A Lovely Spring Evening

My neighbors have their bathing suits on. It's finally the right day for it. They're sunning themselves in their back yard, sitting in the Adirondack chairs she painted a green slightly paler than the lawn. I don't know why it pleases me to see them out there, but it does. Says something about the rightness of things or the blessings of living in America or just that folks can stay married and like each other after a long time. 

 

Their girls are gone now, both in college, one a graduate student. They work hard to keep the house and yard up. And it's beautiful. When they first bought the house--it's Hessing's house, you know--they said they didn't know how long they would stay. It has been about eight years. Maybe nine. They have redone the master bedroom, made several other major improvements. Seems like they'll stay. I hope so. They are good neighbors.

She is blonde, fair. Like me. When I was young we used to lie out on the beach, get ourselves burned and tanned. We had to, you know. It's what we did, because everyone knew we needed to be tan.

Now I go to the dermatologist twice a year because of skin cancer. I've had three surgeries and many zaps with liquid nitrogen. My face is healing from a biopsy and from zapping right now. 

So I wonder about her skin. But I have no intentions of discussing these matters with my neighbor. You knew that. I am content to let her enjoy this beautiful day in the company of her husband in their own back yard.

Just another of life's little challenges

It's my fault, I guess. I hired him. But I didn't know he'd insist on using a riding mower to mow my lawns. They, my lawns, are not big enough for a riding mower, and there are too many trees and too many sprinkler heads. But last Wednesday evening I hear this very loud noise and look out to see him riding around my back lawn on his mower.

I had wanted to show him where all the sprinklers are before he mowed. Did not get the chance. I think it would not have mattered, because that mower is huge.

Thursday I checked out the sprinklers. SURE ENOUGH. He didn't just hit it. He yanked it out of the ground, severed it from the pipe. Water shoots high up into the air, and so on and so forth.

I am not happy.

I called him Thursday, that's yesterday, and left a message about the sprinkler, said I hated to tell him--which is true--but he mowed the heck out of one of my sprinklers, and I would like to talk to him but in the meantime I assumed he would replace it.

Guess what. I haven't heard back from him. I'll let you know when I do.

Addendum: It is now Friday mid morning. I called him again, and he came. He will replace it, fix it, make it right. Yippee. I just hope he knows how.

P.S.  Friday afternoon. It's fixed.

Just a little thing like a face

Yes, It's about my face. Bad. Looking very bad. It kept me home from church today.

Lola said I look like a meth addict. She's right. I do.

But I am not a meth addict.

At the dermatology clinic . . . again

Yes, the dr called me kid. This time I called him kid right back.

By the way, I have three places on my face that look horrible. Two he zapped with liquid nitrogen. One is from the biopsy. They all look angry and unsightly.

For the biopsy he called the nurse to come in so she could a) take a picture of my face . . .  again; b) numb my cheek for the biopsy.

I am getting less tolerant of certain things. So here is our exchange.

Nurse: I'm going to lie this table back so you can get on it.
Me: You're going to what?
Nurse: I'm going to lie this table back.
Me: You can't lie the table back. You can lay it back, but you can't lie it back.
Some comments from the three other people in the room.
Me: I'm an English teacher. And you can't lie anything back.
Nurse: Whatever.
Me: Yes, whatever is what a lot of people say about the way they speak English.

Of course, my voice was friendly, not preachy, really. Pretty risky, though. She was about to stick my face with a long needle.

Still I say learn your own language.

Then there's the exchange between me and my sister Lucile.
Me: The biopsy is not cancer.
Lucile: Good. What is it?
Me: Pre-cancer.
L: What do they do now?
Me: I go back next week and he'll zap it with liquid nitrogen.
L: Oh.
Me: Pre-cancer. I think my whole face is pre-cancer.
L: Yes, except where it's post-cancer.

She's funny.

Not exactly a bowl of mush

My brother Sterling called today, said he wishes I'd come down so we could get together for a bowl of mush.

Which prompted this post.

I work in the temple Wednesday mornings, from 5:30 to 11:30. You can guess what it means to my getting up time. But last night I could not sleep. I may have gotten about an hour and a half, right around the time I needed to be waking.

Anyway, I got home around 12. Went upstairs and changed my clothes and went out to clear the leaves away from one of my sprinkler heads.

Oh yes, I did have about a 1/2 hour's rest. Not enough, folks. But better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Then I came down to eat, and because I sometimes hate fixing food for myself, I had several bowls of cold cereal, and no, I'm not glad. That's just eating to get full. Some food is not unpleasant going down. This was. It was Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds. TOO SWEET. And I don't like the taste of it. I need to give the box to someone, but I can't think who would like it.

Anyway, I added Cheerios and Grape Nuts to counteract the sweetness and kept going until I had had quite enough, thanks. Ugh.

And some food is not unpleasant when we burp it. This was. Will I learn from this experience? Yes, indeed. At least for a good few weeks.

It's only carpet, Carol

Janice, my neighbor, came over yesterday to give me a progress report on their new patio and roof. She is very happy with it so far, even though she always mentions how costly it has been to do this work. I don't doubt it.

And it was all supposed to be done by last Wednesday, then by Friday for sure. But the outhouse/port-a-potty or whatever you call it is still there on the corner of their side lawn. So Monday is the now the end day. I said I'd come over next week to see it. She said don't wait that long. But I will.

She has been over here probably once a month or more often for as long as she has lived in that house. Yesterday, as she walked in, she said, "Oh, your stairs. That's dramatic." Referring to the carpet. So I think:   

1. Could be her word choice meant she doesn't like it. She didn't say she likes it, only "That's dramatic."
2. It's been there--the "new" carpet--since November 2011. That's a year and a half, and she is just now noticing it. My, my. And she's an artist. 
3. I like it.

Just So You Know

This is who I am, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All my life, glad to be, and thankful for it. 

In a sense, I am the church. That is, what you see in me reflects upon the church and everyone else in it. (I'd better be good.) In my life many people have told me they don't like Mormons but I'm different. Well, maybe and maybe not. I don't think so. Maybe I'm the only Mormon they have known close up. 

Or the difference in me could be that I don't talk like I'm from Utah. But what I am is, largely, a result of how I was raised, and I was raised a Mormon. 

I believe in God. I believe in his son, Jesus Christ. I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in prayer and know personally about answers to prayer. I believe in absolutes, like truth, good, law, and love. I believe in revelation and in personal revelation (Holy Ghost, remember), in prophets and spiritual gifts. I believe the Priesthood of God was restored to the earth and know of its power in my own life. I believe that faith also is powerful, and I have been blessed with great faith.

I am looking

Last week I took myself to Quizno's for a sandwich. While I was there a woman and her son, I'm sure, came in. He in a mechanized chair because of his cerebral palsy. Bent and twisted, he looked to be in his thirties. They took a long time deciding what they wanted. "Too many choices," I said as I walked by. She said yes.

They picked a table and he pulled his chair up to it with no difficulty. I do not know how he was controlling the chair, didn't want to stare. I liked his looks, intelligent. Liked his eyes, the kindness in his face. And I thought how his life must be. Of course, I cannot know. She fed him and held his drink for him. They talked, but I couldn't hear them. There was not much smiling, but I did see her smile once.

I visit teach a woman whose son has cerebral palsy. He graduated college, has a master's degree in social work and has a practice of sorts. Not many clients, she tells me. But that can improve.

She has spent her life helping him in every way imaginable, and I'm quite sure the same is true of the woman in Quizno's. Still takes him where he needs to go, to his doctor appointments and such, even though he now lives in a different city. She has another son, too.

I could say something like, "That's what mothers do." But I won't.

A life in a wheel chair is not easy, I am sure. Other health issues come to be because of it. No, not easy for him or for his mother.

Such people almost require us to look at our own lives anew.

Addendum:
I have just visited with my friend. She told me her son has experienced unbelievable rudeness from people, potential clients, potential employers. The dismiss him almost immediately because he is in a wheelchair or because his speech is not as clear as they would like or because surely he can't be intelligent. One prospective employer said, "Oh. You're in a wheelchair." I wish he had said, "Oh. You're not."

We Can Try Writing

Writing is therapeutic, they say. I taught that principle to my students. You know, for 20 years and such.  Except that I likely taught that it can be therapeutic, not that it is. Truly, I do not know if it is for sure. But I have recently read that same idea in a newish book.

I suppose there really are no new ideas.

It's in Brené Brown's Daring Greatly. Her specific use of writing for therapy involves shame. She says to spend at least 15 minutes a day writing your shame--what you're ashamed of about yourself or your life--and in three days you'll be rid of it. Sounds too easy.

But still, I say it's a good plan, worth a try. Especially if one's sense of shame is inhibitive or prohibitive, keeping the person from accomplishment or from being whole, from being the person he or she can be, ought to be.  

But here's my question. If one's shame is too hard to speak, can it be written? I wonder.

I had students who could write about their drug addictions and the shameful things they allowed themselves to do during that period. Those periods, I should say, because addiction is hardly ever overcome in one try. But these were the students who had become clean, as they say, and they wrote without a specific assignment to do so. Goodness, I hope they still are clean. The three I'm thinking of were good kids. I loved them.

The 32-year-old  guy in Philadelphia, who jumped down onto the tracks a couple of weeks ago and saved the man who had fallen, had been a drug addict for most of his life--since middle school. He had tried many times to overcome it, so he knows the ups and downs of rehab. Happily, he has been clean for two years now. His recent actions are known worldwide, and he is called a hero. 

What he said was, "I just reacted." Meaning he took no thought for his own safety and, possibly, he thinks anyone else would do the same. Then he said, "It means I'm good. I'm a good person."

His statements touch my heart, because I think most of us want to feel we are good. I want to feel that way. I wonder how many times he gave up hope that he would ever be okay or see himself as good. I wonder if has ever written, hoping the act of writing would have some therapeutic value for him. And I wonder if it worked.

This Morning I'm Thinking About . . .

Valerie Harper, TV star of the 70s and 80s, is much in the news. She overcame cancer once, or so it was thought, but now has an inoperable brain tumor and will die from it. And she hasn't much time left.

Her face, always smiling, is on three out of every four magazine covers and is flashed across the TV screen almost daily.

Today I turned on GMA to see her and Mary Tyler Moore, Betty White, Cloris Leachman, Georgia Engle (I think) reunited to talk about their time working together and about Valerie.

Except the interviewer was Katie Couric, who can't keep herself from doing all the talking. So in five minutes, we got about 90 seconds of them, the rest of Katie.

It's true. She talks too much.

But that is not what I started out to say. Here's that:
Valerie Harper said she knows what's ahead but is facing it by living.
"Don't go to the funeral," she said, "until the funeral."

Good counsel.

It's like "Don't try to live tomorrow today." And "Don't cross the bridge until you come to the bridge." Except it is very specific to the probability of death. Well, death is probable for us all. She just happens to know when, more or less, it will happen for her.

I think of this as I have been making sure I know where my life insurance and long term care insurance policies are. Have been asked to update beneficiary information on my investments. Just yesterday poked around in the safe downstairs to review my will and living will and durable power of attorney stuff. 

Not that to do so is going to the funeral before the funeral. But it makes one feel closer to death than one--this one--likes to feel. And at my age, when people I know are dying, I can get a little scared.

So, Valerie, thanks for the advice. I take it to heart.

Relative(s)

My oldest son has one more day in his 40s, which I reminded him when we spoke today. Not that he needed reminding. If I am to believe what he has said over the last several months, this is a hard birthday for him.

I understand.

I sent a card and wrote this message to him. "Cheer up. I hear 50 is the new 40."
My friend today said, "Tell him when he's 60 this will look really young to him."

It's true. Sixty is looking young (and younger) to me.