Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I took a brisk walk with a dear friend this morning.  I feel good because my older daughter sent two photos yesterday and she's feeling better and was able to hike with her boyfriend.  I also can plan for her daughter's grandparent trip with us in June.  The sun is out and though the drought is eating away at us underneath, things look good.  My friend and I exchange books and it's fun to share with her, as we generally like the same writing.  I'd lent her a SciFy book, Good Morning, Midnight, and she and her husband really enjoyed it.  I don't read much SciFy.  I do love Ursula Le Guin, Sherri Tepler, and Octavia Butler, and once in a while I come across something, like Station Eleven, that I adore.  But I'm more of a mystery gal.  I love the little lending libraries on almost every block, where you can take a book or add one.  I often stop and see what's inside, though I seldom take anything.  I'm trying to whittle down my bookshelves, and donate to a no-kill animal shelter.  It's been surprisingly difficult to let go of books I'll never read again, either because I have fond memories of who I was when I read it, or because I know it's an important book.  But really, nobody has hired me to preserve the literary legacy of humanity.  And my kids have such eclectic tastes and don't necessarily want to read them.  But I have categories I do keep:  my very favorite writers, African American writing, Hispanic writing, Asian writing, South Asian writing, feminist books, Buddhist books, and Native American books.  Those take up one room, and then, well, the art books.  They fill another room.  Yes, definitely, some culling of the books is a fine idea.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My younger daughter since a video of her one year old chasing a pigeon.  The pigeon knew with whom he was dealing and just kept up a zigzag path and our grandson determinedly followed.  My daughter said it was a good way for him to get exercise.  I said let me know if he catches one.  My grandson was happy and the pigeon, well, you couldn't see him chuckling, but you could imagine it.  I can see it becoming a metaphor for much of what we do in life.  We want to catch and capture something.  But it's illusive, just beyond our reach.  And really, the chasing is the point.  No possession of the being is possible, but we don't quite get it.  We're doing our thing, they are doing theirs.  If we stopped, then what?  Worth contemplating.  Jane Goodall just sat; she watched but she didn't chase, and the chimpanzees came to her.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's a gloomy day, and no rain to boot.  But yesterday was warm and sunny.  I walked to a favorite bookstore and looked for books for my friend's two year old granddaughter.  I love children's books.  When I was a kid there were few books:  nursery tales, fairy tales, the Pokey Little Puppy.  Later there were the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew.  When I was nine and had tuberulosis, my mother read the Encyclopedia Brittanica's Children's Classics, including Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe and Lamb's Shakespeare's Tales.  My love of reading began then.  It is such a treat that my grandchildren have all these amazing, beautiful, funny books to read.  I'm enchanted by them myself.  Well, except for Harry Potter, which my granddaughter loves but I cannot abide.  With the two little grandsons we're still doing cardboard books mostly, in case a urge to snack on a book occurs.  They both love flap books and peek-a-boo and the older adores the silliness of Dr. Seuss.  I returned from my outing with four books I'd never heard of or read, and promptly sat down to peruse them before boxing them up to mail.  The colors, the imagination, the delight!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday we went with a friend to a memorial service for someone we'd once been close to but now hadn't seen in years.  My intention was to honor her life, and our years being friends, but I became detached and unemotional.  I didn't open my heart.  Afterward, when my husband and I were home alone, he said he'd been similarly unmoved.  And I realized no one in the room had been crying, except perhaps the immediate family, and that the atmosphere was something we were feeling and reacting to.  It was strange, and we both felt like "bad" people.  I had always been sympathetic to this person's challenges in life and her horrible childhood, yet at the service it felt like very old news.  There was praise from coworkers and her sisters.  But it felt like something was left out, as if there were several elephants in the room.  We couldn't mourn her properly because she wasn't portrayed as human.  She was perfect.  And as that was not the woman I knew and loved, I think I shut down.  What I'd assumed would be a healing ritual didn't appear to be so for the people who attended.  It was a perfect service, but that organization shut us out when we should have been embraced.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I read an article in the newspaper this morning about two black bears whose paws were badly burned in the Thomas fire and a veternarian was treating them with tilapia.  Not for eating.  She sewed the fish skins on their paws because it's soothing and helps collagen to produce on the paws for healing.  She also wrapped their paws in corn husks and other edible stuff just in case.  Bears will eat anything.  Neither bear tried to rip off the tilapia and she was able to change the dressings in 12 days.  There was a photo of one of the bears lying on it's side, covered with a blanket.  Their paws hurt so much they couldn't stand, and the vet was worried the female bear, who was pregnant, would reject the cub if it was born in captivity, so there was an urgency to the task.  The story said the bears seemed to understand that the humans were helping them and did not resist the treatment.  Compassion across species is always cause for rejoicing.  And I pray these two bears get back to the wilderness and live out their lives.  There is good news if you search for it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today we took our thirteen month old grandson to the pet store for the second time.  He loved the two bunnies and there were two cats this time, and he still adores the birds.  They have gorgeous colored feathers and some are huge and talk.  Then we took him to the toy store for the first time.  They have a train table there, so he was in heaven.  An older boy came around, and was startled when our grandson took the engine he was holding.  His mother said to him, "he's just a baby".  "Yes," I added, "he's clueless about sharing, I'm sorry".  Our grandson, oblivious, was luckily distracted by a fire engine on the shelf.  My husband picked out a simple wooden track set, I purchased it, and we headed back home.  Now we have a modest bridge, and two small circles of track to go with our little trains.  It's satisfying to my husband, who seems to enjoy setting it up whenever our grandson is here.  The broken piece of track in the old circle track was haunting him.  Now we have sturdier track, a complete track, and his mind is soothed.  Our grandson?  He stomps around like Godzilla and was the cause of the piece being broken.  Order is has no appeal to him.  He is all impulse.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm seeing my therapist today.  I only see her occasionally, and I canceled the last appointment because I felt I was doing well.  The holidays were good and I was excited about the days getting longer, lots of plans with friends, and the new year thing, which always lifts my spirits.  But today I'm fearful of our daughter's treatment and how it's going.  The big unknown.  Having her far away is so difficult and it means deliberate visits, not any kind of checking in casually.  I have to sit with this fear here while she sits with it there.  I want to DO SOMETHING, but what?  Praying doesn't seem like enough.  I trust my daughter's ferociousness.  Yet she must be so tired of fighting and feeling not well and thinking about how to continue living a normal life in an abnormal situation.  My heart is cracked open with love and pain and fear.