I have a little troll who likes to visit me;
The pleasure that he gets from it is more than I can see.
He crawls out nearly monthly, from underneath his rock,
And writes a little comment full of unkind ugly talk.
I’ve tried to just ignore him. I’ve notified police,
And pastors, friends, and family. I’ve asked that he just cease.
He changes names like t-shirts in an effort to conceal
His identity but there’s no doubt — this troll is very real..
Father Thomas, quite by accident, kicked a nest of trolls.
They railed at him (IN ALL CAPS) ne’er retreating to their holes.
They summoned other uglies, who joined the angry mob
In giving Father Thomas quite the hatchet job.
But Thomas preached forgiveness – and his words gave me a chill —
“Forgiveness,” he said wisely, “is an act of your own will.*
You may desire justice, but mercy may be better.
Dismiss the debt that’s owed you and forgive the debtor.”
I wanted to ask Thomas — “Does this apply to trolls
Who threaten and attack you and seem to have no souls?”
I knew what he would answer. At least, I had a guess —
Trolls are really humans. God does not love them less.
Created in God’s image. His breath, their breath — and more,
His mercy for their troll-ness, their awfulness He bore.
So daily now, I pray for him — this troll who visits me —
That from the hate which binds him he would some day be free.
*What he actually said was, “This is just Christian ethical consideration for what you do in the event of trespass… Forgiveness relieves the tension in the ‘mercy versus justice’ option.”
Originally my plan was to write about “safe” for the letter S.
About a month ago, I overheard a conversation while waiting for my father. He was visiting friends and I was sitting in the front lobby of the nursing home after an unsuccessful attempt to visit Mary Three octogenarianesses (octogenarianettes?) sat down opposite me.
Their conversation was at an octogenarian level, so I couldn’t help but overhear.
“I just need to feel SAFE,” one said. “That’s why I would come HERE.”
The last word of every sentence was the loudest, and I found it an interesting way to punctuate.
A different lady, the one they were visiting who was obviously a resident, said, “My children kept telling me that I couldn’t do this, that, or the other thing. After I fell…” Her voice trailed off and she spread her arms to highlight the wheelchair she was in.
The third woman said, “I just don’t have the pep to do everything at home any more.”
“When the house sells, I’m coming HERE,” said loud-final-word.
Resident lady said, “I should have come here when I was 70. Now I’m 87, going on 88.”
#3 said, “It’s at the point where I have to do something.”
Loud said, “SAFE. I just need to feel SAFE.”
But as my mind wandered over this “safe” conversation, I thought about Laurel’s water safety presentation that she’s working on, and I thought about how I missed swimming now that it’s over and the pool is closed, and I thought about how unsafe the water can be and water safety is so important and… you see the currents that my mind drifted along, like a lazy river ride that had no definite end.
So S is also for Swimming.
My parents made sure we all could swim — and I’m sure my love of the water began at a very early age.
Mom and StewartMom with Stewart, Donabeth, and PeterThe only picture I could find of me. What form!
I can remember being in the watch-me stage when I was about 5 at Mirror Lake at Fort Devens. My mom was sitting on the beach and I was in the shallow water, stretching my legs out behind and walking my hands along the bottom.
“Look, Mom! I’m swimming,” I called, but I’m sure I didn’t fool her for a moment.
I remember playing and playing in the water — and I think that may be why I’m a big proponent for kids playing in the water. Kids can learn so much through play.
The thing is, though, water is never really safe. Kids drown in small amounts of water. Elite-level swimmer Fran Crippen drowned in an open water race. Being around water requires vigilance.
Bodies of water are like Aslan — not safe.
But good.
Each time a swimmer slides into the water, he or she is baptized into a new way of moving and breathing.
My father has told me a number of times, “You’re one of the richest people I know.”
I respond with, “Yeah, and maybe someday I’ll have money.”
Not this year, though. The money part, that is.
When I filed our taxes our income had gone down. It was the first time in many years that I didn’t have to file a Schedule C or SE for my swim officiating pay. Scholastic swim officials are paid, and I had been working for a number years at the modified, high school, and college level.
But, in the late fall of 2014, at the end of the girls’ season, I realized that I couldn’t commit to officiating during the boys’ season which runs November to February. I contacted the assigner and let her know. She emailed me for the next season, fall 2015, and again, sadly, I told her that I couldn’t do it.
Both times, I knew it was the right choice. As much as I love officiating swimming, it doesn’t compare with how much I love my family.
And, as it turned out, instead of scoring dives or disqualifying breaststrokers, during each of the seasons I have missed, I have had the privilege of caring for aging parents. No one can put a price tag on that.
Here is an partial list picture of my assets.
Family at Sam & Donna’s wedding
I wish I had photographs, too, of the circle of friends who do such a good job caring me.
Patrick Meagher said, “Some people are so poor, all they have is money.”
Every Saturday morning, I sit alone, pen poised over my journal, and attempt to write a prayer.
It is a discipline that I have not mastered. My words falter and fall flat on the page.
Then, as I pray my newly-written prayer in the days that follow, I edit, crossing out whole sections or single words, trying to form the sighs of my heart into something utterable. I know that when I can’t, the Spirit will intercede for me. (Romans 8:26)
P is for prayer.
I pulled out my journal to look at the prayers I had written during those last weeks with my mother.
On the day after she went in the hospital, this is all I had —
You, God, are amazing. I am not. Thank you for Your presence and Your help. Hold me,
Help me,
Heal me and mine.
I never changed a word of it. Maybe it was all I could do to pray it. By the next Saturday, she was gone.
And I struggled.
The next time I wrote, I filled two pages with prayer words, but then crossed out and wrote over much of it. By the end of the week, I had two prayers where I had begun with one.
Prayer A —
Lord, I don’t know what to pray.
My mother is gone.
My father is so sad.
Like a small child riding the up-and-down of a carousel pony, I need someone to hold my hand.
Will You?
Prayer B —
Almighty Father – You set into motion the cycles through which we live – the turning of our planet – its orbit around the sun – the rising and falling tides – the four seasons – the water cycle – the respiration of plants – the respiration of animals – the breath of a human being from first cry at birth to last breath at death – decomposition
Every breath — the inhale, the exhale — is part of Your plan, part of a cycle
So, Lord, with profound gratitude and amazement I will live this day And breathe these breaths ordained for me.
I will ride this turning planet orbiting around the sun
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me…
Jenny Joseph
Three “old” poems — one for my grandmother, one for my mother, and one for me.
When I am old, I shall buy a piano And rest my fingers lightly on the keys, curved just so. I’ll retrain them to move the way they did when I was a girl, The time I accompanied my brother, Nichol, While he played his violin for Calvin Coolidge.
I’ll play hymns on the upright And sing along
With the nobody in the room. And I will drink dessert wine Even though I am a Baptist One glass every night before bed Because my doctor said I could.
When I am old, I shall plant a garden
Not of practical vegetables like green beans and carrots,
But a banquet for the eyes.
Flowers,
A sumptuous spread of colors
That changes from week to week,
Crocuses, daffodils, bachelor buttons, and poppies.
I shall plant it close to the road For the passers-by to feast upon
If they but take their time.
But to those who drive too fast,
I will shake my fist
And shout –
“Slow down!
You’re missing the best part of life!”
When I am old, I will pump iron. I’ll pull my kettle bells out of the closet
And swing them. I’ll do squats and lunges, Deadlifts, presses, Russian twists, And Turkish get-ups.
My body may wear the softness of a slowed metabolism
But underneath I will be strong –
Strong enough to arm-wrestle with my children
And laugh at the absurdity of the thing
But still occasionally win.
About once a week I still try to go see I-can-do-it Mary. I wrote about her in “I Can Do It” and Leave Me Alone.
My father likes visiting people at the nursing home so I drive him over. While he’s visiting Linda, the lady who cuts hair, or Savannah, the bank window lady, I go down to Mary’s room.
She usually has her blanket over her head. When I see her like that, I just whisper a prayer for her in my heart.
The other day, though, her room was empty. The sun was out and I found her sleeping the sunshine of the courtyard. She loves being outside.
I stood beside her and laid my hand on her arm but she didn’t stir. When I removed my hand to leave, her eyes fluttered open.
“I brought you a present, Mary,” I told her. “It’s in your room.”
A dish garden with yellow tulips, miniature daffodils, and a pink hyacinth had beckoned to me from the flower kiosk at the grocery store. When my mother was alive, I tried to bring her flowers occasionally because I knew that she loved them. This week, I purchased some for Mary.
“Oh!” she said, reaching her good hand out to me. “Say, say, I can do it!”
“I can do it, Mary,” I said. I put my hand in hers and she kissed it.
“I love you,” Mary said.
“I love you, too,” I told her.
“Would you like to go see the flowers?” I asked and she nodded her head vigorously in response.
She hooked her good foot under her bad one and began pulling herself along using that one good foot.
“One. Two. Three. Four,” she said, counting her pulls. I had never heard her count before and she watched me to make sure I was seeing and hearing this new miracle.
By the time she reached “Thirteen,” she was at the door.
Clearly thirteen has gotten a bad rap. It was a beautiful number when she said it.
When we got to her room and she saw the garden, she said, “Wow! Wow!” She turned the dish slowly so she could see if from all angles, then she reached up and pulled me to her in a bear hug.
“I love you,” she said again.
“I have to go find my father,” I told her. “He’s visiting upstairs. Do you want to go back to the courtyard?”
She nodded.
As we walked back to the courtyard, suddenly Mary stopped. She grabbed my hand and looked at me. ” I en-,” she began, and then she frowned.
“I en-,” she said again.
I waited.
She frowned in frustration, then she waved her hand in the air, erasing the words that lingered there unfinished. “I can do it,” she said quietly.
When I got her settled back in the sun, she gave me one last bear hug. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I told her.
*****
This is a video I took of Mary singing to my mother.
I’ve occasionally wondered what was in the guy’s trailer by the time he got home.
He started off with an empty trailer and some debts he needed to collect.
At the first stop, he got a dirt bike because the guy didn’t have any money to pay him.
At the next, he traded the dirt bike for a horse.
When he arrived at our house, it wasn’t to collect a debt, it was to look at a pregnant heifer that my dad had advertised in the Pennysaver (<— Craig’s List of 1970). To make the story of the pregnant cow short and tasteful, my brother had been given a Holstein calf which we named Sock-It-To-Me Sunshine.
Peter and Sock-It-To-Me Sunshine, with Shetland pony, Rosie, in the background
It grew up.
Clearly we were not sure what to do with a calf.
The dairy farm next door had a bull instead of an artificial inseminator. The bull and the heifer had a surreptitious rendezvous, and voila.
So the guy showed up with a horse in his trailer. He left with Sock-It-To-Me Sunshine (in the family way) in it instead.
Goldie
Peter got the short end of that trade. He lost his cow and I got a horse, a large Palomino named Goldie. (I think, at the time, we also had a cat named Gray Kitty and another named Black Kitty. I would say that we weren’t skilled in naming animals, but I’m not sure if a cow named Sock-It-To-Me Sunshine makes my point or disproves it.)
Goldie was large and docile. I usually rode her bareback because getting a saddle on her and then getting the girth tight enough so that it didn’t slip was beyond my strength. Sometimes I didn’t even put the bridle on but just looped a rope around her halter. She was so patient with me.
I never knew how old she was. I asked my father, but he didn’t know. He also told me, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” and I had to look up the meaning of that saying. It turns out that a horse’s age can be determined by their teeth.
I also learned the saying, “Long in the tooth,” because a horse’s gums recede as they get older so their teeth appear longer.
Goldie was not long in the tooth when we got her. She was young and healthy and brought me great joy. When I grew too busy with school activities, she went on to bring another family great joy.
My mother was long-in-the-tooth by the time she died. Not literally.
But she was 87.
I’ll never forget the young doctor meeting with us and beginning with the words, “Mom is very sick.”
Here she paused and looked slowly around the room at the gathered family members. She wanted her words to sink in.
“And she has been sick for quite a while,” she continued.
She boldly laid all the cards on the table, face up, so we could all see the hand that had been dealt.
Long in the tooth, when it comes to elderly dementia, means a deteriorating brain.
She wasn’t just losing memory. She was losing the capacity to live.
Hours. We spent hours talking about my mother’s condition. I grew longer in the tooth in those few hours than I had in my whole life.
Weight piled upon weight piled upon weight.
I felt that I would never be able to stand under all of it.
When the meeting was over, we had acknowledged a trade.
Not a horse for a cow, but a new existence by letting go of this old one.
When we got home, my sister found the health directive my mother had written years before. We had followed my mother’s wishes, and that brought peace.
In trading, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I think both happened that day.
Clearly I’m doing this A-to-Z Challenge all wrong.
I feel angry.
And not kind.
I hung up on Time-Warner yesterday. Told them we were switching to Direct TV.
I’m not happy with them.
I posted a rant yesterday and almost immediately the person I ranted about contacted me. I was in the midst of a conversation with a different friend.
“I should have said something to her before I posted it,” I told my friend about my other friend — are you following this? Too many unnamed friends, I know.
But I knew the right way to handle the situation — and I didn’t do it. I posted a stupid blog post. (It has since been edited.)
This is how not to do things, kids. Talk to people who upset you. Don’t rant on your blog. Do as I say, not as I do.
I believe in handling things the right way and in kindness. Sometimes belief isn’t enough. We have to actually do it.
I’m working to memorize Isaiah 58, a chapter where God is dealing with a people who are oblivious to their sin.
“Look at me fasting,” they say to God. “Look at my sackcloth and ashes. Look how humble I am. Why aren’t you noticing any of this?”
And God says to them, “I really want you to be nice to each other. Don’t be grumpy. Don’t strike out at people. I want you to fast from your meanness. Put that aside instead of food. Undo someone’s yoke. Feed a hungry person. Invite a homeless person into your home. Sheesh!”
He didn’t really say the “sheesh” part. I added that.
But you get the point.
Can I just say here, in the depths of this post where few people will probably read, that life is hard right now? My father is struggling — and he doesn’t even know he’s struggling.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” my brother and I told him, ganging up on him to persuade him to have a medical test which may put us on a path to improvement.
“That’s what they keep telling me,” he said, in a tone that showed that he clearly didn’t believe a word of it.
It reminded me of a post that I had long since taken down. The post, from April 2011, had been called “Four Questions.”
It ends with kindness — which works for “K”.
****
Four Questions
Mom — April 2011
Question #1
I asked my mother this question one day when we were in the car, “Mom, do you know what Alzheimer’s is?”
She knew the answer. “It’s a condition where people can’t think sensibly,” she responded.
Yes, it is. It’s not a condition where someone doesn’t think sensibly. They can’t. And yet, sometimes, they can. Like being able to answer that question with a pretty concise response shows some sensible thinking.
Question #2
Yesterday my mother handed me a sheet of address labels that had come in the mail to her.
“These are for you,” she said.
“I can’t use these, Mom,” I told her. “They have your name and address on them.” I tried handing them back to her, but she pushed them over to me again.
“That way you won’t forget me,” she replied.
I felt a little ache in my heart at those words. “Mom, I won’t forget you,” I reassured. “Will you forget me?” I asked it, even though I already knew the answer.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll never forget you.”
But moments later, she forgot that she had even given me the address labels and took them back to her pile of things. She removed one and stuck at the bottom of a note she had written herself about dinner with a friend. It was a dinner with a friend that had taken place months or years ago. She had forgotten. But she stuck the address label on the bottom of the note.
“This will help me remember,” she said. Oh, if only it were that easy.
Question #3
Alzheimer’s is a condition where people can’t think sensibly. The varying pieces of information that are constantly coming at us are no longer being filtered correctly in the mind of someone with Alzheimer’s. It’s impossible to make sense of it all.
When my parents were going through some of the clutter that had accumulated at their house, my father picked up a kitschy dog made out of golf balls. “We could probably get rid of this,” he said.
“Are you going to get rid of me?” she asked. With the filters missing, that was what she heard.
“You’re too valuable,” he told her. “We’re not going to get rid of you.” She still has value. She needed to hear that.
Question #4
In difficult situations, so many people show little kindnesses. With my mother’s Alzheimer’s, people have been so kind. Total strangers, long-time friends and family members have all pitched in to keep my mother safe and to make life easier for my father. I know my father appreciates it, but I often wonder if my mother is even aware.
Yesterday, she answered the unasked question I have had for a long time. Are you aware of all the things people do for you?
She was looking for my brother. “He’s up at his house, Mom, right next door,” I told her.
“That’s right,” she said. “He has been so nice. Every night he brings dinner right down to us so I don’t have to fix anything.”
Yes, he does. And his wife does. And I’m so glad you recognize that. Even if you don’t always recognize me. I know it’s because you can’t think sensibly.
When I am old, I shall plant a garden
