Life is Good in my Hood

When I was growing up, I helped my mom with housework and we changed the bed sheets every Saturday. It was an unwritten rule I obeyed all of my life until I started having arm pain last summer when I did certain things including making my bed with its heavier-than-lead thick mattress. I’ll skip the details about my long-ago failed surgery and say that following my bone doctor’s life-time restriction of not lifting anything above my waist and retraining myself not to do any motion that causes pain has gone well. Except I couldn’t figure out a work-around for putting clean sheets on the bed so I’d put that job off until my house cleaning service girl was coming which meant that with the exception of the pillow cases I was only getting clean bedding once a month.

I found heaven a few days ago. I’ve had my new bed just over a week now and I changed my sheets after five days of using them. Doing so all by myself with a lighter weight mattress I could walk entirely around was so blissful I turned it into a meditation session, smoothing out even the tiniest wrinkles and making the best hospital corners my bed has seen in a year. I was coming home to myself and the ‘welcome mat’ of crawling into clean sheets that night, knowing I can have that serene feeling anytime I want, was powerful. I laid there thinking about how we take so many things like that for granted and it was on the tip of my tongue to say, "God is good" but I didn't because I don't buy into the personification of the word ‘God.’ To me it makes more sense to say, “God is goodness.”

My thoughts wandered as I lay there to a story in the news about what the police found when they raided a house because the owners failed to take their son from an Urgent Care center to the hospital as instructed. Little kids were laying in their own vomit because their parents were too stupid or lazy to change their sheets and take proper care of their kids. If God is good, why do innocent kids have to suffer poor parents? If God is good why does He help some victims of abuse or neglect and not others? To me, it’s better to think of God as the combined goodness of mankind---a random thing at times, a planned thing other times. Either way, the intrinsic value of goodness spreads so slowly over a single person’s lifetime that we often miss seeing that the power goodness is building upon itself with each century that passes. Hard to believe, but there was a time when outsiders wouldn’t have stepped in between what a parent does with or to their kids. Okay, so I went from an idyllic memory of doing housework with my mom to challenging a traditional belief system. It’s time to find something new to write about. 

How about I write about four woman with beautiful spirits and the wills to do adventurous things but who have bodies meant for staying home and reading a book, who climbed the tallest mountain in their state yesterday. They laughed as the butterflies at the top of the mountain welcomed the person to their lair who had the prettiest hat and they cried silently thinking about how their old bodies would feel the next day. But in between they were grateful to share the experience with good friends who were all equally proud that they were able to plant a flag of triumph on their adventure. And they thanked the gods of wheels and walkers that helped make the adventure possible. 

Let me translate the above paragraph. Yesterday three of my Gathering Girls pals and I went to the Butterflies in Bloom Exhibit and to lunch at the sculpture garden. What we didn’t count on was all the construction going on which meant from the handicapped parking lot we had to walk 1,500 steps (according to my Fitbit) just to get to the main door, a walk that used to be around 300 feet. They are going from 140,000 square foot of buildings to 230,000. Mind you one of my friends has severe back issues, another severe lung issues and one just finished her second round of chemo. She was the one wearing the multi-colored hat, having just had her head shaved. It actually gave me chills that the butterflies were fluting around her head and landing, even going for rides as we made our way through the huge, glass-domed tropical garden. 

People were pointing her hat out to children and each other, taking pictures of the live butterflies covering her hat and giving her the celebrity treatment with friendly chatter. No one was looking at her with pity because in any other setting it would have been obvious she was wearing a chemo hat. In the garden, the chemo hat was transformed into a joyous thing, a stroke of genius to wear it. Maybe the butterflies couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t get any nectar from that hat as they walked around the bands of neon colors, but I prefer to believe they were helping her heal. The whole experience was positive energy from the universal, goodness directed her way when she needed it the most. ©

Barf, Art, Friendship and Minutia

Fifteen minutes after taking an Ambien sleeping pill plus two chewable Melatonin I heard the unmistakable sound of the dog tossing his cookies alongside of the bed, right in the pathway to the bathroom. I get up several times in the night to pee and even if I had wanted to, there was no way I could let the barf sit until morning. I turned on the light and couldn’t believe how high that pile of undigested food was that Levi had the bad manners to deposit on the carpet. With sleep quickly taking over my body I managed to drop the pile of vomit I had picked up with a paper towel, spreading it across the three foot between where Levi had parked his barf and the wastebasket. While I was undoing the damage I did, I heard Levi out in the living room retching up more vomit. In two different places. The poor little guy was sick and I was not safe to be walking around. I was afraid I’d fall asleep right in between his second and third piles so I picked up what I could and left the deeper cleaning for morning when I was sure the Resolve Pet Expert, High Traffic Carpet Cleaner could do the rest. And it did, but it wasn’t going to dry before the township inspector was due at the house to check out the installation of the new hot water heater I got last month. Rather than let him think the dog had peed on the floor I plopped two of Levi’s least favorite toys on top of the wet spots. I am nothing if not creative. 

This week I’ve been busy with not much opportunity to be bored or melancholy but both are still lurking below the surface none the less. Monday I had lunch at the sculpture garden with my Gathering Girls pals where there was a new exhibit of contemporary sculpture by Masyuki Koorida from Shanghai, China. His medium is mostly marble and the one thing we each wanted to do is touch the polished surfaces of his work, but of course that’s not allowed. The security guard either had a thing for older women in comfortable shoes or he didn't trust us not to resist touching the stones because he followed us around from room to room. Every time I go to one of these exhibits of art that each costs more than my house, I wonder why not me? Why do some of us give up playing with paints or clay before we’ve become so damned dedicated that others think our work must be good just because we’ve devoted our every breath to creating it? The artist, the docent said, sits in a room with a slab of marble for hours letting the stone speak to him before he starts. (Ya, sure. My husband and I once did that before tackling our first wallpapering job, knowing it would be costly if we screwed up.) Mr. Koorida says he’s letting the “heart of the stone out.”

The next day I let the heart of friendship out when I met one of my husband’s high school classmates for lunch. He lives a couple of small towns away and a couple of times a year we meet in the middle for lunch. He’s thinking of moving out of state. That made me sad, then ashamed of myself for feeling that way. I should be happy that he wants to find a climate better suited to his disability but if he leaves all my connections to the good times we all had in our old group of friends will be gone. Sure, we can still talk on the phone like we do every couple of weeks when we each give the Republicans hell---get it all out of our systems until the next big news story breaks. But it won't be the same. He’s been such a great friend, even moved in for a couple of weeks to be my husband’s caregiver when I had my knee replacement surgery. How many friends can you name who’d wipe your butt like Gary did with my disabled husband? 

Yesterday I went to a travel club presentation to hear about the 2019 trips they’ve got planned. Three of the five are taking place in The States which makes them more doable and intriguing to me. One trip abroad is a ten day Kenya Camera Safari for $4,195 plus airfare. The other overseas trip is a cruise called the Mediterranean Legends. Thirteen days for $3,995 taking in Rome, Sicily, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia and Malta. The trips here in The States are: 1) The Tournament of Roses for five days, $2,650; 2) New Orleans for seven days, $1,999; and 3) seven days to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, $2,895. I go to these travelogues because they’re a free afternoon with interesting things to learn and see and usually they inspire me to hop back on the diet train. Travel would be so much easier if I could drop a few pounds. But this time with boredom and melancholy so close to the surface, I got to the "rail station" too late to catch that train. I have no reason to be unhappy but every so often---like now---I feel like I’m hiding behind a cardboard cutout of myself, showing the world what they expect to see when inside I’m questioning why the minutia of daily life is sucking the sparkle out of me. ©

Meijer Sculpture and Garden Park, more work by Mr. Koorida.

The Gathering Girls and Spring Plans

Last Friday five of us from The Gathering (who henceforth in this blog will be known as ‘The Gathering Girls’) went to our local garden and sculpture park. It was a rainy day with severe weather in the forecast but we’d had the outing planned, canceled and rescheduled already so we went anyway rather than reschedule yet again. Even with retired widows it’s hard to coordinate schedules with five people involved. There is plenty to do inside the buildings at the park. The butterflies were hatching and flying about in the tropical conservatory which was totally unexpected for me. I associate them with April when I usually go to see them as an annual pilgrimage to honor my husband’s birthday and our anniversary. We also nabbed the best table in the dining area, under a small, glass conservatory where we laughed and recuperated half way through viewing the Al Weiwei show we’d come to see. 

According to the booklet they handed out at the exhibit, Mr. Weiwei is one of the “most compelling and influential cultural figures in the world today.” He’s a Chinese artist and activist who has been arrested, held under house arrest and his art studio was torn down for speaking out against censorship and the political system. His porcelain work is flawless, but I can’t say I like many of his pieces. I had to keep reminding myself that it’s not the aesthetics as much as the underlying statement that he’s making that is the most important element. One piece, for example, consists of 1,000 porcelain crabs in a pile and The Guardian explains the work of art like this, “The word for crab, hie xie, is a homonym for harmonious, we are told, and much bandied about in Chinese government circles. There’s not much harmony here among the crustaceans. The word is also used a lot on the internet in China, as slang for censorship.” Okay, I got that at first glance. Easy-peasy.

The Gathering Girls all have a similar sense of humor; we laugh at the same throw-away lines and all of us add our own throw-away lines to conversations. Four of us are in our early to mid-seventies and one is eighty-something. We’re all widows but the oldest of us has a long-time significant other that she visits daily in a nursing home. She’s the only one who doesn’t live alone although she’d like to move out of her son’s house. He and his wife are against it. We’re still in the getting to know each other stage but two of the ladies seem to be bonding faster than the rest of us and that’s probably because they take the same exercise class at the senior hall. Three of the ladies are extremely spontaneous. For example, at coffee after the last Gathering (for people looking for friends) someone suggested we go to a movie on the spot and they would have if they had found one scheduled they hadn’t already seen. Me, I have to think about the dog and how long before he’ll need to go outside so being spontaneous is harder for me and for the elder in the group who meets her young grandson at the bus stop after school is out. The two ladies I’d love to bond with the most double-adore shopping and of all the activities women do in unison that’s one thing I’m not fond of…but I will do it to be sociable. Color me sad about that. 

Monday was RSVP day at the senior hall for all the activities that will take place in April and May. Have I whined enough about the process for you to get the idea that I hate the system of having to be at your computer exactly at 9:00 to send an email list of what I want to do? If you’re one minute late there’s a high probability of going on a waiting list, to see if enough people sign up to add another bus or class or someone cancels. There were twenty-seven events listed (not counting the daily drop-in stuff). I picked six to RSVP but I usually do twelve. I cut back to make room for my personal training sessions and classes at the YMCA. Yes, I’m serious about this being my Spring of Getting Physically Fit. I passed up some great day trips and off-Broadway type shows, too, but I snagged a reservation on one of the five buses going on a restaurant hop in my favorite get-a-way tourist town on Lake Michigan. So I was a happy camper.

But before I get to my April and May spring plans I have to get through March which just might kill me and make the dog an orphan or at the very least, a lonely Schnauzer. There are 25 weekdays in March and I have 29 things on my schedule. Because of my new YMCA sessions, I’m getting up 6:30 when I normally don’t roll out of bed before eight or nine. I’ve been falling asleep before Stephen Colbert does his monologue at 11:30 and that is something I truly regretted until I found clips of show online the next day. How did we ever live without the internet? ©

Al Weiwei's pile of crabs

Same Time, Next Year

Three of my husband’s oldest and dearest friends were in town this week and we all met at the Sculpture Park. They were killing two birds with one stone---seeing me and the new Japanese garden at the same time. I didn’t mind. It was a sunny day at a beautiful setting that is ranked in the top 100 most-visited art museums in the world and three of us are arty-farty types. Before we explored the new Japanese addition, we took a half hour, narrated tram ride around the 158 acres that took us past many of the 200 permanent pieces in the park. I’ve been on the tram many times but it was only my third time going to the 8 ½ acre Japanese addition. 

Once inside the gates to the Japanese Gardens, we found a private ‘alcove’ near the Zen garden that overlooks the lake and the zig-zag bridge and we sat on polished marble bounders talking about the good times we’ve had over the years. And there have been many. Parties, vacations, raft races and just a hanging out over pizza. Don and these three had been friends since junior high and even though two of them haven’t lived here for thirty years they’ve all stayed close. I feel honored that after Don died they still include me on their ‘must see’ list when they come up from Georgia. And it’s always fun to be with people who knew my husband before his stroke. Knowing Don is like shorthand for knowing me. Unfortunately, there aren’t many people left in their families to bring them back to town, so I couldn’t help feeling like this might be the last time I’ll see them. Ohmygod, taking in our physical conditions---one guy in a wheelchair, the other woman badly needing a hip replacement, her husband fighting cancer and me with my snow white hair and old-lady sweater in the summer---one of us might not be alive same time, next year. 

Seeing these people every summer for so many years it can’t help but remind me of the 1951 movie with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, titled Same Time, Next Year. They played a couple who for over twenty-five years would met once a year for a romantic tryst and along the way they managed to develop an emotional depth they hadn’t expected. Not sure if it would work that way in real life for lovers, what with the guilt thing and suspicious spouses getting in the way, but I know for a fact that for life-long friends emotional depth can be maintained long-distance. 

Paul McCartney once wrote: 

Must we wait another year

For the celebration, dear?

If we do, we’ll hold it here,

Same time next year.

I'll be here, the same as ever,

Maybe wearing something else.

Ah, but nothing changes,

Ah but nothing changes.

Wrong, Paul! Everything changes from year to year, especially once you get past seventy. Sometimes it’s even hard to recognize people who’ve been in your life for decades. But I know what he meant. The warm feelings don’t change. The love and respect doesn’t change. But the melancholy of saying goodbye hits you harder when you get older, knowing that a wonderful afternoon like I had this week could be our last one together. At least until one of us dies. We all have cemetery plots right next door. It tickled my husband’s sense of humor to think about being neighbors in death.

After spending three hours at the park the four us went to a restaurant/bar in my adopted hometown. The others have been going there since their teens and a trip to Michigan always includes a pilgrimage to eat their “famous” hot dogs that aren’t that good in my book. But you don’t mess with an iconic place so deeply engrained in someone’s mind. Like I told them when they asked about the other hot dog place in town and I said, “Their dogs are better but you guys don’t come here for the food. It’s the memory triggers of this place that makes it special.”

And with that, this widow can report the ending of another day filled with laughter, a sincere appreciation of beautiful people, relationships, things and places plus a few melancholy thoughts wondering if we’ll still be all together this time, next year.  ©