year.  We've had a coldish winter, not much rain, none the last month and it's inhibiting the daffodils.  But there were thousands in pots and crowding in the meadows where the fruit trees are.  Only the plum and nectarine trees were in blossom; the cherry and apple trees are still in buds.  We'll have to come back to see the tulips, as they were just coming out, and to see that huge field of yellow.  We also took a woodland path back to barns and a nature center, and saw huge tree limbs down at various places from the recent windstorms.  We then had lunch at the cafe and returned to the little shop and I bought two daffodil pots and three pansy pots.  Pansies used to be my favorite flower as a child and now daffodils are.  I came home chipper and infused with the beauty of the garden.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend and I went to see "Seberg", starring Kirsten Stewart and Anthony Mackie.  I had remembered seeing Jean Seberg on the cover of Life Magazine when I was a kid, and how Otto Preminger, the director, searched the country for his star of Joan of Arc.  It was as if a princess had been discovered, but I never actually saw the film when it came out.  I was a student with no money.  I did not follow her career, but I knew she died young.  This story of her life, focusing on just a couple of years, stirred my friend's and my emotions.  We were both married to black men, and this era portrays her affair with a Black power activist.  Her support of "the revolution" caused her to be hounded by the FBI, and it destroyed her career in America.  My friend and I remember how much unwanted attention we received for our marriages.  And how our children from those marriages faced and still face racism today.  I thought the film was fascinating, because Stewart's performance is so tense and vulnerable and she is not a stereotype in any way.  My friend, as we were eating after, compared her destruction to Jane Fonda's weathering of her radical stance.  But as my friend said, Fonda did exercise videos to get herself back out of the limelight.  She had to wed herself to Ted Turner to become America's darling again.  Seberg never backed down.