holy water

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I live in a house in the woods but I can can walk to the bay. I work on an island and can walk to the bay or to the ocean, sometimes just a few steps out a door, from every house I work on, and there it is, the water. This nearness to water and access to it would make one think I am a swimmer, a floater, a rower, a boater, an enjoyer of watery related things, but I am not. I took swimming lessons as a child in our local lake and we had a pool for a time in my teens, but I never became a water person. I have dated surfers & sailors, and men who made their living on the water, but being comfortable with water never happened for me. When my mom was just 13 her little brother drowned in the bay and died. I can’t say that this is the only reason, but my mom is not a water person, and while my dad was indeed a water person when she met him, he became less so with a wife who was not. As a family, when I was a child, we went to the beach once and we went sailing once and we went canoeing once, if we did any of those things more than that, I’ve no memory of it. I had a spectacular childhood at the shore but it did not grow me into a water person. So here I am, a woman growing older in the later chapters of life near the water and I don’t take any of the pleasures the water has to give. I do however love the sound of the waves in the ocean and the ripples in the bay, I have always loved the calming song of moving water.

I read an essay recently by an Irish poet called Pádraig Ó Tuama who wrote about a place he loved to walk as a teen, “The wind, the grey, the drizzle, the salt, the spray, the wet shoes, the inadequate coat, the mediocre life, the far-away-from-everything that I felt…” and his words got me thinking, as words so often do…I am struggling right now as a woman growing older in the later chapters of life. I am deeply dissatisfied with so much and so many, including myself, and I don’t like it. It feels mediocre at best, and that is hardly a goal I think anyone ever aims for…Friends used to joke that I was the most cheerful person they knew, but these last years that person feels like she has shriveled up and died. My STARry-ness feels dulled. Mediocrity is creating melancholy. Circumstances happened to me and I am living with the consequences of those circumstances and don’t feel like myself. Sure, I have lots of happiness and joy and good in my life; I love my job and my yoga and my reading and my crocheting and my house and my girls, but if someone asked me simply if I was happy, the answer right now is not yes. All too often anymore I’m feeling a want to feel the far-away-from-everything, and that feels like a cop-out, trying to forget my troubles and ignore them rather than tackling them. And this too makes me sad because it is not who I want to be, and I don’t think it is who I am, but it’s who I have become and I find it unnerving that I’m seemingly allowing it to shape my life in such an engulfing all encompassing way…like I’ve been buried in mud, layers and layers of mud dried up and packed on month after month and now I am a fossil of my old happy, cheerful, optimistic, or hopeful self…and thinking of myself this way, and the heaviness that it leaves me with made me think of how to wash away all of that muck and mud…water

Water might be the answer. How many dozens of novels have we read where the heroine, in her grief or anger or unease, runs to the edge of the sea and the wind tangles its fingers around her hair and the salt water kisses her lips and she finds the peace or answers she was seeking in the whispers of the waves in her ears??? How many movies have we seen where the lead female character is sporting a fantastic chunky cardigan and her jeans are rolled up, just so at the ankle, and the shot zooms in as the water washes over her toes to the tops of her feet and visually washes away her worries??? She looks up to the horizon line with a bewildered expression as if thinking “wow I feel so much better now” as a John Williams score quietly rises in the background. While I have never used the water that surrounds my life as a healing modality, I’m thinking perhaps it’s time I should.

I am not blaming anyone but myself for my current state. I accept the hard truth that I too often in life did not set proper boundaries when I should have, and when I did set them I was somehow so mesmerized by other mitigating circumstances that I kept erasing the lines I had drawn. The red flags were fiercely waving right in front of me and I just became colorblind. I’ve gotten myself into something of a mess, and my love of a deep clean is such that I (me of all people for goodness sake) ought to be able to get myself out of it…cleaning up messes is what I most enjoy doing…

And so, as it was, contemplating my present tense, I had this essay show up in my email and this Irish writer found his walk to the water helped him to calm the turbulence of his thoughts that was his present tense. At yoga we call it the “monkey-mind.” And so it got me thinking, what if I began to harness to power of the water to help me calm the turbulence of thoughts that is my present tense? I had a very good friend who was a deeply devoted Christian who often told me that she got complete peace of her mind from prayer and let her prayers carry away her worries. Maybe much like old Catholic grandmas who go to church every morning to pray their rosary beads, I’ll go to the edge of the sea and experience my own interpretation of holy water?

Seriously…I have friends who surf who swear that when they are out in the water they are completely released from all of the monkey-mind, the worries, the bewilderment, they do indeed experience the far-away-from-everything when they are out there. I will be out of town for a few days next week with my sister and my daughter and we will be on and near water…I might as well begin the experiment…What if water IS holy? What if the water IS like a prayer? What if I make a point to go to the water every day I am on the island? What if I don’t let the cold or damp or rain or time of day alter my decision to do this? What if it brings me the far-away-from-everything that will help me come back to myself? What if I commit to going to the water no mater what, every day I am on the island? Maybe it will help me sort out all of the mud and muck of my thoughts and wash my mind clean? Maybe it will be for me like how a cloudy bottle can become a piece of sea glass and shine & sparkle when the light hits it just so? Maybe I need to feel the wind in my tangled hair, maybe I need to feel the spray on my face and taste the salt on my lips? Maybe I need to hear the calming song of moving water, over and over and over, and have my toes curl up from the cold and feel, what?…reborn…restored…reSTARred…maybe…

“hashtag Blessed hashtag Screwed”

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A writer I admire, who is also an ordained Lutheran Pastor & founder of ‘House for All Sinners & Saints’ in Colorado, recently shared about how life can sometimes blindside you so quickly… *”We all, at some point in our lives, will have the stones of our own temples quietly crumble underneath us. There will be times when everything in our lives goes from hashtag blessed to hashtag screwed*” and her words seemed like the absolute best thing any of us can read right now, because they are the truest truth. Some of us, where I work at the Jersey shore, taking care of luxury beach properties, are not suffering any of the changes happening in our communities or country. Some of us, where I work at the Jersey shore, are scared every single day by the changes happening in our communities or country and as wages have been stagnant for years and have not kept up in any way with the cost of living here, people are on edge. I imagine most of us are somewhere in the middle but it increasingly feels like too many people don’t understand that one can go from hashtag blessed to hashtag screwed, blazingly fast, and suddenly one wishes for empathy when one realizes they’ve suddenly become the “other.” To my mind too many have a way of thinking in an “us/them” kind of way, forgetting all along that it has been, and should be, “we.”

Some people manage to get through life like they are at anchor on the 72 foot schooner …Imagine! on a quiet windless Wednesday on the Chesapeake Bay, and others have troubles, turmoil, and trauma year after year, decade after decade, constantly trying to stay afloat like they are aboard the Andrea Gale; everything’s fine, until it isn’t. For most of us, I think it is a combination of the two, whereas we try and try and try to make and manage a peaceful and productive life and sometimes things go amiss and we simply fail and have to navigate that route for a while. I have been on both vessels and know firsthand that the tranquil is far more desirable than the rough. Hashtag Screwed is a tiresome way to live and Hashtag Blessed isn’t.

Like millions of other self-employed working Americans, I never had health insurance until the Affordable Care Act was passed. Roughly 50% of workers in the United States get their health insurance through their employers, but for us who do not have an employer, finding a monthly premium that was within my budget was not at all possible. I was lucky that I do not ( yet ) have any sort of disease, or chronic condition and VERY lucky that I never suffered an injury or accident. Some years I had insurance coverage and some years I didn’t. Once I was able to have a monthly premium I could swing, I was still lucky that I did not have any major needs and have had one major and one minor surgery in 15 years…much like my car insurance, 41 years worth of yearly premiums with never a claim, or my homeowner’s insurance, 28 years worth of yearly premiums with never a claim, …insurance, for the what-if, for the maybe-when, for the possibility that life might go from Hashtag Blessed to Hashtag Screwed in an afternoon.

Millions of working Americans are on the cusp of finding out how screwed or how blessed they are. The federal subsidies and budgets that made insurance affordable for millions are ending and millions of us are going to no longer be able to afford insurance. For me, with no chronic conditions or disease or illness, who quit smoking ages ago but who does need to get to a healthier weight, not having insurance will be worrisome, but I take no medications and see no regular doctors, so it will be manageable. I moved a lot of furniture last month at several properties and am not joking when I tell you that carrying heavy teak chaise lounge chairs down 8 steps from the pool to the yard makes one very mindful about “watching her step.” I moved 21 screens up to an attic with pull-down stairs and every step with one hand, or no hands, because I had a hand full of six foot screens made me careful to watch my step. BUT what if I fall off a ladder and break my leg? If it just needs to be set in a cast, that’s probably an expense that I can easily put on a credit card, but what if it’s a fall that leaves me with a bone sticking out of my leg and I need surgery? What if I need a night in the hospital and an anesthesiologist and an orthopedic surgeon and a physical therapist?? What if I am out of work for weeks while I heal??? It isn’t hard to understand how a person can go from Hashtag Blessed to Hashtag Screwed.

It feels, these last many months for me at least, that there are a lot of people who seem to think that things are fine because bad things are not happening to THEM only to OTHERS. This way of seeing the world only will work in the Hashtag Blessed phase because the Hashtag Screwed phase can catch them totally off guard. A food bank in Hyattsville Maryland opened the other day to hundreds of federal workers who have been laid off for weeks now without pay. One woman waiting in line was quoted, “I’ve not been in this predicament ever. I served 21 years in the military. I’ve been a federal government employee for the past two years. The reason I wanted to become a federal government employee was stability. That stability, that rug, if you will, has been snatched away from us,” These are working people with property taxes, car payments, student loans, kids on traveling hockey teams, parents who need help with their errands, kids who need money for band camp, they’ve got car insurance, broken furnaces, a busted sprinkler line…these are the people in your neighborhoods. She might as well have said everything went from Hashtag Blessed to Hashtag Screwed. The Philadelphia Eagles coaching staff has an expression that they use, “You can’t have greatness without the greatness of others” and it is a good thing to reflect upon right now in my ever so humble opinion. We are all them, we are all us, there is no “other.”

” *Who Lives? Who dies? Who Tells Your Story?* “

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I have joked, for decades with my daughter, and these last years with her daughters, that if I die in some sort of dramatic or fiery way, there are decades of my journals under my bed in a purple Rubbermaid tote labeled “HerStory.” AND to be clear, it’s doubtful I will die in some exciting story-worthy way, but it’s important to plan…My dad questions me, teasingly, but I think in all seriousness, several times a year, “when are you going to write your damn book?” and recently I looked in the drawer of the filing cabinet at my desk at the printouts of my blogs & only the ones since 2012, not even all the ones of the years before…and when I hold the hard-copies in my hand it is in fact a pile of paper thicker than most books I get from the library!

…but here’s the problem, I am not a writer. I am a person who likes to write. It’s not at all the same thing. I read, a lot. I do not believe that I have the momentum, and I do not believe that I have the confidence, and I do not believe I have the descriptive vocabulary it takes to write a book…my blogs are more like little essays I guess, and if I’m being honest, which when blogging ought to be the ONLY way TO be, I mostly started blogging because my penmanship got worse as my fingers grew more crooked with arthritis as I got older, and typing is faster and easier. My journal writing and “dear diary” notes really simply started with my ‘The Secret Garden’ diary, with a lock and key, that I got for my eighth birthday…and so it was, throughout my teen years and twenties, and well into my thirties, a form of therapy or emotional cleaning. Journal writing, and now for the last 15 years or so blog writing, remains a way for me to get things off my mind, it’s as simple as that… the no-cost form of therapy that I find most useful in keeping me sane and centered and as mentally balanced as I can be…other than yoga, it feels like it is what keeps me from losing my mind.

You will recognize the song lyrics as this blog title if like me you have watched HAMILTON a ridiculous number of times. Some people leave the Weather Channel on their television, or sports or news if they just want some background noise at home, but for me, at least the last few years, if it’s not music throughout all my speakers, it’s HAMILTON on the television. AND EVERY time I hear these lyrics I think of my journals, my blog, and my future book…Who tells your story is kind of a big deal…there are things that happen in families and to families and behind closed doors that are never spoken, or written, or even recognized. Some people spend their whole lives wishing that someone had acknowledged their pain, or struggle, or hurt. I guess for me that, the silence, just feels like a disservice to my soul. I am pretty much an open book…I tell people how I feel and I share with people things that are going on, or going wrong, and I know that suits me fine, and for others it does not sit well with them to air their laundry, dirty or otherwise… I get it. Both of my granddaughters share my love of writing. They both have kept journals since they were little and as far as I know they both write in them often. They frequently share their school work with me; research papers, essays, debate scripts, book reports, whatever, they often send me a copy, and every time I am impressed. I just wrote out the birthday card for the baby of our family, I call her The Little Blonde Wonder, and she turns 18 this week. I suspect if I don’t get around to ever writing my book, THEY will live and tell my story, and until then, I guess I will just keep up with my jibber-jabber therapy sessions between my fingers and this keyboard…

Scar Tissue

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I was thinking last night as I opened my book at bedtime that reading is part of my self-care/wellness regimen. I could never go to bed without a shower and I could never go to sleep without reading. Some nights I get through a few paragraphs and my eyes start to droop, and other nights I get through several chapters, but my “rule” is that the minute I feel like it is time to sleep, I put down the book and turn off the light…I don’t push through because I am one of those people who really needs her full nine hours! To be clear, I have on a few occasions just kept reading to finish a book, plow through the sleepy sensations to get to the last page, but this is not a regular occurrence and I don’t recommend it unless you are retired can sleep til you want and take naps!

I have come to a conclusion that I have not a minute left to waste…I have been tending to a wound (metaphorical wound, not physical) for almost four years now and it is still not healed and still causing me frequent pain and daily discomfort. It is my own fault that I am in the situation I am in, & I take full responsibility for my poor judgment and deeply regret some of my choices…but none of that matters, because here I am, right here right now. I am tending to scar tissue from a wound that was not my fault but the healing from it is my responsibility…I read a quote like this, four years ago, and I think I wrote the words wrong, but I get the meaning and it has been on my mind ever since. I have put myself in a bad situation and I have to tend to my wellness while I try to get this situation resolved and scar tissue gets thick, and fast, and so tending to this metaphorical wound has a time element…tick, tock, tick, tock…if I don’t get this injury closed up it’s going to leave a dark scar that will never go away, my point is, while I was falling asleep last night, I was thinking about how to heal myself, and I realize that, as a bookworm, what I NEED to do is re-read the books that spoke to my soul and use those words to heal.

I still journal and I write regularly and that is how I vent, it’s like therapy, but reading the ideas and words that other people think of and put together is a different kind of medicine. There are MANY books that I have read over the last 50+ years that touched me so deeply that I feel like they became part of my cells, part of who I am. You might think it silly for a woman who has not yet turned 60 to reference books from her whole reading life, but I kid you not, it started with The Secret Garden at eight years old, then Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret in 6th grade, then The Outsiders in 7th grade…Great Expectations and Jane Eyre in 9th grade, The Diary of Anais Nin at age 15, The Stand in my senior year of high school, The Handmaid’s Tale, Women Who Run With the Wolves and Beloved in college..the list goes on and on and on, but these are the ones that stick out to me when I quick-think about the books of my past that really changed me…in the 90’s Outlander, in the aughts I Know This Much is True and The Secret Life of Bees, Eat Pray Love was the first book I read after I moved into my house in 2009 & The Nightingale in 2017 & Demon Copperhead last summer just to name a few LOL I think a “few” is really supposed to be three or so, but if you are a reader, you get my drift and if you are not a reader, you surely think I am a nut-case!

Where I live the property taxes are outrageous but the only two things that don’t make me mad about them are the library tax, because I have used the library every week of my life since I got my library card at nine years old, and the school tax because my daughter and granddaughters went to public school here and my daughter teaches here…otherwise every quarter I am fuming made when I write my check, but I digress, my point is that I love LOVE L-O-V-E the library and only buy books occasionally. They allow you to have 20 books “on order” at a time and so on any given day I have about four on my nightstand and 20 in my queue. I keep them organized to come in every ten-12 days or so because it usually takes me a week to read a book. Sometimes I make an error with my request dates and I end up with three books arriving on the same day and then I put post-it-notes on the covers with the due date and I reshuffle the order in which I will read them. This is all a lot of jibber-jabber silliness if you are not a reader or don’t use your library.

I am going to read the books that I have on order through November and then starting in December I am going to begin a re-reading regimen. I am going to heal my sadness and anger and disappointment (and to be clear, it is not just the election that makes me sad and angry and disappointed, that just exacerbated the sadness and anger and disappointment I was already carrying) by reading again the stories that shaped me. The stories that I read from age 8 to now that I feel like were part of what has shaped me into who I am…I don’t like the “me” that I am now, these last years have been rough…I don’t like the thoughts that I think and I don’t like how and what I feel about the current state of my affairs. It’s not at all who I thought I would grow up to become, or how I thought these chapters of my life would be…so I am feeling deeply scarred and feel like I need healing and am going to start the process with books. I know some people heal with booze, and some heal with benzodiazepines, but I am going to try to heal with books…smooth out that scar tissue…one page at a time…

Kick A Stick

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When you are enjoying a walk, maybe on a forest path, and a log or limb or branch is in your way, you step or jump over it, or maybe walk or run around it & if it’s only a stick, you might just kick it aside as you pass by. I’ve had such clear images lately of myself and my path, and the sticks and branches, limbs and logs, that have been in my way specifically over the last couple years but perhaps really for all of my adult life, and I’ve seen myself smoothly and seamlessly navigating my path forward. Sometimes when I was very strong, or much younger, or simply exceptionally determined for a particular point in time, I could hurdle with ease over the biggest hazards, and my pace never slowed, but I have felt, if I’m being honest, (AND there is no point in NOT being honest, in a blog no less,) much weaker and far less determined these last months, and feeling a bit like trees and obstacles are just piling up in front of me and I don’t like that feeling, of feeling trapped, and the more I think about it the worse I feel. AND I definitely don’t like that!

This morning at yoga our teacher was guiding us in a meditation before we began to move; “may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, and may I be free from suffering” it sounds much lovelier in sanskrit, and when it is sung, but for me this morning on my mat it was just the words going in and out of my brain when I had one of those stop in my tracks moments. Suffering at this moment is simply self inflicted negative thoughts. Suffering at this moment for me is just sticks, branches, limbs, and logs that I have to kick or skip over because there is nothing “bad” or “wrong” or worth suffering over, for real, in my life at this time, but MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS, NOT THE THINGS THEMSELVES ARE THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING. Yogi Kevin might read this and think, “well duh?!” but for me in a split second I felt 100 times better than I had been feeling for months. It’s very easy to get in a rut of negative self talk and negative thinking and that heaviness I had been feeling for a while just “poof” disappeared. I know it may not last, but then again, maybe it will.

I know people who have had far more difficult experiences in life than I have. I know people who have had true suffering, whose paths have been rocky with sickness, divorce, death, financial ruin, physical and mental health challenges, abuse, addiction, fraud, failure, and losses and pains of all kinds…real ones, not *checks her notes* made up in your own head kind of pains. I feel like even the strongest of us will stumble and trip and get jammed up on our paths when there is perpetual suffering but for somebody like me, for the most part, the suffering is not real, it’s all in my head. It’s like imaginary trees and logs and branches on an otherwise smooth journey. It got me thinking all day today ABOUT WHY I SOMETIMES DWELL ON THE STUMBLES AND STICKS and not just gaze delightedly and gratefully at the clear path ahead. I mean seriously, how lucky??!!

That expression, ‘for the most part,’ is funny but effective because it’s true if nothing else. My life is pretty great for the most part. Period. That can end the sentence and the expression. Why am I, for quite some time now, too long, WAY too long, still thinking about the rough roads when, for the most part, my travels have been rather clear?? I suppose a person far more educated than I would suggest it is a form of self sabotage and she, or maybe he, would probably be right. BUT WHY? Why do it? Why hurt your own self with your own brain and the words you let in it?

I have no answers today & I guess as per usual I am just thinking out loud, through my fingers, on my keyboard. My conclusion, if it were, is that the obstacles, the sticks in my path, the sufferings, are, for the most part, all in my mind. Not figuratively as an expression, literally all in my mind. My thoughts about things are more troublesome than the things themselves. Period. “Kick a Stick” is what I have been thinking all morning. If like me your mind is getting jammed up with obstacles and barriers and negative-Nelly kinds of thoughts, just kick a stick! AND like yogi Kevin sometimes sings to us “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” which means may all beings be happy and free from suffering. I wonder how to say “kick a stick” in sanskrit?

Debbie Downer vs. Josie Joyful

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I am sad. I am mad. I am unnerved. I am eating too much sugar and using carbs as a coping mechanism. I feel like right now I am not in a good place mentally. I have been soul-crushingly sad since my birthday, November 6th, when I felt what might be the biggest disappointment of my life. I live in a neighborhood and area of New Jersey where lots of people do not think as I do about most things, and I began to shrink into a sadness that I am feeling such heaviness from I am kind of scared that it is not ever going to leave me. All of this is true…BUT…What is also true is that I live in a house that I designed myself and I love every inch of it and even now, 15 years after I moved in, I still get a little spine tingle when I go up the driveway. What is also true is that my granddaughters and my daughter live next door to me and I can see them and talk to them and hug them anytime I want. What is also true is that I live ten minutes from the ocean and can walk up over the dunes any day of any week and see the whole rest of the world in front of me. What is also true is that I love my job and I get to work on and in beautiful homes every day. What is also true is that I have good friends, so many friends; at the yoga studios, at the fitness center, in real life, and in cyber space. What is also true is that I joined an art therapy group filled with educated and like minded women and once a week we chat about current events and talk about what we can do about them while we create something new,and we discuss where and how we can make changes in our own lives to try to navigate the horribleness that we see unfolding before our eyes and hear the words that make our ears bleed. We talk about things that matter. My point is that while I am still feeling very low and somewhat powerless I am also loving and know I can make a difference, ever so small, to make the world a kinder and more compassionate place. I can do things that make my life better by focusing on the good. I can remind myself, every hour if need be, that when the history books write about this, I was on the good side. I am going to work very hard to not let the ugliness around me make my life ugly. In a world that seems increasingly like one that wants to kill my cheerful vibe, I plan to kick that gruesome energy to the curb. I am going to fight this fever of despair and try with all my strength to quell the debbie downer energy and to rejuvenate and share the joyful josie spirit that I know is within me…

Who Dis?

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Who is this person? This person sitting at her desk on a very cold morning in November is not the same person who was sitting at this same desk weeks ago, months ago, years ago…This person who always joked that she was a “silver lining seeker” is feeling disappointed, disenchanted, disengaged, distressed, disheartened…and is finding it harder and harder, day by day, to see any silver lining whatsoever…who dis??

Usually at the week of Thanksgiving I am just bubbling over with gratitude and overwhelmingly emotional about all that is good and beautiful in my life, and all of that is still true this year too, but there is an ugliness inside of me that is darkening and inking out the light of who I think I am. There are people I love very much to whom I am related and people I work for who I cherish and am deeply thankful for, but the way that these people think is anathema to me, and it pains me. I can’t end my relationships with my loving and generous family and I can’t end my relationships with my trusting and generous clients but it feels like there is a wedge between me and them now and it makes me sad.

They certainly have every right to think what they think and say what they say, but I continually come back to the fact of the matter that is this; I have watched in real time this person talk, this new incoming president, and have heard in real time what this person said, this person who did not even get more than 50% of the votes and yet still wins, and cannot believe that any thoughtful person would also hear and watch this man and think, “yes this is the best choice for myself and my family and my country” and these people did, and it has made me feel bad every day since.

I can only wonder if this is the same feeling old people had in the sixties when their college students were hippies, and these old people wondered how on earth their kids could think like they did about civil rights and war?? I can only wonder if this is the same feeling as picky eaters at fine restaurants where they sit and eat buttered rolls while the other guests around them eat beef Carpaccio with Beluga caviar, and wonder how these foodies could enjoy these things??? Or is it more like when someone picks the ugliest wallpaper, or itchiest sweater, or most uncomfortable shoes? I don’t know what it is but I do know that I don’t like how I feel about it.

I don’t have any answers. I did all that I could and read all that I could and acted accordingly. I simply have a really hard time believing that the people who voted for him actually did read any of project 2025, and read the part about how the incoming administration would aim to cut more than 96% of the budget for social security and think that was great and would somehow make their lives better. I simply have a really hard time believing that that people who voted for him realize how many billions of dollars immigrants bring into our country every year, and what the loss of those tax dollars will do to our economy, or how the loss of laborers will hit farming, hospitality, and construction. If you were mad about the price of lettuce or berries over the summer when they were picked by mostly brown low paid non-American workers, imagine how mad you will be when farmers have to pay white college students off for summer break a living wage to pick them. It’s certainly not that simple and it’s certainly not anything easily conveyed in a blog, but it does make me wonder when the buyer’s remorse might set in?? Will it be when your daughter’s insurance that she buys through the marketplace gets canceled and then months later she finds out she has breast cancer and loses her house because she can’t afford the treatment?? Will it be when your granddaughter has an accidental pregnancy and can’t get an abortion and neither wants nor can afford a baby?? Will it be when you get the notice next year that direct deposits for any social security numbers that end in an odd number will now be cut in half and every social security number that ends in an even number will now be cut by one third, is that when you will wish you had read more of the fine print? Maybe it will be when all of these tariffs are put in place that are supposed to make America great but will perhaps make consumer costs higher, unemployment higher, and plunge the stock market into decline, and nobody but the very wealthy will be able to afford to buy a new washing machine or television?

If I am wrong I have no qualms about accepting my errors or ways of thinking. If I am wrong I will admit fully that 49.6% of the voters saw something in this person that I clearly did not. If I am wrong I will be so happy to have cheaper vegetables and fruit and chicken next year. I’m just an angry woman who reads, I’m like Ruth Langmore from Ozark, “I don’t know shit about fuck,” but what I do know now, at least for me in this moment, is that nothing feels good and nothing feels like joy and nothing feels like a silver lining and that disturbs me and disrupts my brightness, and that kind of Dis does not suit me at all at the time of year that I am normally abundant with thanks and kindness.

a 47th for my 57th

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This year, Wednesday, was the saddest birthday of my life. For months I had been practically giddy, and gloriously positive that for my 57th birthday I was going to get our first female as our 47th president. What we got, what nearly half of the country chose, and believed to BE the better choice, was an extraordinarily unqualified man and gruesomely poor public speaker, rather than a woman whose entire adult life has been working in public service, who speaks with passion, and in clear full sentences about very important things.

Would you hire a math tutor who failed math and did not have a college degree to help your son with school?? BUT you think the economy, still healing after a global pandemic, will be improved by a man who went bankrupt multiple times, has been convicted of falsifying business records, and thinks tariffs are an answer to lower prices?? Would you want your son’s new wife to be a woman who cheated on all three of her last husbands?? BUT you think a man who cheated on all three of his wives, and has been accused of sexual misconduct is a “family man??” No, you would want the math tutor to be both qualified and capable to do the job you hire him for and have the positive ratings of others who have used him so you know you are getting a good service for a good price. No, you would tell your son that if she cheated on all three of her past lovers she will probably cheat on him too, and that he should probably seek a more honest partner. BUT HERE WE ARE…

Now, to be clear, I studied criminal justice and law, and feminist theory and women’s history in college and while I did graduate in the top 1% of my class, I am not exceptionally smart nor do I claim to be smarter than you, but I am smart enough to believe that when our nation’s highest ranking military officer says out loud about a presidential candidate that he is “the most dangerous person to this country” I believe him. When I read multiple interviews with a number of people who have worked side by side with this candidate, and they have said and been quoted in no uncertain terms, that he is not qualified to do this job, I believe them. AND YET, millions of people who like to think they are patriotic, because they are flying American flags and many with bumper stickers that say “we the people” voted for a person who tried to overthrow the last election, stole classified government documents, and falsified his own business records, according to several who actually know and knew and worked for him, and was even described as “fascist to the core.” IS this how we love our country, is this the new patriotism?? SO does this mean that voters heard these stories about this candidate and don’t care, or heard these stories about this candidate and like the idea of a liar and cheater as their president?? Do they think, oh sure the left says he is bamboozling me but I don’t believe it?? Is this where we are??

My eyes are still puffy from crying and my heart is heavy for people I love and people I care about who are gay, who are not white, who are nonbinary, who are teachers and doctors, who are the light workers and the helpers. My heart is exceptionally heavy for every young woman of child bearing age, and ANYONE who did not even bother to read ANY of PROJECT 2025, who could not at the very least make some time to read about what many people were saying and warning us about, well For Shame For Shame For Shame…I read quite a bit and found every bit rather terrifying. I have joked for years, but it’s also really who I feel I am, that I am a silver lining seeker, and so in this depth of despair I feel this morning and have felt for more than 60 hours now, that I will have to look hard for the silver linings…I wonder is there something that millions of people see in him that is so admirable and honorable that they picked him over her?? Will I ever see what they see in him?? I can’t imagine as I have felt nothing but disgust for him since 2015 when he mocked that physically disabled reporter…so it is highly unlikely anything will sway me…I realize rich people want to get richer and I realize that poor people want to blame others for their hardships, and those of us in the middle have to pick a side. I live in an area of the country where I am the blue dot in a sea of red and let me tell you, having a maga devoted family and living in a maga devoted area is soul-crushing, but every day I wake up I tell myself that we have to find common ground and every day I truly try, but what does it say about people, when presented with two choices, an either/or, that literally half pick one and think it’s great and the other half think it is horrific??!! What happened on Tuesday is that evidently somehow 15 million or so people chose not to choose at all, and the other millions were split almost down the middle, and the worst possible person won, again…so here we are. I hope the cost of their diet coke is worth whatever comes next…

Tempus Fugit

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The “baby” of our family will be 17 tomorrow. I call her The Little Blonde Wonder but she is no longer little and is now the tallest of all of the females in our family. The days of her natural bright blonde ringlets are long gone and her light brunette roots are now reminded, two or three times a year, that she was, for the first half of her life, very blonde and ringlets only form if they are coaxed with heat or satin curlers. She still gets straight A grades and she still makes me laugh. When I dropped her off to school last week I said to her “do good work and be kind” the send off she heard from my mouth every school day of her life as I got her onto the bus at the end of our shared driveway or as she got out of my truck in the drop off line. That day, as I left the parking lot I realized that it was the last time I would ever say those words to her…and my eyes teared up a bit, for tomorrow her mother is taking off work to take her to get her driver’s license and starting Tuesday she will be driving herself to school. I can only hope, dare I write pray, that the words she heard from me all of her life will still ring in her ears as she goes off to school and then college and then a career…do good work and be kind.

Every thorn and splinter I pulled from her feet and hands, every boo-boo I blew on as I poured peroxide onto the result from a trip, a fall, a bike tumble, every knot I tenderly tried to work out of her hair, every time I helped her rearrange her furniture or paint her bedroom, these moments all remain part of me, the helper, the Nana Next Door, and I can only wonder if those moments will all remain a part of her.

To have been able to live next door to my daughter and her daughters over these 15 years has been the gift of a lifetime, and all of the stressful times or worrisome times or difficult times seem to have melted away from my mind, and the annoyed moments of feeling like I “had to” do something for these three girls has morphed into ” I GOT to” do these things for all three of them…The privilege of being a helper…I have helped my own daughter with every imaginable task that has ever come up at the house next door; birds, mice, ants, broken doors and screens and hearts… and helped both of her girls with homework, their bedrooms, their laundry, their whatever…15 years of whatever they needed help with and I loved that here I was, just about 300 feet away, ready to help, but the number of times a week that they have needed me, for anything, has become less and less frequent over these last few years, and as of Tuesday as The Little Blonde Wonder pulls out of the driveway on her own, my “duties” will mostly be done. We made a lot of memories here in this compound down this shared driveway and whatever happens in the future, with the three of them, with me, remains. Time however really does fly…

She could be me…I could be her

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There is a woman in Asheville North Carolina just like me, except now, well, as of Friday morning, she is no longer just like me. She is no longer even herself…

Just like me she probably got her first job at 14 and just like me she has worked ever since. Just like me she might have made some really awful choices as a teenager and by the time she was twenty, had been married, a mother, and divorced. Just like me her constant narrative in life, when life got hard, was that she was doing the best with the cards she was dealt, and just like me, she probably hated when she thought that way, self-defeating as it was, because just like me she knew it was her frequently wrong “well, I picked the wrong door” kinds of decisions that got her the life she was living.

Just like me through determination and strength of will, she put herself through college while working full time and raising her little girl, and just like me her little girl grew up and made her own choices and moved away. Just like me she floundered a bit those first couple of years, with no more role as mother to play and wondered what she might do with her life now, now that her “baby” was making a family of her own miles and miles away. Just like me she was elated when after her second grandbaby was born her daughter decided, just four years after leaving the area, she really wanted to be closer to family while she made her own family and wanted to “come home” and just like me she wondered where her daughter would live, as the rentals in the area were so expensive…here in a destination vacation area of the Jersey shore and hers a destination/vacation area in the lush mountains and rivers of Asheville.

Just like me this woman’s mom and aunt had a brilliant idea; some family land would be sold and two new houses would be built, and her daughter would have a place to live, right next door to the dream house she would build for herself. Just like me she started drawing her house on scrap pieces of paper, post-its, on graph paper and in notebooks and eventually even started learning how to use a CAD program. Just like me her mom & dad started building a house on the other piece of acreage for her daughter & just like me she planned every single inch and foot and detail of the house and maybe her dad told her too, “we’ll start her house next door so you can practice for yours.” Just like me she was positively giddy, every single day, as she watched her dream house become a reality. Just like me she worked at the house every day before work and every night after work and could not believe she was going to get to not only live in a house she created herself, it was going to be right next to her daughter and granddaughters.

Just like me, alongside her dad & mom & the subcontractors, one year and one day from the date she got her building permit, she got her certificate of occupancy. Just like me she didn’t splurge on granite countertops and chose instead formica to cover the plywood kitchen counters that she and her dad built together. Just like me she used a huge chunk of her budget to splurge on her silver metal roof and solid black walnut floor boards. Just like me, other than the first three rows her father started for her, she picked and placed and hammered in every single floor board in the whole house, EVERY SINGLE BOARD and she knows exactly where her errors are and where she missed and had to use her bee-keeping bar to pull out a bad hit and start over and she knew exactly where she was going to put a sofa in what would be the living room so she made sure the ugliest boards were in the middle of that place that nobody would really ever see. Just like me she wrote notes to herself with big fat sharpie markers on the sheathing the morning before the sheetrock installers came and laughed while she did it, thinking some day, when she was dead, that someone would want to remodel her perfect one-off-custom-creation-little house and would tear down the sheetrock and find these notes of hard work and determination and love for a home.

Just like me she found it the truest joy to help her daughter next door to raise her family and just like me she walked down the shared driveway every day for more than a decade getting her granddaughters onto the school bus every morning so her daughter did not have to rush getting ready for work. Just like me, as recently as last month, she realized that her time to be needed was coming to an end really, one of the granddaughters is in her second year of college and the other to get her driver’s license in just weeks, and so whenever they asked her to do anything, she jumped to do it, because she was well aware her Nana-ing time is coming to an ending chapter.

BUT…but…B U T… as of Friday she is nothing like me. As of Friday everything she worked so hard to created and build and maintain and love is gone. I hope and, non believer that I am, dare I write “pray,” that she is physically unharmed and that her daughter and granddaughters survived, but I believe her heart is broken into a thousand shards of pain and might never heal from this loss…Just like me she loved her house almost like it was a person and she cleaned it and cared for it with the loving care she once used to tend to her child and her granddaughters, and now it is gone, splinters of 2x4s and shards of standing seam metal roofing material, and chunks of soaking wet insulation…maybe her walnut floor boards are still nailed together in parts, she probably picked one up out of the mud over the weekend, and wondered which room it was from as there are no more rooms and no more house.

I guess what I am writing this morning is that my heart is broken these last days for a woman I don’t even know and a woman who I simply think must exist and I am feeling a depth of gratitude for my life and my home that I don’t have words to describe. When hurricane Sandy came here to the Jersey shore we had no power for nine days. I had filled all my gas cans and my generator worked well all nine days and while I am only one mile from the bay and only 200 feet from a flowing stream, my house is 17.3 feet above sea level and the surge came, but it did not come to me. I am so sad every time I watch one of these short videos on the internet of the devastation and destruction in an area that did not ever expect to have hurricane rain and wind destroy their lives. I have made some financial donations and today after work am going to buy supplies that are being collected locally to donate and while I don’t have an “extra” hundred or $200 in my budget this month, I do have my house, and she does not, and for that anguish that she surely feels, I can modify my spending a bit to see that a stranger in need gets something she needs. It could have been me. It could have been you.