Tag Archives: personal

Tomorrow, A Million

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This is just a quickie as it is very late and I am very tired. I am not sure where the day went, but went it went. I think that tomorrow the world will cross the 1,000,000 infection mark. That feels crazy as I remember noting, with my students, when there were 1000 cases, in China, back in January, I think. This is hard to believe.

There are still many people who don’t take this seriously: most of the state of Texas seems to not take it seriously. I wonder who is right? I miss my students and have a strange sense of time right now. I miss my students and wonder if they miss me. I miss my students and miss my structured days a it, even though my ability to walk my dog once a day and spend time in my garden and sew the quilt squares for the Lockdown Patchwork Project makes me happy.

Nicole’s uncle died of COVID-19 and I worry he is just the first person of many who I will be acquainted with. 240,000 people will die, they say, if we do everything right. Texas? Any ideas about that one?

Tomorrow is another day. I wish on the stars each night that it is only the smaller number and that we figure out this crazy virus soon.

Good night.

Date: 01 April 2020

Cases: 937,567

Deaths: 47,235

Mortality Rate: 5.038%

Daily Promise

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It has been several days since I have written, and I now realize that it is a massive oversight. So much is changing, every day, sometimes every hour, that this situation almost requires documentation. So, I heretofore commit to writing at least a little bit, every day.

I post the statistics at the bottom of every post but suffice it to say: living through a pandemic is eerie and off-putting in the strangeness of how everything feels the same, except that you can’t go to work and you are not supposed to see your friends or go shopping for anything non-essential. Today, Drs Birx and Fauci presented some very interesting projection modelsof where we go from here. Without any intervention, 2,000,000 deaths. With interventions, our best-case scenario is about 200,000. Dr. Birx always says we need to do better, and I appreciate that about her. She also has an amazing scarf collection and wears them tied in interesting ways every day. Her scarf affinity reminds me of Madeline Albright’s pins; I love good accessorizing.

I am not trying to be glib. In fact, I am very worried. I mostly worry because I think only a very small percentage of people are taking the pandemic as seriously as they need to; it seems that people think it can’t really happen. But I think something at least will happen, and I am scared about what it will be.

Meanwhile, I have to come up with meaningful online lessons (that is no problem) and hope that most of the students do them (that is more of a problem), and I have to wrap my head around staying home for at least one more month. Two weeks has felt like forever: I wonder what I will be saying come May 5th. School is cancelled till May 4th per government order. Wild times.

I am going to teach lessons around COVID-19 in computer science class and think about meaningful communication and stress management and future-casting in college and career readiness. I am going to plan for next year’s switch to full-time computer science and moving to the high school. I am going to edit my book, which is 1200 pages and is sitting beside me on the table, grinning and glowing in its glory. I am so excited. I am going to sew, and garden, and paint, and organize the scary closet. I am going to write.

I have been listening to lots of podcasts about this pandemic: maybe you have, too. I am fascinated to talk to my friend and mentor, Derry, about the science going on behind the scenes of media frenzy and public panic. He says that they are studying why certain people die and why certain people barely get sick. They are trying to figure out why the immune system over-reacts to it sometimes, killing its own alveoli (lung) cells, and what impact the disease has on the heart. They are looking at using Immuno-suppressant therapy, perhaps, and trying to sequence the genotype of all people with the disease so that they can find the commonalities that cause people to die, and some people to spread the disease without knowing they are sick. Mysteries, right? Living through a pandemic, an event “never seen before in modern medical science” as Derry says, is a crazy, wild rollercoaster of a ride.

The backdrop of this ride is the beauty of Texas spring, with all of its birds and bugs and flowers. My bees don’t care that there is a human pandemic, and the starlings that gather in their murmurs aren’t affected. The rain falls with regularity, the sun sets, and it rises. My love for people grows each day, as before, but perhaps with a bit more purpose, intent and fervour. I worry a lot and try to remember that control is an illusion. I remember this best when I am outside with plants and trees. I remember it, also, when I am reading and sewing, or just sitting on the patio.

When this is over, whenever that will be, I wonder what we will remember? That is why I commit to writing every day. Otherwise, I will forget.

 

Date: 31 March 2020

Cases: 855,007

Deaths: 42,032

Mortality Rate: 4.916%

 

Quiet Afternoons

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There are people out riding their bikes and mowing their lawns and it is Thursday afternoon. People are out walking, and making beautiful photos on Instagram, and cooking, and everything else. Everything else but….working.

According to the New York Times, 3 million people have filed for unemployment, the most people ever in one week. I don’t really know what that even means, it just sounds like such a big number. Never before have I been more thankful for my job: I am so lucky to have my job, that Cody has his job, and that we both are able to work from home and still be paid.

I feel that there is some sort of shift happening in peoples’ perceptions in terms of their own lives and livelihoods. So many parents have told me that they are so happy to be at home with their families. So many people are out on the streets walking around instead of inside, glued to screens. So many people are more kind to each other than they were. People seem to be sharing, pitching in, and working together. I am ignoring the government and all the crazy madness that seems to come spewing out of the executive branch each day: I cannot understand a president who places money over people. I do acknowledge that it is not just as plain and simple as that, and that we must of course think of the economy, too, but it seems not to be a choice between but a choice of both. Texas Monthly has a great article about this false choice .

The days are strangely long, but they pass into relaxing evenings and then into beautiful mornings, over and over, on a relaxed sense of repetition. I feel guilty sometimes about my peaceful experience of this pandemic, but I suppose it is just the way it is for me. So I send love out to the rest of you, and hope you are all ok.

Date: 26 March 2020

Cases: 529,591

Deaths: 23,970

Mortality Rate: 4.52%

Today the United States became #1 in infections

Today

Let Me Tell You About My Day

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Today I was given a task: something new and novel after 7 days of nothing, of stewing, of worrying and brooding. Here we were: back to work. I was asked to call every student in my 2nd period and try to talk to them and their parents. I started off the day in my seemingly neverending quest for flour, but that is another story. Flourless, I began the phone calls at about 10am.

I have this theory about education; the theory is that public education, but K-12 education in general, gets a bad rap in the press, but in reality, people love their local schools. I spent hours today talking to kids and their parents. I spent time laughing and listening and commiserating and checking that they were all mostly ok. I listened to moms so worried their kids were going to miss out, to a dad who said his son was very sad to miss school (a revelation since I didn’t know he liked it at all), to a student who told me, in his typically friendly and nonchalant way, that everything was all right and he understood what he needs to do next week.

The calls took hours: much longer than I thought they would. Even though at times I became tired, I was thankful to reach out and talk to each and every one of those people. Sometimes, I took the calls outside on the patio when I needed some sunshine, and sometimes I just sat at my kitchen table and laughed and laughed with fellow moms of teenagers. One mom told me that I am the first teacher who has ever given her child a B and she likes me for it because it taught him to work harder. One mom said she was so worried about her three girls that she felt panicked but would do her best to make sure they walked over to pick up free breakfast and lunch and did their work for school. Her daughter, fellow nervous spirit, is so worried that she doesn’t have enough hours for NJHS (she has 46 out of the required 10) and that we wouldn’t be able to host the fundraiser for the cafeteria manager who has breast cancer.  I asked a dad of a student who wants to be in Early College High School that he talk to his extremely gifted child about the importance of being flexible and open in the face of uncertainty. As I write, another child’s father just called because he received my message earlier and wanted to check about the plans for next week.

I teach in a district with 87% poverty. Let that roll around in your brain a bit. There are all sorts of assumptions about students who come from under-resourced environments. Data says they don’t achieve, that they don’t have the grit of their wealthier peers, and some folks even say that they are un-teachable. With these attitudes come years of classist and racist prejudice that are unfounded; I have done this for 14 years and I have very rarely found a parent who does not want the best for their child. Even those two moms I can remember saying so were only speaking out of their own pain, anxiety, and fear.

I started today by looking at news that said we are facing 30% unemployment. This afternoon, I spoke to a dad who clearly was very worried about getting food for his wife and himself, and was relieved to hear that there are free meals available for his children. When I listen to parts of the daily press briefings, it is abundantly clear to me that the people in government have no idea what a dollar costs. They don’t know the price of a gallon of milk, or the choices parents have to make between eating themselves and getting food for their children. When I think about these things a lot, I become very angry.

I ended today by speaking to so many parents and students; the majority of my students said they missed being in school. The majority of their parents were very carefully listening to exactly what they needed to do to connect their child with the academic expectations of their teachers. All the people I spoke with were kind and said they were doing fine and that it was important that resources went to people who really need them.

In other words, I had a very positive, human experience. No matter how angry our government’s response (or rather, lack of response) makes me, I have to remember that in order to move through this experience, whatever it will be when we get to a place of reflection upon it, will depend on the actions of each other. We will listen and laugh, and cry, and find solutions, together. We will remember that each of us is trying her or his best and that each person cares so much it is incomprehensible and indescribable.

With love and appreciation tonight, I am going to go and eat chicken and rice, and not worry about the fact that I still can’t find flour.

Date: 23 March 2020

Cases – 378,679

Deaths – 16,508

Mortality Rate – 4.359%

A Thousand People – Same Human Being

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AIDS Memorial Quilt, Washington, D.C. 1987

I am feeling a bit bleak today. I just took the dog on a very long walk through the old parts of Elgin, and I feel better, but still bleak. The news seems so odd, so full of danger and uncertainty. No one has any idea what is happening save that there is a rising tide flowing fast towards us.

Cody is outside gardening; he is planting cucumbers. I started a lot of seeds a while ago, mostly focusing on flowers but with a few veggies in there for good measure. We usually have a pretty and amazing summer garden, and this year feel a bit more pressure to step it up a notch.

Today we had a Digital Learning Team conference call to discuss how to help teachers transition to remote learning. People expressed the worries that kids won’t do anything and we then discussed the fact that a) we have no control over that b) we can’t grade anything and c) we have to abandon expectations and just do this for the sake of the kids who will do it. I think there will be many of them. I think, for me, my overwhelming sense is of worry for them. I worry that they won’t get to see their friends and their teachers and ask all the weird questions that teenagers ask. I worry about missing them and that they won’t learn anything and they will be sad. We don’t live in Austin, where kids can get out and walk around and look at things. A lot of my students live on big properties with a few tiny houses or house trailers on them and a whole lot of nothing for them to do. School is such an important place and outlet for rural kids.

My general bleak feelings come from fear, I think, and I know that fear is the mind-killer, but it is there nonetheless. I am worried more bad things will happen, bad things that I can’t even foresee since things seem to change every few hours. I feel terrible for the people who are sick and all the doctors and nurses that are taking care of them. I have this horrible fear of not being able to get food. I don’t think that one is super realistic, and I also know that lots of other people feel that same feeling. It is a horrible feeling and one I have never had before. I think that is part of the bleak feeling I have today is that the feelings/thoughts/passing brain impulses that I am having I have never had before, and so they are very disorienting.

My friends Kevin and Darrel went out for a walk in their neighborhood in Altadena this morning and found that their neighbors had made sweet signs for their yard, so I think I am going to go and channel these feelings into something positive and pretty. I think little things do make a difference, right?

Date – 23 March 2020

Cases – 329,862

Deaths – 14,378

Mortality Rate – 4.3%

6 Days In to Quarantine

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This map is cited below, in the last paragraph

I read somewhere, yesterday, that it is important to journal during times like these. We are ankle-deep in a pandemic, on our way to being knee-deep. For the first time in my life, my parents’ life, and even my grandparents’ life (who are all dead), there is a virus ravaging many corners of the globe. As it ebbs and flows, retreats here and expands there, the most common feeling of it all is a simmering panic based in uncertainty. It seems not even our leaders know what to do or what to say, so they talk about the stock market a lot, and we all feel lost.

This morning, I went to the grocery store because I have been unable to get sugar for a few days, and my two new beehives still need to be fed as there aren’t quite enough flowers to sustain all those little, buzzing creatures. I waited in line for an hour with a garbageman on my left and a pastor on my right; we discussed the state of affairs, laughing to keep from crying. When I finally made it inside the store, all looked mostly normal except there are still no potatoes or onions. It is a mystery.

I found a 25-pound bag of sugar, grabbed dinner for tomorrow and Monday (as I aim not to go to the store for a few days), and went through the line with my 4 items, being blessed by the manager along the way for only buying what I needed. The boys running the check-out are in high school and looked a bit winded and rough-trod. I asked them if today was another day of adventure and they whinged at me a bit, then talked to each other about the line around the building and the one person who tried to jump the line (I saw her; I am going to assume she just didn’t see all the people standing in the great big, huge line).

When I am home, on my property, it is almost possible to forget all of the madness that is happening, especially in the cities, around the Western world. Around me, as I walk with the dog, are the singing sounds of birds just returned, the breeze caught in spindly branches with, as yet, no leaves, the snort of the horse next door, the strange cry of the neighbor’s guinea fowl, or the incessant barking of Chomps, the next door neighbor’s pit bull who spends her life in the backyard, alone.

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Student-created coding art 

But the reality is that on Monday, I will wake up at a normal time and call all of my students in my 2nd period class on the phone, try to reach them, see how they are doing, and ask how ready they are to learn remotely for a while. They say now that we will go back to school on April 6, but I am highly in doubt of that. We start on March 30. Why would we do all of this work for a week? I miss my students and am thankful that my 2nd period is one of my favorite classes, and the one in which we have studied the Coronavirus since we first started hearing about it, back in the fall. My 2nd period class has learned about the virus, about epidemiology, and has designed proof of concept apps to help people or HHS workers with an outbreak. Little did we know that we would be here now. This year, we have also spent a lot of time comparing and contrasting Chinese and American cultures and our different approaches to authority, privacy and liberty. In other words, that class (and its 7th period counterpart) are well-versed in where we are at this exact moment.

I looked at the Times this morning and there is a video about how New York City is shut down and 100% of its workforce (except essential workers) have been ordered home. My friend Kevin texted from Altadena the other day that California, too, is in lockdown. The garbageman in line this morning had a card in his wallet that his employer had given him because the City of Elgin is worried that it will be soon illegal to drive and leave your home: the card is to show policemen that he is an essential worker.

How did we get here and so fast? How were we so woefully unprepared? How is our economy so supposedly powerful but yet is crippled by debt? Do businesses not keep cash on hand anymore? Why are so many people losing their jobs in an instant? Why are so many people buying so much food at the grocery store and where has all the toilet paper gone? Why is this only impacting the western world? We hear almost nothing from Latin America, South America, Africa, Russia, and now it seems that the Asian cases are almost finished.

I have been thinking about how to teach students in times like this. What do we focus on? Can we focus? What are the most important messages that need to be communicated? I wonder if the most important things for students to do are creative, real-world and involve them being able to choose what they want to do, or how, at least, to express their learning.

I feel like I am rambling and don’t have a “flow” today to my writing. I had something brilliant the other day, but of course didn’t write it down. So, for today, I am going to go. But I will be back, maybe later today! I wonder what people thought 100 years ago when the Spanish Flu began to creep in around society’s edges. I was just looking at my favorite COVID-19 map and remembering when we were talking in CS class about how the cases had risen to 1,000.

Date – 21 March 2020

Cases – 287,239

Deaths – 11,921

Mortality Rate – 4.15%

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Student-created coding art – focusing on the meaning of loops – Apple Keynote

Paciencia, Paciencia – Part 2

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I have known for a long time where I wish my ashes to be scattered. I have walked that stretch of beach, a cove within Salsbury Cove, just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from The Ovens, probably a thousand times. Maybe I have walked it more than a thousand times in the 37 years I have known it. Known its curves, its predilection for purple seaglass and mussels with pearlescent shells; the pads of seaweed at low tide that you can walk across if you are careful to feel out the rocks beneath with your feet. The tiny island that forms just beyond the point that *sometimes* has a seal on it, but more often, you see the seals in the water, watching you.

I have walked this beach for years of my life. I learned to skip stones in the water there, have taken countless pieces of driftwood to burn in their Aurora Borealis colors in a campfire: I have found bricks and glass and jellyfish and dishes and seaweed growing, attached to same, for years and years. When I was ill 21 years ago, I still walked down to this beach, and back up the hillside walk to the house on the return journey.

It was on this beach 5 years ago that I set off lanterns with Cody into a winter sky: a night sky so clear and so full of hopeful wishes from the both of us. Drifts of snow lay before us on that beach and we crouched, almost in silence, making wishes as we sent wasteful lanterns off, over the water.

So, I have long known this is the place upon which I would like my ashes to be sprinkled, which brings me to my latest update: the newest iteration of the blog.

I am in the middle of downloading the old, and rediscovering the need to write the new. I am finishing an old project, and beginning two new ones. I am editing and rewriting the first version of this blog into a book:  a memoir. I have learned, through reading many memoirs over the past two years, that memoirs are best suited to a specific,  certain time, place, and theme. Hence, I realized that I finished one at the end of my last post, and here I am beginning a new one about the understandings one has at the cusp of turning 40. I now understand all the strange “over the hill” comments of my childhood. I am, for the first time, more than likely, closer to the end than to the beginning of my life. Now, being a person who became very ill and almost died at 18, a whole other aspect appears: I wasn’t sure I would make it this far. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey, wherever it will take all of us, each of us, individually: after all, it is a one-person journey as far as I can tell, despite all the lovely people who dot the landscape of our lives.

Happy New Year.

The Power of an Autumn Cold

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“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away

Wild, wild horses couldn’t drag me away

I watched you suffer a dull aching pain”

 

I caught cold whilst riding horses two Fridays ago; lately, I have been going riding with a few other families on Family Night at the local riding club. One of the benefits of rural life is that people get together to ride horses and have potlucks with wine and beer in the dark of a Friday evening; it is beautiful to watch all the teenagers racing their horses around the arena, teaching littler ones to ride horses at all, and then to, occasionally, get up on a horse oneself and try to conquer that lifelong fear of horses that was borne from being thrown at a Girl Scout camp all those years ago. We have been taking the teenager, River, because he told us a while ago that he really enjoyed riding horses. Two Fridays ago, the origin point of today’s tale, he told me he had changed his mind.

Have you ever raised a teenager? I have not, but I do teach them each and everyday and have done for many years. Next year is Lucky 11 in public school, and 15 in total. Anyway, I digress. River told me in the car, after mopily being convinced to ride bareback on a paint named Zoomey, that he really didn’t like riding because he had nothing in common with the other kids there. I asked if it was because they are all girls? He responded that they don’t have a lot of brainpower, and that all of his friends use their brains a lot. I asked, are you talking about playing video games? Moving on to the kitchen in which I was trying to restrain myself from, what Maw Maw calls, braining him while he told me that everything that Cody and I take him to do and everyone we introduce him to makes him uncomfortable, but when he is at home with his mother, he is totally comfortable, not shy and talks constantly. In this moment of teenage darkness, I chose the high road and told him I thought he should get out of his comfort zone and that we just want to make him happy. Inwardly, I was consumed with anger.

This was the beginning of the Transformative Autumn Cold: one that, even today, Sunday, nine days after initial exposure, still holds on to my lungs and nasal passages. It has a lingering force that can only mean one thing; I am supposed to learn something from it. So here’s hoping.

{Please bear with this tangent-filled exploration of my human psyche today. It all makes sense in the end.}

When I was 18, I became very ill which was, at that time, a mystery illness. I was hospitalized and was out of school for almost an entire semester. I lost most of my hair, had congestive heart failure, and an incredibly low blood count. It wasn’t until almost 20 years later, when I lucked into an amazing hematologist/oncologist who did a genetic fact-finding mission of my entire extended family’s bloodwork, was it discovered that my cousin Jackie and I both have agammaglobulinemia, a genetic disease that usually only affects males, but in our case, impacted two females of the same generation on the Blythe (paternal) side of my family. It was a crazy experience that was definitely transformative and taught me to appreciate every day of my life, and that my life had a purpose, although at the age, I didn’t understand what that was or even what that meant.

As I got better, slowly, and with the help of traditional and non-traditional doctors, I left home and moved to Austin, Texas to go to college at UT. After attending debate camp several times during high school, I had fallen in love with Austin and thought it was the bees knees of cities, and, I think, it was. A lot of people still think it is, as seen by the 150 people who move to Austin each day now. I would disagree, but I am able to as I now live in the country and like the slow life much better than the hustle-and-bustle-avocado-toast-trend-of-the-moment that seems to be the lifeblood of Austin these days. Oh, and not to forget all the music festivals.

I digress, again. Since getting sick two Fridays ago, I have experienced a lot of frustration. I was frustrated with River, and with the concept of blended families in general. I am not even sure if I would call ours “blended” as sometimes I think that Cody is treated like an afterthought, or a necessary chore, rather than an equal member and a father to River. (There goes that anger again!!!).

Digression.

In addition to raising a teenager in a blended family, Cody and I also take care of his aging grandmother, Maw Maw, who is in some sort of “rapid decline” as the medical people call it, but who, herself is in some strange space of denial-bargaining. She seems to think one day this will all stop; we know that it will, but not in the way that she wants. It is crazy disorienting to take care of someone who you “know” (?) is dying who herself has not acknowledged it truthfully to herself, except when occasionally she asks us to shoot her, throw her in the river, leave her out with the garbage, etc. (yes, these are statements that have all been uttered). I don’t know how to react to Maw Maw or tell her what I think. I just try to listen, keep her comfortable, and get her to eat something.

A few weeks ago, I took advantage of the in-house teacher counseling service at my school and went to a session with our school’s counselor, Mrs Williams. I talked about the struggles I have with taking care of Maw Maw at home, teaching 8th graders at school, and having a teenager at the same time. She told me to trust the universe and remember that Maw Maw’s age is a blessing, that each day is a blessing, and that I am there solely to make her comfortable and try to keep her happy. Other than that, I cannot fix or change anything and that it is really up to God, whoever I conceive of them to be. I agreed and had a mental image of my garden in the spring: full of flowers and butterflies and bees, and I remembered how happy being in the garden makes me, so I, at that moment, tried to consciously remember to shift my perspective from helping to supporting. That shift is a difficult one that I have to concentrate on each day, especially on days when Maw Maw won’t eat, or she calls me “that woman I live with”, her heart rate goes above 130, or whatever.

The last aspect of this current experience of transformation-via-autumn-cold is that my oldest friend and I are in a spot of disagreement, or perhaps a better phrasing is uncertainty about our relationship. I went to see her in India in June, and during that trip, said a lot of things that hurt her feelings, but she didn’t tell me any of this until an email I got last week. She works for the government, and lives in different places around the world for chunks of time, and then gets zoomed back to the US before zooming off again. She planned an amazing trip for us, and everything we did was beautiful and inspiring. Of course we didn’t get along every moment, but I have never traveled with anyone that I got along with every moment. Perhaps, most definitely, this says more about me than any friend that I have traveled with, but nevertheless, I was hurt by the fact that she didn’t tell me any of this while we were in the same space together, during which time we could have talked about this and she could have told me she thought I was being a jerk, and I could have told her that I was super worried about her and it was coming out the wrong way, and we could have found a place of peace. But now, she is about to zoom off to another country and the likelihood of us being able to talk about this in a meaningful way is quite limited until I see her again. And my takeaway from the email is that she doesn’t want to see me again, at least not for a while.

In this specific situation, unlike my frustrations with River and Maw Maw, I feel adrift. I am 100% sure I make mistakes, because I often do with people: ask anyone who knows me well. I can be harsh, overly-emotional, tactless, too optimistic, too domineering with my opinions, etc. These are aspects of myself that I was unaware of until I went through years of therapy to find out who I really was under those onion layers. Despite me *mostly* keeping those tendencies in check these days, or at least being very aware of them when they pop up and being active at fixing them and reinforcing the relationships they impact, occasionally they pop up especially with older friends, who have known me since I was 10, and knew me better when those layers were under wraps than now, when they are unwrapped and under psyche-scrutiny each and every day. My friend wrote to me that we are in different places in our lives, which of course is true; this is something I have been thinking of in terms of all my friends as I approach 40 years old. Some of us are single, some are married, some have kids, some don’t. Some live in far off places, some very close. Some have professional jobs, some have no jobs (lucky ducks — I think). Some are consistently sad or anxious, some are happy at their core, some don’t know how to be, some question themselves (all), some are blinded by ideas, and some see clearly. Some think they see clearly and yet are still blinded (all, again). Some are all of these things in intermittent moments: aren’t we all? While we are all in different places at this juncture that I call 40, but some friends may call 42, or 35, or 32, we can all be great friends to each other because we love each other and accept each other as flawed human beings who experience all the iterations (and more) listed above. Right? In what perfect moment are friends at the same point in life? I find it to be impossible, but more significantly, not important. I love my friends very much, and that force is much stronger than any job or house or partner, etc.

So, I sit here, at noon on Sunday, still sniffling, and wondering about all of these ideas. Teenagers, dying grandmothers, oldest friends who can’t really talk with each other; it is a quagmire.

Unless……

Yesterday, I moved a lot of wood: giant chunks, small branches, and a lot of in between sizes. They all came from cutting down a 236-year old post oak tree in our front yard that died. It was an amazing tree and we have many giant stumps to play with for the rest of our lives. It was hard for me to believe that its first year of life was in 1783: I have no idea what was going on here in 1783. Who lived here? Did someone plant that tree or was it just one of those magic, random occurrences of nature? I love that someone built our house just behind that tree and one more, as if they were planted for this house, when of course it was the other way around. As I moved all those chunks of wood, back and forth to the woodpile using the wheelbarrow, lifting heavier pieces just to see if I could, dumping them in loads, over and over again, I felt better.

I think the reasons I felt better were a combination of exercise-created-endorphins and an understanding of how I have changed in the last few years. Five years ago was the beginning of my last winter in Maine, when I lived in a cabin on a lot of land next door to a lovely neighbor and pig farmer who looked out for me. I heated my house with wood and really experienced solitude. I wrote many entries here during that time, whilst sitting at a round, pine table with my woodstove to the left and my sweet kitchen off to the side. There was so much snow that winter, and I lived on a property that felt like the target point of the whistling wind that came between two mountains across the road. Sometimes I would go outside in the evening to get frozen wood and would just wonder what the hell was happening? How did everything get so hard? It wasn’t until deeper in that winter that I realized two things: it had become that hard because I made it so, and that it actually wasn’t hard. I just wasn’t seeing clearly and especially wasn’t seeing all the people around me who loved me.

When I moved back to Austin the next late-spring, I was in a relationship for the first time in over four years, and really struggled with the same struggle. I asked: why is this so hard? Why can’t I run away? I don’t want to be here – or do I? Do I want to teach again? All of that time, I had these wonderful friends around and a lovely boyfriend who just loved me and wanted me to be happy. Cody had his own growing to do, but he did it, but in terms of me, he was always loving and encouraging. I had this barrier up that said something like…you can’t be happy because if you do, they will find out all these bad things about you and then what will you do? It was something like that, and was couched in my experience of getting pregnant at 15 and living in an alcoholic family with a Vietnam vet for a father who never let his own bad experiences go and a mom who sought to control everything at everyone’s expense. It is fascinating to me how we can get locked in our own psyches without our knowledge, because some series of experiences can be so painful or frightening. I was lucky because I did discover the key to my own salvation: forgiving myself, grieving for that painful experience, and finally seeing all the people around me who just plain loved me. It was then that I could love them, too.

One of my takeaways from my last 5 years is an understanding that I have no control over anything (I still struggle with this: referencing that convo with River, my issues with wanting Maw Maw to get better when it is not up to me, or being hurt and bewildered by my friend’s email). This popped into my head yesterday whilst moving all those loads of wood.

Another is that I have changed over these interim years, thanks to my friends, myself and cognitive behavioral therapy. It took years of talk therapy to get to the discovery of the need for CBT. I think it saved my emotional life. I realized yesterday, whilst in the woods, walking back to the front yard, that I am so valued and appreciated by people at my school, and I have the power now to recognize that and build on it. I don’t think I could see that clearly before, because I couldn’t believe that people would see me that way. I got divorced back in 2009, and I realized that the last time I felt this valued was just before the divorce; it was a great discovery to me that the experience of divorce, in the moment, set me further back on this journey. But then again, that experience was what spurred this self-discovery of the last 10 years, so there you go. I also feel so appreciated and valued by my friends. I feel terrible that my oldest friend doesn’t feel that I feel that way about her, even though I do. I think that old habits die hard, and apparently I crossed a line for her and can only hope she forgives me.

My last takeaway here is that life just keeps moving forward each day. I have found the key to juggle all of the dishes spinning in my life right now is to remember this in every moment I possibly can. My coworker Nicole says that nothing phases me right now, and my other coworker Tori says I have such a “chill vibe”. I think they are sweet, and definitely wrong about this sometimes (the emotional swings still happen!), but I love those notes of appreciation and I look at them at lessons in remembering to stay present whenever I can, in remembering impermanence and the lesson of trying to be equanimous. It helps me find peace in this chaos.

The only power I have in this situation is to love my people: love River especially when he makes me crazy. Love Maw Maw and try to make her laugh a couple of times a day. Love Cody and thank him for loving me, too. Love my friends and try to make sure they know how much I care about them, but not in a way that offends them.

I think I appreciate this cold now, can bless it and send it off into the autumn wind that is blowing around my house. Is that rain?

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The Year of Magical Thinking

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I just started reading this book, by Joan Didion. She physically (and, as I read, emotionally/spiritually/whatever) reminds me of my friend Meredith, who I lost almost nine years ago. I was inspired to write to her, as I do often talk to her, in the garden, on the patio, gazing up at the stars and the clouds of Milky Way on dark, dark nights. Please bear with me as I write to her here, and no doubt jettison us off somewhere.

I was thinking about you just now, as I was reading the second chapter of “The Year of Magical Thinking”; have you read it? When I think of you, and of Joan Didion, I think of women very physically similar: tiny, thin like birds, blonde hair, great style, strong wit, indefatigable intelligence. But you were you and she is Joan Didion: after all, there is a Netflix biography on her, when, sadly, there is not one on Meredith Farmer. If I were to see Joan Didion at the supermarket, if I didn’t already know who she was, I would see someone like you: a middle-aged lady with simple elegance, beautifully-colored hair, probably looking with disdain at something in produce, ever in judgement of all the “normal” things.

You’ve been gone almost nine years, and life has ebbed and flowed and changed, moved around, wiggled, metamorphosized a wee bit (as my grandma would have said: she now gone 15 years, and that, another story). Ultimately, though, life is still the same: I am just more skilled at handling its curve balls due to experience and therapy and probably, my friendship with you.

There was a night about  6 years ago when I chatted with you off my front porch in Northeast Harbor, Maine, when I lived in the Dollhouse (or the Fishbowl, depending on who you asked) : the tiny house on the town parking lot in which my comings and goings were very public knowledge and everything in the house was so small. My closet was a pole that hung at the end of the bed, and the shower felt like I was hosing myself off on a dock somewhere with hot water. But, it was $650 a month and the landlords were dolls and I walked to work and to get breakfast sandwiches at Ben’s, and I had a wonderful, small garden of unruly morning glories that threatened to take over the house! I had many memorable conversations on that porch, on the picnic table that I stole from someone’s trash and Dan Bondo‘d so that it would survive, and I painted Seal Harbor Green after JRa and I put in the new path up to the front door, made from stone dust that we bought mostly drunk one day from the quarry in Trenton. That was where you and I talked, formally, the last time. Informally in between, many times. I don’t know what we talked about, but I am sure that I asked you questions and you laughed at me, in a loving way.

I remember, at your funeral, there was a slideshow of pictures of you. My favorite was a photo of you in college, cigarette in your right hand and an ERA button on your left lapel. Your hair was strawberry blonde and you looked so damned engaged. I feel, I wonder, do we lose those feelings as we get older? Do we blame husbands/partners/kids and is that bullshit? Is it just projecting like everything else: an excuse to disengage, to check out? What do you think?

I see you smiling. I feel like you are at the pool right now, but perhaps that’s just because I read a chapter in which Joan Didion describes her newly dead husband as having a daily routine of reading in the pool (reading “Sophie’s Choice“, no less) while she gardened, and of course that made me think of my small 8 foot cattle waterer pool that I bought after doing some work for the old lady next door and now I share with Cody almost every day, sometimes several times a day, despite his almost constant chagrin with me about how I let the leaves and flowers and bugs in, and he doesn’t.

Such is married life, to someone I am actually married to, rather than the first one, that you bore witness to, or to your 2nd, as I bore witness to. Marriages, men, children, time: rental houses and the houses we “own”. All the stuff within those houses, the boxes, the moving, the priority of sorting out the kitchen, the living room, the bedrooms. The conversations about Mama and Daddy and who built Mansfield Dam, what the role of all the boyfriends and husbands actually were. I look at your Carnival Glass dish, blue with a sheen of multi-color on it, as if it is coated with oil, all the time: I think of you wryly smiling at me, or of that day we went fishing on the dock of my neighbor’s house on the Croton River, when Steve and I lived with Brien and you came to visit and told me I was a witch because my garden grew so well!

I think, in the end, that the boyfriends and husbands are not as important as the memories of people as unique entities in and of themselves. I remember you as such: and think of you this way often. I find it funny, sweet, sad and ultimately, joyful, that you still are such a part of me: that we still talk. I wish you could see where I am now, as it is a very nice place (and the pool is pretty nice, too) and you would like Cody a lot. You would laugh at both of us, in a loving way.

Rest in peace: I miss you. Love, Patience

The Noise

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all pictures in this post are by the wonderful Maxfield Parrish…what a dream to dream!

It is late, dark, and quiet. Next to me, someone is sleeping sweetly, curled against a pillow and under a blanket. To my left, the air conditioner blows on and off, and to my right, a fan oscillates slowly back and forth. It is the quiet time, when no one and nothing stirs: if I go outside, all I can see is the guard light shining its amber glow, stars that flicker but remain in position, and occasionally, a passing car.

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My home is very quiet. A few weeks ago, a nice woman who is in Chinese medicine school but who moonlights as a phlebotomist came by to do some medical tests for our life insurance policies. She took her shoes off at the door. They were so small, black tennis shoes, that I thought they were a child’s shoes! She remarked how quiet it is here, and that was during the day.

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Lately, I find the external world so very loud: so much noise. News, social media, and people driving on the highways just seem to be shrieking, screaming, pushing, prodding, yelling: the common theme, fear of…..what exactly? Fear of the unknown? Fear of the inevitability of change? Fear of the direction in which our society finds itself? Fear of not having enough, or too much? I can’t put my finger on it, but I see examples everywhere.

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Currently, I drive 3 hours round trip as my commute to my school: this is about to change. I drive with hundreds of other people to and from Austin. I find that at least 10 each day drive so aggressively that they scare me, and I worry about finding myself in an accident like the ones I hear about every day. People chase around me in their cars, cut me off in their cars, drive just behind my bumper in their cars, and every time it happens, I wonder why. I hear teachers at my school yell or complain: I hear students do the same. I see article after article online and hear article after article on the radio about the President. Its as if the noise is catching: once it starts, it has to keep building to some mad crescendo.

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The presence of the noise makes me thankful for the quiet. I find that I catch myself in its moments rarely, and so, I try to cultivate them. Today I walked in the garden and checked in with the cotton and roselle plants, gazed at the sunflower seedlings. I pet the neighbor’s dog. I sit here, typing. I find the quiet helps me understand that the noise is just that: noise. Meaningless, temporary, distracting: the reality is the moments of quiet, the moments that I catch the mockingbird sitting on the garden’s arch, the arc of a cotton stem, the funny way that sunflowers bend toward the sun, the way children look when they are distracted and staring off into space, breathing. I suppose the task of the moment is to change the focus from the noise to the quiet: otherwise, where shall we go?

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