Tuesday, January 28, 2014



                                                  Look Homeward, Angel

Whenever a lone of poetry, whenever a song lyric, whenever an entire poem pops into my head, I almost always am able to trace these mind-events to the why-source of their existence. Today's entry was a line from a book I read 51 years ago, when I was seventeen.  My reading, that year, was devoted to the great  writer, Thomas Wolfe.  The line was, ".....a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces."  The book was Look Homeward, Angel.

Recently, a friend made the observation that he finds my blog to be "tinged with sadness".  Judging from the fact that the above quote is the main quote I have taken with me from my seventeenth year, and that the rest of my favorite lines, lyrics and entire poems are also on the, let's say, dark side (although, God knows, I am most certainly also partial to songs like, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", "Sunny Side of the Street", "Ain't She Sweet", and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby"  - - songs my mother loved to sing to me before she became ill) - - he may be right.  On the other hand, I have known incredible joy, have jumped for it (joy), have danced in it (joy), have sung inside it (joy), have laughed my head off in it (in it).  Have exalted in it.  Joy.

But I am getting off point.

A stone, a leaf, a door.

What you lose, what you find. What you see, what you do not see. The past, the present the future.
By seventeen, I surely knew that life is difficult, that being alive is incredible, that my emotions were events,  that life held so many amazements from the huge to the small-but-still-amazing, say, like a new bar of soap is always amazing.....and that there is a past, a present and, I most resoundingly  

hoped, a future.

When I was seventeen, Maurice Nicoll was not yet writing about Time and Physics: "I have already said that if the actuality of the fourth dimension is grasped, all history becomes alive.  All IS, in this dimension, not WAS or WILL BE.  Every moment IS.  Every moment is LIVING.  The world extended is time IS.  The creation of the world IS in time.  It is all PRESENT." - M. Nicoll

I love this stuff. The world in which nothing is lost.  The world in which what was, long ago, still is.  The stories, the early scenes, the early attractions, the old smiles, the early songs, the days themselves, all are.  I can read it and I can type it, but only a certain type of physicist understands it.

A stone, a leaf, a door.

What got to me, I think, when I was seventeen, about this (quite famous) line of Wolfe's, is it's feel for loss and discovery.  (When Freud was a little boy he wold hide his toys so that he could lose them, so that he could have something to seek.  Loss is that compelling. The British psychiatrist, Winnicott, wrote, "It is a joy to be hidden, but a tragedy not to be found.")

So what's this blog really about?  It's about going along, living your life, thinking you've kind of got a handle on what is and what will be (and maybe you do and maybe you don't), dating and then not dating, seeing patients, sure, getting together with friends and family, eating your frozen dinners and making your funny kind of coffee, reading your books, watching your movies and then.... one day, there's that stone, that leaf, that door. 
  

  

Friday, January 24, 2014





                                                     ON AGEING
I

I saw my neck today, in a Macy's mirror. I wanted to run away, but I didn't run. Instead, I turned down the edges of my black turtle neck and moved in closer, closer.  I don't have a full length mirror at my house and it's hard for me to see all of me.  All I see is corners, circles, strips.  At Macy's, I saw it all. All of me, why not take all of me?  Can't you see, I'm no good, without.......well, we'll finish the song right there.

I saw my neck. 

It was a wondrous sight, my neck.  My skin, my dear, dear, skin - - went in and it came out.  It had its own say, apparently, about where it would and would not go.  Somewhere along the line a ballot showed up at my house  that I forgot to sign.  I did not sign this ballot that read, "Let go of the neck! She does not care anymore!" Truth is, I do very much care, I just didn't vote in that election.
 Damn. Double damn. And here I am, out there, on the streets, in the restaurants, at the local events, and the public thinks I simply didn't vote.
 Well, I meant to.
 So there.

Because my husband was twelve years older than me, I had always been "the youngest one".  It came with the territory.  I got away (or hoped I did) with all kinds of transgressions: not being a great cook, not being as well organized, not being as serious, not caring so much as......and on and on....as the rest of them, our friends, all of them, who were Jim's age.  I slid.  I was "the kid".  I was holding down a job, going to school, reading tons of books, directing plays,  writing and publishing....but I wasn't, somehow, a "full-fledged adult" - -not like them. I didn't have to be. Oh yes, I did plenty of stuff, but..... I also got away with my stuff. I was both admired and disapproved of for this existential "space" I took up. Not that other friends, older friends, didn't also dare take up this kind of space with me. In our circle. We knew who we were. We still know who we are. It's a matter of charisma. Charm. Childishness.
 We have, all of us, ridden ourselves of these vainglorious  traits, but it has taken us a mighty long time.
 Meanwhile, we are certain to have these necks.    
       
Susan, one of my dearest friends, looked down at her hands this past Monday and said, "Well, I don't care about my hands, because who does care about hands, really?  I don't want to do anything to point attention to my hands.  So I have decided to focus on my eyes."  Susan, at age 67, has discovered eyelash extentions.  I must say, they are most fetching.  Another female friend advises me to go get Botoxed.  "It's a cosmetic," she says, in her excited voice," nothing more, nothing less. It's a cosmetic, except that it hurts."
 "But I already hurt," I said, "How much more do I have to hurt to look good?"  My friend looked at me like I was just so dumb.

"You already look good," she said.  "But to look better, you have to hurt. That's what we pay for.  
Come on, Kay.  Get with the program.  Looking good isn't good enough!"
'It isn't?"
"Oh, God, No!"
""Oh."

So aging isn't just surrendering to our ideas of what our Grandmothers were like.....it's trying to keep that flame of what our Grandmothers were like inside a face and body that looks thirty years younger than the face and body of the face and body of what our Grandmothers'  walked around in.  I can't even imagine my Grandmother looking like me - - and she died at 63, five years younger than me. Would my Grandmother have been getting advice about her eyebrows? The plasticity of her skin?  The plasticity of her vagina? 
 Wouldn't she have run like hell-fire down the lane past the well-house, past where we were all sure the dread White Lady lived, past the Clear Creek with it's salmon and it's secret rocks?
 We are in a new land, now, Cousins, we need Protection and we need to Protect each other.  There is nobody else older than us, than us.

My mother has been dead since I was twenty-five, so she's not much help. Mostly, I turn to my older friends, my friends in their eighties, like Mel, who is eighty-six. What's she up to? I want to model myself like Mel. That girl I see in my office every Wednesday at five, she's cute, but she's twenty.  There's a lot of boat adjusting and moving that boat in a new direction between her years and my years. 
There's a lot of neck action I'm a'gonna' have to surrender to, in the meanwhile.

So That's it from me, from the colored condo where it's never too late to figure how to live.  

Thursday, January 23, 2014


                                                           Bainbridge

Not a day goes by that I don't question my decision to move here. One day, after lunch, driving home from Bainbridge to Bremerton, I said to Magge, "I'd kind of like to live there," and Magge said, "Well, why don't you?" and one week later, I did.  Really. That's what happened.  I put my house up for sale, looked at a few places here, plunked down cash for this space, got some friends together to help me move, packed my things up inside a friend's industry-size moving van, and vroooooom. 

And that's what I know I know about grief.  You all know the story about the ninety pound lady who picked up an automobile because her son was lying under one. Well, I left one house, bought another, and moved to a community I did not know in seven days time, without consulting anyone. Why? Because I had cried enough tears in Bremerton and I needed to spread the tears around.

No, that's the joke answer.  Because I felt abandoned and unreceptive and not one good sensible thing felt right to me. Because friends were making noises like I should be over Jim's death and I was still sleeping with his ashes, stuffed into a silk pillow case - -  (I slept with them here, too, for over two more years, until one day Alan asked me if I would please, please consider putting my Jim-pillow away).

And now that the silk pillow has been emptied into the waters of Puget Sound, and now that I have come to my senses again, I find myself here.

Here.

Here's what I know about here.  If it weren't for my patients, I think I might go mad, here.  My patients bring a certain reality that is otherwise invisible to this place.  Otherwise, there are no African Americans in this place. Otherwise, there are no lower middle class people.  Bainbridge is kind of like a little literary heaven. They celebrate William Stafford's birthday here. I knew William Stafford. I knew his wife, Mary.  I visited them, at their home. Bill used my right shoulder to steady his - - that thing that you look at the heaven's with. Telescope.  He attended two of my writing classes at Port Townsend. And, of course I attended his.  Here, if you go to Gerry's Auto Repair, you are very likely to find an Edith Wharton book next to you on the crappy little side table. Here, there is Shakespeare in the Park and famous authors in the most surprising places and ten minute plays to write and poetry contests to win and only white people on the streets.  Here, the doctors live on the island and their staff live off island.  Here, if there's been an accident on the bridge, the restaurants don't open because the staff live off island.  Here, you will never run into one person with a sign that reads, "NO JOB! NEED MONEY!" held with a bedraggled man standing at an intersection with a dog.

What's wrong with me that I crave to see poor people?  That I crave to see different colored faces?  Could it be that this place is just a little too much like living in some mutant version of adult kindergarten?  And, oh my God, am I biting the hand that feeds me?  Probably.  I don't know.

Probably.  I don't know.

Today a  very dear and very bright friend who is coming to visit me, wrote, "Bainbridge is a fur piece, but seeing you will make it worth it."

       So what have I done here, other than rebuild a successful practice (no mean feat, at 65 years old)?  Well, Ma'm,  I have learned, finally, how to live alone.  I have learned how to care for myself.  Not without a struggle.  Not without things to be otherwise. But. If I want to go to a party, I throw a party.  If I want to join others, I find others.  During the Golden Globe awards, I bought myself a split of very good champagne, curled up on my couch in my silkiest black robe and ate a dinner of champagne and popcorn.  I was perfectly happy.  During the last SeaHawks game I split my time between a good book and the game, knowing my autonomic nervous system couldn't simply watch the game clear through. When I need a walk, I take a walk. When I need to lift weights, they're right here, beside my television.  I read a ton of books. I keep a journal.  If I feel broken, I know how to fix myself. I no longer need anybody else to fix me.

That's big.

I no longer need anybody else to fix me.  I can fix myself.

Even so, wow.  Without my patients, without their humanity, without  their crushing honesty,  their inevitable struggles, their commitment to life,  without the solace of their struggle at the deepest level, where could I find my own.  I share myself, of course. I am not that therapist who does not share herself. But it is the participation that makes life here, life on Bainbridge Island, not merely tolerable, but deeply live-able and most certainly love-able, for me.  

    

Wednesday, January 22, 2014





                                                  Here, There, Everywhere

"When you say 'I'm from here,' do you mean you're from Washington State or do you mean from this part of the U.S.?"  my new hair stylist - - thirtyish, wearing a crisp white shirt, a black velvet vest and jeans stuffed into green very chic cowboy boots,  not to mention her wonderful bangs which were thinned and styled just right, not like my big bang clumps dropping down from someplace near the middle of my head.  "Because," she went on, "some people, when they say they're from here, they mean Oregon, or Idaho. California, even."

"No, I mean here," I replied, "or pretty much here, as in some thirty miles away.  I mean, I'm from Silverdale."

"Wow," Penny said, her head hanging down nearly to my side and looking upwards as she cut what she called an angle into my hair, "and where did you come from before Silverdale?"

"Nowhere," I said.  "Just - - Silverdale. I was born there. My father was born there. His father came there as a teen. My grandfather came here. My great-grandfather came here.  All my cousins are from Silverdale.We grew up there. Of course, nothing was there in those days but a feed store, a Chevon station, a bake shop and a kind of variety store. Anyway, Bainbridge Island was here, and we lived - - there."

She stopped her hair cutting.

"But - - " she butted.

"Yes?" I yessed.

"That can't be. I mean, you're so - -fashion forward!"
Of course I can't have been from Silverdale because I am, at sixty-eight years old,   so- -- fashion foward.

She dropped her head way down low again, but now on the other side, and asked the question that made me laugh for the rest of the day.  The question she asked was, "Are you sure?"

                                                          ********
      Grief does not end and love does not die and my Jim dreams have begun again in a new and, for me (and for poor Jim, if dreams were really real) awful way.  For the past month and a half Jim is alive again, but the bargain made is that he gets to be alive and engaged with his life and his friends and me and his children and his paleontology and everything he loves - - and then he has to die all over again and he has to know this and to face it and knowing this is terrible for all of us.  And I just keep looking at him and wondering how he can bear to deal with this truth.

     I don't want to dwell on this, but when one lives along one has to tell someone and I've just decided to begin to blog again. So just two or three more lines on this. In my office, I discovered the diary I kept of the year that ran from Jim's diagnosis to Jim's death. All the quotes. All the biopsies.  All x-rays. All the margins. All the chemo. All the dinners brought by friends.  All the hope. All the lawyers. Me and my kids chasing the lawyers out. Tom  Clouthier carrying Jim around. Jim and I saying our vows again, serving pumpkin pie and champagne. Kelly, Erin, David and Kevin coming home.  Kelly, Erin, David and I, there, on the last day.  Rachel. taking care of me, afterward.

Okay, that's it. But it's powerful stuff, because, see, I hardly remember any of it. So it has brought it all back to life again for me. I guess, then, I am "the Jim" in the dreams.
                                            ******************           
                                                    

                      Here are some of my best most recent Bainbridge quotes:

"Are you sensitive to meatlike consistencies?"

"Have I told you about my mother, who tried to dial her micro-wave instead of her phone?"

"Just eat a live toad in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day."

"My own death? Are you kidding? I'm already missing myself!"

"What do you mean you didn't love Eat, Pray, Love?'
 "I mean I didn't love it."
" But what does that even mean?"
" It means I thought it was shallow and vapid."
"I think that means we can't be friends anymore."
"Okay."
"But don't tell anybody, okay?"


"Hey, look, stop it! You're making me feel like I'm the last car on the ferry!"

"Would you like your white wine with ice cubes or would you just like it cold?"


                                      ******************************

                         And a poem a patient brought last week:

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand
and chasing a soul and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company
doesn't mean security and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up
and your eyes open with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn to buid all your roads today because tomorrow's ground is too undertain
for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much
so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting
for someone to bring you flowers and you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong and you learn with every good-bye you learn.

                        - Anonymous

So goodbye from the colored condo where it is never too late to learn how to live.