True Joy, Jigsaw Puzzles, Teenagers and Disillusioned...

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I've got held up for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”  George Bernard Shaw

I’m addicted to watching Facebook Short Reels every morning and every morning I find something that touches my soul or my funny bone or makes me think. Today I ran across the above quote of George Bernard Shaw and it shined a light on what I’ve been doing wrong my entire adult life and what my niece has been doing right her entire adult life. She is being honored in September as a ‘Hometown Hero’ so it’s not just my opinion as a proud aunt that she's making a difference in the world. Me? I’m may not be a “selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making [me] happy” but except for a brief few years in my life when I was mentor and administrator at a large stroke support website I’ve lived a life one might say was devoted to making myself happy.

A recent post in Donna’s blog, My View From Here, reminded of a quote from Socrates that goes "the unexamined life is not worth living." That’s one thing I’ve done in my life. I’ve examined the stuffings out of my every action, my every thought and that comes from being a life long diary keeper starting at age ten. Cause and effect. I said or did so-and-so and as a result this or that happening. It was that cut and dry when I was a teenager writing about crushes I had and all I can say about that is I’m glad we didn’t have the internet back then. I would have been a cyber stalker instead of just a girl joy riding with my best friend past the places where our crushes lived, hoping they’d be outside washing a car or mowing the grass. Guys back then did the same thing. My best friend and I would hang out on our front stoops hoping a guy we liked would drive by. One time a guy drove around the block seven times before he got the courage to stop and talk to us. Trust me when I say that was a red letter day in the life of a teenage diary keeper. Literately. Back in those days I put a red star next to “special” encounters with the opposite sex. 

Now days my encounters with the opposite sex involve disputes I’d like to have but avoid over the community jigsaw puzzle. I’ve decided I’m too OCD to play nice with others at that table. Last month I spent over an hour sorting a new puzzle by colors---we have a puzzle table with drawers for that purpose---and a guy came along and dumped all the drawers with the sorted pieces onto a large, white foam core board. He likes the white background to “see the pieces better." I didn’t say a word to anyone about the ‘dumping’ but I vowed that was the last time I’d work on the puzzles. The guys are the ones who used to take pieces of the puzzles home so they could be the last person to compete a puzzle. And it's a guy who stacks pieces on top of the finished portion of the puzzles and that makes me want to go postal. If you ever see a headline that reads: 'Beloved Grandfather Killed Over a Jigsaw Puzzle' you'll know I finally did! If you say anything to him about how hard it is see pieces laying on top of the others, he'll say "I don't worry stuff like that. That's my wife's job." I'll bet she's been picking his dirty clothes up off the floor, too, for the past 61 years and putting them in the hamper.

For two weeks I stayed away from the puzzle and it was a hardship because I love working on it 10-15 minutes while waiting for a class or lecture to start or for my dinner reservation time. It’s set up in the hub of everything and it’s the best gossip gathering spot on campus, with its location just a few feet away from a grouping of chairs by the fireplace. People tend to forget you’re there with your back to them and your listening ears on. The only time I work longer on the puzzles are when they unbox a new one; I’ve gained a reputation for being The Sorter because no one else seems to want to do it and it's my favorite part.

Changing topics: I admire how so many young people today seem have found their sense of community at such a young age. Every day on Facebook I see them working for causes that sets them apart from the self-absorbed teen I used to be. They are bringing attention to climate change issues, working to change our gun culture or helping the homeless or standing up for their LGBTQ+ friends. They are going to be force to be reckoned with when they come of age. That has me wondering what my parents' generation must have thought about me and my best friend when were we teenagers. Did they think we were self-centered or naive? Looking back I know I was both those things. Even so, until the Trump administration came along I was proud of my generation because we’d done our part to make the world a better place as all the generations before ours had done. In the sixties---the era of social changes---we Baby Boomers led the charge through activism. But all our gains in Women's Rights, Civil Rights, Voting Rights and personal freedom are on the cutting block.

Yesterday at a birthday party/sing-along on campus we sang God Bless America at the beginning and the end and it felt hollow and wrong. The night before six of the eight candidates in the Republican primary stood on a stage and pledged with a show of hands to support Trump if he wins the primary "even if he's convicted of high crimes in a federal court." (One retracted his hand raising afterward, said he misunderstood the question.) How can anyone be proud of our country and ask God to bless Her when so many Americans are willing to trade our Democracy for Fascism and the Cult of Personality? ©

Until next Wednesday…

Dreams, Nightmares and Jigsaw Puzzles

My eyes were nearly crusted shut, I had to pee but the tail end of a dream kept me in bed as I tried to stay in the dream for as long as I could. Usually when a dream wakes me up it’s one about a hallway or alley of doors and I’m trying desperately to find the bathroom. It’s a common dream of mine and one time in my dream I actually found what I was looking for. Oops! 

But the dream that woke me up this time was of my husband. He’d come back from a long separation---like death in my awake life, duh--but he’d been lost in the wilderness in the dream and it took him a decade to get back, but he couldn't find me right away. We only reconnected after he'd finally bought a house. He took me to see it but in the dream I was obsessed with writing down the address so I could find the house again and I desperately wanted a key to that house but I was debating in my head: Should I ask one or wait for him to offer a key? It was similar to a dream I had the end of summer about finding my long-lost husband in a match box and worrying that I wouldn’t be able to find him again. I don't think it's a big leap to conclude that in my subconscious mind I believe we'll reconnect in the afterlife...if there even is one...but I'm worried that we've changed so much we won't stay connected after we do find one another. A few days after Don died my sister-in-law said she could picture him in heaven holding court with a bunch of adoring women sitting at his feet listening to one of his long-winded stories. 

I was hurt and replied, "Thanks a lot for planting that image in my head." 

She laughed, "Don't you want him to be happy in the afterlife?"

"Not that happy!"

Finally, I had to answer nature’s call but then I went back to bed. It was 5:30 and I tried to let sleep wash over me again, hoping to see the ending of the dream. But that never works. I laid there with tears in my eyes, feeling lonely and alone. No one knew me as well as Don did and no one ever will. Poor me. I’m surrounded by friendly people and I don’t let any of them in past the metaphorical front door. When you meet someone at 27 and spend 42 years sharing secrets, hopes and dreams and building memories together there’s no time left to replace that kind of trust in another human being when you meet at 80. People do it, I know. But it often makes the media when geriatrics meet and marry and half the time they knew each other before they both took other spouses. I’m too cynical to buy into that plot line of life. That’s like saying you’re the same person at 80 as you were at 20 something. I’m certainly not and I wouldn’t want to be. 

Related question to ponder: If there is an afterlife and Don died at 61 and I die at 80+ will the same cynicism apply? Does the key in my dream represent this dilemma, the uncertainty that we'd still be together? Will I just be another one of the ladies sitting at his feet being entertained by one of his stories? Life lesson here: Be careful what you say to widows about their spouses being happy in heaven. It's been ten years and I still can't dismissed that image planted by my silly sister-in-law.

Another new topic: Did I mention we got our big community table back? If so, I have to tell you it only lasted a week and a half before the two tables for six were separated and turned back around. The timing for when we had our fun table back suspiciously coincided with when the director of marketing was out sick with Covid. She’s the same director of marketing who had a fit over us having a jigsaw puzzle table in the main lobby/hub and she’d had it moved to several different places before a bunch of residents went over her head to the CEO and got it put back into center of all everything.

The puzzle table is a popular gathering place, even those who don’t work on the puzzle come over to see it’s progress or we use it as an excuse to talk to someone who is working on it. Me, I’ll go to dinner fifteen minutes earlier than my reservation and work the puzzle while I wait, others do the same before classes that they’re attending or to wait for the mail truck. One couple practically lives at the puzzle table, and while four people can easily work at one time, I avoid them. From my living room window I can see into the lobby across the piazza and I have a clear view of the puzzle table. It’s rarely without someone sitting or standing in front of it. I’ve even seen the security guard working the puzzle in the middle of the night when dreams wake me up and I can’t fall back to sleep. If it didn’t require me getting dressed to building hop, I’d be at the puzzle table along side him when I can't sleep. He's my prototype for a leading character in the murder mystery romance book I'm writing in my head. ©

From Going Blind to Jigsaw Puzzles and Gritty Netflix’s

 

The Association of the Blind put on a presentation at my continuum care complex. I’m not in danger of going blind anytime soon but knowledge is power and my threshold for boredom is pretty low which is why you’ll find me at most of the informational experiences offered on this campus. You can always find something useful and this time I learned about these things called ‘Bump Dots.’ When the woman talked about how putting these tiny rubber dots on things like stoves, washers/dryers and electronics can help the blind I knew I wanted a couple for my microwave. That sucker has a black panel that is hard to read unless you have a flashlight in your hand. I happen to have a card of ‘Bump Dots’ marketed for another purpose---for the the bottom of vases and things you don’t want to scratch the tops of your furniture---and the minute I got home I dug them out. Well, not the same minute, I had to pee first but you don’t need to know that. I can’t believe that two little dots on my microwave have made so much difference. No longer do I need to keep a flashlight handy just to heat up some water for a hot beverage or to heat up my bean bag/foot warmer in the microwave at bedtime. (And aren’t we all glad the beanbag season is almost gone.)

The community jigsaw puzzle table has been entertaining since it arrived 2-3 weeks ago, but not for the reason you might imagine. It’s been bounced around to different locations Goldilocks and the Three Bears style. One room was too cold, another too far off the beaten path and the just right place in the lobby, the marketing director didn’t like. She was cagey like a fox and went to the CEO to get it moved yet again. But as the concierge correctly said, “If there’s ever going to a protest march on this campus it will be over the puzzle table.” Six of the puzzle workers went to the CEO in mass and told him the marketing director doesn’t live here and shouldn’t have a say it it. Not to mention they’re marketing this place to people over 55 and old people like to do jigsaw puzzles. The puzzle went back to the lobby.

But that wasn’t the end of the puzzle drama. We finished one puzzle and Mr. And Mrs. Matchy-Matchy started another puzzle only they started it with the top of the puzzle running along the side of the puzzle table so it’s hard make any sense of what you’re looking at and they laid out all the pieces to one side of the of the border pieces instead of on both sides making it hard for anyone but them to work on it. One of them sat in front of puzzle-in-progress and the other stool blocking all the pieces. With the first puzzle we could get five people around the table working together. I don't know what to think about the group puzzle experience. I also just found out that someone took a puzzle piece home so he could have the satisfaction of putting the last piece in place. With the second puzzle, two people did it. Someone needs to remind them they're not twelve years old. And once I was standing with a piece in my hand when another resident took it out of my hand and said she knew where it went. She didn’t. Why did she have to have that piece when there were 500+ others on the table to choose from? It's one of the old people mysteries I can't solve except to say I'm wondering if a community puzzle is bringing out some long, lost sibling rivalries.

On to my latest Netflix obsession. If you liked the gritty, character driven series In the Dark you’ll probably also like Hap and Lenard. It’s based on Joe Landsdale’s book series by the same name. It’s set in East Texas in the late 1980s and I’ll quote a Salon article to describe what it’s about. “Hap is a former 1960s white radical and hippie. He is best friends with Leonard, a black gay Vietnam veteran who is also a Republican. Together in their small corner of the world they try to do the right thing in keeping with their own code of honor about respecting the human rights and dignity of all people. The television series and novels are compelling on a number of levels, but what is perhaps most striking is the authenticity of the relationships between the characters and how Lansdale's humane values shine through in what he describes as his Southern noir-influenced 'mojo' style of storytelling.” 

I will add that Hap and Lenard became friends in early childhood after a drunk driver killed both their fathers. Honest to God, some of the seedy situations they get themselves into had me sitting on the edge of my bed in the wee hours of the morning more than a few times. It’s not a series everyone will like, but if you like crime/thrillers you might want to try Hap and Lenard. It got canceled during the Trump administration when racial tensions heated up and the show became too hot for Sundance TV. A good article about it can be found at the web address below. For some reason the Bloggers platform isn't allowing me to embed the link today.   ©

https://www.salon.com/2018/06/12/losing-hap-and-leonard-in-the-trump-age-this-show-was-an-inoculation-for-some-people/

Death Defying Acts Born out of Boredom

I thought I’d try a trick that Dawn over at Bohemian Valhalla likes to do. She plays with catchy post titles trying to draw people into reading her blog. Did it work? She’s good at it, and me? I’ve never been good at naming things---painting, poems, essays. It’s a wonder my dogs weren’t given letters in the alphabet instead of the names I would have given my babies had I had any. Sometimes it can take me longer to name a post than to write it. I generally start out with a working title but it changes as I work on the content. Death Defying Acts---spelled ‘death defining acts’---was the working title here. Can you tell I’ve run out of things to write about? I can’t wait until Easter is over and this continuum care campus gets back normal. They’re celebrating Easter here more than Christmas and not the fluffy bunnies and pastel colored eggs kind of Easter. Wafers for Lent are easy to come by here but not a a single marshmallow Peeps has made an appearance. I might preform a death defying act this afternoon and venture out to the dollar store to get some yellow Peeps. They were in short supply last year.

I finally made it over to the activities room to see the new jigsaw puzzle table and two hours later I was still there. It’s a pleasant room with widows on both sides, lots of light. They are waiting for a couple of round card tables to make their way across the ocean, but for now there are three oblong long tables set up which I hear tell is filled with some loud and serious card games going on. But in the time I was there not a soul came in or walked by. (It was after lunch and nap time for old people. I don’t do naps so I still have bragging rights to youth---age being relative around here, of course.) 

The jigsaw puzzle in progress is large and complicated and the edges were done. The pieces were all laid out but no attempt to sort them by color or subject or shape was made. That will bug the heck out of me if I make a habit of stopping by and I think I might. I got a 4” x 7” section done and sorted all the pieces with faces on them off to one area before I forced myself to leave. At home when I do puzzles I set a timer so I’m aware of how much time goes by. I suspect I’ll need to carry my timer over when I go to that room. Otherwise the night security guard/s will probably find me still there when doing their rounds at two in the morning.

Another afternoon was saved from death by boredom when I signed up to go to our Art Museum downtown, to see an exhibition of work by two black photographers of “great importance” in the field: Dawould Bey and Carrie Mae Weems. It covered work from over forty years of their careers and the pamphlet we were handed called them “today’s most important and influential photo-based artists.” They both worked entirely in black and white and his stuff, which was mostly portraits and candid stuff taken in Harlem, I liked but her work I hated. She was in every single picture she took and she called her stuff “performance art.” She sets up a still life of objects and/or people, sets a timer so can run around in front of the camera and be part of the photograph. Forty years of doing selfies would put me on the train to Crazyville and the bitch factor in me wondered if she is a recognized photographer for her endurance rather than for any artistic quality in the photos. Forty years is a long time to be shouting, "Look at me! Look at me!"

One set of 12 'kitchen table' photos told a story and viewers are supposed to guess what it is. We had one of those I’m-smarter-than-you-because-I-understand-this-stuff museum docents you get once in a while who asked questions trying to get us to see what she saw and she was Oh So impressed with the talent on display. In turn I was thinking I was Oh So not enjoying Ms. Weems’ photo-art. I didn’t just not like it, I had a physical reaction to it that felt like anger mixed with wanting to get out of Dodge as quick as possible. And the longer the docent made us sit there trying to get us to cough up answers the madder I got.

And it’s just now dawning on me that I was probably so uncomfortable because maybe I was flashing-back to when my husband was in speech therapy and they’d throw photos down in front of him and try to pull language out of him by pointing out stuff in the photos. On a good day a half hour session would yield 4-5 words. One time they showed Don a picture of a man with a gun pointing at a baby elephant and the entire yield of words that day was “BAD!” repeated over and over again while Don slammed his finger down on the photo. I was sitting behind a one-way mirror and I explained to the professor in the room with her students watching the session that Don was a very ethical hunter and the hunter in the photo obviously was not. The poor student therapist working with Don that day didn’t have a chance of getting a good grade that session. Instead of the student therapist trying to pull words out of him he turned the tables on her and had her doing the word search work. A common error for the students (and families) to make.

I was Don's aphasia interpreter for 12 1/2 years and for six year of that time I helped him with homework using photos of random scenes. It wasn't art. It wasn't performance. At the museum Weems' photos became tools that the gloating docent used to give me a look at my past and my future, should I ever have a stroke and can't talk. If art is about evoking an emotional response then her kitchen table series was a huge success. But somehow I don't think 'my emotions' were what she was going for, do you?  ©

Photo from Carrie Mae Weems' kitchen table series.

The Way We Were and Other Widow Worries

jigsaw puzzle

I’ve always loved the 1973 movie, The Way We Were, with Robert Redford playing Hubbell and Barbara Streisand playing Katie. If you haven’t seen it you must be living under a rock. It’s a classic and comedian Gilda Radner once summed up the plot like this: "It's about a Jewish woman with a big nose and her blonde boyfriend, who move to Hollywood, and it's during the blacklist and it puts a strain on their relationship." That’s all true as far as it goes but it’s the strong contrast between the Katie and Hubbell’s personalities that makes the movie memorable---at least for me. She was a vocal woman with strong anti-war opinions, a political activist who took life and current events super seriously. Hubbell was a carefree guy with no particular leanings in the political arena. I can’t remember if it was Katie or Hubbell himself who described him as a guy who had everything in life came easy for him, but it fit. His good looks and athletic ability took him places without much effort. Of course, their love affair and short marriage was ill-fated and the movie ended with what has been described as the “most romantic love scene of all times.” I wouldn’t say that---ever---but I guess the idea of a chance meeting with an old flame who looks at you like the ‘good one’ that got away has a lot of appeal to some women.

I like the movie because I always thought Don and Hubbell had some qualities in common. Some things in life came easy for Don---he was a good looking people-magnet with a silver tongue for story telling---and I thought of myself as a Katie type who got too intense sometimes. Before I met Don I had lost a couple of boyfriends because I had aspirations that didn’t include staying home and keeping a supply of a clean socks and hot meals available 24/7 for her man. And maybe it was the gods of twisted humor that, in the end, turned me into a married woman who spent the last 12 years of Don’s life staying at home and keeping a supply of clean socks and hot meals available and turned him into someone who had to struggle just to get one word ‘sentences’ out of his aphasiac brain.

One of the advantages of growing old is you actually get to see the ending of things like an x-boyfriend who eventually came out of the closet long after our relationship ended. When I think about the pain of that break up compared to the pain it would have caused if I had married the guy and found out 20 years later that he’d been hiding a secret all that time---well, I dodged a huge bullet didn’t I. Another guy I could have married turned his wife into a sports widow on the weekends and short-order cook for his buddies and I would have hated that life-style. Nope, I don’t have any regrets about the ones that got away. If I saw either of those guys today I wouldn’t look at them longingly like Hubbell did with Katie and wish I had chosen a different path. I doubt they would look at me that way either. If given enough time, life works out the way it should or at least in a way that finally makes sense.

Now that I’m wearing my widow’s garb I’ve entered a new phase of life. I’m too old to make mistakes and miss-steps because I don’t have enough time left on earth to make corrections. Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time, right now, keeping a long range plan in sight so I can keep the daily stuff moving in that direction. Too often I find myself drifting without accomplishing more than getting dressed by noon and day-dreaming and plotting my course. The future seems like a giant jigsaw puzzle and I’m still working on finding the edge pieces. 

Have I ever confessed that I like putting jigsaw puzzles together, the harder the better? I've never liked telling people that because it sounds like something only old people do, but I've loved them since I was a kid and work 3-4 puzzles a year. I have a puzzle with pictures on both the front and the back of the pieces, a round puzzle and puzzles with geometric patterns. I have other puzzles with repetitive images that are really difficult. (Visualize hundreds of yellow pencils lined up side by side---that’s the picture on my favorite puzzle.) I could do one of these difficult puzzles in two days. Don would roll by in his wheelchair from time to time and look at me with admiration. He was impressed. I haven’t done one since he died. If widowhood has taught me anything about myself it’s that his admiration was a prime motivator in my life. I always thought I was my own motivator and I truly was before we met all those years ago but somehow I must have transferred that chore to him; I fed off his admiration, breathed it in like air and I miss that. Now I’m struggling to motive my own self again. This was the way we were. Now I am writing the sequel: the way I am. ©