Sunday, July 10, 2011 - Survivor

Would you spend 39 days in a remote location with no creature comforts, competing in rugged contests for food or a warm shower, and make deals and alliances to continue in "the game"? I love to watch "Survivor" on TV. People get bruised, stabbed in the back, lose weight, and have to deal with bug bites and weeks without a bar of soap, but in the end, win or lose, they come back to the real world where many of them will really have to put everything on the line to survive with no prize on the line except for the survival itself.

I ordered my Survivor mug online because I count myself among the real survivors. Like many thousands of people in our country today, I am a long-time survivor of panic disorder. Some days I forget about it. Life rolls along and nothing bothers me. Some days, driving to the post office is harder than being the last man standing on the top of a four inch pole, but I can't give up. I have to find every ounce of strength deep down and be as courageous as I can be and hang on by my fingernails. I have to meet the challange and "survive."

My prize isn't a million dollars. It's not even a "good job" from my teammates. It's just knowing deep inside that I didn't give up. I performed to the limits of my ability. I am a survivor.

Saturday, July 9, 2011 - too much stuff

In the film "Home for the Holidays," the Holly Hunter character is sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table where her dysfunctional family is engaged in a financial discussion. Within the inevitable argument, she interjects that what's wrong with the world is that there's "too much stuff." After years of buying this, saving that and collecting the other, I have come to the point where my life is filled with "too much stuff.

I have recently started selling off many of my books, DVD's and CD's. It's not that I've lost interest; I've just realized that the world is making it so much easier to live with less. I can download books to my e-reader. I can watch almost any movie I want through Netflix, On Demand, or the innumerable movie channels I subscribe to each moth. And for music, an affordable yearly membership gives me just about any artist or album on Rhapsody.

Oh, wait a minute. I'm not living with less. I just don't have to find the room to store it.

Friday - July 8, 2011 - Unfinished Business

I live in conflict. At times, I look at the date on my license and see that my life has moved well past the halfway mark and most of my major accomplishments are behind me. But then I look around me, think of the things I haven't crossed off my ever-growing bucket list and realize that my life, as my backporch upkeep is unfinished business.

My bucket list is largely unwritten, but I do have physical lists of books I want to read, movies I want to watch, CD's I really must listen to. I have a basket of clippings for places I want to go, and in my head, I have stored all those goals I never reached - the time for some have passed and others might still be possible.

Sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by the unfinished business in my life that I can't accomplish anything. I just sit, ponder, wonder how many things from those lists will actually every be finished. And who will really care if they aren't?

Film Class - July 7, 2011

Thursday evening and I'm going to film class. I'm an adjunct professor of English, and this summer - for 8 weeks - I'm teaching a history of film course which starts at 8:05PM. And it run until 10:35PM. I'm a morning person; this was not my first choice of a teaching assignment, but it's film, and I love film.

I grew up in the era of television. Maybe I should say that TV and I grew up together, and in the early years of television, there were a lot of old movies on. I got lost in the films of Shirley Temple and Judy Garland. I was a child who loved to sing, so watching young people on the television who could sing gave me something to shoot for. How I wanted to respond when Mickey suggested to Judy, "Hey, let's put on a show!"

My parents were lean on funds, but once a week, they would put me in the back seat and go to the drive-in. I loved the playground before the films started and the fact that my mother would sneak me pieces from her giant Hershey bar during the films. But what I loved most were the movies. I never slept in the back seat - just lay back and silently watched the films. I was a bit scared during "Dial M for Murder," my first Hitchcock film, and I had to learn to sing "Tammy's in Love" after I heard Debbie Reynolds sing it on screen. I was mesmerized by the airplanes in "Twelve O'Clock High." But the moment I remember most was seeing Cary Grant's anguished face when he sees the wheelchair at the end of "An Affair to Remember." It's still my favorite movie moment.

I've grown up watching film. It transports me to romantic places, exposes me to experiences I'll never have, teaches me things I didn't know through the documentarian's lens. The movie theater is the one place where the phone doesn't ring, where the world stays away. And now, I get to share just a bit of what I love so much with the students in my class.

Mail - July 6, 2011

I was about five years old, and I could look right out of the mail slot in our front door without standing on my tip-toes or bending over; it was perfect. Going back as early as I can remember, I would sit in the living room watching for the mailman who did his rounds on foot with his mail bag and cart. He'd stop on the front walk, gather magazines from his cart and find the appropriate envelopes in his hand, and walk up the stairs to the front porch. By the time, he was on the porch, I'd be in the front hall, waiting for the brass slot to be pushed out and mail to cascade to the carpet below. I'd gather it up to bring it to my mother. I waited for the day I'd be tall enough to look straight out of that slot. I loved watching the mailman through the slot and would dart back as the magazine would shoot through the slot.

By the time I was twelve years old, I was penpalling. I put my name in the pen-pal column of very teen magazine that had one, and before long most of the mail was for me: pink, yellow, gingham, flowered, all sorts of envelopes filled with letters and pictures from all over the country and several foreign countries. Writing letters became my passion. I had a half dozen boxes of beautiful stationary at any given time, and I'd answer each letter in the order it was received. I kept a log of things I'd done and dates I'd written each friend, so I wouldn't miss sharing a moment of my life. I loved hearing from them too. I'd never had many friends, so they became my friends.

I pen-palled through high school despite maintaining and A average, participating in lots of clubs, taking German, piano, and voice lessons. By the time I was in college, I'd lost a number of them, but there were still a half dozen I maintained. As a young mom, I looked to penpals to be my friends and confidants again. I found new ones in magazines. Every evening, as my husband worked second shift, I'd sit at the kitchen table writing letters.

But times change. We got busy. Three pen-pals remained. Then in the early 90's one of them died - cancer. Two of my old penpals still send Christmas cards - one's a facebook friend now.

I look at the pile of mail at the post office (no door slots these days - not even a mailbox by the road) and I remember the smell of a perfumed letter, the joy of seeing a picture enclosed, and the warmth of knowing a friend had come to visit.

Britty (July 5, 2011)

This morning I poured my coffee into my Britty mug. Actually, it's a Cairn Terrier mug I bought in a gift shop somewhere a number of years ago. It probably cost five dollars, and it's nothing anyone would look at twice at a garage sale, but it's special to me because when I think of it, I think of Britty.

Britty was 9 years old when she ran up the porch stairs chasing my son up to the front door late one night. The next morning she was still there, on the porch looking into the full length window. Even though we'd had a Schnoodle for a dozen years, I was never a big dog lover - cats are my friends of choice - but there was something about this bedraggled pooch. We took her in, contacted the local dog officers, and waited for a response.

The owner did contact us. Her story was a sad one. In short, she didn't really want the dog back. She sent me the vetinary records on the dog, and Britty(or Pie as she came to be called) was ours. She'd had a tough 9-1/2 years before she came to live with us. She had one medical issue after another as a result of her years of neglect, and I think we bought our vet a summer home with all the fees we paid him. She had a skin condition and was lovingly groomed every week, by a groomer who seemed to love her as much as we did. On the way home, we would stop for ice-cream. She never learned to play with toys, but she was the best friend I ever had. She was happy to just lie there beside me.

We lost her 5 years later to kidney failure. It was the most profound loss I have ever experienced. If a dog can be your soul mate, then she was mine. I think we both felt battered and bruised in much the same way but for different reasons. She knew I needed her as much as she needed me. At this point, we're caretakers of cats, but someday....

Fourth of July (2011)

I don't remember the last time I saw Fourth of July fireworks up close and personal. I think that my son was a small child at the time, burying his head in my lap, so that would make it around 30 years ago. I do love fireworks, but I have no patience for the traffic and the hordes of people who go to the free town fireworks displays. While others like the sense of community, I don't live in a communal small town. You probably wouldn't see a single person you knew by name.

Luckily, we live outside of Boston, so every Fourth of July, we curl up in our living room, put on the TV, watch the Boston Pops concert, complete with the 1812 Overture we can probably now hum from beginning to end and watch the fireworks over the Charles River. HDTV does a pretty good job of showing off the gorgeous colors, and fireworks of this caliber are ones my town could never afford. But still, at the end, when the last flicker has fallen from the sky, there's that wisfulness than I an not there, but at home observing from a distance, separated by the technology that made it possible to view in the first place.

Next year, maybe, just maybe, we will go to the Museum of Science in Boston, where members can congregate on the roof of the parking garage overlooking the Charles River and watch the fireworks...up close the personal...just once.

Baking, July 3, 2011

My husband bakes for me. That's one of the ways I know that after 41 years he still loves me. You see, I'm gluten intolerant, and so eating pastry is more of a challenge than it used to be.

When my kids were young, I baked almost daily. As a stay at home mom, it was nothing to make a cake, pie, brownies, cookies. I had a box full of recipes, and I was always trying something new. Thanksgiving meant a collection of pies, and once we got past Thanksgiving, it was cookie time. Many years, we had 80-100 dozen cookies of various kinds wrapped in foil. As Christmas approached, my daughter and I would fill baskets or tins with cookies and candies for friends, relatives, people my husband worked with, and anyone we thought might eat them.

But now the kids are grown, I'm busier than I used to be, and gluten-free baking is a whole different thing. You have to mix different types of flours to get the correct consistency. It's trial and error, and so often the results are disappointing enough to end up in the trash. But my husband knows that I love nothing more than a homemade pastry, so, even though baking isn't really his thing, he's taken on the challenge. Thanks to my honey!

Saturday Morning Ritual 07/02/2011

Saturday morning means that The Wall Street Journal has an expanded arts and culture section with in-depth book reviews. I have always loved both newspapers and books, so on Saturday morning, before 7AM, I head down our 120 foot driveway in my pajamas and flip-flops to get the paper. The street, a fairly busy one at other times of the day, is quiet at this early hour, and our house is set back onto a treed lot, so no one can really see me unless I'm at the very end of the driveway

If I'm lucky, the paper is lying on the gravel and not in the drainage ditch that lies on either side of the driveway. More than once, however, I've had to place one foot on the side of the ditch and lean precariously as I reach as far as I can to grab a corner of the plastic covering.
In the past we have had paper chutes, or paper tubes, as some call them, but we are located on a curve, and more than once, the paper chutes have been run over and smashed. Once, when we put them into a wine barrel, a truck drove over the wine barrel and rolled it down the hill. Now, the delivery persons (We do get a local paper as well) just put the papers in plastic covers and toss them in our direction.

Paper retrieved, I head back to the house where coffee is already dripping and likely ready. I will pour a cup and, since it's summer, I will head onto the screen porch with at least two of my three cats to savor the WSJ and read about the wonderful new books I won't have time to read.

Dwayne (7/1/11)

I've never been one to have many friends. My parents had family and acquaintances, but I don't remember either one of my parents having a close friend. Somehow I got the message that friends weren't a good thing, and that the only thing worth having in life was a list of accomplishments. I haven't had a "close" friend since I was 16.

However, about 8 years ago or so, I met Dwayne. Dwayne is a bartender who works in a lovely and classy restaurant close to where I was teaching at the time. I had a several hour break on Thursday afternoons and I needed a meal. The restaurant was in easy walking distance and quiet, and since I'm not adverse to sitting at the bar, I found myself heading over there every Thursday around 2PM and getting something to eat.

Dwayne is an easy person to like. I get along better with men than with women, and Dwayne is a "what you see is what you get" kind of a person. Thursday afternoons is very quiet at the restaurant and often we would talk for hours. Over the years, I started to drive over there even on Thursdays I didn't have to be in the city. If I timed my visits well, Dwayne and I would have lunch together at a corner table. He became the closest thing to a friend I've had in a long time. Sometimes my husband would join me for a meal at the bar, and my daughter has been there with me also.

We started to exchange birthday and Christmas gifts, and even though I knew deep down that I was only a "customer," it was still a very meaningful and satisfying relationship for me. I haven't seen Dwayne in 10 months. We haven't had extra money, so spending the afternoon at the restaurnt and handling the food and bar tab (I'm not a big drinker)along with the tip that I'd never skimp on became something we couldn't handle financially. I miss Dwayne. I miss our discussions and just keeping in touch with someone on a continuing basis.

The picture today is the hydrangea Dwayne gave me a few years ago for my birthday. It was only about a foot high in a pot, and we planted it in front of the front stairs. It's now a sizeable bush and develops more and bigger flowers every year. Everything I look at the bush, I'm reminded of Dwayne. This year it looks like the flowers will be blue.

What's coming and why

Entry 1 - 6/30/11

Well, things in my life haven't been going so well lately:  bankruptcy last year, having friends and relative battling cancer, becoming old enough to get senior discounts and start thinking about social security, having an impossible time losing the weight I need to lose to maintain decent health, not having the money for a vacation, realizing I've never eally made solid life-long friendships, watching my husband get slower and older, and...well, you get the picture.  In short, depression and it's cousins anger and lack-of-interest are starting to invade my life more and more each day.  And I don't like it.  It's bad enough that I feel that the last part of my life hasn't gone as I'd wanted; thinking that I will sabotage the rest of it is more than I can handle.

So, I've taken on a new project.  I've long loved photography and taken a fair number of decent pictures will all sorts of cameras, but more often than not, the camera sits in the closet without me.  Photos  - good or bad - are the way in which we "remember' things, and we all know that the older you get, the harder it is to remember.  I find that I look back on a year and can pick out only isolated days.  It's easy to forget the good things and focus on the not so go. 

Starting tomorrow, my camera and I shall forge a new relationship.  It will go where I go, and I hope to take pictures of the mundane and the magnificent.  Each day, I'll select one and only one picture that signifies the one thing that I believe is either the most significant thing in my day or represents something I don't want to forget.  I'll upload it along with a journal entry.  Maybe the journal entry will morph into memory.  That's quite alright with me. 

I'm doing this for myself, but maybe for you (whoever you are) too.  So welcome to my year ahead.  I'm counting on it to contain many happy things.