Category Archives: The Path

where i’ve been, where i am, where i’m going and why

Apr17

ivy

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ivy

I wonder where my fascination with ivy began?  It’s one of the lesser totems of my life.

When I moved into the house on Marcia, the kitchen pantry was lined with ivy wallpaper.  (My dad painted over it one day while I was gone.  “You were going to paint over it, weren’t you?” as if any alternative was unthinkable.)

When I lived in Austin, while browsing the local Goodwill store, I spotted a plate, sage green with white ivy leaves.
It was just one plate, tho, and I had no use for a single plate.  But it was there the next time I went back, and for $1.50, it was a must purchase.

Turns out it was Harkerware.  Thus began a long love affair with all things pottery, especially tableware, but also bowls.  I angered my friend Ann one time because I had found a huge bowl somewhere shopping, and she thought I should let her buy it.  But I had been looking for a bowl like it for big recipes, like oatmeal cookies, where the flour goes everywhere when you start up the mixer.  At the time I did not understand why somehow I seemed like the bad guy in this deal, because she had numerous similar bowls and I had none.

In retrospect, I understand it a little better today.  Crockery can be a kind of addiction.

Anyway, back to Austin:  I began searching for pieces of the Harkerware on eBay and I ended up buying, selling, collecting, learning everything I could.  I inherited a large cache of Fiesta from Mom, who included boxes and boxes bequeathed to her by the former Anne Roney, who’d gotten tons of china and figurines and JUNK for her wedding gifts.

I began collecting a huge set of Azura by Taylor Smith Taylor.  It seemed the perfect fine china companion to my everyday Ivy Wreath.

It’s all in boxes now.  I gave the Azura to Rachel when I moved back to Memphis.  She’s used it once, last Thanksgiving.  It set a very nice table.

Three of my salad plates are downstairs in the kitchen.  I should probably rescue them.  I had the sugar bowl in the hallway, to keep dog biscuits handy.  Hannah discovered these, and the sugar bowl is no more . It’s not like I used the sugar bowl, anyway, and I’m certainly not using it now.  I still have the lid, and I might find a replacement for it.  But not for a while.

One of my favorite photos is of a sprig of ivy in a bud vase, sitting on the windowsill of the bathroom upstairs on Carnes.  It’s flanked by some of my seashells.  Not sure if I even have those shells anymore or the vase, but I have that photo.  I look at it frequently, tried to make it part of my Facebook timeline but it’s the wrong crop.

Near the garage, there’s ivy sprouting in a place where hostas had been and died.  It’s tenacious and hardy.  It holds the ground together and can form a carpet across a lawn in no time, or up an exterior wall.  It is the bane of masons and carpenters, and it can be tiresomely mundane.  But there’s something about it that reminds me of sweeter times, of disappointments and flawed relationships, and hope.

Nov18

Permanent

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I am not a boy.

I have straight, dark hair.

I am four.  My best friend is beautiful. And I am not.

She makes me sit in a chair.
She pulls my hair and twists it around tiny plastic things.
I like to play with the little sheets of tissue paper.

Sit still, she says.
Here, you can hand these to me, one at a time.

I feel important.  I am helping her.

I don’t like the cold dripping down my neck.
I don’t like the smell.
It’s hard for me to breathe.

But she looks determined and certain.  This will make you beautiful, she says.

The plastic things are sticking into my head.
I want to scratch but she says no.
Just a little longer and you will be beautiful.

I want to be beautiful.  Then she will love me.

She pulls a chair to the sink and pushes my head under the faucet.
The water is warm and feels so good I want to stay there forever.

But I have to be neutralized first.

I am wet and cold and the skin of my head feels like a blister.
But she squirts the neutralizer onto my head.
We’re almost done, she says.

The sun is shining.  I can see the lawn through the glass door.
My friend comes to the door.  She is beautiful.

But I cannot go outside.

I am not beautiful yet.

Sep14

depression

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it doesn’t even seem fair to call it depression. it just feels like nothing. Life just feels like very, very slow death. One day is just like the next. I pray at night that God will show me mercy and that, after all these years, he will just let me sleep forever. I do not dread anything but the unending stretch of years without any real joy.

I fake it, I lie about it, I laugh until tears stream down my face. At the core of me is an endless black hole that sucks the meaning out of every moment. I don’t care about anyone or anything. I work to pay my bills and keep food in my body. I smile at people who wait on me and hope that I encourage them just a little, because nothing encourages me.

Money matters little, because there will never be enough to make me happy. I suspect more money would simply tempt me to eat, drink or drug myself to death. I don’t feel like I can share this with anyone who knows me. I think it would shock them. It kind of shocks me. But not really.

I have a doctor’s appointment next week. More drugs, more vitamins, more sun, more exercise. I do not see the point. Why prolong a life that seems pointless?

Aug21

aging parents

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My Dad has just become increasingly frail but continues to try to do things like put the trash bin on the curb and cut the grass.  He’s always been a hard worker and is happiest when he’s doing physical things.  He complains bitterly of being tired and when he does get up and try to do something it’s to be celebrated.  It’s just that he puts himself at risk so often.

The other thing is he has always been sort of reclusive and with each passing year leaves home less and less.  He is anxious when my mother leaves him.  And she is anxious when she leaves him as well.  She used to go out once a week and play cards and volunteer at the church but she has pretty much given up her social life to run around after him.

Decades ago my brother offered to build them a house near him where he lives, which is about 30-40 min from where they are now.  We’ve pleaded with them to move out of that house they live in now, that they bought in 1969.  It’s on a steep hill, so the driveway is as well. 

Both front and back steps are tiny little concrete pads with no handrails — the back is especially dangerous.  My Mom suffers from vertigo and recently fell coming down the attic stairs, knocking my Dad on the floor.  She sprained her ankle and he hit his head on the tile.

I think you get the picture.

Then there’s the mental illness part of this.  My mother is afraid of doctors and mistrusts all medication.  So she tinkers with both Dad’s and her own drugs.  She only takes a fourth of her antidepressant and she takes it like a tranquilizer.  She cannot comprehend that it’s not that, nor a narcotic, and that it needs to be taken just like her blood pressure medicine.

She has dismissed sitters, who would at least make sure they got their meds and would get her out of the house now and then.  She is unwilling to go up against Dad, who doesn’t want to move, to get them into at least a retirement community, OFF THAT DAMN HILL.

She calls us in turn, telling us all that no one else pays any attention to her (we all check in regularly) to say that she is very sick.  Yet when we manage to squeeze out 2-3 hours from our schedule to make the trip to visit, she either disappears into the kitchen or the bedroom or sits down and tells us every thing is fine.  This makes both of us crazy, and simply mystifies the rest of the family.

So my brother woke me up last week worried about Mom, and after investigation it was determined that she’s simply now picked him as her current rescuer.  She’s even called my ex from time to time.  It’s insane, and my brother and I have just had about enough.  So I took a day to talk to my peeps and even went to the church and ended up having a pastor pray with me.  But I think we have a rough plan in place, and have agreed to intervene with Mom and Dad AS A FAMILY, which is something new for us.

Mom has always been the gatekeeper of all the family relationships and she has always been threatened whenever any one of us appeared to have a relationship that didn’t include her.  She is very controlling while appearing sweet and guileless.  She’s a master manipulator. 

While she and Dad have very real issues that concern us all, she has sabotaged any attempts of aid, pits us against each other and has succeeded in alienating us all from each other until just the last few years.  It’s a real testament to her, though, because she’s always ensured that we meet at her house at least half a dozen times a year or more for family dinners, and over the years at least we remember who each other are.

And we love each other, all of us, through thick or thin, through the spats and the silent treatment.  We are family, and we all have that value in common – we stick together.

Aug15

a southern girl’s rebellion

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I feel left out.  I feel like I have to compromise who and what I am to play their game (join, join, join, no matter what the outcome). I prefer to maintain my autonomy and let my gestures be from me and not from an amorphous political group. But I feel left out.

So I’m looking at WHY I feel left out.  I’ve never been a part of that group. Never.  I’ve been wooed and solicited by them as individuals, and even by women who are not a part of the group. I suppose I took some sort of proprietary interest in the group through others.  But I am no more a part of this group of women than I am a part of my mother’s church.

So there must be a part of me that WANTS to be a part of them.  And that stuff goes back to junior high! when I was the weirdo on the outside, the girl with the strange pantyhose, too tall, too homely, too moody and too foreign to fit in with the cheerleaders, the popular girls, the ones who were always at the top of all the lists.

But such is the incubation of the artist, I think. Even then I was ahead of the curve and not afraid to express what I saw coming, in spite of the guffaws and the naysayers.  When trends eventually emerged and they remembered that I was wearing those strange hose a year ahead of them all, they looked at me with something that looked like fear.  I didn’t like that part of it, but they began to treat me differently.  They began to ask my opinion of things, and when I answered they listened.

I suppose it all comes down to trusting my instincts, believing my inner voice, the body of work I’ve done around romances gone wrong, when my instincts were derailed and my voice was silenced.  That guidance is just as strong as it ever was.  But as an addict, I constantly look for affirmation from other sources: people, food, sex, drugs, etc.

So the incubation continues.  As the Big Book says, it’s a lifetime pursuit.

May12

not long

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STRAWBERRY © Beata Wojciechowska | Dreamstime.com

I think to myself, I just want one night of love with you. Just one. Just one night. A few hours. One hour, maybe two. That’s all I need. Not long.

I think this and then I go back to work. I work for a while. Then I find myself thinking it again.

Then I go back to work some more, only now I am aching and wet. Thinking I will mow the lawn even if it doesn’t need it, so I can exhaust myself and maybe the fire in my knickers.

Salad. I’ll make a salad. I’ll use balsamic vinaigrette and strawberries and romaine and that will satisfy my need for wanting to lick you from neck to thigh.

Tears well up into my eyes and I wonder why. Maybe I’m so wet it’s leaking out from my eyes.

May10

a whole new world

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Ecclesiastes 2:12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly.

I was writing to a good friend on Facebook, and this just sort of spilled out of me.  It seemed like a good thing to repost here, because I need these sorts of revelatory experiences to remind me of where I’ve been, where I am and where I’m going.

***

I don’t recommend it for everyone, and I wouldn’t have recommended it for me five years ago, but I have settled into a nice little life without making The Group the center of it.

I have a well-rounded set of friends and acquaintances and we rarely lapse into tirades of personal drama. But I have stopped soliciting that, too, and so my communication with my peeps is more about what we’re doing and where we’re going.

My recovery from alcohol is not the neon sign over my head any more. It’s a fact of my life like my adoration of God and my love of good poetry and my obsession with art direction.

The best thing is I don’t feel like I have to compete with people just to be who I am.

I look back on all the angst I felt around the women at The Group, and especially the women in certain cliques, and it seems so strange to me now.

I feel like I have spent great chunks of my life trying to shoehorn myself into places where I wasn’t welcome or even that I didn’t care about, as if that would somehow complete me.

I see it in my romance, trying to get men to accept me who weren’t even worthy of me. I see it in my family, as if they could provide the solace I needed when they were so overwhelmed by their own pain that they forgot I existed.

I went to The Lake with David last week and, for the first time since I’ve been going there, it felt just right.

Something is different with me, and I chalk it up to God changing me when I wasn’t looking. That, and all that TRUE drama in my life has sort of brought me around to a clearer perspective.

It’s really a struggle for me to muster much sympathy for the strident shrew who screeches because she hasn’t accrued an appropriate level of sympathy for her latest self-styled crisis.

Friends are putting their furniture up on cinder blocks at Harbor Town. Hopefully they stacked the blocks five or six high, because the water is thigh-deep there now.

I am happy because I am strong enough to push the lawnmower up the hill.  Even though it takes me three days, cutting the front yard is great for my waistline, and I revel in the personal glee I experience when I think, this body belongs to a 57-year-old woman, and it still works.

My life doesn’t really look that different from the outside.  From behind my eyes, it’s a whole new world.

May7

OMG

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Last night’s dinner conversation included a debate on the necessity and/or appeal of texting and instant messaging.

My date was mildly astonished that I’ve never met my boss or my coworkers.  As a matter of fact, I don’t even know what they look like or how they sound.

I’m a telecommuter.  I applied for work online.  I interviewed and tested via email and FTP. I get assignments via email, phone text and AIM.

I have fibromyalgia.  It’s an odd illness.  It prevents me from sitting or standing for long periods.  As long as I keep moving, I’m fine, but that has its limits as well.  Eventually my back and knees will complain, and after a while they demand bedrest and Advil.

So I ended up here. I do all my work on my bed.  While sitting in a chair becomes painful after a couple of hours, I can work long days sitting on a mattress, propped up with many pillows, and still be able to cook, exercise or hook up with friends at the end of my “shift”.

When I was a child, we had a rotary dial telephone, four television channels and a Kodak camera that shot 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 black and white film.  Dad was in the Air Force, and I grew up around tubes and solder and meters and stuff.  Mom was a public school librarian, and when the budget enabled the system to put computers in, she learned how to use one.  But they do not have a computer at home, and while she has a cell phone, she keeps it turned off most of the time.

It’s an interesting time we live in, and I seem to be squarely in the middle.  I’ve resisted using Twitter, because I already spend so much time on my Treo and Facebook and email and AIM.  But the Red Cross and the National Weather Service are finding that during an environmental crisis, satellite TV really bites, and when the power goes out there’s not even that. So status updates and tweets help folks find food, water and shelter — and loved ones.

I do have a Twitter account.  I check it online about once a quarter, if that often.  But methinks a more proactive path lies ahead.