Old Men Who Give Old a Bad Name
January 4: Waiting at the pharmacy for my prescriptions. I'm looking at the remedies on the shelves for cold sores, chapped cows udders - the salve for which I guess works great on human hands and lips, lice shampoos, etc. I hear an old man come in and start off complaining how his insurance won't cover his prescription. Right away, he blames "Bama" for it all. How he's spending all our money in other countries instead of here. How he's making a mess of health care. How we're all gonna die and it will be his fault. But it won't matter anyway because somebody's gonna shoot him soon enough. What a mess he's made of everything. I don't turn around, and instead examine ear drop solutions. If the old badger were to engage me, I'm not sure he'd like what I have to say to him. The only thing I could think to say would be: "With all you have to complain about, what are you doing to make the world a better place? What do you do that you get out of bed for every day where you think to yourself, 'This will help to make the world better for everybody.'? Because you bitchin' about it isn't doing anybody any good." Cocoa butter lotion. I could use some of that.
Old Men Who Give Old a Good Name
January 5: Waiting room to get my blood drawn. The only other person there is an old man. He smiles and says hello to me. I smile back, say good morning. He comments on the cold. Not as bad as it has been, I say. He says he's been in Kentucky. Tells me about the flea market he went to, "As big as from here to Euclid" he says. That's at least six blocks away. I tell him he had it good. Missed the worst of the weather. He laughs and tells me he's seen plenty in his day. I tell him I hope he sees plenty more. He laughs, and I laugh with him.
We have plenty of role models for our old age all around us. What kind of role model will you be? What kind of role model are you?
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Friday, January 01, 2010
January 2010
Walking through Midland Street, Bay City, Michigan
January 1, 2010 at 8:00am
Down to the River Walk with Scrappy. A thin layer of fluffy snow hides the ice patches, catches us on occasion, but neither of us fall. Nobody else around, but the tracks of humans and their dogs. Who else would get up so early on New Year's Day? Dogs, not their people.
The snow on Midland street is trampled through. Outside the Lumberbaron, brightly colored confetti is frozen to the sidewalk, black styrofoam takeout boxes litter the lot, red and white checkered pizza slice papers tumble along in the wind.
Lucky's still has their outdoor speakers on, some inane rock and roll ballad blares as we walk past, then fades to dissonance in the cold. The guy with his chow mix walks on the other side of the street. "Your dog doesn't like mine," he said to me once. His chow barks, snaps and snarls - would attack us if that leash broke - that guy has a skewed perception of which dog has the issue. "Happy new year!" I call to him across the street, over his monster's snarls. He nods and waves, tells the dog to shut up after we pass.
Dorr's restaurant is open for breakfast. Cheese omelet with potatoes is the special today. The waitress leans heaviy onto the counter, looking out the window but past us walking by. Her hair hangs in loose clumps out of her pony tail. Here she is not five hours later, ready to serve the hungover patrons who won't remember playing grabass with her last night, or that they stiffed her on the tip. She's tired, but she'll remember.
A crumpled black jacket lays in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the last bar. It's lightly dusted with snow, and I think to pick it up, but then decide against it. It makes it's own kind of art there: NYD 2010 - The Morning After Sidewalk. At least there wasn't any puke - not on this side of the street anyway. I'm sure on the Mean Chow side there was some - usually by the Westside there's a pile, along with frozen pee that starts partway up the building wall and makes it's way down the sidewalk.
Oh, to think of all the fun I miss by staying home on New Year's Eve, not going to the bars until midnight and then drinking until 2am. I can't remember the last time I side the other side of midnight, let alone 2am. No, I'll take these mornings any day over late nights. The cold, crisp calm of winter morning sunrises. The quiet walk down to the river, frozen over and still. Empty city streets. This is a much better way to start a new year, and hope it stays just as dull the whole year long.
January 1, 2010 at 8:00am
Down to the River Walk with Scrappy. A thin layer of fluffy snow hides the ice patches, catches us on occasion, but neither of us fall. Nobody else around, but the tracks of humans and their dogs. Who else would get up so early on New Year's Day? Dogs, not their people.
The snow on Midland street is trampled through. Outside the Lumberbaron, brightly colored confetti is frozen to the sidewalk, black styrofoam takeout boxes litter the lot, red and white checkered pizza slice papers tumble along in the wind.
Lucky's still has their outdoor speakers on, some inane rock and roll ballad blares as we walk past, then fades to dissonance in the cold. The guy with his chow mix walks on the other side of the street. "Your dog doesn't like mine," he said to me once. His chow barks, snaps and snarls - would attack us if that leash broke - that guy has a skewed perception of which dog has the issue. "Happy new year!" I call to him across the street, over his monster's snarls. He nods and waves, tells the dog to shut up after we pass.
Dorr's restaurant is open for breakfast. Cheese omelet with potatoes is the special today. The waitress leans heaviy onto the counter, looking out the window but past us walking by. Her hair hangs in loose clumps out of her pony tail. Here she is not five hours later, ready to serve the hungover patrons who won't remember playing grabass with her last night, or that they stiffed her on the tip. She's tired, but she'll remember.
A crumpled black jacket lays in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the last bar. It's lightly dusted with snow, and I think to pick it up, but then decide against it. It makes it's own kind of art there: NYD 2010 - The Morning After Sidewalk. At least there wasn't any puke - not on this side of the street anyway. I'm sure on the Mean Chow side there was some - usually by the Westside there's a pile, along with frozen pee that starts partway up the building wall and makes it's way down the sidewalk.
Oh, to think of all the fun I miss by staying home on New Year's Eve, not going to the bars until midnight and then drinking until 2am. I can't remember the last time I side the other side of midnight, let alone 2am. No, I'll take these mornings any day over late nights. The cold, crisp calm of winter morning sunrises. The quiet walk down to the river, frozen over and still. Empty city streets. This is a much better way to start a new year, and hope it stays just as dull the whole year long.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
South East Asia
I just got back from a week-long conference in Kalamazoo on South East Asia.It was amazing how ignorant I was about that area of the world. It's easy to learn a lot when you're ignorant and receptive to learning.
I learned a great deal on the history of the region and on the current state of its role in global economics. South East Asia really is a dominate force in keeping this world going. It is a region rich with cultural history and immense future potential.(This workshop excluded China, Japan, and India which are each studied individually in other week-long workshops.)
One of the most surprising pieces of information I learned is how much better some of the medical facilities are in SEA than they are here in the US. In fact, Blue Cross Blue Shield is actually sending people overseas for procedures that can be done better and cheaper than they can here in the US. Not surprisingly, the majority of doctors were educated in the US.
For the most part, the US education systems holds great prestige in SEA, and students who come to the US return to their home countries. The only country where this is not as true is the Philippines. Cultural differences between generations has led the youngest generation of that country to leave and not want to return.
I also learned a great deal about Muslims in SEA. This is another area in which I had absolutely no store of knowledge. As one of the workshop teachers told us, SEA is where Muslims are going to learn to work out the rich history of their religion with the modernity of contemporary cultures. The two can co-exist and deeply benefit one another, and SEA is where he said it is already beginning to happen.
I have nearly 50 pages of notes to work through from this workshop, in addition to needing to complete research to develop a module to infuse into one of my classes. I had thought the mythology class would be a no-brainer for this, and it is. I'll be incorporating more myths from SEA as well as information about the contemporary cultures, but for my module I have decided to use my developmental class, ENG090.
I finished reading Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen this summer and didn't think much of it. However, being able to frame that book in the context of SEA studies as well as under the auspices of Delta's Peace Studies Program, I will definitely be using it next year in my classes.
What a great week away. Exhausting, and as always, good to be home, but definitely I've been schooled and will be building on this in my work.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
My Neighborhood
New across the street
drug, paternity testing
DUI classes
Lots more vans around
guys on bikes
smokers watching us
Lock the doors
Move
drug, paternity testing
DUI classes
Lots more vans around
guys on bikes
smokers watching us
Lock the doors
Move
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
New Years Day 2009
How the first day of the year begins, so the rest follow.
I woke early and lay in bed for a while, just enjoying the warmth and quiet. The dog nuzzled me to get up, so we were out on the road by 7:30am.
It was cold. Very cold. New snow from days ago did not impede our walk, which after a couple of blocks turned into a jog. As we rounded the park and began to head for the riverwalk, the sky was a deep orange-red. By the time we neared the river, it fanned out into brilliant pink with amber streaks where the sun shone behind the clouds, through the cold.
We met no one as we made our way along the river, though footprints proved other life had passed by there. The snow had drifted off the path, making our progress easy. Chunks of ice flowed through the river, chunks that had only days before been a frozen floor for humans, a ceiling to the fish. No doubt a great lakes ship had come into port and caused the breakup.
I stopped along the rail and watched the ice flow. Anyone who does not believe the continents and landscape were formed by shifting plates of land need only to watch an ice flow. One chunk collides with another, and the seam where their edges meet piles high. What had been edges now become mountains down the middle of the land. And when the ice chunk breaks away and leaves the raised edge, I imagine the coastal ranges, like in Ireland and California and Oregon.
I could have stayed, mesmerized by this flow and formation and reformation, had the dog not whined to remind me we were on our path.
Around the marina, up the hill into the downtown area. Plastic cups began to appear, as if the first signs of civilization. An empty champagne bottle. Coursing through the bar district, other revelers' celebratory activities and their aftermath become evident. Empty cigarette packs, empty beer bottles, broken glass, a slice of uneaten pizza (pepperoni still intact), a woman's broken hair clip, dozens of cigarette butts, splatters of blood, bloody tissues, a splotch of vomit. Yeah, I see what I'm not missing when I stay home on New Years Eve.
Against the wind when we started, it now is at my back (the dog's tail), making the run home easier, faster, warmer. We slow a block early and walk it in. The town is quiet still.
I grab the brush for the dog, taking care of animals is a major part of every morning. Once inside, I will clean cat boxes, make sure cats have food, all animals have water, and feed the dog. Then the water ritual will begin, as I fill the humidifier, the tea pot, wash dishes, take a shower.
The day will move forward slowly, unhurried, peacefully. While all the others that follow will not be exactly like this day, it is an encouraging start - in health, reflection, appreciation, curiosity, observation, consideration, respect, diligence, understanding, ritual, and gratitude. Working both with and against nature, but persevering regardless. And, at the last, coming home, to those I love, and who love in return.
Yes, I would be happy to have even a small percentage of days like these ahead of me in this new year.
I woke early and lay in bed for a while, just enjoying the warmth and quiet. The dog nuzzled me to get up, so we were out on the road by 7:30am.
It was cold. Very cold. New snow from days ago did not impede our walk, which after a couple of blocks turned into a jog. As we rounded the park and began to head for the riverwalk, the sky was a deep orange-red. By the time we neared the river, it fanned out into brilliant pink with amber streaks where the sun shone behind the clouds, through the cold.
We met no one as we made our way along the river, though footprints proved other life had passed by there. The snow had drifted off the path, making our progress easy. Chunks of ice flowed through the river, chunks that had only days before been a frozen floor for humans, a ceiling to the fish. No doubt a great lakes ship had come into port and caused the breakup.
I stopped along the rail and watched the ice flow. Anyone who does not believe the continents and landscape were formed by shifting plates of land need only to watch an ice flow. One chunk collides with another, and the seam where their edges meet piles high. What had been edges now become mountains down the middle of the land. And when the ice chunk breaks away and leaves the raised edge, I imagine the coastal ranges, like in Ireland and California and Oregon.
I could have stayed, mesmerized by this flow and formation and reformation, had the dog not whined to remind me we were on our path.
Around the marina, up the hill into the downtown area. Plastic cups began to appear, as if the first signs of civilization. An empty champagne bottle. Coursing through the bar district, other revelers' celebratory activities and their aftermath become evident. Empty cigarette packs, empty beer bottles, broken glass, a slice of uneaten pizza (pepperoni still intact), a woman's broken hair clip, dozens of cigarette butts, splatters of blood, bloody tissues, a splotch of vomit. Yeah, I see what I'm not missing when I stay home on New Years Eve.
Against the wind when we started, it now is at my back (the dog's tail), making the run home easier, faster, warmer. We slow a block early and walk it in. The town is quiet still.
I grab the brush for the dog, taking care of animals is a major part of every morning. Once inside, I will clean cat boxes, make sure cats have food, all animals have water, and feed the dog. Then the water ritual will begin, as I fill the humidifier, the tea pot, wash dishes, take a shower.
The day will move forward slowly, unhurried, peacefully. While all the others that follow will not be exactly like this day, it is an encouraging start - in health, reflection, appreciation, curiosity, observation, consideration, respect, diligence, understanding, ritual, and gratitude. Working both with and against nature, but persevering regardless. And, at the last, coming home, to those I love, and who love in return.
Yes, I would be happy to have even a small percentage of days like these ahead of me in this new year.
Friday, November 07, 2008
As Time Goes By
Sitting at the desk, writing, I look out the front bay window and my vision is filled with burnt umber. The leaves on the oak tree are turning darker each day, now beginning to curl up around the edges. Over the next few days, they will fall to the ground and join the layers of others from neighboring maples. As I look out the window to my left, the tree is bare, having lost her leaves weeks ago. They sit now in piles in the gutter. Raked there, waiting for the street sweeper to make its yearly rounds - sucking them up, grinding, munching, carrying the mess away to the city compost heap. The sky is a cool gray today, having rained itself empty through the night. I remember this same time of year, four years ago. It was a much more dismal time. A much darker and sadder time. The leaves that fall from these trees cannot even begin to match in number the people whose lives have been lost, tormented, terrorized, upset and divided as the result of choices made by one man. I watch him now, on the news, see him curling at the edges, and just wait for him to fall, onto the lawn, into the gutter. Let the sweeper carry him away.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
New Year's Day 2008
Life is what you make it. How many different ways have you heard it said?
I once read somewhere that whatever it is you do on New Year's Day sets the tone for the rest of the year. Now, it actually may have been more mystical like whatever it is you are doing at the stroke of midnight - which is why, perhaps, it is tradition to kiss. Sure, some might think this is going to bring them a year filled with sex and passion, but there is so much more symbolically to a kiss - connection, prosperity, companionship, warmth, sharing, giving, receiving, and - okay, okay - procreation, which in itself can symbolize a wealth and vitality.
I can tell you where I was a the stroke of midnight: just falling asleep and awakened by screams of "Happy New Year!" from the neighbors, along with the cold winter night's muffled blast of fireworks. If that's the tone of my whole year, then I guess I can count on a lot of interrupted sleep, but that's not how I plan to see it. No, I'm going with New Year's Day.
I woke early, feeling well rested and clear headed - my sinuses were nearly clear and not aching. I dressed and stepped outside into about four inches of new snow. My first obstacle of the New Year. Without hesitation, I got a shovel and cleared the back deck and all the sidewalks. I met the obstacle head on and did not let it dissuade me. Not only that, but I was taking others into consideration - even though there aren't many walkers on a holiday, I know it's an important aspect of civil living to keep the sidewalks clear in the winter. Plus, we already got one scolding from the mail carrier, so I'm hyper-conscious of it now.
Sidewalks cleared, I leashed up the dog and we headed out for our first run of the new year. We ran in the road - since at 6:30 AM I couldn't well expect others to have been up to shovel yet. It was clear and easy to find footing in tire ruts. I was running against the wind into a light snow. Okay, so the year will start with some opposition, but, I knew on the way home, the wind would be at my back, so that would mean the year will get easier as it progresses.
I went to 7-11 to get a newspaper for my husband. Start the year doing something nice for others. I didn't see a single car on the road on my way there. Not one. I may be the last person on the planet in 2008? No, not quite, but perhaps some peace and tranquility from the usual grind. That would be nice.
At 7-11 I bought three papers. Start the year reading; that has to be good. The run home was a bit challenging, as I haven't run in a few days, but I persevered and it felt good to finish. Again, a tougher year to start, but I will push through and find it rewarding to have done so.
Once home, I started a load of laundry - keeping life clean - and cleaned out the cat boxes, taking the used litter directly out to the garbage. No "waste" in the house to start the new year. This was followed by more taking care of animals. I find a good portion of my morning is spent on that: walking the dog, letting the cat in and out, filling up food and water dishes, cleaning the cat box, brushing the dog, petting cats. But none of this is a "chore" since I am so appreciative of these creatures in my life.
There's also a lot of water in my daily morning rituals: laundry, pet water, drinking water, teapot water, bathroom, shower. I am very conscious of and grateful for all the water we have, especially knowing how desperate others are for it.
I straighten up the house a bit and do some more exercises and some yoga before I make my first cup of morning tea and settle down to the computer to write. Writing. Great New Year's Day activity. I'm hopeful this one activity will prevail through the new year (yes, Casey, even though Pima says hope ain't so great).
What else today? There will be healthy food - mother's bread to start the day followed by a turkey dinner with middle east side dishes and fresh vegetables. There will be quiet time and the Parade of Roses and football all day.
Most importantly, there will be the man I love here with me - my best friend, my family - sharing in this New Year's Day. He's sleeping now, but not for long. No oversleeping on New Year's Day. That would set the wrong tone for the new year.
I once read somewhere that whatever it is you do on New Year's Day sets the tone for the rest of the year. Now, it actually may have been more mystical like whatever it is you are doing at the stroke of midnight - which is why, perhaps, it is tradition to kiss. Sure, some might think this is going to bring them a year filled with sex and passion, but there is so much more symbolically to a kiss - connection, prosperity, companionship, warmth, sharing, giving, receiving, and - okay, okay - procreation, which in itself can symbolize a wealth and vitality.
I can tell you where I was a the stroke of midnight: just falling asleep and awakened by screams of "Happy New Year!" from the neighbors, along with the cold winter night's muffled blast of fireworks. If that's the tone of my whole year, then I guess I can count on a lot of interrupted sleep, but that's not how I plan to see it. No, I'm going with New Year's Day.
I woke early, feeling well rested and clear headed - my sinuses were nearly clear and not aching. I dressed and stepped outside into about four inches of new snow. My first obstacle of the New Year. Without hesitation, I got a shovel and cleared the back deck and all the sidewalks. I met the obstacle head on and did not let it dissuade me. Not only that, but I was taking others into consideration - even though there aren't many walkers on a holiday, I know it's an important aspect of civil living to keep the sidewalks clear in the winter. Plus, we already got one scolding from the mail carrier, so I'm hyper-conscious of it now.
Sidewalks cleared, I leashed up the dog and we headed out for our first run of the new year. We ran in the road - since at 6:30 AM I couldn't well expect others to have been up to shovel yet. It was clear and easy to find footing in tire ruts. I was running against the wind into a light snow. Okay, so the year will start with some opposition, but, I knew on the way home, the wind would be at my back, so that would mean the year will get easier as it progresses.
I went to 7-11 to get a newspaper for my husband. Start the year doing something nice for others. I didn't see a single car on the road on my way there. Not one. I may be the last person on the planet in 2008? No, not quite, but perhaps some peace and tranquility from the usual grind. That would be nice.
At 7-11 I bought three papers. Start the year reading; that has to be good. The run home was a bit challenging, as I haven't run in a few days, but I persevered and it felt good to finish. Again, a tougher year to start, but I will push through and find it rewarding to have done so.
Once home, I started a load of laundry - keeping life clean - and cleaned out the cat boxes, taking the used litter directly out to the garbage. No "waste" in the house to start the new year. This was followed by more taking care of animals. I find a good portion of my morning is spent on that: walking the dog, letting the cat in and out, filling up food and water dishes, cleaning the cat box, brushing the dog, petting cats. But none of this is a "chore" since I am so appreciative of these creatures in my life.
There's also a lot of water in my daily morning rituals: laundry, pet water, drinking water, teapot water, bathroom, shower. I am very conscious of and grateful for all the water we have, especially knowing how desperate others are for it.
I straighten up the house a bit and do some more exercises and some yoga before I make my first cup of morning tea and settle down to the computer to write. Writing. Great New Year's Day activity. I'm hopeful this one activity will prevail through the new year (yes, Casey, even though Pima says hope ain't so great).
What else today? There will be healthy food - mother's bread to start the day followed by a turkey dinner with middle east side dishes and fresh vegetables. There will be quiet time and the Parade of Roses and football all day.
Most importantly, there will be the man I love here with me - my best friend, my family - sharing in this New Year's Day. He's sleeping now, but not for long. No oversleeping on New Year's Day. That would set the wrong tone for the new year.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Things I Forgot I Knew :: Winter Nights
We went to Traverse City this past weekend to visit parents. I took the dog outside to wait for my parents to arrive at the in-laws - a pre-holiday get-together, since we won't be there for Christmas.
It was only six o'clock, but it was dark already. The ground was covered with several feet of snow that had been dumped the week before, and teensy cystals were sifting down from the night sky - a step more frozen than the drizzle it would be if it were warmer. I stood and looked into the dizzying swirl of snow; in the street lights, it sparkled like glitter.
As I stood there, in that moment of silence and nature, I remembered how much I loved being outdoors on winter nights. I was run through with a feeling of comfort, like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket. It seems contradictory, I know, to be out in the cold and say it felt like that, but the winter nights have always had that affect on me. With no traffic around, there is such a deep silence in a night where people are all indoors, having shoveled and salted their walks earlier, no one comes out at night unless they have to. No one is barbequing on back porches, no kids riding their bikes up and down the streets, no late night walkers - or at least very few - and their crunching steps become swallowed up into the night air as soon as they pass by. The blanket of snow upon the earth must act like some kind of giant sound absorber, but it's also what gives me that sense of being wrapped up inside of it all, comforted by its thickness, regardless of the fact that it's as cold as a popsicle.
Not something you'd want to wrap yourself up in, you might say, but as a child, I loved to dead-drop onto my back into a fresh fall of snow, watch the plumes of cold crystals swirl above me and settle back onto my bare face. I would sit unbreathingly still and watch the icy flakes rest and then melt on my lashes, feel the trickling transformation of ice to water on my cheeks. I loved that moment of stillness, of quiet comfort wrapped up in the snowfall, just before my arms and legs would swing robotically back and forth and I would try as gracefully as possible to rise and step out of the angelic impression I had created.
When I was older, I walked the snow lit streets late at night, especially around Christmas. Even during my I-loathe-Christmas phase, I still enjoyed walking alone at night (usually sneaking smokes) and seeing the holiday lights. There is no other time of year those lights are more beautiful than in the winter, and never as beautiful as when seen against and through the feet of snow that inevitably will fall each season.
Three blocks from our house was the local skate rink - the Thirteenth Street rink - right next to Thirlby Field - the high school sports area. It was a grass lot that, thanks to days of carefully channeled water, transformed into a large oval rink each winter. A rickety wooden warming house sat at the nearest end, with outside benches where we could change out of our boots into our skates. The warming house had an "In" door on the right, worn wooden floors, benches along the wall, and an "Out" door on the left, so we could enter, walk through and exit in an orderly fashion. A black iron wood stove sat in the center with a worn wooden rail being all that separated children walking unsteadily on their skated feet from falling in and becoming a sizzling ice cube against the hot metal. There was also a very fat man who tended the fire, harrassed you a bit if you sat too long, and joked around with the parents and older kids who weren't afraid of his largeness.
While I loved going to the rink during the day, I also loved to go at night, when the warming house was closed, and the rink lights were off. Even with the traffic of Thirteenth Street just over the snow bank, there was a vast silence in the night sky, which seemed to hover black and starry so close to earth. I would skate for hours, until my feet and fingers and thighs and butt were all completely numb. Only then, reluctantly, would I fumbly unlace the skates and slip back into my ice-cold boots. I would have to shuffle-walk all the way home, the circulation never quite returning to my extremities until I had been inside for at least a good half-hour. And still, I would wish I could have stayed longer.
I practice creative visualization with my students - especially my developmental writers - as I try to help them find ways to relax when faced with writing assignments or exams. It also helps them work on their descriptive writing, as I have them "go to a place" where they feel totally comfortable and safe. One of the places I visualize is a skating rink out in the middle of a wooded grove. There are snow banks pushed up all around it, but I can see pine trees surrounding the area. It's night. It's quiet. There's a gentle snow falling and all is dimly lit by the light of the moon. I am skating, effortlessly gliding around on the glassy smooth surface. And while I feel the cold on my face and in my lungs, I am warm. Through and through, I feel a sense of security, of comfort, of calm and of belonging.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Casey Tells Me
Casey says I should blog at least once a week here. Casey tells me meditation is good for me and I should do it every day. Casey tells me I should watch this or that yoga video. Casey tells me I should eat broccoli/fish/beans/squash. Casey tells me I should plant flowers. Casey tells me I should pull up the hosta that has gotten overgrown. Casey tells me I should do more work for NewPages. Casey tells me I do too much.
Friday, June 08, 2007
You Can't Tell, You Just Can't Tell
I wanted to see the house where the old woman died. Two blocks over and four blocks down. Past the park. I didn’t know her. I was out walking the dog and decided I wanted to see the house. I told myself it would be like paying respects to walk past it, from across the street. Stop a moment, bow my head as though I am saying a prayer to the god she believed in.
That’s what I read. That she was very involved with the church. Went to mass every day. Helped out with church events. It reminded me of my own mother who does the same. At least I think she still does, the mass every day part. The other I know she does, the helping with events and such. Only this woman was 82 years old. That’s ten years older than my mother. Only ten years. Now that I think about it, it’s not that much.
I walk one block past and think it will be okay to go back and circle the block with the terrace on my right. That way, the dog won’t be peeing on trees or pooping on the terrace lawn while I am doing the paying respects thing. The funeral service is at ten today, and I imagine there will be a lot of people there who didn’t even know the woman, but are so upset by her having been murdered in their quiet little town that they will show up. They will want to show their support for her having been alive, or to show how upset they are about her being murdered, or maybe it’s just because it’s something to do when you don’t know how else to respond to something as totally out of control as two teenage boys breaking into her home and murdering her.
I look around the neighborhood as I walk. I would say it’s no different than my neighborhood, being only a few blocks away, but it is. It’s more run-down. The houses are smaller and not as neatly kept. There are more crappy cars in driveways and on the streets. It’s a little bit different, but not much.
I hit the street corner and I can see her house from where I stand. It’s 402, so it’s only the second house in. I don’t stop walking. It’s a simple little bungalow style. It’s tan. It’s close to its neighbors on either side. Someone from inside the house called 911. That’s how the police knew to come. The boys were still in the house, with credit cards, cash, jewelry. She must have been dead then. They were still there while she was dead on the floor, or wherever they left her.
I don’t turn down the street. I don’t want to walk past. I turn and go the other way, cross the street, and realize I’m right in the neighborhood where a woman was murdered. It’s a murder neighborhood now. I won’t tell my husband I’ve been here. He didn’t want to ride past on our bikes the other night. He didn’t really want to read about it in the paper. He can turn off that morbid fascination and honestly not want to know. But still, I think he wouldn’t be happy to know I had walked through the neighborhood. He gets upset when he looks at the weekly crimestoppers map in the paper and sees that there have been street assaults where I go running every morning. “It could be two drunks fighting over the last beer at a party,” I say, “not muggers attacking strangers.” He wants to see police reports to be sure.
There’s no way you can tell that a neighborhood has had a murder. Or a rape. Or houses a child molester. Not just by looking at it. There’s no way. How can a person know? Maybe that’s why I came here. Just to see if I could tell. If I could be the one to say, “Oh yeah, right there. Right there you should have known this could have happened in your neighborhood.” But there’s no way.
The sky is grey and sunny at the same time, which means the rain will move in after sunrise. The morning birds are singing and flitting from one green leafy branch among the canopy of trees to the next. Children are shuffling their way to the final days of school. And I am here, a woman out walking her dog, so that anyone driving by can see me and know what we all don’t know, just how something like this could have happened here and why we didn’t see it coming.
That’s what I read. That she was very involved with the church. Went to mass every day. Helped out with church events. It reminded me of my own mother who does the same. At least I think she still does, the mass every day part. The other I know she does, the helping with events and such. Only this woman was 82 years old. That’s ten years older than my mother. Only ten years. Now that I think about it, it’s not that much.
I walk one block past and think it will be okay to go back and circle the block with the terrace on my right. That way, the dog won’t be peeing on trees or pooping on the terrace lawn while I am doing the paying respects thing. The funeral service is at ten today, and I imagine there will be a lot of people there who didn’t even know the woman, but are so upset by her having been murdered in their quiet little town that they will show up. They will want to show their support for her having been alive, or to show how upset they are about her being murdered, or maybe it’s just because it’s something to do when you don’t know how else to respond to something as totally out of control as two teenage boys breaking into her home and murdering her.
I look around the neighborhood as I walk. I would say it’s no different than my neighborhood, being only a few blocks away, but it is. It’s more run-down. The houses are smaller and not as neatly kept. There are more crappy cars in driveways and on the streets. It’s a little bit different, but not much.
I hit the street corner and I can see her house from where I stand. It’s 402, so it’s only the second house in. I don’t stop walking. It’s a simple little bungalow style. It’s tan. It’s close to its neighbors on either side. Someone from inside the house called 911. That’s how the police knew to come. The boys were still in the house, with credit cards, cash, jewelry. She must have been dead then. They were still there while she was dead on the floor, or wherever they left her.
I don’t turn down the street. I don’t want to walk past. I turn and go the other way, cross the street, and realize I’m right in the neighborhood where a woman was murdered. It’s a murder neighborhood now. I won’t tell my husband I’ve been here. He didn’t want to ride past on our bikes the other night. He didn’t really want to read about it in the paper. He can turn off that morbid fascination and honestly not want to know. But still, I think he wouldn’t be happy to know I had walked through the neighborhood. He gets upset when he looks at the weekly crimestoppers map in the paper and sees that there have been street assaults where I go running every morning. “It could be two drunks fighting over the last beer at a party,” I say, “not muggers attacking strangers.” He wants to see police reports to be sure.
There’s no way you can tell that a neighborhood has had a murder. Or a rape. Or houses a child molester. Not just by looking at it. There’s no way. How can a person know? Maybe that’s why I came here. Just to see if I could tell. If I could be the one to say, “Oh yeah, right there. Right there you should have known this could have happened in your neighborhood.” But there’s no way.
The sky is grey and sunny at the same time, which means the rain will move in after sunrise. The morning birds are singing and flitting from one green leafy branch among the canopy of trees to the next. Children are shuffling their way to the final days of school. And I am here, a woman out walking her dog, so that anyone driving by can see me and know what we all don’t know, just how something like this could have happened here and why we didn’t see it coming.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Promotion: Step One
Winter Semester 2007. No snow. I'm okay with that. There are enough other things to have to worry about on a daily basis that not having to deal with icy, slippery roads is quite the bonus. Still, I am holding out hope for a snow day this year...
Back in the classroom, focusing on teaching and my students. I'm in my second year here, and I realize now, my fifteenth year of teaching. Yow. I was really excited to think that now I could finally just bury myself in the pedagogy (uh, I guess that would be the theory of how I actually teach and why) and caring nothing more about how to make myself a better teacher so my students can all have better learning experiences. But, nooooo.... I find out it's time for me to start putting together a committee for my promotion.
Promotion. Yes. Committe. Yes. I have to go around and ask people - my colleagues, who are already overburdened with their own work and pedagogy, to sit on a committee to review all my materials and make a recommendation for me (or not) for promotion.
Okay, so step one shouldn't be so bad. Just ask people, right?
No.
Come to find out, I have to be careful about who I ask, what kind of credibility they will have in the department, and whether or not they would even consider doing it at all. Because this is my first promotion, to Assistant Professor, I'm told not to pick people who are full professors. What? Why? Too heavy-handed for my first promotion. Huh? Okay, well, too late. I already asked two people who are full professors, and I didn't even care that that's what they were. I asked them because I thought they would be the best people to evaluate me and give me feedback that would help in certain areas of my continued professional development.
Excuse my practicality. It's been trumped by politics.
Then there's the "third." This has to be a person outside of the department. Well, good luck knowing a whole lot of people outside of your department after only being here a year and a half! Lucky for me, I guess, I do, but then as I mention their names, I hear, "Not much credibility in our dept." "Nobody knows that person." "He won't do it; he never sits on these things." Etc.
So, as per usual, I didn't listen. I have gone ahead and done what I wanted to do for my own reasons, the politics be screwed. If what I have done isn't good enough, what difference does it make if it's presented by a full professor or an associate, by someone known in our department or not known. Cripes, it's maddening. And at the same time, I want to do it. I want to participate in the process.
Everyone says it's for the money. There's a pay raise for every promotion. But that's not why I would do it.
Money is nice, sure. But what matters more to me is just simple recognition. I feel like I do a lot both at the school for my students and outside of the school for my community. I don't do it thinking it's going to help me get promoted or help me get tenure. I do it because it's just what I do. I came from a school with no system of recognition - no promotion, no tenure. No matter how much I did, or how much someone else didn't do, it didn't matter to the school. They never recognized us for it. No pay raise. No titles. All I'm asking for is recognition. A pat on the back. Something that says, we appreciate what you're doing and recognize it's integral for your continued growth as an educator, and as such, here's a title that recognizes that growth.
I will do this thing. I will ask people. I will put together a portfolio of my work. I will half listen to the political advice. But in the end, it should really come down to whether or not they will recognize me for what I have done, since I have no doubts I have done all they would require of a person to advance, and more. The recognition here, while it seems like it is them looking at me, is just as much me looking at them and saying, "What kind of school are you? Are you earnest in what you will recognize, or is this a game of politics?" I would like to think this school is worth all that, and more. I guess we'll both find out.
Back in the classroom, focusing on teaching and my students. I'm in my second year here, and I realize now, my fifteenth year of teaching. Yow. I was really excited to think that now I could finally just bury myself in the pedagogy (uh, I guess that would be the theory of how I actually teach and why) and caring nothing more about how to make myself a better teacher so my students can all have better learning experiences. But, nooooo.... I find out it's time for me to start putting together a committee for my promotion.
Promotion. Yes. Committe. Yes. I have to go around and ask people - my colleagues, who are already overburdened with their own work and pedagogy, to sit on a committee to review all my materials and make a recommendation for me (or not) for promotion.
Okay, so step one shouldn't be so bad. Just ask people, right?
No.
Come to find out, I have to be careful about who I ask, what kind of credibility they will have in the department, and whether or not they would even consider doing it at all. Because this is my first promotion, to Assistant Professor, I'm told not to pick people who are full professors. What? Why? Too heavy-handed for my first promotion. Huh? Okay, well, too late. I already asked two people who are full professors, and I didn't even care that that's what they were. I asked them because I thought they would be the best people to evaluate me and give me feedback that would help in certain areas of my continued professional development.
Excuse my practicality. It's been trumped by politics.
Then there's the "third." This has to be a person outside of the department. Well, good luck knowing a whole lot of people outside of your department after only being here a year and a half! Lucky for me, I guess, I do, but then as I mention their names, I hear, "Not much credibility in our dept." "Nobody knows that person." "He won't do it; he never sits on these things." Etc.
So, as per usual, I didn't listen. I have gone ahead and done what I wanted to do for my own reasons, the politics be screwed. If what I have done isn't good enough, what difference does it make if it's presented by a full professor or an associate, by someone known in our department or not known. Cripes, it's maddening. And at the same time, I want to do it. I want to participate in the process.
Everyone says it's for the money. There's a pay raise for every promotion. But that's not why I would do it.
Money is nice, sure. But what matters more to me is just simple recognition. I feel like I do a lot both at the school for my students and outside of the school for my community. I don't do it thinking it's going to help me get promoted or help me get tenure. I do it because it's just what I do. I came from a school with no system of recognition - no promotion, no tenure. No matter how much I did, or how much someone else didn't do, it didn't matter to the school. They never recognized us for it. No pay raise. No titles. All I'm asking for is recognition. A pat on the back. Something that says, we appreciate what you're doing and recognize it's integral for your continued growth as an educator, and as such, here's a title that recognizes that growth.
I will do this thing. I will ask people. I will put together a portfolio of my work. I will half listen to the political advice. But in the end, it should really come down to whether or not they will recognize me for what I have done, since I have no doubts I have done all they would require of a person to advance, and more. The recognition here, while it seems like it is them looking at me, is just as much me looking at them and saying, "What kind of school are you? Are you earnest in what you will recognize, or is this a game of politics?" I would like to think this school is worth all that, and more. I guess we'll both find out.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Gratitude in Waiting
Each semester, I have my students make lists of important people in their lives: “Think of your role models,” I say. “Who is in your life to guide you, someone you would want to be like – for better or for worse, for fun or for serious; who supports your being in school by encouraging you to do your homework and stay on track?” It doesn’t take long for them to come up with a good-sized list of people in their lives: parents, siblings, friends, relatives, neighbors, former teachers, even the occasional “famous” person. I normally sit and write with my students; although, this is one particular exercise I’ve skipped the past couple of years. I’d like to say I don’t know why, or, for no particular reason, but I wouldn’t be telling the whole truth in that. Maybe, for a while I didn’t know why, but this last semester, when I sat to actually try and write my own list, I came face to face with the reason why. The one person I had always considered one of my greatest role models, one of my supporters, someone I could always turn to in good and bad, is no longer that person for me. How it came about – a much longer story than I care to tell, complex with many boring layers that played themselves out over long periods of time. It could just be that old adage, “people change.” But I don’t think it was even that. I’m pretty sure we are both as much the same as we ever have been, just some things came to light that I hadn’t seen before, and once I did, I made the decision that it was not healthy relationship to maintain. It can be a tough relationship break, but even tougher when that person is your own sister.
She was the first born, followed by four younger brothers – all my big brothers. Then came three more girls, me in the middle of them (that makes me seven of eight, if you’re counting it out). I grew up thinking my big sister – (the eldest one, not the one just before me – she was my older sister, but I don’t think I ever referred to her as my “big sister” – although the one younger than me was always my “little sister”) – my big sister was the coolest person I knew. I adored everything about her, and aside from the occasional tensions, can’t remember a time when she ever would have made me spit-raving angry, like I would have been at my little sister (for the dumbest things – like wearing my clothes – you know, girl stuff…). But, because of the age difference between us – nine years, I think, she was out of the house quite early on. She married (another story) and moved into a trailer park. She didn’t go to college and worked waitressing at a diner downtown. She may have had other jobs, but I don’t recall.
Once gone from the home, my attentions turned to my other siblings. I had always paid attention to them anyway, but now more than ever as I began to search for the kind of comfort in adults that children will seek. My four older brothers. This is what I began to realize as I sat with my students and attempted to write my list of important people: My four older brothers. They were the ones that were there with me during my later growing-up years. They were the ones there during all the teen angst and rebellion. They were the ones whose behavior I was watching most carefully as I, too, began to age and need direction in my life. I began to follow them.
The two oldest brothers both went to Michigan Tech to study engineering. I remember the long drive to Houghton during the winter months to visit them, how I wrote letters to my oldest brother telling him how much I missed him and wanted him to come home. He was the one who rode his bike long distances on a whim, and once across state lines to visit a girlfriend (and my father had to retrieve him - not such a good idea to ride through Gary, Indiana). Is it any wonder I became a long-distance cyclist? And the fact that the second youngest brother was a runner – any wonder that I also became a distance runner?
The third brother also went to school, in art, then went on to graduate from an art institute. Of all things, he was my inspiration for becoming a nude model when I later went to college. He had said that models are often difficult to find, but that they are integral to an art student’s education. So I sat, often times teeth chattering, in the drafty drawing rooms in the basement of the university while a dozen students scratched at paper with charcoal. More than this, I also developed a great appreciation for the arts and support the efforts of art students at every opportunity, always with my brother in mind.
And the fourth brother, the one closest to me, I would have to say he had some of the greatest impact in my life. In so many ways, I wanted to be just like him. I switched from playing the violin after middle school to the bass in high school. He was also a bass player. He paved several roads for me in this – giving music lessons, so I gave music lessons; playing with the professional symphony, so too did I. He went on to university, and I followed to that very same university. He studied psychology, and I made it my minor.
College was never a question for me. It wasn’t pushed in my family as I know it is in so many of my students – their parents telling them they WILL go to college, no questions asked. If I had chosen not to attend college, I don’t think there would have been a protest on the part of my parents. In fact, once, I remember my mother telling me that my father hadn’t expected the girls in the family to go to college. His expectation was that we get married and have children. Just as well this wasn’t pushed as equally as college wasn’t. But, knowing that, I have to look back and say that it was my brothers who were my greatest role models. I also have to throw in here and give credit to my older sister (not my big), because she even started attending college classes early, either while she was still in high school or she graduated early and started college, I’m not exactly sure. I just know she was there before her time, and that was a huge encouragement to me as well.
Not only was college not a question, continued college was as well. I would attend two years at the local community college – just as all my brothers and older sister had – and then I would go on to university – just as they all had (or were planning to do). And so I did, as did we all. Seven of us in the family college graduates, some with post graduate degrees.
So now, looking back over the years, and taking new stock in my role models, I wonder what my life would have been like had those four boys not been born there. What if only one had? What if they were all younger brothers? When I consider what the answers to those questions might be, I know for a fact I was very fortunate to have them in my life. I have never before thought to give them this kind of credit, this kind of grateful consideration. As so often seems to happen in our lives, it takes what we perceive as a negative experience to make us realize and appreciate the positives we had not seen before. Of course, we still wish the negative hadn’t happened, but without it, so much more gratitude is left to wait.
She was the first born, followed by four younger brothers – all my big brothers. Then came three more girls, me in the middle of them (that makes me seven of eight, if you’re counting it out). I grew up thinking my big sister – (the eldest one, not the one just before me – she was my older sister, but I don’t think I ever referred to her as my “big sister” – although the one younger than me was always my “little sister”) – my big sister was the coolest person I knew. I adored everything about her, and aside from the occasional tensions, can’t remember a time when she ever would have made me spit-raving angry, like I would have been at my little sister (for the dumbest things – like wearing my clothes – you know, girl stuff…). But, because of the age difference between us – nine years, I think, she was out of the house quite early on. She married (another story) and moved into a trailer park. She didn’t go to college and worked waitressing at a diner downtown. She may have had other jobs, but I don’t recall.
Once gone from the home, my attentions turned to my other siblings. I had always paid attention to them anyway, but now more than ever as I began to search for the kind of comfort in adults that children will seek. My four older brothers. This is what I began to realize as I sat with my students and attempted to write my list of important people: My four older brothers. They were the ones that were there with me during my later growing-up years. They were the ones there during all the teen angst and rebellion. They were the ones whose behavior I was watching most carefully as I, too, began to age and need direction in my life. I began to follow them.
The two oldest brothers both went to Michigan Tech to study engineering. I remember the long drive to Houghton during the winter months to visit them, how I wrote letters to my oldest brother telling him how much I missed him and wanted him to come home. He was the one who rode his bike long distances on a whim, and once across state lines to visit a girlfriend (and my father had to retrieve him - not such a good idea to ride through Gary, Indiana). Is it any wonder I became a long-distance cyclist? And the fact that the second youngest brother was a runner – any wonder that I also became a distance runner?
The third brother also went to school, in art, then went on to graduate from an art institute. Of all things, he was my inspiration for becoming a nude model when I later went to college. He had said that models are often difficult to find, but that they are integral to an art student’s education. So I sat, often times teeth chattering, in the drafty drawing rooms in the basement of the university while a dozen students scratched at paper with charcoal. More than this, I also developed a great appreciation for the arts and support the efforts of art students at every opportunity, always with my brother in mind.
And the fourth brother, the one closest to me, I would have to say he had some of the greatest impact in my life. In so many ways, I wanted to be just like him. I switched from playing the violin after middle school to the bass in high school. He was also a bass player. He paved several roads for me in this – giving music lessons, so I gave music lessons; playing with the professional symphony, so too did I. He went on to university, and I followed to that very same university. He studied psychology, and I made it my minor.
College was never a question for me. It wasn’t pushed in my family as I know it is in so many of my students – their parents telling them they WILL go to college, no questions asked. If I had chosen not to attend college, I don’t think there would have been a protest on the part of my parents. In fact, once, I remember my mother telling me that my father hadn’t expected the girls in the family to go to college. His expectation was that we get married and have children. Just as well this wasn’t pushed as equally as college wasn’t. But, knowing that, I have to look back and say that it was my brothers who were my greatest role models. I also have to throw in here and give credit to my older sister (not my big), because she even started attending college classes early, either while she was still in high school or she graduated early and started college, I’m not exactly sure. I just know she was there before her time, and that was a huge encouragement to me as well.
Not only was college not a question, continued college was as well. I would attend two years at the local community college – just as all my brothers and older sister had – and then I would go on to university – just as they all had (or were planning to do). And so I did, as did we all. Seven of us in the family college graduates, some with post graduate degrees.
So now, looking back over the years, and taking new stock in my role models, I wonder what my life would have been like had those four boys not been born there. What if only one had? What if they were all younger brothers? When I consider what the answers to those questions might be, I know for a fact I was very fortunate to have them in my life. I have never before thought to give them this kind of credit, this kind of grateful consideration. As so often seems to happen in our lives, it takes what we perceive as a negative experience to make us realize and appreciate the positives we had not seen before. Of course, we still wish the negative hadn’t happened, but without it, so much more gratitude is left to wait.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
This Fall
Cool orange afternoons swirl into
cold grey evenings that come earlier
each day
Dry rustling leaves blow loose
some piled in yards and at curbs
sweeper takes all but a few ragged clumps
Pull doors shut against gusts of wind
plastic ripples at the windows
loose gutter taps against the siding
This fall leads to winter
white and crisp as death should be
we tuck ourselves away
cold grey evenings that come earlier
each day
Dry rustling leaves blow loose
some piled in yards and at curbs
sweeper takes all but a few ragged clumps
Pull doors shut against gusts of wind
plastic ripples at the windows
loose gutter taps against the siding
This fall leads to winter
white and crisp as death should be
we tuck ourselves away
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Normal is What You Make It
Normality. The way each one of us chooses to live our life. That's what's normal. "I just want things to go back to normal…" I hear people say after some kind of a stressful time or crisis. When I worked at the battered women's shelter, I would hear that, and I would say, "No such thing as normal anymore. You need a new normal now." The whole point was to get them to change what they were accepting as normal – being abused – and find a different way of living that didn't include getting yelled at or being beaten in cycles. But many of them did go back to it, because that's what was normal for them. That's what they knew and were comfortable living with. Changes the definition of comfortable a bit, doesn't it? But as has been said time and again, we are creatures of habit.
My husband and I took the dog for a walk the other night around the neighborhood. It was garbage day eve, and I was looking for old broom or mop handles to use in an art project. I found one, and he ended up carrying it as we wound through the city streets. It was a nice, end-of-summer evening. People were out enjoying one of the remaining warm nights of the year, cooking out, kids playing in the streets, families out on bikes. It was nice. Pleasant. Until, as we approached a house on a corner, we overheard a young scraggly-haired blonde woman sitting out on a back step yelling at a thin young man standing on the sidewalk. I'm not exactly sure what she said, but I caught: "…this fucking family…you think you know…fucking…I don’t care…" The man turned and stormed away, followed by another young woman, who may have just been plump, but to me looked early-pregnant plump. A child, maybe six or seven years old with matching scraggly blonde hair, stood in front of Cussing Girl, looking up at her as the rant issued forth. Cussing Girl, I noticed as we got closer, was also talking with someone on a cordless phone.
We kept walking, not breaking our pace, and approached just as the young man turned and walked off. The little blonde-headed girl came and stood at the sidewalk's edge as we passed. I glanced at Cussing Girl. She was a teenager, at most. No doubt somewhere in that 14-to-16-year range. Her voice was one of terse complaint as she continued talking into the phone. Little Blondie looked up at me as we passed, smiled and said, "Hi." I smiled and said hello back to her. She looked happily at the dog, and seemed suddenly oblivious to the angry actions surrounding her. She could, because this is what was normal for her. And not yet being directly involved in the action (though there is no doubt that someday it will be her playing the Cussing Girl role), she could tune it out.
In the few steps it took us to pass Cussing Girl on stoop, Angry Young Man, not more than three or four heated strides in front of us, turned on his heels and began to walk back. Apparently, he wasn't done. He passed just beside me and the dog. Oblivious to us. His jaw set tightly, his eyes drilled on his target. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that matched his black, bowl-cut hair. (Were either of those really in style anymore? His normal, not mine.) I could see the muscle in his tawny body twitch with tense, violent suppression as he went back for round two (or was it maybe even three or four or ad nauseam?). I don't know what went on back there, because I didn't turn around to look.
Ahead of us, at the corner, stood Plump(Pregnant) Woman. She had short blonde hair. I thought for a moment about the relationship between them all – maybe the blondes were all sisters? Maybe Angry Young Man was a brother of Cussing Girl? Or the boyfriend of Plump(Pregnant) Woman? I let the thoughts quickly pass as I let go of wanting to care. Mind you, I had my beating a short time back from the neighbor girl chasing the dog (See "On a Cool Evening with the Windows Open"), and I was learning to not get involved, from the inside right on out. Plump(Pregnant) Woman looked at our dog, then to me as we approached her.
"What kind of dog is that?" she chirped with a smile.
Are you serious? I thought. Angry Young Man is going after Cussing Girl with Little Blondie standing right there watching the whole thing (not to mention the several children playing out in the yard across the street), and you can totally ignore that and cheerfully strike up a conversation with strangers walking past?
Normal. All that was surrounding her in that moment was her normal life. Not my normal. Her normal. I didn't need to make it mine.
I smile at her. "He's a mutt."
"Ohhh, he's so cute," she adds as we keep walking by.
I still don't look back, even when we turn the corner and I could easily just shift my gaze a bit to the side. And I'm proud of myself for not getting involved in other people's normal and thinking that their normal has to match my normal in any way. Although, I guess I do get involved by not getting involved, and I play my own role in the scene of their normal life: Woman with Dog who says hello; Man with Yellow Stick.
My husband and I took the dog for a walk the other night around the neighborhood. It was garbage day eve, and I was looking for old broom or mop handles to use in an art project. I found one, and he ended up carrying it as we wound through the city streets. It was a nice, end-of-summer evening. People were out enjoying one of the remaining warm nights of the year, cooking out, kids playing in the streets, families out on bikes. It was nice. Pleasant. Until, as we approached a house on a corner, we overheard a young scraggly-haired blonde woman sitting out on a back step yelling at a thin young man standing on the sidewalk. I'm not exactly sure what she said, but I caught: "…this fucking family…you think you know…fucking…I don’t care…" The man turned and stormed away, followed by another young woman, who may have just been plump, but to me looked early-pregnant plump. A child, maybe six or seven years old with matching scraggly blonde hair, stood in front of Cussing Girl, looking up at her as the rant issued forth. Cussing Girl, I noticed as we got closer, was also talking with someone on a cordless phone.
We kept walking, not breaking our pace, and approached just as the young man turned and walked off. The little blonde-headed girl came and stood at the sidewalk's edge as we passed. I glanced at Cussing Girl. She was a teenager, at most. No doubt somewhere in that 14-to-16-year range. Her voice was one of terse complaint as she continued talking into the phone. Little Blondie looked up at me as we passed, smiled and said, "Hi." I smiled and said hello back to her. She looked happily at the dog, and seemed suddenly oblivious to the angry actions surrounding her. She could, because this is what was normal for her. And not yet being directly involved in the action (though there is no doubt that someday it will be her playing the Cussing Girl role), she could tune it out.
In the few steps it took us to pass Cussing Girl on stoop, Angry Young Man, not more than three or four heated strides in front of us, turned on his heels and began to walk back. Apparently, he wasn't done. He passed just beside me and the dog. Oblivious to us. His jaw set tightly, his eyes drilled on his target. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that matched his black, bowl-cut hair. (Were either of those really in style anymore? His normal, not mine.) I could see the muscle in his tawny body twitch with tense, violent suppression as he went back for round two (or was it maybe even three or four or ad nauseam?). I don't know what went on back there, because I didn't turn around to look.
Ahead of us, at the corner, stood Plump(Pregnant) Woman. She had short blonde hair. I thought for a moment about the relationship between them all – maybe the blondes were all sisters? Maybe Angry Young Man was a brother of Cussing Girl? Or the boyfriend of Plump(Pregnant) Woman? I let the thoughts quickly pass as I let go of wanting to care. Mind you, I had my beating a short time back from the neighbor girl chasing the dog (See "On a Cool Evening with the Windows Open"), and I was learning to not get involved, from the inside right on out. Plump(Pregnant) Woman looked at our dog, then to me as we approached her.
"What kind of dog is that?" she chirped with a smile.
Are you serious? I thought. Angry Young Man is going after Cussing Girl with Little Blondie standing right there watching the whole thing (not to mention the several children playing out in the yard across the street), and you can totally ignore that and cheerfully strike up a conversation with strangers walking past?
Normal. All that was surrounding her in that moment was her normal life. Not my normal. Her normal. I didn't need to make it mine.
I smile at her. "He's a mutt."
"Ohhh, he's so cute," she adds as we keep walking by.
I still don't look back, even when we turn the corner and I could easily just shift my gaze a bit to the side. And I'm proud of myself for not getting involved in other people's normal and thinking that their normal has to match my normal in any way. Although, I guess I do get involved by not getting involved, and I play my own role in the scene of their normal life: Woman with Dog who says hello; Man with Yellow Stick.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
On a Cool Evening with the Windows Open
“God damn it fucking Lola!” I hear out my window and look to see a young blonde girl running barefoot down the middle of the street. I don’t know who or what Lola is.
I see the young girl disappear between two houses, then a small, grayish dog shoots out from the between them and begins running back toward our house. I recognize it as the neighbor’s dog from two doors down.
The dog runs back toward the house where another girl’s voice is calling it in a more playful, fun tone. The dog slows. The blonde girl runs faster, screams, “Fucking dog!” The dog starts to run away from her. (She doesn’t understand the dog thinks she’s playing, and will continue to run as long as it’s chased; the dog is being a dog, while the human thinks the dog should be a human. Who’s the dumb one in this scenario?)
There is a dark-haired girl to whom the dog has run, the one calling the dog in a nice way. She scoops the dog up and holds it in her arms. The blonde girl screams down the street, “Beat the fucking shit out of that dog’s ass!”
I’m sickened at hearing that. I panic for the welfare of the dog, and feel like I have to say something, anything to try to intervene. “That’s not the right response for a dog that comes back to you,” I say out the window.
“Fuck that shit! Fucking beat that stupid dog!” the girl screams.
“Or for the neighborhood to hear,” I say as I see another neighbor’s two young children standing out on the sidewalk, hearing all of this.
“Shut the fuck up!” she screams at me as she passes by. She grabs the dog from the dark-haired girl and stomps up the porch and into the house, out of sight.
I don’t know if the dog got beat or not, but I sure felt like the rest of us did.
I see the young girl disappear between two houses, then a small, grayish dog shoots out from the between them and begins running back toward our house. I recognize it as the neighbor’s dog from two doors down.
The dog runs back toward the house where another girl’s voice is calling it in a more playful, fun tone. The dog slows. The blonde girl runs faster, screams, “Fucking dog!” The dog starts to run away from her. (She doesn’t understand the dog thinks she’s playing, and will continue to run as long as it’s chased; the dog is being a dog, while the human thinks the dog should be a human. Who’s the dumb one in this scenario?)
There is a dark-haired girl to whom the dog has run, the one calling the dog in a nice way. She scoops the dog up and holds it in her arms. The blonde girl screams down the street, “Beat the fucking shit out of that dog’s ass!”
I’m sickened at hearing that. I panic for the welfare of the dog, and feel like I have to say something, anything to try to intervene. “That’s not the right response for a dog that comes back to you,” I say out the window.
“Fuck that shit! Fucking beat that stupid dog!” the girl screams.
“Or for the neighborhood to hear,” I say as I see another neighbor’s two young children standing out on the sidewalk, hearing all of this.
“Shut the fuck up!” she screams at me as she passes by. She grabs the dog from the dark-haired girl and stomps up the porch and into the house, out of sight.
I don’t know if the dog got beat or not, but I sure felt like the rest of us did.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Age Isn't Even a Number
Growing up, I’m not sure I ever really grasped the concept of age. It still escapes me at times. Most of the time, really. I just don’t think about it. How old am I? Sometimes I forget. No, I mean I honestly forget. I have to try to do the math (ouch) of the current year minus the year I was born to get the number, and then try to remember if I’ve had my birthday already this year or not. Of course, my older-than-me husband doesn’t seem to mind that I can’t remember how old he is, or how much older than me he is... It just doesn’t matter to me.
My friend Sarah once said something about how cool it was that we were friends because I was well over ten years older than her, but she never felt like I looked down on her or treated her as younger and less knowing than me. She was right. I never thought about her being younger. In fact, there were many times I went to her for advice and counsel on life matters.
What matters to me more than a number is how a person acts. And how a person acts is generally a reflection of how they feel inside, about themselves, about where they see themselves in life. I shock a lot of people when they find out my age (when I can remember it to tell them, or when I get carded for buying alcohol, which I take as a compliment!). But partly that’s due to how I consider myself mentally. I am terminally 19. Not for any particular reason. It’s a number that has just stuck with me. If I really think back on it, maybe it was a great year for me. A year of freedom, independence, coming into my twenties, whatever. It’s just a number that stuck in my head all these years, and I just live with it there. Maybe when I get even older, that number will shift, but it’s been there for a while now. People who think of age as their burden in life as they get older will, in fact, be burdened by themselves as they age.
Recently, as much as I don’t think about my age as a number, I have been feeling my age and recognizing myself as aging in memories that come to me as I go about my day. They are memories of my mother, who is still living. I am the seventh of eight children, and my mother didn’t have her first child until she was 20, and then we were all born fairly close together. So, you can imagine that by the time I was, oh, say eight, she had to be at least in her thirties, and had already gone through raising several and would have been brooding over several at the time. But, I never thought of her as a number, as an age. She was always just Mom.
I remember once she commented on my muscles, telling me what great shape I was in. I said she was, too, and she laughed. She pushed her finger into my thigh and said, “That’s muscle.” Then she pushed her finger into her own thigh, and I saw the pocketed ripples of cellulite as she said, “This is Jiffy cake!” Mind you, she was and still is in great shape for a woman birthing and raising eight children, she was just aging. (As my doctor sister says, and she would know – “Every woman, no matter how thin, gets cellulite when she gets old.”) These days, I’m not so active. I can still run and bike and swim, just not intensely. And when I look at myself in the mirror while I’m getting dressed, I see the layer of ripply cellulite on my thighs and butt. “Jiffy cake,” I tell myself, poking at it.
We live near enough to the lake that we could go to the beach and go swimming several times a week in the summer, if we wanted. But we don’t. Even when we do go to the beach, it’s to hunt rocks and not just lay out, soak up the sun or swim. I think I may have swum in the lakes once or twice last summer. And this is what I remember about my mother. She would take us kids to the beach and we would swim our little hearts out. We would go to the beach just about every day, as it was only about a mile from the house. And she might come in the water, and she might not. Sometimes she just stayed on the beach. Once all the kids were gone, and I asked her about going to the beach, she said she tries to get down there a few times each summer, on a walk or bike ride. It’s just not that big of a deal when you’re older, and I realize that now. It’s not that I don’t want to go, or wouldn’t go to the beach. I just don’t think about it so much. If I do go, swimming isn’t any big deal. I can do without it. I understand now what I didn’t when I was younger, that my mother was just at an age where she had lived it, done it, and it wasn’t a big deal. I don’t know that I really cared or thought much of her behavior then, it’s just that now, I look back and go, “Oh, I get it. This is how Mom must have felt.” It’s just another way I realize that my mother is her own person, just as I am, and having these memories of her being that person, recognizing how she was her own person, I can accept what it is I’m now feeling as my own person.
I look at my hands. They are filled with crackly lines and age spots are beginning to emerge. I remember sitting at the kitchen table one night with my mother, pushing at the skin on the back of her hand, pinching it and watching it slowly go back. I couldn’t do the same with my young, tight flesh and she tried it, laughing at the difference in our skin. “My hands are like Grandma’s,” she said. “Farmer’s hands.” “No,” I said, “not like Grandma’s.” I couldn’t see it in her hands, but she could. And now, as I look at my hands, I realize they look like hers did that night at the kitchen table. I push the skin up in folds, I pinch it and watch it slowly drop back around my tendons. The last time I saw Mom, I looked at her hands. She was right. They do look like Grandma’s, as will mine someday.
“Time only moves forward.” It’s a comforting thing I tell myself when I am having a hard time with something. It helps me focus on knowing whatever it is that’s bugging me is only temporary, that it will end in some way, shape or form. Aging is just time moving forward. It only can. I wouldn’t want to go back in my life for anything. No matter the good, the bad, the losses. Nothing can be regained in this life. Certainly not time, nor youth. No laments. No regrets. I watch my mother carefully when I am with her. I watch her smile, I listen to her laughter. I watch the way she moves and carries herself. She’s shrinking, now, just as I remember her mother doing. Her bones settling in, she’s getting more compact. I see in her what I know I will be someday, and I’m okay with that. I have no idea how old she is right now, but I know someday I’ll be there, and by then, she won’t be here anymore. But, in a way, she will be. In my smile. In my laugh. In the way I move and carry myself. And I’ll know how old I am when I remember her. I’ll know I’m “there,” right where she had been before me.
My friend Sarah once said something about how cool it was that we were friends because I was well over ten years older than her, but she never felt like I looked down on her or treated her as younger and less knowing than me. She was right. I never thought about her being younger. In fact, there were many times I went to her for advice and counsel on life matters.
What matters to me more than a number is how a person acts. And how a person acts is generally a reflection of how they feel inside, about themselves, about where they see themselves in life. I shock a lot of people when they find out my age (when I can remember it to tell them, or when I get carded for buying alcohol, which I take as a compliment!). But partly that’s due to how I consider myself mentally. I am terminally 19. Not for any particular reason. It’s a number that has just stuck with me. If I really think back on it, maybe it was a great year for me. A year of freedom, independence, coming into my twenties, whatever. It’s just a number that stuck in my head all these years, and I just live with it there. Maybe when I get even older, that number will shift, but it’s been there for a while now. People who think of age as their burden in life as they get older will, in fact, be burdened by themselves as they age.
Recently, as much as I don’t think about my age as a number, I have been feeling my age and recognizing myself as aging in memories that come to me as I go about my day. They are memories of my mother, who is still living. I am the seventh of eight children, and my mother didn’t have her first child until she was 20, and then we were all born fairly close together. So, you can imagine that by the time I was, oh, say eight, she had to be at least in her thirties, and had already gone through raising several and would have been brooding over several at the time. But, I never thought of her as a number, as an age. She was always just Mom.
I remember once she commented on my muscles, telling me what great shape I was in. I said she was, too, and she laughed. She pushed her finger into my thigh and said, “That’s muscle.” Then she pushed her finger into her own thigh, and I saw the pocketed ripples of cellulite as she said, “This is Jiffy cake!” Mind you, she was and still is in great shape for a woman birthing and raising eight children, she was just aging. (As my doctor sister says, and she would know – “Every woman, no matter how thin, gets cellulite when she gets old.”) These days, I’m not so active. I can still run and bike and swim, just not intensely. And when I look at myself in the mirror while I’m getting dressed, I see the layer of ripply cellulite on my thighs and butt. “Jiffy cake,” I tell myself, poking at it.
We live near enough to the lake that we could go to the beach and go swimming several times a week in the summer, if we wanted. But we don’t. Even when we do go to the beach, it’s to hunt rocks and not just lay out, soak up the sun or swim. I think I may have swum in the lakes once or twice last summer. And this is what I remember about my mother. She would take us kids to the beach and we would swim our little hearts out. We would go to the beach just about every day, as it was only about a mile from the house. And she might come in the water, and she might not. Sometimes she just stayed on the beach. Once all the kids were gone, and I asked her about going to the beach, she said she tries to get down there a few times each summer, on a walk or bike ride. It’s just not that big of a deal when you’re older, and I realize that now. It’s not that I don’t want to go, or wouldn’t go to the beach. I just don’t think about it so much. If I do go, swimming isn’t any big deal. I can do without it. I understand now what I didn’t when I was younger, that my mother was just at an age where she had lived it, done it, and it wasn’t a big deal. I don’t know that I really cared or thought much of her behavior then, it’s just that now, I look back and go, “Oh, I get it. This is how Mom must have felt.” It’s just another way I realize that my mother is her own person, just as I am, and having these memories of her being that person, recognizing how she was her own person, I can accept what it is I’m now feeling as my own person.
I look at my hands. They are filled with crackly lines and age spots are beginning to emerge. I remember sitting at the kitchen table one night with my mother, pushing at the skin on the back of her hand, pinching it and watching it slowly go back. I couldn’t do the same with my young, tight flesh and she tried it, laughing at the difference in our skin. “My hands are like Grandma’s,” she said. “Farmer’s hands.” “No,” I said, “not like Grandma’s.” I couldn’t see it in her hands, but she could. And now, as I look at my hands, I realize they look like hers did that night at the kitchen table. I push the skin up in folds, I pinch it and watch it slowly drop back around my tendons. The last time I saw Mom, I looked at her hands. She was right. They do look like Grandma’s, as will mine someday.
“Time only moves forward.” It’s a comforting thing I tell myself when I am having a hard time with something. It helps me focus on knowing whatever it is that’s bugging me is only temporary, that it will end in some way, shape or form. Aging is just time moving forward. It only can. I wouldn’t want to go back in my life for anything. No matter the good, the bad, the losses. Nothing can be regained in this life. Certainly not time, nor youth. No laments. No regrets. I watch my mother carefully when I am with her. I watch her smile, I listen to her laughter. I watch the way she moves and carries herself. She’s shrinking, now, just as I remember her mother doing. Her bones settling in, she’s getting more compact. I see in her what I know I will be someday, and I’m okay with that. I have no idea how old she is right now, but I know someday I’ll be there, and by then, she won’t be here anymore. But, in a way, she will be. In my smile. In my laugh. In the way I move and carry myself. And I’ll know how old I am when I remember her. I’ll know I’m “there,” right where she had been before me.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Mr. Too-Cool is All That and Then Some
Out walking the dog the other night, I stopped at a corner and watched as a sleek, black corvette with its top down came to a stop across from me. I saw some guy in driver's seat, dark sunglasses obscuring his gaze from me, and decided rather than to cross in front of his leering gaze, I would turn and walk down the sidewalk. He turned the corner very slowly and came following up behind me. "Great," I thought, "Mr.Too-Cool has got to be sure everyone in the neighborhood sees him in his fancy-pants car..." I didn't turn my head as he went by, until a flash of movement caught my eye: two little, pale fleshy arms shot up out of the passenger's seat, childish hands wide open in the minimal wind that passed overhead. The driver looked down at his tow-headed passenger and both laughed aloud. Silly me...
More than that, as the car continued on its slow path up the street and very cautiously around the corner, I was reminded of the many times I was taken along "for a ride" by my older brothers and sisters when they go their new cars - or new used cars, anyway. I remember being the one in the passenger seat, my hands out the window catching air - it seems it was always summer when new cars came into the family. I remember being taken out on back roads and brothers driving way faster than I'm sure Mom and Dad would have liked to have known about, but at the same time, they must have known about. Isn't this every new teenage car owner's rite of passage?
One road in particular and one ride I will never forget (until I'm at least 50...) was when my brother Brian had his orange Chevy Nova - had to be in the 70s - with its version of mag wheels on the back. We went down a road we called "Rollercoaster Road," and at speeds somewhere around seventy-ish, I'm pretty sure we caught some air more than once. What a blast it was to sit in the back seat of that car and go up and down, up and down, the rock'n'roll blaring out the speakers, the wind whipping my hair around my face, dusk settling into the woods around us, my stomach queezy and tingling from the repeated drop in gravity, and just how cool it was to be hanging out with my brothers who talked by yelling at one another and laughed open mouthed in the front seat. I felt safe and free, wild and daring in that moment, and I felt so much like I belonged. So much like I was someone, alive and in the moment. Now a memory long etched in my feelings of joy and comfort.
I watched that Corvette turn the corner and out of sight, and I thought of the guy driving the car and nodded with an appreciative smile: He really is Mr. Too-Cool.
More than that, as the car continued on its slow path up the street and very cautiously around the corner, I was reminded of the many times I was taken along "for a ride" by my older brothers and sisters when they go their new cars - or new used cars, anyway. I remember being the one in the passenger seat, my hands out the window catching air - it seems it was always summer when new cars came into the family. I remember being taken out on back roads and brothers driving way faster than I'm sure Mom and Dad would have liked to have known about, but at the same time, they must have known about. Isn't this every new teenage car owner's rite of passage?
One road in particular and one ride I will never forget (until I'm at least 50...) was when my brother Brian had his orange Chevy Nova - had to be in the 70s - with its version of mag wheels on the back. We went down a road we called "Rollercoaster Road," and at speeds somewhere around seventy-ish, I'm pretty sure we caught some air more than once. What a blast it was to sit in the back seat of that car and go up and down, up and down, the rock'n'roll blaring out the speakers, the wind whipping my hair around my face, dusk settling into the woods around us, my stomach queezy and tingling from the repeated drop in gravity, and just how cool it was to be hanging out with my brothers who talked by yelling at one another and laughed open mouthed in the front seat. I felt safe and free, wild and daring in that moment, and I felt so much like I belonged. So much like I was someone, alive and in the moment. Now a memory long etched in my feelings of joy and comfort.
I watched that Corvette turn the corner and out of sight, and I thought of the guy driving the car and nodded with an appreciative smile: He really is Mr. Too-Cool.
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