life goes on for the living

I had a fairly normal day Wednesday but then I didn't have to talk to anyone, had three errands to run; took the recycling to the site, got a box from the post office to send all those jewels and lenses to my friend Steve in Colorado that does stained glass, and got another bucket of pecans cracked. So far I've shelled eleven and a half pounds of pecans and given away four. I'm still picking pecans up out of the yard and my neighbor's yard. So many leaves have fallen now that it takes longer shuffling through them but it'll be easier once Marc mows/mulches the leaves.

I went to SHARE Thursday and got lots of hugs and well wishes and every time I would tear up but it was good to be busy and have something to focus on. My station was a mess. Not a messy mess but nothing was in the right place and I had to rearrange everything back to the way I like it. On the other hand, yoga at Hesed House that night was particularly hard. Stephanie always starts out with quiet breathing and focusing on any aches or pains and emotions and how those emotions connect to your body and tears were just rolling down my face and I was thinking it was too soon, too soon, but once we got into actual body movements it was easier.

We had rain Thursday, nearly all day but it only amounted to 5/8”, and drizzly yesterday. The rain packed the leaves down and I picked up over two gallons worth of pecans yesterday. My little food garden is growing. The broccoli is starting to form. I don't know if you can see it in this picture (assuming I can figure out how to change the picture from MB to KB on my phone and add it in) but the very center is a tiny broccoli head. 

The cauliflower doesn't look like it's making yet but the cabbage is starting to form little heads.

Still no movement on getting the kittens fixed and moved to new homes. I feed them every night, Momcat still lets me pet her and last night I managed to stroke the two tabbies, one brown and the other gray, several times but only while they are eating. Their hunger is overcoming their fear whereas before their fear was overcoming their hunger. It still takes me several tries. The third kitten which resembles Momcat and is bigger than the other two and damn near as big as Momcat who is a small cat, still backs off and won't let me touch her.

Today I may try to get the pansies in the ground that I bought a month ago but it's still very wet and overcast out there or maybe I'll pack up the glass jewels or maybe I'll go poach pecans from the backyard of the vacant house that's for sale across the street or maybe I'll just sit and read all day and give my poor arthritic left thumb joint a break from shelling pecans.

Thursday I did something I don't think I would have done if my sister was still alive. It was almost time to lock the door and several of the volunteers were sitting around chatting when I walked up and one of them said they were planning a trip to Brookwood to shop for Christmas and have lunch and did anyone want to join them. Brookwood is a residential community for adults with disabilities and a wholesale nursery where the residents do all the work with supervision from planting the seeds to caring for the mature plants. They have a craft center where the residents make garden related items, a gift shop, a retail greenhouse, and a fabulous restaurant. It's been years since I've been out there and I had planned on suggesting a day trip to Pam before she died so I piped up, I'd like to go. Of course that night my social anxiety popped up, what have I done, but life does go on for the living even when there is a big hole you have to navigate around.

 

remembering my sister and holding her in our hearts

A week ago today I found my sister and just like that my life has changed irrevocably. Heartfelt thank yous to all who have expressed your love, sadness, and support. There is no way I could ever reply to each of you individually.

The first few days most of the family that gathered were still here, each of us supporting the other, while we dealt with the immediate tasks required after a death...contacting a funeral home and retrieving the body for cremation, acquiring the death certificates, reading the will, figuring out which of her bills were outstanding, getting access to her phone, etc. Her house reverts back to me and we have decided to just let everything sit for now although her kids, grandkids, me, my grandkids have tagged the things we would like to have, small things have already been taken. It's weird though to walk through the house and see little bits of blue tape with names written on it stuck on just about everything. We're going to keep the house as a furnished guest house for now since I don't have a spare room for when people visit. Her granddaughter who lives in Cincinnati wants 'the boys', Pam's two cats, but can't take them until next summer so my granddaughter Robin who lives here with her parents is going to move into the house in the interim and take care of them.

My sister was not religious and so there would not be a funeral or service or viewing but the family decided to have a life celebration for her on the following Friday at my house because it was bigger than Pam's house. While I had called everyone else to spread the word, Monday afternoon Denise and I went to Hesed House, a community resource center where my sister volunteered arranging the monthly EarthLab lectures, to tell the director, Stephanie, in person and she offered to hold it there on the back deck and pergola behind the Welcome Center which we accepted immediately since Pam was very involved with Hesed House and it is a beautiful space.

When we got there Friday afternoon they had set up tables and chairs, vases with garden flowers, tables for refreshments and one for a sort of altar with Pam's picture and flowers and bits and pieces of things that related to my sister's life. The weather was perfect. We had notified her friends that I had contact information for, the garden club of which Pam was a past president, the museum people where she worked two days a week, Stephanie sent out a notice to her mailing list and people came to honor and remember my sister. All the family that had been at the hospital returned plus her stepson from Virginia, her granddaughter from Cincinnati, and her brother from the PNW. 

My daughter created and printed out a beautiful eulogy and remembrance. 

Stephanie arranged for us to plant a tree in Pam's honor there on the grounds of Hesed House during the celebration. She gave the eulogy, she read what I had written out for me because there was no way I was going to be coherent, other people got up and spoke. We had a memory book for people to write in, something I've not had the courage to read yet.

It was beautiful and the hardest fucking day of my life.

Afterwards we all went out to dinner to celebrate her granddaughter Abby's birthday which was that day.

Seeing all the family together, still missing ten people, my brother and I marveled at how big the family has grown from the days when we could count us all on two hands and didn't need all the fingers.

the ends of things

There is something dead in the kitchen. It is out of sight and out of reach but by way of odor that is where it must be, behind a wood panel in the cabinet that creates an empty space in the corner that is open to dying vermin. We have no recourse but to suffer through its decomposition. I have no idea why the people that built this house did many of the things they did but Rocky and I marvel at it all the time and by marvel I mean shake our heads in mystification.

I planned to empty the cabinet tomorrow and clean it because it smelled funky but by early evening there was no mistaking that odor and so I emptied it looking for the offender to no avail but it was also the source of the smell so I can only surmise that the little stinker is behind that panel.

It’s not the first time we’ve had to live through a decaying mouse or rat. One died in the wall between the kitchen and my studio and more recently somewhere in the little bathroom since it’s been torn out (never did find it or pinpoint it).

I've given up on the garden. We're nearing the end of June and it is just so hot out there and the garden is across the street in the back and what with my guest and the week of rain and the heat things have gone unharvested...tomatoes rotting on the vine, jalapenos turning red, banana peppers turning orange and the bell peppers never did all that well. I went over yesterday and picked all the corn about a week or more too late, husks drying out and kernels wrinkled and turning brown, 

they all went to the neighbor's chickens 

as well as the last bag of stink bug damaged tomatoes in the refrigerator. It was just too much work cutting out the damaged parts to salvage less than half in some cases. The tomatoes are still edible but the enzyme that stink bugs inject makes them taste sour. Also picked two enormous zucchinis, also chicken food. Probably the last ones I'll get as the plants are starting to succumb to the squash vine borers. Pulled up all the onions which barely got as big as a golf ball and only a few at that. 

The only things still going are the green beans that have put on a new round of blooms but when it gets this hot, they don't really develop well, we'll see, and the japanese eggplant which looks like it is putting on new blooms after I finally took the last three fruits that were not getting bigger, only grayer. I should go over there and pull everything out and give the dirt a rest.

Rocky showed up yesterday and together we worked out the placement of the hex tiles and the blue border because I tend to obsess about tiny details and wanted the pattern to be symmetrical up and down, side to side. 

Took us about three hours, arranging them this way or that way, marking and cutting tile. It's a good thing I got two extra sheets. Not perfect but good enough. And omg that bathroom is little and cramped and hard to work in and hot! But even with all that, I did enjoy working with Rocky on the tile. He got the blue border set before he left yesterday and is here now doing the final trimming on the hex tile and getting it set. 

all set

Then it's finish the grouting and all the tile work will be done and then it's back to finishing out the walls and trim and installing the door, setting the sink and toilet, installing the mirrored cabinet which I have and light fixture which I still need to buy.

This bathroom may just get finished yet.

post christmas post

Some of you might have figured out that this has not usually been my favorite time of year. In the past for many years I actively hated it. The constant christmas carols and winter songs everywhere you go, the encroachment on Thanksgiving and now Halloween, the sappy christmas shows and specials on TV that take over, the ridiculous over-commercialization, the unreal expectations, the obligatory nature of the gift giving, the absurd claim that any tragedy that happens in December is somehow worse because it happened at this time of year, the so-called 'war on christmas' because other people celebrate other holidays at this time of year and like to have that acknowledged.

If it could just be contained to a week or so it would be so much more tolerable.

I'm not nearly so bad about it as I have been. Mostly these days I'm fairly ambivalent about it though I still avoid going into stores from Thanksgiving on.

And actually there are some customs I like about it like the outdoor lights and the ornaments, especially the glass mold blown antique ones. I have several from my childhood that I think I've finally figured out how to display, if I can find room. And bringing trees in the house. And even the idea of gift giving.

But these are modern variations of the ancient, older than christmas, mid-winter solstice celebration customs and if I think of this season in those terms, I find I am starting to reconnect with some of the pleasure. Eat, drink, and be merry. And be generous.

Yes, I can definitely get behind that.

Maybe next year I'll light some luminarias on the longest night and bring in some pine or cedar boughs. Can't in good conscience bring in a tree. They are, after all, living sentient beings. You don't just cut one down to display it's corpse and then throw it on the trash pile.

The reason for the season is much more fundamental than any one god's claim to a day or festival or celebration. It is the end of the long night, the promise of the warmth and life to come, food is still abundant from the harvests, the ale and wine made earlier in the year has matured, there is more leisure time while the fields lay dormant. The turning of the wheel.

It is the rhythm of life.

a major achievement

My youngest grandchild, Robin, was Bat Mitzvah last Saturday. Bat Mitzvah (Bar Mitzvah for boys) is the coming of age ceremony in Judaism which marks the celebrant as an adult in the eyes of god and the community.

Robin on the bima

They are not adults in actual growing and legal terms, but at this point in their lives and after years of study, they are old enough to know right from wrong and bad behavior is no longer excused as being too young to know better.

In Judaism, while the Rabbis generally lead the services as the very learned teachers they are, any Jewish adult can lead the community in worship and so to introduce and welcome a new adult to the congregation, the Bat/Bar Mitzvah conducts the worship service.

This is not an easy task. Robin attended special classes for 3 years twice a week and religious school once a week and in the 6 months preceding her date, that study intensifies. She not only learned about being a Jewish adult but she also learned to read Hebrew as most of the service is conducted in Hebrew.

Generally, because the congregation is so large, each Bat/Bar Mitzvah has a partner and the services Friday night and Saturday morning are divided between them but Robin's partner was going to be out of town all summer and couldn't start the intensive preparations so they gave her a different date. Which meant that Robin didn't have a partner so for her, they decided to forgo the Friday night service.

When my kids were Bat/Bar Mitzvah, they led the service for the entire congregation both days. Now, because the congregation is so large and there is a Bat/Bar Mitzvah nearly every freakin' weekend and they started getting complaints from members who just wanted a regular service on Saturday mornings, the congregation in general holds services in the Chapel while the celebrant and their family and friends hold their Saturday service in the Sanctuary.

The Torah (old testament to Christians) is read in it's entirety every three years (one third of every book every year). They start at the beginning of Genesis after Yom Kipper (Jewish New Year) and end at the end of the Days of Awe (the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipper). Every congregation no matter where in the world they are reads the same Torah portion on the same day.

And so Robin found a lesson in her Torah portion and spoke about the importance of forgiveness.

She did a great job and we are all very proud of her.

And then it was all over except for the partying!

Marc's immediate family and spouses minus 8...brothers, sister, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, great nieces, great nephews.

ready for the party, all we need now are the guests

Robin

Robin and Thor

RobinThor

grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends

a little line dancing

her uncle's questionable taste in footwear

Autumn with her balloon headwear

it's that time of year again

My birthday is tomorrow, April 30, and I'm going to be 63 years old.  

The 60s have freaked me out a little bit.  But this year, I think maybe I am OK with it. I mean, really, what choice do I have?  I can be OK with it or I can be miserable.

Or as I think of it, you can fight against the current or go with the flow but you are going downstream regardless.

So it is with living.  Every kind of life ends the same way.  

And as one of those organic beings that has undeniably passed the halfway mark, my ultimate demise and the condition of my being in my last years occurs to me more often than it did when I was still young and more energetic and raising my children and building my business and who the hell had time to think about old age.

I'm working hard on acceptance in advance since my chosen path did not result in monetary riches.  And none of us really knows the future that awaits, what thing or when it will strike that might put us 'at the mercy'.  

If we reap what we sow then I'm probably fucked anyway considering my mother, with whom I did not have a good relationship, was stuck with me. So I do what I can to stay healthy and cognizant.

I look in the mirror and I see my aunt, sometimes hints of my grandmother.  That's sobering. I look at my elder sister and see our grandmother and sometimes our mother. In my family, my sister is the matriarch. Everyone from our parents generation has already passed.

Actually, I think I like being older. I like that being older is so much less intense. I can just walk away, I don't have to engage. I speak my mind without fear. I don't have to tolerate bullshit.

I mean, we all have to put up with a certain amount bullshit in our lives, right? Stuff we need to endure through familial or work relationships. When you're young you are still trying to find your way, climb that ladder, competing and acquiring. You have responsibilities to the older and younger generations.

Well, I've fulfilled most of those obligations for good or ill. They are behind me. And I think I've achieved as much as I ever will and I'm OK with that.

What I want for the rest of my, hopefully long, life is to just be content. 

the wicked witch is dead

A month or so ago, Marc took one of our granddaughters to see his father, her great grandfather. It was the first time Marc's father has met any of his great grandchildren. Jade is the only one who has ever really asked about her grandfather's father and then only recently. They know their great grandmother so she had asked to meet him.

It's really too late for any kind of acknowledgement since he is very old, very sick, and has dementia. He can't communicate even if he does understand what is happening. She saw only a pale shadow of the awful man he was. Which is just as well as far as I'm concerned. It's only in the last 6 months, now that his wife went home to Brasil to die among her family and he has come back here to die, moving in with his youngest son, that he has expressed a desire to see Marc.

The old bastard waited until the very end to regret disowning his first born 15 years ago. Ironic that the one who wants to know him was one of the reasons he turned his back on our family all those years ago and she wasn't even born yet.

Not that he had anything much to do with us before then, saving all his attention and hopes and pride for his two younger sons, barely knew his only grandchildren when he moved to Florida with his wife to retire, had basically emotionally abandoned his oldest son when he was about 12, would not give him an ounce of credit for all that we accomplished together attributing it all to me.

So you might wonder what caused Danny to officially disown us as opposed to just ignoring us as he had been. 

When our daughter was 19, she became the mother of a less than one day old newborn and moved in with her boyfriend. Six months later she was pregnant herself. The evening she came over to tell us, she also called all her grandparents to give them the happy news.

The next morning, the phone rang and it was Danny. This is terrible, he said. She's ruining her life, he said. She's happy about this, I said. I want you to tell that boy to convince her to have an abortion and get out of her life and I'll give him $5,000, he said. I'm not going to do that, it's not my decision to make and she's happy about this, I said.

When he couldn't get any satisfaction from me, he asked to speak to Marc. Marc laughed at him and told him no.

And that was the last time his father spoke to him. Or to any of us. 

Well, now the old bastard is dead. Died in his sleep Sunday morning, a week after Marc's last visit.

He deprived himself of so much.

my 5 essentials

Back when I was doing the river guide thing, canoeing and kayaking, I also assisted a friend on occasion who taught kayaking. He would always begin any soiree on the water by asking everyone if they had their 5 essentials...kayak, paddle, helmet, spray skirt, and pfd (personal flotation device commonly known as a life preserver). Also necessary but not considered essential was water and a snack.

I don't kayak anymore, have given away all my kayak gear, not that I wouldn't again but all my paddling buddies have either moved away or moved on in their lives, but I still retained the principal of the five essentials.

Instead of applying it to getting on the water, I now apply it to leaving the house.

wallet, glasses, keys, phone, and camera

solstice

Nature is awesome. I just saw a picture of a parasitic nematode, the kind that can be transmitted by mosquito, that can, given no resistance, suck the life right out of you.

It's quite beautiful, don't you think? I do.

Makes you wonder about how something that can kill you can be so beautiful to look upon.

But if you think about it, the roundworm is also an expression of the godhead, whatever you conceive that to be. To me it is simply the source from which all this reality that we perceive emanates. It seems obvious that there was as much love expressed through this nematode as through us.

I have no way to describe what that source is besides life, energy, magnetism, love. A totally unknown source, of which you are but one expression but all of creation an expression of the same thing, floats in an unknown realm and...dreams.

I imagine the tendril of dream becoming thought and the thought becoming crystallized and the crystallization becoming manifest with the atomic breath and the link that cannot be broken because it is us. All of us. All of it.

Whatever ritual you pursue or recognition of a greater whole, whatever play you hold dear created to counter the long nights or if you have no pageant at all, the root of all is the end of the long night and the welcoming of the light. It is a story that has been told and retold over and over and written down for as long as humans have been able to write.

The long night is over and even though we know winter is still to come, we also know it will end.

It is a holiday for those with a religion and those without. It is a human holiday.

We celebrate the coming of the light!

love and marriage

I see that the Supreme Court is going to take on Prop 8 and the Defense Of Marriage Act. I would be glad that this debate is finally going to be put to rest but with such a conservative court, I'm not sure that they will be able to keep their religious views out of it and come to the only right decision.

Prop 8, in case you aren't aware, is California's amendment to their state constitution that banned gay marriage. It has been challenged in the courts and found to be unconstitutional but it's proponents keep pushing it to a higher court and it finally made it's way to the top. The challenge to DOMA is only against the section that prevents the federal government from recognizing and giving the rightful benefits to same sex marriages even if it is legal in the couple's home state.

It seems to me the outcome should be pretty clear. In this country we are supposed to have separation of church and state.

Although many states have banned same sex marriages, their main reason for doing so is based on their religious beliefs, a 5,000 year old book of stories. Their god finds it abhorrent so they find it abhorrent and since so many LGBT are not staying in the closet and insist on being who they are in their public lives as well as their private lives and they fall in love and want to get married, that somehow threatens these religious people so they scrambled to make it against the law. To 'define' marriage. And, by god, their tax dollars will not go towards benefits to people that god abhors.

Only, that's just their religious opinion.

The reality of it is that human gender and sexuality is extremely complex. It comes in many forms and there is no one 'right' way to be.

Isn't it enough that two people, regardless of their sex, have bonded in love and want to have a committed relationship? And if special civil rights are given to married people should not same sex couples be granted those rights as well? Because it's not just about being able to get health insurance through your spouse's job. It's about having the right to sit by your loved one and make decisions for them while they are gravely ill. It's about having the right to inherit, without all the taxes, the estate of your partner. It's about having the right to be recognized as a unit by all the powers that be. It's about not being marginalized in your community. And yes, it's about getting the same perks from the government as opposite sex couples and why not?

Regardless of what they claim, this group of religious people did not invent marriage and should not be allowed to define marriage, an institution that has existed in many forms throughout human civilization. I'm not saying that these religious groups should be forced to marry LGBT people if they are against it. I am saying they should not be allowed to force their particular religious beliefs about the right or wrong of human sexuality on the rest of the population and deny marriage to anyone who so desires it. Marriage does not require a religious ceremony.

It is my great hope that the Supreme Court will be able to take religion out of the equation altogether when they deliberate these two cases because when you take religion out of the equation, there is not one single good reason to deny the gay community the right to marry.

balance

I stopped shelling pecans about two weeks ago. My hands just couldn't take it, cutting stencils for 3 days and shelling pecans for 4 days, and since I already have 10 pounds worth of shelled pecans, I figured I would wait til I finish all the stencils for the mountain wall.

I'm still picking them up though, almost three boxes worth and still when you look up in the trees you can see pecans.

One day, several weeks after the pecans began to fall, when I leaned down to pick up a nut, I felt a twinge in my back. I'm right handed and I carry the bucket in my left hand leaning down and slightly sideways to pick up the nuts with my right hand.

After doing this over and over for several weeks, my body was telling me that it was getting out of balance. So I decided to switch the bucket to my right hand and pick up pecans with my left hand. Voila! No pain. Only my right handedness is so entrenched that I would notice after a while that I had, unconsciously, switched the bucket back to my left hand.

That first week, I had to make a conscious effort to be aware of what hand I was using. After a couple of weeks, it didn't matter which hand I carried the bucket in as things had balanced themselves out so long as I periodically switched from one side to the other.

It reminded me how important balance is not only in the human body but in life.

One of the guiding principles for my life has always been 'all things in moderation' and I seemed able to apply it towards all things except my work. When I am working on a project, I tend to become totally absorbed and work for hours on end with no breaks.

As long as I was young with a resilient body, I never suffered any ill effects from this tendency. About 12 years ago though, we were working on a job that consisted of 10 panels approx. 5' x 6' each that made up two 25' long walls. It was a beautiful job and we were elated to be done and have it installed. After months of working intently, intensely, and non-stop, I was finally able to relax. And a week later my back clenched up so badly that I was all but immobilized. I had, for months, been stressing muscles, holding positions in one direction, without ever engaging the opposing muscles and now I was paying the price.

I'd like to say that after a week or so all was well but it was not and I feared it was perhaps a permanent injury. Sitting, standing, bending, lifting anything was extremely painful. Working in the yard was impossible for more than 5 minutes. It did, over about a year, get incrementally better but it did not heal until I joined a gym and worked on strengthening my core muscles, front and back.

So.

I was out there a couple of weeks ago, feeling pressed for time, a little stressed. There is so much I needed (and still need) to get accomplished by the end of this month, and by the middle of December as well. That's our target date for finishing up the mountain wall.

I was feeling guilty and thinking, as I wandered around enjoying the temperate weather and idly picking up the fallen nuts, that I should quit wasting my time and get in there and get to work on the waxes or filling the molds or whatever particular task awaited me.

Fortunately, my previous thoughts about balance reminded me that this activity was just as important as the intensely focused activity of work in regard to my personal and physical well being.

I have tried to keep, in the conscious part of my brain, the warning of Spider Woman when she was teaching Wandering Girl how to weave:

"But there is one danger that you must always be aware of. The Navajo People must walk the Middle Way, which means that they must respect boundaries and try to keep their lives in balance. They should not do too much of anything. You must promise not to weave for too long, or a terrible thing will happen to you." from The Magic Of Spider Woman by Lois Duncan

For Weaving Woman nee Wandering Girl, that was becoming trapped in her most perfect blanket. For me it was a grave injury to my body.

I was led to this story, I believe, by Spider Woman after she made herself known to me on a vacation through the Navaho Nation several years after we finished the job that got me so out of balance.

It was one of those light bulb moments.