Hub Says the Darndest Things

This was our conversation last weekend on Hub’s birthday:

Me: “Honey, We are so fortunate we’ve been able to share so many birthdays together.”

Hub: “We are.”

Me: “I hope we both stay healthy enough that we can enjoy many more together.”

Hub: “Me, too.”

Me: “But I know how lonely you would be if anything happened to me. If I die first, I want you to find a companion who can share golf with you because we have such fun when we play.”

Hub: “OK”

Me: “In fact, you should let her use my clubs.”

Hub: “No, I would never do that.”

Me: “Why not? They are really good clubs, and I don’t mind.”

Hub: “No, I can’t.”

Me: “Why not?”

Hub: “Because she’s left-handed.”

Ha ha ha – April Fool’s Joke!

THAT conversation never happened.

But the following conversation actually occurred a few years ago …

If we don’t spend Thanksgiving Day with friends or family, we like to go for a long walk after dinner. One of our traditional walks meanders through a local cemetery where our talk often turns to our own lives, our remaining years, and whether we want to be buried, cremated, have a tombstone – more in a reflective than maudlin way.

That particular year, I was feeling thankful for all the spectacular vacations we’d taken, especially to some quaint locales before development changed their character and made them over-populated tourist meccas.

“Honey,” I said, “when I die, I want you to cremate me and take my ashes back to all the places we’ve traveled together and have such fond memories. Sprinkle a little of me each place you go, and enjoy being there again yourself.”

“Like where?” he asked.

“Oh, you know, like Turks and Caicos, the Cayman Islands, Young Island, Maui, Mackinac Island, the Lake Superior shore, San Francisco, Paris, Carmel, Telluride, Santorini  the Maine coast. What do you think? Would you like to do that?

Hub … thinking … pausing … grinning … “Would I have to go alone?”

Flying into Turks & Caicos 1987

Spring, Bling and Hurt-ing

If we were having coffee, I am and half of you aren’t!

I’d tell all of you that it feels like I’ve been waiting a month while you’re standing in line for your special tea or coffee-with-this-much-cream, or chai orders and I’m nestled here in our cozy corner booth sipping low-maintenance hot, black coffee.

But I know you’d laughingly scoff me out the door.

Instead I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve missed all of you, and I’m sorry I’ve been absent from blogging and somewhat absent from commenting on your blogs. P-A-I-N has been a lifelong, albeit unwelcome, companion. It comes; it goes; it has never achieved diagnosis (other than occasional hypochondria) and no remedy seems to be the magic bullet. After 12-14 months of triage treatment for injuries from my bike accident, I thought I was on the mend. But over the last three months, what was my typical before-accident daily pain progressed to full-bore, everywhere-in-my-body-but-especially-in-my-upper-spine P-A-I-N.

The kind of pain that:

• Makes a grown woman cry
• Makes me curl up on the couch all day
• Makes me say to Hub, “Aieee, don’t touch my head; your gentle touch feels like a hundred-pound hammer.”
• Makes me so cranky, I snap at Hub with nastiness when he so much as tells me he loves me

After years of the mysterious Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and undiagnosed pain, it becomes harder and harder to advocate for myself, especially when symptoms hurt the worst. Fortunately I had my annual physical in mid-March where I promptly broke down in tears and said simply, “I hurt everywhere, all the time.”

My new-ish doctor is the first practitioner to utter the “F” word.

Fybromyalgia.

The IBS-digestive equivalent for inexplicable neurological pain.

Along with a referral to a spine specialist, she suggested I switch anti-depressants to Cymbalta because it contains an ingredient that blocks nerve pain. After seven days of Cymbalta, I hesitate to say this (because I’m so afraid it’s the placebo effect), but I feel So Much Better. The past two days I spent the entire time in activities, including sitting at a table in a restaurant, which I haven’t been able to do in months.

My visit to my spine specialist was nothing but positive and hopeful news. My spinal fracture healed properly; I have no disc damage; but I have soft tissue injuries that were never addressed after my accident. He said it’s not too late to address those problems with treatments like ultrasound and dry needling, as well as working on exercises that will strengthen and realign my spine in order to support the weight of my head (no doubt all that brain power is a heavy load).

My fingers will be crossed as I go through the next six weeks of twice-weekly therapy sessions and pray the Cymbalta (or possibly another fibromyalgia medication) gets me back to significantly more ‘good’ days than ‘bad’. I know many of you suffer from a variety of life-altering chronic ailments, too. We’ve all lived with them long enough to know that’s the cycle – good to bad and back to good. But it’s best – even if it takes desperate tears – to ask/beg for help when the bad days outweigh the good for a measurable period of time.

Spring, oh spring, oh spring. Our most capricious season here in Colorado. I love that word ‘capricious”. I first read that word in an essay about springtime when I moved to Colorado and experienced a mid-May snowstorm. Yesterday and today we enjoyed spring – 70 degree weather with a light breeze; full sun in a blue sky as far as you could see; and bright green popping out in such rapid succession, you could almost hear those buds bursting.

That might be all the spring we get. Sometimes we get snow or rain right up until June. Other years April and May are so hot and dry we search the skyline daily for the dreaded wildfires, or the wind blows so fiercely our bikes and golf clubs gather dust in the garage..

But in the years when we have a true spring – when the redbud and magnolia blooms make me think I’m still in Michigan; when the lilac scent lasts for three blissful weeks – those are the years worth waiting for.

B-L-I-N-G

B-L-I-N-G

B-L-I-N-G

And Bling-o was his name-oh.

Oh, sorry … wrong song.

Yesterday was Hub’s birthday and we celebrated with the kiddos at Patsy’s, a local Italian restaurant where the garlic bread melts in your mouth without a chew. Raqi – bless her heart – always dresses up for our birthdays. Like so many who haven’t (yet, but someday I hope) learned the difference between comfort and bling, her closet floor is strewn with sparkly sandals and fashion-forward boots. How she walks in them, I don’t know. But that’s not my battle to fight.

About halfway down the block from our parked car to the restaurant door, she bent down to adjust her sandal, saying “this is rubbing me“. By the time we got to the door, she’d done it two more times.

On the way back to the car, she stopped suddenly saying, ‘Ouch!” and showing me the red spot on her foot.

When she commented on it again in the car, rubbing her sore spot, I suggested that it’s a fashion choice she’s going to be making the rest of her life. Comfortable walking shoes and bling-y high fashion shoes aren’t a matched pair I’ve found in my 64 years.

I clued her in that the runway models and singers and dancers – all those women that she so desperately wants to be RIGHT NOW – ditch their sparkly shoes the minute they are off camera. I insist that she wear safe, closed-toe shoes for biking and climbing on apparatus at the park.

But she’ll learn her own lessons and make her own decisions about B-L-I-N-G-O.

At least she listened with interest to what I had to say.

Coffee and The Cycle of Life

If we were meeting for coffee this weekend, I’d order pain du chocolat to go with my coffee. Would you like one, too?

I like my coffee black and piping hot, and I bite off the corner of the pastry then dip the exposed chocolate in my coffee to melt it on the edges. I usually end up dribbling coffee and melted chocolate, along with pastry crumbs, down the front of my shirt. But remember, I have a clean one just like it to change into.

While sipping my coffee – which is rapidly cooling – I’d repeat how much I prefer almost-burn-your-tongue-hot coffee and how I hate going to restaurants for breakfast where the server places a plastic carafe of coffee on the table. Coffee which is barely lukewarm to begin with, and cool by the time it hits my cup is not the outta-bed jolt I’m looking for.

I’d tell you that Raqi is beyond herself with grief and excitement as she learns first-hand about the cycle of life. She and Sparks just lost their dear dog Kaleb Spencer (yes, our family dogs have middle names) to old age. Sparks bravely accompanied his Dad to the vet’s after they made the difficult family decision to end Kaleb’s pain and suffering. A week later little Briar Rose, their new Shorkie pup, arrived on their doorstep.

Plus, Raqi’s third grade class is currently incubating a whole slew of chicks – well, right now they’re eggs, but some will become chicks if we’re lucky.

And there is nothing like baby chicks to make me think about Easter and spring being right around the corner!

If we were meeting for coffee, I would tell you about this little gem of a movie called The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and I’d hand you the DVD and urge you to watch it.

It’s a documentary about Mark Bittner – a gentle, unassuming ‘bohemian’ who lives in an unadorned one-room structure on the side of a very steep hill in San Francisco. There is a flock of parrots – escaped or let loose by owners – for whom Mark has become the unofficial caretaker. They forage ‘wild’ on the hill, and Mark records his observations as well as feeding and nursing them when they are wounded or ill. He has named them, and tracked their behavior, mating rituals and personalities for years.

The parrots are vibrantly colored, charming, scheming, cooperative, combative, blustery, vulnerable, and have a mutual love for Mark. I cry every time I watch this touching relationship that stretches the definition of ‘family’.

In one moving dialogue with the filmmaker, Mark likens our life cycle to the movement of a waterfall. He says before birth, we’re all part of the stream above the falls – moving en masse and indistinguishable. Once we reach and plunge over the falls – during the turbulent tumble (life) – we each travel as a single, unique drop of water experiencing our own pace, our own path.  We drops come together, we separate, we spin and dance to our own tune. At the bottom, we all become one again, in the same way death dissolves us.

If you love San Francisco, parrots with personality, watching a loving caretaker tend his flock, or living the ‘simple’ life we all say we yearn, you will enjoy meeting Mark.

I forgot to find out if he likes coffee.

PostScript: At the end of this 2005 documentary (available at Amazon), Mark reveals that the owner of Mark’s residence will be demolishing it (code requirements) and Mark will be moving. Further research indicates Mark still lives in the Bay area and the parrots still thrive on Telegraph Hill, all having moved on in their own cycles of life.

The Vision Thing

(Coincidentally, I wrote this post last week BEFORE  ‘what color is the dress’ set the world a-twitter!)

We see, look, view, observe, peer, watch, stare, examine, gaze …

How we characterize vision is unique to each of us – a combination of visual acuity, our level of awareness, and emotional reaction to what we are seeing.

I was reminded just how unique when I read Dan’s recent post about his color-blindness. Now I wonder if any of us see ‘true’ colors, or discern the same subtleties of hues, pastels and palettes when we look at something. How do we know? I haven’t a clue what colors you see and vice versa.

Hint: There’s no lavender, Dan.

I’ve worn glasses or contacts since the tenth grade. Once I saw the world in high definition 20/20 rather than blurry 20/400, I never let those glasses out of my sight (no pun intended).

In hotels, I refuse to take the side of the bed without a nightstand because my glasses will be out of reach. I insisted that the nurse let me hold my glasses, through the night in the hospital, because I’d need them if I had to rush to a fire exit. I sit out fun times in the lake because I’m too scared not to be able to see the shore.

Despite my disappointment when my eye doctor told me recently my vision can no longer be corrected to 20/20, I remind myself that I’m seeing better than ever. Yes my visual acuity is deteriorating, but I am paying far more attention to what is around me – seeing light, shadows, patterns, colors, movement in ways I used to ignore.

Having to accept and adjust to changes in visual acuity reminds me of an episode when I first moved to Boulder in 1977 – a heady time for a Midwestern farm girl to be transported to a culture mix of Rocky Mountain outdoor living and Boulder earth muffin hippies. After devouring the menu of classes offered at the Community Free School, I registered for Vision Quest.

The first lecture was about how Westerners (non-Asia) interpret vision as visual acuity and strive to provide everyone with the same 20/20 corrected vision. Easterners, we were told, accept eyesight as it exists without correction, and interpret vision as what the mind and soul perceive.

Our first assignment was to take a walk and ignore visual acuity using our other senses and soul to guide us. We didn’t have to go as far as closing our eyes, but the instructor encouraged us to leave our glasses at home.

I lived north of downtown, and several miles separated me from my favorite Chautauqua Park up a steep hill at the south edge of Boulder. On a sunny, warm September afternoon, I set out on my ‘vision quest’ to walk without seeing to see what I could see. (Or something New-Age-y like that).

Although I was scared crossing streets, and somewhat intimidated that someone might be staring at me, I gained confidence with each block. The sun was warm – too hot almost – and I huffed and puffed my way up the long hill, not yet acclimated to Boulder’s altitude.

Breathless and triumphant, I reached the park entrance and headed up a familiar trail a short way before deciding to sit awhile and ‘invite vision into my soul’. I stepped off the trail, crossed my feet, bent my knees to lower myself to the ground, and sat squarely on top of a small prickly pear cactus.

So … yeah … The Vision Thing?

I find it a giant pain in the ass.

There Is A Crack In Everything

“Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget the perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything;

That’s how the light gets in.”

Thanks to Susan at Garden of Eden for this quote which is part of Anthem by Leonard Cohen.

Ever since Saturday morning when I read Kelli’s moving post and haiku about her family ties and her own adoption, I’ve been haunted by unsettling emotions.

Kelli wrote about her adoptive family in such loving terms; so full of confidence in belonging; pragmatic in her decision not to seek out her birth mother, yet clearly forgiving and appreciative of her birth mother’s decision.

I think it is Kelli’s statement that her adoption occurred in the 1970’s, and her haiku thanking her birth mother for carrying Kelli for nine months, that struck a chord with me. In our youth we gloss over, and bounce back from, events that only through the lens of life’s experiences do we realize have left lasting impacts, scars or emotional cracks.

I hesitated to refer to Kelli’s post, and asked her permission before doing so, because I don’t presume to comment on her birth mother or the circumstances surrounding Kelli’s birth.

But reading that 1970’s date was a jolt to my heart. Putting me smack dab in my college dorm in 1969-1972, a time when a perfect storm of mixed social messages, blossoming sexual appetites and unappealing consequences made me and many others behave and make decisions in ways we were too immature to handle.

Despite the burgeoning sexual revolution, ‘good girls’ – at least at my Midwestern university – were not supposed to want or engage in sexual activity. Because it was frowned upon, we could hardly make our first-ever visit to a male gynecologist; admit we were having sex; and ask him for birth control. Neither did we insist on condoms since diseases weren’t yet a significant issue, and carrying a condom implied an intention we weren’t willing to admit.

So we had sex; crossed our fingers; and waited with bated breath for our periods to appear. If they didn’t, we marched down the dorm hall to our Resident Assistant’s room and tearfully confessed. Fortunately for 95% of us, our teary confession was enough to get the blood flowing within a couple days.

While I made that dreaded march to my RA’s room a couple of times, I was very lucky to be in the 95% who never faced the choices of a young, terrified, unwed, pregnant college student. None of those choices would have been easy at the time. In retrospect, I find them even more untenable.

Abortion wasn’t yet legal, and carrying a baby to term as an unwed mother was not socially acceptable. Neither was raising a child as a single parent. Marrying for the wrong reasons was no more palatable.

If I had gotten pregnant in those years, I would have begged my RA to help me arrange an abortion – partly to spare the shame of telling my parents and partly because I would have mistakenly thought it a quick, inconsequential fix. Even though abortion was illegal, the channels were established and many girls used them.

Today, all these years later, I tearfully acknowledge how much I would have regretted choosing an abortion. Yet carrying a child to term then giving my baby away would have been unbearable. Either decision would have weighed forever heavy on my heart; I’m not sure I would be able to forgive my younger self.

Where am I going with this? I don’t know, except to acknowledge the bravery of women like Kelli’s birth mother and gratitude for adoptees like Kelli who forgive.

I was a lost child without guidance in those years, and I feel for every female – and male –  past and present who finds her/himself in difficult sexual circumstances.

Today’s sexual mores and pitfalls for young adults are no less confusing and risky than they were in the late 60’s. If anything, they might be more convoluted. Without debating specific issues like abortion or sexual assault on campus, I believe that young adults of all genders are as much at risk as I was of being thrust into situations in which they are ill-prepared to make decisions carrying lifelong consequences.

Research is providing more insights into how and when our brains develop, and why our teens and twenties can be fraught with impulsive behavior that, especially when hormonally driven, can be destructive physically and emotionally. I used to think young adults have become far too pampered (and I still do), but I also have come to realize how utterly vulnerable we all were/are at that age.