Busy Little Bee!

 

Correction. I’m not ‘little’ but I’ve been a busy bee lately and it’s mostly my own fault that I had a million questions come at me where ever I went this week. 1) I’m being credited for saving my upstairs neighbor’s life---not my words. Her daughter started that rumor and gave me a purple orchid for doing what anyone else would have done in my situation. But more on that later. 2) I had the bright idea of co-teaching a How To Play Mahjong, three-part clinic and the announcement went live on our communication app and and within six hours enough people signed up that we now have a waiting list. My co-teacher and I are over-whelmed with how popular it’s going to be and surprised at who signed up. A few of the people who signed up will never be able to learn to play it but we didn’t want to show favorites and have the clinic by invitation only which someone suggested we should have done. That would look and be too clicky in our opinions so we have to expect a high drop-out rate. 

I’ve written four pages of hand-outs for the classes in addition to check-off sheets for teaching the three sessions with my co-teacher acting as my editor. She has a dyslexic son so she understands my first draft crazy spelling without judgement. She also has Lewy Body Dementia and it’s important to her to pass on her thirty years of loving Mahjong before she can’t. She taught all our current players including me but now she occasionally asks me for clarification on rules and procedures. Being One-Tracked obsessed with the game, I have played over 3,000 games online against computer bots and I never miss our weekly Mahjong days here on campus. 

And last but not least I was extra busy because the above two things all happened the same time frame as my Creative Writing Group was working on a new project that had us text messaging back and forth before our meeting. Then out of the blue a person not in group sent me the first and last chapters of a book he’s been writing and wanted to know if our group would read and edit the full book. Again, text messages and emails had to be read and written. I personal thought it was a big ask of someone who isn’t even in our group so we ended up inviting him to come to a meeting and read his first chapter in person, which he did and he said he’s coming back 25 times to read addition chapters. (Lord, what have I gotten myself into?) His wife just got moved from our independent living building to a room on my brother’s hallway in the Memory Care building. That first chapter was all black and white facts with not even a hint of emotional content and when he was asked about that he said that he never writes about his feelings. The rest of our writing group spills our emotions all over our pages, then sweeps them up into a pile for the rest of us to jump into.

The project we started is we each wrote some Ten Word Stories on slips of pair and folded the papers up. The plan is to draw one a month to use as a writing prompt---a little ‘side hustle’ to whatever else we might be working on. For March we’ll all be using the follow Ten Word Story: “His kiss was more of a dismissal than a sign of affection.” The rule is we can write between 50 to 3,000 words and the ten word sentence can be the first or last sentence or in a random scene in between. It will be fun to see the different directions the little game takes us.

In our group of would-be writers we’re not experts and we don’t pretend to be but we’re constantly being asked to write stuff. For example also this week one of our favorite servers got fired (or quit) and I was asked to write a petition to bring her back. I did not want to get involved in that tale of woes, especially since rumors are flying around that tell diametrically opposite versions of what happened. I said I’d sign it but someone else will have to write it. The person who ended up writing it, slid a copy under my door with a note attached asking me to collect signatures on the sly. You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. I never agreed to do more than sign it, which I did, then I slid the petition under HER door. The audacity of that ‘ask’ made my head hurt.

Okay, now the story of why I’m being credited with saving my upstairs neighbor’s life. She’s in her nineties and weighs about the same yet she sounds like an elephant as she stumps around in her apartment with no carpeting under foot. She’s always dropping (on purpose) heavy boxes of photos and genealogy albums on the floor, tipping over chairs (not purposely), dragging a vacuum around every single day and she has fallen 3-4 times. She doesn’t like me to check on her when I hear loud noises so I’ve gotten in the habit of looking at the time when I hear what I think is a fall with the plan that if I don’t hear her moving around in five minutes then I'd check on her. 

This time she fell and didn’t get back up nor did she answer her phone. So I went up and rang her doorbell. She didn’t call out but by the time I got back down to my apartment to call the security guard she had remembered me teasing her that if she falls and can’t get up she can pound on the floor and I’d hear her. The guard and I let ourselves in, then called the ambulance. I waited with her, called her daughter and the rest is history. 

God, I hope I never break a hip! She was in so much pain that they couldn’t even move her until some pain meds took effect. I’ve never seen anyone shake that badly while trying unsuccessfully not to cry. I’m not the only person in continuum care campus who has helped a neighbor---it’s the nature of a CCC like this. Anyway, I needed something to bring to our creative writing group so I dashed off the poem below. It still needs some work but the bones of my thought process after the experience are there for later refinement.  

 Misguided Gratitude

Three sets of open arms

greeted me at the door

reaching out to hug me for

so-called saving their mother

and all I could think about is

have they all been vaccinated?

 

How could I not let them do

what they came here to do

with their smiling faces all lit up

while I envisioned hospital germs

crawling happily up their arms

and pole jumping over to my shirt.

 

They handed me a purple orchid

that doesn’t fit with my decor and

with my background with plants

it could out live me since I don’t

have the will to kill a living thing

even those I don’t want nor deserve.

 

They also gave me a delightful box

of heart-shaped chocolate cookies

to follow up the month I just spent

detoxing the sugar out of my system

and I’m worried my monsters will

eat them all in one day-long sitting.

 

The next time I hear a giant thud

coming from up above I shall call the

ambulance anonymously and keep

it under the minute needed for tracing

because I’m no life saving heroine,

I’m just a person with a handy phone.

                 by Jean at The Misadventures of Widowhood ©

 

 Until Next Wednesday! ©

 

* Photo Credit:Ranger Rick Magazine

 

 

Creative Writing Groups and Poetry

 

Six months or so ago I started a creative Writing Group here at the continuum care complex. We’re a small group with a core of four but we are faithful in our endeavors. Two of the members say the group has helped inspire them to start writing and keep writing---something they had planned to do in retirement but hadn’t gotten around to doing it until I started the group. One of them is a woman who has been working on writing several short-but-connected stories and claims it’s the first time she’s tried to write anything. She’s good! So good I have a hard time believing she’s as green as she says she is. On the other hand she was a librarian her entire career and as Stephen King says the best way to learn to write is to be ferocious reader. The guy who credits the group for keeping him writing does poems and brings a half a dozen to group each time we meet, usually written a few days before our get-togethers. I wish I could write that fast.

Another women in group is a pastor here on campus and she’s been writing for years, even had a column in the daily newspaper back in the '60's and '70s. She’s a true asset to our group, especially when it comes to critiquing the rest of us with her positive observations. Sometimes she shares beautifully written stories about her life that’s been full of dark twists and joyous turns like you wouldn’t believe. Other times it’s a sermon she might be working on that she shares. I’m a duck without water when it comes to helping with her questions on the latter topics. She knows I’m an agnostic which I told her in a one-on-one long before I started the group. I’ve written about her before labeling her with the name Ms Angel. And she is one. I fan-girl her because she’s wicket smart, has great recall and empathy and is non-judgemental. If she didn't wear an obnoxious perfume I'd probably pursue a one-on-one friendship with her. She's suggested coffee so I know she feels the same pull but sitting next to her for an hour of group is almost more than I can take of that perfume. It gives me a headache and you can smell her coming from eight feet away.

I’m the forth one the group---Chatty Cathy dropped out a long time ago and the guy who said he’d come back if she dropped out got voted off the island, so to speak. We had two others sample the group but they didn’t come back. We’re planning a poetry slam in the fall, open to all the residents to read their favorite poems. We’ll, however, be reading original stuff at our fireplace gathering place in hopes that will get some more people interested in joining us. It will take me from now to then to write something that might have universal appeal and to practice reading it out loud. Talk about breaking out of my rut and comfort zone, this will do it in spades.

A month of so after I was hospitalized I wrote a ‘dark’ poem and recently shared I it with my Creative Writing Group. When I finished, no one said a word for the longest time. Finally someone says, “I don’t know what to say” and another person was quick to agree. The third comment was, “It’s very different than anything else you’ve written.” I was embarrassed. What I usually share are humorous little poems and occasionally a slightly revised blog post. When I do the latter I call them slice-of-life essays because no one here knows I keep a blog, nor will they ever if I can help it. Half the time I wish I hadn’t started the group because it’s harder than I thought it would be to keep that secret. But the rest of the time I’m vain enough to enjoy the status I get from being known as "the person who has that writing group" even though I tell people, “It’s not my group, we share equally.” And we do. I’m proud of the way we interact with one another.

I was in a creative writing group back about ten years ago. We had eight members and I know if I had read my ‘dark’ poem (The Call) to that group they would have spent fifteen minutes dissecting it, tearing it a part piece by piece until I disclosed who was right in figuring out the caller and helping me decide if I need a third stanza or to drop the last line of the poem. (I still can’t decide.) I honestly expected it to be an easy poem to discuss/figure out/pick apart and I would have loved that but I was sorely disappointed by the reactions it got. So I made sure after that third comment that we moved quickly on to the next reader. Lesson learned: stick with humor in that group. With that introduction, I’m giving you guys a taste of my poetry. The first is titled Forensic Digest---a stupid title, I know, but long-time readers know naming creative things is not my strong suit. The second one is The Call, the poem that left my group speech-less. ©

 

Forensic Digest by Jean R

 

It’s a billboard screaming

an old person lives here ---

nail clippers, a forgotten mug,

a big button remote

with a crossword puzzle

next to a magnifying glass,

a shoe horn, eye drops and

and a potato chip

that lost its bag a week ago.

Cluttered chair-side tables

talk and tell stories

to our La-Z-Boys

who don’t care if they’re

partners in this classic

display of old people gear.

 

© The Misadventures of Widowhood

 

The Call by Jean R

 

He bays like a hound in the night

begging me to hear and come

along leading me to

where I know I must go.

In bed I listen to the notes on the wind

hoping the ghosts in the shadows

will lead the messenger astray.

But he’s playing his song calling to me

and it’s time to pay and go on my way.

 

A thousand memories keep me awake,

a hastily written memoir of fate

while the ghosts in the corners

listen and mark their slates

for the caller to add up their weight.

Is there enough to pay the way

through to the end of the line

or will I be left out in the cold,

a blind kitten alone in the dark?

© The Misadventures of Widowhood

 

Until next Wednesday...

Back in the Saddle and the God Question. Again

I’m chugging along, doing the bare minimum to stay alive and I’m not liking this new me that can’t sleep at night but who falls asleep during the day, whenever the drone of voices are around me. But I may have turned a corner. Tuesday I had to go to the doctor’s office, then since it was near-by I went to the grocery store. When I got back home again I sat in my La-Z-Boy at five and slept until 10:30 when I got up and went to bed and slept until almost nine. No sleeping pill, no Tylenol 500s, no Lidocaine patch and best of all no rib or shoulder pain to wake me back up. I don’t think I even heard five minutes of my sleep meditation app that was playing on my Kindle.

The next day I managed to stay awake long enough at lunch to eat my beef and barley soup and chocolate pudding. I was so encouraged by that and my marathon sleep episode that I accepted a dinner invitation for that night, even though I had some precooked barbecued spare ribs in the refrigerator. You’d think ribs would be the last thing I’d wanted to eat considering what all I’ve been through after breaking a couple of mine. When I do get around to eating them, I’ll give an extra thanks to the Spirit of the Pig who gave them up. Poor pigs, cows and chickens. I wish I could be a vegetarian but I just can’t bring myself to give up my childhood training--that dinner plates should be divided up into three sections for meat, starches and veggies. Whenever I have a choice, though, I buy the free-range and the certified organic and humanely treated farm stock and produce plus I feel sufficiently guilty while licking my fingers. 

At the creative writing group I started and the others seems to enjoy they got into a discussion about how their churches are each handling the “gay issue” and that alphabet of other rainbow communities I can never get right. Their church’s mucky mucks are rewriting their stand on the issues and breaking up and making up as they come to a decision on how much acceptance they can show or not show and still believe in the Bible. Some noted scholar is going back to review all the Biblical translations to see if they were accurate and unduly influenced by the men who did them over the centuries. Duh. That was one discussion I would have liked to have slept through but it was too small of a group to get away with doing so. 

But in general I’m always been fascinated with how deeply involved in church doctrine some people get. It’s almost as if they don’t have a moral compass of their own to guide them without the scriptures to tell them not to screw their neighbor's wife or to steal a wheelbarrow from a guy down the street who accidentally left his outside overnight. To me, all you need to know is the Ten Commandments. Yet even those have been deluded and nuanced by the church: It was okay to murder others during the Crusades and wars since then if you are on the ‘right’ side and the sin of adultery can be forgiven if you ask nicely and mean it. Even the sin of sexual misconduct with children within the ranks of the Catholic Church leaders wasn’t/isn’t enough to persuade many true believers that the Men of the Cloth are first of all, just men capable of all the same sins and evils as any other. 

Near the end of our creative writing session, someone stated that we’ve all been called to serve God and I blurred out, “Not me.” Just then someone wandered into our room, changing the energy and discussion so thankfully I didn’t have to explain myself. I’m not sure but I might have told them about an uncle I had who I like to say could have been the prototype for the door-to-door Bible salesman in the movie Paper Moon. He swindled hundreds of dollars from most of his brother-in-laws including my dad and he got away with it because he was “a Man of God” and God would see that they got repaid someday which, of course, never came. 

My uncle lived in a travel trailer and would spend a week living in our driveway a couple of times a year while he restocked his supply of Bibles and other stuff he sold to churches on his southern route or his northern route. Never paid a penny towards the electricity and water he used or the food he and his wife ate. She did, however, help my mom deep clean the house during those weeks. My mom and her sister were close and maybe this was part of a barter they worked out, I can’t say.  But my dad just tolerated my uncle and his nightly, long winded prayers at the dinner table while my brother and did our share of snickering during those prayers only to feel my mom’s kicks under the table. 

Oh, yes, I’ve known plenty of people who’ve “been called to God” many of them served themselves but at least one aunt on my Dad's side actually did serve her God her entire adult life, scrubbing floors on her hands and knees for the Catholic Church.  ©

Second Sugery and Second Writing Group Meeting

This post was written a few days before my second surgery for carpal tunnel and trigger thumb that took place on October 17th. I was thinking this one would be the easier of the two surgeries because I know what to expect. With my dominate hand done first I thought it would be a piece of cake but I just realized that holding a computer mouse with a splint on my hand will not be possible for the first week where with my other hand in a splint I could still type with a few fingers tips. Plus I'm going into this surgery with a great deal of pain from a frozen elbow and shoulder that I'll have to deal with as soon as possible. So expect shorter replies to comments made on this and the next pre-written and scheduled posts coming up which also means if anything exciting happens in my life between now and, say, October 26th you won't be hearing about it. (Like how much excitement could happened to an 80 year old?)

One of the things that will happen before I get back to real time posting is my brother is moving into the Memory Care building here on campus tomorrow. Exciting for me and his kids but, of course, it will be hard on him. When they told him he was moving, my youngest niece asked, "Do you remember when you visited Aunt Jean and you said you like her place...?" And my brother got upset and shouted, "I'm not living with my sister!" So I guess I'll have to let him get settled into his own building before I can walk down the road to visit. The family was told it takes new residents a month before they finally settle in and know the move is permanent. But I'm dying to see his freshly painted and carpeted room and his view.

Our Memory Care program has won state awards and his building has the same view overlooking the lake and the woods in full color now. It's a bit of a drive for his kids to visit but this CCComplex is in an area where they all come to shop the near-by malls and visit specialists. (The main reason I picked it in the first place.) He'll be living just one buildings away from me so I'm sure I'll get to see everyone more often than I do now. I'm excited for me but sad for him even though it truly is the right time for him to transition out of living alone. His kids have done a wonderful job of bringing in help to keep him safe at home for as long as they did, but those of us who've been in that situation knows how draining that can be.

And now on to the writing group: As I suspected would happen, Chatty Catty who took dictation from God for the songs she produced, didn't come back so we are down to four of us and we are all a good fit for getting along. Ms. Angel couldn't make this meeting because she had a last minute spiritual consultation but recently she's written and read publicly two poems---one at our anniversary party and one at our monthly Resident Dialogue in lieu of reading an opening prayer---so we know the quality of her work and she's excited about writing more. Mr. Graphic Artist brought six poems to read---five older one and one new one he just finished and he thinks this group is helping to get back into writing. When he moved here, like me, he thought he'd be spending all his time writing and doing art which didn't happen for him (or me)---just too many activities to get involved in.

Ms. Librarian blew us away by reading twenty pages of a novel she wrote since our last meeting. It's set in 1940 in a French Convent. It's good, it's really GOOD but far over the 1,000 word limit we'd set for our readings. We had that same issue in another writing group I was in and the facilitator didn't say anything about it, so neither did I. None of our Group's guidelines are set in stone and as long as we can get everyone's readings into our meetings I guess it won't matter.

I brought in a rather sad poem I wrote about our Memory Care building here on campus and copy of one of my favorite, funny blog posts from my caregiver days as a sample of what my past writing style was like. I ended the meeting with asking everyone their writing goals for the coming month and I reading from a the book, A Year of Writing Dangerously; 365 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement. All and all it went great. We had some interesting conversations generated from our readings and we are all committed to keeping creative writing on our front burners, so to speak. We also hoped to get one more person in the group and we thought we had her but the Activities Calendar overlapped our group with Line Dancing and she's really into that, so she had to choose. Hopefully, that won't happen next month. ©