Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm feeling sorrowful today.  Thinking about all the suffering going on around the world and the unknown future, I feel useless.  I like to tackle things, but I'm too old, not skilled in medicine or research, and having empathy seems paltry.  I pray, I try to keep focused on my blessings and they are many, but today I was just down.  I see this discouragement in people on the street when I walk, with even my grandkids.  We are resilient, but there is no blueprint for how to cope with this isolation and uncertainty.  My husband researched today about the 1918 pandemic, and what he told me scared me more than I already was:  there were three waves of the flu, and the second was more devastating than the first.  First wave in spring, second in fall, third in winter.  I hope a hundred years later we have more tools in our toolbox to fight this menace, but our lack of leadership has killed many and we have no handle on how to fight this virus.  So we need to pray for science to guide us to treat those infected more skillfully and be preventative, which so far has not been well organized.  I wonder when or if we will listen to them and be guided.  I hope so.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I wasa crazy busy today helping my daughter out with her two boys, then rushing home to take care of my son's one year old.  Luckily, both experiences went smoothly, and I take such delight in the children.  It also keeps my mind off worrying about my older daughter, who is now trying to switch medications, which is risky and painful.  My prayers may be helpful, but imagining scenarios is not.  Don't know is also the way I handle the coronavirus news, because there is no consensus and the theories are confusing.  We don't have enough information, which is why we should be cautious.  But the will power to be cautious is eroding, and governors and officials won't be able to persuade people as well as they did in the beginning.  I pray for sanity and reason, but a lot of impulse and fear is driving people.  I understand, but we only thought we had any control over our lives.  We really never did.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today is my daughter's official book launch.  But, of course, no readings, no tours, and readers have to make a determined effort to buy it.  Luckily, she's had a lot of radio interviews and podcasts already, and quite a bit of press.  Hopefully new reviews will keep coming, and she can bask in those.  I genuinely think it's a terrific read, plus the bonus of seeing a different perspective, and insight into what children of immigrants struggle with as they grow and mature.  I'm proud of her talent and determination, and she's now out in the world forever.  A book is hard.  I had one published many years ago, and I wasn't prepared for the struggle, the moxie it took to promote it, and, in my case, the fact that it sold few copies.  My agent had thought it would be a TV mini series, but she was wrong.  I'm still grateful for the experience, but though I've written half a dozen drafts of novels and a memoir, I haven't been thick skinned enough to put them out in the world.  Thank goodness my daughter is tougher, has an amazing editor and publisher, and is in tune with the current zeitgeist.  This is a really special day.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's much more difficult these days to pull myself into the book I'm reading.  I don't want to read.  Not about Covid 19, any news, but not any fiction either.  It's a fugue state, thinking about my daughter struggling to find meds that ease her pain, about my grandchildren, suffering from the isolation and the tension they feel through their pores, thinking about how my husband and I and our friends are considered expendable by some people in our culture - useless because of our age, and devalued.  Yes I am old, but I want people to care about the value of my life.  My solace is seeing the grandkids now.  I know I am helping them and their parents.  I feel useful.  I have no more idea of what the future holds than the next person, but right now I am alive to help and feel and pray.  That and writing 100 postcards for the election, to beg people to vote.  Not vote a certain way, but just vote.  Take the responsibility our current President will not, and make ours a more compassionate nation, based on the value of all of us, young or old, rich or poor, black or brown or white.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've had a nice Mother's Day, at my own home, of course.  My younger son, his wife and one year old came over as well as my younger daughter, her husband and two boys.  They brought pasta salad and green salad and I made fried chicken and jello salad.  The kids played, we monitored and it was very relaxing.  Now I'm going to make up my grocery list and then read my book, Paulette Jiles' Simon the Fiddler.  The sun came out this afternoon, but it's chillier, and supposed to rain tomorrow.  I hope it does.  Anything to ward off drought.  I think of my own mother, gone over thirty years, and how  complex she was, caught in the mores of the fifties, without an education (only to 3rd grade) and yet how vibrant, fun, generous and loving she was.  She had a passel of friends and she adored and kept up with all her siblings (11) and was a great grandmother to my kids.  She died at 61, and it was sudden and surprising.  Yet I had made my peace with her, after the usual stages of rebellion, anger and judgement, and I wish she'd had more time.  I see her in myself in many ways, and her social skills and artistic abilities I envy.  She left a hole in the world. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Tulips arrived for me this morning sent by my younger daughter.  Yellow, pink and red.  So cheerful they immediately lifted my mood.  Before the coronavirus I bought flowers almost every week at Trader Joe's or elsewhere, as my yard has azaleas and camellias and flowers that die inside in a vase.  We do have some struggling roses in the front yard, but I hate to cut them as they are the only real flowers there, except for the rhododendrons fall and spring.  Flowers brighten our lives, and right now the trees and plants and flowering vines and bushes are a balm to our souls.  There are two peony bushes up the street that I always stop and admire.  One is white tinged with pink and the other a deep, rich magenta.  I pay my respects, sigh and move on.  Healing is helped by these friends, gracious with their beauty, reminding us of the wonderful world in which we live.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today we spent the morning looking for rolly polly bugs, worms, centipedes and slugs.  Our three year old grandson is bug crazy and we have pictures of him with his little arms covered with slugs.  He even found a beetle.  This involved a great deal of tipping plants in pots to see what lived underneath.  His finding ability is enhanced by the fact that he can see close up and personal, being a very small person.  His joy in his discoveries was contagious.  We felt thrilled ourselves.  He moved a few slugs to new homes, which means new plants in are garden will be under siege, but who cares?  In a stay in place world, adventures are to be found if you just look closely enough!