My Prayer for 2016

Father in Heaven,

My heart is full.  My life is full.  I have been blessed with the best of the best.  My daughter--my only child--is beautiful, intelligent, creative, and talented.  My grandchildren have blessed me even more because of my undying love for them.  I thank You every day of my life for them.  My child doesn't always do what I think she should do, but I acknowledge that I've made my own mistakes in life, so I can't judge.  Still, I am always aware that You have never left me in all of my travails, and I know You won't leave them, either, even after I am gone.

Today marks the end of a year and the beginning of a new one.  My sister needs you, Father.  Her life is fraught with challenges as she cares for her failing husband and children.  Please give her strength and comfort.  My children need you, Father, as they try to find their way in a new part of this great country.  I need you, Father, as my own life changes by age in so many expected ways.  Be with us every day in every way, and may we come to know Your love as an influence in what we do.

Praise be to you for our daily victories.

Amen!

Back to Reality

My daughter/husband/ grandchildren--and cat-- are now winging their way over the northern climes of our great country as I type.  All of their worldly possessions are on a moving van somewhere between Illinois and Seattle, as is their car.  Through the wonders of technology, I could be in touch with them until they were put in "airplane mode" and am tracking their flight.  I won't be settled until they are at their day's destination:  Microsoft corporate housing in the Seattle area.  After several weeks of discombobulation, just being in a place they can call home until they can find where they want to live will be a relief.  They will be exhausted.  They won't be able to find things.  They will be impatient.  I am praying for them.  Please join me.  They need all the help they can get!

I'm not at all happy about these changes, for selfish reasons.  Our nomadic life as Navy dependents when I was a kid left a mark on me.  It wasn't all bad.  I think I lived much of my life hoping that others would take care of me, but my reality was that I was on my own.  I learned, through divorce and experience, that I was stronger than even I knew.  I still am...to my own detriment, sometimes.  Do I think I am always in control?  HA!  Not even a little.  But I keep trying.  That's just human.

So...as the winter moves from the holidays into reality, I am digging in to make life as palatable as I can with what I have.  I ain't much, baby, but I'm all I've got!

The Music...Yes

The day:  December 24, 2015.  Christmas Eve.
The situation:  It is warm outside...60+ degrees....with no hope of snow in sight.
The mood:  Hopeful but not at all Christmasy.

My family--daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren--arrived the day before.  All of their worldly belongings are packed on a moving van somewhere.  They've had no Christmas tree, and any Christmas presents that they receive must be something that can go through the airport or be shipped later as they prepare to depart the Midwest to move to the Seattle area by air.  I feel grim.  All I can offer them is cash and hope, but it doesn't feel right.  It isn't enough.  The holiday seems hollow.

The only stipulation I had for the day, other than good food, was for us all to attend a candlelight service at church at 9:00 PM.  (There were several other services but this was the last one of the day that would have choir and orchestra.)  I was so tired, I came close to canceling out on that, but a few minute's rest helped.  Oh, how very happy I am that we went!  It changed everything for me!

In the sanctuary, there was our choir and an orchestra, invited by our hugely talented Music Director. With the lights behind the cross and the gorgeous music, it became a time of peace amid the turmoil. Peace...beauty...moments so seriously needed to make Christmas seem like Christmas.  The service didn't disappoint!  We lit our candles at the end and sang Silent Night.  Oh, the happy peace of the night!  What a difference it made in my attitude!

It is the music that makes all the difference.  Take away music and the world stops.
I don't know if the service had the same effect on the rest of my family.  All I know is that it made it all happen for me.  Our meager gifts for each other the next morning paled against the backdrop of Peace On Earth and knowing that we were all together.  I hope life and love survive the holidays.  I'm just so very grateful that I could share this Christmas Eve with my family.  God bless us. every one!

Our Lady of the Angels

I started this plog post on December 2nd while still up at my daughter's, but I have decided to finish it.

Yesterday's date in 1958, a horrible tragedy happened in Chicago.  A Catholic school--Our Lady of the Angels-- caught fire and 92 students and three nuns were killed.  They never had a chance.

At the time, I was a relatively new 6th grade student in Oak Park, IL, the first suburb west of Chicago on what would become Interstate 290.   The fire occurred at the end of the day--I think a Friday--and all of the Chicago television news was full of it.  I was a kid.  I was a kid in school.  I soaked it all up as if a sponge...a sponge that could do nothing but watch and feel and hurt for the families involved.

The fire apparently started in a trash barrel in the basement at the foot of the wooden staircase.  The staircase provided a perfect updraft for the heat and flames.  Other things took place, as well.  People made mistakes.  In short order, the main route of escape (the stairs) was destroyed by fire.  The fire alarm wasn't rung early enough; the fire department was stalled for minutes by a locked gate; nothing went well, and kids died.  Lots of kids.

The next Monday, just after lunch, the fire alarm in my own school building sounded.  Very somber students marched dutifully out of the school.  It was a drill, but it was a drill with a purpose.  I was in what would now be considered middle school, yet I can't remember a single sound coming out of the kids as we, for once, did what we were supposed to do.

Years later, when I became a teacher in my own right, I was teaching in a very old school building with wooden floors and wooden staircases.  At least one fire drill each year would block off the main staircase, and we would be directed to go down the fire escape.  It wasn't perfect but at least it was a plan.  Every year thereafter, in all of the places I've taught in which I was responsible for kids, I told them the story of the Our Lady of the Angels School fire so that they might know that fire drills are serious business.  Did they get it?  Probably not.  Never sinks in until it happens to you, right?

As a result of that horrible fire, many national laws regarding school construction were made to protect children.  I can't begin to tell what they all are.  I do know that wooden staircases had to be enclosed with doors, top and bottom, to help prevent updrafts, and that hallway doors, etc., could not be "stoppered" open.  (Some schools have doors that are held open by magnets, but the minute a fire alarm is sounded, the magnets automatically shut off and the doors close.)

I know that today's children are much better protected than the kids of my generation, yet they don't seem any less scared (due to circumstances about active shootings, etc.)  The survivors of the OLA fire would be relatively my age now.  I'm sure they will never forget that day.  I want them to know that I haven't, either...and I wasn't even there.  God bless you all!

I Am Lost

My mother was my best friend.  As a young wife and mother, I went to her endlessly to complain about my then-spouse....how he wasn't helping with our child or with the inside home chores, even though we both worked outside the home full-time.  For a long while, Mom's response to me was, "What makes you think you are any different than the rest of us?"  What she meant was that it was always thus for women and probably always would be.

But things were different for my generation.  Raised by the Greatest Generation's dreams that their children have more than they had, we Baby-Boomers were the first to have the contraceptive pill; the first to have legal abortions; the first to have women who went to college to have careers before/while they had children; the first in which women faced high divorce rates which demanded the careers to support themselves and their children; and the first during which couples recognized that, in order to have all of the things that their parents had achieved through their hard work and sacrifices, both husband and wife would need to be working.  I struggled with it because I was raised with one set of values but was living with the new ones.  In a sense, I resented it.  We were on the cusp of change, not an integral part of either generation's values.  What I wanted was to be a stay-at-home mother like my own mom.  What I got was the need to work, even though my husband made good money.  It seemed we were always in credit card debt.  With a child to care for, I felt that going back to work after maternity leave was a major complication of life.  Now I had a house and housework, a baby, AND a full-time job.  I wasn't one of those women who wanted it all.

In spite of everything, there were values that I just came to know as part of what was right in life, and the main one (for me) was that family came before all.  I didn't know much of my father's family.  He grew up in poverty as the youngest of nine kids.  His parents both died before I was born.  His sisters and brothers had scattered, and I do think he distanced himself from them because he was working hard to make something of himself.  My mother's parents, however, took him on as their very own son, and he was as much a son to them as anyone could possibly be.  Wherever we went with the Navy, we always came back to the family farm outside of Streator, Illinois.  Home.  After the war and Navy years, we were never more than three hours from there.  At the last, we were within an hour-and-a-half...and then my parents retired to that farm when it was their turn.

And then it was my turn.  As a young married woman/mother, I could never imagine myself being far from my folks.  Holidays and special occasions were always spent at the farm, shared with my parents and the rest of my family with traditions and love and good times.  Generally, we never lived far away.  In my then-husband's last position in Illinois, we were only 25 miles away.  Things happened.  We moved to Indiana, a scarce ten miles from his parents, but still only four hours away from my own.  He and I split up.  Meg and I moved to Plainfied, IN, still within four hours of home.  Then she grew up, got married and had babies.  Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would ever be far from her or my grandchildren.  I would never move out of reach of them and never thought that they'd move away from me.

I was wrong.
First, they relocated to Muncie, Indiana.  I cried for a few days but since Muncie is only 90 minutes up the interstate from where I live, I managed.
Then her marriage broke up.  She and the children moved in with me, unannounced.  We eventually remodeled the house to make bedrooms for everyone.
Not long thereafter, she met the new love of her life, and--in a poorly handled set of circumstances--gave unannounced and immediate custody of the children to their father and drove off to California where she married her new beau.  That threw me into a serious depression that I never really got over.  I wept constantly and some days didn't even get out of bed.
The children were still in Muncie for awhile.  I was allowed to have them about one weekend a month.  That worked.  In the meantime, I also was the flight escort to take the children to California to see their mother and stepfather a couple of times a year.
Then, the children's family moved to the northeastern suburbs of Chicago where their stepmom had procured a nice position with Carthage College, and their father found work that was right up his alley.  They rented and eventually bought a really nice old house in Zion, IL, near the Lake Michigan lakefront.  The drive up was four hours in good circumstances.  For awhile, I was still allowed to have the children for a weekend about once a month.  And then my daughter and son-in-law relocated to the northeastern suburbs of Chicago also, just to be close to the children.  And they were.  They didn't miss the multiple soccer games or band concerts or school programs.  They were THERE, where they should have been all along, and it soothed my heart to know that things had come full circle.  All I had to do to share in their lives was get in my car and make the four-hour trip, which I have done on a regular basis for the last few years.

In another string of circumstances this past year, both of my grandchildren have gone back to my daughter's custody.  And my son-in-law's parents have come from Russia to live with them all.  That latter part hasn't worked out well.  Now, in a quest to earn a higher salary, my family is moving back  (without the Russian grandparents) to the West Coast...to the Seattle area.  This has been a whirlwind of activity and decisions--so much so that I have trouble thinking clearly about it all.  Too much to think about, too soon...too many changes in such a short time.  They will be coming for a quick Christmas here only to fly off into the sunset and leave me feeling lost in their absence.

I can't throw my stuff into my vehicle and drive four hours for a visit.  I really can't even do airports any more without major support, due to health problems. If I'm lucky, I might get to see them a couple of times a year.  When Denis (my son-in-law) first broke the news to me, I think my response was, "If you are expecting me to jump up and down and say that I'm happy about it, that isn't going to happen."  He wanted to know if I had questions.  Yes, I had a million questions, but every one of them came from my feelings of the unworkability of it all...for me.  I was totally aware that the decisions had been made...that my questions wouldn't change a thing...and that the train was leaving the station, one way or the other.  Thus, I have retreated into my little lost world.  I don't ask much or expect much.  As they say, it is what it is.

Beyond the obvious, I am upset by the fact that soooo many people have children who get married and move away.  They manage.  Why can't I??  I posed that question to my co-grandparent, Phil.  His response was that other people in my situation have spouses, and maybe that's why I feel so alone.  I think he's right.  It wasn't my plan to be this alone this late in life.  I'm also not receptive to taking on a spouse!  

The other issue that has come up is whether or not I could move with them.  Well, yes I could, but I have a home full of "stuff" that needs to be disposed of and things to be worked out.  Housing out there is expensive.  I'm not sure the kids could afford a place that would have room for me, and I'm quite certain that I could not afford a separate apartment.  Still, I'm not ready to say no.  I'm just ready to say that I'm quickly getting to the point of figuring out how to get from point A to point B as best I can.

I'm doing the best I can to accept life as it is handed to me.  I'm not sure anyone totally understands how very much I adore my daughter and my grandchildren, and how proud I am of "our Denis". Giving them up to another life is hard, ain't it hard, ain't it hard....

If you are a praying person, I would appreciate your putting up some pleas to the Almighty to get me through this.  If you aren't, a few positive thoughts in my direction might help.  I just want to get through this life with all of my fingers and toes intact, hoping for the best.  Right now, I'm just lost.

Technology, Thy Name Ain't Grandma!

Just over a month ago, I drove up to Northern Illinois to spend some weeks attending my grandchildren's happy events and celebrate Thanksgiving.  I charged my cell phone and took it with me.

Now, you have to understand that my so-called cell phone is a dinosaur.  It was a hand-me-down from my daughter years ago--a Motorola Tracfone.  I rarely ever used it.  The only time I ever had it on was when I was on the road, but even that seemed unnecessary since I always had a ham radio in my vehicle.  Then I bought a new vehicle just over a year ago that has no room for a radio.  Thus, I charged the cell phone for my trip up because there is no house phone up there.  The kids all use cells.  If they leave the house, I have no way to call 911 should an emergency arise.

One day while there and everyone was gone, I was trying to coordinate with Luda, the other woman in the house, in case she needed to be picked up from the gym due to predicted rainfall.  I took out my cell phone and turned it on.  She tried to call it, but it wasn't happening.  I looked at the screen.  It said: Unregistered SIM.  The phone had run out of days.  Later, after some figgering, Megan set up my computer with a phone calling system whereby I could call out from the computer.  That became a godsend.  None of us were willing to put more money into the Tracfone when it couldn't do anything besides make calls.  No texting, etc.  A dinosaur.  Thus, the end of that phone.

Then came December 1st.  My mortgage payment was due.  I forgot it for a couple of days but then decided I should get the job done.  Got online with the bank to pay it, as I always do, but the site wasn't accepting my password.  I made several failed attempts, then the system locked me out.  It occurred to me thereafter that the bank site had required me to change my password, and I didn't remember what it was!  Finally, I asked my daughter to look in her files to find my new password, but she (and I) realized that it had been changed after I had given her all of my user names and passwords...plus it was Saturday, and the bank's customer service office was only open on weekdays to help me unlock the site.  Since I was coming home late on Sunday, I knew I was still in the grace period for the mortgage payment.  I'd make the payment Monday, right?

What I haven't mentioned, so far, is that my son-in-law installed Windows 10 on my computer while I was there.  It's a small learning curve, but things are different.  I had to learn how tell my computer not to go into Sleep Mode every five minutes of non-use.  I had to learn how to set the time to EST instead of Central.  Blah!

I also haven't mentioned that my Christmas present from my children is a new cell phone.  It's a pre-paid deal but more like a Smart Phone than anything I've ever owned.  Wow!  Major learning curve there!!  I learned how to turn it on and off, to make calls, and even take pictures.  I got it hooked up to my wifi here at home.  Much, much, much to learn.  How do I respond?  With frustration!  I'm working on it...

So...I got home on Sunday and quickly discovered that both of my house cordless phones were DOA, even though they had been on the chargers for a month.  The rechargeable batteries had been failing for months.  I just didn't expect them both to be totally dead.  So how was I going to call the bank to get them to unlock my account in order to make my mortgage payment??  Cell phone!  Using the new cell, I called, got the bank to unlock my account so I could make my payment.  Do you think this is the end of the story of Technology vs. Grandma?  NOOOOO!  The bank's website was running so slowly that nothing was happening even after I got in.  I figured that I needed to reboot the modem, which I did...and that helped.

Thereafter, I went to Walmart and purchased another set of cordless phones.  Had to assemble them then put them on charge.  Still haven't set all of the features, but at least now I have home phones again.

Through an abundance of redundancy, I have survived a bunch of "what if's".  Computer, cell phone, regular phones, wifi.  It takes me a bit longer, but I can do this!!

Halloween After-Action Report

I've written about Halloweens past before--about how it is my brother's now-posthumous birthday, how things were when I was a kid, even the stupid Halloween eye-flashing bat wreath I put on the door for the "holiday", blah, blah.  This year, once again all alone in the house, I just focused on the kids who came to the door.

I don't do as much for Halloween as I used to.  Without family here, I don't carve pumpkins anymore.  Instead, I've opted for the foam jack-o-lanterns with the light bulbs inside.  I do put batteries in the bat wreath, rake the ample leaves from the front of the door, and make sure the candy bowl is filled.  Then I turn on the outside light and wait for the ghoulies and ghosties and three-leggedy beasties to knock on my door.  It helps that my computer spot in the house is now right next to the door.  Less walking that way!!

For the most part, the really little kids are clueless.  All they know is that they get to dress up in whatever costume they want and collect free candy for their cuteness.  Here are the highlights of my experience last night:

1.  I make the kids say "trick or treat" before I will give them anything.  Last night, one little guy forgot to say it, so I prompted him: "What do you say?"  He thought for a second and started spouting what he thought I wanted to hear:  "Please?  Thank you?"  He'd been coached, bless his heart!

2.  Once they say "trick or treat", I always say, "Well, I don't want any tricks so I guess I should give you a treat!"  I'd say that 99% of the marauding children have no clue about the history of the phrase "trick or treat".  Nothing like the earlier days when children threatened the phrase as an excuse for getting candy.  Now it's just an expression.  That's probably a good thing!

3.  One dad came with three of his kids.  The littlest one--maybe 5 years old-- saw me give his sister a candy bracelet.  I had a Tootsie Roll for him, but the boy said, "I want a candy bracelet!  I want a candy bracelet!"  The dad, embarrassed, started to stop him...but I had candy bracelets and there was no reason why he couldn't have one just like his sister.  I gave him a candy bracelet.  I expect the young lad heard about that after they left my doorway!

4.  As I am dropping candy in their bags or buckets, I always try to guess what their costume is.  "Let's see...you're Spiderman...you're a princess...you're a ghost."  Last night, I couldn't guess the costume of the last little guy in a group of three, so I said, "And who are you?"  He looked up at me in all innocence and said, "Greg".  It totally cracked me up!

Oh...and I was corrected with another costume.  "You're Batman," I said.  One of the child's companions indignantly responded, "She's Bat GIRL!".  I had the gender wrong. In my own senile defense, I'm not sure there is such a critter as Batgirl, and I'm not sure how I was supposed to tell when her hair was pulled back in braids and hidden under a Batman headdress.  Sheesh!

5.  When the kids knock, they sometimes don't know enough to step back from the door so I can open it to give them their treats.  And when they do take a step back, they forget that they had to step UP on my stoop to knock.  I always have to watch to make sure someone doesn't get hurt by accidentally stepping backwards off the stoop---especially the real little ones.  Then, too, I customarily put the candy in their containers myself, rather than into their hands. Most of them know to hold their bags or buckets open for me to do that.  Last night, one really little guy stayed behind the door while his siblings were taking up the stoop space in front of the door opening.  When they left the doorway, he stayed back there waiting for his treat.  I was encouraging him to present his bucket at the door opening because I couldn't see him OR his bucket where he was and couldn't open the door any wider for fear of knocking him off the stoop.  But I knew he was there.  How?  Around the edge of the door opening, there appeared a disembodied little hand with chubby fingers wiggling to be filled with a piece of candy.  Oh...they learn early, don't they???  It tickled me.

With more than an hour of trick or treat time left, the rain started and the door knocking came to a halt.  Halloween 2015 is in the books.  On to the next holiday!

The Thousand Natural Shocks That Flesh Is Heir To...

Hamlet. To be, or not to be- that is the question: 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep- 
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 1755
That flesh is heir to. 

I had breakfast yesterday with a handsome young man--a 33-something former student who is in town to bury his father yet wanted to break bread with me, his old English teacher and now Facebook friend.  Imagine!  

The young man's name is Kyle.  He has a fraternal twin brother that I also had in school, and another older brother whom I don't know.  He asked to meet me at Bob Evans at 8:00 AM, the morning of his father's funeral visitation.  We arrived at the same time and greeted each other with a heartfelt hug in the parking lot.  I told him I was so very sorry about the circumstances of our meeting, and he expressed that he was, too.  Then we went in.

I always had a soft spot in my heart for Kyle.  He's an ambitious young'un--a do-er with a can-do attitude. Sometime just after graduation from Monrovia, he expressed interest in amateur radio and becoming a pilot.  I took him, with the help of a friend who worked there, on a tour of the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Indianapolis.  (This was before 2001.  When 9/11 happened, that sort of thing came to a roaring halt.)  He got a pilot's license and went on to sell radios, professionally.  I figured he could even become president some day!  I consider Kyle one of my educational success stories.  Thank God, we've always been able to talk frankly to each other.  He knows I am one of his cheerleaders, and I know he is a loyal "follower" of Ms. McNary.

Which brings me to our breakfast together.  Kyle's father's death (in Florida where the dad lived) was "sudden and unexpected". I only found out the night before, from Kyle, that his passing was a suicide.  An unpremeditated suicide.  He shot himself in the head, without fanfare, in front of his wife and paramedics who had just arrived to treat the father's visiting brother who was having a heart attack.  No one knows why.  There were no clues.  No hints.  Just a knee-jerk thing that leaves family and friends alike thinking they are living a nightmare that will be over if they can just wake up from it.  All that is left are questions.  

Kyle talked about it.  He wasn't emotional, although he certainly could have been.  I think he's just numb and terribly, terribly confused.  He was working on writing his father's eulogy that he will deliver today at the funeral.  I told him that I wouldn't be there for mobility reasons, and he understood.

We didn't just focus on his father.  We did catch up on other things...his brothers, his job, his life and mine.  As much as we could do in the 1 1/2 hours we soaked up space in the booth.  My heart left with him, but I--like the rest of his family--came home with sooo many questions about suicide.  We all have hard times and sometimes depression, but we don't all consider doing away with ourselves.  

1.  I think everyone can respect someone who takes his/her own life due to physical pain in a disease situation that isn't going to get better.  Choosing death on one's own terms is noble.  I could never fault the people who jumped from the towers on 9/11, for instance.  Or someone who was in horrible pain from cancer, or unable to exist without the hard work of other people due to paralysis or a degenerative disease.  I get that.  Kyle's father wasn't sick, that anyone knew of. The Medical Examiner has requested his medical records and is awaiting toxicology reports.  The dad was full of life and passion; loved his family; had just bought a new boat, etc.  

2.  A re-run Dr. Phil show that I saw after I heard about Kyle's dad featured a family whose father had killed himself due to illness and depression.  One of the daughters expressed the question, "Why wasn't I enough to make him want to live?"  Yes...there's that.  

3.  Kyle asked, "Why would he want to do this to his wife?  She is a mess.  We don't even know if she can come to the funeral."  (The wife is the boy's stepmother of 16 years.)  There's that, too.  No one knows WHY.

4.  The problem with an unexplained suicide is that no one gets answers.  The only person who can answer the questions is gone forever.  This particular death is labeled "uncharacteristic" by his family.  

5.  What's worse, people who forever threaten loved ones with suicide but never make an attempt, or those who do it without any warning whatsoever?  Either case makes us numb, but for different reasons.

6.  All of the loved ones left behind will spend the rest of their lives wondering "what if"?  It's not fair, but life isn't fair...so I guess we all need to suck it up.  Too many former students and too many of their parents have committed suicide to think it is all that uncommon.  I know of at least ten people who have deliberately done away with themselves.  That's too many!!

My heart is with the Kaiser boys today.  They are bearing one of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to".  May God be with them.    

Glad I Didn't Say That

Awhile ago, the leader of my adult Sunday School class was humbled by something that she said that she thought might have offended someone, so in our opening prayer, she said. "Father, place one hand on my shoulder to guide me and the other hand over my mouth to shut me up!"  Oh boy, do I understand that!!

Just yesterday, I almost said something that would have proved me to be an idiot.  There was a gal just ahead of me in a grocery store check-out line.  She looked preggers, and I was feeling very maternal, so I helped her unload her cart, then came very close to asking her when she was due.  Something told me not to.  Imagine how embarrassed I would have been had I done that and she turned to tell me that she wasn't expecting!

In that same vein, I caught myself just in time the other day.  One of my Facebook friends is a former student of mine.  (I'll call her Susie.)  Susie is all grown up now, with a family of her own, in a same-sex marriage with the love of her life.  They are having their second child together, while Susie has two other children by previous relationship(s).  So this baby will be Child #4--a boy among three  sibling sisters.  Once she shared her news, I ALMOST said, "Now that you have a son on the way, maybe your family is complete and you can consider a tubal ligation?"  It was going to be written tongue-in-cheek.  As in joke...ha ha...but for the wrong reason!  First of all, they didn't need my grandmotherly advice, thankyouverymuch, but the worst part is that it didn't dawn on me at the moment that this is a same-sex marriage she is in.  As in no conception without outside help.  As in no need for contraception.  As in DUH!!!  I am SOOO happy that the little voice in my head stopped me from my effort to be witty.  It wouldn't have come across in print as witty at all.  It would have appeared totally ignorant.  As in stupid!!

There have been other times when I was glad that God put a hand on my shoulder and the other over my mouth.  He needs to be more vigilant about that before I make an absolute fool of myself!  It's coming!

Why I Don't Want a Pet

I don't think I have ever told the story of our pet rat, so here goes:

When I was in college and living in a dorm, spring break came along.  I was packing, waiting for my mom to arrive from the Chicago area to pick me up and take me home to Oak Park for the week.  As it happened, I was one of the last girls to leave that day, and the Dorm Director--a matronly lady-- came to my room to check on my departure schedule.  She was carrying a shoe box with holes in it. "Someone left this cute little hamster in the laundry room," she said.  "I don't know what to do with it."  The "cute little hamster" was trying to chew his way out of the box, quickly making his air holes into port holes of escape.  I told her that my mom and little brother were coming to get me, and since brother Doug had always had hamsters and guinea pigs and gerbils, I would take the "cute little hamster" home with us.  She was relieved and grateful.  After she left my room,  I peered into one of those holes.  The nose that greeted me was not the nose of a cute little hamster.  It was too pointy and too big.  It was a rat.  A lab rat, to be exact.  An albino lab rat...white with red eyes...and all too intent on getting out of that box.  Someone at ISU had unintentionally--or even deliberately--left behind a science department participant.  And the Covills gained a pet.

When Mom and Doug arrived, we loaded my stuff in the car.  Doug was in the back seat.  I handed him the box with holes and told him, not all that quietly, to keep the contents secret until we got out of town.  Of course, Mom was immediately suspicious.  "What is it??"  Never a good liar, I confessed.  Told her the story.  Know what?  She wasn't flapped at all!  The rat entertained my 8-year-old brother all the way back to Chicago, and all was well.  (Secretly, I knew my mother wouldn't mind.  We already had cages and water bottles, etc., at home.  The rat would just become the newest resident of one of them.  We always did take in stray critters...and even some stray people!)  That stupid rat went on to be a great pet.  He eventually developed a tumor in his abdomen and went the way of all pets over the Rainbow Bridge, but my brother loved him, as he did all animals.

With that as background, I have to say that I, too, love animals.  As mankind continues to dominate the planet, I abhor that critters suffer from habitat disruption, deliberate abuse, inadvertent neglect, and wanton massacre.  Yet, I'm not into PETA.  I'm still a carnivore.  I trust (perhaps errantly) that animals raised for food are slaughtered humanely.  I want wild animals to remain in the wild.  That cute little raccoon can tear up your house in mere minutes...seriously.  I don't mess with wild animals except to rescue the injured ones.  (More about that later.)  But animals that are bred to be pets need to be treated as pets.  In my home as a child and as a woman, the household pets were part of the family.  They had full reign of the house without restriction.  I always have considered the expenses incurred as collateral damage.  I think the expression is "Love me; love my dog."  Animal hair, potty mistakes, grooming expenses, vet expenses, food costs, flea control, furniture damage, etc., all translate into the risks of pet ownership.  I didn't always like it very much, but I rolled with it as part of having a "needy" family member, but I'm not whacko about it.

The pet loves of my life as a child and a young married woman were dogs.  We had a cocker spaniel when I was a kid.  She was largely ignored but was never a problem.  I have guilt feelings over Taffy because I was just a kid and didn't really understand that dogs weren't supposed to just lay there all day.  We fed her and let her out to do her business, but we really didn't do anything to entertain her.  Then, as a young woman in my 20s and on my own, my boyfriend-now-ex-husband gave me his Irish Setter, Ann.  With him, she was an outside dog.  In my home, she was an inside dog...and I loved her as I would have loved a child.  She came with pedigree papers but was not a beautiful setter.  She didn't have a long, silky coat and did have a boxy-looking face...and the brains had been bred out of her.  She wasn't very sharp.  But she was totally reliable after an adjustment period.  We could take her anywhere without a leash.  She would stay close to us, even with other dogs around.  She was my baby...and then she died a horrible death in a hot car on a warm day.  (I won't go into more detail in order to protect the feelings of the person responsible.)  After she died, I was sick to my stomach for weeks.  Then along came my daughter.

Funny how having a baby makes worrying about furry family a little less significant.  We lived in rental houses, most of which didn't allow pets....but, in time, my kid wanted a cat.  She LOVED cats. We took one in for awhile in Pontiac, IL, against our lease, but got rid of it when the landlord saw it in a window while driving by.  When we moved to Indiana in 1988, Meg was on a mission for a cat. We asked for, and got, permission from the landlord to have one.  I called a vet's office which put me in touch with a lady in Eminence, IN, who took in strays.  She fed a lot of felines, almost feral, in her back yard and in her house.  The one we got from her was the only one she could catch that day--a yellow tabby that we named Butterscotch.  Butterscotch raked the dickens out of my arm when we tried to put her in the carrier, and when we opened the carrier at home, she ran out and disappeared under the furniture, not to be seen again for awhile.

The very next day, a kitten came running at me out of the bushes in the back yard, meowing and needy.  It was dirty, but mostly hungry.  Immediately, Meg wanted to keep it.  I said no.  We didn't need two cats.  I sent her out in the neighborhood with it to ask neighbors if the kitten--probably about 4-months-old--was theirs.  She came back saying no one claimed it.  (I have absolutely no proof that she actually did as I asked, but it doesn't matter now.)  The kitten-cat, that we soon named Puddy Tat, ate and ate and ate...then slept forever.  And yes, it stayed with us.  What else was I to do with it?

Puddy Tat was largely responsible for bringing Butterscotch out of her shell.   We put strings down to play with the Puddy.  Butter, just out of reach under the couch, couldn't resist the temptation to grab at the strings, too.  Eventually, Butter began to come out and trust us, but she would always be our scaredy-cat, ready to run at the slightest noise or movement.  Puddy, however, became a cat thug of sorts.  We saw her terrorize visiting dogs ten times her size, and if she saw another cat outside the house in HER territory, her tail puffed up and she became loud and wildly aggressive--even bit my daughter once--until the threat of the other cat disappeared.  Still, she and Butterscotch were the best of friends. They licked each other endlessly and could often be found wrapped up in each others' arms, asleep.

Then the divorce happened.  People don't think of who will get custody of the critters in a divorce situation.  There was no doubt in our case.  My ex insisted that the cats would have to go with my daughter and I (which sounds unselfish but wasn't).  The problem was that Meg and I were moving into a rented duplex in another town with a lease that stipulated "no pets".  Drat!  We kept them with us for a short time until we could figure out how to re-home them, but it wasn't happening.  Meg finally expressed what I was already thinking:  we're going to get caught with the cats and will be kicked out of this place with nowhere else to go.

I called Brother Doug, the animal lover.  Doug was a grown-up man by now, living in an apartment in a western suburb of Chicago with a roommate and six cats of his own (against his lease).  Would he take our cats and find homes for them?  He assured me he would/could, so Meg and I drove up to the 'burbs to deliver our furry buddies, hoping they would find happy new homes.  Doug didn't incorporate them into his cat population.  He kept the two newcomers isolated in his bedroom.  (I can only imagine what life was like for them in there.  Puddy loved to wake me up early every morning by standing on the pillow just above my head and licking my hair.  Oh, boy!)

A few months later, I began to think about buying a house in Plainfield, IN, where we were living. The gal that owned the duplex we rented was also a real estate agent, so I called her and asked if she were willing to help me find someplace that I could afford and also allow me to break my lease. She was. She took us to see some little "national homes" in the neighborhood where I now live.  She guided me through the whole process of making an offer and getting a loan.  She said, "Peg, this is the only house you will ever need."  (She was right.  It has served me well for almost 25 years.)  A couple of days after we moved in, during spring break, I called my brother--seven months after taking my cats--to find that he still had them.  I told him we could take them back.  He replied that we needed to do it NOW because he was preparing for a visit from the Health Department.  Someone had turned him in for having too many cats.  Meg and I made the drive and came back with our long-lost buddies.

We wondered if the cats would remember us and what challenges the new surroundings would bring. Interestingly, none at all!   When we opened the carrier in the new place, the felines waltzed out and looked around as if to say, "What took you so long?"  They didn't act suspicious or scared in the least. We introduced them to the litter box and the food area, and that was all it took.  They were home.  We were all family again.  Back to business as usual.

Years passed.  First Butter went over the Rainbow Bridge...then Puddy a couple of years later.  (Puddy never really recovered from losing her cat buddy and her human buddy--who got married and moved out--all in the same week.)  But there was another critter that came into my life that overlapped Puddy's demise:  Frodo the Wonderdog.

Frodo was an adorable little female buff cocker spaniel puppy that my then-son-in-law just had to have.  They were barely ensconced in an apartment on the west side of Indy.  I begged them not to take on a puppy, but Nathan was adamant. The instant they got married, they got Frodo.  The pup was a hoot!  Cute as she could be!  But, because the kids lived in an area that had a lot of ducks and geese as outside residents, they didn't take her out to housebreak her because of all of the goose poop on the ground.  Shortly thereafter, they moved to the country to a house on a golf course and had babies. Housebreaking Frodo took even more of a back seat to raising children.  In time, it pained me to see my toddler-granddaughter learn to put a napkin or piece of paper towel over dog poop in the house so no one would step on it.  Ugh!  That dog loved me.  When I showed up to visit, she would run figure-eights all over the house in excitement.  Wow!

Then, inevitably, the family had to move on to a higher paying job to support the family.  Nathan took a job in Muncie, IN, but they were moving into a rental home that said--you guessed it--no pets. What to do with Frodo?   By now, the Fro-Dog was three years old, still largely unhousebroken, and neurotic.  She wouldn't eat dog food but was a shameless food whore.  She would take food off the table if your back was turned, and heaven help you if you had food in your hand without paying attention.  She got upset if the table was cleared without her being allowed to lick the plates.  If she got something she knew she wasn't supposed to have, she ran to a back room and would snarl horribly if you tried to take it away from her.  She also was a "fear biter".  In short, she had been treated like a princess and couldn't understand life in the real dog world.  I loved her but I didn't want her.  Still, guess where she went??  Grandma's house, of course.  I made Meg and Nate pay to get her up-to-date with shots and things that she would need with me....money they really couldn't afford (still ashamed of myself over that one)...and became the tentative owner of a granddog.

Tentative, you ask?  I had every intention of finding another home for Frodo.  I figured I'd keep her for a bit, spend the summer housebreaking her in an effort to make her a more adoptable pet.  (Part of that was teaching her how to ride in the car.  She hated it.  Insisted on being under the driver's feet, which is unsafe.  It took three or four trips of having to pull over to eject her from the front to the back, then holding my arm over her escape area to come back to the front.  She never did get used to it.  Finally learned to sleep on the floor of the back seat, but only after I picked her butt up to put her there.  Ugh!)  Her spoiled little furry brain thought she was human.  I was trying to teach her how to be a dog!

One day, my daughter and grandchildren came to visit me for my birthday and never went home.  (Long story.)  A divorce ensued.  The dog became a problem.  STILL not housebroken, Frodo sometimes would hit the puppy training pads that I had spread over the kitchen's indoor/outdoor carpeting.  Sometimes she wouldn't.  I couldn't keep the floor clean enough to raise young children. Little Ryan thought it was funny to get down on his hands and knees and follow Frodo around the house wherever she went.  She would come to hide under my legs, but he was relentless.  I was just waiting for her to turn and bite him in the face.  Then, too, she nipped Robin on the fingers more than once for reasons that Robin was too young to understand.  (It hurt enough to make her cry.)  I couldn't let the children go outside in the backyard without first doing "poop patrol" to pick up piles of dog feces.  Ryan got pretty astute at finding them...and it bothered me.  The dog had to be groomed about every three months.  Any less than that, and the hair around her rectum would catch feces and bring it into the house.  Her ears would get infected and stink.  No one really played with her...and I confess that I was busy trying to maintain my career, keep house, help my daughter stay in school with all her stresses, and provide for my grandchildren.  The poor dog--stubborn as she was--probably suffered, and so did I.  I gave up.

I could have given Frodo up to a shelter, but she would not have understood even a second of that. She also was not a candidate for immediate adoption due to the fact that she wasn't housebroken,  her fear biting, and her defensive attitude about toys and treats.  She would not have survived as an "outside" dog.  I talked to Meg, briefly, about the situation and found that she did not care for the dog at all, aside from the obvious.  I decided to have the Frodog euthanized.  I felt like an absolute murderer.  No one at the vet's office discouraged me.  I think they also felt that Frodo wasn't going to work in any other home.  And so it was.  My decision.  Frodo was eight when I sent her over the Rainbow Bridge.  I had loved her and provided for her and tried to train her for five years, but there came a time when I had to weigh the pros and cons of having her.  She lost, God bless her.  I will forever live with the understanding that I failed a pet.  Actually, she was failed before I got her, but all of my efforts to rehabilitate her didn't work.  For the first time in my life, I gave up on a critter.  It hurt.  Still, our lives were better for her not being with us anymore.  I'm sure the grandchildren have secret accusations in their hearts about my doing that to "their" dog...but when they are parents and have to think about their own children crawling around on floors that are soaked in urine and feces, they may understand.  I hope so.

I have been petless ever since.  Because I live alone and get lonely sometimes, people--especially my daughter--say "You need a pet."  Blah!  No, I don't!  I'm done being the Pet Mommy.  I've made my sacrifices at that altar.  Through many years of pet ownership, I have endured cat poop, dog poop, cat barf--hair balls and otherwise--animal hair all over the house, potty accidents, shredded wallpaper from bored cats, vet bills, figuring out who will care for them in my absence, costs for pet food, cat litter, pet grooming and pet toys, arranging the house to make sure food is protected, parasite control.  I'm done!  If I had a life partner that guaranteed another person in the house, I'd love to rescue a cat, for instance, but then I am immediately tethered to the critter when I want to go visit my daughter.  As it is, I'm free, and I intend to keep it that way.

I don't want a pet because I don't want to be limited to life's choices with one as a responsibility.  Pets are our retarded children, totally dependent yet unable to communicate above a certain level.  I can no longer afford to feed and vet one.  I don't have the resources to replace things they destroy.  I don't have the resources to provide needed grooming.  I can't exercise a dog.  I can't play with a cat. Bottom line, I don't need a single other life to be responsible for since I can barely be responsible for my own!  I guess at my age, alone and relatively infirm, interacting with a pet is like interacting with a grandchild:  love 'em and spoil 'em, then send them back to their owners!
    

PTSD

I've been reading, with interest, a Facebook conversation between two young women who are cancer survivors.  One of them posted an article that mentioned that 1 of 3 cancer survivors exhibit symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I believe it.

PTSD used to be called "battle fatigue" and "shell shock", and was usually used in reference to soldiers in war who came home never to be the same again.  MOST people survive intact, in time, but many do not.  Jewish victims of the Holocaust had to have been PTSD sufferers.  Some wanted to talk about their experiences so that society would never forget; others pushed off the memories hoping they would go away so they could live again.  Much depends on when and how they were raised.  My father went through WWII and the Korean Conflict, but he chose to protect his family from the awfulness in favor of the amusing.  He was one of the happy survivors who made it home with his family intact and waiting for him with open arms.  He was almost retired when the Vietnam vets returned.  He called them "crybabies" because they seemingly whined about mistreatment.  It was a different time and a different war, but the results were the same.

PTSD is defined as something that happens to the mind--a mental condition--that occurs after experiencing or witnessing a situation that threatens one's sense of security.  (Translate: ability to live.)  The people who lived through 9/11 surely saw things or felt things that most human beings should not have to see or feel.  Their very ability to live through it was in jeopardy, but they did...yet they are challenged by the things that haunt them from the experience.  Thus, I define PTSD as what one sees when he/she closes his/her eyes to sleep at night, and how long those visions last.

A number of years ago, I went through Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) training with The Salvation Army.  This is a course that qualifies a person to assist first responders in disasters to debrief.  There are several levels of training for this, and it was an honor to be included in this level of training.  It is, however, like CPR training in that it expires after awhile.  I would no longer be officially qualified to help, but it did give me a feel for what needs to happen for people to avoid PTSD in disaster situations.  It's a skill...a feeling...an intuition.  I'm happy to have been a part of that.  I think it helps me to be sensitive to others who are challenged by their experiences.

One of the cancer survivors--Ashley by name--is a young mother.  She is a Facebook friend of mine because she was one of my students.  Diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, she was treated and free of the disease...then it came back.  She then went through a bone marrow transplant that almost killed her.  Two years later, she is now free of the disease again, but she lives every day with the notion that it could come back.  It's a potential hammer hanging over her head, and living with that kind of fear is as much a part of PTSD as imagining that a stalker is coming to kill her.  It takes away a sense of security and function.  And it doesn't just happen with her.

A few years ago, I experienced a life-wrenching experience that plunged me into a horrible depression without benefit of medical help.  I don't pretend that my situation in any way matches the life-threatening situations that would normally cause PTSD, but the results were the same.   I was despondent, devoid of hope.  I KNEW I was in trouble and looked to places for help, but there were none.  Nowhere that I called could offer me counseling.  There are simply no counseling groups for old people to deal with the issues of old age and family problems.  Case in point:  my sister needs emotional support in caring for her husband with dementia.  Everywhere, there is advice about what to expect, but nowhere is there a place to go to know what to do, unless you can pay for it.  Even then, it doesn't always work.

Thus, it is no surprise to me that people with mental illnesses go untreated, then go on to kill others.  Mental illness, whether caused by PTSD or genetics, brain chemicals or injury, goes largely undetected and untreated in this country.  But treating mental illness is sometimes only a tweak in thinking.  Sometimes, just having someone to talk to and hold hands with works wonders.  Human beings gain strength in knowing that they aren't alone and unprotected in life.  We can't always change our experiences, but we can find healthier ways to deal with them, long term.  It's time for America to change its approach to mental illness, which includes PTSD.

Truth be known, mental illness is not at all rare.  I believe that every person experiences it at least once in life through experiences or fears.  Some people are able to work through it on their own, in time, but many don't.  Post Traumatic Stress is the very thing that causes us to remember exactly where we were and what we were doing the minute we witnessed or heard about life-altering events such as the assassination of a president or airplanes deliberately guided to crash into buildings.  In that sense, we all have PTS.  It becomes PTSDisorder when it won't go away...when our minds can't let it go...when we continue to live in fear in spite of our safety when the immediate danger is gone.

Cancer survivors don't always live with that feeling of safety.  They exist through treatment one day or week at a time.  Then a month passes.  They can breathe a mini-sigh of relief.  A cancer-free year later, the relief is more palpable.  The next milestone is five years.  After the 5-year mark, they are considered "in remission".  That doesn't mean "cured", although it could.  They just don't know for sure.  Thus, they live with the notion that whatever life-threatening risks they once had could return. Which causes PTSD.

I am not suggesting that the so-called normal life events that we all suffer from come close to what the cancer sufferer endures, but I am suggesting that there, by the grace of God, go we all.  We are all in this world together.  Time to be there for each other.        

Goodbye Again

Yesterday, I posted the story of the family in Monrovia, Indiana, that was forced to consider pulling the plug on their youngest daughter after a serious car accident that left her unable to recover.  Last night, her father announced on Facebook that his daughter was "with God now".  Her organs were donated to who knows how many lucky recipients who were praying for a miracle.  Parts of Meredith live on.

I was, unluckily, present in an ICU hospital room for just this sort of thing when I was sent there for an aneurysm brain bleed.  I was in a double room.  Another woman was on the other side of the curtain, on a ventilator.  The male nurse asked me if I wanted to watch TV.  I said I would but didn't want to disturb the other patient.  He said, "I wish you could disturb her.  She had what you have, but she's not doing so well."  That was his tactful way of saying that the woman was brain dead.  She was being kept alive for organ donation...something I figured out for myself when I overheard one of her children weeping over her, "You've always had such pretty eyes, and now someone else is going to see through them."  I realized in that moment that I should not be there.  These were private moments within a family.  I had no business intruding on their privacy, even though a curtain separated us, and it wasn't my fault.  And then, late one night, the transplant team came to usurp the room, doing whatever they do to prepare for organ harvest.  Meanwhile, the hospital was desperately trying to find a private room to get me out of there. My surgery was over.  I was no longer critical.  Fortunately, it happened the very next morning.

I am a little surprised at how very sad I feel for Meredith's family today.  Yeah, yeah, yeah....people die every day.  Grandparents and mothers and fathers get old and die.  People in the drug culture die every day.  Soldiers get killed.  People get drunk and do stupid stuff and die.  People get cancer for seemingly no reason at all, or drop dead of heart attacks.  (Like my very own stepson and brother, respectively.)  But...but...it doesn't happen to US.  Those nasty things happen to others.  But a child? A beautiful, intelligent, talented, athletic kid with her whole life ahead of her?  I internalized this one. I know the family.  I had her sister in class.  I get it.  All I can really tell you is that if something like this happened to my daughter, her husband, or my grandchildren, you will be able to visit me at the psychiatric ward in a hospital somewhere.  I would not survive intact.  There would be no further reason for me to live.

The older I get, the more these things affect me.  I try to offer support by way of my own experiences with grief but am not always sure if it hits the mark.  I don't get into the "so sorry for your loss" stuff...or worse..."she/he's in a better place".  Yet, I wonder why we are so shocked when these things happen.  Wake up!  You are not promised tomorrow...and neither am I!!

Having spent most of my adult career as an English teacher, I sometimes turn to literature for answers, and today my mind goes to this from John Donne's "Meditation 17":

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less As well as if a promontory were, As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. These famous words by John Donne were not originally written as a poem - the passage is taken from the 1624 Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and is prose.

Saying Goodbye

We humans are such a trusting lot.  When we go to bed at night, we believe that the sun will come up in the morning.  We assume that we have a tomorrow.  We play out our lives not willing to believe that things can change in an instant, never to be the same again.  The play Our Town portrays this when a young woman dies and is given the chance to go back to her family for one more day as if she were still living, only to realize that they aren't focusing on what is really important in life.  She is dead.  She gets it.  They aren't, so they don't.  And so it is.

A family of my acquaintance in the school district where I once taught is learning this lesson the hard way.  The last of their five daughters just graduated from high school last May--beautiful, bright, athletically talented, and full of future promise.  Then she was in a terrible car accident.  She was put in a drug-induced coma to try to control brain swelling, but then developed Acute Pulmonary Distress Syndrome as a result of her injuries.  She was already on a ventilator.  The doctors did everything they knew how to do to help her lungs heal, but nothing was working, which prompted doctors to tell the family that there was nothing more they could do for their daughter.  There is no happy ending here.  The parents are now charged with the notion of "pulling the plug" on their baby.  They have determined that Meredith's organs will be donated because she is young and strong and would have wanted it.  It's a way of saying goodbye without actually having to sever the string that binds her to the world.  (God bless the family!  I had one of her sisters in class.)

I have written endlessly about my family's nomadic life in the Navy before I was 10-years-old.  In that year, we went back to civilian life as my father was put on inactive duty.  My brother was only 4 at the time, so he spent his entire school career in one school district and in one house.  My sister was a Senior in high school.  She got the worst of it, having to say goodbye to friends over and over again as we moved wherever the Navy sent us.  I, however, was on the cusp.  When we were stationed in Danville, IL, we were there for four years.  Unheard of!  It was long enough for me to make a neighborhood friend.  Susan Kochell and I were inseparable buddies, in the same class at the local school.  We'd been friends since second grade...only lived a block away from each other.  BFFs!  And then, at the end of my 4th grade year, Dad was sent to Japan, and we with him.

The day we left town to go to California to meet the ship that would take us to the Orient, we stopped at Susie's house to say goodbye.  The car was packed to the gills for our cross-country trip.  No one even got out of the car.  Susie's family met us at the curb for our final farewells, and as it came time to depart, all I could do was sob in deep anguish, "I don't want to leave!"   I think it broke my mother's heart, but my own heart was broken.  After we were a few miles down the road, I understood that we were on a great adventure and there would be no turning back.  I carried on.  I had no other choice.

Through all of my military youth, I learned not to look back.  Saying goodbye in those days meant "I will never be here again or see you again."  That is such a heavy thought.  So final.  Thus, it becomes difficult for me to do justice to endings.

The last time I saw my beloved grandmother alive, I had the sense that it would be the last time.  She showed me her grangrenous black foot when prompted to do so by my mother.  Baba's eyes were hollow and distant.  She knew she was dying, and so did I.  (It had already been decided not to put her through amputation surgery since her prognosis was already dire.)  In the moments before I left her that day, I kissed her as I usually did and told her that I loved her as I usually did and then said, "See you later."  It wasn't exactly the kind of deathbed sendoff that I would have wanted.  She looked so very alone in that bed, surrounded by several family members who loved her dearly...and it hit me that dying is the loneliest thing we do.  No one can come with us.  I didn't say the kind of goodbye that maybe I wanted...but what is the best thing to say?  I wasn't in charge.  Her children--mostly my mother--were in charge.  I put my faith in my relationship with that grand old woman to believe that she knew how I felt about her.  Never alone.  Never, never alone!

When my own mother passed away, none of us were with her.  It was a sudden and unexpected departure.  Mom was my best friend and confidante.  I wasn't there with her...and it bothered me...but I also comprehended that I probably would not have handled the end well.  I am 100% certain that my mother's last conscious thought was about who would care for my dad in her absence.  I'm happy to say that we all stepped up to do just that.  We "closed ranks" as my military uncle--her brother--suggested, and I have no regrets about my relationship with Mom.  Still, saying goodbye was plenty tough.  I remember putting my head on the shoulder of the funeral director as I was entering the funeral home saying, "I don't think I can do this."  He said, "Yes, you can."  It was such "Mom" thing to say!  It was all I needed to bring strength from my toenails to get through the day.

Still, I have problems with goodbyes.  Who wants to say, "In case I never see you again, here's how I feel?"  No one.  We plan for tomorrow, sometimes without planning for the hiccups that can happen between now and then.  When I started living alone, I tried  to cover some bases about things should I become disabled, etc.  And you'd better bet that the last thing on my mind and on my lips as I slip into oblivion will be love for my children and family.  I have done my dead-level best to live a good and honest life.  No one can ever accuse me of not working hard enough to do so!

The bottom line for me is this:  Life is short and fleeting.  If I leave you or you leave me before we've had a chance to finalize our relationship, it's okay.  Eternity is forever.  I gave you the best I had.  I can only assume that you did the same for me.

I think the Hawaiians say it best:  We don't say goodbye.  We just say Aloha.  I'm good with that.

A New Kind of Bad Guy

Today's topic, boys and girls, will be about bad guys.  You may call them villains or whatever you wish, but they boil down to evil intent.  I point your attention to a scholarly article on the subject of today's bad guys: pharmaceutical companies that are price gouging.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/09/generic_drug_price_gouging_how_shkreli_and_other_monopolists_cornered_the.html

The article is full of a lot of big words, but here is the jist:
A small pharmaceutical (drug) company, led by a smirky young CEO, has acquired the rights to an old drug (since the 40s) that is prescribed to fight parasitic infections that sometimes prey on people with AIDS.  Under this man's leadership, the price of the pills went from $13.50 apiece to $750.  The CEO says he believes that the cost of the drugs should be borne by the people who use them, rather than on the backs of those who don't.  (I don't believe that drugs were ever part of a socialist notion that the many pay for the few, but I am admittedly naive about such things, so I'm not sure.)  He made another statement, however, that sent up a red flag in my brain.  That was something to the effect that the price increase was a "favor to society".  I asked myself why.  Who will benefit from the price increase, and who will suffer from it?  The drug company is the only beneficiary, and the majority of the sufferers are AIDS patients.  And who, according to societal myths, are the bulk of AIDS sufferers?  Homosexuals.  Since we are a nation divided over same-sex issues, I wonder if the agenda of this drug company, led by Mr. Shkreli, is meant as a strike against gay folks.

What Mr. Shkreli has done is, apparently, totally legal.  Is it ethical?  Not on your life!  It's not a matter of supply-and-demand.  It's not a matter of a new drug being tested on the market.  It's not even a matter of keeping the drug company afloat.  It IS a matter of corporate greed with maybe some social issues at the fore?

Back in the 70s, I was doing homebound instruction for a Pontiac (IL) Junior High student who had a heart transplant.  Heart transplants were relatively new in those days, but the girl had cardiomyopathy, and there was no other choice.  After her successful transplant, she was prescribed the anti-rejection drug Cyclosporin.  The cost for that drug was over $2,000 a month.  Her father was a state employee, working for the Department of Corrections at the Pontiac maximum security prison.  The family had insurance through Blue Cross/Blue Shield, but BC/BS refused to pay for the drug because it was considered experimental.  The cost of that one medicine was more than the family's monthly income. What were they supposed to do?  Let their child die because they couldn't afford the medicine that would prevent her body's rejection of her new heart??  In desperation, the family went to the media with their plight.  Then-Governor Jim Walker got wind of it and worked some magic to force BC/BS to pay up.  I think the young lady eventually died...but that's not the story I am focusing on here.

I think I am part of this new Bad Guy thing.  My pulmonary doctor has given me a couple of sample inhalers, etc., that seem really helpful, but I can't afford the prescription.  We've gone around the mulberry bush with two prescriptions now, both of which are out of reach for me--even with Medicare and supplementary insurance.  I live on a subsistence budget.  I get by, barring anything catastrophic.  I'm sorry that I can't afford $250 a month for a breathing drug, but so far, I still don't depend on anyone else for financial help.  The doc and I settled for an older drug that is much, much cheaper...but what would I do if a pharmaceutical company bought the rights and decided to hike the price out of reason?

When I was a kid in the 1950s, poliomyelitis was a scourge.  It killed many and crippled more.  Even President FDR was affected.  And then, Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine that prevented it from infecting more victims.  We children back then were lined up at school to be vaccinated--for free.  Polio has been eradicated in the world, except among the unvaccinated.  Dr. Salk rejected the notoriety he was receiving.  When asked "Who owns the patent to this vaccination?", he responded, "No one.  Who can patent the sun?"  He could have profited greatly from his scientific work; instead, he gave it to the world.  Had Mr. Shkreli been in charge, we would still be fighting polio because the poor or under-insured would not have been able to afford the vaccine.  If you didn't grow up in my era, you won't understand, but the world can thank God for the likes of Jonas Salk.  Mr. Shkreli?  Not so much.

I don't want to be held hostage by the drug Bad Guys.  I'm not stupid enough to believe that research just happens without financial support, but I also don't believe that putting a drug (or vaccine) out of the reach of those who need it will advance us as a nation.  I am also very much suspicious of companies that seem to be aiming at a certain controversial target.  I could be wrong, but I don't think so!    

The House on the Golf Course

Some things have happened to bring these memories to mind, so I thought I'd write about them as family history, from my own perspective.

When my daughter and her first husband, Nathan, were married, they had been living with me.  Getting on their own meant getting their own place, so after much research, they settled on a pretty nice apartment up on 38th Street in Indianapolis.  (Not such a great area, but not horribly bad then.)  It worked for maybe a year, but then--due to a loss of job(s)--they had to vacate.  They moved in with Nate's parents for awhile (maybe eight months or so)...and then...and then...and then....

Nate was offered a position as superintendent of a golf course out in the country just south of Plainfield:  Friendswood Golf Course.  It was a course that was purchased and built around a very old brick school building.  Nate would have to take a class or two in environmental stuff, but he accepted the position.  The pay was quite low, but one of the perks was a home on the property.  It was an old home, but it gave the newlyweds a place to be, independent of both sets of parents, and since Megan was pregnant by this time, it seemed like an answer to prayer for us all.

Did I mention that the house was old??  Yeah...big time.  The owner was going to have new carpet put in the whole place and so required that NOTHING be put in there until that was done.  But before that could happen, both families converged on the place to see what we needed to do to make the place livable.  The kitchen drawers and cabinets were full of mouse droppings.  The upper cabinets were gummy with accumulated grease and grime.  The floors were slanted, to the degree that if you had dropped a marble, it would have rolled downhill.  The floors were plank and full of holes that looked down into the crawl space.  When we opened the electrical box, there was an electrocuted mouse stuck behind a fuse.   In short, we had a lot to do before the kids moved in!

The first thing I did was obtain pieces of tin of various sizes from a friend.  I personally nailed tin over at least a dozen floor holes.  Then we stuck pieces of steel wool around the plumbing holes in the house--anything to keep the mice out.  We stripped and refinished the birch kitchen cabinets.  We made and bought curtains to fit the house and make a nursery.  We cleaned everything.  (Truth be known, our efforts worked.  Mice were never a problem in that house after that.)

The one thing we couldn't fix was the iron-filled water.  There was a water softener in the house that would take iron-removing salt pellets, but the kids were generally too poor to keep buying that stuff.  The water came out of the faucet looking so bad that no one wanted to drink it or cook with it, so I bought a water cooler for them and went about the business of making sure that they had enough 5-gal. bottles to get through a week.  They bathed in the nasty rust-water, however, so the bathtub looked awful and red and ugly.  We bought a "tubby" thing to put the baby in when she was big enough to put in a tub.  It wasn't pretty....  The snow-white cloth diapers that I had bought for my first grandbaby became orange.  We didn't buy anything white by way of clothing or bedding because it wouldn't stay white for long!!

And then there was Frodo the Wonder Dog.  Frodo was a buff cocker spaniel...a real cutie...but also so totally spoiled and untrained that she toileted in the house, no matter how often she went outside (which apparently wasn't often enough).  Nathan took her on at six weeks.  I begged them both not to take a pet.  Did they listen?  Nooo...  And the end result was that Frodo often piddled and pooped on the brand new carpets in the golf course house...the brand new carpets that my grandchildren would be crawling on...  I hated that.

Then, not so long after my granddaughter (Robin) was born, her brother was conceived.  I had spent hundreds of dollars to give my daughter and family the things that I thought they needed, and even more than what they thought they needed.  I sponsored the Quilt Phase, the Kindermusik Phase, and the Creative Memories Phase of Meg's existence back then.  She was doing all she knew how to do to help improve their financial situation.  It wasn't enough.  Never enough.  Ryan was born in November of 2003.  We cleaned out yet another room of the golf course house--questionable, for sure--to upgrade Robin to a different bedroom while her new brother took the nursery.

There were a lot of happy things going on in that house, but we soon became aware of  problems.  I would put a blanket on the floor in order to play with my grandchildren but noticed that everything felt damp.  After awhile, the excessive humidity in the home became an issue.  The kitchen floor became spongy.  There were mushrooms growing on the wood window sills in the bathroom.  There was mold on the bathroom cabinets and on some of the furniture.  The crawl space under the house was damp but not streaming.  No one could determine what was causing the moisture.  There was no humidifier on the new furnace and no water leaks that anyone could find.  I bought a dehumidifier but even that didn't seem to reduce the dampness by much.  Then, too, Megan would hear scurrying noises in the walls at night...and we noticed winged creatures descending into the defunct house chimney at dusk.  Bats?  Birds?  We all began to wonder if the free rent was worth whatever health risks could be occurring.

Then came the tornado.  It came right down through the golf course.  Thanks be to God, the kids and family took cover--even with the dog.  (I've written about this before.)  A huge tree came down in the back yard, missing the house by mere inches.  Nathan had his work cut out for him on the course.  The grandchildren stayed with me six miles from the carnage, while everyone assessed the damage early the next morning.  Phone and electricity were restored to the golf course house before the first day was over, but it took months to remove all 125 of the downed trees...and then some.  The little old yellow house had no damage, although a barn on the course mere yards away was destroyed.  We were all shaken but grateful that no one was hurt.  The only thing by way of personal property that was damaged was little Robin's outside tugboat sandbox and her Little Tykes jungle-gym-type contraption.

Nathan began to look for other work.  Even with housing thrown in the mix, his income at Friendswood wasn't enough to keep the family afloat.  He was offered a good position near Muncie, IN, that he accepted.  I cried for three days!  They were going to take my grandbabies away!  In any case, at the end of my three-day mourning period, I jumped on the bandwagon to help them move out of the golf course house.  (That's a whole other story.)  That started the Muncie stage of our existence, and I did every bit as much for them there as before...but "helping" now was 1 1/2 hours away.  The new position was much more lucrative, and the kids bought a house.

Meanwhile, getting out of the Friendswood house wasn't so easy.  The non-lease contract the kids had agreed to said that they would repaint the interior of the house upon their exit.  They hadn't been in the house very long--less than two years--but a deal is a deal.  Consequently, Nate's parents (particularly his father) spent a lot of hours and effort, plus expense, painting the interior of the house for whomever would be the next tenants, while the kids were moving and trying to settle in Muncie.  None of the house problems had been addressed, but those walls were sure going to be clean and freshly painted!

I can only speculate what happened at the little yellow house after that.  The new superintendent at the Friendswood Golf Course was to be the owner's grandson who already had a home and wouldn't be using the old house.  My guess is that the owner began to take a look at the house issues in order to prepare it to be rented out.  Before long, rumor had it that the golf course house was unfixable because it would cost too much to bring it up to code.  It would be torn down.  To save the cost of demolition, the house had been offered to the fire department for a planned training burn.  The FD declined.  Why?  Because they found too much asbestos in the place for them to risk releasing the fibers into the air with a fire.  Ack!  My babies had lived in that place!!

Thereafter, all that was left to do was observe the demolition of the little yellow house.  One day, as Megan and family were visiting in Plainfield, Meg and I stopped by the place when one outside wall had been taken down.  It was as if looking into a doll house with all of the rooms exposed because a wall was missing.  As we stood there looking in at the bathroom and nursery from outside the house, we noticed that there were walnuts and walnut shells spilling out of a now-exposed wall interior.  Lots and lots of walnuts!  Walnuts no doubt put in the wall by the furry creatures that Meg had heard over a long period of time.  We each shed a tear or two, remembering that their little family had its beginnings in the house that was soon to be no more. Then we returned to the car and left, never to look back.

And so it is.  That was probably ten years ago now.  Nothing is left to indicate that a little yellow house had ever stood there.  The children were too young to have any memory of the place.  It was an awful house, but for a short time, it was home to some very special people (and a few animals, it seems).  All that love...all that expense...all that hard work (including freshly painted walls)...have gone the way of all earthly things.  But the memories...ah, the memories...will remain with us forever.

Laundry Tips

When my daughter and grandchildren were living with me a few years ago--and I was still teaching--the weekends were the only time to do the mountain of laundry that accumulated through the week. In those days, the children were going to visit their father in Muncie every weekend.  Megan was taking college courses and using the weekends to do her work.  I did laundry.  This was my choice.  It gave me a sense of control because I would know what was clean for everyone because I was the only laundress in the house that would sort loads and follow through with hanging, folding, and putting away.  It was a LOT of work, but it also helped me to feel that I had accomplished something, no matter how exhausted I was!

Then, too, I consider myself the Stain Queen of the Universe.  I know all of the tricks and have all of the products that do the job...with effort.  (The only stains that have vexed me to this day are the ones in my tablecloths, one of which is a crocheted piece that took me a year to make.  I've done everything known to man to get rid of the stains, to no avail.  Ugh!)

But, sadly, the daughter and grandchildren moved on.  The only benefit of that was that my laundry burden went from 10 loads per week to three.  And now, much less.  What are my secrets?

1.  Use towels more than once.  Never washcloths.  If you don't have enough washcloths to last a week, buy more!

2.  Have enough underwear and socks on hand to last two weeks.  I bleach mine in hot water, which means that I have graduated to white cotton "granny pants" from the sexier nylon ones that fall apart after too many bleachings.  TMI.

3.  Wear clothing more than once before washing.  Yeah, yeah...I know that sounds gross...but unless you are a construction worker or exposed to germs or body fluids on the job, how dirty do your clothes get?  How dirty are you when you put yourself into them each day?  When I was a kid, we had school clothes, play clothes, and church clothes.  I was not allowed to play in school clothes. Those got taken off and hung up at the end of the school day to be worn another time before washed. We have become so nasty clean that we are raising a generation of children with allergies and phobias, not to mention housewives who are fatigued in spite of the fact that we have better laundry facilities now than at any other time in America's history.

4.  Hide out!  If no one sees you, you don't have to be spiffed up!  Well...I shouldn't go there.

I'm doing laundry today.  Could you guess that??

Garden Blocks

In yesterday's post, I mentioned sending my man James to purchase garden blocks.  It's hard to look these up online.  Apparently they are called blocks for retaining walls, because that is where I found what I wanted on the Menard's website.  I only had $80 on me--which is an unusually large sum for me.  I had no clue how many blocks he could purchase for that, nor did I even know how many of the blocks we would need in order to edge my flower garden.  The cheapest ones I found online were about $1.50 apiece.  James stepped out the measurement with his feet, so he had an idea, but I wasn't sure.  In any case, he went off with cash in hand in his jalopy truck.

He was gone a long time.  I fell asleep as I usually do at that hour of the day.  When I came to, he was here and had already lined the flower bed edges with the blocks...and had enough left over to line another small flower bed...and even line the front under the new fence!  He had found the blocks for 89 cents apiece!

Please understand that in the 23 years I have owned this little house-on-a-slab, I have personally made those flower beds...and have had, in that time, at least two types of rubbery edging.  The first kind required a little trench, but it all got kicked out by frost over time.  The next effort was with small units of edging that had to be pounded into the ground with a rubber mallet.  That didn't even last as long.  Last winter's cold, along with the mower hitting it, forced it out of the ground entirely.  I am no longer able to tend to the outside of the house, but I have to tell you that deciding to buy those blocks was the best decision I could have made.  They sit on top of the ground.  No amount of cold can dislodge them!  And James's putting them down while I was asleep made it a huge surprise to me.  It looks every bit as good as I'd hoped!

There is, of course, more to do.  The perennial plants need a lot of attention.  That and painting the trim on the bay window are on the top of my outside list...but I'm sure happy with what I have, so far!

To Sleep...Perchance to Dream

Aye, there's the rub!

Thank you, Shakespeare!
I don't sleep well these days.  At best, I get five hours.  Sometimes more; sometimes less.  Today, I was up at 3:00 AM.  This is nothing new.

Usually, when I wake up long before an acceptable time, I force myself to stay in bed and continue to doze.  Today, however, was a bit different.  I was having crazy dreams that made it impossible for me to go back to sleep.  As stupid as it sounds, I was dreaming that my ex-husband was trying to force his way back into my life...and other such impossibilities.  My conscious brain was rejecting all that my subconscious brain was suggesting...so I woke up with no hope of going back to sleep.

All I want out of life right now is to sleep restfully all night.  I guess I need a definition of what constitutes "all night"!!  I long ago gave up fighting my circadian rhythm.  If  all my body wants by way of sleep is five hours, I guess I need to accept that...but why????

If this is part of the aging process, I don't like it, but nobody asked me!