Tonight when I got home, walked to the mail box in the cold night air, I looked up. In the night sky to the south I saw the Big Dipper and above my head I think I saw the red star Betelguse. I only recently learned that besides the planet Mars, which often looks orangeish to our eyes down here, the other "red" is Betelguese. I subscribed to an university astronomy site that sends me weekly notes on what to look for in the heavens. I always find the night sky when there is no moon out to be truly awe inspiring... I am overcome for a few moments by the sense of my Self as a truly small and inconsequential being. I think longingly for a few moments about my oft-remembered desire to spend more time looking up at the stars. As a young girl, I drove across West Texas one night with my grandmother in the car. It was the wee hours. I opened my eyes and looked out the back window. It must have been moonless and far away from any city then because the sky was so filled with stars and small, medium and larger dots of light that it seemed crowded. Now that I am grown up, and the world is a brighter place at night even when there is no moon, I have never seen again a night sky so full of twinkling mystery.
Look up and wonder. Look up and learn.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
A human life at 10
Since this blog is for my family and some of my family don't really know ME, I am writing to create 'knowing between generations. I have already written about my mother and her influence on my life, and I have written about my passage into an older age, one that is ill-defined except to be clear about not wanting any new animals in it!
Maryn is 10 so I will remember and write about when I was 10. Perhaps Dan will write about when he was 10 too!
At 10, I was living in Yuma, Arizona. My brother, Joe (that's what he likes to be called now) was 9. We played out in the sand dunes when we could, tumbling and rolling down uncontrollably but confident we would not be hurt. We built forts, and pretended to design our future homes and the city they occupied. I had my usual cat, scarred from numerous abscesses since he got into fights all the time. He didn't sleep on my bed but I loved him. My favorite sport was tetherball, which I played every chance I got with a ferocious spirit of competition. My fiercest competitor was a girl whose name I still remember and not because she was my friend. I was a typical wild child and can remember doing bad things, like engaging in a game of darts with my brother, but there was no dartboard. We threw them at each other and tried to dodge them. That game ended when one went into the top of my knee! In those days, early 60's, to kill mosquitos in the summer months, the trucks roamed our neighborhood at dusk blowing a thick smoke out the back which I believe now was probably a pesticide like DDT. My friends and I ran crazily behind the trucks dodging in and out of the thick curling smoke. The truck didn't go too fast that it outran us. I remember having fun doing something that I know now was insane to have done! Kids at 10! What did you do when you were 10?
Maryn is 10 so I will remember and write about when I was 10. Perhaps Dan will write about when he was 10 too!
At 10, I was living in Yuma, Arizona. My brother, Joe (that's what he likes to be called now) was 9. We played out in the sand dunes when we could, tumbling and rolling down uncontrollably but confident we would not be hurt. We built forts, and pretended to design our future homes and the city they occupied. I had my usual cat, scarred from numerous abscesses since he got into fights all the time. He didn't sleep on my bed but I loved him. My favorite sport was tetherball, which I played every chance I got with a ferocious spirit of competition. My fiercest competitor was a girl whose name I still remember and not because she was my friend. I was a typical wild child and can remember doing bad things, like engaging in a game of darts with my brother, but there was no dartboard. We threw them at each other and tried to dodge them. That game ended when one went into the top of my knee! In those days, early 60's, to kill mosquitos in the summer months, the trucks roamed our neighborhood at dusk blowing a thick smoke out the back which I believe now was probably a pesticide like DDT. My friends and I ran crazily behind the trucks dodging in and out of the thick curling smoke. The truck didn't go too fast that it outran us. I remember having fun doing something that I know now was insane to have done! Kids at 10! What did you do when you were 10?
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Dog Days
“Squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste,” my mother said. I could relate to the analogy having attempted many times to balance the contents of the squiggly, twisted, squeezed out mess by massaging and manipulating in my sense of duty to my role as the mistress of order from chaos. I had to admit it. I was that squeezed out tube and I made my inner life manageable by massaging and manipulating it at least into a semblance of what looked and felt tidier, less tortured. I have always been drawn to the writings on the chaos theory. Its understanding that there was order even within what we might believe is just this useless negative thing called chaos. My life is chaos.
Its funny how in quiet moments we remember our lives as emotions and value judgments on those moments weighed against accomplishment and non-accomplishment. My instincts (when I am connected to them!) tell me there is no non-accomplishment. There is only that part of us that makes us judge and value on scales we don’t create ourselves but borrow from our cultural mores and gender identified roles. These memories fold in on our time sequence. Sometimes for moments at a time we forget how many years have passed since that event occurred. It seems right there with us and we reevaluate. This time around, we reevaluate differently. We are different now than we were then, even when we can’t know that in the same moment of re-experiencing.
I am the perfect example of not only the squeezed out tube, or perhaps I should say this squeezed out tube is not an example but a reality of sorts. A reality of so many women in middle age who take care of mothers, and children, animals often brought into their lives by those children, and often at the same time trying to find someone – a partner for their lives. For one reason or another, their past partners left or disappeared. I am one of those. In certain moments, I glimpse myself as ridiculous. Middle aged and trying to be attractive like a younger woman, worrying about body shape, graying hair, wrinkles and age spots, yellowing teeth, expectation even of disease of one kind or another that afflicts the aging. I know that being comfortable with self, confident in self as self, who/whatever manifestation that might be, in fact creates the most attractive individual, male or female, at any age. Certainly, there must be the acceptance that the sweet energy of youth is gone, but it is replaced by the sweet energy of confidence. Not arrogance or complacency – no absolutely not. That is extremely unattractive. Ah, yes, the squeezed out tube – me.
I had the experience of being squeezed out some more yesterday. Actually, that is why my mother said that about me. My youngest daughter, Lily, fell in love with a puppy at the puppy store. She had to have him she said. I still have her other dog we adopted more than 7 years ago. And her cat. Her fish. Her mouse. I take care of them. Perhaps not very well, but they don’t starve. I had to say No. She sent me a photo with her camera phone to my camera phone. I still said No. She made me go to the store to meet him. She told me he was the love of her life. I was forcing her to give up the love of her life. We walked in to a room that stunk. The stench of urine and feces hung heavy in the air. Not to mention the sounds of yapping, whining puppies. He was cute. His ears were very long and soft. But I remained unmoved. My daughter reminded me of the love I was depriving not only her of but the puppy. I remained strong. I noticed not even a twinge of regret on my part. I am old now. I knew it absolutely in that moment. To no longer be that person who felt the sensation of how cute these little things were – to the point that this cuteness was something you wanted to “have and to hold from this day forward.” Old. (sigh!). I was comfortable with this new person I had not thought that I would ever become. I did not judge her harshly for her lack of softness. Her expectation that her life mattered too. The way she spent her time mattered too. There were so many that needed homes, needed love. I could not help them individually. I was comfortable with that knowledge and walking away, wishing them each well in my heart. I knew Lily would suffer a while but would be well too in a few days or even hours. She was so changeable. I think I believed she had been distracting her self from her own problems (boyfriend problems) by falling in love and desiring the puppy to love, imagining her ability to take care of it forever. Perhaps she had found an impetus for a future goal of her heart, to raise dogs like these, or take care of them. If that was true, it was good.
That is a part of the chaos. The balancing of needs. My own, now that I had the time and mental and emotional focus of middle age, and the needs of my mother, my children, my grandchildren, etc., etc. I can focus more on the larger picture. Or at least I think that’s it. I will admit that I live in an almost perpetual state of “not knowing” the answer and of doubt of whether there is supposed to be an answer.
Its funny how in quiet moments we remember our lives as emotions and value judgments on those moments weighed against accomplishment and non-accomplishment. My instincts (when I am connected to them!) tell me there is no non-accomplishment. There is only that part of us that makes us judge and value on scales we don’t create ourselves but borrow from our cultural mores and gender identified roles. These memories fold in on our time sequence. Sometimes for moments at a time we forget how many years have passed since that event occurred. It seems right there with us and we reevaluate. This time around, we reevaluate differently. We are different now than we were then, even when we can’t know that in the same moment of re-experiencing.
I am the perfect example of not only the squeezed out tube, or perhaps I should say this squeezed out tube is not an example but a reality of sorts. A reality of so many women in middle age who take care of mothers, and children, animals often brought into their lives by those children, and often at the same time trying to find someone – a partner for their lives. For one reason or another, their past partners left or disappeared. I am one of those. In certain moments, I glimpse myself as ridiculous. Middle aged and trying to be attractive like a younger woman, worrying about body shape, graying hair, wrinkles and age spots, yellowing teeth, expectation even of disease of one kind or another that afflicts the aging. I know that being comfortable with self, confident in self as self, who/whatever manifestation that might be, in fact creates the most attractive individual, male or female, at any age. Certainly, there must be the acceptance that the sweet energy of youth is gone, but it is replaced by the sweet energy of confidence. Not arrogance or complacency – no absolutely not. That is extremely unattractive. Ah, yes, the squeezed out tube – me.
I had the experience of being squeezed out some more yesterday. Actually, that is why my mother said that about me. My youngest daughter, Lily, fell in love with a puppy at the puppy store. She had to have him she said. I still have her other dog we adopted more than 7 years ago. And her cat. Her fish. Her mouse. I take care of them. Perhaps not very well, but they don’t starve. I had to say No. She sent me a photo with her camera phone to my camera phone. I still said No. She made me go to the store to meet him. She told me he was the love of her life. I was forcing her to give up the love of her life. We walked in to a room that stunk. The stench of urine and feces hung heavy in the air. Not to mention the sounds of yapping, whining puppies. He was cute. His ears were very long and soft. But I remained unmoved. My daughter reminded me of the love I was depriving not only her of but the puppy. I remained strong. I noticed not even a twinge of regret on my part. I am old now. I knew it absolutely in that moment. To no longer be that person who felt the sensation of how cute these little things were – to the point that this cuteness was something you wanted to “have and to hold from this day forward.” Old. (sigh!). I was comfortable with this new person I had not thought that I would ever become. I did not judge her harshly for her lack of softness. Her expectation that her life mattered too. The way she spent her time mattered too. There were so many that needed homes, needed love. I could not help them individually. I was comfortable with that knowledge and walking away, wishing them each well in my heart. I knew Lily would suffer a while but would be well too in a few days or even hours. She was so changeable. I think I believed she had been distracting her self from her own problems (boyfriend problems) by falling in love and desiring the puppy to love, imagining her ability to take care of it forever. Perhaps she had found an impetus for a future goal of her heart, to raise dogs like these, or take care of them. If that was true, it was good.
That is a part of the chaos. The balancing of needs. My own, now that I had the time and mental and emotional focus of middle age, and the needs of my mother, my children, my grandchildren, etc., etc. I can focus more on the larger picture. Or at least I think that’s it. I will admit that I live in an almost perpetual state of “not knowing” the answer and of doubt of whether there is supposed to be an answer.
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