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Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Email required Address never made public. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Cassie makes up the rules as she goes.
Observations from the other side of mid-life
Both are independent in very different ways: Carlene stubbornly so and Cassie instinctively so. Cassie is a defender of the underdog. Cassie instinctively knows things most of us have to learn. The world outside of books makes sense to her, where Carlene would be lost without books.
Botley residents share their memories of Bag Lady at service
As you might guess, Carlene was an aisle-seat girl and Cassie loved the window. Yet for all her adventurousness, it was Cassie I put in charge of the money and calling card and her sister, too, for that matter. Cassie takes pride in her physical strength. Challenging herself physically that way uncovered a new side of her, one she still embraces today. Their similarities are what we all want children to be: They were courteous to my friends and co-workers and, except when Cassie would crawl under the table in restaurants to pull out a loose tooth when she was little, I was never embarrassed to take them out in public.
Carlene never left home easily. Cassie was out the door almost as soon as she got her diploma. That they live in close proximity again makes me happy. My first grandchild, Claire, turned 11 years old yesterday. I wrote this on March 17, I remember and I still feel this day in my heart. I used to think of walking as merely a way to get from point A to point B or a means of exercise.
A walk is a walk is a walk… That is, until I walked with Claire. We decided to walk uptown to the post office and library. She put on her Dora sneakers and tan jacket, and I surprised her with new purple mittens with hearts and rainbows that I bought her on winter clearance. This made her very happy. I put on my pink backpack loaded with the envelopes that needed to be mailed, my phone, and some money since I was pretty sure I had library fines to reconcile. Claire put on her Dora backpack and off we went.
The weather was lovely — sunny and about 40 degrees.
Confessions of a bag lady
Since sidewalks are inconsistent for the first few blocks, we cut down an alley to avoid street traffic. When we turned the corner we were back on a sidewalk and our shadows were in front of us. Claire hopped over each crack for the rest of the block, thrilled that her shadow kept up with her. We got to a corner and had to cross a street. I was holding her hand and was just going to walk her across when it dawned on me that I could teach her how to properly cross a street. Do you see a car coming? Then she spied tiny purple flowers in the next yard.
I kept up by walking more briskly, but it was fun to let her get to the next house a little before I did. We went to the post office first, which is next door to the library. I handed the envelopes to the mail clerk. Saying nothing, Claire smiled and looked down at the hearts and rainbows. From under the counter, he produced a brown grocery bag.
Claire reached in and pulled out a small chocolate flavored Tootsie-Pop. Claire insisted I open the wrapper before we left the post office. After going to the library, we walked home in similar fashion. Cracks in the sidewalk. I have a shadow. Oh that the world could feel such peace. Most nights, in a sleepy stupor, I open the door, she does her thing, and she trots back in. He was looking in our direction and Zuzu was looking in his.
God knows she loves to bark at and chase wildlife just ask our cats and the bear she chased away from the garbage last week , and so I snapped on her collar and leash and took her out manually. I thought the buck would run away, but he just looked at us. He was quite amazing. After heading back to bed, I laid awake for 30 minutes before I gave up sleep and went to the spare room. The windows were open and I listened to the crickets, and heard the faint call of an owl.
It warmed me inside. MeToo is so big that it can be overwhelmingly draining without self-care. Have I been a perfect practitioner? Just look at my Facebook posts. Rather than try to fix anything, I sit with my feelings of anger, disappointment, and downright despair, and I name them. Allow them to wash through me without doing anything except being fully aware of their power.
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While inquiry may expose judgments and thoughts about what we feel is wrong, it focuses on our immediate feelings and sensations. Sexual power and religious absolutism are the gods de jure, and they need to be brought to justice one story, one protest, one vote at a time. But please, take care of yourselves and your emotional lives as you journey on.
And then breathe again. Listen to crickets or children laughing or even the hum of a fan. Before you act, do nothing more than focus your attention on a tree, a house, a piece of artwork, or a deer standing in a yard light in the middle of the night. Inquiry builds the emotional muscle we need to carry on.
Have faith that in the long run, justice and goodness — and not paranoia and fear — will prevail. Recently, the husband of a dear friend of mine was killed when a tree limb fell on him while he was working in his yard. A freak and random accident, it has left my friend stunned and so very, very sad.
But you know grief. Sudden loss can feel like an ambush. There are times, too, when grief is more subtle. It refuses to readily identify itself. I write this to remind us that grief is not something we ever finish. This is not to say that what brought us to grieve is somehow a good thing. But all of these losses make up my real life. Subsequently, grief, too, is a part of my real life, and I want grief to have meaning and a purpose, even if that purpose is simply to listen to a friend who is hurting.
We witnessed a simple and bittersweet lesson in grief recently when a female orca whale carried her dead baby on her back for 17 days before finally letting it go. She grieved in her own way, and so should we. In the Bible, specifically Corinthians I: Love in this context is a noun; an affirmation with no excuses or conditions. Paul, for all his faults, is spot on about Love, and his words still resonate with an old agnostic like me who often places conditions on Love in everyday encounters.
My first stop was the grocery store. I picked up four items and got into the express lane. The woman at the checkout was paying for her groceries with dimes and quarters. She laid them out on the conveyor belt one at a time. When she was done, the cashier picked up each coin, one at a time, and counted the amount in her head. This went on for 10 hours.
The transaction ended, and the cashier handed the woman her receipt.
Your guide to a happy, healthy & extraordinary life
Driving to my next destination, after encountering an unusual number of red lights clearly karma was riding shotgun , a construction worker walked out in the middle of the street and stopped traffic. An electric company vehicle needed to pull out of a driveway so someone in a bronze Jeep could get out. OK, I thought, the guy was just doing his job, and the person in the Jeep needed to go somewhere.
Either of them could have been me or someone I know, but more broadly, they were fellow human beings. Neither of them deserved my angst. Score one for kindness and patience! Next and last stop: Like the grocery store, there was an older lady first in line and an older man behind her. She was chatty, talking to the cashier about her dog and asking him about his dog. They talked and laughed as she slowly put her change back in her purse. Finally she moved to the side so the man behind her could pay for his few items.
Soon they were all talking about dogs. I could have been more patient. I could have been more kind. My mother, who is 86, told me that many of the shoppers at the grocery store she goes to always seem to be in a hurry, and some demonstrate their frustration of her slow walk, hearing aids, and near blindness in obvious, rude ways.
I am ashamed, as I should be. We can pause and touch into dread. We can touch bitterness of rejection and the rawness of being slighted.
Botley residents share their memories of Bag Lady at service | Oxford Mail
Whether we are at home or in a public spot or caught in a traffic jam or walking into a movie, we can stop and look at the other people there and realize that in pain and in joy they are just like me. Just like me they want to feel respected and physically comfortable. I listened to a heartbreaking interview on Wednesday with a woman named Katy Brogan, who last week lost her home in the Pawnee wild fire in Northern California.
She offered a raw and honest account of her experience, including her bewildering feelings about the things she and her family lost, and the often not-so-helpful words a few people said to her following the loss. For instance, my grandmother and great-grandmother, who emigrated from Norway in the early twentieth century, were very poor, and they brought their things over in one trunk each. I have the great fortune of owning both of those trunks, and I would be very sad if I lost them, as they reflect part of my history.
A few years ago, my daughter Carlene rearranged her kitchen to make room for the items she received when she got married. I was struck by the connections we have to our kitchen stuff in particular, including how we acquired certain items. For instance, I inherited my the lefse stick and roller when the grandma with one of the aforementioned trunks passed. I use it every year when I make lefse. I also still have a smoke-colored Pyrex bowl that was once part of a set of four I received at my bridal shower when I got married 37 years ago.
The folks in California who lost their homes to wild fires also had lefse sticks and Fannie Farmer cookbooks and dishes and pots and pans they acquired in special, meaningful ways. All my Carhartt stuff.