The Screams of Silence

When awake and busy toddlers suddenly become quiet, it's time to find out what they're up to.        When someone you love who is normally talkative stops talking, something's up.                                    When you abruptly have no words to explain how you are feeling or why anyone should care, red flags should fly.  

Sometimes, silence from people virtually screams TROUBLE.  Those who are too far into depression, loneliness, problems in life, or mental illness are experts at hiding what's wrong.  They can be ashamed to appear emotionally weak, or perhaps they are embarrassed to have anyone know their dirty little secrets.  Maybe they have low self-esteem and don't consider themselves worthy of the attention of others.  Not sure.  Doesn't matter.  All that matters is that someone you know, and maybe love, isn't talking.  Where do we go from there?

"Am I my brother's keeper?"  In a sense, I am.  I certainly can't fix the world but I do understand that something isn't right when people uncharacteristically get quiet.  But there is another aspect to this that isn't immediately obvious:  sometimes, when I get a hint of something I simply can't deal with, I don't ask questions because I fear the answers.  My daughter, the one person in my life that I love above all else, also senses the triggers.  She doesn't offer answers to questions I haven't asked because she also doesn't want to deal with the problems that the truth might bring.  Thus, we both remain detrimentally silent about a huge pile of manure in the middle of our virtual living spaces.  I always intuitively know the truth without the details.  When I think I am ready to hear the details, she has already shut me out.  (This is a pattern with the two of us.)  In this case, silence isn't golden.  It's destructive of our trust in each other.  Beyond that, it's an indication that we don't know each other as well as we think we do.  

Truth is--and my daughter knows this--it takes me a little bit to adjust to/accept big changes in the flow of things in life.  When she and her first hubby announced to me that they were expecting, after telling me just a couple of weeks before that they had decided not to have children, I was confused.  That time, it took me less than an hour to switch gears from Mom to Grandma.  And then they gave me another grandchild.  My life was changed forever!  Those children became the focus of my life.  And then...and then...my daughter made a decision I simply couldn't understand, and never will.  It affected all of us, including the children, and I still can't talk about it without tears and heartbreak.  Thankfully, most of that has been resolved but at what cost?  There were months of silence, anger, sense of betrayal, and prayer.  There is no hurt quite as exquisite as coming from the ones you love the most.

Silence doesn't always represent relief or calm.  Sometimes, it screams that all is not well.  I must come to understand the difference.      

  

What the Pandemic Created.

It has now officially been one year since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus to be a pandemic.  World-wide.  It has now officially been one year since the world started to shut down in order to stop the spread of the virus, and it has also officially been one year since the President of the United States (POTUS) decided to downplay the virus and make it a political issue.  Thousands were dying every day.  He was playing mind games.  I was disgusted.

The school district from which I retired years before had a group of teachers, parents, and students touring Europe one year ago.  This was not school sponsored but was offered by a tour company to teachers/students/families interested in a chaperoned tour.  A couple of days before their scheduled flight to come home, they were stranded.  European borders were closing.  Flights and trains and bus transportation were quickly drying up.  Parents and teacher friends in the US were in contact with the group.  They were begging for us to start pulling political strings at home to help them leave Europe.  (They were prepared with numbers to call, etc., making it easy for us to let our Indiana lawmakers, including VP Pence, that they needed help.)    

I was a 10-year-old kid when I lived in Japan (1957-58).  Many is the time that I worried about my safety as an American in 12-year-post-war Japan.  I needn't have worried.  I had the US Navy behind my being there, but who knew about that, then?  Thus, when I got word that 19 adults--some of whom were former colleagues of mine--and 20 kids of middle-to-high-school age might not be able to get home from Europe, I became part of the team to do my part.  Somehow, things worked out.  Embassies were involved and money with which to bribe bus drivers.  The crew reached Frankfurt, Germany, with enough time to get on the last flight to Chicago out of Germany.  Whew!

As a high-risk person in the pandemic's target range, I became a hermit.  No one came in my house, and I went nowhere unless absolutely necessary.  I have a decorative bench just outside my front door.  That bench became the place for me to receive things or send things out.  I am blessed because people did things for me.  I usually didn't even have to ask.  It's not in my make-up to ask for help, but I have learned to accept it with gratitude.

Over the past four or five years, I have learned to keep track of the weather.  When a snowstorm approaches, I have made sure that I go out in advance to make sure that I have everything I need to make it through for a few days.  In short, I've always been prepared to be a hermit for a week at a time, perhaps.  I just never thought about how that would work over a whole year, and counting.

As Christmas of 2020 approached, I became inconsolable.  It had been a year since I last saw my family, and that represented the most time I had ever been away from them.  I became convinced that I would never see them again due to my own failing health, and that destroyed me.  For the first time in my life, I was alone.  Yes, I have lived alone for many years, but I always had the freedom to come and go.  This time, I wasn't the only one restricted.  The whole world was, with no immediate light at the end of the tunnel.  I couldn't even pretend that all was sunshine and flowers.  In spite of all of my presumed strength to make it through, I became uncomfortably aware that I was not okay.  My Positive Mental Attitude no longer existed.  I was weeping all day, every day...so I began to seek help.  I wasn't suicidal, just in so much pain that living wasn't convenient.  I was chiding myself for feelings I didn't think myself worthy to have.    I reached out to my doctor about my "old age depression" made worse by the pandemic.  My doctor put me on low-dose Zoloft, and it has helped.  It doesn't make me happy, but it does level my moods.  At least I'm not crying all the time.

All the while, I have been battling health problems.  Tests.  Blood draws.  Dr. visits.  And finally...FINALLY...vaccinations against the virus.  Which is where I am now.  I am still, perhaps, overly-cautious because I think people are acting carelessly in an effort to make life normal again.  There is absolutely NOTHING normal about life in Indiana or even the US right now.  Thank God we have a new president who is not a narcissist.  We have a lunatic fringe, but I'm seeing more common sense than I have seen in awhile.  Hallelujah!  We have learned a little more about how to take care of each other.  Maybe.  We'll see.

This is not my first pandemic.  The last one I endured was in the late 50s, called the Asiatic Flu.  When I got it, however, I was 10 years old and healthy enough to get over it.  This time around, I was 72 when it hit.  I don't have enough time left to be burning daylight, waiting for herd immunity to take place.  I'm 74 now, with even less time.  I'm considering my priorities every day.  Every day is a new hurdle, but I'm still in the fight!      

 

      

The Gaslight Sisters

 It's true.  Two female siblings from the same parents, raised in the same household with the same values, can remember things differently and/or go in different directions in life, to the effect that they tend to gaslight each other--lovingly, of course, but still with some amount of teasing about who is right and who is wrong.  

As it happens, I have an older sister.  She is 79, and I am 74.  That's a difference of a mere five years, yet we span two separate generation labels.  I am a Baby Boomer.  She is pre-Baby Boom.  She grew up with Elvis.  I was more into folk music and the Beatles.  As kids, we fought like...well...like sisters.  She was married and raising a family when I was still in junior high school, so we missed some of the important things--she because she was busy being a wife and mother, and I because I was a teenager.  In short, we weren't close as kids.                                                                                                                  As adults, we are tight as thieves.  Confidantes.  There isn't much that we don't know about each other.  We both know things about each other and our families that we don't divulge to anyone, because that's what sisters do.  Still, there are ways that we gaslight each other--in jest, I believe--but with a grain of truth to everything.  

For example, my sister was the firstborn child/grandchild of the family.  I have this theory, with evidence, that she got all of the "good genes", and I got the leftovers.  (Not sure what our younger brother got.  He passed before we had a chance to talk about DNA with him.)                                    *Shari (my sister), has a full, non-gray head of hair.  My hair was prematurely gray and thinned out early in life to reveal all kinds of bald spots.                                                                                                *Shari is petite and cute; I am average height and plain.                                                                        *Shari doesn't have high cholesterol, even though she slathers major butter on everything; I watch my fats, but still have to take a statin drug for cholesterol.  She does not.                                                  *Shari always looks like she just stepped out of the dry cleaners.  She irons clothes and has a big wardrobe of trendy clothing and shoes.  I go for comfort; thus, I usually look like the stereotype of a homeless bag lady.                                                                                                                                    *Shari is a "looker".  She takes care of her appearance.  I am the recipient of comments like, "I bet you were a looker in your day."  (Isn't that special!?)                                                                                          *Although Shari is older than I, if anyone looks at us side by side, he/she would guess that I am the eldest. But who's counting??  

I freely confess that I never wanted to be like my sister; I just wanted to look like her.  She was popular with the fellas.  I was just a tomboy.  Still, I had our mom save a couple of my sister's special dresses so I could wear them "someday".  It didn't happen.  Shari and I simply aren't built the same, but I can still see a couple of those dresses in my mind. 

Flash forward to now.  Shari's husband of 55 years died in 2016, of the complications of dementia.  She had done absolutely everything possible to keep him home and provided for, until he became too sick for her to tackle alone.  To her absolute credit, he was so far gone that he didn't last all that long in the hospital where he was being treated for complications of his condition.  After he passed, I told her that she wouldn't be "on the market" long  if she sought companionship, because she is cute and capable and still spry for her age.  She assured me that she flat-out wasn't looking for love.  And then along came Jim.  The rest is history.  I truly have never seen her quite this happy!    

Okay...on to the gaslighting.

Shari and I have running jokes about things...things that drive us both nutsy.  Here are some of the gaslighting issues:

1.  Shari insists that our mother never put mustard in her potato salad (which was to die for).  I insist that she did.  I mean, Shari left home at 18.  I stuck around longer.  I learned to make potato salad from Mom.  How else would I have known to put mustard in the potato salad dressing??

2.  I put onion in tuna salad, egg salad, and in deviled eggs.  Shari doesn't and claims that onions have no business in those.  I claim that they don't taste right without onions.  Who wins??  When I'm at her house, I eat what she serves.  I guess when she's at mine, she will eat my offerings!

3.  Shari has a habit of  opening the refrigerator and/or freezer door to get something out, etc., and keeps the door open the whole time.  We aren't talking a few seconds here.  We are talking about 30-60 seconds, during which all of the cold air is running out of the appliance.  One day at her last visit (a week or so ago), she opened the fridge door, then went to another room for a bit and walked right past the open door on her return without closing it.  Argh!  Drives me crazy!

4.  I'm a slower driver than my sister.  When she's driving on my turf, I try to give directions in time to make things happen appropriately; still, my dear sister approaches cars too close and too fast for my liking.  Visit before last, she missed a turn (probably my fault) and performed a U-turn in the middle of US 40 in the center of town.  Yikes!  I was terrified.  She just thinks I'm silly.

5.  There are things I have had to look up to determine who is right.  We had an on-going discussion about "dry measure" vs. "liquid measure".  She insisted they were different.  I had never observed a difference.  Turns out, there is no difference in amount.  I win!

While setting a holiday table, Shari was setting the knives next to the dishes with the blade facing the plate.  I had always been taught that the blade needed to face away from the plate.  Had to look it up.  I won again! 

The latest one is something I had never heard of.  I had a half-gallon of expired milk and a half-gallon of unexpired milk in the fridge.  The expired milk was close to the REAL expiration:  a week after the expiration date on the carton.  Shari took the expired milk out, shook it, and declared it was still good because shaking it created bubbles.  I have no sense of smell, so just sniffing it wouldn't work for me, but because she declared it was still usable, I used it.  Put it and a stick of butter in the microwave to soften it up before putting in cooked macaroni and cheesy sprinkles.  (Kraft.)  Thank goodness I did that before adding the macaroni and cheese sauce mix.  After 30 seconds in the microwave, the butter had softened, but the milk had curdled.  Neither of us liked the looks of that, so we tried again with another stick of butter and the unexpired milk.  Success!  So much for the bubbling milk test!

I get no pleasure out of being right.  (Well, maybe just a little.)  But I am fascinated by how two sisters raised in the same household can be so different.  Thank God, Shari and I agree on politics.  We can still be sisters!  Ya know, she and I know the best and worst of each other, but we still accept who/what we are.  I think Mom would be so proud!           

Happy Pills

The pandemic, isolation, old age, and fear overtook me for awhile.  My daughter and family were embarking, at long distance, on a new adventure, but I was being blamed for not being informed about it.  In the midst of that, I was having kidney problems that were only revealed through blood tests.  Long story short, I was grieving with no way to express it.  Still am, but who cares?  It was getting deep and helpless.

The last time I visited my Primary Care Physician--maybe a month ago--I talked to her about my depression.  She decided to put me on the generic version of Zoloft, low dose, for a trial.  I'd been on Zoloft once before in the early 90s, just after my divorce, but didn't think it really helped that much.  I believe that I was thinking that the medicine would make me happy, but I wasn't.  Still, this time, I noticed a difference.  My mood leveled out.  When bad things happened, I was more mellow and less anxious.  Success!  I will continue to take the drug because it helps me.  There was a time when I was proud of not having to take meds.  That was then; this is now.  Thankfully, nothing I take will kill me if I don't get it down my gullet once a day.  

For all of my years of not doctoring, I'm pretty happy with my team right now.  Dr. Rebecca Dunn is my PCP.  Dr. William Gill is my cardiologist.  Dr. Anthony Rose is my pulmonologist.  They are all MUCH more attentive than any previous doctor I've had.  Attentive and kind.  I'm quite pleased with them.  That feels really good!

So here I am, taking my happy pills and enduring old age, with help.  I can't ask for more!  

Shots I Have Known

I'm not talking about shots of alcohol in this blog post!  I'm talking about shots meaning inoculations, as in vaccinations.  I've had many, many, and thought I'd mention them.  (See what happens when an old lady has too much time on her hands and not enough mental stimulation??)

I simply don't know what immunizations were standard in 1947 when I was born.  I have the traditional circular smallpox scar on my upper left arm and don't remember getting it, so I assume it was done in infancy.  I think I was given what was then called the DPT immunization, too:  Diphtheria, Pertussis (Whooping Cough), and Tetanus.  Also when I was an infant, I was given an injection of Gamma Globulin because my older sister had contracted measles, and my mother was worried that I would get it.  I developed a very mild case.  Just enough to give me immunity for life.  (I had it checked during a routine blood draw before a trip to Seattle where there was a measles outbreak just a couple of years ago.)

Along about 2nd or 3rd grade, there were outbreaks of Polio all over the country.  The disease was a killer, but those who didn't die were crippled for life, like President FDR.  In Danville, IL, where we lived at the time, there was an outbreak, so my best friend and I were not allowed to go to the public swimming pool in the summer.  And then...and then...during the school year...it was announced that there was a vaccine for Polio.  It was called the Salk Vaccine, after Dr. Jonas Salk who developed it.  School kids were to be vaccinated en mass at school.  Permission slips were sent home.  My parents signed as did most others, and my class was lined up in the gym.  Girls were in slips and boys were in underwear.  We were inoculated in an assembly line...and then there was a booster shot at another time.  And that was the end of Poliomyelitis.  Done.  Finished.  Disappeared in the United States.  (Later, an oral vaccine was developed, which honked me off because I had to have the shots and not just drink something.  Sigh.)  This was in the early-to-mid 1950s.    

And then, the Navy was sending us to Japan in 1957, just 12 years post-WWII.  The military required that the whole family get immunized for a whole bunch of diseases.  We reported to the Navy clinic once a week for at least 10 weeks to get our shots.  For my 10-year-old self, it was a nightmare.  I hated needles, but I was a good little girl and did what I was supposed to do.  It served no purpose to resist.  As clearly as I remember, we had a Smallpox booster (which didn't "take"), shots against Cholera, Typhus, Typhoid, with two of those requiring a booster shot, a DPT booster, and God knows what else.  I was immunized against diseases not really found in the U.S. but who knows what we would catch in Japan?  

Actually, what we caught in Japan was a virus that went around the world...a pandemic that didn't catch too much attention.  It was called the Asian flu.  Several of my family members got it, including me.  There was no shot for that.  One of the ladies on board ship on our way back to the States died of it the day before we docked in Seattle.  She was the mother of four.  A pall fell over the ship.  Couldn't wait to get off the next day.

A number of years ago, in my old age, my doctors told me to get some immunizations.  I was directed to get a flu shot every year.  I have.  My pulmonologist wanted me to get two different immunizations against pneumonia.  I did. Due to my childhood experiences with so many needles and so many shots, I never, ever, though I would go somewhere and ask to be immunized!  Then along came COVID-19.  

I can't begin to talk about how awful my life has been because of that virus.  I am a high risk person due to age and underlying health conditions.  I haven't seen my family in person for 14 months and counting.  It kills me.  So finally, a vaccine was rushed through and was offered for old people first.  I latched on for anything to help get me/us through this nightmare.  I had my first immunization on Feb. 10th, with my second scheduled for Mar. 8th.  

Never have I been more grateful to be stabbed with a needle.  And never would I have imagined, due to my past experiences, that I would willingly ASK to be stabbed with a needle.  If vaccinations cause autism, I am a prime candidate, but I am just normally strange...not on the Spectrum at all.  I don't want to jinx myself so I probably shouldn't say this, but I simply cannot remember the last time I was acutely sick.  Please, God, grant that it stays that way!  

   

The UU's and Me

 Anyone who follows me on Facebook has likely noticed that I post quite a few memes, cartoons, and videos that I find on a website called Unitarian Universalist Hysterical Society.  From that, one might assume that I am a Unitarian Universalist by faith.  I'm not, or at least I wasn't.  (More about that later.)  I'm an active member of the Plainfield United Methodist Church here in the town where I live.  I've been a Methodist since 6th grade, and just a plain old Christian before that.  And I don't know why.  It's complicated.

My family didn't consist of church-goers, except for my grandparents--my mother's folks who farmed 160 acres of prime Patrick's loam soil in north central Illinois.  That old farm had been in the family for generations and was a mere fraction of property that my great-grandfather owned prior to the Great Depression.  It was either he or my great-great-grandfather who helped to establish a little church with a parsonage next to it just two miles from the farm, in a "town" that was merely a cluster of a few houses near a grain elevator next to the railroad tracks.  The town was called Ancona, and the tiny church (the sanctuary of which would hold 50 in theater seats instead of pews) was named the Ancona Church of Christ, which was not affiliated with the Disciples of Christ sect that now calls themselves The Church of Christ.  The membership consisted of the local farmers and people in the immediate area.  My grandparents were stalwart members of that church, largely because it was the closest place of worship, and also because of the family connection to its founding.  It was just a simple Bible-preaching church, with Baptist overtones, that didn't belong to any conference or mainstream denomination.  When we went to visit my grandparents, we went to church.  Thus, my grandparents were my first introduction into religion.  They weren't Bible-thumpers.  The were proud, kind people, but the Bible was the rule for every moral question.  If some belief wasn't based on Scripture, it wasn't real.    

Through the Navy years when my father was on active duty, we were stationed in California and Hawaii when I was very young.  We didn't attend church there.  Then we were stationed in Danville, IL, where Dad was the C. O. of the Naval Reserve Training Center there.  We were there for 3 1/2 years--long enough for me to actually make a couple of friends and start going to church with one of them.  I attended Sunday School there--the Central Christian Church--and sometimes the actual worship service.  It was there that I was baptized by emersion in a sort of conveyor-belt style that baptized a whole bunch of kids on the same Sunday.  I think we were in the third grade.  Baptism is a rite of passage to Christians.  Back in those days, you couldn't become an actual member of any Christian church or take Holy Communion, or even get into Heaven when you died if you weren't baptized, so, to my family at least, it was a big deal.  Of course, I had no knowledge that there was another form of baptism other than emersion. That, according to the grandparents was the only way to be properly baptized.  That made me officially a Christian!  

And oh, what a pious child I was!  Seriously!                                                                                            To understand this, you have to also understand me.  In my really young years, up to age ten, we were never in any one place more than two years.  Sometimes we moved twice in one year in the same community just to find better rental homes to meet our needs.  I had no place I could actually call home except where we were at the moment.  My grandparents' farm became our home base, except we only visited there.  I couldn't even make friends because we'd move with Dad's Navy orders and never return to the same place.  We dared not ever look back.  My parents (and grandparents by default) became my only security, along with my teachers at any given school.  So many schools!  My motivation currency was to keep my parents and teachers happy with me.  I was a rule-follower and well-behaved, mostly, because to do less would mess up whatever security I had.  Family became everything to me.  Thankfully, I was a good student.  Had I been a poor student for any number of reasons, I would have sunk into an abyss.  Truth: I was already in an abyss, but didn't know it then.

All of this turned me into Super Christian.  I prayed silently all day long.  It was as if I were trying to put a magic bubble of protection around myself.  Jesus would take care of me because I was good.  I was good ALL the time...except when my little brother drove me nuts or my sister didn't appreciate how good I was.  But I didn't smoke, drink, swear, take drugs, participate in risky behaviors, have sex out of marriage, or do anything that I thought God would disapprove of.  And truth be known, all of that really seemed to grease my luck.  Good things happened to me for which I didn't really have to work.  I thought I was doing things right and that God was on my side.  That was then.  My early years, through high school.  Then came life.   

In college, I went through the regular questioning of what was real or not.  It was the late 60's, complete with race riots and war protests.  It was very confusing to me.  I was a Hippie sympathizer but dared not participate for fear of dishonoring my father's sacrifices for our family through the years.  I still couldn't rebel.  I was too scared to act outside of my family security aura.  But my brain was working overtime, as was my Fairness Gene.  

After college, I married a Catholic.  I took catechism just to see if I could convert to Catholicism to fit in with his family, but my spouse wasn't interested in attending Mass at all, so I figured I'd just stay a Methodist.  He joined me in Methodist services.  We divorced after five years with no children for a lot of reasons, many of which were on me.

A few years later, I married a man who claimed he was Christian but wouldn't attend church with me in our new community, so I couldn't coerce our daughter to go with me.  I had failed in giving her a proper Christian education, largely because I didn't really believe half of what I was asking her to believe.  I don't believe in Heaven or Hell, or even eternal life.  So many Bible stories make no sense, and blindly believing in them denies science.  I spent a lot of time finding ways to reconcile the two. I DO believe in faith and believing in something bigger than one's self.  I DO believe in a universal energy that created life and the forces of nature.  And I do believe in prayer as a source of focus.  I long ago gave up the thought I was above the evils of the world because God would protect me.  I'm just one lowly human being alone in the universe.  My pastor tells me that God knows me by my name, and that gives me something to hang onto.  In the Catholic Church, believers don't have a choice to decide what they believe or don't believe.  In Protestant churches, I hope that there is a choice, but I'm not so sure.

This is where the UUs come in.  My daughter and her family moved to Muncie, IN, when my grandchildren were still in cribs.  It was 1 1/2 hours from me.  I cried for three days.  They gravitated to the Muncie Unitarian Universalist Church.  My daughter and her then-husband even sang in the choir.  Up until this time, the only exposure I had ever had with the UU faith was from one high school friend.  Oak Park, IL, where we had settled after my dad went on inactive duty, was the location of a Frank Lloyd Wright creation called the Unity Temple.  The only UU I knew was a fellow student named John Dove.  When I asked him about his faith, he responded that the UUs take in everyone, no matter their faith.  He quoted this poem by Edwin Markham:

“He drew a circle that shut me out.                                                                                                                 Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.                                                                                                                               But love and I had the wit to win:                                                                                                                         We drew a circle and took him in!”

That was the long and short of everything I knew about the UUs.  When I went to Muncie to visit my family, maybe twice a month, I attended church with them.  At first, it was awkward for me.  I mean, the UUs aren't Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or Shinto or Pagan or any single religion; they are all of them.  Just like my own church, they have as part of their service, a part in which congregants are free to share their joys and concerns.  People would stand and ask for others to send good thoughts for their issues.  If we substitute the word "prayer" for "thoughts", we might as well be in my Christian church.  The true focus of the UU fellowship is respect and inclusion for ALL people, and respect for the planet we live on:  truly universal beliefs, unless I am mistaken.  Yet neither God nor Jesus were mentioned in sermons, unless through quotes included in the text.  That's why I felt awkward.  Can't call that a "worship service" because nothing was being "worshipped" in any sense of religion.  And that's where my brain scrambled.  I have always been a student of other religions.  Now, here I was in the presence of people who lived them all.

That Muncie UU Church building was quite interesting.  One whole wall of the meeting room--to the right side if facing the pulpit--was all glass, facing woods.  At the top of those windows, all along the length of the wall, were framed stained glass artworks representing symbols of all faiths.  Pretty!  One Sunday, as we sat waiting for the service to start, a deer grazed his way past those windows.  It was so calming and beautiful.  You can see pictures of the location if you search for the Muncie UU Church.  

That particular church had a great children's program.  My pre-school grandchildren loved it there.  The church's children participated in the whatever religious occasion was being celebrated that day.  They followed St. Lucia on St. Lucia's Day.  (St. Lucia wore a robe and a wreath of real lit candles on her head, with the children following her.  Someone baked traditional saffron buns to serve to the congregation during the social time after the service.)  At Christmas, the children of the church sang just before Santa appeared.   Something for everyone.  

What is really, really stupid is that when my grandchildren were little, I was worried that they weren't getting a religious education.  Then they were UUs...then they went to live with their father and stepmother and were sent to Catholic school because their stepmother was Catholic, baptized in the Catholic Church, and indoctrinated.  Then they went back to live with their mother and eventually became UU again.  They also attended Methodist services when they were visiting with me and their paternal grandparents since we attended the same UMC church.  Not only did they get religious education, they were steeped in it!  

My grandson decided that he didn't believe in the magic of religion.  He joked that he was a Pastafarian, worshipping the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  My granddaughter became very active in their now local UU fellowship in Washington.  She was a youth leader.  Went to conferences and meetings and camps.  Was included in the adult leadership in the church.  She also became a human rights activist well before the age of 18.  It scared me to think of her in such risky situations, having lived through the terror of things that happened to the Freedom Riders, et. al., during the 60s and 70s, but the truth is that I totally admire her dedication and fortitude.  I wish I'd had her courage and determination when I was her age!  

In the mid-1990s, stuff happened at my workplace and at home that concerned me.  The Moral Majority reared its ugly head.  I received a mailing obviously not intended for me, asking for a financial donation to help Evangelicals to run for school boards.  I have never espoused religion in schools or in school decisions.  Then, too, there was a movement from the local Christians in my school district to get rid of something called OBE, Outcome Based Education.  The roar was so loud that the Superintendent established a committee of ten to deal with their concerns.  Three teachers and seven community members, with one expensive facilitator that was being paid $200/hr.  One of the teachers chosen to represent the staff excused herself because of blood pressure problems, and I was elected.  Maybe I should have refused, but I didn't.  The committee met once a week in the evenings, and there were times when it got heated.  I won't go into the gory details, but it totally soured me to the religious community who seemed to have an agenda that I didn't think was appropriate to a public school district.  We met for months and months--at least seven--and prepared a conclusive document to deliver to the school board at the end of our determinations.  It was delivered...and never heard about again.  In the end, 13 teachers and virtually all of the administration left the district because of this big Evangelical push.   

That whole experience took away from me something that I have never been able to get back:  the belief that Christianity is good.  On paper, it is...but so very many use their faith and the Scriptures to make excuses for their hypocritical behavior that I have backed down.  I don't want to be associated with that, and some of it happens with friends in my church whom I love for their faith and not their politics.  In fact, the United Methodist Church, my church home since 1958, is on the brink of a division over the issue of homosexuality.  My local church, thank God, is inclusionary.  If/When the rift comes, we will likely be on our own.  I have begun to think that the UUs have something that Christians apparently don't have.  And when I began to look at issues, one by one, I discovered that I am probably more UU than Christian.  Still, I hang on.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I could give up organized religion in a heartbeat, but I still consider myself a person who follows the example of Jesus.  I still try to be good.  I'm still not a risk-taker.  I still work to make the world a better place for my being in it.  But I won't reject gays because they are gay, or blacks because they are black, and I won't give lip service to those who do. 

I don't know where to go from here, religiously.  My church has been extremely supportive of me.  The nearest UU fellowship is 15 miles from me.  Heck, I don't even make it to my own church which is a scant 1/4th mile from my house.  All I know is that, at the age of almost 74, I'm still a work in progress!        

Re-Tired-Ment

How do I begin to tell a never-ending story of love, dedication, and confusion?  It's complicated and convoluted, which makes me think I'm silly to even try.  Still, people--including me--like to feel validated.  I'm not narcissistic enough to believe that anyone owes me anything.  Giving is a gift to me. 

Somehow, I've been enveloped in some family drama with my only child.  It doesn't take much.  There are times when I sit back and wonder how the dickens a situation got out of control, only to realize later that it has to do with failed expectations.  Sometimes I don't ask questions because I fear the answers or understand that I will get no response at all.  I'm pretty sure my daughter's thoughts are the same.  It's like writing a love letter and pouring your heart out to a person only to find the letter crumpled up in the wastebasket.  Dear God...that has never been my intention, nor hers, I think.  But here I am,  Confused.  Befuddled.  Alone in my bungalow, which (thankfully) is still heated after Saturday's call to the furnace repair service.  (This has been an expensive month!)

We are experiencing a big, nasty snowstorm.  I'm not capable of digging out, so I happened upon a service that offers to dig out people for a price.  They are coming on Wednesday to clear my outside surfaces.  I have a critical doctor appointment on Thursday for kidney problems, but I understand that yet another snow is due that day.  No rest for the weary!  Am reminded of the old ketchup commercial:  ANTICIPATION.