GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN


Fun is in the experience of the participant. Therefore I shouldn’t be surprised that many of the things I find fun tend to bewilder others.

When I was young walking to the Santa Fe Public Library was fun. Reading a dozen books a week was fun. My mother was not thrilled that I always had my nose stuck in a book. Hiding out from my mother was fun. Climbing cliffs was fun. Digging caves, building tree houses, and riding my bike was fun.

School was not fun. The only fun I had at school was taking tests that felt more like doing a series of challenging puzzles than work. Skipping school was more fun.

Social interaction has not been fun at any stage of my life. After I was married when I had to visit my in-laws I used to sit in the corner of their living room doing crossword puzzles when people dropped by. My mother-in-law did not understand my antisocial attitude. Nor did I understand how rude my behavior was until years later.

Social occasions are still not fun for me. People tell me that socializing is probably good for me, so I participate from time to time. I put in my hour of making small talk then I disappear. As a lifelong introvert I get my energy from being alone. Extroverts get their energy from being with people. Most people are a mixture of introvert and extrovert.

Scrabble is always fun. Tournament Scrabble is more fun even though I lose more games than I win. But I enjoy the process of playing and being challenged. Very little small talk, and I get endorphins, those feel-good hormones, from playing Scrabble.

Driving used to be fun for me. Not so much anymore. I still enjoy road trip movies. I even enjoy car commercials; the moving background soothes my restless spirit. Riding in any thing that is moving is fun for me. Even escalators are fun. I love the idea of hang gliding and bungee jumping and The Amazing Race on TV.

Computer games have been fun for me from the beginning. I enjoyed introducing several of my grandsons to computer games. Their parents never forgave me even though one of the grandsons now works for Microsoft. I still enjoy computer games.

Writing is something I’ve done for a lot of years and it seldom used to be fun. It was part of how I earned my living. Therefore it was work. Getting published was the only part that was fun. And I did far more writing than publishing.

These days I write because it’s more fun than not. I find that fact incredible, but know that these days I’ll seldom do anything more than once that doesn’t have some element of fun in it. I continue to write. Therefore I must be having fun.

EMERGENCY

I ended up in the emergency room of Highline Hospital a few nights ago. I’d been living with an increasing pain on the left side of my lower back for the better part of a week, but had assumed it was a pulled muscle so just went about my business as usual.

I live with a certain amount of pain on a daily basis and this time of year my fibromyalgia acts up anyway. Chronic pain ends up being something to manage, not something to get rid of, so I just endure it with the help of OTC ibuprophen. I have heavy-duty prescription medication available but I don’t enjoy just sitting around happily drooling.

So I hurt a lot, but not being over-medicated means I can write, and drive myself to swimming. Both things are important to me. I’m not used to living with acute pain.

The night before I went to the emergency room had been hell even with Vicodin, so not wanting to go through another night like that, I had to decide what to do. And, smart as I think I am, I couldn’t figure out what to do. I was in too much pain to drive myself anywhere, but it didn’t feel like it was a genuine 911 emergency.

When my children were little and I was busy writing I used to tell them not to bother me unless it was a breathing or bleeding emergency. I did not have that serious an emergency so after a few tears of self-pity I got on the phone.

I ended up having to get permission from two consulting nurses to allow myself to think about calling one of my kids to take me to the hospital emergency room. Not easy to do. I like to think of myself as being capable and independent. I don’t know how to be sick. The last time I went to the emergency room was ten years ago.

Michael came and drove me to the hospital. It took an hour to get some relief from the pain, then came a series of hurry-up-and–wait tests. I sent Michael home. He is dealing with another flare-up of his Crohn’s disease. Two hours later I got the diagnosis of acute pylonephritis (bad kidney infection) for myself. I was relieved to know what the problem was and that it wasn’t something more serious or mysterious.

Deborah came to take me home. By the time she got there I was feeling no pain (temporarily). The next day I felt okay enough to drive to the pharmacy, but was pretty shaky by the time I had to wait for a half hour and was ready to pay for the prescriptions. In retrospect I obviously was less capable than I thought because I could not remember my credit card pin number.

Fortunately my fingers finally remembered on my third try. Good old muscle memory! I came right home, took my medications (antibiotic and Vicodin) and went to bed where I belonged.

P. S. I’m getting better every day. Thanks for asking.

SMALL TALK


We talk of the weather – how awful, how nice.

We talk of the neighbors in search of more spice.

We talk of the congress as if they were lice.

We talk of our fortunes – a throw of the dice.


We talk of our hairdos how good or how bad.

We talk of the movies – the fun and the sad.

We talk of the parents the mom and the dad.

We talk of the lovers we wish we had had.


Should we talk of the leaders we think we deserve?

Or talk of the money we ought to conserve?

Should we talk of the world we would like to preserve?

Or settle for small talk and gossip with verve?

FOOLS AND CHILDREN


They say God protects fools and children. It’s obvious to me that I’ve been operating as one or the other most of my life. After all, life is a risky business.

When I was thirteen I lobbied hard to come up to Washington state and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce. I talked her into hitchhiking from Marysville to Everett to ballet class once a week “I’m a good judge of character,” I told her.

When I was fourteen and back home again I used to sneak out of my window at night and ride over to the movie theater on the wrong side of town. I got creeped out a few times, but never frightened enough to stop.

When I was fifteen my mother, younger brother, baby half-brother and I were living in a primitive cabin on a cliff overlooking the Pacific north of Arcata, California. My brother, thirteen-and-a-half, and I had carved out a rough trail down the sandy bluff to the tiny beach 600 feet below. We talked my mother into going down with us for a picnic one day. I assured her I could carry baby Russell. “No problem,” I said. And so I climbed down and back supporting Russell on one hip while clinging to sketchy handholds and bushes. No problem.

At the age of seventeen, having just graduated high school, I traveled to Chicago on my own, found a trainee position, and a tiny basement apartment on Michigan Avenue, promptly got fired, and found a less demanding job as a waitress at Stouffer’s Tearoom. I also, on one of my late night walks, acquired a stalker who wanted to take me to Florida with him. I went home to my mother instead.

Marriage and motherhood tied me down for a few years, and I became an armchair traveler courtesy of the public library, but I never passed up any opportunity for adventure with or without the kids. I wore out a Chevy station wagon in those years.

After a divorce, travel was high on my list of priorities. I picked up hitchhikers on a trip back from Los Angeles (a story for another day). I racketed around the greater Seattle area to singles dances at night after the kids were in bed. I answered singles ads in The Weekly for a while, after which I taught an Experimental College class titled “Playing the Personals.”

On a trip to see a friend in Salishan on the Oregon coast I stopped my car on a steep driveway and had to step outside the car for a moment to push the buzzer to get the gate raised. As the car began slowly drifting backwards I flung the door open and myself inside just in time to brake to a stop. One of the scarier moments of my life!

Other than the trip down the bluff with my baby brother and hitchhiking with cousin Janyce most of my close calls only risked my own neck. Then I agreed to lead a small group of writers on a trip to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. As group leader I assumed responsibility for those who traveled with me, but did not understand how challenging that would be until I encouraged one young woman to ride the subway back to Chapultepec Park after a group excursion there one afternoon. I felt sure she could handle any problems, but four hours later when she still hadn’t returned I was in a torment of worry. After another hour and a half she returned happy and full of stories. “I knew you could do it,” I told her, vowing to be more cautious regarding other people in the future.

I should have understood from that experience how worried my children might be when I began traveling around the states and Canada all alone in a small RV, or took off at Christmastime to travel by local bus without reservations in Mexico and Guatemala. But I was as clueless as ever as I accumulated more adventures and close calls. I even left for seven weeks in South America without much of an itinerary and without any way for my kids to contact me. This was before the age of cell phones and e-mail, but my kids were busy with their own lives and it never occurred to me that it might be important to stay in touch.

Although these days I’d like to think I’m neither as foolish nor as childlike as I’ve been throughout most of my life, the feedback I get from family and friends suggests that I’m still more delusional than not. And when I lock my keys in the car, set off the smoke alarm regularly, or trip over the hem of my long skirt and fall down, it’s a good thing that I can trust God to continue to protect fools and children.

DUSTY CONSPIRACY


I got my hair cut today. “Your hair, it’s so thick,” the stylist said.

I found that hard to believe, because I keep losing hairs, dozens of hairs daily, all over the place. My place mostly – where the dust not only grows thick, but also thumbs its nose at me when it thinks I’m not looking.

And snickers. It snickers at night when it thinks I’m sleeping.

If you watch the commercials on TV, dust is portrayed as this fluffy thing that can easily be persuaded to surrender if you use the right equipment. That’s just not true. Dust comes in many forms. The fluffy stuff is the easiest to catch, even when it morphs into dust bunnies that hop away and hide out under the bed.

But, besides fluffy dust, there’s cluster dust; cluster dust is dense and clings to rugs. And there’s sticky dust; sticky dust is found in the kitchen. It conspires with kitchen grease to glue itself to surfaces adjacent to the cooking areas such as the hood over the stove or the top of the refrigerator.

The worst stuff is more like powdered milk that accumulates on surfaces. You can move it from one surface to another; you can seldom really get rid of it entirely. Some of it can be vacuumed up, but a residue always lingers. So, when I’m dusting, I have to dust each surface at least twice.

My daughter claims that my dusty problem is due to the fact that I don’t dust often enough. It’s true that I only formally dust twice a year. So, who, besides her, says that twice a year isn’t often enough?

Twice a year is also when I dust my bathtub. Let me explain. I swim daily and take showers before and after each swim so I seldom need to use either tub or shower in the bathroom. So, assorted dusts build up in the tub – mostly what looks like the debris from a windstorm along with discarded hairs and cluster dust.

I’m beginning to develop a theory about cluster dust; it’s just another conspiracy. It’s obvious the dust clusters are held together with all my lost hairs. Do you suppose the clusters are the offspring of intergalactic aliens getting ready to take over the world clinging to hair, to the discarded flotsam and jetsam of humankind? Maybe that’s what the nightly snickering is really all about.

PAIN POEM


Pain carves my face like a pumpkin, a toothless rictus to frighten children.
Pain corrodes my day, drills deep into my psyche, shattering emotions

Bone scrapes on bone
Nerves scoured raw misfire
Muscles clench and spasm
My body is a prison

Pain trumps all else


Every night pain claims me for its bedfellow, a sadist making himself at home.
Wrapping arms of barbed wire around my torso, pain drags me down

Breathing fire on my neck
Splintering vain resistance
Shredding my sleep
No respite anywhere

Pain trumps all else


On the other hand I witness Sister Meg, silent tears streaming down her face,
Transfigured, offering her suffering as a joyful sacrifice.

Glorified, accepting pain
Clutching her rosary beads
Seeking only God’s will
No energy wasted

For Sister Meg pain does not trump God.


As for me pain remains a bully, a tyrant, a thief stealing my patience
A ravenous beast, pain devours my will and flays my soul

I bitch, moan, whine, and complain.
I resist. I fight. I medicate.
My agnostic self suffers
But not in vain

My poem trumps pain

FATHERLESS DAYS


“Don’t you miss not having a father?” The question came at me from time to time as I was growing up – mostly from my schoolmates.

“How can you miss someone you never knew?” I’d reply, shrugging off any deeper implications of the question. Not aware there were any deeper implications.

So, I grew up in a one-parent family and that one parent was often missing in one way or another much of the time. I heard references to my father from my mother from time to time. Mostly about him being an alcoholic and an unsuccessful door-to-door salesman. Explaining somewhat why she left him when I was five years old, and again more permanently when I was six.

By the time I was a teenager I was aware that he lived in Seattle where I had been born. We lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in a kind of religious cult community. The cult was benign as cults go. No sensational drama, just lots of prayer meetings, and constant entreaties for “love gifts.” My poor mother never failed to have a dollar or two, which we could ill afford, to “gift” to the wealthy leader.

When I was fourteen I lobbied hard to come to the Northwest and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce in Marysville. Successful in my scheming, I had my first airplane ride to Seattle in 1949. My father picked me up at the airport. I had no memories of him, just my mother’s comments. The plan was for me to stay with him for a few days before my aunt and uncle from Marysville could drive down to pick me up.

He lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Tacoma where I slept on the couch. He commuted by bus to Seattle where he worked at Rhodes Department Store on Second Avenue in the appliance section. He ate all his meals out. So, for those few days we’d catch the bus after breakfast for the hour-long ride to Seattle. I went to work with him each day and just hung around the store in the mornings. After a quick lunch my father would give me a few dollars and point me in the direction of one of the downtown movie theaters where I would spend the afternoon.

I’d meet him back at the store by closing time and the two of us would walk down First Avenue to one of the card-room/taverns for dinner before catching the bus back to his room in Tacoma. My father was a taciturn bookish man in contrast to my loquacious mother, but he told me some things about himself those few evenings we were together.

His philosophy of salesmanship: “I give them information and let them make up their own minds.” No wonder he was unsuccessful. He talked a little about growing up an only child in Clarkston, Washington with a mother who did not like children. When he asked his father why he stayed with her, his father said, “Mabel sets a good table.” We talked of books, of philosophy, of metaphysics. He smoked a pipe.

Having so often heard my mother mention his alcoholism I was surprised I didn’t see him drinking since I thought I smelled alcohol on his breath every day. But he did not seem to be impaired in any way. Years later I realized what I’d smelled was bay rum aftershave lotion. And I found out that he was a periodic alcoholic; every six months or so he would go on a bender and on occasion have to be hospitalized.

He came to Marysville to visit several times during the school year I was there, and seemed to be painfully shy and awkward around people. No wonder my mother, out of patience with me, would complain how much like my father I was. Taciturn. Bookish. Awkward around people. The legacy of my absent father.

In early summer I spent several more days with him before flying back to Santa Fe. One Saturday he took me to the Woodland Park Zoo where he took some pictures of me. Photography was one of his hobbies. We also visited The Smith Tower building.

Ten years later I returned to the Seattle area with my husband and children and would invite him over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. When his mother died he moved back to Clarkston and eventually started keeping company with a next-door neighbor somewhat older than he was. Miss Lou invited the children and me to visit him east of the mountains and we usually did a couple of times a year. He was happy.

Eventually he got sick with cancer of the esophagus, and was hospitalized in Spokane. I drove over, stayed in a cheap motel, and visited him every day. One day when I arrived I was told that he had almost died during the night and had had to be resuscitated. When I went in to see him he looked panicky. The cancer made it difficult for him to speak, but he clutched at me and I leaned closer to hear him. “They are trying to kill me,” he whispered. And I realized that he had misinterpreted the violent efforts to revive him.

He died shortly thereafter. He was 69. After the funeral my brother and I helped sort out his parent’s house where he had lived. I got some furniture and books and papers that I loaded into my station wagon to take back to Seattle.

By that time I’d become aware that having been raised without a father had set me on a path of searching for a father in every man I met. Part of what I’d been telling myself for years was that I had no memory of being loved. Not by my mother. Not by my seldom-seen father. Explaining in part my unhappy life.

During the next year as I sorted through his papers I found lots of photographs. One that had been taken at the zoo when I visited him. Another, more important one, taken by someone else shows him squatting down on one knee in front of a fir tree. He’s clutching a five-year-old me on the other knee. We both are grinning like idiots.

I could no longer believe that I had never been loved.