The Tree

Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I always have problems around this time of the year getting into the Christmas spirit.  Part of it is that everywhere I look, it's a family time.  There are young couples wrapped up in each other, families out with all the generations together shopping or touring light displays.  And simply everywhere, everywhere are the children.  It makes me feel so very alone.

Additionally, there is the pressure that comes with my job.  The end of the semester is an endurance race full of deadlines, papers to be graded, last-minute emergencies, and altered schedules.  It leaves me too exhausted to feel very festive.

I had decided not to get a tree this year because of Stella.  She's still such a puppy.  I have had to put up baby gates to keep her out of parts of the house, and visions of my antique Shiny Brites in little shards kept dancing in my head.

Friends of mine on Facebook suggested several alternatives, including a rosemary tree, and I even went to Lowe's and got one.  It smells lovely, but it just didn't feel like Christmas.  In fact, looking at the tiny tree-shaped rosemary draped in colored lights felt exactly the opposite.

Today after lunch with Mom and Dad, I drove the short distance to Lazy Acres for a real tree.  When I got there, the "sleigh" that takes people around to the various parts of the farm was slowly filling with little kids holding their parents' hands.  The very last seat had already been commandeered by a young couple who, despite the unseasonable heat, were twined together in that way that only the newly-married seem to indulge in.  I had a giant case of the "nopes," but I also didn't feel like walking over the property on foot to find a tree.

We've been getting trees from Lazy Acres since I was about ten.  That's almost thirty years of trees for me from there.  Every year, either my family and I or just I alone have hiked out, inspected different types of trees, waited for that National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation moment of light from above, cut it down ourselves, and dragged it out to the sleigh.  This year, I just couldn't stand the thought of it.  So much of the joy of it had always come from it being a family thing, from the silly jokes we always told every year, from teasing each other over our annual tree-getting behaviors.  Without that, every part of the experience just felt like a chore.

While I was debating whether or not to suck it up and get on the sleigh, I saw the assortment of pre-cut trees they have near the checkout area.  I suppose they've always had them there; I've never really even looked at them, though.  There were some huge ones and some petite examples, too.  Since I had decided to get one small enough to put on a table to keep it out of Stella-range, I decided it couldn't hurt to look at them.  After all, it would keep me off that kid-filled wagon....

There was a perfect one toward the back.  I tore off the tag, paid, and had it tied to the top of my car in under thirty minutes.  It was back at my house, up in its stand, and covered in lights in under a full hour.

While I worked, I listened to my all-time favorite Christmas vinyl, a recording of carols and Christmas songs played on antique music boxes.  I've loved it since I was a child.  It makes me remember my earliest Christmases as a child with the big Sylvania turntable loaded with all our albums - Elvis, the music boxes, those Firestone Christmas compliations.  The music box one is so different and so lovely from all the others.  I always felt like Christmas was really here when I heard it. I played it through twice as I nestled lights into the boughs of the little tree.

So now my tree is up.  It's different than I usually have, elevated as it is.  There are no ornaments on it yet.  I'll hold off on that until I'm sure that Stella's current indifference is her real reaction to it.  She sniffed it twice, looked at me as if to say, "Sure.  If it makes you happy.  Whatever," and walked off.  She has been chewing on various toys ever since.

Despite the differences, just looking over the top of my computer screen at it makes me happier.  I'm glad I did it.  Maybe if I put enough little things together, then some of that magic I used to feel can return.

After Paris

I wonder if this is what it felt like living in the last days before World War I and World War II, this sense of things spinning out of control, this basic disrespect for the value of human life.  Even though we’re in the Centennial of WWI, I can’t help but feel we’re also living in the shadow of the next “war to end all wars.” 

The level of hatred I see displayed on Facebook on a routine basis is horrifying.  While I know there are tons of “trolls” who find some perverse amusement in stirring the hornet’s nest, I am not sure all these people are professing opinions for the shock value.  Everybody is afraid and angry, totally committed to demanding his/her own best even if it means cutting the other guy’s throat.  And then there are the people who actively search for a chance for that cutting to begin….

People online are arguing over whose tragedy is worse, who the cameras should be focused on.  It’s almost like some kind of hellish competition.  All over every social media outlet I use, this sort of faux superiority is pervasive, “Oh, you are posting in support of Paris?  Humph.  Well, I am CLEARLY a more developed and wonderful human than you.  I post about Beirut.”  “Oh, YOU’RE talking about BEIRUT? Racist! The only thing the news should be focused on is Mizzou.”  And it's endless.  The place names change, but the sense of vicious righteousness does not.  Where did this one-upmanship come from?  What do people think it’s going to accomplish?

Then there are those who use these horrible things for their own political grandstanding.  I have unfollowed five people on Facebook in the past two days and am within inches of disabling my account for a while because of all the finger pointing, fear mongering, and out-and-out lies. So few people seem to be trying to do anything about any of what’s happening other than use it as a club to bash their political opponent with.

And I’m the first to admit I don’t have answers.  I just wish people would use their brains and their hearts a little more, all people, and maybe together we could find some workable solution. 

I’m terribly afraid we’re past the point where that’s possible and only violence can follow.

Really, Really

I had to run up to Mom and Dad's for a quick pickup, and rather than putting Stella back in her crate, I decided I would take her with me.

She danced out the door in her new neckerchief and on her leash, but when I opened the car door, she totally wilted.  I told her to "load up," my all-time command to dogs to get in the car, and she pulled backwards, ears flat, eyes huge.  It took a minute, but then I realized what was happening.

Stella is a rescue.  As a tiny baby, she came into the system when the person who had her first tossed her and her sister out of a moving vehicle in front of a vet's office.  Fortunately, other than scrapes and scratches, she wasn't physically damaged.  Psychologically, though...  Does "even an animal" (a phrase I am not sure I trust very much) ever forget being treated like that totally?

Also fortunately, after that she was taken in by a rescue group in Madison that is wonderful.  She's had love, vet care, doggie companions, but she's never had a "forever home."  She's been taken to lots of events looking for the people who would keep her, and I suppose some of that was what she was reliving tonight.  Even though I know I'm reading it in to her behavior, I could almost hear her saying, "But you told me this was my HOME!"

I picked her up and placed her in the driver's seat.  Every other dog I've ever had automatically moved over to the passenger side.  She just sat trying to make herself as small as possible.  I finally got her to budge, and she was shaking as I cranked up.  I smoothed my hands over her, rubbed her, and talked to her.   Off we went.

The trip was brief.  Mom came out to hand off the items, and she put her hand through the partially open window.  Stella sniffed and licked, perking up just a little, but she was still clearly waiting for the moment when the door would open and her life would change again.  I started the car again, and we were headed back down the road.

She was puzzled but curious.

When we pulled up next to the house and I cut off the engine, she peered out the window.  When the scent of home hit her, she started wagging her tail.  I didn't have to fight her at all this time.  She unloaded, bounce mostly returned, and by the time we got on the porch, she was grinning and sassy again.  She pawed at the door with both front feet, chastising me for being too slow with the keys.  When I got the door open, she flew in and body slammed/hugged Chewie before racing around the living room.

I had a feeling she would be nervous when she got in the car.  I knew it might be a stressful moment.  We will probably have another one when I take her to the vet for the first time.  It's really important to me that she has good car experiences.  I want her to know that she's always coming back home.  This isn't another wayside station in her journey.  This is the place where the arms are open.  This is the forever home.

Stella Arrives

Tuesday, I got up early, loaded Chewie and Yelldo into the back seat, and headed two hours north to see a rescue pit bull.  She was beautiful and bouncy, but Chewie wanted nothing to do with her.  He was so deeply avoiding her that he turned his body in whichever direction she was not, like some kind of odd large white furry reverse weathervane.

So we loaded back up, drove back home, and I was very sad.

The lady at the rescue suggested that we needed a very young puppy to help Chewie feel less threatened, so after I took a long nap, I got up and started the search again online.  I sent several requests to rescues and shelters all over three states.  I asked for help on FaceBook.  I opened the PetFinder app on my phone.  Then I settled in to wait.

One of the FaceBook contacts responded to say that she had a pit who was about to have a litter of puppies.  If I were willing to wait 8 wks, I could be on the list for one of them.  It seemed like the best bet at the time, so I made my peace with it and went on about my life.

Then I got a message from the Madison ARK.  I had put in an application for Stella, a 5-month-old female, but I wasn't very hopeful after the debacle with the other young female in the north.  Stella had actually been on my radar for a long time; I remembered her adorable ears and her unusual light eyes from the search I had done before Dad's heart surgery this summer.  I talked to the people at the ARK, and I told them about my situation.  We agreed that I would bring Chewie out and see how he responded.  So yesterday morning, I loaded him into the car again and we set off.

Chewie behaved much better.  He walked along up and down the street in front of the rescue, and although he didn't seem to be very interested in being bounced on or playing, he did condescend to sniff her bottom and allow her to do the same, something he flatly refused to do in the meeting with the other dog.  I was hopeful. 

We took them in, and they continued to interact, and although Chewie would not engage her, he wasn't being the anti-dog weathervane, either.  The people at the rescue decided that he would probably just need time to adjust, and they asked if I would want to bring Stella home for a trial run.

I agreed.

We all came home, me driving, Chewie sitting in the middle seat and staring balefully out the window, and Stella confined in her travel crate in the back.  I pulled through Chick-Fil-A because Chewie always gets nuggets when he has to go do something, and after getting our order, we hit the interstate for home.

Upon arrival, I was fearful of how she'd react to all the other creatures and vice versa, so we shut her in her new big crate.  She was *most* unhappy.  She wanted to smell, to run, to play.  She saw her first cats as Dillon and Pearl came to stand in the doorway of the dog room, and she was fascinated.  Chewie and Yelldo came in to inspect the new addition, and Stella wagged and yipped.  

After an hour or so, I decided to see what was going to happen.  I put her on a leash and brought her out.  She bounced right across to Pearl who was watching from beneath the dining table and got her nose roundly slapped.  In true pit bull fashion, she blinked, sat back in confusion, and decided she loved Pearl too much not to try it again.   Poor Pearl....

Pearl has broken in too many dogs to be worried about something not very much larger than herself, so she held her ground, fluffed her regal mane, and growled like something from the pits of hell.  She looked like a pocket-sized grey lion.  Stella got weirded out and came and sat next to me.  Pearl simply looked down her nose at the dog and sashayed off toward the living room. Mission accomplished.  

We're twenty-four hours into the experiment, and Stella has been off-leash since about 4 pm yesterday.  She's been round and round the yard, sniffing like Roux used to, the noise I always called "truffle pig."  She's eaten half a large bowl of dog food by taking two pieces out at a time and running into the living room with it.  She's consumed two small exerhides in an epic battle of gnawing that took about 30 minutes each to destroy something Chewie crunches like a potato chip.  She's charged to the end of her leash after some unknown woodland beast in the dark of night.  I think she's having a good time....

She's currently unconscious on the floor next to my chair on a blue blanket having worn herself completely out most recently by going around and around my yard, barking her high-pitched little squeaky toy bark at my crows, trying to engage Chewie or Yelldo in play, sitting in my lap and giving me kisses, chasing the four hundred toys she has dragged out from the basket on the hearth, and generally being the precious little diva she is.  

In time, I really believe Chewie will warm up to her, especially when he realizes that he will still get the same attention as before. He is already consenting to be sniffed more often and following us around the yard. I look forward to seeing them run and play.

I have plans for her, too.  I want to see if I can train her for agility.  She can leap about two feet straight in the air just when something startles her, so I think she will be good at it and it will be a good release for her.  I will have to train myself to work with her, but that will be good for me as well.  

I love her.  She's not what I had thought would come to me, but she's perfect.  I realized two things about that.  One, her name is Stella.  She came to me with that name.  That was the name I had sort of picked for a daughter if I ever had one.  It's a family name on my mother's side.  I have always loved it because it sounds a little old fashioned and also because it means "star," which she totally is.  Additionally, and this didn't come to me until last night, if she's 5 months old, that means she came into this world about the time my Roux left it, almost as if Roux sent her to me.  While I know that 's not the way the world works, I can't say that coincidence didn't touch me.  

We have a long way to go.  There is bonding that needs to occur between her and me, between her and my other animals, between her and my parents.  I really believe all that will come in time.  She is going to be the most loved little baby pittie anyone ever saw.  By Christmas, her level of spoiled-rottenness should have reached really absurd heights.  

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.  

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. 

- Flannery O'Connor

Listen to Bessie while you read this.  She's never, ever a bad idea...

Tonight, I taught Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."  Although I've read it several times before, this was my first time using it in instruction, and as is always the case, I learned an incredible amount about it through the process.  Sometimes I think I get more out of teaching the stories than my classes do from being taught.

Tonight, the moment of transformation that takes place for the grandmother really struck me.  The whole way through the story, she is obsessed with things that are surface or things that are gone.  She romanticizes the Old South where every old homestead was a plantation, where every plantation had hidden silver waiting in the walls,  and where "gracious living" with dress codes and manners marks the worthy.  She believes she can tell a "good man" based on what he looks like, what his speech patterns are, who his "people" are.  She believes herself to be a good woman, a Christian person.

And then reality comes crashing in, quite literally.  

When she is staring down the barrel of the gun, for the very first time in her life, all the externals she has used to insulate herself from real application of the religion she gives lipservice to are stripped away.  There is no protection to be found in her white gloves and navy straw hat.  There is no grace given because she has manners and respect for the place she's from.  Her comfortable life which has allowed those moments before where she's been snide, snobby, or indifferent to the suffering of others is on the verge of ending.  Only in that moment does she understand the reality of the world, the reality of her faith.

She reaches out, and in her sudden and total acceptance of someone who is going to reject it, in her compassion for someone who is going to take her very life, she connects to the core of Christianity.  The same woman who callously ignored the needs of the little child on the roadside is reaching out to the Misfit, and when her hand touches him, something far more significant occurs.  She becomes the thing she's only been pretending to be.  She becomes a good person.

And it's dangerous to be genuinely good in a world that prefers superficiality.  It's costly.  At the end of the story, though, even after she's paid that price, she still smiles.  Something that the Misfits of the world cannot take away even through violence remains.

I need to read more O'Connor.  She's portraying something she calls Christian realism, and the combination of those two concepts intrigues me.  I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time.  

The Cure

I have been feeling really bad today.  It started this morning at church.  I subbed on the organ for the morning service, and they had baby dedication.  Then there was a presentation from a summer missionary full of all these beautiful children in need of families.  Also appearing were various announcements for all the weddings and showers that everybody seems to be having.  Every single button that I have that can be pushed was being ballroom danced across.

So I loaded myself in my little white car and drove to Walmart to buy pet food and Diet MD since I was totally out of both.  And I cried.  Embarrassing ugly crying.  Thank God I was in my car where nobody could see or hear me.

Usually, I'm okay.  Most days, I'm fine.  I stay busy, and my life is a good one.  I love what I do; I love my home; I love my friends and family.  I do not stay in a woe-is-me mindset. (And here's I'm going to have a slight Bob Dylan interlude because of reasons.)  I can honestly say that...

Most of the time
My head is on straight
Most of the time
I’m strong enough not to hate
I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind....

Most of the time.  Today was not most of the time.

I did what I could to try to pull myself out of it.  I made a skillet of faux tacos.  I watched the last three episodes of season three of Orphan Black.  I took a little bitty nap with a purring cat.

None of it worked. The overly-chirpy alarm on my phone went off, and I felt like hurling it into the wall.  Seeing those horrible technicolor rainbows around the lights and feeling for all the world like my head was about to crank up with a migraine, I pulled myself into a decent pair of jeans, loaded my red Peavy Foundation into its case, and reluctantly headed back to the church.

Only a few of us were there for our evening jam session since several of the people who usually show up were gone this weekend, but those of us who were there worked on a fun little song for the night service, and I found myself starting to feel a little better.  I tried to work on a few walks for it, and to be honest, they didn't go so well because of how badly I was feeling, but just having the instrument in my hands was somehow comforting.

The hymns for tonight were full of accidentals, and by the time we got to the specials, all I wanted was to crawl under the pew and sleep awhile.  Our music director announced the song, and I trudged up to the front, picking my bass up along the way.  We started to play, and the congregation started to sing.  The song had some silly lyrics to it, and we sang it over and over again.  Every time we went around, I found myself feeling a little better.  By the end of it, I was smiling.

The music is somehow a cure.  I don't know how it should be that this is true, but for me, it is.  Sometimes the relief comes in just listening to it, to a song that reminds me that I am not alone and that there is still hope.  Sometimes the words are the most important part. Tonight though, it came from shutting out everything except my fingers on the finger board and strings of that old bass keeping a steady rhythm.  There was comfort in every part of it, in the pull of the strap around my neck, in the weight of the body in my lap, in the smooth glide of the polished maple against my hand, in the press of the strings against my fingertips, in the mathematical and logical patterns of notes that were creating the music.

Part of me wishes I could have sat there on that front pew and kept playing forever.  That's not the way the world works, though.  Sooner or later, the music has to end.

The trick is to find a way to keep the good inside even when the instrument is back in its case.  I have to admit I'm still working on it.

Brother

This song.  This. Song.  

I don't have flesh-and-blood brothers, but this pretty much sums up the way I feel about my close friends.  I think it's a beautiful picture of what real friendship is supposed to be, a place where both people are protected and valued, a place where we hold each other up and hold all the broken pieces together.

This has been on my mind quite a lot lately as something I should share with a particular person.  Every time I hear it lately, I think of that individual, but things there have gotten weird.  Instead of bothering that person with it, then, I'm just going to put it here.  

Ramblers in the wilderness we can’t find what we need
Get a little restless from the searching
Get a little worn down in between
Like a bull chasing the matador is the man left to his own schemes
Everybody needs someone beside em’ shining like a lighthouse from the sea

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

Face down in the desert now there’s a cage locked around my heart
I found a way to drop the keys where my failures were
Now my hands can’t reach that far
I ain’t made for a rivalry I could never take the world alone
I know that in my weakness I am strong, but
It’s your love that brings me home

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

And when you call and need me near
Sayin' where'd you go?
Brother I'm right here
And on those days when the sky begins to fall
You're the blood of my blood
We can get through it all

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re feelin' low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

Brother let me be your shelter
I’ll never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you’re low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

Not Yet

I went to a craft show in Jackson a few weeks ago, and at the entrance were several animal rescue charities.  One of them had brought in dogs and cats to be adopted.  I put my hand up as a makeshift blinder and rushed by.  Once my friend and I were past them, I assumed I was going to be safe.

Not so.

We walked around looking at the booths.  We stopped to talk to one of my favorite potters and to buy one of his awesome dragons.  We dodged various unreasonably large baby carriages.  And then we turned one of the final corners.

The entire booth was covered in colorful paintings of pit bulls.  Roux's sweet pitty smile was on every canvas.  I felt like someone had slugged me in the stomach.  I couldn't breathe.

The booth belonged to a pit bull rescue from the north of the state.  They were selling shirts and paintings to raise funds for their organization.  I had to walk by it, and I'm embarrassed to say that it took me quite a few minutes to get myself collected again. I finally composed myself enough to come back, and I got some information from their group.  When I got home, I put it on my coffee table and left it alone.

Several days later, I checked out their website.  All those beautiful faces, all those brave hearts in need of a home... I fell in love with all of them, but one stood out.  She was an American Bulldog, and I sent a question to the organization about her.  Unfortunately, while she is good with other dogs, she views cats more as snacks than friends, so she is not a good match.

It's still so hard missing Roux.  Yesterday, I was in Big Lots, and they had the silly little dog Halloween costumes out.  It made me instantly think of how wonderfully patient Roux always was with being dressed up in silly outfits.  She wore reindeer antlers, New Year's hats, angel wings, and absolutely rocked a winter sweater.

I look at Chewie in his chair, and he seems lonely.  Yelldo does not play; he's too old.  I think about how much Chewie would love to have someone to romp with, but then my eyes track across the room to my cats, Pearl and Dillon.  They're peaceful and sociable.  What would happen if I brought a new dog I couldn't be absolutely sure of into their lives?

So it's not time yet.  Not yet.  When it's time for someone else to join my furry family, everything will fall into place.   We'll all be ready then.

When It's Too Late

After a busy day, I checked my messages.  I had a text from my mother.  My uncle had died.

He was the last of my father's brothers, the one we hadn't had anything to do with for years and years.  The estrangement began when my grandmother passed away.  His wife and her child put on quite the show.  After that, years passed.  The last time we saw each other was about fifteen years ago when he was doing coast-to-coast trips driving an eighteen wheeler and stopped in Bloomington to see me.  I remember that visit being a good one, and I had hope that maybe my family would pull itself together. Then my grandfather died, and insanity on a level not even Hollywood could imagine occurred.

My feelings are in conflict.  On one hand, a member of my family is gone.  I feel that I should feel something profound.  On the other, so much ugliness and sheer crazy resulted from almost every encounter with his wife and stepchildren that absence was not just the best policy, it was the only rational one.  I didn't have the overwhelming sorrow I had when Dad's other brother, the middle son, passed away.  Instead, this strange confusion came in.

I always thought there would come a time somehow when the two brothers would pull together again.  I don't know exactly how I imagined it happening or why I thought it would after so long a time of separation.  Deep down, I guess I believed that one day something would heal the rift.  Isn't that the way families are supposed to work?

Maybe some wounds don't heal.  Maybe sometimes, no matter what the beginning connection, actions sever the ties clean.  Cause and effect.  Karma.  Something....

Or maybe the chance is always there until the time runs out.  I wonder, although I am not going to ask the question, if my father ever thought they would reconcile.  Was it ever in the back of his mind?  Was it in the back of my uncle's?  

His family continues their ridiculous behavior even after his death.  They deliberately left out his two brothers in the obituary.  They listed everyone else down to the family pets and the military branch in which he served, but they refused to acknowledge that he had not one but two brothers.  As my students would say, "Just petty."

And maybe that's fine.  It is now in every way too late for mending fences, after all.

Tired

Unexpectedly, Dad was able to come home this evening.  I am thrilled to have him out of the hospital, but getting him in the house was more than challenging.   Who ever would have thought that four simple stairs would create a problem of that proportion?  It took my uncle, my cousin, my mother, and me to get him in. God as my witness, if I ever build a house, it will have at least one entrance that is flat on the ground or easy to "ramp" by throwing a piece of plywood across low, low stairs.

Part of it was because no pressure can be put on his chest.  That means he can't be pulled by the shoulder, can't grab and pull with his arms, can't really do much except hold his heart-shaped pillow and let us get him up by creating a type of sling using his shirt.

He did the first step from the car and the first of the four steps fine, and then the day caught up with him and his knees went to jelly.  We managed to catch him, something that isn't easy to do if you're trying to dodge a giant chest wound, a huge wound on one arm, and so on.  We managed to get him up the stairs to the deck rail, and after that, into a rolling computer chair.  Eventually, we got him in the house.  Then we sort of reversed the process to get him from the computer chair into his big comfortable living room chair.

Once we'd gotten him settled, Mom had to go back to town to pick up all his prescriptions. He came home from the hospital with four pages of medications, some old, some new, and some to be stopped.  All total, he's taking 21 medications right now.  Some are AM meds, some PM; some are once-a-day, some twice, and one annoying iron pill has to be taken three times a day.  It's all so complicated that I sat down and made a checklist/flowchart for it all, and then I sorted the meds into four different boxes/baskets.  Hopefully that will make it all a little bit easier.

We worked on trying to get Dad to eat, but we only managed to get a tiny sliver of toast and a cup full of applesauce in him.  He swears he will do better tomorrow.  I hope he really will.

Five hours after he first rolled into the yard, I had reached the limit of there was that I could do tonight.  I'd made two documents/charts (thank God for my mad teacher Word skills) to track his vital statistics and the aforementioned med chart, sorted out all his old meds and put them in storage so nobody gets confused, helped him change clothes to what he plans to sleep in, worked to transfer him to the bed with the help of Mom and our handy-dandy computer chair (CRAP, but we are getting a wheelchair tomorrow even if I have to rob somebody for the money for one), assisted Mom in pulling together the elaborate mosaic of nighttime meds and treatments, eaten three pieces of toast for dinner, and checked all his gadgets to make sure they're charging for when he might want them tomorrow.

This is what I came back home for.  I knew this time would come, and I knew I'd need to help pick up as much slack as I possibly could.  I just don't think I was prepared to be as tired as I am right now, especially since this is not even really "day 1" at home.  Hopefully, he will continue to improve.  If we can just get him semi-mobile again, then a lot of the physical side of things will slow down.  If not....well....I always need a workout, right?  The only important thing is that he is getting better and in a comfortable place to do that.

After

You know you've been at the hospital too much when you know which vending machines have "quirks" about taking quarters, scanning cards, and holding certain items.  You know you've been in the CCU waiting room too often when you know either by name or by face all the other "long-term" family members waiting for visiting hours, when you share a smile between you as one of you enters the room, when you contemplate the "new people" waiting on someone in surgery as a temporary phenomenon.

It's hard to believe it has only been a week.  It feels like years and years.  While it's not quite over yet (we're waiting for all the final bits to finish so Dad can come home), the worst part seems to be behind us.  Dad is chomping at the proverbial bit to come home, and they've disconnected most of the IVs and machines.

He already seems like he's doing better.  I don't know if it's increased blood flow, stress relief, or changes in medication, but he seems much more focused.  We've heard doctors and other people who have had bypass surgery talk before, and they've talked about having a "new lease on life."  At the risk of this post turning into a mass of cliches, that is exactly what it seems like.  I'm so excited for him.  I know how much it was bothering him mentally that he wasn't able to do the things he wanted to do anymore because of the pain and exhaustion caused by the blockages.

Even though I did not go through any physical changes myself, nevertheless, I do feel different.  Some things that seemed terribly important to me before all this began just really don't matter at all now.  Other things have waxed even as the others waned.

What I expected to be a fairly placid summer has turned into something transformational for my entire family.  It is always hard to tell whether the changes will be good or bad when they come so suddenly and on such a massive level.  I guess we will just move forward into the after and see what comes next.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow....

Today, I got up, grabbed an air tank, dodged a highway worker making a poor choice on a narrow bridge, filled the tank, dodged the same stupid guy on the way back over the bridge, and filled the leaky front wheel on my lawn mower.  Then I spent the next three hours riding in increasingly small circles in various sections of my yard until all the ugly upthrust seed Vs of the Bahia grass were gone.  My shoulders and back got too much sun, and I'm hoping they will decide to stay at "freckle" and not move up to "sunburn."

I had to do something, and mowing can be very meditative.  I turn up a random playlist on my phone and because my mower is pretty old, I have to put most of my attention on making sure it is actually cutting right.  It's not go-kart fun, but it will do in a pinch.

Finally, late this afternoon, Dad called to say everything has been cleared for tomorrow.  The surgery is officially on.

So now, I'm making lists, laying out clothes, packing up things I'll need during the interminable wait.  In a few hours, I'll go lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling.  Then tomorrow will be today, and we will see what we will see.

Fordite

"Fordite, also known as Motor Agate, is a unique automotive enamel material with an interesting history. The original layered automotive paint slag 'rough' was made incidentally, years ago, by the now extinct practice of hand spray-painting multiples of production cars in big automotive factories. 

The oversprayed paint in the painting bays gradually built up on the tracks and skids that the car frames were painted on. Over time, many colorful layers built up there. These layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Some of these deeper layers were even baked 100 times. 

Eventually, the paint build-up would become obstructing, or too thick and heavy, and had to be removed. As the story goes, some crafty workers with an eye for beauty realized that this unique byproduct was worth salvaging. It was super-cured, patterned like psychedelic agate, and could be cut and polished with relative ease!"  - taken from fordite.com 
__________________________________

I'm obsessed with this stuff.  In addition to mad housecleaning, I am also using the internet as a tool for avoidance of reality, and as I stumbled through the rabbit hole of Etsy, I came across Fordite.

As the history blurb above details, this is a reclaimed thing, something that occurred as an accident, a nuisance byproduct for the auto industry.  How beautiful this nuisance is, though.

I wonder who the first person to notice the internal loveliness under the unsightly exterior was, who the first person to scratch the surface and find more than was expected.

Fordite, or Detroit Agate, isn't produced anymore.  Technology changed the manufacturing process, and this side-effect doesn't happen now.  What I'm sure the industry looked at as a waste now fetches as much money as some "real" gemstones, especially if it can be proven to have come from a particular auto maker, model, or factory, for example the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, KY.  I even saw one piece marked as "mustangite."  Guess what it was supposed to have come from?

I have found a piece on Etsy that I really love....well, probably more like five pieces, but still...and when my money from the AP reading comes, I am going to splurge on a piece.  Aside from the incredible visual appeal of it, I like the symbolic reminder that it's what's under the surface that matters, that the world rarely takes the time to look for less-than-screaming-in-its-face-obvious value and is prone to discard things of beauty and rarity.  It's a lesson worth remembering about a tendency worth avoiding.

I don't think that's too much philosophy to hang from a silver chain, right?  If it's too much for you, I guess you can just enjoy all the pretty colors.  To each, her own.

Type A

Today, I exerted my Type A-ism over the only thing I can control right now, my own house.  I got up, made coffee, cranked the Dance Workout playlist on Spotify, and started cleaning.

I vacuumed, steam cleaned the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom floors, did laundry and put it away, stripped my bed and put my feather mattress out to sun, emptied and reloaded the dishwasher, washed and replaced my slipcovers, took out the trash.  Every little thing felt like a stitch to hold the fabric of life together.

There's more that needs to be done, shelves to dust, a piano and an organ to detail, a shower curtain to replace.  Once I'm finished inside, there is a whole world of yard work. I am going to hold this line.

What's the alternative?

Recently

Sometimes, it seems like your life can drastically change from one moment to another.  Like somebody has flipped a switch from one position to its opposite.  Final.  Complete.  You were *this*, but suddenly you are *that* instead.

I have been having a chain of these events during the past two months.  Instead of the gradual shaping that life does on all of us, the water over the stone, the windstorm shaping the dunes, things lately have been all dynamite and sinkholes opening up.  I have yet to figure out the extent of it all.

For one thing, I lost my Roux.  She had what they decided were several small strokes, and finally, I sat in the back corner of the teacher's portion of the school cafeteria and made a decision to let her go.  I have not been able to go back into that space since that day.  I lost something more than just her.  Some part of my heart just snapped off and quit.  I am not sure I am going to be able to get it back.

And then there's the friend I treasured who has thrown me away.  Looking back over the past few months, I guess it's been coming for awhile. There's no comfort in that.  All it means is that I've been stupid a very long time.  I'm hung between pain at the loss and sheer anger at once again being the one to whom it mattered more.  I can't get over the fact that I never seem to learn.  

After that, I sat in a very large room and graded papers for eight straight days.  This may not sound like much to you, but it becomes a form of meditation.  The focus required strips away everything non-essential.  The breaks that are taken allow only certain key concepts to float up from under the weariness of the job.  During this time, I came to a very significant realization about some things.  An opportunity came to me during this same time to make some changes.  I took it.  I am still not sure what the outcome of it will be, but that still small voice in my heart told me that if I didn't even try to take this, then something like a total ossification of my soul was going to take place.  

And then I came home.  My parents came down the day I got back to have dinner, and in that way they have, they told me that my father's doctor had ordered a heart cath for Thursday, two days away.  They hadn't told me about it because...and sing along because you know the chorus....they didn't want to distress me with it.

 So Thursday came, and we went through all the same motions I did not so very long ago when another big part of my own life changed, the sign in.  The cath lab waiting rooms are small, private, as opposed to the larger room for the ICU/CCU/Outpatient surgery.  I am always grateful for a small waiting room.  I cannot stand to look around and see all the faces filled with misery and fear.  It presses down on me like a stone on my chest, and I can't breathe because of it.  Mom busied herself with preparations for something she was working on at the church.  I took a deck of cards, found a battered brown coffee table, and played solitaire over and over.  I lost much more than I won, but the movement helped me block out the interminable creeping of time.

The doctor finally came to see us, and the news was not good.  A surgeon would have to look at the results and make a recommendation.  The cardiologist had exhausted all the means at his disposal, and the blockages and damage were severe.  Basically, Dad could have died at any moment with any exertion.  And someone shifted the gears on the machine of my life again.

When the cardiovascular surgeon came to see us later that afternoon, he brought unexpected hope.  Bypass surgery was possible.  It will be complicated, but at least there was an option.  Another shifting of the gears.

Now we're all waiting.  Thursday will be the day.  We'll see who we all are at the end of it.  

Literary Epiphanies

I went to the annual Eudora Welty teacher workshop Friday.

Getting there was nightmarish.  Ice had gridlocked the entire city of Jackson.  All roads in and all roads within were obstructed by wrecks.  The dreaded "stack" where I-20 and I-59 go their separate ways was completely closed.  Insanity reigned supreme with selfish motorists refusing to move out of the way of incoming emergency services.  I personally sat about five miles outside of Brandon for 45 minutes, engine off, waiting for some accident I never saw any trace of to be cleared.

When I finally got to Welty House, I was late.  I scurried in and took up a seat in the back.  The two stories we were to have read before arriving were already under discussion.  I quickly got my pen out and started filling pages of notes.

These moment where I get to be a student again are precious.  I love to learn, feed on it just as much as I get nourishment from any kind of food.  I don't know how people function who never take in new knowledge somehow.  I always feel like my brain is like a pool, and if no new material is added, I swear I can feel it getting stagnant and brackish.

The two stories we were contrasting were "The Wanderers" by Welty and "The Dead" by Joyce.  I've been on something of a Joyce kick lately (the Moderns in general, but Joyce particularly).  F. got me started on the Joyce, an author I had avoided for years because of all the pretentious blather he gets in my field.  I can't think of another author who has more of what I have always thought of as the "Emperor's New Clothing Syndrome" attached to his name than Joyce, by which I have heard people who quite obviously had no more idea than the man in the moon what was going on in his works loudly discussing him like they were going to get some kind of celestial brownie points for doing so.  In any case, at F's urging, I decided to see what the fuss was about.

(Side note about that:  He sort of had to prod me a lot, and I was fairly grumpy and grudging with my acceptance. You would think by now I would just accept what F. said and go on.  He is the one who got me to listen to Dylan and at least a couple of other things I had decided that I was not going to fool with because of all the loud-sounding nothing that surrounds them.  He is right about things I will like to a degree that I do not understand.  I haven't reached the point of just going along with it, though.  I am aware that it is a character flaw.  If you try to push me toward something, you can be pretty sure I'm going to move it to the bottom of my list of priorities or refuse it altogether.  I know this behaviour is hardheaded and almost certainly unwise.  Can't seem to fix it, though.)

I was surprised when I liked what I was reading.  There was none of the deliberately abstruse stuff I'd always heard of.  The stories were engaging.  I finished Dubliners quickly and moved on to Ulysses.   I got about halfway through it before the semester started jumping up and down on me with its great black jackboots, so I am still plowing my way through it in doses.  It requires more concentration than Dubliners, more than most works I've read in my time studying literature, and while I like that about it tremendously, at the end of a long day, I don't always have that to give.

In any case, when the conference rolled around this year and I saw the pairing of Welty and Joyce, I was pretty excited about it.  I had never really thought of them together, but when I saw the titles, putting them together seemed perfectly logical.  Both are acutely interested in place and how it shapes culture and the characters they present.  I expected to learn a great deal and maybe figure out how to put both stories into the course syllabus I'm always in the middle of tearing apart and putting together, a little like faithful Penelope and her permanently unfinished weaving.

What I did not expect was a sharp and personal revelation.

Both stories have at their heart a trapped wanderer who has to lose what is precious to become free.  There are two different reactions reflecting the drastically different world views of the two different authors behind them.

Both Welty and Joyce were themselves wanderers.  Welty left Jackson for a long time for school and travel, but she had that permanent and inexplicable need to return that seems to be something we take in with the waters here in Mississippi.  She came home to take care of her family when they needed her.

Joyce left Dublin, that big city that felt so small, and refused all aspects and claims of its culture and practices.  He refused even to kneel at his mother's deathbed.  He was constantly seeking something somewhere else, yet his writing stays eternally tied to Dublin, picking it apart piece by piece in his works. For him, there is a paralysis that settles over life in Ireland, something caused by politics, religion, family.  All of it was a crushing weight that froze an individual in place, and in his stories some who are trying to escape come to a realization that they are not what they thought they were, become "sadder and wiser" because of it.

Welty, too, feels the power of place over her characters.  Family ties and cultural expectations reach out and twine around her wanderers, too.  She has a gently satirical eye for all the human frailty and foolishness that is a part of every community.  Unlike Joyce, though, I think Welty can see that there is good mixed in with all that stuff, too.  Her Wanderer, Virgie, has gone out and come back.  She has given up years of her life trying to fulfill the requirements of family and cultural duty.  As the oldest daughter, it's her job to take care of her mother.  At the end, when all the ties of family and property and obligation fall away from her, unlike with Gabriel in "The Dead," a sense that she is going to be okay now comes.  She has been changed, shaped, by all her experiences and decisions, but there is hope at the end.

And that is a critical thing.  That is the thing that I kept missing in Joyce.  I enjoy his stuff, but at the end of the day, I miss that glimmer of hope.  Maybe it's a Mississippi thing.  I see the same difference when I compare Faulkner and Hemingway.  I love them both, but there is usually a comfort at the end of Faulkner that I cannot always find from Hemingway.

I have to believe that this possibility of hope and comfort *is* present if we will look for it.  I think Welty gives it to us maybe in part because she comes back to a place that is probably not exactly where she wanted to be but she lives in it and makes something of it.  Instead of it becoming a stagnation that destroys, for her, it becomes an exercise in seeking the good, finding it wherever it appears, the garden, her friends, the ridiculous, the beautiful, the everyday miraculous.

I want to be more like Welty.  I, too, feel completely trapped here.  I am a wanderer who came home, and I can feel the weight of obligations and cultural issues sitting on me like bricks on bird wings.  Sometimes, it almost feels like there's not enough air to breathe.  I don't want to be like Joyce, though, and just lump the baby and bathwater together as I toss it all out the window.  There *is* the possibility of hope and comfort.  There are lessons to be learned if I persist.

Hamlet (you knew he was showing up sooner or later, right?) says that "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."  I have been so focused on all the things I do not like about being home that I am forgetting there are a great many good things here, too.  I think it's time to adjust my focus.  Lincoln famously said, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  Time to pick Welty's Wanderer instead.