Have you heard AD36, a common virus that causes colds in humans, also causes weight gain in animals? One-third of obese folks test positive for this virus, as compared with only one in ten of leaner people, and we know those ones in tens virus-carrying skinnies are probably anorexic.
I’m recovering from a twenty-year-old cold, okay? Pass the doughnuts.
© Donna Warner, August, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
ON REVIEWING MY VACATION
Thanks, Keetha and Nicole and the Rolling Stones:
You cant always get what you want
You cant always get what you want
You cant always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you might find
You get what you need
You cant always get what you want
You cant always get what you want
You cant always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you might find
You get what you need
Monday, August 20, 2007
Looks Like Heaven to Me
Cabin! Sunsets! Sunrises! Fishing! Pool! Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant! Fun, remember?
Before we left town I hit the bread store for three grocery sacks of reject bread, and the local bakery for sour dough. I returned home three (3!!!) times before Sandra, Tristan and I made it to the city limits. How could I forget the little phone, the antibiotics and the swimsuit…separately? We got turned around in the last-city-to-have-a-bathroom-before-the-resort-Tristan-had-to-potty-how-did-we-end-up-going-North-when-we-were-headed-South, and were so late we had to stop to eat fried fish that had been sitting under warming lights. On the road again, a little fawn ohmygod ran right in front of my big car, whamp, the car behind me swerved wildly to miss rear-ending us, we made it, at the campground there was no pool (wishful remembering), the swimming area was closed in hot, hot August because all the lifeguards had returned to school, there was a brown spider in the tiny bathroom, at the Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant! the gumbo was gray and lunch’s fried-fish-under-the-warming-lights had been better than hot-out-of-the-kitchen-fish here, when Tristan’s grand-daddy came for the night, the beds were ill arranged for sleeping three and one, Tristan’s grand-daddy forgot the fishing poles, the air-conditioners in the cabin almost didn’t work, nobody could really sleep, something bit me in the bed at night and left an angry red welt. This is a for-fun vacation? Thanks, Universe.
In lieu of swimming we hit three discount stores before we found the big plastic ball and bat, and in the process we managed to land a haul of bubbles and a miniature 18-wheeler and a package of five little super balls. We rolled the beautiful beach towels to block the space between the couch and the floor so we wouldn’t have to constantly bat the little super balls out with the broom handle. Wish you were there?
But we did have the pier and more old bread than the geese could eat. The little fish loved bread, too, so you could see them with their eerie blue fins silently gliding through the water, and did you know the sign for fish is your hand in front of you, little finger on bottom, thumb on top, fingers together and waving as you move your hand from right to left? Try it. Wave those fingers a bit faster. You’ll know immediately you’re signing fish, it’s intuitive. Have I told you Tristan is deaf?
The second day we got the big cabin with extra beds and good air-conditioning. We saw sunsets and sunrises, had pimento cheese on sour dough for breakfast, drank coffee, fed geese and fish, blew bubbles, pitched, hit, and caught balls, read books, practiced sign language, early to bed and early to rise. A grandma and a great-aunt seemed to be just about enough grown-ups for an active four-almost-five-year-old who can’t hear, and when he doesn’t like what you’re signing, has selective seeing.
After our last meal, Tristan tried to take the money we’d left on the table for the waitress. Though he had seen us pay for meals before, perhaps this was the first time we had left money so alluringly in the open. Sandra helped me sign, “That’s to pay for our food.” We could see him understanding that the money made the food possible. I’m the great-aunt, and I gave him a dollar just because, and when he wanted the quarter on the table, I gave him a quarter, too. He grinned and immediately began waving his money, trying to attract the interest of the waitress. “Ask him what he wants,” I told Sandra. She did. He was sparkling. "Ice cream!” he signed, “Candy!”
In the car he spread out both his arms, made little fists with his hands, the little finger and thumb extended. He waggled one hand toward Sandra and then toward himself, and toward me and himself with the other. The sign for together, the three of us.
That Universe. It’s intuitive.
© Donna Warner, August, 2007
Before we left town I hit the bread store for three grocery sacks of reject bread, and the local bakery for sour dough. I returned home three (3!!!) times before Sandra, Tristan and I made it to the city limits. How could I forget the little phone, the antibiotics and the swimsuit…separately? We got turned around in the last-city-to-have-a-bathroom-before-the-resort-Tristan-had-to-potty-how-did-we-end-up-going-North-when-we-were-headed-South, and were so late we had to stop to eat fried fish that had been sitting under warming lights. On the road again, a little fawn ohmygod ran right in front of my big car, whamp, the car behind me swerved wildly to miss rear-ending us, we made it, at the campground there was no pool (wishful remembering), the swimming area was closed in hot, hot August because all the lifeguards had returned to school, there was a brown spider in the tiny bathroom, at the Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant! the gumbo was gray and lunch’s fried-fish-under-the-warming-lights had been better than hot-out-of-the-kitchen-fish here, when Tristan’s grand-daddy came for the night, the beds were ill arranged for sleeping three and one, Tristan’s grand-daddy forgot the fishing poles, the air-conditioners in the cabin almost didn’t work, nobody could really sleep, something bit me in the bed at night and left an angry red welt. This is a for-fun vacation? Thanks, Universe.
In lieu of swimming we hit three discount stores before we found the big plastic ball and bat, and in the process we managed to land a haul of bubbles and a miniature 18-wheeler and a package of five little super balls. We rolled the beautiful beach towels to block the space between the couch and the floor so we wouldn’t have to constantly bat the little super balls out with the broom handle. Wish you were there?
But we did have the pier and more old bread than the geese could eat. The little fish loved bread, too, so you could see them with their eerie blue fins silently gliding through the water, and did you know the sign for fish is your hand in front of you, little finger on bottom, thumb on top, fingers together and waving as you move your hand from right to left? Try it. Wave those fingers a bit faster. You’ll know immediately you’re signing fish, it’s intuitive. Have I told you Tristan is deaf?
The second day we got the big cabin with extra beds and good air-conditioning. We saw sunsets and sunrises, had pimento cheese on sour dough for breakfast, drank coffee, fed geese and fish, blew bubbles, pitched, hit, and caught balls, read books, practiced sign language, early to bed and early to rise. A grandma and a great-aunt seemed to be just about enough grown-ups for an active four-almost-five-year-old who can’t hear, and when he doesn’t like what you’re signing, has selective seeing.
After our last meal, Tristan tried to take the money we’d left on the table for the waitress. Though he had seen us pay for meals before, perhaps this was the first time we had left money so alluringly in the open. Sandra helped me sign, “That’s to pay for our food.” We could see him understanding that the money made the food possible. I’m the great-aunt, and I gave him a dollar just because, and when he wanted the quarter on the table, I gave him a quarter, too. He grinned and immediately began waving his money, trying to attract the interest of the waitress. “Ask him what he wants,” I told Sandra. She did. He was sparkling. "Ice cream!” he signed, “Candy!”
In the car he spread out both his arms, made little fists with his hands, the little finger and thumb extended. He waggled one hand toward Sandra and then toward himself, and toward me and himself with the other. The sign for together, the three of us.
That Universe. It’s intuitive.
© Donna Warner, August, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Clarity
My sister Sandra, coming to visit me, was flying with her grandson Tristan for the first time. They would be riding in other people's cars after they arrived. What are the car seat laws, she asked me. Tristan is only four, and by state law would require a child’s seat once he was here. With his stuff and her stuff and nobody to ferry them to the airport, Sandra could not see herself lugging his seat, too. I asked my friend with a five-year-old if she had a car seat we could borrow. She had just gotten rid of hers, so I put the word out among the with-small-child group, only I had discovered what we needed was a booster seat, not a car seat, and nobody I knew had one.
On the ground and headed to my house, Sandra stopped at Wally World and picked up a booster seat for under twenty dollars. With the booster seat Tristan rides high enough to see out the window, and he is also legal.
Today my friend emailed me: When is your sister coming in? I have a booster seat…could her grandson use that instead of a car seat?
If you're feeling a lack in your life, remember you have to know what you want before you get what you think you're asking for or you have to know what you're asking for to get what you want or something like that.
D. Warner, August 13, 2007
On the ground and headed to my house, Sandra stopped at Wally World and picked up a booster seat for under twenty dollars. With the booster seat Tristan rides high enough to see out the window, and he is also legal.
Today my friend emailed me: When is your sister coming in? I have a booster seat…could her grandson use that instead of a car seat?
If you're feeling a lack in your life, remember you have to know what you want before you get what you think you're asking for or you have to know what you're asking for to get what you want or something like that.
D. Warner, August 13, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Good Vibrations
Researchers have discovered your facial expression releases emotionally charged chemicals in your brain. A smile releases happy chemicals, a frown releases negative ones. So if you’re happy because you're going on a beachy trip with your sister and her grandson, you’re smiling, right? And when you’re happy, then walking the dog, calling your grumpy daffy old aunt, cleaning the toilet, washing the dishes, just about anything is A-Okay. And you discover August, heat wave and all, really is fun. Go ahead. Try it. Put on a happy face.
© Donna Warner, August, 2007
© Donna Warner, August, 2007
RECEPTIVITY
Always in August it seems as if Fun has surely drained from the weave of the world. Those towels striped the color of the tropics, six lush feet of Egyptian cotton and half-price, a mere pittance for such sweet promise, reminded me of that. The old Happy Talk song from South Pacific played in my head—you know—‘you got to have a dream, you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?’ Somehow here it was, another hot, grim August, another year without a beach, how did this happen again, last year I said next year, and now, here under the bright glare of this week’s shopping at Wal-Mart, this year was already spinning out of sight
I’ve read the books, I know the Secret, act as if your dream has come true and it will, so I piled the lengths of Aztec gold and orange with that thin strip of sea blue into the bottom of my basket. At this stage of my life I could afford a frivolous notion, so why at the check-out stand did I tell the clerk I had changed my mind? What I could not afford was to open a drawer some future August and discover the forgotten towel packed in the bottom, dusty and never used.
Though I put it back, acceded to the nonclutter wisdom of my new housekeeping creed, the colors of the towel hovered in my dreams, soft and bright and full of hope.
Then my sister called. She was coming in the middle of the month, bringing her lone grandchild with her. I have told you: August. Hot. I did not tell you that judges are ordering school children to stay inside, forbidding outdoor sports in this heatstroke weather. What’s a four-year-old, alone with the oldies to do? How are the oldies going to keep him occupied without losing their sanity? What a child needs in the throes of such a month is water.
On a notion, a beach towel wish, I called our favorite little family resort, the one we go to each Easter before the pool is open, the one that by January is booked solid into next winter, the one that has had no openings the previous two times I called this year.
The week my sister and my nephew were coming, our favorite cabin was open. The cabin has air-condition and plenty of beds and a nice little kitchen for breakfast and sandwiches and guacamole. The cabin is on a lake, with a pier and turtles and ducks and fish. The resort has a restaurant with yummy, melting-in-the-mouth vacation food, cooked and served by other people. It is hot, hot summer August and the pool is open.
Cabin! Sunsets! Sunrises! Fishing! Pool! Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant!
The connection between beach towels and a trip to a small family campground and receptivity might be a bit subtle, but for me that’s how this Universe/God/Law of Attraction/miracle stuff happens, even when I get the glooms and forget what’s possible. It’s all ideas. We’re ideas. And we get to choose the ideas we want to color our lives. Beach towels dreams, real-time pool trips…Universal truth working out, or hum-drum coincidence? And small stuff at that…what about world peace and joy and love? But the next time I feel like a weary traveler in a glum world, I hope I remember to choose the good dream.
Yesterday in Wal-Mart I bought two six-foot-long gleaming Egyptian cotton beach towels. “You’re going to a beach?” the clerk wistfully asked.
"Yeah," I said, though the beach part wasn’t exactly true. I grinned big time. "I'm gonna have some fun."
© Donna Warner, August, 2007
I’ve read the books, I know the Secret, act as if your dream has come true and it will, so I piled the lengths of Aztec gold and orange with that thin strip of sea blue into the bottom of my basket. At this stage of my life I could afford a frivolous notion, so why at the check-out stand did I tell the clerk I had changed my mind? What I could not afford was to open a drawer some future August and discover the forgotten towel packed in the bottom, dusty and never used.
Though I put it back, acceded to the nonclutter wisdom of my new housekeeping creed, the colors of the towel hovered in my dreams, soft and bright and full of hope.
Then my sister called. She was coming in the middle of the month, bringing her lone grandchild with her. I have told you: August. Hot. I did not tell you that judges are ordering school children to stay inside, forbidding outdoor sports in this heatstroke weather. What’s a four-year-old, alone with the oldies to do? How are the oldies going to keep him occupied without losing their sanity? What a child needs in the throes of such a month is water.
On a notion, a beach towel wish, I called our favorite little family resort, the one we go to each Easter before the pool is open, the one that by January is booked solid into next winter, the one that has had no openings the previous two times I called this year.
The week my sister and my nephew were coming, our favorite cabin was open. The cabin has air-condition and plenty of beds and a nice little kitchen for breakfast and sandwiches and guacamole. The cabin is on a lake, with a pier and turtles and ducks and fish. The resort has a restaurant with yummy, melting-in-the-mouth vacation food, cooked and served by other people. It is hot, hot summer August and the pool is open.
Cabin! Sunsets! Sunrises! Fishing! Pool! Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant!
The connection between beach towels and a trip to a small family campground and receptivity might be a bit subtle, but for me that’s how this Universe/God/Law of Attraction/miracle stuff happens, even when I get the glooms and forget what’s possible. It’s all ideas. We’re ideas. And we get to choose the ideas we want to color our lives. Beach towels dreams, real-time pool trips…Universal truth working out, or hum-drum coincidence? And small stuff at that…what about world peace and joy and love? But the next time I feel like a weary traveler in a glum world, I hope I remember to choose the good dream.
Yesterday in Wal-Mart I bought two six-foot-long gleaming Egyptian cotton beach towels. “You’re going to a beach?” the clerk wistfully asked.
"Yeah," I said, though the beach part wasn’t exactly true. I grinned big time. "I'm gonna have some fun."
© Donna Warner, August, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Forbidden Fruit
We have a mail slot in our door, and we accidentally trained our dogs to kill the mail. I say accidentally because we caught them snatching the mail, and we thought it was so funny that we would feed them junk mail through the slot. It’s what old, not-too-bright people do for entertainment. Then the little darlings managed to take a chunk out of a refund check one too many times and we got a new mail carrier with a dog phobia. Up went the new outside mail box.
We changed our wicked way, but the dogs didn’t. When the mail comes and is safely deposited in the outside box, they go wild, running and barking and gouging claw marks in the front door. They do this, occasionally falling in a snarl on one another, until I retrieve the mail. The big dog is satisfied when I’ve done my job, but the little one, the Yorkzilla, is still determined to shred anything incoming. He performs wild leaps and twists that would make any Olympic ice skater proud. Occasionally he’s managed to snag a mail-order book or a Netflix cd, and anything accidentally hitting the floor is hamster bedding.
But my husband has taught me a new trick. Select a piece of junk mail. Offer it to him. In the middle of a feeding frenzy, Little Bo gets a befuddled look on his face, and chagrined, turns away from the offering.
When you're playing at being the bad dog, it’s only really good if they don't want you to have it.
© Donna Warner, July, 2007
We changed our wicked way, but the dogs didn’t. When the mail comes and is safely deposited in the outside box, they go wild, running and barking and gouging claw marks in the front door. They do this, occasionally falling in a snarl on one another, until I retrieve the mail. The big dog is satisfied when I’ve done my job, but the little one, the Yorkzilla, is still determined to shred anything incoming. He performs wild leaps and twists that would make any Olympic ice skater proud. Occasionally he’s managed to snag a mail-order book or a Netflix cd, and anything accidentally hitting the floor is hamster bedding.
But my husband has taught me a new trick. Select a piece of junk mail. Offer it to him. In the middle of a feeding frenzy, Little Bo gets a befuddled look on his face, and chagrined, turns away from the offering.
When you're playing at being the bad dog, it’s only really good if they don't want you to have it.
© Donna Warner, July, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Redemption
A friend writes me of her aunt ‘who longs for God and has gone the scary fundamentalist route that still hasn’t filled her up (but she’s scared the beejeezuz out of the rest of us). My mom keeps telling her that she has everything she already needs but she doesn’t get it. It makes me sad for her. She tries so hard and gets no happier. Not saying that I completely get it. Sometimes I still think shoes are the answer but it is a temporary insanity.’
Remember the Three Stooges routine where Larry starts yelling he can’t see, and Mo says what’s wrong, and Larry says I’ve got my eyes closed?
And there’s a Rumi poem about the guy knocking at a closed door, wanting what Methodists from Cleveland would call God to let him in, and then he finds out he’s been knocking from the inside?
So why does the search for God always end in disillusionment? If you think you’re lost, Baby, you best open your eyes and quit banging on the door, because God has always loved you, and could never, would never, never, ever, not in a zillion years, not in eternity, misplace you.
Remember the Three Stooges routine where Larry starts yelling he can’t see, and Mo says what’s wrong, and Larry says I’ve got my eyes closed?
And there’s a Rumi poem about the guy knocking at a closed door, wanting what Methodists from Cleveland would call God to let him in, and then he finds out he’s been knocking from the inside?
So why does the search for God always end in disillusionment? If you think you’re lost, Baby, you best open your eyes and quit banging on the door, because God has always loved you, and could never, would never, never, ever, not in a zillion years, not in eternity, misplace you.
It Really Is That Simple
“The alarm woke me this morning,” my husband said, “and I was glad.” Usually he is awake before it goes off, and if he is sleeping, it means he’s really tired. “I was dreaming. I don’t remember the dream, but I know I was confronted with an unsolvable conundrum I didn’t want to solve. Then the alarm went off. ‘Eureka!,’ I said, ‘That’s the answer. Wake up.’ So I did.”
Friday, February 02, 2007
Gotcha
I’m fat. Like the rest of America, I think Fat is a pejorative. A character flaw. Nay—a sin!
And I want to be skinny. But more than I want to be skinny, at times I want chocolate. Or those macadamia nut cookies that cost $1.25 EACH, but then they are SO huge.
Recently my husband uncharacteristically commented on my pulchritude, but not way before I acknowledged to myself the results of cookie coddling was getting out of hand. “I’m trying,” I say. “No more sugar.”
And I avoided the peanut butter cups for over a week, until I felt I had stepped up to lead the brigade on the stress front, and there they were in their covered glass bowl, small and snackable and sweet. That was three days ago.
“We still have any of those little candies?” said my husband who smokes and eats honey buns for breakfast.
Of course not.
“Who ate them?” His smile was sly.
How I hated him. And he knew it.
“I wasn’t being mean,” he said.
Was to.
I thought I was over this. I sometimes encourage myself to believe if I had all those years to live over again, due to my sustained spiritual practice I wouldn’t be so sensitive, tearful, downright rageful. If I had it to do over again, I’d definitely do it better.
Wrong.
“You’re just feeling guilty, or this wouldn’t get you so upset,” said the smoke sucking, honey bun guzzling guru.
And he’s not guilty of a crime that no one other than some awful, catty woman who’s not your friend would commit?
But I knew if I was angry, I was wrong. So I prayed that prayer where I recognized God didn’t create my anger, and it was a mistake, and Love was my only Reality, and I was willing to let the anger go, only I didn’t know how, but I was willing to let it go, and be shown the truth.
And it went. It did. I realized he had done nothing to me, and I really did know him, he wasn’t trying to be mean, and I was even able to let go of putting it off to he was just a man which meant stupid, and I did get to the Love part, and the evening wasn’t ruined, and the willingness to let go and the willingness to receive a different answer worked again.
But why again? Why was I still going insane over something like five peanut butter cups (the little snack ones)?
Then it occurred to me: I had felt guilty.
And there was so much of it I was still lugging around.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
What would happen if I let go of guilt? If the next time I was ready to go off on the cretins, instead of getting to the tears, the rage, the finger-pointing justifications and then praying to let them go, why not go for the jugular? Why not just let go of guilt…not theirs, mine.
Would I possibly be done then?
And I want to be skinny. But more than I want to be skinny, at times I want chocolate. Or those macadamia nut cookies that cost $1.25 EACH, but then they are SO huge.
Recently my husband uncharacteristically commented on my pulchritude, but not way before I acknowledged to myself the results of cookie coddling was getting out of hand. “I’m trying,” I say. “No more sugar.”
And I avoided the peanut butter cups for over a week, until I felt I had stepped up to lead the brigade on the stress front, and there they were in their covered glass bowl, small and snackable and sweet. That was three days ago.
“We still have any of those little candies?” said my husband who smokes and eats honey buns for breakfast.
Of course not.
“Who ate them?” His smile was sly.
How I hated him. And he knew it.
“I wasn’t being mean,” he said.
Was to.
I thought I was over this. I sometimes encourage myself to believe if I had all those years to live over again, due to my sustained spiritual practice I wouldn’t be so sensitive, tearful, downright rageful. If I had it to do over again, I’d definitely do it better.
Wrong.
“You’re just feeling guilty, or this wouldn’t get you so upset,” said the smoke sucking, honey bun guzzling guru.
And he’s not guilty of a crime that no one other than some awful, catty woman who’s not your friend would commit?
But I knew if I was angry, I was wrong. So I prayed that prayer where I recognized God didn’t create my anger, and it was a mistake, and Love was my only Reality, and I was willing to let the anger go, only I didn’t know how, but I was willing to let it go, and be shown the truth.
And it went. It did. I realized he had done nothing to me, and I really did know him, he wasn’t trying to be mean, and I was even able to let go of putting it off to he was just a man which meant stupid, and I did get to the Love part, and the evening wasn’t ruined, and the willingness to let go and the willingness to receive a different answer worked again.
But why again? Why was I still going insane over something like five peanut butter cups (the little snack ones)?
Then it occurred to me: I had felt guilty.
And there was so much of it I was still lugging around.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
What would happen if I let go of guilt? If the next time I was ready to go off on the cretins, instead of getting to the tears, the rage, the finger-pointing justifications and then praying to let them go, why not go for the jugular? Why not just let go of guilt…not theirs, mine.
Would I possibly be done then?
The God-Shaped Hole
Yesterday I wrote about do-nuts and how, if indulged, there seems to be no end to wanting do-nuts. I ended with “So is there really something else we are longing for? Some wholeness, healing, limitless holiness that offers not more desire, but peace?”
Last night I realized I got the do-nut message wrong. Wholeness, limitless holiness, peace is. Got it? That’s what we are. Now.
If we are longing, even for God, then we’ve forgotten who we are, what we are. And with that longing, even for God, we are just opening up a hole we are unsuccessfully going to try fill: with do-nuts, with trinkets, with people, with new skills, with new experiences, with God.
Won’t happen.
Got it? Just relax. What you really want is already here. Peace.
Last night I realized I got the do-nut message wrong. Wholeness, limitless holiness, peace is. Got it? That’s what we are. Now.
If we are longing, even for God, then we’ve forgotten who we are, what we are. And with that longing, even for God, we are just opening up a hole we are unsuccessfully going to try fill: with do-nuts, with trinkets, with people, with new skills, with new experiences, with God.
Won’t happen.
Got it? Just relax. What you really want is already here. Peace.
Letting Go
“How’s Alton?” I ask my friend.
“He’s okay,” she says. Her voice dips a little, deferring to ambiguity, acknowledging ‘okay’ can accommodate a lot of pain. “He calls his dad a lot to ask him to come home. Now that Justin has had papers drawn up, Alton may understand his dad’s not coming home, maybe he can get a little closure.”
What’s closure to a ten-year-old? The kid is great, full of vim, dedicated to whatever interests him, nice to old ladies, generous…an all around fine person. I know the statistics. I know children of divorce often carry wounds long into their adulthood. I do not want this for any kid, not for this kid.
“Tell him you know he loves his dad. Tell him even when he’s grown, he may still wish you and his dad were still together. But tell him sometimes when you love someone, you have to let that person do what he thinks is right, even if you don’t understand how it could possibly be right.” I want to help Alton, give him someway to honor his own feelings and still love his dad. I want something to heal the wound before it gets too deep.
Later I don’t know if I helped Alton or his mother, but I do realize I’d been teaching myself crazy pain doesn't come from what is gone, but from grasping for what used to be.
“He’s okay,” she says. Her voice dips a little, deferring to ambiguity, acknowledging ‘okay’ can accommodate a lot of pain. “He calls his dad a lot to ask him to come home. Now that Justin has had papers drawn up, Alton may understand his dad’s not coming home, maybe he can get a little closure.”
What’s closure to a ten-year-old? The kid is great, full of vim, dedicated to whatever interests him, nice to old ladies, generous…an all around fine person. I know the statistics. I know children of divorce often carry wounds long into their adulthood. I do not want this for any kid, not for this kid.
“Tell him you know he loves his dad. Tell him even when he’s grown, he may still wish you and his dad were still together. But tell him sometimes when you love someone, you have to let that person do what he thinks is right, even if you don’t understand how it could possibly be right.” I want to help Alton, give him someway to honor his own feelings and still love his dad. I want something to heal the wound before it gets too deep.
Later I don’t know if I helped Alton or his mother, but I do realize I’d been teaching myself crazy pain doesn't come from what is gone, but from grasping for what used to be.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Two Minute Musing
“He’s filed papers,” my neighbor said of her absent husband. She is wan, and her eyes are dark and distant and full of sorrow.
They have been married for 22 years. She could not tolerate me if I told her not to be sad. Instead I offer her the prayer I have to repeat often in my journey, using for her benefit God, since I know that is what she would use, as I often to do to name the Source of All Being.
Tell God you are sad, and that you know it is not His Will for you to be sad. Tell Him you are willing to let the sadness go, but you do not know how. Tell Him to take the sadness for you, and to show you what His happiness really is. Tell Him you are willing to accept what He wants for you.
This is how I have to do it…from having a fellow shopper slam my grocery cart, to some imagined offence by my husband, to the really scary life events I can’t control:
I do not deny how I feel…my sadness, anger or terror.
I acknowledge my feelings were not created by Source/God/Being/What I Am.
I acknowledge my feelings are a mistake.
I acknowledge my willingness to let them go, even if I don’t feel willing at the moment.
I acknowledge I cannot do this on my own.
I acknowledge my willingness to accept instead what God intends for me.
I don’t know how, but for me, it works every time. We are not talking about circumstances here; if I try to direct God’s Will, I am putting a limit on what I will allow Him to do for me. We are talking about feelings, as my husband likes to say sardonically. We are talking about peace/love/joy/happiness. And when I say my prayer (though sometimes I have to say it more than once…sometimes I say it feverishly, repeating it like an incantation…peace/love/joy/happiness always happens. I don’t know how it works. Maybe because that is the Source of my creation, because that’s all that I really am. The rest is just a foolish nightmare, from which I can easily awaken.
They have been married for 22 years. She could not tolerate me if I told her not to be sad. Instead I offer her the prayer I have to repeat often in my journey, using for her benefit God, since I know that is what she would use, as I often to do to name the Source of All Being.
Tell God you are sad, and that you know it is not His Will for you to be sad. Tell Him you are willing to let the sadness go, but you do not know how. Tell Him to take the sadness for you, and to show you what His happiness really is. Tell Him you are willing to accept what He wants for you.
This is how I have to do it…from having a fellow shopper slam my grocery cart, to some imagined offence by my husband, to the really scary life events I can’t control:
I do not deny how I feel…my sadness, anger or terror.
I acknowledge my feelings were not created by Source/God/Being/What I Am.
I acknowledge my feelings are a mistake.
I acknowledge my willingness to let them go, even if I don’t feel willing at the moment.
I acknowledge I cannot do this on my own.
I acknowledge my willingness to accept instead what God intends for me.
I don’t know how, but for me, it works every time. We are not talking about circumstances here; if I try to direct God’s Will, I am putting a limit on what I will allow Him to do for me. We are talking about feelings, as my husband likes to say sardonically. We are talking about peace/love/joy/happiness. And when I say my prayer (though sometimes I have to say it more than once…sometimes I say it feverishly, repeating it like an incantation…peace/love/joy/happiness always happens. I don’t know how it works. Maybe because that is the Source of my creation, because that’s all that I really am. The rest is just a foolish nightmare, from which I can easily awaken.
The Hungry Ghost Do-nut Jones
Last year a new do-nut shop opened in the strip mall a block from my house. Sometimes in the early morning as I walk my dogs the air is filled with the smell of cooking do-nuts, a heady mixture of yeast and sugar and sizzling oil that hits me like a rush. At that moment I want do-nuts, one, then another and another, all the do-nutty goodness promised by each intoxicating breath.
Only do-nuts make me queasy. One hot do-nut would melt in my mouth, so light it is almost nothing but an explosion of sweetness, and then I would want another, and even though I would not be nearly done tasting, tasting, tasting, I would feel my stomach roiling. Not to mention what limitless do-nuts would do to my already cautionary blood pressure, cholesterol, and body mass index. And the almost immediate carb coma.
I know this, and though I never buy them, still I want do-nuts. I am not hungry, and still I want do-nuts. I am seduced by the idea of do-nuts.
As you can guess, do-nuts are a…you know…metaphor.
For me the metaphor is the longing for an illusive temptation, something I don’t need, and is, indeed, bad for me, and even makes me ill, and that can never, ever give me enough to be enough. Like the next game of free-cell. Or another new book I don’t have time to read. The right recipe that will knock your socks off. The grievance I would control, expose, punish, forgive, and not forget because, darn it, you really hurt my feelings, and I never, ever want that to happen again.
Go ahead, name your own.
So is there really something else we are longing for? Some wholeness, healing, limitless holiness that offers not more desire, but peace?
Only do-nuts make me queasy. One hot do-nut would melt in my mouth, so light it is almost nothing but an explosion of sweetness, and then I would want another, and even though I would not be nearly done tasting, tasting, tasting, I would feel my stomach roiling. Not to mention what limitless do-nuts would do to my already cautionary blood pressure, cholesterol, and body mass index. And the almost immediate carb coma.
I know this, and though I never buy them, still I want do-nuts. I am not hungry, and still I want do-nuts. I am seduced by the idea of do-nuts.
As you can guess, do-nuts are a…you know…metaphor.
For me the metaphor is the longing for an illusive temptation, something I don’t need, and is, indeed, bad for me, and even makes me ill, and that can never, ever give me enough to be enough. Like the next game of free-cell. Or another new book I don’t have time to read. The right recipe that will knock your socks off. The grievance I would control, expose, punish, forgive, and not forget because, darn it, you really hurt my feelings, and I never, ever want that to happen again.
Go ahead, name your own.
So is there really something else we are longing for? Some wholeness, healing, limitless holiness that offers not more desire, but peace?
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
That Which Is Lost
Few people act as if they believe me when I tell them this: I have rarely been happy in my life. I know other people who felt they have problems with depression, but even they did not seem to understand when I would say, “I’ve never been happy.” One friend took a rebirthing class, and reported she experienced deep happiness, the kind she had only felt in childhood. I must have been an anxious baby, anxious in the womb. Happiness was a word I had no context for. Even in the most pleasant, the most fortunate of circumstances, I skittered on the surface of enjoyment, with my footing unsure on the edge of a chasm. Another friend in the upheavals of peri-menopause chemical surges said, “Every time I go out the door, I feel like I have stage fright. I don’t see how people live with this.” My friend was often angry or wary. I had not noticed happiness to be her dominant trait, but even she had known life without that amorphous cloud in the sacral chakra. I was astounded. Perhaps happiness was not an emotion, like the emperor’s new clothes, everyone else was faking.
The search for happiness has been the impetus for my entire squandered life. First I wanted to fit in the bosom of my family, then be a best friend, then have a boyfriend, interspersed and followed by self-help and how-tos, then spirituality, seeking the God Who Would Save Me from Myself. Perhaps I equated love and competence with happiness, but somehow, no matter how I was petted or praised, both seemed illusively out of my grasp, perhaps because I was constantly dancing for approval from someone else, while myopically focused on my frantic steps.
After years of pleading, bargaining, practicing, failing, maintaining, I began to have breakthroughs. On occasions, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, I was not unhappy. I was actually timorously optimistic. Sometimes, usually with someone who was in a state more angsted than mine, I was confident and calm. But not happy. I simply had no reference for happy.
Then one day while I was taking care of my paralyzed father, a stranger in a check-out line began to berate me, telling me how stupid I was. In my frazzled and frumpy existence, I had no trouble believing him, but I had been working on the concept of peace, the peace that passeth understanding, and I just wanted to pay for my goods and take my fatigue home. I had to call on God, and not very nicely, to handle the situation. Then a strange thing happened. My tormentor gleamed like honey. The store was suffused in an amber glow, a heavenly golden light. And from somewhere, not from me, but like a sea that had birth me, Laughter…. I have no words for it. I, the angry young man, his harried mother, the weary check-out clerk, the shoppers, we were all loved and supported by Laughter, and we were of It and It was of us. Nothing else changed, except I was at peace, and I was happy. I was of Happiness, Who had just shared a marvelous joke with me.
Though there were good moments after, Happiness did not reappear until two years later when I was trapped in the car with a woman with whom I had formed a contentious bond, a woman with whom I spoke more sharply than any other person in my life, a woman whom I was constantly telling she was Wrong. If I had not had hardening of the arteries, I would have left most encounters with her with a migraine. Still we were called together, and on this day, my spiritual lesson was “God’s will for you is perfect happiness.” Like magnets , we had been drawn into a difference of opinion that finally resulted in war. “You,” I hissed to the God of Lies who promised me happiness, “You need to fix this, because I cannot,” because she and I were broken, and even if we separated, we would be infected and could not expel the deadly toxin.
Then she spoke softly, discussing the meal we had just shared. And when I heard the music of her voice, I also noticed the amber glow enveloping us. I felt the leap of Laughter. I knew, once again, I was home, and I was glad. My friend, the Saint, and I could not go back and repair the damage done, for in that instant there was no damage. There was only Now.
The Laughter and Heaven’s glow ebbed, but I carried its memory everywhere, for I now knew happiness was real, and I expected to meet it again. Several months later I was sitting on my couch, watching a silly movie with my husband, when I noticed a weird feeling. Something was different. I checked out my body, part by part, until I realized the cloud of anxiety in my belly wasn’t present. Then I recognized the amber glow. Nothing was happening, and I was happy.
It lasted for a day. The following afternoon I felt something was slightly amiss. I realized I was missing the anxiety I had lived with for fifty-four years, as if a difficult family member had suddenly disappeared even though nobody had been fighting. By night, my sacral chakra was cloudy again. This was not what I wanted, even if somehow I had chosen it, chosen it in the womb, or some other life time ago, by some habitual action.
But I have learned, happiness is not the result of anything I do, or anything anyone else can do for me. It is the Eternal Source of my being. God is Love. God is Happiness. And though I have chosen to think I have been the source of my own happiness, though I’ve always failed miserably in achieving it, I can choose again, every day. I can choose to let Someone choose for me. And In Love, in Laughter, I know I am at Home, where Peace passeth all understanding. One day I will know it, forever.
The search for happiness has been the impetus for my entire squandered life. First I wanted to fit in the bosom of my family, then be a best friend, then have a boyfriend, interspersed and followed by self-help and how-tos, then spirituality, seeking the God Who Would Save Me from Myself. Perhaps I equated love and competence with happiness, but somehow, no matter how I was petted or praised, both seemed illusively out of my grasp, perhaps because I was constantly dancing for approval from someone else, while myopically focused on my frantic steps.
After years of pleading, bargaining, practicing, failing, maintaining, I began to have breakthroughs. On occasions, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, I was not unhappy. I was actually timorously optimistic. Sometimes, usually with someone who was in a state more angsted than mine, I was confident and calm. But not happy. I simply had no reference for happy.
Then one day while I was taking care of my paralyzed father, a stranger in a check-out line began to berate me, telling me how stupid I was. In my frazzled and frumpy existence, I had no trouble believing him, but I had been working on the concept of peace, the peace that passeth understanding, and I just wanted to pay for my goods and take my fatigue home. I had to call on God, and not very nicely, to handle the situation. Then a strange thing happened. My tormentor gleamed like honey. The store was suffused in an amber glow, a heavenly golden light. And from somewhere, not from me, but like a sea that had birth me, Laughter…. I have no words for it. I, the angry young man, his harried mother, the weary check-out clerk, the shoppers, we were all loved and supported by Laughter, and we were of It and It was of us. Nothing else changed, except I was at peace, and I was happy. I was of Happiness, Who had just shared a marvelous joke with me.
Though there were good moments after, Happiness did not reappear until two years later when I was trapped in the car with a woman with whom I had formed a contentious bond, a woman with whom I spoke more sharply than any other person in my life, a woman whom I was constantly telling she was Wrong. If I had not had hardening of the arteries, I would have left most encounters with her with a migraine. Still we were called together, and on this day, my spiritual lesson was “God’s will for you is perfect happiness.” Like magnets , we had been drawn into a difference of opinion that finally resulted in war. “You,” I hissed to the God of Lies who promised me happiness, “You need to fix this, because I cannot,” because she and I were broken, and even if we separated, we would be infected and could not expel the deadly toxin.
Then she spoke softly, discussing the meal we had just shared. And when I heard the music of her voice, I also noticed the amber glow enveloping us. I felt the leap of Laughter. I knew, once again, I was home, and I was glad. My friend, the Saint, and I could not go back and repair the damage done, for in that instant there was no damage. There was only Now.
The Laughter and Heaven’s glow ebbed, but I carried its memory everywhere, for I now knew happiness was real, and I expected to meet it again. Several months later I was sitting on my couch, watching a silly movie with my husband, when I noticed a weird feeling. Something was different. I checked out my body, part by part, until I realized the cloud of anxiety in my belly wasn’t present. Then I recognized the amber glow. Nothing was happening, and I was happy.
It lasted for a day. The following afternoon I felt something was slightly amiss. I realized I was missing the anxiety I had lived with for fifty-four years, as if a difficult family member had suddenly disappeared even though nobody had been fighting. By night, my sacral chakra was cloudy again. This was not what I wanted, even if somehow I had chosen it, chosen it in the womb, or some other life time ago, by some habitual action.
But I have learned, happiness is not the result of anything I do, or anything anyone else can do for me. It is the Eternal Source of my being. God is Love. God is Happiness. And though I have chosen to think I have been the source of my own happiness, though I’ve always failed miserably in achieving it, I can choose again, every day. I can choose to let Someone choose for me. And In Love, in Laughter, I know I am at Home, where Peace passeth all understanding. One day I will know it, forever.
Little Awakenings
4-19-2005
In the German movie, Mostly Martha, Martha, the second-best chef in Hamburg, obsesses on her work to keep the emotional world at bay. All of that changes when her sister dies, and Martha must provide her orphaned niece with the love the child requires in order to heal. But healing love is unlimited, and Martha is unwillingly included in its cure. In the final scene, Martha’s therapist has cooked a dessert for Martha, following her instructions, but his effort falls short of perfection. “Did you do this, add this, stir just so?” Martha asks, trying to pinpoint the error. Finally she addresses the sugar. He had not use the kind she suggested. “You can taste the sugar I used?” he says. “Of course not,” she says. “I can taste the sugar you didn’t use.” And as it is with sugar, so it is with love. If my life is not quite sweet, perhaps I am tasting the love I haven’t used.
4-14-05
Pallets
Miss Fran wanted pallets for her garage and basement. Being twenty years younger and having truck access made me the get-it-girl. I quickly became pallet aware: Sears, Wal-Mart, the grocery store, the in-business plant nursery and the nursery for sale. Sears had pallets, sometimes, on Tuesday afternoons only, and we would have to come and get them before the mysterious pallet man swooped them up. Wal-Mart, the grocery store, and open plant nursery used theirs (those things cost twenty dollars apiece, the grocery man said). The For Sale telephone number on the closed nursery was wrong. I remembered years ago when all the pallets were free, behind every building to be snatched by teen-agers for bonfires; but no more. Finally the deli had five wooden pallets and two plastic ones, and the skinny young manager helped me load them because his momma would be mad at him if he didn’t. Other than being slightly taken back I was old enough to be somebody’s momma’s concern, I had netted the prize.
But I remained pallet aware. The neighbor who owned the auto parts store said she got them in on occasion, and was always happy to give them away. The For Sale sign and the pallets disappeared from the closed plant nursery. Today I went to the lumber yard. Back in the corner were haphazard stacks of pallets, plus some littering the edge of one of the tin buildings.
“Do you sell those pallets?” I asked the check-out clerk.
“No,” he said. “If you want some, ask Travis. He’s not here right now.”
Fran doesn’t need more pallets, but I’ve seen my lesson for today. If you want something, keep looking. Somewhere it’s waiting for you, in abundance.
4-16-05
Strawberries
For a while I’ve been eyeing the strawberries in the grocery. They are big and red and look very eatable. Next to them is a flat cake called Bavarian sponge cake. The package of strawberries is huge, and I have resisted. Until yesterday, in honor of delicious spring weather, when I went whole hog…strawberries, Bavarian sponge cake and whipped cream. After I got home, I waited until late afternoon. Then I sliced the berries, sprinkled them with a tiny bit of sugar (even though the berries were so large, and not real juicy, they were sweet), layered them on the cake, and topped it off with whipped cream. I could barely wait until I was seated to munch my first bite. And the cake was dry, tasteless and crumbly. Which brings us to today’s lesson…if you choose a poor foundation, no matter how much lush sweetness you layer on top, you’re going to be disappointed in the end.
4-16-07
Awareness
After my dad was paralyzed and we came home from the hospital, we badly needed a ramp. I cannot now remember how long it took us to get one. The men from his church group were going to build it, then the carpenter down the street. I read everything I could get my hands on concerning ramps. All I remember now is that the incline should be one inch of rise for each twelve inches of height, which means, I think, if your front door is two feet off the ground, you must have 24 feet of ramp. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of ramp. We finally hired the lumber yard to build it, and it was beautiful and liberating. My father’s been dead for two years now, the house sold, the wonderful ramp dismantled, but to this day I admire the fine slope of a well-built ramp.
When we cleared out my parents’ home of fifty years, I scrounged packing boxes for months. It’s still hard pass a good box wasted in the trash.
Recently it’s been pallets that I’ve been hunting for a friend. Though she’ll never require another pallet in this lifetime, I now note the location of every pallet I pass.
Busted up concrete. Yep. My neighbor landscaped her walks and flower beds with slabs of concrete, and I decided to do the same. While I don’t have the tenacity of my neighbor, I do have piles of concrete I’ve begged, and I think the guy who helped me in my yard a while, stole. Don’t ask. He’s not working for the city any more.
The church two blocks over is tearing down their original sanctuary, and I walk past it every day. A couple of days ago, I saw an amazing sight, and when I passed my neighbor’s house, she was working in the yard, in her new herb bed bounded by small, symmetrical hunks of concrete.
“Mary Jane,” I said, “you won’t believe the prize rubble over at the church.”
She fell out laughing. “Keith was so happy when I quit forcing him to pick up broken concrete,” she said. “I don’t know if I can break his heart, but I’ve got to go and look.”
Somebody else’s ramp, boxes in the trash, pallets, and rubble. Dogwoods, geese, kittens. Harsh words, misdeeds, a helping hand, a kind remark. Be warned. If you focus on it, you’re going to see it for a long, long, time.
In the German movie, Mostly Martha, Martha, the second-best chef in Hamburg, obsesses on her work to keep the emotional world at bay. All of that changes when her sister dies, and Martha must provide her orphaned niece with the love the child requires in order to heal. But healing love is unlimited, and Martha is unwillingly included in its cure. In the final scene, Martha’s therapist has cooked a dessert for Martha, following her instructions, but his effort falls short of perfection. “Did you do this, add this, stir just so?” Martha asks, trying to pinpoint the error. Finally she addresses the sugar. He had not use the kind she suggested. “You can taste the sugar I used?” he says. “Of course not,” she says. “I can taste the sugar you didn’t use.” And as it is with sugar, so it is with love. If my life is not quite sweet, perhaps I am tasting the love I haven’t used.
4-14-05
Pallets
Miss Fran wanted pallets for her garage and basement. Being twenty years younger and having truck access made me the get-it-girl. I quickly became pallet aware: Sears, Wal-Mart, the grocery store, the in-business plant nursery and the nursery for sale. Sears had pallets, sometimes, on Tuesday afternoons only, and we would have to come and get them before the mysterious pallet man swooped them up. Wal-Mart, the grocery store, and open plant nursery used theirs (those things cost twenty dollars apiece, the grocery man said). The For Sale telephone number on the closed nursery was wrong. I remembered years ago when all the pallets were free, behind every building to be snatched by teen-agers for bonfires; but no more. Finally the deli had five wooden pallets and two plastic ones, and the skinny young manager helped me load them because his momma would be mad at him if he didn’t. Other than being slightly taken back I was old enough to be somebody’s momma’s concern, I had netted the prize.
But I remained pallet aware. The neighbor who owned the auto parts store said she got them in on occasion, and was always happy to give them away. The For Sale sign and the pallets disappeared from the closed plant nursery. Today I went to the lumber yard. Back in the corner were haphazard stacks of pallets, plus some littering the edge of one of the tin buildings.
“Do you sell those pallets?” I asked the check-out clerk.
“No,” he said. “If you want some, ask Travis. He’s not here right now.”
Fran doesn’t need more pallets, but I’ve seen my lesson for today. If you want something, keep looking. Somewhere it’s waiting for you, in abundance.
4-16-05
Strawberries
For a while I’ve been eyeing the strawberries in the grocery. They are big and red and look very eatable. Next to them is a flat cake called Bavarian sponge cake. The package of strawberries is huge, and I have resisted. Until yesterday, in honor of delicious spring weather, when I went whole hog…strawberries, Bavarian sponge cake and whipped cream. After I got home, I waited until late afternoon. Then I sliced the berries, sprinkled them with a tiny bit of sugar (even though the berries were so large, and not real juicy, they were sweet), layered them on the cake, and topped it off with whipped cream. I could barely wait until I was seated to munch my first bite. And the cake was dry, tasteless and crumbly. Which brings us to today’s lesson…if you choose a poor foundation, no matter how much lush sweetness you layer on top, you’re going to be disappointed in the end.
4-16-07
Awareness
After my dad was paralyzed and we came home from the hospital, we badly needed a ramp. I cannot now remember how long it took us to get one. The men from his church group were going to build it, then the carpenter down the street. I read everything I could get my hands on concerning ramps. All I remember now is that the incline should be one inch of rise for each twelve inches of height, which means, I think, if your front door is two feet off the ground, you must have 24 feet of ramp. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of ramp. We finally hired the lumber yard to build it, and it was beautiful and liberating. My father’s been dead for two years now, the house sold, the wonderful ramp dismantled, but to this day I admire the fine slope of a well-built ramp.
When we cleared out my parents’ home of fifty years, I scrounged packing boxes for months. It’s still hard pass a good box wasted in the trash.
Recently it’s been pallets that I’ve been hunting for a friend. Though she’ll never require another pallet in this lifetime, I now note the location of every pallet I pass.
Busted up concrete. Yep. My neighbor landscaped her walks and flower beds with slabs of concrete, and I decided to do the same. While I don’t have the tenacity of my neighbor, I do have piles of concrete I’ve begged, and I think the guy who helped me in my yard a while, stole. Don’t ask. He’s not working for the city any more.
The church two blocks over is tearing down their original sanctuary, and I walk past it every day. A couple of days ago, I saw an amazing sight, and when I passed my neighbor’s house, she was working in the yard, in her new herb bed bounded by small, symmetrical hunks of concrete.
“Mary Jane,” I said, “you won’t believe the prize rubble over at the church.”
She fell out laughing. “Keith was so happy when I quit forcing him to pick up broken concrete,” she said. “I don’t know if I can break his heart, but I’ve got to go and look.”
Somebody else’s ramp, boxes in the trash, pallets, and rubble. Dogwoods, geese, kittens. Harsh words, misdeeds, a helping hand, a kind remark. Be warned. If you focus on it, you’re going to see it for a long, long, time.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Oil Change
January 20, 2003
My husband needed the oil in his car changed, and I volunteered to do it, squeezing the time in around my constant migration between Greenwood and Cleveland and all of the things that mostly never get done. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I wanted to do it quickly. Slam, blam, thank you, m’am….get in, get out, get on to something really important.
My irritation meter counter quivered on neutral as I pulled onto the rack at the lube-in-a-hurry place. It skittered up the negative scale when I couldn’t find the hood release. I rarely used his car, and didn’t know the location of the levers and dials.
I found the latch, and the hood popped open. The attendant who had directed me onto the rack with hand signals disappeared beneath it. I sat behind the wheel, closed my eyes and breathed in and out. I tried not to think of my unmade bed, the dirty kitty litter that remained one of the few household chores I still did at my own house, the bags of unread books I insisted on ferrying to and from my father’s house each week, the minutes ticking off the time before my father’s morning help was due to leave and I would need to be on duty. I tried not to think of all the things I had to do to survive, and, if my life was going to be worthwhile, all the things I needed to do but never got to.
On my in-breath, the attendant rapped on the window. “Need the mileage,” he told me.
I looked at the black square in the center of the instrument panel. Nothing there.
I rolled down the window. “Should I turn it on?” I said.
“Just click on the ignition,” he said, “don’t turn it over.”
I clicked the ignition, and we looked at the black square together. Nothing.
“You can click it one more time,” he said. He didn’t have a lisp, but a way of thickening his words that made him sound less than bright. My irritation flared. If I were going to give this place my time and money, they should give me an attendant who knew more than I did.
I clicked. Still nothing. The attendant reached in and turned the lights on. Nothing again. My lack of knowledge about the car frustrated me. I wanted to rev the engine to get the information he wanted, to be shed of my ignorance, to get my show on the road without any more minutes shaved out of it than necessary.
“Now I see it,” he said, his thick voice almost gleeful, as if we had pulled this chestnut out of the fire together.
I looked harder at the dark glass and could still see nothing. I squinted my eyes, waiting for numbers to cohere.
“Here,” he said, laughing and tapping to my left. Once I would have considered the stupid joy in his voice that of a slow man accomplishing a simple task with great difficulty, but in one glad instant I recognized the laughter. I knew Who was speaking to me. I knew a message was coming. I needed only to listen. With a deep thirst I drank in the foolishly beaming face.
“We was looking in the wrong place,” he grinned.
“So we were,” I answered with a rippling joy of my own.
My Brother grinned bigger. “I bet if we had started up the car,” he said, “we still couldn’t of seen it.” He tapped the odometer again. “Because we was looking in the wrong place the whole time.”
My husband needed the oil in his car changed, and I volunteered to do it, squeezing the time in around my constant migration between Greenwood and Cleveland and all of the things that mostly never get done. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I wanted to do it quickly. Slam, blam, thank you, m’am….get in, get out, get on to something really important.
My irritation meter counter quivered on neutral as I pulled onto the rack at the lube-in-a-hurry place. It skittered up the negative scale when I couldn’t find the hood release. I rarely used his car, and didn’t know the location of the levers and dials.
I found the latch, and the hood popped open. The attendant who had directed me onto the rack with hand signals disappeared beneath it. I sat behind the wheel, closed my eyes and breathed in and out. I tried not to think of my unmade bed, the dirty kitty litter that remained one of the few household chores I still did at my own house, the bags of unread books I insisted on ferrying to and from my father’s house each week, the minutes ticking off the time before my father’s morning help was due to leave and I would need to be on duty. I tried not to think of all the things I had to do to survive, and, if my life was going to be worthwhile, all the things I needed to do but never got to.
On my in-breath, the attendant rapped on the window. “Need the mileage,” he told me.
I looked at the black square in the center of the instrument panel. Nothing there.
I rolled down the window. “Should I turn it on?” I said.
“Just click on the ignition,” he said, “don’t turn it over.”
I clicked the ignition, and we looked at the black square together. Nothing.
“You can click it one more time,” he said. He didn’t have a lisp, but a way of thickening his words that made him sound less than bright. My irritation flared. If I were going to give this place my time and money, they should give me an attendant who knew more than I did.
I clicked. Still nothing. The attendant reached in and turned the lights on. Nothing again. My lack of knowledge about the car frustrated me. I wanted to rev the engine to get the information he wanted, to be shed of my ignorance, to get my show on the road without any more minutes shaved out of it than necessary.
“Now I see it,” he said, his thick voice almost gleeful, as if we had pulled this chestnut out of the fire together.
I looked harder at the dark glass and could still see nothing. I squinted my eyes, waiting for numbers to cohere.
“Here,” he said, laughing and tapping to my left. Once I would have considered the stupid joy in his voice that of a slow man accomplishing a simple task with great difficulty, but in one glad instant I recognized the laughter. I knew Who was speaking to me. I knew a message was coming. I needed only to listen. With a deep thirst I drank in the foolishly beaming face.
“We was looking in the wrong place,” he grinned.
“So we were,” I answered with a rippling joy of my own.
My Brother grinned bigger. “I bet if we had started up the car,” he said, “we still couldn’t of seen it.” He tapped the odometer again. “Because we was looking in the wrong place the whole time.”
Coyote
Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass. Marc Leeds, The Vonnegut Encyclopedia, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995, page 348
Thursday January 23, 2003
Sometimes the idiot at the head of the line is a chubby woman who has totally forgotten the McDonald’s breakfast menu. Usually it’s me. Usually I am either too easily distracted or way over focused, and strangers discover I am a clot in the artery of commerce.
I don’t have a job and a paycheck. All my money comes from the sweat of my husband’s or my father’s brow. My husband obsesses about retirement. In recent years his motto seems to be a penny pinched is more money in a meager retirement portfolio. My father worries that his savings will end before he does. Shopping for all us often becomes an art in juggling.
To complicate shopping, some things my dad needs are tax deductible, and I have to keep those separate from the ones which aren’t. Also I have set up a small account of my own just to keep track of my personal spending. A person ready to check out might spot me standing alone at the counter and make the mistake of thinking my line will be short and quick. Wrong. There could be at least four different transactions occurring at the register: my father’s, my father’s, mine and my husband’s, and mine.
Which is what happened at Wal-Mart the day after the blessing of grace at McDonald’s.
No one was around when I wheeled the basket up to the counter. I bought first Dad’s medical supplies, then his household goods, then the Warners’ pet supplies, all with different credit cards I had to fumble to find, making sure I used the right one, signing for each, then making sure I put the card back in the right purse pocket instead of dropping it on the floor. In my usual hurry, I was goading myself to juggle more artfully.
I carry cash to pay for my personal purchases…the pens and notebooks and paper I will scatter between my Cleveland household and the one in Greenwood. I have a small pocket in my tiny purse for the cards, but my cash is kept in a fold down flap pocket with ripped lining. The change slips under the lining and collects in a heavy mass on the backside of my purse. I never seem to find the time to get a new purse, or fix this one that works best for me in most ways.
The clerk rang up my goods, and not wanting to add any more coins to my extensive collection, I scrabbled for the correct change, thinking, as I always do when I dive for dimes, of my mother and my stepdaughter. My mother hated old ladies who hunted in their purses for pennies. My stepdaughter thought change was something poor people used.
I am a poor person; an almost old lady who digs through her purse. On Thursday I couldn’t stop myself as precious minutes whizzed past. With my hand creeping up behind the pocket lining, I saw my stepdaughter when she was young standing in the moonlight on the curb outside a Burger King. She looked at the change she had just received, shrugged, and then flung it in a graceful silver arc into the empty field in front of the car. I fussed at her then; now, I understand the relief of the gesture.
I threw some of my own pennies and nickels and quarters on the counter. Not quite right. I had to go back for more. What an idiot, I thought, and almost heard my mother hissing. Why am I doing this, I wondered, it doesn’t make any difference to anybody but me. I finally pieced out the correct change and pushed it toward the clerk before beginning my search for dollars.
“……know you,” I heard someone say behind me.
I looked up and was shocked to discover my line was at least seven customers deep. The speaker was a tall, neatly dressed black man who seemed to be standing with his mother. A woman about his mother’s age separated us.
“You know me?” I asked. For years people have remembered me long after I have lost any memory of a connection. Though I couldn’t place this man, I didn’t want to be rude.
He looked back right into my eyes. He seemed amused. “I know you’re stupid,” he said.
Well, wasn’t that obvious? Hadn’t I just been calling myself stupid for who knows how many lost minutes, seconded by my mother’s ghost and engaged in activity my stepdaughter at eight-years-old had outgrown? And now all these folks who probably counted exactly how many minutes I had lost were piled up behind me. I knew I should turn away, but since I had made eye contact with the man, neither thanking him nor ignoring him seemed the polite thing to do.
“I am stupid…,” I agreed, willing to make a joke of this as I pulled dollars out of my purse. I thought of all the stupid things I had done all of my life. Most of my major decisions have been absolutely stupid, not to count all the little daily stupid things I do. I almost laughed because this stranger could never imagine how deeply stupid I was. I thought all this even as I finished the sentence “ …but I don’t think you really know me well enough to know that.” I flung a wad of dollars on the counter to sort.
“I know you are stupid,” he said.
Now how do you get out of this one, I thought. I could feel the tiny splash of what could be a tidal wave of irritation, but ignoring him seemed more hostile than acknowledging him. “I agree,” I said, “but I don’t think Miss Manners would approve of your pointing that out in a public place.” Like Miss Manners would approve of my pointing out his breach of etiquette in a public place. The pained look of the two women between us made me think they wished Miss Manners were shopping there instead of the two of us. I know I did. I teased out what I hoped was the right domination of bills. I pushed them toward the clerk. “Is that right?” I asked.
The clerk flashed an edgy smile as she picked them up.
“You are stupid,” he said. “You could have handed the lady your money.”
I looked back at the black man in line. He didn’t look crazy or as if he were packing a gun. He didn’t even look angry, so why was he doing this? I looked at the clerk sorting the money into the drawer. She was black, too. In Greenwood a year or so back the letters to the editor had hotly debated the issue of white customers refusing to touch the hands of black clerks. Was that what this was about? Had this very nice looking man confused my whole stupid life gestalt with racism?
The clerk handed me my receipt. I don’t know if our hands touched, but I was closer to getting the hell out of Dodge.
“I don’t know you,” the man said one more time in a voice that boomed over our heads, “but I know you are stupid.”
I was confused. What was I supposed to do now? When had the peace of McDonald’s departed? How had it arrived in the first place? I had refused to fight for a banana. But this guy and I both had our hands on the banana. Anything I could think of doing seemed like jerking harder.
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God, said the Voice in my head, the Voice that doesn’t debate or incite, the Voice with stillness and space around it. God reads Kurt Vonnegut? This was peculiar all right, but what were the travel suggestions? And what about all that peace-of-God stuff?
Okay, Buster, I thought, you asked for it. You’re gonna get what should be the answer.
I looked my tormentor in the eye. “Oh, you do know me,” I said. His eyes were, I swear, merry. “And I know you.” Everyone around us were faded as ghosts. He seemed to glow like butter. I delivered my benediction like a bludgeon. “And may the peace of God go with you.” And may it go with me, I silently pleaded. Please may it go with me.
Though I couldn’t hear anything, just before I turned back to the register, it looked as if he were laughing. And not knowing why, I wanted to laugh with him.
For the love of Christ, I thought as quick anonymous hands loaded my cart, Jesus-is- trying-to-love you is not the peace of God. But even if I had not been able to step back now, it seemed possible next time, or the next. It felt as if I had released some unnamed burden. As I left the store I could see the man’s smiling eyes and the buttery glow of his skin. I could feel the unuttered laughter floating freeform around us.
I thought of Coyote, of Raven, of the old Trickster who comes to devil you and leaves you with a gift. I was irritated, frustrated, tickled. I was happy. What a great joke, I thought, not quite knowing what the joke was. I wanted to share it with my teacher, but I was afraid if I waited for the man in the line to leave the store, I would find my teacher was already gone, and I would just convince some stranger I was as crazy in a parking lot as I had been stupid at a check-out counter.
This time I hadn’t been able to step back, but the blessing came anyway. I could feel it flowing through me. And I had been right about one thing. I did know the man in the line. With gratitude and laughter, I will know my Brother forever.
Thursday January 23, 2003
Sometimes the idiot at the head of the line is a chubby woman who has totally forgotten the McDonald’s breakfast menu. Usually it’s me. Usually I am either too easily distracted or way over focused, and strangers discover I am a clot in the artery of commerce.
I don’t have a job and a paycheck. All my money comes from the sweat of my husband’s or my father’s brow. My husband obsesses about retirement. In recent years his motto seems to be a penny pinched is more money in a meager retirement portfolio. My father worries that his savings will end before he does. Shopping for all us often becomes an art in juggling.
To complicate shopping, some things my dad needs are tax deductible, and I have to keep those separate from the ones which aren’t. Also I have set up a small account of my own just to keep track of my personal spending. A person ready to check out might spot me standing alone at the counter and make the mistake of thinking my line will be short and quick. Wrong. There could be at least four different transactions occurring at the register: my father’s, my father’s, mine and my husband’s, and mine.
Which is what happened at Wal-Mart the day after the blessing of grace at McDonald’s.
No one was around when I wheeled the basket up to the counter. I bought first Dad’s medical supplies, then his household goods, then the Warners’ pet supplies, all with different credit cards I had to fumble to find, making sure I used the right one, signing for each, then making sure I put the card back in the right purse pocket instead of dropping it on the floor. In my usual hurry, I was goading myself to juggle more artfully.
I carry cash to pay for my personal purchases…the pens and notebooks and paper I will scatter between my Cleveland household and the one in Greenwood. I have a small pocket in my tiny purse for the cards, but my cash is kept in a fold down flap pocket with ripped lining. The change slips under the lining and collects in a heavy mass on the backside of my purse. I never seem to find the time to get a new purse, or fix this one that works best for me in most ways.
The clerk rang up my goods, and not wanting to add any more coins to my extensive collection, I scrabbled for the correct change, thinking, as I always do when I dive for dimes, of my mother and my stepdaughter. My mother hated old ladies who hunted in their purses for pennies. My stepdaughter thought change was something poor people used.
I am a poor person; an almost old lady who digs through her purse. On Thursday I couldn’t stop myself as precious minutes whizzed past. With my hand creeping up behind the pocket lining, I saw my stepdaughter when she was young standing in the moonlight on the curb outside a Burger King. She looked at the change she had just received, shrugged, and then flung it in a graceful silver arc into the empty field in front of the car. I fussed at her then; now, I understand the relief of the gesture.
I threw some of my own pennies and nickels and quarters on the counter. Not quite right. I had to go back for more. What an idiot, I thought, and almost heard my mother hissing. Why am I doing this, I wondered, it doesn’t make any difference to anybody but me. I finally pieced out the correct change and pushed it toward the clerk before beginning my search for dollars.
“……know you,” I heard someone say behind me.
I looked up and was shocked to discover my line was at least seven customers deep. The speaker was a tall, neatly dressed black man who seemed to be standing with his mother. A woman about his mother’s age separated us.
“You know me?” I asked. For years people have remembered me long after I have lost any memory of a connection. Though I couldn’t place this man, I didn’t want to be rude.
He looked back right into my eyes. He seemed amused. “I know you’re stupid,” he said.
Well, wasn’t that obvious? Hadn’t I just been calling myself stupid for who knows how many lost minutes, seconded by my mother’s ghost and engaged in activity my stepdaughter at eight-years-old had outgrown? And now all these folks who probably counted exactly how many minutes I had lost were piled up behind me. I knew I should turn away, but since I had made eye contact with the man, neither thanking him nor ignoring him seemed the polite thing to do.
“I am stupid…,” I agreed, willing to make a joke of this as I pulled dollars out of my purse. I thought of all the stupid things I had done all of my life. Most of my major decisions have been absolutely stupid, not to count all the little daily stupid things I do. I almost laughed because this stranger could never imagine how deeply stupid I was. I thought all this even as I finished the sentence “ …but I don’t think you really know me well enough to know that.” I flung a wad of dollars on the counter to sort.
“I know you are stupid,” he said.
Now how do you get out of this one, I thought. I could feel the tiny splash of what could be a tidal wave of irritation, but ignoring him seemed more hostile than acknowledging him. “I agree,” I said, “but I don’t think Miss Manners would approve of your pointing that out in a public place.” Like Miss Manners would approve of my pointing out his breach of etiquette in a public place. The pained look of the two women between us made me think they wished Miss Manners were shopping there instead of the two of us. I know I did. I teased out what I hoped was the right domination of bills. I pushed them toward the clerk. “Is that right?” I asked.
The clerk flashed an edgy smile as she picked them up.
“You are stupid,” he said. “You could have handed the lady your money.”
I looked back at the black man in line. He didn’t look crazy or as if he were packing a gun. He didn’t even look angry, so why was he doing this? I looked at the clerk sorting the money into the drawer. She was black, too. In Greenwood a year or so back the letters to the editor had hotly debated the issue of white customers refusing to touch the hands of black clerks. Was that what this was about? Had this very nice looking man confused my whole stupid life gestalt with racism?
The clerk handed me my receipt. I don’t know if our hands touched, but I was closer to getting the hell out of Dodge.
“I don’t know you,” the man said one more time in a voice that boomed over our heads, “but I know you are stupid.”
I was confused. What was I supposed to do now? When had the peace of McDonald’s departed? How had it arrived in the first place? I had refused to fight for a banana. But this guy and I both had our hands on the banana. Anything I could think of doing seemed like jerking harder.
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God, said the Voice in my head, the Voice that doesn’t debate or incite, the Voice with stillness and space around it. God reads Kurt Vonnegut? This was peculiar all right, but what were the travel suggestions? And what about all that peace-of-God stuff?
Okay, Buster, I thought, you asked for it. You’re gonna get what should be the answer.
I looked my tormentor in the eye. “Oh, you do know me,” I said. His eyes were, I swear, merry. “And I know you.” Everyone around us were faded as ghosts. He seemed to glow like butter. I delivered my benediction like a bludgeon. “And may the peace of God go with you.” And may it go with me, I silently pleaded. Please may it go with me.
Though I couldn’t hear anything, just before I turned back to the register, it looked as if he were laughing. And not knowing why, I wanted to laugh with him.
For the love of Christ, I thought as quick anonymous hands loaded my cart, Jesus-is- trying-to-love you is not the peace of God. But even if I had not been able to step back now, it seemed possible next time, or the next. It felt as if I had released some unnamed burden. As I left the store I could see the man’s smiling eyes and the buttery glow of his skin. I could feel the unuttered laughter floating freeform around us.
I thought of Coyote, of Raven, of the old Trickster who comes to devil you and leaves you with a gift. I was irritated, frustrated, tickled. I was happy. What a great joke, I thought, not quite knowing what the joke was. I wanted to share it with my teacher, but I was afraid if I waited for the man in the line to leave the store, I would find my teacher was already gone, and I would just convince some stranger I was as crazy in a parking lot as I had been stupid at a check-out counter.
This time I hadn’t been able to step back, but the blessing came anyway. I could feel it flowing through me. And I had been right about one thing. I did know the man in the line. With gratitude and laughter, I will know my Brother forever.
Next
January 15, 2003
Desperate for my first complete cup of coffee, I stood in a clutch of McDonald’s customers. Six of us milled in front of the counter, half hanging back in a quasi-line in front of the one open cash register. Six customers in front of the counter, six employees behind it and only one person taking orders.
A chubby woman directly in front of the cash register two-stepped to the right. “I don’t know what I want,” she giggled as she looked up to ponder the menu board.
It’s always the same menu! snapped the voice in my head. How can you not know what you want?
In front of the counter we stood on hold, reading the selections with her, except for a young man holding a Styrofoam container and repeating the third time, “But I ordered the Big Breakfast Deluxe, not the Big Breakfast.” Behind the counter the woman dressed in the mustard brown manager’s uniform gazed bleakly over our heads before turning her back to fish out a rack of hash browns.
Jeez, I thought amid the sizzle of grease and the alarm of the buzzers, it’s never going to be my turn.
Those few morning hours should be my time, the only time of the day when someone else is responsible, but the morning help had been a no-show. Instead of drinking a second or a third cup of coffee at home while I read or worked on some writing of my own, I was the one who mixed Dad’s medicine and waited for it to slowly drain down his feeding tube, bathed and lotioned him, did his range of motion with the legs he could not feel, diapered and dressed him, hoisted him into his wheel chair, combed his hair, gave him his glass of Ensure to drink while I threw my clothes on, warmed the van, worked the lift, and drove us to McDonald’s. I had barely combed my own hair. And when we returned home there would be beds to be changed, clothes to be washed, more diapers, not to count the time Daddy just needed company, a body sitting next to him at the table or by the bed with no space in my brain for solitude and reflection.
Dad in his wheel chair was at the table catty-cornered to the entrance where some of his cronies meet six out of seven days a week, for that hour from nine to ten o’clock sharp. While I hadn’t had time to bath or brush my teeth, if the folks in the McDonald’s breakfast crowd got their act together I might have time to read, or contemplate the spiritual nature of life, or at the very least, consume one whole cup of coffee before the rest of the day consumed me. I didn’t just need caffeine. I needed what little time that could be my own to be mine. I needed my turn.
A graying man who had been aimlessly off to the left drifted vaguely into line in front of me. Not fair. He needed to do his wait in purgatory with the rest of us. My inclination was to side-step him, do a little body block that would inch me forward and reward me with an extra minute or two alone at a table where I could close the world out. It was a Clara Pilcher moment.
Clara was a little old lady at a day treatment program where I worked years ago. She had been sent there from the nursing home next door for stealing food from the cafeteria. We were supposed to behavior modify her into being a more acceptable citizen, only we were constantly busy and our clients’ lunches were in easy access on a table in the front of our own kitchen. “Clara ate Ruby’s sandwich and she’s leaving with Ruby’s banana,” someone tattled as I was passing from my office through the kitchen. Clara and I met in the doorway, blocking staff members and other clients on the move. I towered half a foot over Clara, who had the pink pudginess of a spinster princess. No space between the door frame for behavior modification. “That’s Ruby’s banana,” I said. “You need to give it back.” “No,” Clara vowed. I am sure this exchange occurred more than once, and somehow both Clara and I were holding on to the banana. It was fairly firm and did not squish. I don’t know how many times I yanked up and she yanked down, while the crowd encouraged me and admonished Clara. They knew fair.
Suddenly I woke up.
I was fighting an old woman over a banana.
I let go.
Only the crush of the spectators kept Clara from toppling to the floor. I know she ate Ruby’s banana, and Ruby got a free lunch on the center. I don’t know how long Clara kept coming, or what we did about the bagged lunches. I know I vowed never again to wrestle an old lady for a banana.
For me it has been a metaphor with endless applications. That Wednesday, thanks to Clara, I didn’t body block the gentleman to my left.
I stepped back.
Not with graciousness, but with an aggravation that scoured like grit on my day. So what if by the time I got my coffee it would be time to leave. So what if I went unread as well as unwashed. So what if my life was filled with longer stops than starts, and there was always some idiot at the head of the line overwhelmed by the mystery of McDonald’s breakfast menu.
“See,” said the guy opening the Styrofoam container. “It’s not the Deluxe.”
Your only function is to extend peace, said the Voice in my head.
This message I had read many times in many books, a message that sounded true, that should be true, but somehow never penetrated the cowl of anxiety that must have swaddled me in the womb, so long it had been with me. But on this Wednesday a Voice that sounded like my voice, the one that herded my grievances and exacted scores with the dim tenacity of an English sheepdog, said, “You’re only function is to extend peace.”
And it made sense.
I laughed.
How simple.
My only function was to extend peace.
Nothing had changed, but a heaviness had fallen away from the counter section of McDonald’s. Everything was somehow lighter…the clatter, the movement of the bodies, even the quality of the air.
I stood in line and relaxed.
My mind tried to take up the threads of worry that I use to harness my life. All the needs and wants and shoulds and oughts would come later, but right here, right now, they were not my concern.
My only function was to extend peace.
Peace to the woman who had finally made up her mind. Peace to the line-breaker. Peace to the manager in her ugly uniform who directed her workers in a choreography with the single purpose of moving food from the back out front to us. Peace to the young man who didn’t get the Deluxe he wanted. Peace to me.
Briefly, in the midst and muddle of life, I woke up.
I knew it wouldn’t last for, oh, maybe the rest of my life. But this morning it was my turn. Our turn.
And I was glad.
Desperate for my first complete cup of coffee, I stood in a clutch of McDonald’s customers. Six of us milled in front of the counter, half hanging back in a quasi-line in front of the one open cash register. Six customers in front of the counter, six employees behind it and only one person taking orders.
A chubby woman directly in front of the cash register two-stepped to the right. “I don’t know what I want,” she giggled as she looked up to ponder the menu board.
It’s always the same menu! snapped the voice in my head. How can you not know what you want?
In front of the counter we stood on hold, reading the selections with her, except for a young man holding a Styrofoam container and repeating the third time, “But I ordered the Big Breakfast Deluxe, not the Big Breakfast.” Behind the counter the woman dressed in the mustard brown manager’s uniform gazed bleakly over our heads before turning her back to fish out a rack of hash browns.
Jeez, I thought amid the sizzle of grease and the alarm of the buzzers, it’s never going to be my turn.
Those few morning hours should be my time, the only time of the day when someone else is responsible, but the morning help had been a no-show. Instead of drinking a second or a third cup of coffee at home while I read or worked on some writing of my own, I was the one who mixed Dad’s medicine and waited for it to slowly drain down his feeding tube, bathed and lotioned him, did his range of motion with the legs he could not feel, diapered and dressed him, hoisted him into his wheel chair, combed his hair, gave him his glass of Ensure to drink while I threw my clothes on, warmed the van, worked the lift, and drove us to McDonald’s. I had barely combed my own hair. And when we returned home there would be beds to be changed, clothes to be washed, more diapers, not to count the time Daddy just needed company, a body sitting next to him at the table or by the bed with no space in my brain for solitude and reflection.
Dad in his wheel chair was at the table catty-cornered to the entrance where some of his cronies meet six out of seven days a week, for that hour from nine to ten o’clock sharp. While I hadn’t had time to bath or brush my teeth, if the folks in the McDonald’s breakfast crowd got their act together I might have time to read, or contemplate the spiritual nature of life, or at the very least, consume one whole cup of coffee before the rest of the day consumed me. I didn’t just need caffeine. I needed what little time that could be my own to be mine. I needed my turn.
A graying man who had been aimlessly off to the left drifted vaguely into line in front of me. Not fair. He needed to do his wait in purgatory with the rest of us. My inclination was to side-step him, do a little body block that would inch me forward and reward me with an extra minute or two alone at a table where I could close the world out. It was a Clara Pilcher moment.
Clara was a little old lady at a day treatment program where I worked years ago. She had been sent there from the nursing home next door for stealing food from the cafeteria. We were supposed to behavior modify her into being a more acceptable citizen, only we were constantly busy and our clients’ lunches were in easy access on a table in the front of our own kitchen. “Clara ate Ruby’s sandwich and she’s leaving with Ruby’s banana,” someone tattled as I was passing from my office through the kitchen. Clara and I met in the doorway, blocking staff members and other clients on the move. I towered half a foot over Clara, who had the pink pudginess of a spinster princess. No space between the door frame for behavior modification. “That’s Ruby’s banana,” I said. “You need to give it back.” “No,” Clara vowed. I am sure this exchange occurred more than once, and somehow both Clara and I were holding on to the banana. It was fairly firm and did not squish. I don’t know how many times I yanked up and she yanked down, while the crowd encouraged me and admonished Clara. They knew fair.
Suddenly I woke up.
I was fighting an old woman over a banana.
I let go.
Only the crush of the spectators kept Clara from toppling to the floor. I know she ate Ruby’s banana, and Ruby got a free lunch on the center. I don’t know how long Clara kept coming, or what we did about the bagged lunches. I know I vowed never again to wrestle an old lady for a banana.
For me it has been a metaphor with endless applications. That Wednesday, thanks to Clara, I didn’t body block the gentleman to my left.
I stepped back.
Not with graciousness, but with an aggravation that scoured like grit on my day. So what if by the time I got my coffee it would be time to leave. So what if I went unread as well as unwashed. So what if my life was filled with longer stops than starts, and there was always some idiot at the head of the line overwhelmed by the mystery of McDonald’s breakfast menu.
“See,” said the guy opening the Styrofoam container. “It’s not the Deluxe.”
Your only function is to extend peace, said the Voice in my head.
This message I had read many times in many books, a message that sounded true, that should be true, but somehow never penetrated the cowl of anxiety that must have swaddled me in the womb, so long it had been with me. But on this Wednesday a Voice that sounded like my voice, the one that herded my grievances and exacted scores with the dim tenacity of an English sheepdog, said, “You’re only function is to extend peace.”
And it made sense.
I laughed.
How simple.
My only function was to extend peace.
Nothing had changed, but a heaviness had fallen away from the counter section of McDonald’s. Everything was somehow lighter…the clatter, the movement of the bodies, even the quality of the air.
I stood in line and relaxed.
My mind tried to take up the threads of worry that I use to harness my life. All the needs and wants and shoulds and oughts would come later, but right here, right now, they were not my concern.
My only function was to extend peace.
Peace to the woman who had finally made up her mind. Peace to the line-breaker. Peace to the manager in her ugly uniform who directed her workers in a choreography with the single purpose of moving food from the back out front to us. Peace to the young man who didn’t get the Deluxe he wanted. Peace to me.
Briefly, in the midst and muddle of life, I woke up.
I knew it wouldn’t last for, oh, maybe the rest of my life. But this morning it was my turn. Our turn.
And I was glad.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
A+
Suddenly there is much to be done. Projects, his, mine, ours, a friend’s, hers, always with a reminder I have more projects in boxes and closets. His daughter needs a little extra help. My son is coming home. The holidays are approaching, parties are in the offing. Cheese wafers to be made. I need my hair cut, I need to cut his.
Take one step at a time. Be in the moment. Participate with love. Breathe.
Today he asks for quarter round, which means a trip to the lumber yard. I don’t want to go, but I must. It’s in my job description.
Trucks pack the parking lot; several are parked along the access road. Definitely not a good time to be buying a measly thirty-two feet of quarter round. Who is going to care about quarter round except he who wants it? Breathe.
Inside the store are eight customers, most of them on the tool side, and two clerks. I head for the supply side. The man in front of me wants some kind of pump; he and the clerk play word association. Sump pump. That’s it. They head for the bowels of the store. More customers come in. One guy sports dreads and a kerchief; his jeans are patched. He disappears into the aisles. A round man comes in and stands in front of me, next to the counter. He pulls a package out of a bag. A return. Obviously he feels his bad purchase trumps my potential one. A woman, red ankle length coat, red four inch heels, red lipstick, wanders the store. She leaves the supply side for the tool side. In the back my clerk is still talking sump pumps with the man who doesn't even know the sump part but needs one. They could be gone a while.
The dread guy resurfaces with a clerk. Where did he find a clerk? A pack of guys leave from the tool side, and the woman in red stands at the counter. I’ve made the wrong choice. I head for the tool side. The one clerk on the tool side is cutting keys. An office door opens, and a man in khakis stands in the door way, talking. Maybe he will see me. He doesn’t glance at the sales counter. Maybe he is a customer, or a salesman. Some guy goes behind the counter to meticulously tape a small package. He doesn’t look my way, but he does say hello to the woman in red. The key cutter asks me what I want. Quarter round, two twelve foot sections, one eight foot section. He heads for the computer to put in my order, but is diverted. A new sales clerk comes from the recesses of the tool aisles with a new customer. What have they been doing back there? The sump pump seminar is still being held on the supply side.
I suddenly understand. I’m having a miracle pop quiz. The Universe is giving me the opportunity to discover how much I’ve learned. I understand it’s a quiz, and I realize the chemicals churning in my brain aren’t the right answer. I can ask for a miracle. I do. Breathe.
The khakis guy comes behind the counter. He asks me what I need. Quarter round, two twelve foot sections, one eight foot. He goes to the computer. The new sales clerk is using it to check out the new customer. The new customer needs two of something, and both men disappear into the aisles to look for it. The khakis guy smiles at me. I breathe. “Computer’s busy,” he says.
I breathe deeper. I ask for a miracle. Jumping up and down and giving them what for won’t get me anywhere. Somehow-- apparently by magic or secret handshake according to the random pattern of converging clerks and customers -- with only two computers, this store, the only lumber store in my small town, manages to service the building needs of the community. Whole buildings are erected, new houses, remolding jobs. Thirty-two feet of quarter round is not going to impress these mystics of raw wood and sump pumps. I can’t get quarter round anywhere else in a fifty mile radius anyway. Obviously a miracle is in my best interest.
“Let’s go to the other side,” the khakis man says. We do. He rings up my sale. The computer doesn't stall or crash. He gives me my receipt, directs me to the warehouse in the back. I’m on my way, with only a mild churn burning through my brain. C-, probably, on the miracle pop quiz.
I drive around back, squeezing past the huge truck and trailer unloading stacks of something, to get to the back where they have my quarter round. I don't even bounce over the rotted landscape timber jutting into my cramped space. Luckily I have a small truck. What do the big truck guys do if they have to pick up lumber?
A weasely fellow comes to get my ticket. He disappears into the tunnel of lumber, and begins pulling quarter round. We've done this drill several times in the past, so I know it's easy sailing now. I read the paper. Weasel appears at my window. “We only got two fourteen and an eleven,” he says. I can interpret. He’s taking about feet and quarter round. “I bought two twelves and an eight,” I say, feeling the chemicals simmering. I've never before had trouble with these measurements. This test must be a two-parter. He disappears.
A dapper man, obviously a supervisor, replaces him. “We can’t cut the fourteens,” he says. “We can give you two fourteens and a four.” I decide to decipher the rules. “How come you can cut four feet, but not eight or twelve?" I say. I sound evil, a cat smirking at a mouse. “I’m not supposed to,” he says. He sounds exasperated. “It’s the only way I can give you your thirty-two.” I remember to ask for a miracle, but the brain chemicals are telling me to give them hell. “I can send your paper work back up front,” he says. “No!” I say. I feel like I’m about to draw a Dismal Swamp card in the Candy Land game. Miss two turns. Not up front again. Never. Breathe. “Give me the two fourteens and a four,” I say. I am not gracious. Two fourteens and a four, and no miracle. We’ll be piecing quarter round along the baseboards. “Want me to tie it down?” he asks. I look at the six foot of quarter round bending out the back of my little truck. I want to go home. "No." I’ll go slow.
I drive to the check-out point. The checker looks at my drooping quarter round. “Want me to tie that down?” he says. He picks up the piece that is now lying on the ground. I give up. I have to accept help. “Guess you better,” I say. He begins to position it across the back of the bed. I wonder how I’m going to drive home with six foot of quarter round poking the cars behind me. There must be a better way, I think. Again, I have to give up. I must join in. I get out, looking for a way to tie the quarter round with the extra extending over the cab. The checker decides to lay it along the side, tying it to the rear view mirror in the front and to a hook at the foot of the truck bed.
The dapper man reappears. “I knew it needed to be tied,” he says. He works two sheds over. He has come to make sure I can get home. I am out of the truck, in the parking lot of the town’s only lumber yard, in the clear November sun. I realize the brain chemicals have receded. I am breathing. I am light. “You were right,” I tell the dapper man. Travis. His uniform reads Travis. We are grinning at each other, as if we have just discovered a delicious secret. He is explaining the intricacies of quarter rounding to me. I am telling him I have been cranky. The quarter round lies snug along the length of the truck. At home, with what we already have, it will turn out to be just enough...no piece work will be required. The cheese wafers will be made and declared good. I will get my hair cut. His girl will be steadier. My boy will come home. Some projects will be completed; some will be deferred. But when time gets constricted and I get tense, my path will ease when I remember this moment. “You weren’t cranky,” he said. “You just wanted what you wanted.”
He was right again. And I got it. Those little miracles, they’re a giggle.
Take one step at a time. Be in the moment. Participate with love. Breathe.
Today he asks for quarter round, which means a trip to the lumber yard. I don’t want to go, but I must. It’s in my job description.
Trucks pack the parking lot; several are parked along the access road. Definitely not a good time to be buying a measly thirty-two feet of quarter round. Who is going to care about quarter round except he who wants it? Breathe.
Inside the store are eight customers, most of them on the tool side, and two clerks. I head for the supply side. The man in front of me wants some kind of pump; he and the clerk play word association. Sump pump. That’s it. They head for the bowels of the store. More customers come in. One guy sports dreads and a kerchief; his jeans are patched. He disappears into the aisles. A round man comes in and stands in front of me, next to the counter. He pulls a package out of a bag. A return. Obviously he feels his bad purchase trumps my potential one. A woman, red ankle length coat, red four inch heels, red lipstick, wanders the store. She leaves the supply side for the tool side. In the back my clerk is still talking sump pumps with the man who doesn't even know the sump part but needs one. They could be gone a while.
The dread guy resurfaces with a clerk. Where did he find a clerk? A pack of guys leave from the tool side, and the woman in red stands at the counter. I’ve made the wrong choice. I head for the tool side. The one clerk on the tool side is cutting keys. An office door opens, and a man in khakis stands in the door way, talking. Maybe he will see me. He doesn’t glance at the sales counter. Maybe he is a customer, or a salesman. Some guy goes behind the counter to meticulously tape a small package. He doesn’t look my way, but he does say hello to the woman in red. The key cutter asks me what I want. Quarter round, two twelve foot sections, one eight foot section. He heads for the computer to put in my order, but is diverted. A new sales clerk comes from the recesses of the tool aisles with a new customer. What have they been doing back there? The sump pump seminar is still being held on the supply side.
I suddenly understand. I’m having a miracle pop quiz. The Universe is giving me the opportunity to discover how much I’ve learned. I understand it’s a quiz, and I realize the chemicals churning in my brain aren’t the right answer. I can ask for a miracle. I do. Breathe.
The khakis guy comes behind the counter. He asks me what I need. Quarter round, two twelve foot sections, one eight foot. He goes to the computer. The new sales clerk is using it to check out the new customer. The new customer needs two of something, and both men disappear into the aisles to look for it. The khakis guy smiles at me. I breathe. “Computer’s busy,” he says.
I breathe deeper. I ask for a miracle. Jumping up and down and giving them what for won’t get me anywhere. Somehow-- apparently by magic or secret handshake according to the random pattern of converging clerks and customers -- with only two computers, this store, the only lumber store in my small town, manages to service the building needs of the community. Whole buildings are erected, new houses, remolding jobs. Thirty-two feet of quarter round is not going to impress these mystics of raw wood and sump pumps. I can’t get quarter round anywhere else in a fifty mile radius anyway. Obviously a miracle is in my best interest.
“Let’s go to the other side,” the khakis man says. We do. He rings up my sale. The computer doesn't stall or crash. He gives me my receipt, directs me to the warehouse in the back. I’m on my way, with only a mild churn burning through my brain. C-, probably, on the miracle pop quiz.
I drive around back, squeezing past the huge truck and trailer unloading stacks of something, to get to the back where they have my quarter round. I don't even bounce over the rotted landscape timber jutting into my cramped space. Luckily I have a small truck. What do the big truck guys do if they have to pick up lumber?
A weasely fellow comes to get my ticket. He disappears into the tunnel of lumber, and begins pulling quarter round. We've done this drill several times in the past, so I know it's easy sailing now. I read the paper. Weasel appears at my window. “We only got two fourteen and an eleven,” he says. I can interpret. He’s taking about feet and quarter round. “I bought two twelves and an eight,” I say, feeling the chemicals simmering. I've never before had trouble with these measurements. This test must be a two-parter. He disappears.
A dapper man, obviously a supervisor, replaces him. “We can’t cut the fourteens,” he says. “We can give you two fourteens and a four.” I decide to decipher the rules. “How come you can cut four feet, but not eight or twelve?" I say. I sound evil, a cat smirking at a mouse. “I’m not supposed to,” he says. He sounds exasperated. “It’s the only way I can give you your thirty-two.” I remember to ask for a miracle, but the brain chemicals are telling me to give them hell. “I can send your paper work back up front,” he says. “No!” I say. I feel like I’m about to draw a Dismal Swamp card in the Candy Land game. Miss two turns. Not up front again. Never. Breathe. “Give me the two fourteens and a four,” I say. I am not gracious. Two fourteens and a four, and no miracle. We’ll be piecing quarter round along the baseboards. “Want me to tie it down?” he asks. I look at the six foot of quarter round bending out the back of my little truck. I want to go home. "No." I’ll go slow.
I drive to the check-out point. The checker looks at my drooping quarter round. “Want me to tie that down?” he says. He picks up the piece that is now lying on the ground. I give up. I have to accept help. “Guess you better,” I say. He begins to position it across the back of the bed. I wonder how I’m going to drive home with six foot of quarter round poking the cars behind me. There must be a better way, I think. Again, I have to give up. I must join in. I get out, looking for a way to tie the quarter round with the extra extending over the cab. The checker decides to lay it along the side, tying it to the rear view mirror in the front and to a hook at the foot of the truck bed.
The dapper man reappears. “I knew it needed to be tied,” he says. He works two sheds over. He has come to make sure I can get home. I am out of the truck, in the parking lot of the town’s only lumber yard, in the clear November sun. I realize the brain chemicals have receded. I am breathing. I am light. “You were right,” I tell the dapper man. Travis. His uniform reads Travis. We are grinning at each other, as if we have just discovered a delicious secret. He is explaining the intricacies of quarter rounding to me. I am telling him I have been cranky. The quarter round lies snug along the length of the truck. At home, with what we already have, it will turn out to be just enough...no piece work will be required. The cheese wafers will be made and declared good. I will get my hair cut. His girl will be steadier. My boy will come home. Some projects will be completed; some will be deferred. But when time gets constricted and I get tense, my path will ease when I remember this moment. “You weren’t cranky,” he said. “You just wanted what you wanted.”
He was right again. And I got it. Those little miracles, they’re a giggle.
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