betaphilings

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ — John Keats

I don’t know where this is but I want to go there.

Brooke 21 months, Brenda 61 years

My two best friends in life, Tom and Martha, both died when they were 61 and I am 61. I’m doing everything I can to stay alive until the end of March when I turn 62.

Mostly, I’m not taking any chances with my health, especially in this home stretch. I figure if I can make it three more months, I’ll be 62 and past the possibility of dying at 61. That is my plan—make it to 62. Until then I’m a fallow field.

As a fallow field, I take it upon myself to think, feel, and do as little as possible. Just be, I say, like an unseeded field at rest for a season. New seasons will come, new seeds will fall. I will be productive again. If I’m lucky, I will live to be 90 or more like Uncle Fred and Ilona Smithkin.

I wish Tom and Martha had been luckier. Sixty-one feels like the wrong time to die.

I love kooky old ladies like this!

I’m putting this 90-year-old Maxine here for future reference.

I’ll be back to listen to this again. It needs 1 hr 47 mins.

Please join me in imagining a Louisiana coastline that is healthy and thriving.

Except for having Brooke here every Friday, I thought 2011 was pretty sucky.

This is one of my new favorite blogs. Deb Taylor lives in Central Texas and posts something small and artful almost daily. Check out her beautiful, inspiring blog at Deb Did It. I don’t know anyone more madly in love with her life. Deb makes things, like this heart with wings, then photographs them. She’s a talented and interesting woman.

Brooke isn’t falling for it. Something’s wrong with this picture, she seems to be thinking. Most little ones are scared of Santa, yet we resurrect him year after year. Here’s what Keri London thinks about all this Santa stuff.

“Seriously? How is humanity to evolve if we can’t give up these archaic myths? How is a big dude in a red suit who comes down the chimney to put gifts under the tree relevant these days? When my son asked me if there was a Santa, I didn’t have the heart to lie to him. I don’t get these weird rituals. That is just what they are, rituals. What does this have to do with Jesus and the Bible? Every year we all go through the same rituals, that were invented so long ago that we even forgot how they came about. Think about it, does this really make sense for the present day? We can’t evolve if we keep recreating the past every year. It’s part of the system, in order to change it we have to create something new and different. A new energy or frequency. Why do we keep doing the same things over and over every year even though it no longer makes sense?” — Keri London

This is my new friend Wendy who writes about life in the Louisiana wetlands. Check out her blog at BayouWoman.com.

No, I did not stage this shot. She selected the picture. In her hand is a small brown eyebrow pencil. Apparently, she did not want me to see her drawing on the dead dictator’s face. Oddly, when she says my name (Mamaw), it sounds a lot like she’s saying “Moammar.” 

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.  — Anaïs Nin

John Piscatella lost his wife to cancer in 2006 and spent the next four years writing the most amazing love poems I have ever seen.

John posted those poems on Reflections of Florine, and I happened onto them one day while clicking “next blog” on Blogger. I’ve since scoured the internet trying to learn more about this man and his wife but can’t find anything. I wrote him an email and got no response.

John and Florine met and married in college, had no children, and spent forty-six years together. If ever a man loved a woman more, I would like to know who. I’ve had Reflections of Florine opened on a tab, and now that I’ve read all the poems, it’s time to close the tab.

Below is the last poem John posted on July 29, 2010. There are hundreds more love poems on his site. I would love to know more about this devoted couple. One thing appears certain in the poems: John really, really loved Florine.

TIGERS UNCHAINED

 

We dance the dance
dreamlike
of eternal harmony,
magnetically connected
like a first kiss.

Inseparable
beyond
impassioned expectations,
we dance fiercely
like tigers unchained.

Movement on movement,
breath on breath,
rumbling,
tumbling pores
decanting liquid life
beneath the rhythm
of a single heartbeat.

Enormous together
we are one with the night,
belonging only
to the moment
and the music
in each other.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

My granddaughter seems to have inherited my hypersensitivity to certain sounds. Here she is showing obvious alarm at the sound of an airplane overhead. I see this same look on her face throughout the day, whenever the central air conditioning unit kicks on, whenever a dog barks or a train whistles or a siren goes off.

If she is like me with regard to loud noises, then she also wakes up throughout the night, which can leave her feeling tired and restless in the morning. I have suffered through this waking in the night my entire life. I’ve bought squishy ear plugs to wear, but they always fall out.

Yesterday, however, I found a package of industrial grade ear plugs at my daughter’s house that her husband wears at work. Last night I wore them to bed and actually slept peacefully through the night.

Whenever Brooke grabs my finger and pulls it, I follow her anywhere.

This is my new favorite thing — being led by Baby Brooke. I am crazy in love with this little girl!

Love is not a giving or a taking, it is a state of being – a one way street of allowing, accepting and holding a space for all things to be exactly as they are.   — Jackson Kiddard

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— by Rumi

I decided one morning to test sobriety,
to waken at dawn to sparrow chirp and dark clouds
blowing seaward from the Bultaco factory,
to inhale the particulates and write nothing,
to face the world as it was. Everything
was actual, my utterances drab, my lies
formulary and unimaginative.
For the first time in my life I believed
everything I said. Think of it: simple words
in English or Spanish or Yiddish, words
that speak the truth and no more, hour after
hour, day after day without end, a life
in the kingdom of candor, without fire or wine.

—from Black Wine by Philip Levine

Brooke started day school on August 1st. Today, she was moved up to the 18 to 24 months class. She loved it, and the teacher and older kids loved her. I hope this promotion to a more advanced class is the start of a trend for her.

Uncle Jay took this picture with his iPhone today.

My son, my daughter, my granddaughter, and an iPad.

At the 1998 Texas Renaissance Festival

Children sweeten our labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter.   ~ Francis Bacon

Brooke is sixteen months old today. She stays with me on Fridays. Here’s what she likes to do.

• play with my computer
• play with my cell phone
• eat and drink
• pick up rocks, sticks, and leaves
• take a bath
• play with her cardboard books
• watch me work in the kitchen
• dig through my makeup drawer
• play with Hunter

I took this picture some time ago. It’s not very good but it is interesting. You can almost see the pain on my face from losing my boyfriend this summer, then dealing with a family deception, then learning that my “daughter” has cancer.

It has not been an easy summer.

Jenna was Jay’s girlfriend throughout high school, she was a bridesmaid in Jill’s wedding, and she was at the hospital when Brooke was born.  She is beautiful and brilliant and has always been like a second daughter to me.

On July 30th she turned 23, and a week later she had a massive seizure that sent her to the hospital, where a golf ball-sized tumor was removed from the top right part of her brain. The news that followed was devastating.

Jenna has stage III malignant brain cancer.

I have cried more this summer than I have in years. In fact, years have passed without me shedding a single tear because life was just so darned good. This blog is a testament to that. Looking back over the six years of my blogging I can find very little sniveling.

But shit happens and some things make you cry and some things make you angry and sometimes you just feel sad. This thing with Jenna has hit me hard. What I have learned this summer is that NOTHING, absolutely nothing that anyone can say or do to me compares to the difficulty of potentially losing a child, even a grown child. A new mantra has come from all this. It’s a prayer, a hope, and a longing.

Thank you, my beloved Jenna. Healing energies surround you and infuse you with perfect health.

And thank you, Jay, for bringing beautiful Jenna into our lives. She told me the other day how in 10th grade she walked by the computer lab one day and saw you sitting there and decided she wanted to date you, so she began stalking you, sitting by you in the cafeteria every morning until finally the day came when you began to open up and talk to her.

Thank you, too, for coming in on Wednesday to check on Jenna. She begins chemotherapy on Tuesday.

granddaughter at 15 months—click on image to enlarge

If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. — Henry Miller

Boyfriend should have taken an interest in my blog and he would know I’m over here posting his Miller1971 password so anyone who sees it could seriously disrupt his Gmail and Facebook accounts. I set both of those accounts up for him, and I could delete them both in two seconds. Anybody could. He’d never know what happened. He would think it was a virus or a bug.

Too bad I’m not the vengeful type. I could totally put an end to all the pictures and sweet stuff he has piled up in Gmail. I could totally wipe out his nice collection of female friends on Facebook.

How do I stop reading his mail when the sordid details of his affairs are sitting right there daring me to look? This stuff is solid gold. Yesterday, for example, one of his Facebook buddies asked him where he’d been and he sent the guy a private message saying, I’ve been up in Dallas, fixing to move up there, met a sweet lady, thinking about getting married.

What? My boyfriend’s getting married!

I bet this Dallas woman he’s thinking about marrying doesn’t know about Diane, the woman he spent the 4th of July with. He’s been flirting with her on Facebook for a while, and on the 4th she sent him a private message: You just left my house. I feel good about you. You are a real man. Yes, Diane, and he’s also a real player. That’s why he didn’t text you back when you asked him if he made it back to Dallas. He’s about to marry a fat girl there, and you were just a holiday fling.

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.  — Henry Miller

Last summer when we met we admitted that the thing we wanted most was to be in love again. We agreed that there’s nothing like it, nothing in life makes you feel as good as being in love. We decided to take a giant leap of faith, go all in, and be in love for a year, which is exactly what happened. He took a player break and focused his attention on me. I knew where he was all the time, and I adored him.

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.   — Henry Miller

Then his dad called and asked him to come to Dallas. I encouraged him to go. He has spent his whole life here. We talked about me joining him there. I never imagined he would go up there and get engaged, but it makes sense now. He needs someone to pay for materials so he can work. He has a business partner here who does that. If he wants to move to Dallas, he needs to find a partner there.

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads.  — Henry Miller

So an overweight A&M accounting instructor who adores him gets the job. That’s her kissing him in the pictures. Her maiden name is Bedgood, I swear, but it should be Bedfull because she is definitely a bed full from the looks of her. I don’t know where he found her but I do know why he wants to marry her. She’s a working teacher and teachers have access to all kinds of credit. Financial necessity is a valid reason to marry but not a good one.

Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am. — Henry Miller

I wanted to spend my birthday with you, he said when he showed up unexpectedly on July 1st. The kids and I were about to leave for the holiday weekend. I cried when he kissed me, knowing he’d been kissing other women. Confronting him on his birthday didn’t feel right, though, and there wasn’t time, so I choked back my words and they stuck in my throat and I couldn’t breathe or speak or swallow. My throat burned and my heart ached and tears filled my eyes. I knew I would never see him again.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.  —Henry Miller

Last night, just to see what would happen, I sent him a picture of me. He deleted the picture but sent me a message saying, I love you and I will always love you.

Saturday night I got two text messages from him: Want some company? Want some company? I didn’t reply.

As for what happens now, I see three choices.

1. Keep reading his mail as I’ve been doing. The pull to keep spying is strong. How often in life do you get such incredible access to a person’s private life? It’s more interesting than what I generally do at 4:00 in the morning when I can’t sleep. Besides, minding your own business is overrated. Facebook encourages us to check on the people we care about. If I hadn’t accidentally blocked him, we could be Facebook friends.
2. Confront him with all of this, in which case he would surely change his password and my snooping days would be over. This is what Ernie thinks I should do, only I can’t quite put it all together in my head just how this would work. It might be too late for a confrontation. I haven’t talked to him in two weeks.
3. Delete both of his online accounts. This is what Susan thinks I should do, only he doesn’t need another lesson in non- attachment. He already knows how to let things go.

I don’t know what I will do.

On the meridian of time there is no injustice. There is only the poetry of motion, creating the illusion of truth and drama. — Henry Miller 

Your favorite author and the year of your birth is not a good password. I guessed it on the very first try. Now I almost wish I hadn’t because I found these in your mail.

These pictures make me sick.

I thought you were my boyfriend.

My mind is racing thinking about this. How do I calm down enough to get this off my mind? Out of my mind is how I feel. It comes and goes relentlessly like waves slapping the side of a boat. I almost want to throw up.

Just breathe, Brenda. Everything will be alright eventually. You have to ride the waves a while is all. It’s going to be painful and scary. Breaking up is always painful and scary.

So I deserve whatever I get for looking at his mail, right? Apparently so because I got slammed big time this time and therein lies the story: Attractive older woman gets duped by handsome younger man.

Poor guy doesn’t have a clue that I know what he was doing in Dallas last month when his dad called him up there to work on a house. Doesn’t have a clue that I’ve been following this whole sordid month-long mess — the messages, the women, lots of women, lots of pictures. The pictures of them kissing hurt the most.

I don’t even know what to think about this. My brain is throbbing. My heart aches. I know I could fall deeply in trouble emotionally because I loved this man. We spent a wonderful year together. We shared every holiday and birthday and major event in the last twelve months. We were a couple.

So who is taking pictures of him kissing other women and why? No one ever took a picture of us kissing. Where is the honor in running around on your girlfriend like this? Why are there no good words in this scenario? I know he didn’t do this to deliberately hurt me. I did it to myself by reading his mail, thank goodness. He didn’t even have a computer or an email address when I set the gmail account up for him and showed him how to use it. Oh, he screwed up alright, if losing me counts as a screw up. But I don’t think he intended to lose me. I don’t think he has a clue why I won’t talk to him. If I tell him that I saw the pictures, he’ll change his password and I won’t be able to spy on him anymore, which is probably what should happen so I can get over this man. He would never think to come here and read this. He said he’s moving to Dallas. There’s more work up there. Yeah, and more women.

If he knew I’d seen these pictures, he would probably say you’ve got to forgive me because that’s what love does. It forgives. It doesn’t judge; love forgives all things.

No it doesn’t. It can hold grudges. It can cut people totally off when they’re caught kissing other girls. Despite the fact that we may have been put here to learn how to love unconditionally, few relationships survive infidelity.

Goodbye, boyfriend. I will miss you.

My daughter and granddaughter at my aunt’s house.

My dad was the kindest man I ever knew. This picture of him is how I remember him—always smiling and cheerful.

When I think of Dad, I think of LBJ, cars, and the store.

LBJ

My last few years at home with my family were the LBJ years, 1963-1968. LBJ was Dad’s kind of man—tough, wily, rough, nothing like that good-looking young Harvard educated Pulitzer Prize winning Catholic-boy predecessor. Dad and most other men in the South in the ’60s had grown up in the country, where there was just too much work to do to be sitting around writing books like JFK had done.

LBJ, on the other hand, was a work horse President. He was not only running a huge war, he was passing massive amounts of legislation aimed at helping the poor and the elderly. He gave us the Civil Rights Act and Medicare and food stamps and much more. I can’t think of a President in my lifetime who accomplished more in six years than LBJ did.

LBJ had been 21 when the Great Depression hit, a perfect age for a young man to see and understand how government programs could actually help people recover from serious losses. His dedication to improving the lives of people in this country must have inspired my dad and others like him to work hard too.

Too bad he couldn’t figure out how to shut down that war instead of letting so many boys my age die. History would view him differently if he had.

CARS

There was so much going on during those years to trouble a person. Schools were integrating. War was raging. Russians were developing nuclear weapons. Assassins were taking out our best leaders. And American auto makers were making cars like this one.

Minus the wax job and wheels, this is the same car that Dad bought me when I was nineteen—a 1969 Oldsmobile 442. I didn’t know at the time what a muscle car was or what a Quadrajet carburetor did. I didn’t realize I had the hottest car on campus that year. All I knew was that my daddy loved me. He’d given me a nice car, a credit card for gas, and a college degree. What more could a girl want?

I wanted to go to Texas, I knew that, but the 442 didn’t get me there. This 1973 Buick Regal took me to Texas, home of LBJ, a massive freeway system, and my future. I drove this car for thirteen years before selling it to a stranger for $500. Every time I drove it home for a visit over the years, Dad would put it in the shop and have it serviced. I got a lot of mileage out of that car thanks to him.

It’s hard to think of Dad without thinking of cars. He would have been so proud to see the little red 2002 Chevy Cavalier I bought for my daughter when she turned sixteen. He was always a Buick man himself, which is probably why I bought the Regal. To this day Mom still drives a Buick.

THE STORE

I’m often dismayed when people claim that those who served in the armed forces are our finest citizens. My dad never served in the military and he was the finest man I ever knew. His birth in 1928 kept him out of World War II. He was barely 17 when that war ended. My birth in 1950 kept him out of Korea. Men with children were given service exemptions.

Dad’s destiny was not to be a fighter on a foreign battlefield but a fighter of another kind at home. He became a successful businessman, a merchant who served his community well for almost thirty years.

The counter in my dad’s store was a place where men hung out and drank coffee and told stories. Dad and his younger brother provided a captive audience for tales being told. Each year a new school boy stood with them, getting credit for working there during school.

So many young people over the years got their first job at Dad’s store. He hired them mostly to pick up and deliver auto parts. I’m sure he would have loved getting paid to drive a little blue Nissan pickup around town when he was their age. His Temple Auto trucks were fixtures in the Natchez/Vidalia area for many years.

During the late ’60s, if you went into Temple Auto around 3:00, you’d likely see a one-armed man standing by the window looking out. They called him Red and Red scared me a little. He’d lost an arm and his mind on a battlefield somewhere. He never spoke, he never looked up, he simply got his coffee and stood by the window drinking it. No one ever made fun of Red. He was treated with reverence almost.

I loved listening to the stories the men would tell, but I didn’t get to hang out at the store much, not as much as I would have liked. Dad would tell me to “go home and help your mother.” I obeyed him totally because he commanded that kind of respect.

My daddy was a sweetheart. I loved him very much. Many people in that community loved him. At his funeral in 2005, the pastor called him “a great man.” In his latter years, as heart disease slowed him down, he still made his weekly deacon’s rounds to check on his senior citizens. The man had the kindest heart, and a gentle way of flowing through life seemingly effortlessly. I feel blessed to have had him for a father.

Here’s a ten-minute message from Earl Nightingale, the voice of my dad’s generation. It’s full of platitudes, and a big secret having to do with the power of thought.

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’”

— William Hutchinson Murray

See the sketch on the left? I drew it six years before I ran into the woman on the right. 

On February 15, 2005, I uploaded this digital image into my DeviantArt account, where it has been parked for six years now. I titled the image “Ethnic Woman.” Like most of my portraits, it was drawn from no one in particular.

Today, however, something changed. Today I saw a video of Inelia Benz and immediately thought of this wide-eyed woman I had drawn those many years ago. I recall drawing that portrait and imagining a woman who has the same calmness and stillness that Inelia has. I knew that her eyes had to be large and wide to represent great knowledge and awareness. I even imagined that in her presence I would feel great peace and acceptance.

Call it coincidence or call it whatever. I call it manifestation. I think I literally drew Inelia into my life.

Like all my drawings, Inelia’s likeness came to me from that etheric space where inspiration lies.  She is one inspirational lady alright, and her message is imperative. We must raise our vibrations and expand our awareness as best we can.

I love it when things like this happen. Inelia calls them synchronicities. I call them things I want more of.

Call it making meaning where there is none. Call it a need for meaning. Call it nothing at all. Call it interesting, amazing. Call it what you will. I still choose to call it manifesting, and I want more of it, and I don’t want to wait seven years.

at Brooke’s 1st birthday party in April

Of Mother’s Day, Mothers’ Day, and Mothers Day, you could make a case for how each of these three uses is correct. The first one is probably the most popular, although the second use suggests a day belonging to all mothers, which is also correct. The third is my favorite — you have some mothers and you have a day and nothing belongs to anyone.

I’m all for absenting apostrophes wherever possible because few people seem to care about singular and plural possessives anymore, especially when signifying possession is as daft as it is in the case of parent days. In general in this computer age I could care less about apostrophes and commas, but not much. Mostly, I like my apostrophes in contractions; e.g., Any day’s a good day. Happy Mother’s Day!

I ran across this picture recently and can’t quit thinking about it. It was taken at Jefferson Davis’ home in Biloxi, MS, during my trip to Natchez a couple of years ago.

The woman on the right is a middle school English teacher who works at an alternative school in Baltimore, MD, which is exactly the same job I had during my last few years of teaching in Texas. How odd it was for us to find ourselves at the same place, a tiny little hurricane-ravaged tourist attraction on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, on the same day at the same hour, when there are new tours every hour.

We met in the movie room, where we watched a 45-minute documentary on the life of the famed Confederate States President. She turned around to make a comment and we connected on some kind of spiritual sister level. I knew almost instantly that we were kindred spirits, and she seemed to know it too. We strolled together for the rest of the tour, while Ernie walked around taking pictures.

Who knows what we were talking about there under the tree? Probably the cemetery or the war. The tour had brought into clear focus the atrocities of the Civil War and how deeply entrenched Davis was in the war effort. We were told that no man apart from Thomas Jefferson had ever held as much power in Congress as Jefferson Davis did in the early 1860s. One by one a total of ten other state senators followed Davis’ lead in walking out of the Senate on January 21, 1861.

Jefferson Davis’ Farewell

By any standard, this scene has to rank as one of the most dramatic events ever enacted in the chamber of the United States Senate. Would-be spectators arrived at the Capitol before sunrise on a frigid January morning. Those who came after 9:00 a.m., finding all gallery seats taken, frantically attempted to enter the already crowded cloakrooms and lobby adjacent to the chamber. Just days earlier, the states of Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama had joined South Carolina in deciding to secede from the Union. Rumors flew that Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas would soon follow. (read more here)

As a topic of study, the Civil War is like a giant rabbit hole that gets deeper and deeper and doesn’t let you out. It’s not for me. However, let me also say that my dream job would be to work with a team putting together a screenplay for a Jefferson Davis movie starring Hugh Jackman. There is little that pulls at my heartstrings quite as much as this man’s efforts to do what eleven Southern states elected him to do; namely, to fight a war against the United States while simultaneously putting together a whole new country called the Confederate States. If that is not valiant, I don’t know what is.

English teacher types are vastly underused because we generally don’t have enough hustle to drum up work like that on our own, but we could be extremely valuable in producing a movie like this one. Somebody needs to make this movie — a sympathetic look at a rather frail little man from Natchez, MS, who for four years actually did succeed in breaking this country in two. That is huge, Hugh Jackman! I am available to help in any way I can.

Here’s a picture of Beauvoir, Davis’ Biloxi home. It looks out onto the Gulf of Mexico. The cemetery is in the back. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina tore up the grounds and flooded the basement. Tour guides say the Presidential papers on display in the basement were lost in the flood. I have a feeling that is not the case, but that is a whole other movie.

a dream I dreamed last night

Stuck in Dallas trying to get out
only I need you to show me the way out
only you need to stop by here and say hello
to this old girlfriend you lived with when you first
moved here from Oklahoma and you cannot fathom
why or how I could possibly be bothered by this.

She is large and still loves you madly
obviously.
I want to leave but the two of you are rolling around laughing
on a pile of clothes on the landing at the top of the stairs
your hands and glee all over her big dumb short-haired blondness.

I watch you play with her in front of me.

She has AIDS you say later in the truck as we drive
through Dallas
forgetting that my car is still sitting at her apartment
and we have to go back and get it and get separated once again.

a poem by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

a poem by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I’m going 60, lady on shoulder pulls out in front of me, I swerve to the left, then swerve to the right, then back to the left and down an embankment where a culvert catches my right rear tire and stops me cold. I’m ok but my poor car is shot. Scariest day of my life. Thought I was going to die.

That’s how I described it on my Facebook page, my very first car wreck. Incredibly, there is not a single scratch on me or my car. What’s broken is hidden from view. What happens next is not clear too.

It began as a leisurely Sunday afternoon drive through the country to visit my daughter. She had called and invited me to spend the day with her. She’d gotten a new dog she wanted me to see, a three-year-old Shi Tzu named Thor. I wanted to see Brooke taking her first steps by herself. She’s ten months now. Jared was helping his brother build a garage. The sky was a beautiful blue and the temperature was 72.

When you’re driving down a highway on such a perfect day, you don’t expect someone parked on the side of the road to suddenly pull out in front of you. If I hadn’t swerved, I would have hit her and there would have been a tragic accident. There were seven children in her car.

She admitted pulling out in front of me, running me off the road. She was young and cute and worked at the Sonic Drive-In in Kountze.

I’d never lost control of a vehicle before. It’s a strange sensation, almost like an amusement park ride but very scary.

Once long ago when I went to sleep floating on my back and got out past the breakwater, I recall meeting Death, who shook my hand and shoved me back above water toward shore, almost like a porpoise toying with me.

I met Death again when my car was swerving all over that road.

Again, it was almost like the porpoise toying with me. There was something playful about the way Death slid me all over the road, back and forth and down the hill, careening away from the tree line and into the culvert. What a ride. At least 50 mph and then that sudden stop when my wheel fell through the grate. Wow. Thanks, Death. I won’t forget this.

I could have hit her Ford Expedition. I could have hit oncoming traffic. I could have hit a tree. I could have skidded and rolled down that embankment. My front tires could have gone into the culvert and flipped my car. I could have died any number of ways. I could have had a heart attack or a stroke.

The whole time it’s happening that’s what I’m thinking. Am I going to die? Is this the day I die?

The wrecker took my car to my daughter’s house, and the ambulance took me to the hospital because my blood pressure was 194/112. Normal is 120/80.

I stayed with Jill for a couple of days, trying not to think about the wreck, just enjoying my granddaughter and the cute new little dog. Thor. Here’s a picture of them.

And here’s a picture of Brooke and me. We are glad to be alive.

“All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

—Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Western Michigan University, Dec 1963

“I know what it is to feel lonely and helpless and to have the whole world against me, and those are things that no man or woman ought to feel. And I ask your candidate and all those who love their fellow men to set themselves resolutely to make this world a happier place to live in, a world where no nation plots against nation, where no neighbor plots against neighbor, where there is no persecution or hunting down, where everybody gets a square deal and a sporting chance, and where people try to help and not to hinder, a world from which suspicions of cruelty and fear have been forever banished. That is the sort of world I want! Is that the sort of world you want?”

— Richard Hannay, The 39 Steps, 1935

My curly-haired daughter and nine-month-old scrunchy-faced granddaughter.

Nine months old and eyes of blue. That’s my girl.