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Oh for the bravery of the Wild Outdoors

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humingbird

image:birdsandblooms

You’ve seen hummingbirds, right?  Minute things whose wings go faster than you can see, know what I mean?  They’re like a blur, they move so fast.  And the colors!  Jewel tones, like deep green and red and purple; they’re like, wow, just gorgeous, get my drift?  And they’re drawn to red things, right?  So the feeder in Mother’s garden is red on the top and the bottom,can you picture it?  And she makes this red, sugary water syrup and the tiny little things are drawn to it.  They hover over the yellow, daisy shaped holes in the base and drink with their little bodies making tiny up and down movements.  In the heat of the summer, the bees are drawn to the feeder pine and they swarm around the little holes, which means the hummingbirds have to brave the bees to get any of the sugary water syrup and I feel for those poor little hummingbirds because not only do they have to eat several times an hour to survive, now they have to fight the battle of the bees taking all their nourishment.

Is that fair?  Is life fair?  Is there any place I can go to get nourishment that doesn’t include some battle against some force that wants to defeat me?  Will I have the strength and courage to keep up the fight for what I need?

image:thriftyfun

image:thriftyfun

Oh, for the bravery of the jeweled colored hummingbirds,                                                                    oh, for the bravery of the loud, buzzing, bright yellow and black bees,                                                                                                                                                                                 oh, for the bravery of the feral cats who stalk the jeweled colored hummingbirds in Mother’s yard,                                                                                                      who ignore the loud buzzing of the bright yellow and black bees,                                                                                                                                                                    those feral cats who’ve got our movements down                                                                                                                                                                                             who know to run when we come outside;                                                                                                                                                                                                                oh, for the bravery of the wild outdoors.

It wasn’t always this way.  In the gauzy memory of my childhood, my stalwart father’s cheerful, loving spirit hovered over our home as its benevolent and strong protector and my ever present Mother in her dutiful homemaker role made a safe and loving canopy for my brothers and my sister and I to grow; in those days our sanctuary included cats and a caged bird or two and there was harmony for both species.

But somewhere along the way, Mother decided that the back yard should be a bird sanctuary, so she had Daddy get her a stone bird bath, shaped like a huge concrete flower on its concrete stem and most days, she went out to clean out the birdbath and put in fresh water and she kept the hummingbird feeder filled and she determined to chase away the feral cats in the yard to keep them from stalking the birds.

image:ehow

image:ehow

At the merest sight of a cat, she rushed out as if she too had wings, all the while yelling or hissing at the cats and the yard erupted in the black and gray blur of running cats and a great cloud of bird wings rose from the grass to the fence and to the trees where they squawked loudly at the whole commotion.  These days, Mother has lost her wings and her movements are slow and ponderous, punctuated by her cane’s thunk and the times she gets outside are fewer, face it bud, it happens to the best of us, but this doesn’t change her worry, know what I mean?

No, what happens now, if you get what I’m saying, is, now she frets and fusses and tries to hiss at the cats through the window or bangs on the wood part of the back door to scare them off.  Or, she does try to slowly get outside and I’m sitting there, trying to write, and I’m thinking, how can I write with all this going on around me?  Is this part of the test of being a writer, being forced to find the concentration amid all the distractions?

image:fanpop

image:fanpop

I resist the urge to try to take over the task for her, resist trying to alleviate her stress, to make her situation better.  In truth, she’s the only one who can decide to let go of the things that make her nuts.  I can’t fix that for her, so I am resolved I will not let her stresses make me nuts.  I let go. I envision the hummingbird and I take flight.  I will fly unafraid as on the wings of a writer.

And the circle of life goes round…

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circle of life family

image:familycourtservices

Family.  A collection of men and women, boys and girls, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, grandsons and granddaughters, adults and children, little people and big people, older people and younger people, teenagers and senior citizens and babies and every age in between.  And the circle of life goes round.

They come in all shapes and sizes and ages; from the spectrum of the patriarch and the matriarch who started the whole procession across time and states and lifestyles to the tiny ones just starting out on their journey that could take them across time and states and lifestyles.  And the circle of life goes round.

The patriarch and the matriarch began their journey together in the days when not so long before they’d had to brave the cold and dark of night to visit the outhouse; and not so long before, the family had gotten their first car; and not so long before, one of the older brothers had brought in enough money to have the telephone wire run to the house.  Why, there wasn’t even a radio in the house when they were young.  Not so long before.  Not only that, they’d had their own small children running around the house before TV became the new phenomenon.  And the circle of life goes round.

And the patriarch and the matriarch did their best for their children and felt great pride as their children became young adults and started their own separate journeys across time and states and lifestyles and they cried a little (or a lot in the case of the matriarch) as the home nest emptied and the patriarch and the matriarch were just two again.  And the circle of life goes round.

And the family came together in happiness and enjoyment when the first grandchild was born and the patriarch and the matriarch felt vindicated and pleased as they kissed the chubby cheeks of the golden-haired little girl.  And the circle of life goes round.

And careers took hold and the children’s lives were busy and spread out around the states and weddings were celebrated and more grandchildren arrived and the patriarch and the matriarch wished they lived closer so that they could squeeze those grandchildren on a more regular basis.  And the circle of life goes round.

And the grandchildren thrived and the years were captured in the school photos and family portraits and milestone announcements that were sent to the patriarch and the matriarch who proudly decorated their walls and table tops with these trophies of the Family.  And the circle of life goes round.

And the years marched on while grandchildren grew and aged and began careers and found mates and began the next generation and before you knew it there was a third and a fourth and a fifth generation of offspring and they spread across the years from the newborn to the middle-aged.  And the circle of life goes round.

And one day, the family paused in its mad pursuit of life to mourn the death of the elderly patriarch and to contemplate what it all means and to be grateful for their place in the midst of this maddening and nurturing animal called family.  And the circle of life goes round.

And the matriarch moved slowly on through the pain and difficulty of old age, and her children, gray-haired and slower themselves, began to see themselves in a new light, no longer the ones on the quest for new worlds to conquer but instead the pillars of this thing called family.  And the circle of life goes round.

And they saw they were part of the procession that would continue after they were gone and they prayed that the third and fourth and fifth generations and beyond would find the real meaning of life; that they would cherish and embrace this thing called family.  And they saw they would have to trust that the thread of beliefs and values that were passed from their ancestors to them would continue on to their descendants.  And the circle of life goes round.

Why they remember a time when TV was black and white and man first walked on the moon and every house had a landline, except in those days it was just called the telephone.  And the circle of life goes round.

And they saw that the beliefs and values could transcend the new age of smart phones and iPads and technical gadgetry that consume the time and energy of the family.  And they saw that the beliefs and values could live on as the future dawns with even more startling and unimaginable advancements.  And the circle of life goes round.  And the circle of life goes round.

Did I write that right?

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Image:fanpop

image:fanpop

So, here I sit again in front of those sheers on the window that soften the view.  Write without a purpose or goal in mind, my writing teacher, Jack, instructed.  How does that work?  Especially when the mind is always thinking, moving from subject to subject.  I don’t know that I get this exercise, God.  How do I write with no goal or agenda?  Do I write the random thoughts that lead to whole other subjects?  Do I write the ongoing conversations that you and I have throughout the day?  Do I write the goals for the future?  The fears?  The frustrations?  The hopes?

If I have to get Jack’s book out to look at the example again, isn’t that writing with a purpose?  And, since I’ve spent the last few years thinking about stories and plots and characters and writing them, how does that get turned off?

I was just preparing for tomorrow, for the class I help teach on Sunday’s.  It was all about listening to God’s Spirit speaking to my spirit.  How do I have all that in my head and not write about something specific?

Meanwhile, Mother is in the other room burping.  Loudly.  It’s the GERD reaction to what she eats.  I’ve explained to her several times that’s why she has a hard time swallowing, getting medication down, taking all the vitamins and supplements I want her to take so that she can be at her best.  She’s determined to eat what she wants so I drive her crazy with my reminders about GERD.  She complains about her GERD symptoms, which drives me crazy.

Ok, now there I go, telling a story.  Or am I just embellishing or explaining a small thought into full-fledged sentences and story lines?  I’m not sure I get this process.

So, how do I do this?  If this is just a journal of what’s happening in my head, then it’s a writing down of thought processes that always lead back to you, God.  Because I don’t like dwelling on any thought, fear, hope, joy, whatever, without bringing it back into context of how it fits into You, God.  For me, that’s what pulls all of life together.  Knowing that there’s a bigger picture than I can see, but taking joy in the knowledge that it’s like the backside of an intricate, detailed tapestry.

image:tapestryshare.blogspot

image:tapestryshare.blogspot

Lots of random threads that seem to go nowhere, colors intermingled, some tiny stitches overrun by long, bold stitches, everything seemingly unorganized.  But, when the tapestry is turned around, there is a beautiful scene or portrait that couldn’t have been planned or designed by me, yet it’s there and every now and then I get a glimpse of the beauty that is being made through the pain and struggle, or during the inane and boring, or the frustrating and difficult.

Hold that thought.  Mother is calling from the other room to come turn off the ceiling fan over the dining room table.

It’s another hot day and the A/C can do just so much to take the heat off the house.  Personally, I’d be happy with fans in every room, but the medication Mother takes for high blood pressure and huge edema in her feet and legs, lowers her blood pressure and with it her body temperature so that she’s always chilled.  And accusing me of trying to freeze her out when it 78 degrees inside the house.  Good thing I’m beyond hot flashes or we’d really go at each other in frustration.

So, now the fan is off, the orchid is watered and I can return to the keyboard and she can return to trying to stay awake.  I read the other day that the curse of the elderly is spontaneous sleeping.  Mother and I laughed over that because it’s true and she is always trying to stay awake.  Or maybe I laughed and Mother frustratingly agreed it was true.

Mother’s calling again.  It seems the water that I just gave the orchid was too much because it’s running out of the pot.  Good thing I put the pot on the table before I watered it so that it has a long way to run before it runs off the edge of the table.  Mother, of course, is sure that I’m about to flood the dining room.  It only takes three paper towels to sop up the excess and Mother is mollified.  Somewhat, anyway.

image:123rf

image:123rf

She and I have two different outlooks on the world.  Yin and Yang.  I tell her that her glass is always half empty and she tells me no, it isn’t, her glass is cracked and the liquid is oozing out the bottom.  Totally agree with that!

Daddy’s glass was always bubbling up and the excess running over the top.  How in the world did her live with her for sixty-one years and not lose his excess?  How did he retain his equilibrium and provide enough for her as well?  Well, I know the answer to that.  I’ve never known anyone who loved God more and spent more time with God daily than he did.  To me, that proves it.  God has to be big because he’s bigger than Mother’s pessimism.

Which brings me back to the whole point of a journal.  For me, anyway.  It’s reaffirming, with every rabbit trail, every thought, every distraction, that God is big.  Big enough to get me through.  And, thankfully!  To get me through with excess bubbling over the top of my glass instead of leaking out the bottom.

Vacation! Pack the headstone and burial plots

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image:practicalmoneymastery

image:practicalmoney mastery

We’re planning a vacation!  Exciting, even if it does involves headstones and burial plots.  And, arrangements to make for travel to New Mexico to the cemetery.

It all takes me back to that night three years and eleven months ago.

Did I hear Daddy’s last breath?  I’d walked into the living room to close the front door against the evening air that had cooled down the stuffiness of the day’s warmth inside the house and realized that for the first time in nearly three days, Daddy’s loud, raspy breathing had calmed.

Was he breathing?  I concentrated to tune out the sounds of Mother clattering dishes in the kitchen as well as the sound of the TV in the dining room and tried to focus on the sounds right where I stood.

The lamps on the sofa end table and on the old sewing machine cabinet next to Daddy’s recliner usually cast a soft, warm glow across the red carpeting and made the brown of the room’s wood trim, the brown of the recliner and the gold, beige and brown of the sofa look comfortable and cozy.  Tonight the room they lit was changed as Daddy’s hospital bed, squeezed into the space between the recliner and the sofa, sucked all normality from the room.  He lay there just as he had for the last four days.  He looked unchanged, his withered, translucent skin pulled tight against shrunken bones, covered by a sheet, he was mostly unmoving, either sleeping or out of it due to the morphine and Ativan that hospice provided for comfort in his last days.  The nose plugs of the oxygen tubing were still in place, his mouth open slightly, his eyes closed, his skin color still the slightly yellow pallor it had been for weeks.  One thin, stick of an arm was outside the sheet, propped up on one of the pillows that had been placed along his side to keep him from wounding himself on the bed rails.  His skin was so fragile, it didn’t take much pressure to cause bruising and bleeding.

It had been four days since he’d wanted any water or food.  The last time he tried, it just wouldn’t go down.  The only thing that had been easy about his care since then was using the medicine dropper to put the drugs in his mouth to keep him comfortable.

In the few weeks that he was failing and able to do less and less for himself, we’d talked about the future and how he’d always planned to be there for Mother to the very end and how he would have to leave her now, when he didn’t want to leave her alone.  We talked about the things I would need to do to keep the house running and Mother able to stay in her home.  We talked about when he needed medication, what I could do to help him get from the bed to the wheelchair to the recliner to the wheelchair to the table.  He was responsive and mostly clear headed.  One of the effects of liver cancer is its effect on the brain and every now and then he would seem confused but for the most part he was lucid and knew who he was and who we were and what the daily issues were.

He was six weeks away from his eighty-ninth birthday and I would be surprised if there was a time in all those years that he was unmotivated.  Even as he got weaker, he got up every morning with a purpose.  That habit was hard to break.  It had just been five days earlier that he woke and sat up in the hospital bed in the morning and tried to get up.  I helped him dress and then said,

“Daddy, this is all further you have to get up.  Why don’t you just lie back down?”

“Oh.”  He said.  “All right.”

That was the last morning he spoke clearly and the last time he tried to follow his normal morning routine.  There was no fear on his part that he was leaving, no anxious grasping on to life.  There was never any regret on his part for the life he’d lived, because he lived it honestly and fully, every day.  He had nothing to confess, nothing to make right.  He’d done that along the way.  He’d invested himself fully in serving the God that he knew loved him and there was no doubt that God was waiting for him, as soon as his last breath in this life was expended.

image: google images

image: google images

Was this his last breath?  His chest seemed to contract and there was a slight hissing sound from him mouth, then he was still.  I moved closer to the bed and laid my hand on his skin.  Warm.  His chest did not move again.  There was no sound of air moving.

In the couple of hours that followed, Mother and I sat down to eat the dinner she’d been preparing.  We knew we had to have food to get us through.  Then I called all the family and Hospice.  Hospice sent a nurse who verified he had died and she called Loma Linda University where he had donated his body to science.

It was a hard night and the next day was torture.  Mother and I were exhausted and emotionally spent, yet the phone didn’t stop ringing, one niece came over and people from the church came.  Mother and I have said since, that if we could have, we would have taken that day away from everyone and everything.  The next day, we were back to normal and able to go on with plans.

image:digginitinc

image:digginitinc

Plans were fairly simple because it would be about two years before Daddy’s cremated remains would be released from the teaching hospital.  It was Daddy’s idea to donate their bodies to science, both because it was such an inexpensive way to take care of remains and because he liked the idea that even after his soul was bounding across heaven in a new heavenly body, his old body here just might do someone, somewhere, some good.

His remains were released last year and they wait patiently on a shelf at the funeral home.  We know he is not there.  He has begun eternity with Jesus in heaven and is unbothered that a few ashes are yet to be buried.  Mother has not felt physically able to make the eight hundred mile trip, but now she says it’s time, so we will choose headstones and go to see his remains interred in the plot in the small country cemetery where so many other Deans and Jones remains lay.

Daddy’s children, my brothers and my sister, will come from Texas and Tennessee and northern California to join us there and we’ll reminisce and laugh and play together and have a vacation away from our daily lives and Mother will bask in the attention of being surrounded by her children.  And I’ll have a vacation from being her sole caregiver.

image: the3dstudio

image:the3dstudio

We’ll need each other as we stand by that cemetery plot and see the headstone set and are reminded again of our loss and finality of what life comes to in this world.  Ashes.  Buried in a plot of ground.  And we’ll joy at the thought that one day we will all be together again, our souls unfettered by any loss or pain.  We’ll go on from there to continue life, living out the legacy our loving, faithful, funny, intelligent, caring Daddy gave us:  love God, love each other and live life fully.

Stretching Roots

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I sit at the computer desk with its gauzy view out of the windows through the white sheers that hang there.  The world looks softer and maybe the sheers will hide all the tasks that need doing.  I can block them out and just think, and try to write.image:fiskars.org

Not that I can really forget them, because Mother keeps a list and she never forgets.  She forgets, at 85 that I did buy sugar and filled the large canister at the back of the counter.  In fact, when I got home from the writing workshop last night, she looked at me with that piercing look and said,

“I thought you were going to buy sugar?”

“I did.”  I said, “Remember, you stood right there when I filled the large canister?”

“Oh.”  That look of puzzled defiance she gets when she’s sure of something and I’m sure of just the opposite, “Well,” she said, “I used the sugar in the small Sugar canister.  I had to ration how much I put in the apples I cooked to put up in the freezer.”

The apples arrived on the front porch yesterday morning in a plastic grocery bag.  From one of the neighbors across the street?  Probably.  We take them some of our excess and they share their’s with us.

The cooked apples were still in the pan.  Sitting on top of the stove.  I taste them and say, “They’re perfect.  The ones you made last time were too sweet for me.”

image: justhungry.orgThat gets Mother out of her padded chair in the dining room, in front of the TV, and she heads for the kitchen.  Her footed cane is where she left in the kitchen.  She probably had something in both hands when she left the kitchen for the dining room.

I meet her halfway with the cane and she comes to taste the apples, too.  We agree they are delicious and I tell her that it’s nice living with someone who cooks these tasty things.

So, now she’s happy.  I’m back home and appreciating her hard labor.  And it is hard labor for her.  It’s hard for her to stand with her scoliosis and she tires easily.

But does she forget the things she wants done?  Of course not.  And that list just doesn’t ever seem to get any smaller.

Wash the windows.  Prune the grape vines.  Soak the vegetable garden.  Weed the vegetable garden.  Water the newly planted apple tree.  And why is that round spot in the back yard looking dead when everything else looks green?  Did you find some chives seeds?  Did you water that new flower that you planted?

And on, and on, and on.

She loved working in the gardens.  So did Daddy.  He did all the big tasks and even collected up the weeds she picked out of the gardens.  They took pride in their yard and loved growing fruits and vegetables and flowers.  With her curved back she really can’t do that anymore.  Oh, she tries and then is in pain and we head off to the chiropractor.

I never thought I’d be Farmer Dean.  Dirt on my hands?  No way.  But, I came back because they were both sick and when Daddy was dying, I told him I’d be here for Mother.  He always said he would live forever and bury all of us so it was hard on him to let go when Mother was still here.  But, I think he took comfort knowing I would be here.  I could see him relax at the end when I said I’d stay.

Of course, at that point I had no idea I’d take his place in doing the outside work, but Mother and her lists!  The only way to keep her somewhat mollified is to work on the items on the list.  And which is more important?  All the inside tasks or the outside tasks?  It’s the stress of juggling of all the things that have to fit into each day’s schedule that threatens to take me to the brink of losing it.

There’s a lot to do outside.  Grapefruit, peaches, nectarines, apricots, squash, cucumbers, strawberries, grapes.  All I can say, is, thank you, God, that the apricot tree is huge and getting old and the crop is far less than it was in the last thirty years that Mother and Daddy picked and froze and canned and gave away and ate until they thought they might pop.  image: google images

A small crop from any of the trees or grapevines or the vegetable garden is just fine with me, because I get to do all the heavy lifting; which actually isn’t nearly as hard as listening to Mother worry about what she will do with all the fruit and how disappointed she is that the crop is so small and why did we only get a few squash on the vine, and on, and on, and on.

This year she wanted herbs, so of to the nursery we went and I had to find time to get all the plants and seeds in the gardens.  Now, each evening before dinner, we’re picking lettuce, arugula, chives, dill, cilantro and nasturtiums for the table.

And the flowers.  The California Poppies, the Evening Primrose and the Bougainvillea, I love those.  The huge camellia outside my bedroom window covered with perfect pink blooms.  And the geraniums and the Gerbera daisies and the chocolate mint that I just found at the nursery and planted.  Yum!

I guess the joke’s on me, because after three plus years of working in the gardens, watering, convincing Mother she really could afford and should get, a sprinkler system, I find myself enjoying the digging and the work and the fruits of the labor.

So, yes, the joke is on me, God.  I thought I was just here to ease Mother’s last years and I’m the one whose roots are getting stretched and planted in new soil.  Thank you that I’m here, God, and that you can give me ears to listen to the lists and not go mad.  I feel you smiling, God.

Chocolate Gravy and Legacies

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Mother is sleeping in her padded chair in the dining room while on the TV in front of her, a cooking show goes on and on about how to whip potatoes.  Funny, all those years I thought we were having mashed potatoes they were really whipped potatoes because Mother always did them just like the TV show says to do them if you want them whipped.  The test cook chef is amazed at this new recipe she has found and how good they are.  They should have been at Mother’s house for the last seven decades and they could have already had them.image source:cookscountry

I suppose that means we never really had mashed potatoes.  One thing we had that I bet most people didn’t, was chocolate gravy.  Over fresh, hot biscuits.  Wow.  I wanted to get my face down close to the plate and just shovel it in while savoring every bite and lick of the spoon.  It’s the consistency of gravy, but it’s chocolate.  Milk chocolate.  Not a glace, not a mousse, it’s gravy; chocolate gravy that runs down the side of the hot Bisquick biscuits straight out of the oven.  Man, it’s good.  Melts in your mouth.  Hits that chocolate itch perfectly.

I’ve only met two other people outside the family who knew what chocolate gravy was.  And they were clients I had in Nashville, a young woman who moved to town from a little country town in Oklahoma or Arkansas.  Her mother was in town to help her find a condo to buy and we had a good time visiting as we rode around looking at condos.  Turns out the mom made chocolate gravy!  I couldn’t believe someone else knew what that was.  And, of, course, they put it over hot biscuits.  Although, I think she made her biscuits from scratch.  Mother could too, but usually was too busy.

Mother always made yeast rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.  They were made from scratch and were fabulous.  Yum.  One of those things that brings back memories the moment you smell that yeast in the oven.  Mother hasn’t made them in years because it’s a big job but my sister used the same recipe to make them all the years her girls were growing up.  Now my sister’s girls and grandchildren always ask for them at the holidays so she’s built the same memories in her family that we had growing up.

Lemon meringue and chocolate cream pies.  Mother made those from scratch too.  And in the summer, Daddy would buy a lug of peaches and Mother would make peach ice cream or sometimes, banana or fresh strawberry.  Once in a while, chocolate, but usually a fresh fruit ice cream.  Daddy would sit out on the back stoop, cranking the ice maker, filling the sides of the ice cream maker with rock salt and ice and talking to whoever would sit out there with him.

Someone was usually playing the piano, one of us kids running in and out the back door.  Or sitting on the couch, noses buried in a book.  My sister used to say that if I was reading she could never get my attention.  But what I remember are all the sounds of the house swirling around like background music to whatever I was reading.

About the time I moved to Nashville to sell houses, I gave my sister a big bag of books that I wasn’t taking with me and her husband said,image source:shereads.org

“We’ve lost her now.  She’d be buried in books for weeks.”

It runs in the family, this immersion in books.

When Daddy died, we donated over 1100 of his books to his favorite university.  I can now go online and search their library catalog and see his name there.  Such a nice feeling.  He left a quite a legacy.

Speaking of legacies, I remember being concerned when I was a girl that since I only had two brothers, the Dean name might not carry on.  I’ve since learned that there are millions of Deans, but most of them are in the Eastern United States or in Great Britain and European countries.  In my life, I have only personally met two, maybe three other families named Dean.

Turns out, I needn’t have worried.  My oldest brother has three sons to carry on the name and two grandsons, so far.  My other brother has four sons carrying on the name and they are all at marrying age and beginning their families.

Legacies are interesting.  It started with two, Mom and Dad.  Sixty four years later there are forty-six of us now, plus three deceased and another seven that left the family through divorce.  We stretch from the youngest who is about five months to Mother, the oldest at 85 with every age in between.

One year, there were four or five great-grand kids graduating high school the same year.  In the last year, four of the great-grand kids brought spouses or significant others into the family and started having babies.  Two more got engaged this year.

image source:mcmnetworkIt’s good being here so that Mother can stay in her home but it feels different from what I thought these years of my life would feel.  I miss being free to travel to my sister’s or my brothers’ houses.  Laughing with the kids and their kids.  I always thought I’d be there to support my nieces and nephews and their children.  I didn’t imagine that I would not be able to travel to their graduations or weddings.  But here I am, so that Mother can stay in her house.  That’s a good thing.  I’m happy to be here for her.  I just didn’t expect the limitations it would mean for me.

But then, I’m not sure you can really understand what your legacy will be.  A warm, safe home, with lights shining out the windows in the twilight and the smell of Mother’s cooking are what I remember.  That and Daddy’s peace and calm.  I guess I have to just trust that I built some legacy with my nieces and nephews and their children and that this part, this being stuck in one place, that’s part of the legacy as well.

Disclosure: this may gross you out

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image source:medicinenet

image source:medicinenet

Dear God, I don’t know what else to do to help her?  I’ve cut back Mother’s heart medicine and it seems to help but only until the half-life of the meds wears off and then the sluggish valves in her legs are again overwhelmed and huge with edema.  I researched herbs for heart function and sluggish circulation.  We’ve bought herbs and even got Dr. Costello’s approval.  They help but we can’t get her totally off the Rx drugs that reduce her blood pressure so that the sluggish valves in her legs work easier.

So she suffers from side effects of those meds.  On the day of the worst I’d seen in a long time, I no longer knew what to do. She’d only been on minimal doses of her meds.  But she couldn’t swallow much, was coughing, had chest pain, what felt like a knot in the middle of her chest, spitting up saliva, sore throat, croaky voice, hiccups when she tried to eat.  After an hour of back patting, she was finally able to get some hot tea down, her system seemed to calm and she was able to eat her dinner.

There has to be a cause of this and a solution, God.  What am I missing?  All I knew to do was go back to the computer for more research.  I decided to search a list of her symptoms to see what might come up.  There it was: Gastroesophageal Disease (GERD).

Mother has GERD?  No wonder the look of doubt on Dr. Costello’s face when we would describe some of her symptoms and I’d say they were a side effect of her meds.  They weren’t.  Oh, sure, there are some stomach distress and diarrhea side effects to those meds but that doesn’t explain all the other things going on.  GERD does. image source:haverfordlibrary.org

It occurs as stomach acid backs up into the esophagus.  It can be life threatening if the sufferer aspirates in their sleep.  Causes?  Spicy foods, high fat foods, caffeine, raw onions, tomatoes, citrus juices, French fries, ice cream.  Mother loves all of these things.  And eats them with regularity.

Well, hit me upside the head with an “a-ha” moment.  I know what caused that worst flare-up.  Jessica and Juan, the young couple renting Sarita’s house next door, brought us a thank you gift of Christmas jelly because I went over and to give their old bull-dog, Sugar, water and food and let her in and out in the evenings while they visited family for Christmas.

One of the gifted jars of jelly was Jalapeno jelly.  Mother had never had it before and I was excited because I enjoyed it in the South with cheese and crackers.  We opened it immediately and was it good!  Hot!  Best on cheese, but I’d been off dairy for nearly a year, so eating it with gluten-free crackers seem the next best thing.  So good you can’t just have just one, so believe me we didn’t stop there.  Three days we had some for breakfast, both Mother and I.  And then that night, she tried to eat dinner and the episode was the worst I had seen.

Thank you, God!  At last I knew what’s going on and that there was something we could do about it; not only for Mother’s sake but for mine as well.  Truth be told, I too had started having that chest pain and times when things won’t go down easily.

And all the times we’ve had to leave a restaurant or Mother has had to retreat to the bathroom because she’s spitting up her food.  And then the rest of her meal sits untouched on her plate.  Or, the times when she couldn’t make it to the restroom and there’s a napkin across her plate covering up spit-up food and saliva.  Lots of saliva.  She was embarrassed.  I was grossed out.image source:google images

I printed out all the GERD info and took it to Mother in the dining room to explain what I’d found.  I started talking and she muted the TV so that she could hear.  She was not happy with this information.

“I’m 85 years old and I will eat what I want!”  She declared forcefully.

“Fine.”  I’d anticipated a fight over this and was prepared.  “Do whatever you want.  Just go in the other room and do your spitting and coughing and hiccuping away from me.”

“Humph!”

“In the last year I’ve had that same pain and there are times when I can’t swallow.”  I try to reason with her, but rational thought is not her strong point these days.  “I’m only 62 and I don’t want to have this the rest of my life and get as bad as you are.”

She turns the TV sound back up.

“We at least need to cut the spices WAY back and not make every dish we eat spicy hot.”

“Humph.”  Her attention is purposely glued to the TV.

Over the next few days I casually repeated the list of foods to avoid and I try to be on hand when she’s adding spices to the pot of beans (which turned out very spicy) and with the cheese soup, we used gluten-free four and Almond Milk and I followed the recipe instead of tripling the chili pepper as Mother usually does.  I thought the soup was good.  She didn’t.  She still says she will eat what she wants but I see her softening when it comes to my health.  She’s not hard-hearted, just stubborn.  Good thing I’m affected as well or she’d never moderate what she does!

My research indicated taking Licorice tablets, Ginger and Silymarin to help the sphincter that has been damaged by all the reflux acid so I added those to her daily pills.  My hope was that she would moderate her diet and with the extra herbs, she would eventually heal.

In the last month since I made the GERD discovery, Mother has (somewhat) graciously moderated how she cooks and I’m doing better.  For herself, however, she is determined to eat the way she likes to eat.  Milk, spices, butter on everything, tomato sauces, citrus – whatever is on the list to avoid – she goes all out to eat.

“I’m eighty-five and I’ll eat the way I want to eat!”  She repeats every so often.

I had bought the over the counter acid reducers with the hope that she wouldn’t rely on them, however, it appears she isn’t changing her diet – although she did admit she had continued for another week to eat the Jalapeño Jelly but was stopping as she was having more trouble getting food down.  I’m concerned she could aspirate at night, so she started taking the acid reducer.  Of course, she thinks that means she can eat whatever she wants without consequence, but even that isn’t a magic cure.

“I don’t want to hear about it anymore!”  She said last night when she was hiccuping too much to get anything down.  But I know at last she is hearing me.  And that is the biggest part of the battle.  Nothing changes for her until she lets go of her believe it’s all just sinus drainage and admits that she has a problem with what she is eating.  It’s like any addiction or habit that any of us has, WE have to be the one who wants to change.  No one can change for us.

However, I’m relying on one of her most basic instincts, she’s a mother.  When she sees her daughter suffer, she wants to do something different.  Oh, she fusses that she doesn’t know how to cook without gluten and dairy and high fat foods, but I see her make the effort for me and I’m grateful and hopeful that one day she’ll make that same effort for herself.

Dreams

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highrise city scape

image source: fineartamerica.com

In the dream, I’m in the middle of towering steel and glass highrises in a large, downtown city, the sky’s blue reflected from building to building.  I’m not aware of any particular sounds or smells but street traffic is heavy and sidewalks are crowded with busy, rushing people.

I’m anxious.  I’m to start a new job in one of these highrises.  Will I be able to deal with the new work environment?  Will I succeed?  Where will I live?  What part of town?  Will I be able to support myself?  How much style will I have to sacrifice to find a place that is affordable?  Will I be able to build a retirement income?

I vacillate in the dream from being energized at the prospect of a new challenge to feeling out-of-place and aware that I no longer belong in this busy, downtown world.

The dream never seems to go beyond that point and when I wake, I’m surprised that I dreamed of a new city and a corporate job.  Is it San Francisco, Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Nashville, or perhaps, Dallas?  I can’t pinpoint the city.  I’ve worked in highrises in all those places but it’s been thirty-three years since the first day I walked into a job in a highrise and eighteen years since I left the corporate world for self-employment.

Strange that I never had the dream until after I’d retired from selling Real Estate and moved back home to care for my elderly parents.  Perhaps that’s the point.  I left the outside work world of highrises and busy downtown streets and took on a job that is primarily contained within the four walls of this suburban house.

I’d had the dream a time or two before I realized it was a stress dream.  It typically came the night before I had some task to which I had committed myself but about which I was uncertain.  The times of the dream that stand out in my memory are the nights before Daddy’s Memorial Service; before I drove to UCLA the first year I went to the Los Angeles Times Book Fair; the night before singing a solo, also the night before I started my first writing class in West L.A. with the highly regarded writer and teacher, Jack Grapes.

Dream - beach scene

image source: google images

A few nights ago, I had the dream again.  This time, there were people at my new job in the highrise.  They weren’t faceless, but I couldn’t tell you much about them.  Again, the city was unknown, but everything was bright, shiny, modern and exciting.  I asked a thirty-something man where he lived and what the housing options were in town.  He told me about the trendy, beautiful, large and upscale apartment he rented in a building with all the amenities: pool, spa, exercise rooms, doorman, cleaners, restaurant, WiFi, grocery, roof gardens.  He said it was downtown in walking distance to my new job.  Wow.  Sounded wonderful.  And expensive.  Probably far more than I could afford.

“How much do you pay, if you don’t mind me asking?”  I asked.

“Three Hundred and Forty-Eight Dollars.”  He said cheerfully.

“What?”  Surely, I’d heard wrong.  “Three thousand, Three Hundred and Forty-Eight?”

“No.  Three Hundred Forty-Eight.”

I was ecstatic.  I was starting a great new job and I’d have a wonderful place to live.  This was thrilling!

When I woke later, I was amazed at the change of my stress dream to a dream of possibility and excitement of great things to come, things of challenge as well as enjoyment and ease and comfort; things bright and shiny and new, surrounded by blue sky.  But why had it changed?

I’d gone to bed in the wee hours of the night, tired but happy after posting to my blog and getting positive feedback from family and friends and even strangers with blogs of their own.  The dream hadn’t changed because I had learned all I needed to know about writing well; nor because I’d crossed the goal line of maximum impact with my writing footprint on the big, wide, world.

Rather, I had begun.  I had pushed against the fears of not being good enough, of having nothing to say, the fear of saying something offensive or politically incorrect that would end any chance of being considered a successful writer.

Jeremiah 29:11

image source: Photobucket

As I thought about the dream, positive as it was, the unknowns lurking there were clear.  Will there be enough income to take me through retirement?  Enough for some of life’s finer things, like travel or a lovely place to live?  Was there significance to the age of the man who told me about the apartment?  I was successful in the corporate world in my thirties and forties.  Am I now too old to accomplish anything of worth or value?  By the time Mother’s days on earth are finished, will it be too late for me to travel and to embrace once again, the outside world?

Yet, when you boil it all down, is there anything new here?  Don’t we all have the same needs for significance, safety and security?  None of us can see the future and a dream of stress or a dream of promise won’t change what happens, but my dream reminds me that I’m to push forward against the fears, all the while resting firm in what I know to be true:

“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you a hope and a future.”  Jeremiah 29:11.

God will be there to walk with me into that waiting future.  What else could I need?

To value or not to value….

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image source:google images

     image source:google images

Monday night TV at our house is PBS and Antiques Roadshow.  First, the      original show that is recorded in Great Britain, which is especially fun because those antiques are really old.  Next is the American version with relatively newer antiques, followed by a new show this season, Market Warriors, which is about four buyers who hit flea markets and sale houses to find treasures that are then auctioned off, hopefully for a greater price than what the buyers spent to purchase the items.

The fun in watching these shows is to see if that stuff around the house that you thought was junk is just junk, or if that loved item that some ancestor was sure was valuable, really is valuable.  I like to test my knowledge and see if I can recognize the item before the expert tells us what it is.  I know what I like, but I also know that most of the ‘tells’ that indicate value or worthlessness are mostly Greek to me.  If I can learn by watching and guess the designer or manufacturer then maybe I can move beyond my ignorance. That isn’t the real reason though, because ignorance isn’t that big a deal; everyone is ignorant about something.  To change that, you just have to learn.

But can I move beyond an upbringing that was filled with cast-offs, cheap, mass-produced functionally adequate furniture, clothing, housewares – all devoid of any real beauty or value?  Can I move out of the cookie-cutter suburbs and into something that actually has some class?  We had no money, no class and no fine culture.  Can I cover up that basic beginning with a coat of sophistication like you’d cover over a cheap, pressed cardboard backed dresser with a new finish?  Will I then feel valuable?  Will I then BE valuable?

And what is real value?  Mother grew up with even less that we had when I was a child and she loves these shows as well.  Is that because she sees the beauty in things, whether of value or not?  Like the three-quarters finished paint by number canvases we found when going through stored boxes looking for the oil paintings she did years ago.  We hung her oil paintings in the house and I sat the paint by number canvases in the box for Goodwill.  Mother took them out of the box and keeps saying she is going to get some double stick tape and put them, unframed, up on the walls of her bedroom; walls that already have hanging on them the original oil paintings that she did as well as oils done by friends; walls that also have outdated calendars with pretty pictures but which can’t be thrown away because they’re pretty.

Why would she even care about the old paint by number paintings?  Is she able to see some beauty that I can’t?  Doesn’t she know how tacky they will look on the walls?  Actually, I can see the beauty of the scene, if you stand far enough back that you don’t key in on the paint by number aspect, but there’s no monetary or resell value to it.  So, why keep it?  Why clutter up the full walls with one more thing that is cheap and mass-produced?

The clutter that covers every space in the house drowns out all beauty for me.  It’s too much.  It threatens to close in on me, so my mind’s eye tries to shut it out and it becomes some dark, busy background that drives out the air and leaves me feeling stifled and I find myself breathing shallowly, barely existing.

And then, some person on Antiques Roadshow brings out their treasured tchotchke and the appraiser tells them it’s worth hundreds or maybe thousands and as I look at it my childhood memory is jogged.  Mother turns me and says that the one she has, that is just like the one on TV is in the cedar chest, and “don’t forget to keep it, don’t send it to Goodwill.”

image source: google images

image source: google images

My breathing expands, I take in more air.  There is value, right here in all the clutter.  Right here in my classless childhood.  Not really because there’s something here that’s worth some monetary amount, but because Mother, whose family survived the Dust Bowl, the depression and years as itinerant workers, recognized value and held on to it.  And I see that she has a classiness that I had missed before.  A classiness that has nothing to do with things and everything to do with the intrinsic value we each have.  We’re God’s creation.  We are the thing of value.  All the stuff that fills up life, whether it’s sophisticated and expensive or classless and cheap is just that, stuff.  Once again I see that I do have value, and with that reminder, I have hope that I can look beyond the things and recognize the true beauty around me and the real value within.

Some days are like that…

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image source: www.mindpluming.com.au

image source: mindpluming.com.au

Some days my ears just can’t take it.  The sound of Mother’s voice hitting them feels like a loud, clanging gong that reverberates through my brain, threatening to blow the top off of my head.  Today is one of those days.

I try to have some time alone at the start of the day.  Time to take the supplements that help balance my endocrine system, time to talk to God and breathe in His rest for my spirit and soul; time to get to the computer to write in my Journal before the sound of the TV or the radio or Mother herself.

If I wake and she isn’t up, I listen for a few minutes to see if she’s stirring and about to head for her bathroom.  If I hear anything, I lie still, eyes closed, playing possum until she’s come down the hall, adjusted the thermostat on the Heat/Air unit and gone into her bathroom.  Once she’s done that, I have anywhere from one to two alone hours before she emerges, fully dressed, hair combed and sprayed, her diary writing done, her Bible readings done.

I mistimed it this morning.  I’d been dozing and thinking about getting out of bed for about forty minutes, the house still totally silent when I decided to get up and get into the home office and on the computer, usually another good way to avoid first thing in the day contact.  I’d done stretches and taken supplements and was turning up the heat when her bedroom door opened.

She emerged in her pale lavender robe, her hair mussed, her insulated cup in one hand, the other hand on her footed cane.

“You’re up?”  She began as she walked down the hall toward me, the sound of the clunk of her cane on the floor in front of her with each step.  “Did you turn the heat up?”  Clunk.  “Is the sun already on that side of the house?”  Clunk.  “Did you sleep cold?”  Clunk.  “That heater blower fan just doesn’t work right.”

“Uh huh.”  I answer to each thing she says, my brain reacting to each of her comments by zooming off in a dozen directions, leaving me irritated, frazzled and angry.  I’d lost a pill under the bed, so I lean over and pull up the bed dust ruffle, but still I know she’s coming closer.  She’s moved into my open bedroom door.  I keep looking for that pill, not talking; anything to discourage interaction; anything to keep me from saying something rude or caustic.

Fortunately, the house is cool enough at 68 degrees that she can’t stand there long and she goes into her bathroom, turns on the ceiling heater and closes the door.

I breathe deeply, my ears and mind immediately less stimulated, I move around the room, making the bed, tidying up.  The easier days when I lived by myself and had all the alone time in the mornings that I wanted are gone.  I used the time in the same way I try to do now, spending time with God, listening to the Bible on tape or to Christian music.  By the time I left the house for work, I had been reminded of who I was: a child of God.  Loved by Him and with His grace and power, I could tackle the day.  I was ready.  Not that my days were simple or easy but by spending time with God first, I went out prepared.  Those days with the luxury of being alone and making choices that suited me best have changed.  Now all decisions are shared and I find myself in the pressure cooker of most of my waking hours in the same space as the person who gave me birth.  Most adult children know what a challenge can be.

Tuning her out nags at me.  I need distance from her but I’m torn by needing time to be myself, time to develop a writing skill to prepare for the future I will have once she is gone versus the need to be available to her as her caregiver along with the need to give her respect.  Help me, God, is my thought as I breathe in and out.

“It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your statutes,” pops into my brain.

image source: GodVine

image source: GodVine

Ah, yes, Proverbs 119:71.  Yes, it is good for me to be here with Mother, good for me to have to learn to deal with the differences in our personalities, good for me to learn to react in love, in graciousness.  Good for me to have to throw myself back into God’s arms, to drink in His love and strength, to depend upon Him for this challenge.  Good for me to know that I can’t do this on my own.  Good for me to know that depending upon myself only leads to semi-solutions like tuning her out or playing possum.  Those drain me of energy and vitality.  They do nothing to ease the irritations.

“It is good for me, God, to lean on your strength, to rely on you.”  Good for me to be reminded, Victoria, God knows the journey you need to take before you do.  I breathe deeply and feel the love and peace of God float across my frazzled nerves and fractured thoughts.

As Mother emerges from the bathroom some time later, I turn to her and smile, “How are you today, Mother?”