Civil War

January 23, 2017 Sally2 Comments

“Is there going to be a civil war?” one of my children asked yesterday.

“Gosh, I hope not,” I replied.

The tension in our country is alarming. I’ve never lived in a place where is an active war is being fought, and I don’t think I want to. As Rodney King once said, “Can’t we all just get along?”

To me, the question raised an interesting perspective. From a young person’s point of view, does it look like we’re headed for war?

And what would we hope to gain?

Aren’t there always peaceful solutions?

The Women’s March drew huge numbers. Friends and relatives of mine participated. I did not. Some of the signs I saw posted on social media were positive action signs, but others were angry and negative.

Last week we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day. He said,

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Yet, there they were — hating the haters, as if two wrongs make a right.

Hate is a double-edged sword that we wield by the blade. Everyone is hurt by it.

There has to be a better way.

Here are some positive steps we all can take (loosely based on Emanuella Grinberg’s CNN article: You Participated in the Women’s March. Now What?

Volunteer for a group you care about — Absolutely get involved in constructive ways. Women’s shelters. Homeless shelters. Counseling centers. Food banks. Look around you. Be hands on. Do good.
Be involved in the political process — Learn what candidates really believe. Use your head. Their actions and their words matter. If you’re a person of faith, pray about it. Be open-minded. Think. Don’t be a blind follower. Make your own decision. Do your research. Forget labels. Look at character.
Be your own Congressional Oversight Committee — The real Congressional Oversight Committee monitors the executive branch. Hurrah! May they do their job well! But you can oversee your elected representatives. Pay attention to what is going on in government and don’t be afraid to let your elected officials know what you think. Know the names of the people who represent you and let them know, in positive ways, what your thoughts are. Visit “How to Contact Your Elected Officials” to learn how to get in touch with them.

I love the fact that we can have peaceful protests in this country.

Let’s just keep it constructive, encouraging, and productive.

Success

January 22, 2017January 22, 2017 Sally6 Comments

The other day a friend posted on Facebook a rejection she had received for poetry submitted for publication.

She is a wonderful poet and writer, and I ached because a rejection feels like, well, a rejection — a failure — and she is not a failure.

How do we measure success? I asked myself — and, in a flash, I saw the scene that I wrote out below. It’s a totally made up story, kind of like a nightmare — but here it is for what it’s worth.

“Thank you for filling out the questionnaire,” the doctor said, studying the paper in front of him. He was checking off my answers with a pencil. I felt like it was more a quiz, than a get-to-know-you form for the first visit.

“You prefer to be called Sally?” he asked, looking up at me.

“Yes, I do,” I replied. I smiled at him, but he was already looking back down at the paper.

“Height, okay… Weight,” he looked up at me again. “You might want to lose a few pounds.”

“I know,” I said, “but things have been stressful lately, and I stress-eat…” My voice trailed off. I was hoping for a bye, but he just kept going down the list.

“You noted that you’re a writer,” he said, looking up again.

“I did?!” I said, questioningly because I didn’t remember putting that down.

He picked the paper up and turned it toward me, his finger pointing at a fill-in-the-blank mid-page. In my handwriting, next to the word “employment,” was the word “writer.”

“Oh,” I stammered, “I’m not really a writer. I don’t know why I wrote that.”

“Do you write?” he asked.

“I guess,” I said.

“Have you submitted pieces for publication?” he asked.

“A few, I guess, a long time ago.”

“How many times have you been rejected?” he asked. It was more of a demand.

I squirmed uncomfortably. What was this all about? I wondered.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t understand. Why do you need to know this?”

He glared at me.

“Can I change my answer?” I asked.

“Real writers have a pile of rejections,” he said. “I think changing your answer would be wise.”

He picked up a pen and neatly crossed out my response, then sat with pen poised waiting for my new answer. “Employment?” he asked.

“Umm.. I’m mostly a mom,” I said.

“How many children do you have?” he asked.

“Eight,” I told him. I found myself sitting a little straighter in the chair now. Surely this would impress the man.

“How many times have they broken your heart?” he asked.

“What?!” I asked.

“You know, how many times have they fallen, made bad choices, or failed?” he said.

“I thought you would want to hear about their successes. They’re doing pretty well,” I said.

“Real mothers have their hearts broken on a regular basis. They start off putting bandaids on skinned knees and move on to bruised egos and hurt feelings. They ache with their children. I’m trying to determine if you are a real mother,” he said, and then he repeated his question. “How many times have they broken your heart?”

I thought of the many emergency room visits, the hospitalizations, the times I stood outside a bedroom door and prayed for the child inside. I thought the listening and the insufficient advice I tried to give. I thought of skinned knees, skinned hands, stitches in the head, broken bones, tears, tears, tears, and more tears. I thought of driving when called for help and crying all the way, dropping kids off for college and crying all the way home, and watching them get married and crying for joy.

“How many times have they broken your heart?” he asked for the third time.

“None,” I said.

elderly · family · Life · photography

Graceful

January 21, 2017 Sally6 Comments

The word prompt was “graceful.”

I debated about using photos of my children in sports.

Swimming, tennis, soccer, and diving all have their graceful moments.

Aviary Photo_130563787939035300 — graceful kick?

I also have little ballerina pictures. Ballerinas are the embodiment of grace.

The very last first time ballet recital for Laurel -- which also turned out to be the very last ballet recital for Laurel. — Mine is the one trying to curtsey.

But I knew immediately which photo spoke grace to me. The trouble was finding it.

It was a picture of my father taking care of my mother.

He visited her every day. Twice a day. He fed her. He pushed her wheelchair on walks.

5501_10152261695866043_678688786_n — or even this one

This was after my brother passed away. He went to tell her the news that her oldest child had died of a heart attack. Because of her dementia, she couldn’t understand, and he had to repeat the painful words over and over. It broke my heart. His grief was doubled because she was unable to share it.

But her bore it.

The graceful picture I thought of was this one. It may not be the best picture, but it was a special moment.

My mother was in the hospital and my father brushed her hair for her.

Mothers brush other people’s hair all the time — sometimes even adding a little spit to do the trick. Of course, I never did that — added spit, I mean.

But this was new territory for my father. He was a little clumsy doing it. But he wanted her to be cared for, and he wanted to be the one to do it.

So he did the best he could to brush her wayward hair into place.

And it was an act that was full, very full, of grace.

family · Leaning In · Life

Weathered

January 20, 2017January 20, 2017 Sally7 Comments

Walk around the barn with me.

The side facing the road is red, the traditional color of many barns. My mother painted the Peace Dove around 40 years ago on a sheet of plywood. Bud found it in the barn this fall and decided to hang it for the holidays.

The northern side bears remnants of the red. Also a few broken windows.

And a tree with a cool twisty trunk.

The messy back side is a mish-mash of red, green (discolored plywood), and black, where the silo used to stand.

Here is what remains of the old silo — metal bands and wooden staves becoming one with the earth.

The southern side is all gray, discolored in the one corner where a truck cap leaned against it for years.

I think this side is the prettiest.

I took a picture of it during the summer just because I liked the way it looked.

It’s lovely, don’t you think?

Exposure to the elements and weather brings about changes — like the trials in our lives. We end up with some scars and a few broken parts.

But if we lean in, we might find some beauty there.

family · photography

Big and Small

January 19, 2017 Sally2 Comments

Aviary Photo_130752467502654336 — My mother must have taken this picture — 1965?

I thought I had a large family when I was growing up.

My parents had five children — a nice, symmetrical boy-girl-boy-girl-boy.

Then I met my husband. He was the second of thirteen. As if that wasn’t enough, his cousin also came to live with them when her mother passed away, so really there were fourteen children in the family. And one bathroom.

Big is a relative term. My family was not big in comparison with Bud’s.

Bud and I have eight children — somewhere in between mine and his. Not that we planned it. We never sat down and said, “I grew up in a family of five kids. You grew up in a family of thirteen. Let’s split the difference.”

That would have been silly.

That would also have been nine.

We are just blessed. So very blessed.

When I saw on Cee’s Photography blog a challenge about Big and Small, of course I thought of family.

Really — that’s pretty much what I think about 90% of the time. Family will never be an overworked topic for me.

In particular, I thought of this photograph — my youngest and my oldest sons.

This was at Philip’s wedding. Karl was gaining on Philip a very little.

In recent pictures I found this one of Philip next to Karl while setting up a family shot. Philip’s little boy, Henry, loves his Uncle Karl.

But Philip is still taller than Karl.

And probably always will be.

I’ll have to keep an eye on these two, though.

Who will ultimately win this Big and Small?

family

Frank Schwa

January 18, 2017April 21, 2017 Sally5 Comments

“Can I rearrange this room?” “Fred” asked a couple of days before Christmas.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to move the Christmas tree,” he said, “and, I don’t know, I need to think about it. But the feng shui in this room is all wrong.”

“You can’t move the Christmas tree,” I said. “It stays by the sliding door so people driving past the house can see the lights.”

I told Bud about it later.

“Who’s Frank Schwa?” he asked.

How do I explain feng shui, the harmony in a room, to man who had hoed out so much junk just to make this room usable?

The family room, as we called it, had become a depository — first for the boxes that we moved out of my brother’s apartment after he passed away, then for the boxes and furniture we moved when we rearranged to make space for a downstairs bedroom and bathroom for my father, and finally for the boxes that we moved home from the nursing home after my mother passed away.

Maybe the feng shui was all wrong.

Maybe the “flow” didn’t work.

But there’s a level of comfort in that same orange loveseat being in the same spot through the years.

I confess — we moved it this year, though. Not because of feng shui, but to make room for a smart TV.

The focal point still is, and always has been, the fireplace.

I think Frank Schwa would approve.

The ambience, the aesthetic appeal — both are present in its friendly warmth.

Even more important to me, though, are the people who fill the room.

Frank Schwa may or may not be among them.

To me, he’s the least important guest.

family · Life

Colorblind

January 17, 2017 Sally3 Comments

pict1161 — The way you can tell which of these boys isn’t my brother is the Yankees shirt. No one in my family would dare to wear such a thing.

My parents did a good job raising colorblind children in a lily-white town. I never heard either of them make any kind of racist statement. Instead I watched both of them operate from a platform of compassion toward all people.

Every summer for a number of years my parents invited Fresh-Air children from New York City to stay with us for a week or two. Honestly, what made Hector and Barbara different from me wasn’t the color of their skin. Rather it was their experiences as city kids.

We had a garden and a menagerie. We caught frogs in the pond during the day and fireflies in the yard at night. We could see the stars.

Barbara and I shared my room. We lay in bed at night and talked. She missed her mom and her mother’s food the same as I would have missed my mom and her cooking.

The battle for middle-class America isn’t about seeing or not seeing the color of the skin. It’s about understanding the similarities and differences of our experiences.

At our Sunday worship service before MLKJr Day, a woman talked about her experiences in the late 60s – early 70s when she, a white woman, was married to a black man. Her husband, college-educated and employed, some days was quite late getting home because police prevented from entering his own neighborhood simply because of the color of his skin. She spoke about “white privilege” — something we white folks can’t see because we live it.

In Cooperstown, I remember watching both white and black baseball players inducted into the Hall of Fame. Arrogance comes in all colors. But so does humility and friendliness.

My two favorite ball players that I met when I worked at the Hall of Fame — Cool Papa Bell and Ernie Banks — were both black. I don’t know a single one of their statistics, but I remember their smiles and the way they made me feel.

Jackie Robinson is one of my father’s heroes. When I read his story, it made me cry. Such indignity in the way he was treated. Such strength in his response.

But I ramble.

I hope I have passed on to my children what was given to me — eyes that don’t see skin color. It can’t stop there, though.

Now we need to understand the difference of our experiences.

We’re making progress.

But we still have a long way to go.

elderly · family

House Beautiful

January 16, 2017 Sally2 Comments

Whenever I drive my father anywhere, he comments on the houses we pass.

“Those are some well-kept houses,” he says, especially in the summer when the yards are groomed and flowers are blooming.

Somewhere along the line maintaining his house became too much.

My mother kept beautiful gardens. She was outside nearly every day in the spring and summer planting, weeding, and pruning so that passers-by were treated to some beauty.

In May 1994 the house was featured in a 2-page spread of Runner’s World magazine. A 10K race was routed right past the house.

As dementia crept in, we discouraged her from being out near the road. I was worried about her safety.

Plus she would shake her fist at cars that drove past too fast.

I was worried she would get a reputation for being a crazy old lady.

As the gardens were overtaken by weeds, the fence rotted. The split rail fence needed a number of rails replaced but when my father purchased new rails a few years ago and brought them home, he discovered they were too short.

“That’s okay,” he said to me. “I’ll just dig up the posts and move them closer.”

My eighty-something father, who was struggling was balance issues and growing frailer by the minute, honestly thought he could do that.

With aging parents — as with children — figuring out how to address challenges without totally discouraging them with you-can’ts is tricky.

“How about if we get someone to help you with it?” I suggested.

“I can do it,” he insisted.

But he didn’t.

And now the rails are rotting in a pile.

Bud has been working hard to reclaim the gardens. Last summer, he weeded and weeded and weeded. He cleared brush. He mowed. He pruned. He’s one of the hardest working people I know and I wondered if my father even noticed.

We were driving to get his haircut last week, and he commented on how well-kept the houses were on the way.

“It takes a lot of work to keep a house looking nice,” I said.

My father was quiet for a few minutes staring out the window. “When is Bud coming again?” he finally asked.

“Friday,” I told him, “when he gets done with work.”

I was relieved because that told me two things:

He made the connection between the work required to keep the house looking nice and Bud.
He recognized that Bud and I don’t get to see each other every day.

We’re doing it for him.

It isn’t easy, but it’s important.

And I’m grateful that we can be there — and get that house looking nice again.

Faith · prayer

Prayer of Confession

January 15, 2017 Sally2 Comments

In the Book of Common Prayer, the morning prayer of confession begins,

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep…

I was interested to read Lancelot Andrewes note on this prayer —

We have wittingly and willingly run from Your ways like an untamed heifer

Last summer, on my walks, I often saw the cattle in a neighboring field. Sometimes they would run up to the fence as I walked past. One liked to lower his head and shake his horns at me threateningly. I tried to reassure him that I meant no harm. I was simply out for a walk.

My bovine friends — or not-friends — became a fixture on these walks. I would scan the field to see where they were grazing. When one escaped, I tried to encourage him to go back with his compadres, but it’s hard to encourage an 1800 pound animal and keep a safe distance.

One fall day, Bud was working in the barn across the street when he heard the screech of tires. He ran out to see a woman, wide-eyed, sitting in her stopped car in the middle of road, staring a herd of cattle thundering toward her up the road. They ran past the house, tipping the mailbox as they went and disappearing over the crest of the hill followed by men in pick-up trucks.

“I had seen them trying to load them into a trailer earlier,” Bud told me. “Must be they decided to get them to the other farm the old-fashioned cattle drive way.”

That evening, when we went for a walk, we saw the guys in the pick-ups sitting outside the pasture that had once held their steer.

“That was something else,” Bud said to them, “watching them run up the road.”

“They didn’t want to get on the trailer,” one guy said, “and broke the fence. If you see ’em, let us know.”

“You weren’t herding them?” we both asked.

“Hell, no,” the man replied.

About a dozen steer were now on the wild in Otsego County, including the one who occasionally menaced.

As best I know, they were never found — although I did hear of occasional steer-sightings.

I pictured them when I read Lancelot Andrewes words.

Breaking through the fence — wittingly and willingly.

Running from the livestock trailer — running from Your ways

Like wild cattle — like an untamed heifer

It’s quite an image.

Almost exquisite — if one can use that word for cattle.

elderly · Faith · family

Incapable

January 13, 2017 Sally4 Comments

Below is a(nother) dusted-off post from 2011. In 2011 my mother was still alive and living at home. She clearly had dementia and her body was slowly failing on her. My father was her main care-provider, but that summer was hard on him, too. With all that was going on, I helped out as best I could.

Mom and Dad — summer of 2011

Last Thursday we went for the follow-up visit for my mother’s bladder biopsy.

The baby-faced doctor handed my father the pathology report. “It’s bladder cancer, just as I suspected,” he said.

He continued speaking, “It’s high-grade papillary urothelial carcinoma.” I could see the words on the path report in my father’s hands. “The cancer hasn’t spread past the lining of the bladder. There is no invasion into the muscle or the subepithelial tissue.”

When he began discussing the treatment options, it was truly a discussion. He listened to our concerns, answered questions, explained, and listened some more.

We finally reached the point in the process that I was anticipating (and dreading).

My mother is now incapable of making decisions, especially decisions like this. She can decide what she wants for lunch — usually something involving marmalade. She can decide what she wants to wear — usually the same thing she has been wearing for the past three days. She can decide when she wants to take a nap — often. She cannot make an informed decision about her health care.

My father has always shown the utmost respect for people and guarded their dignity. I knew my father would want to include my mother in the decision-making process. When the moment came, my father turned to my mother and said, “I suppose we need to ask the patient what she would like to do.”

I started to pipe up, “Dad, I think we’re at the point when you need to make these decisions for Mom,” but my mother interrupted.

My mother, with the utmost clarity, said, “I don’t think I understand what’s going on. I trust whatever you decide.”

Hallelujah! If the angels weren’t singing in heaven, they were singing in my heart!

I hadn’t known to pray for this, but this was an answer to prayer.

The rest of the visit was a piece of cake. We made the decision to simply wait. At 83, any treatment may have been worse than the disease itself….

I had forgotten so much about that time period. The bladder cancer turned out to be a red herring. So many other things made that season hard. Had I know what lay ahead, I would have said that I was not capable of any of it.

But I was.

God makes our path a little windy so we can’t see what’s around the next bend. Perhaps if we knew, we wouldn’t want to go on.

Today, January 13, 2017, I can look back and say, Thank you, God, for getting me through those years. It makes it easier to trust You on the road I’m traveling now.