An Invincible Summer - A Woman's Journey

Poetry seems to requires emotion, knowledge of it, and of oneself. I think this is the reason it has always seemed so perplexing and elusive. My access to a dynamic range of emotion was crippled by a childhood of alcoholism, abandonment and by the generations that preceded that were hard scrabble folks, just trying to get by. They handed down a stoicism and black and white thinking that still lingers inside of me and my remaining siblings. The bigger/harder emotions are left to the side, ignored whenever possible. If we don’t talk about it, does it really exist? As this old gal dethaws, emotions are emerging, some more comfortable than others but all of them belonging and longing to be acknowledged. “Maybe I’ll take up poetry”, I think to myself. But, as I write that down, I can’t help but smile. One step at a time girl. Let’s learn to feel. Leave the magic words to someone else. I’m reading Ada Limón and Dorothy Hunt. Sometimes the beauty of their words take my breath.  I’m taking...

He’s walking slowly. His hair, his clothing, both neat and clean. He is very young, maybe 25 but net yet 30. His burden is heavy. Four large shopping bags overstuffed with goodness knows what. I don’t know for sure his agenda. He may be going to visit grandma or going to a donation center. I don’t think so though.  Is he newly homeless? Did something happen just recently to change his status? Does he still have a job where his fellow employees don’t know? Is he struggling with mental illness? In a city, country where it is so easy to live on the edge, I think his edge came. He’s in the right place, where so many of his compatriots hang out. 82nd street in Portland is not a happy place, and he is here, with all his belongings, the ones he thought were important enough to pack in sturdy grocery bags. He’ll find a cart soon, it’s too heavy to carry far.  I wish the Boy Scout was with me this morning. I am not lion hearted like my daughter. I want to be but I am not. I would love ...

Surgery is scheduled. If all goes well, I should see a marked improvement in my hearing by this time next week. Stapedectomy is not a long procedure. Cutting back the ear drum, proceeding further in, avoiding a facial nerve that would render the right side of my face useless, and a taste nerve that would cause no taste on the right side of my mouth if damaged, the tiny stapes bone will be laser blasted out and a prosthetic will be put in place. At best, dizziness for a few days, very little pain and voila! At worst, hearing gone. We will hope for the best. How lucky I am to live today instead of 100 years ago. I’d be carrying an ear trumpet and saying, “EH? WHAT YA SAY?”

My youngest got her own apartment. Tired of living in a room in someone else’s home, she decided to bite the bullet and get a place. It takes a good portion of her monthly income but, at 27, she really wanted the privacy and freedom. It’s not fancy but it’s hers. The other evening, while doing the dishes in her new apartment, she noticed a man walk by her window. He wasn’t part of the complex, he had a bike and was just hanging around. He had been there awhile and as darkness was coming shortly, my 5’3”, 100lb girl, decides to go out and speak to him since she wasn’t keen on him hanging around after dark. She says hello and asks him how he is doing. He’s a little bit nervous but eventually says he wants to go home. She asks where that is and he says he doesn’t have one. She notices he’s missing a leg. “Can I do anything for you?”, she asks. He tells her he’s hungry. “Okay, give me a second” she replies. This girl of mine has been my food buddy all her life. Even the last time we were t...

Boy Scout has been hired by his internship. This is exactly what he wanted.  The man he works for, Masa, is an aging master Gardner from Japan. He has designed some of the most beautiful Japanese gardens in the Pacific Northwest. He maintains his own designs, which is part of the agreement when he chooses his jobs. He interviews potential clients. No one just hires him. Masa has been purposeful about passing on what he knows to the people he has gathered around him. They are long time employees or students, for lack of a better word. He shares with them and then he starts to allow them to branch out. He hand picks clients for them that they are capable of handling and he checks up, making sure the clients are happy. He is humble and caring. Boy Scout has been handed some side jobs that Masa knows he can do. Yesterday, while speaking with the client, she noticed Boy Scout’s tattoos and asked about them. The first is easy, 8 & 80 , which reminds him there are only two people...

Been spending a lot of time in the garden, doing one thing or another. I’ve converted one zone of sprinklers to drip system in an effort to better care for our plants and to save water. Two more zones to go💪🏼 The other day, while puttering around, pulling weeds, mowing and cleaning up, I got a wee bit too close to a wasps nest. They didn’t take kindly to it. I must have been a sight. Old gal, yelling for the dogs, running for cover while swinging my arms and removing my clothes. They followed! They got me on the wrist, through my sweats on my upper thigh and down at my ankle. It wasn’t horrific, more stingy and hot. I iced them and took it easy. Wasn’t expecting the extreme itchiness that happened the next day. Despite the Benadryl, I’ve bloodied myself like a pro. I think the removal might be a job for someone besides me. I may not be a rocket scientist but I know when I’ve been licked.  Wasp stings, the gift that keeps on giving. 

I have chronic dry eyes. I use eye drops the moment I wake up and then a couple of times throughout the day, as needed. I keep a bottle in next to my bed, in my car, in my purse and in my golf bag. The reason I do this is not just because of the discomfort of the arid desert that is my eyeballs but also because the loss of the tear film on the eye makes it far harder for the eye to focus. I just can’t bloody see. I ran out and grabbed a bottle while at the market. Now, not all drops are equal. The ophthalmologists make it clear that preservative free is by far preferable when using regularly. This means one is paying a bit more. When I say “a bit” I mean anywhere from about  $19.00 all the way to $70.00 PER OUNCE! That comes out to be $2400 per gallon on the low side and $8900 per gallon on the high side. As if that isn’t obscenely ridiculous enough, I recently found out that the companies that manufacture the eye drops purposefully design the bottles so that they produce drops far...

 Just so you all know, my blog won’t let me comment on my own blog and a few of my fellow bloggers blogs too.  I appreciate your comments and I read your blogs but this endless loop of trying to “log in” to my google account that I am logged into already drives me crazy. 

Have you heard of mirror work? Before I started writing this, I decided to Google “mirror work”. It did not produce what I thought it would. Quite the opposite. It gave me a bunch of stuff on exercise, getting in shape, looking your best. The mirror work I am speaking of is purposefully taking time to look at oneself and offer the kind words and unconditional love that our inner being has always wanted or needed. I know, I know, it sounds hokey but it’s part of a multilayered plan to change the way one thinks and “talks” to oneself. My inner critical voice has always been so loud. Picking, shaming, telling me how stupid I am. It had been with me so long I just took it as me, completely accepting it for truth. Whether that voice developed because that is what we heard in our family, or whether we developed it on our own because of things that may have happened in our families, it’s often there. I can trace mine way back to toddlerhood. It was already there in my earliest memory before t...

Today was the day I first heard the term NONES (pronounced like nuns). It is used to describe the growing segment of the population who call themselves spiritual with no religious affiliation. The word has been around awhile. So, am I a NONE or a NONES? I haven’t heard if it has a singular form but I assume it does. I love the freedom of being a none, of recognizing what is holy within me and allowing that to be enough. To put to rest that “too small god” so many of my fellow American Christians have, that one that is causing them to live in fear and spew ugliness that does not resemble Christ in any way, shape or form.  This none is starting to fit like a fine leather glove. Are you a nones too? Is it enough for you? 

Lunch is done! Praise Jesus (said dramatically, hands in the air, with a southern drawl…just kidding). Louie is a nice guy. A little blustery and a little “know it all” but with a good heart but his wife, I just don’t like the woman. I want to be open and I was kind but I almost had the urge to clean after she left. Damn she’s judgmental and sure of her rightness. Her eye roll, used extensively over the 3 hours, was so practiced that I do believe she could see the back of her own damn head. Then the unashamed dumping of her 17 year old cat in a no-kill shelter because she was “done with it” came up and I’m pretty sure my mouth hung open for a few moments before I got ahold of myself.  All other dangerous topics avoided with a few side steps. Hopefully I honored my mom by presenting my best.

Good morning. Today, Boy Scout and I will host lunch for my mother's widower and his wife. They are nice people but they are not my tribe. I feel slightly agitated about how I will remain true to myself if either religion or politics are brought up. In my lifetime, in this country, those two topics were fairly separate. No more. Grandpa Louie and his wife are evangelical and MAGA’s, somehow confusing mango Mussolini with Jesus Christ. Intertwined are the Bible and the constitution. It’s fear, but their fear has a loud voice and a heavy hand, desiring to dictate how others live. Louie was good to my mother and he was a loving grandfather to my children but take mom and kids out of the picture and there is very little common ground.  Hopefully, I will have the power, self control and empathy to divert conversation to appropriate things like …..oh…..the weather, sports, animals, the weather…. And away from the morally bankrupt, misogynistic, ignorant, draft dodging, narcissistic …….oo...

Sometimes when I laugh, a real laugh, not a big ol’ belly laugh but a tickled to the core laugh, I sound just like my mother. And it’s interesting that while being delighted and pleased that I hear her inside me, I also ache just a little. 

The gift of weathering a long winter has arrived. The sun, early in its daily journey, is warming my body and lifting my thoughts to splendid things like energy, strength and gratefulness. The morning is new and I thought I would get some work done in the yard, hopefully not disturbing my friendly neighbors (the unfriendly ones, likely Lenny, a racist jackass, I could care less). So I will shovel quietly and try to beat the heat that is on its way. I am trying to repair and convert the sprinklers to a drip system. So far, the previous installer has stymied my efforts but I remain steadfast in my task. Broken pipes need repair first then drips come next.   Best get on with the job.  Happy Sunday!  Hope you have great weather too🥰 As you can see, the ferns are suffering from lack of consistent watering The azaleas and rhododendrons are ok but won’t be if I don’t get water to them soon 🥺❣️