A Quarantine Monday

Today, quarantine is that little piece of nail that chips off on the ring finger of your left hand and you know that you should stop, file it down or get a clipper and round it off, even though you keep your nails short so they don’t gather dirt or tap on the keyboard.  But you don’t stop, and before you know it, the chip is bigger and catching on the yarn you’re knitting with or the t-shirt and stretchy pants you pull on so your neighbors, who you don’t think pay a bit of attention to you -  but you never know -  won’t think you’re a weirdo for spray painting two old rocking chairs in your nightgown.  But you don’t stop to clip or file, and when you pull on gloves to weed the mint patch of those SOB stinging nettles that you should have weeded a week ago, you catch that now-torn fingernail on the inside of the glove, but you don’t stop to clip or file because it looks like rain and those SOB stinging nettles aren’t going to weed themselves.  And then halfway through the mint patch you pull some SOB stinging nettles and discover the entrance to a huge tunnel, probably dug by that cute chubby groundhog who sometimes hangs out in the back yard and you scream a tiny scream because although he looks adorable through the kitchen window, you don’t know what groundhogs are like close up, even though you’ve seen the Puxsutawney spectacle a hundred times and don’t think they are mean or would launch themselves out of that tunnel and toward your carotid artery.  So you back up slowly toward the garage and get out the power washer and blast the moss off of the plant ferris wheel your dad welded together for your grandma 50 years ago and which you inherited after she sold her farm and which you clean up and re-paint every few years.   And when you go to dig your hammer out of your tool box to repair one of the little baskets on the ferris wheel, you catch that nail again and realize that it’s torn farther into the flesh of your finger, and although it’s going to hurt, you’re going to have to rip it off.  But not now – now you’re in the cathartic throes of power washing, and you scavenge your gardens and garage for more things to power wash!  More things to power wash!  You power wash the corona from the grocery store shelves.  You power wash the guns away from those terrorist/protestors in Michigan and Kentucky.  You power wash the smug right off the face of the president.  You power wash the picnic table where you and Anthony Fauci will celebrate the end of the quarantine with expensive wine and delicious cheese and crisp fig crackers and lovely little pastries you learned to make while quarantine-watching The Great British Baking Show then you and Dr. Fauci will make sweet sweet love right there on the picnic table on your back porch and your dear husband won’t even care because it’s Dr. Fauci for pete’s sake and anyway, he’s too busy watching for the groundhog to emerge from the cavern under your porch to notice the bacchanalia and then the power washer stops because you have drug it out too far from the plug.

And your finger hurts.  And you rip off the remnants of your nail. 

And you put on a band-aid and promise yourself never to let a broken fingernail go too far ever again. 

Peace.

To Bloomington on Tuesdays

There are 34 ways to get from my front door to my writing circle.

By interstate or by avoiding the interstate.

Heading west or heading east – really, they both work.

975, 50, 65, 46, 135, 58, 446 – big numbers that bring me to my favorite place for words.  Words and sentences and paragraphs and stanzas that I write and hear, that take me so much further and farther than the numbered roads I just drove in on.

Grant and Lincoln and Washington Streets, where I turn and park and land to laugh and wonder and discuss all sorts of interesting things, from parking to weather to dogs to the current president, who I am certain will never have a street in Bloomington named for him. 

Some mornings I drive over hills and twisty turny highways, across Monroe, across that causeway that scared me so when I was a high school junior, planning to come to IU to study music.  I was scared that the road would suddenly collapse as that station wagon full of high schoolers barreled over the road over the water to gawk at the dorm rooms and classrooms of our future.

Somedays I drive through campus just to watch students, some hurrying, some not, as they head to class.  I remember wanting nothing more than an oxford blouse with my initials embroidered on the pocket, and a button purse with my monogram embroidered on the outside, penny loafers and knee socks, a pile of books in my arms and a boyfriend to walk me to class. 

Somedays I drive through the IU campus and think about not going there, not getting a music degree.  I did the other stuff, even knee socks, but at my beloved university to the north, where their unofficial and slightly crass chant at the end of “Hail Purdue” is “IU sucks”.  

Tuesdays, I drive and listen to NPR, knowing just where those stretches of road are where I can’t receive either the Louisville or Bloomington stations, and then I turn down the static and think about what the writing circle that day will bring, what I will hear, what I will share, what I saw on the morning’s journey that I want to be sure and jot into my journal, what might become a longer piece of writing, what may lead me to some great enlightenment – the tailgater on 46, the lone kayak on Monroe, the trees a slightly different color than they were the week before, the buzzards finding a possum breakfast, and always bikers preparing for Little 500.  Which didn’t happen this year.

My weekly hour and a half drive isn't happening any more, either.  
I miss my friends, their enthusiastic welcomes, the brief catch ups, the quiet of the circle room, with only the tippy tap on keyboards or the scratch of pen on paper or the whispered “good morning” or the giggle at sitting on a squeaky chair to interrupt the silence until we come together to listen, share, and be filled by women's words. 
Our friends' words.  
Our friends' hearts.

How I miss it.  And even after technological disasters on my end, I am thankful for Zoom circles. 

From my spare bedroom, I’ve found one more way to get to Bloomington.

NaPoWriMo Fail

I wrote an entire one poem for National Poetry Writing Month, April 2020.  I thought I could do better than last year, when I wrote  around 10, but while some would think the pandemic/quarantine/worldwide chaos we are in would make good fodder for writing, it has literally shut me down.  I can't explain it.  This would have been the perfect time to work on my novel(s), but I've written very little - just enough to get me through my writing circle.  

That's embarrassing to admit.  

So here is my one and only sort-of poem.  Our prompt was to describe your life metaphorically along the lines of "life is like a box of chocolates."  I think.  

My Life is Sarah's Birthday Cake

The recipe is old, but good

From the 1959 edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, 

Found in an antique store and

Inscribed on the inside cover "to Georgie, from Mom, for her

Wedding shower, September 1982."

I've made it so many times, 

I'm comfortable with changes.  

An extra half teaspoon of vanilla,

One more egg white.

Now, I spray the 2 eight-inch pans with Baker's Joy 

Instead of rubbing them down with butter then 

Tossing around a few teaspoons of flour to coat.

Sift.  Cream. Fold.

Into the pans, into the oven.

Out of the oven, out of the pans.

Let it rest.  Let it cool.  Let it be.

For about an hour.

Then get busy.

The party is soon. 

The party is always soon. 

Beat the shit out of two sticks of butter and a block of cream cheese.

Add vanilla, sift in a half a bag of powdered sugar

And turn the mixer up too high so powdered sugar flies

Into each and every crevice of your kitchen.  

Split the layers in two, because fancy is everything.

Set the first layer on your favorite fancy cake plate,

Spread with buttercream, jam and repeat.  And repeat.  

The slather the whole cake with buttercream,  smoothing and 

Filling in holes and gaps and smoothing and filling. 

Top with a crown of raspberries.

Because fancy. 

Leave room for candles. 

White ones are best, but any combination of 

Colors, scavenged from the back of the silverware drawer

Will do 

As long as there are candles. 

Sing, clap, blow out the little flames.

Eat, laugh.

Wait a year and do it all again. 

In the Company of Women

There are not many places that I would rather be than with a group of women.

Oh, maybe around the dinner table with my entire loud family.

Or on the couch with my husband and good dog, with some knitting in my hands.

Or in a theater seeing or hearing something movingly spectacular.

OK, so the 4th.  The 4th best place I like to be in in the company of women.

Like-minded women.

Women who feel the same way about an old program, or a new plan or current issue as I do.
Women I can speak freely with.
Women who share my passions.
Women who agree that the current national administration is an outrage.
Women who agree that other women who support this administration are a puzzlement.
Women who love the earth and paint and animals and words.
Women who love being together with other women.

Knowing that we're not alone.
Knowing that no matter where we head to when we leave this company of women,
We know we have a home, together, here, to come back to.*

Peace.
Georgie



*women who don't mind if you end your sentences in prepositions.

And So I'm 60

Do you feel 60?

Friends ask, both those who know 60 well and those who fear its approach.

And I laugh and tell them it’s just about the same as 59.

And 59 felt good.

Not “climb Mt. Everest” or “swim the English Channel” good (how I admire those women!)

But also not too bad. 

Not drive an electric buggy through Walmart and ask people to reach things from the shelves for me bad.

Not arthritis or COPD or cancer or replaced hips and knees bad.  
So that’s good.

60 feels special. 

More special than driver's-license 16.

More special than go-away-to-college 18.

More special than drunken 21.

And much more special than 31, when I realized that I was now “thirtysomething” and was afraid I’d start whining and sleeping around and questioning all my decisions, just like the characters on the TV show that we watched when we were 25 and couldn’t even imagine turning 31.

60 feels monumental.

My mother died when she was 60.

I’ve been without her for 22 years, and with each and every birthday as I grew closer to 60 I could almost hear the death knell.  Then 50 passed me without cancer, and 55 and now 60.

So I think I should do something special with this 60^th year, which feels like a gift from my mom. 

I have yet to figure out what that special something is.  I’ve done a lot of good things in my life.  Raised three very kind and loving children.  Served on boards and worked at soup kitchens.  Rescued cats and recycled tons of newspapers.  Stayed married for 37 years. Knit afghans for immigrants and tiny hats for NICU babies.  Got stamps on my passport and my name engraved on long-forgotten plaques that probably ended up in a landfill.

I also did three bad things.  But we won’t talk about those.

There are things I want to do in my 60^th year.  Improve my Spanish.  Learn to play the guitar that Clay bought for me when I was 30.  Finish my novel.  Paint.  Read the books in my to-be-read pile and finish the projects in my to-be-finished pile.  Stick to a skin care regime. Re-align my chakras.  Make an authentic paella and master the yeast roll.  

Walk more, sit less.  More water, less coffee.  Fear less, love more.  Think less, feel more. (You know – you’ve seen those self-improvement memes on Pinterest, too, right?)  

But to honor my mom, I’d have to improve my habits.

Eat oatmeal every morning.  

Walk every day.  

Stop cursing.  

Read the Bible and the Guidepost Daily Devotional.  Daily.

Lead a 4-H Club.  

Save money.  

Garden and can 100 quarts of green beans every summer. 
Become just a little bit prudish.  

Go to nursing school and care for the people at the Lutheran Home.  

Cover my mouth and pretend not to be tickled when hearing a joke that’s just a little off-color.

Instead of laughing out loud and asking the joke teller to tell it again, slowly, so I can write it down and tell everyone I know.

I’m not sure if I’ll hit upon the special something before I turn 61, although I think it has something to do with asking more questions and listening more closely. 

Asking the questions I’m sorry I never thought to ask my mom.  

I’ll let you know how it works out.

Peace.

Pants on Fire

I was a liar.

When I was in junior high, signet initial rings were a big deal.  A boy would give his to a girl he liked.  The girl would wrap fuzzy yarn around the ring to make it fit, then show it off to all her friends and enemies on the bus and at school.

Oh how I wanted one. Both boyfriend and ring.

My mom had an signet initial ring in her jewelry box.  I don't know who she got it from, when or why.  We only talked about it once - when she told me to take it off of my finger after I'd swiped it from her jewelry box, worn it to school for three days and told kids that it was from my boyfriend who lived in Elwood, Indiana (home of my cousins, and far enough away that no one in our little town would be the wiser).  Sigh.  Because of my short, stubby sausage-like fingers, the ring fit snugly without the addition of fuzzy yarn, and after three days of wearing it at school, I forgot to take it off when I got off the bus that third afternoon; I pried it off my finger and handed it to my mom as she reminded me, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." 

We never spoke of it again. 

When I went to college, I lied and told my new friends about my imaginary travels, my many fake accomplishments and my hometown boyfriend who didn’t exist.

When I came back home for Thanksgiving break my freshman year, I lied and told my old friends about my new college boyfriend who didn’t exist.

I quit lying when I finally realized that I was interesting and smart enough not to lie about things I had done. I quit lying about boyfriends when I finally had one. 

Oh, I’ve lied since college.  My driver’s license weight has always been a big lie.  I’ve lied about Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.  I’ve lied about how much things cost and about who ate the last of the Oreos. 

And I've been caught in the tangled web more than once. 

My mom believed so firmly in truth - and staying out of the web - that it never would have occurred to her that even doctors would lie.  

In the mid-90's, my mom's breast cancer came back with a fucking vengeance.  She had beat it once, but after 6 years of tamoxifen-induced cancer-free life, it came back.  Mom and dad didn't talk to their kids about it too much - I know they didn't want to worry us. Go home.  Don't worry.  Take care of your family, they insisted.  But dad was searching, searching, searching for cures.  He found one through oncologists in Indianapolis, fought with their insurance company to get them to pay for this new treatment, and was ready to sell the farm to make it happen for mom.  It was all so promising.  Except that the treatment was a big lie.  

Here is the blurb from Amazon about the book written about this big lie, False Hope:  Bone Marrow Transplantation for Breast Cancer (Rettig, Jacobson, Farquhar and Aubry):

In the late 1980s, a promising new treatment for breast cancer emerged: high-dose chemotherapy with autologous bone marrow transplantation or HDC/ABMT. By the 1990s, it had burst upon the oncology scene and disseminated rapidly before having been carefully evaluated. By the time published studies showed that the procedure was ineffective, more than 30,000 women had received the treatment, shortening their lives and adding to their suffering. This book tells of the rise and demise of HDC/ABMT for metastatic and early stage breast cancer, and fully explores the story's implications, which go well beyond the immediate procedure, and beyond breast cancer, to how we in the United States evaluate other medical procedures, especially life-saving ones. 

It details how the factors that drove clinical use ... converged to propel the procedure forward despite a lack of proven clinical effectiveness. *

Dad and I sat in uncomfortable plastic chairs in her hospital room at Methodist in Indianapolis where she was zipped into a plastic bubble.  She had had her bone marrow extracted and "cleaned" and had undergone the most horrendous doses of chemotherapy meant to bring her sweet little body near to the point of death before they replaced her marrow cells.  There were long plastic "gloves" through which we could put our hands and arms and hold mom's hand, but they were too small for dad's huge hands.  He cried about those stupid gloves on our walk to the car, where he said, "What the hell are we doing?  What have we done to her?  Almost killed her to make her better?"  And he cried some more. 

The doctors had lied.  Mom died.  Probably sooner than she would have died without that treatment.  There was a class action suit; dad declined to participate.  What the hell good would it do now? he asked.

And we never spoke of it again. 

I think those doctors really believed that the best treatment for breast cancer in the late 80's/early 90's was the bone marrow transplant; they fudged, then published, their results so more women could be helped more quickly.  And they were wrong.  Is lying OK when you think it might save someone's life?

People lie when they've found themselves in a tight spot.  "The dog ate my homework."  "The check is in the mail."  "I would never say/do a thing like that!"  "I'm on my way!"  "Of course this signet ring is from my out-of-town boyfriend."

People involved in politics, on governing boards, in service and civic organizations lie to get things done.  They inflate statistics, deflate costs, exaggerate stories of woe.  They believe their lies are for the greater good.  Is it really lying when one has been voted in/appointed/charged by God to make a difference, if one truly believes it's all for the betterment of our fellow humans? 

Or they lie to save their own asses.  If I have to lie to save my job, my career, my income, my benefits and my standing in the community - keep food in my children's mouths, for God's sake -  isn't that OK?   

I'm writing fiction based on a very big thing that really happened to me and my family.  I have embellished our story.  A lot.  In my book, I have killed off my parents and don't have any siblings.  Almost every time I read part of my story to my writing circle, I preface it with "this really isn't the way it happened." 

I was a liar.  Maybe I still am.  Maybe a wild imagination and a lying demeanor are two sides of the same coin.  

Maybe lying is who we, as humans, are -  who we have become.  We need to be seen as a little more popular, smarter, richer, cooler,righteous than we really are. If we can get away with it.  If we're not called out on our BS.  

And sometimes, even if our lies are exposed, we still get our projects approved.  Get our pictures on the front of the paper.  Advance in our careers. Get to sit in the Oval Office.

And sometimes we just have to give the ring back. 
And never talk about it again.

Peace.

*I have that book, if you need a reason to be sad and would like to read it. 

Something has to Change. It just Has to.

This is the second draft of a blog post I wrote in October of 2017, right after the horrific shooting in Las Vegas.  If you want to read that one, it's here.  It's rambly, because when I'm mad I get rambly.  It's from back when Joe Donnelly was my US Senator.  When I thought I might have to step up and run against the Indiana House Representative from our District - thank goodness someone else did, because you know I don't have the heart or constitution for such a doomed, soul-scarring  endeavor.  This morning, after reading the news from El Paso, Dayton and even my own little town, where there was a shooting right outside the frozen yogurt store last night, I am a mess.  My stomach hurts.  My thoughts are a tangle.  My prayers are all dried up.  I know, I should probably take a shower and go to Mass, but I decided to write/re-write instead.  

Listen.  

I am really sorry for all of you who love to trap shoot or shoot cans off of 

fence posts at your neighbor's farm.  I've done that -- it's fun.  

But you're going to have to find something else fun to do. 

I am really sorry for those of you who hunt to eat.  

But you're going to have to start buying 

your meat at the grocery store like the rest of us.  

Better yet, think about becoming a vegetarian.  

I am sorry for those of you who feel safer carrying
a handgun at your side on in your purse. 

But you're going to have to take some classes in Jackie Chan-style martial arts or even better, 

take a yoga class, meditate and get right with the universe.

I am really sorry for all of you who get a huge hard-on from owning and 

shooting semi-automatic (or illegally-modified automatic) weapons.  

No scratch that.  

I don't really feel sorry for you at all. 

Something has to change.  Something has to change.  Something has to change.

I wish in my little Pollyanna-shaped heart that the change could be that the Second Amendment is lovingly, peacefully and humanely rescinded* and we go door-to-door in every neighborhood, apartment complex and hotel room in the country and collect guns in canvas bags and smash them to bits with big hammers and then bury them deep, deep in the ground in the middle of the Grand Canyon where no one is allowed to go ever again. I know in my regular old slightly-cynical heart that that is not going to happen.  But I ask you, call your Senators and Representatives  ask them to please, please, please for the love of children, the country's future, children, all that is holy and children, to please just say "no" to NRA money and pass some reasonable, rational, life-affirming (let's just say it, because isn't it just this? Pro-Life?) legislation and will keep people (let's just say it - angry white guys) from killing children and other humans with guns that no one really needs to ever-in-a-million-years own.  

Dear Senators/Congresspeople/Friends/Enemies, let's just say this all together: 

LIVES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GUNS

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

It is more important that people can attend a concert, go to a movie or dance their asses off at a club without fear of being killed by a gun than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that people can go shop at WalMart and come home alive than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that synagogues, churches, and mosques remain places of peace and not of carnage than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that young people in troubled neighborhoods can walk safely home than it is for me to own a gun.  

It is more important that women in difficult or violent relationships are not killed by guns than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that police officers not be shot, or even fear being shot, in the course of a routine traffic stop than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that people can go to work in a factory, shop or office and be safe and come home to supper every night and be safe and gripe about their work and then sleep with their partner and be safe and get up and do it all again the next day than it is for me to own a gun.  

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

If you cannot speak (loudly) and believe these words -- 
LIVES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GUNS 
 -- then I just don't know about you.  
You make me furious.  
And I hate to be furious, because I work really hard at being a woman of peace.  

Peace dammit. Peacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeace

 *and if you want to get all pissy with me about the Constitution, I understand the complex and nearly impossible chance that the Second Amendment will be rescinded.  I'm not a Constitutional expert; I just read a lot (and vote and drink - thanks, 19th and 21st Amendments to the Constitution.)  But I dream a lot, too, and in my dreams, James Madison is shaking his head at us and saying, "That's not what I meant at all, you doofuses." Or maybe he would have said "stupid fuckers." Because if we continue to let innocent people - children, moms, grandpas, teachers, children, politicians, artists, children, babies - be killed by white men and boys with anger issues and easy access to guns, that's exactly what we are.