Smart Superstition

I celebrate Friday the 13th as a lucky day. It is for me, because I declare it so, and live my day looking for serendipities. I walk under a ladder on purpose, practically daring a black cat to cross my path and knock the ladder down on me.

But I loved the rabbit foot key-chain I had as a kid, and I still wish for the birthday boy or girl to extinguish all candles in one breath so the wish made will come true! “Cold hands, warm heart”? What else are you supposed to say when someone apologizes for cold hands before shaking your hand? It’s a pleasantry, not a superstition.

Like everything else in life, we choose our superstitions. I picked up one a few years back – one that brings order and joy to my life.

My conscious, life-affirming superstition is: The orderliness of your house as you enter the new year predicts its orderliness throughout the year. That may not have even been what the person said. She may have said “it forecasts how your year will go.” Like eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve for prosperity in the coming year (because I like black-eyed peas and can use tradition as an excuse to serve them), I’ve chosen to organize my environment to a much higher degree around New Year’s Day.

I don’t trouble myself to get it all done before the stroke of midnight Dec. 31. I give myself a couple weeks into January. For example, the spice cupboard is still such a wreck, it takes me five minutes to locate the crushed red pepper flakes.

To me, the superstition is about order more than cleanliness, but if you’re straightening up your office shelves and drawers, why not dust them at the same time?

This year has been particularly fantastic for me. I did my main office cupboard a month or so ago–the really messy one. It’s beautiful inside now. (The unimportant ones have not been sorted.) Sorting. That’s the main reason for reorganizing. It’s a chance to clear clutter and items that no longer serve.

Last year I was so busy, the turtle necks stayed in the dresser all summer, and the sleeveless tops lounged there all winter. This year, I was motivated to downsize. If you don’t know me well, you may not realize in the last 18 months I’ve downsized myself by 82 pounds.  That reduced my shoe size as well as my sock size, let alone blouse, slacks and dress sizes.

I’ve cleaned out all of my dresser drawers (except the scarf and glove drawer, which is still neat from last New Year’s). Not only were wrong-sized items eliminated, so were ragged items (socks with holes in the heels). All of my drawers have cedar lining showing from being “not full.” The closet got the same treatment. Shoes and hanging clothes were sorted and reduced, by both size and season.

The pantry is cleared every time there’s a food drive.

It may take awhile to address my entire surroundings, especially since it’s so cold the tool shed has become a bit tumbled. But I persist, because I love the calm feeling I get when I look at a neat bookshelf or orderly cupboard. I go back again and again just to admire it and feel the joy of accomplishment and revel in the intelligent design (clothes hung by color…yes, I do that.)

And this year, I’m especially enjoying all the space my dresser has for new things. Eighteen dollar socks anyone (they’re so puffy, padded and well-shaped!)?

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Willing to Change Your Mind About Islam?

muslim-womanHow often do you think of major changes in your beliefs over the past course of your life? It could be science or money or an ism…Take religion, for example. I started out being driven to church by a neighbor, then dropped off at church by my mother, then the whole family going together – except on quarterly communion days, which Mother skipped.

By 12, I’d joined a group of kids who went door-to-door giving Bible studies. There was much more to come. Over the next decade, or nearly two, I became increasingly religious…ever stricter in my practices. For example, I gave up chewing gum because it had no redeeming value, it took money from our pockets, and every time I wanted to chew gum, I was reminded of the God for whom I gave it up.

Such was the childhood and upbringing of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, beginning in Somalia and carrying through to 20 or 22 in Nairobi. The difference was, she was surrounded by people encouraging her to become more religious. As I reached for an extremist peak, around age 20, most everyone I knew chided me to back off and live in a more realistic world. They said my purist inclinations were fantasies. Ayaan was told her higher than highest aspirations were required of her.

She was forced to marry an insipid man with the depth of interest in life and knowledge as a horned toad. I, on the other hand, prayed for a godly man to marry. En route to Canada to join with the man chosen for her by her father (after a 5-minute exchange in a mosque), she emigrated to Holland where she received refugee status, with only slight massaging of what she was really running from.

My mistake was praying for a “man.” He was godly…and handsome! That was not my destiny, but naïve as I was, I asked for the wrong solution to the burning in my loins and a desire for “family.”

Ayaan rose to a position in the Dutch Parliament. I, on the other hand, started businesses, the first of which succeeded mightily, and subsequent enterprises were so-so. (The current one will knock a home run, some day, then I’ll build a better one…something I like even more.)

Cutting to the chase, Ayaan ultimately renounced her Muslim faith, as I renounced my Christian one (bolt of lightning, anyone?). Neither of us is saying we gave up all that we believe or relinquished all of our practices. It just can no longer be said of us that we want to be “lumped together” with the most visible, evidently newsworthy, patrons of these religions: the extremists.

We’re both embarrassed by the same recognition: that “holy” people torture those they deem unholy, with no factual basis for the designation. In my tradition, the saying is “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Unfortunately, that translates to “remind the sinner, at each encounter, that you disapprove of this unholy behavior.” Hardly seems loving! (Never feels loving…)

If you’ve ever questioned your beliefs, changed your perspective, or just wondered whether all Islam is as extreme as the extremists who violated the United States, then click this link to my affiliation with Amazon to order and read Infidel.

I dare you!

__________

I read this in two days. It is a “cannot put it down” account of a young woman’s journey from birthright to thoughtful contemplation and even criticism. You will be forever changed after reading Infidel

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Happy Birthday Mother

It hasn’t been a year since you moved on, but the annual celebration of you and who you were has come and gone. I thought about you the entire week of your birthday.

I was too busy to blog you a birthday card. Growing up as I did poor – and as you did dirt poor – I focused my will and skill on making a living, scratching, as your papa did out of the ground oil. It was out of the Internet for me, the lugubrious challenge of drawing attention amidst spams, shams and scams.

I missed your birthday, the same way I missed weddings and funerals, because I didn’t believe they were important enough to offset the cost of travel. After all, you were born in a tent with a dirt floor. Why should I hope for linoleum or cheap carpet, and the ability to cover an extra $350 for a plane ticket? My business didn’t cover expenses during the week of your birthday.

Always short of money yourself, you taught me at 10 and my brother at 11 to say, “No, she’s not here right now; No, I don’t know when she’ll be back.” I didn’t realize until this very moment the truth of the latter part of that statement. We never knew when you would be back, even if you were there.

We managed on our own during your drug overdose, or suicide attempt, when we were 3 and 4. Yes, you were tired, raising kids on your own and working dime-a-dance for the soldiers just to buy us milk and a little oatmeal.

When you didn’t wake up for 2-3 days, and a stranger pounded at our door…a stranger we knew we were not supposed to talk to…my life disappeared. The next thing I knew I was four and living in East Texas with Mrs. Tackett and my brother. Probably a social services placement, which I didn’t realize until a psychologist mentioned it a couple years ago.

You had a way of landing on your feet. I don’t know how you did it. Sheer willpower I think, because I have a strong will, too, and I don’t know how else you could have done it. Maybe with your brilliant intellect and expert verbal virtuosity (though you confessed in your seventies you never learned how the game of life was to be played).

I do tasks instead of caring for people just like you did. And I push through and do whatever needs to get done, just like you did, whether or not it destroys part of my body, or whether or not there’s a man around to help. If one needs a man, you showed me over and over, just flirt with one to get that cabinet moved or that room added on.

You were a woman of steel and velvet. You died like you lived: scared, but strong. Pushing ahead to do what you believed had to be done. You checked out when you thought it was time. April Fools Day, 2009.

I am stronger because of you.

In memory of Virginia Dawn Akerman Ennis, November 3, 1926-April 1, 2009.

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Feckless

Songs get stuck in our heads…possibly worse yet, a single phrase or two of a song. (I’m forcing myself to resist giving examples we can all relate to, such as a song from Disneyland that is so poignant, it’s nearly impossible to stop singing for days, especially if those lovely grandchildren are still piping on about multiculturalism and the size of the world.)

feckless...without power or effectivenessSimilarly, a word can squirm and fidget its way to the surface, demanding to be used. I’m in just such a verbal insistence experience right now. It began last Thursday.

Feckless.

I wanted to say the word feckless. Say it out loud. Use it in a sentence. I wasn’t certain I could define it or use it correctly, but I had to say it. Was my subconscious reaching back to a word not heard or used for decades but that perfectly described my concurrent experience? Or was feckless a random syllabic urge?

I had the sickening feeling it referred to a relationship…fairly new, not romantic, but a new person in my circle.

Feckless is a fun word to say. Feckless. Less familiar than reckless. More common than neckless…after all, how many folks do you know with no neck?

A shaman sat in our kiva five years ago and proclaimed FEEeee a fun word to say. He got it from his grandson. FEEEEE, feeeeee. (Maybe more fun if you’re a lawyer or any professional who charges by the hour.)

Now that I’ve taken the opportunity to say feckless, feckless, feckless…should I trust the emergence of this semi-mysterious word as a warning to remove the ineffectual person from my close associates…or was that a comment on only the day; thus, days to come will be much better?

That remains to be seen. The individual may emerge speckless. Or may surpass the value of my necklace. Meanwhile it would be reckless of me to break the association completely checkless.

So I will check.

Wouldn’t if be cool if one could feck?

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The Parental “Conversation”

This seems to be the year for parent-issues. Last weekend we drove to Los Angeles to celebrate a parental 70th anniversary–my in-laws’. Also on the agenda was discussing with them their opportunity to make a decision to move into an independent living apartment before the need to move into assisted living is forced upon them.

No matter that the anniversary party was supposed to be festive, because as soon as their third-born blasted in and discovered lunch wouldn’t be for two hours, 90 minutes at best, not a shred of peace remained.

Mom said, “I love it when you come, but I love it more when you leave.”

In other words, there was no reason not to tackle the difficult conversation we’d rehearsed. Yes, on the way to their house, Ellen and I bought a super-sized courage-producing beverage to pass back and forth as we role-played possible scenarios while stopped next to a park a few blocks away. Feeling we had several approaches at-the-ready by the time the bottle was empty, we arrived with calm confidence that lasted all the way into the kitchen.

We set up a long table in the living room, with table cloth, plates, plastic ware and paper cups all in silver. It was the loveliest 100% disposable layout I’d ever seen. The deli tray and salads were carried in and the party was joined. Somewhere between my getting but half of the only vegetarian sandwich on the party platter and later sitting on my hotel bed eating pistachios, I suppose “the conversation” took place. It was a blur from the moment we sat down at the table till it was over. Till now, actually.

My older brother-in-law provided soft drinks whose meaning was immediately clear around the table–too soft to support ordinary family dynamics, let alone talk of nursing homes and dying. Ellen retrieved a half jug of wine from the cooler in our car. Salads were passed. Comments were made about roast beef. My younger brother-in-law took his family home as soon as the plates were cleared.

The much-planned-for family photo was not taken. We’d hauled the tripod 500 miles for nothing. In fact, no pictures were taken that included Dad except for the back of his head. The never-still children were blurry. Mom looked angry. Or was she exhausted by our presence? (Of course, there’s never a photo record that I make any of these family trips, since I’m usually behind the camera!)

Professional colleagues I lunched with yesterday confessed to the same strains on their parental relationships. We’re all having “the conversation.” One’s mother said, “I want you to move back to New Jersey so you can take care of me.” He asked us, “What am I supposed to do, wipe her butt?” Another confessed the only way she’d gotten her mother to put the house on the market was to tell her, “When you’re sitting there in diapers, I’m not coming over to change them!”

It’s been stressful over the last few months while researching options the parents asked us to help with to figure out ways to engage in dialogue once Mom flip-flopped and said she wasn’t leaving her house. She declared that the end of the conversation we’re continuing at the risk of her affection and her faith in our affections. We know Mom will leave the house, one way or the other, as will Dad. We’d prefer they walk out together.

Meanwhile, they’ll be here in a week, and we’ve arranged lunch at an independent living complex.

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A New Wrinkle I Can Live With

Do you notice physical changes in yourself that are associated with age like I do? For example, do you remember finding your first gray hair? Noticing when your smile first seemed enclosed in parentheses?

I always thought it would be cool to record the changes. There are baby books. Why not aging-people books?

This week I had several snapshots taken so I could send off a head shot to promote an appearance in a couple weeks on how to slash your mortgage interest in half by changing the way you pay.

The photo on this page didn’t make the promo cut, but if you look closely to your left of my excessively fleshy grin, you may see what made me happy. Or rather a sign I am happy. See the leftmost wrinkle that doesn’t curve like its smiling relatives? It has its own crinkle. I’m calling it a precursor to a dimple. (Why do dimples make their bearers look happier than the rest of us schmucks?)

I like to think that I am happier than I used to be. I want to believe that maturity, centeredness and gratitude make one happy. And the best part about it is, all these traits are choices.

It seems easier for most people to be critical–displeased with their own shortcomings and disgruntled with everyone else’s. That must be the path of least resistance, because few people seem truly happy most of the time. (Why not?)

We know smiling puts people at ease, improves relationships and increases sales. It can relax the smiler as well as others.

It may not be possible to grow a full-fledged dimple by grinning, but there are other advantages of trying. I discovered – and tested – smiling during a workout increases my endurance. I can squeeze out a few more reps by forcing the corners of my mouth outward.

According to Dr. William of Fry of Standford University, smiling stimulates the human brain to release chemicals which inhibit infection and lessen pain. from The Women Warriors

If smiling not only makes me and everyone around me feel better, but also lessens pain and enhances productivity, that’s a wrinkle I can live with!

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Chasing the Dragon

There is (or was) a mysterious objet de’ art in our family. We call it “The Dragon.”

My grandfather, an ornamental iron worker after blacksmithing no longer supported a wife and five children in the early 1900’s, made The Dragon for my grandmother, just before they separated.

The first time I saw The Dragon – in the late 60’s – Grandpa (Arnold George Akerman) was already gone. But from the moment he died to the present, The Dragon has seduced its children and slain its admirers.

The simple story was that Grandpa made this for Grandmother (nee Mary Zula Graham, who refused to be called ‘Grandma’) for her Nasturtiums. I imagine she buried nasturtium seeds in soil in the dark orange bowl of this wrought-iron stand.

Nasturtiums tolerate heat and bright sunlight, and could do well in their Texas Hill Country locale. (There may have been more heat than light in the marriage and divorce of the A-to-Z Akermans [Arnold and Zula], times two in case the first time was a fluke.)

Mother brought The Dragon home, though she insisted the only thing she took from her father’s house was his Bible, which Grandpa’s second wife, Juanita, insisted Mother have. Uncle Dale drove down from Oregon with a Pickup Truck, prepared to take away as many tools as possible from Grandpa’s workshop.

Aunt Hazel, who lived in the same town with Grandpa and Juanita, deserved her due for all the care she’d provided over the ages.

All five adult children stood on the front lawn, screaming epithets toward one another, throwing $20 bills to pay off this or that debt – gas for the drive from Oregon – and crying to extricate themselves from the tangle of the interlocked offspring of a distant father.

For the second and third generations, it was all about nasturtiums. Edible, both the flowers and the leaves. Or, as I like to call these beasts, oedipal.

Isn’t it all about the fathers and the children, unto the third and fourth generations?

So why do all of us, to a person, as the grandchildren of this blacky-turned-ornamentalist, grow in our gardens nasturtiums?

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TSA – the Most Hated Part of Freedom to Travel

Land of the free and home of the brave feels more like land of the hassled and home of the knave if you travel anywhere in the United states by air.

Meanwhile, we all have stories of confiscated bottles of water (even a sealed can of tonic water), cosmetics, nail files, cuticle scissors, shampoo, shaving cream, hairspray and so forth. This blog isn’t long enough to list everything we millions of US fliers have lost. (Ironically, right after 9/11, a TV news report ran a segment on how to slit someone’s throat with a credit card or the seat pocket safety card. I can see how it would be problematic for airlines to prevent carrying credit cards, so that notion gets no press!)

I don’t even like to stand barefoot in a public place like an airport security line!

Krystian Zimerman in 2004.
Photo by S. L. Judd

The worst case of confiscation I’ve heard of came through on National Public Radio this week; although, it occurred shortly after 9/11/2001. Krystian Zimerman, the great Polish concert pianist, always took his own Steinway grand piano with him for concerts. It was confiscated by customs officials at New York’s JFK airport, who thought the glue smelled funny. Ostensibly, like bomb-making materials.

They destroyed the $200,000 instrument.

Zimerman continued to travel and give concerts (a better person than I!), transporting only the mechanical insides of his piano and installing them in a local Steinway shell. In 2006, he tried again to travel with his whole piano, only to have it held up in customs for five days, thus disrupting his concert schedule.

What can one even say about this ignominy?

But do you feel safer?

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Benefits of Harvesting Rainwater

We received less than 1/10th of an inch of rain yesterday – in the midst of “monsoon” season, or, as the weather reporters like to call it “monsoonal moisture.” For once, the phrase made sense!

But that was enough to fill a couple 5-gallon buckets we place strategically under a sloped roof that drains about 1/3 of our roof’s flat surface. From there, I filled the watering can several times to give the birds, herbs and fleurs a small drink. While I don’t track the birds to see how they like rainwater, my rock garden, which I water religiously with the hose, finally sprouted to life after a heavy rain a month or so back.

If the plants can tell the difference, and respond better to rain water than to city water, why do municipalities keep trying to convince us tap water is as good for us as chemical-free bottled water? I’m sure tap water was better for us when it all came from wells that didn’t pass their water through chlorination and fluoridation treatments first.

A landscaper friend, and expert in water harvesting systems, told me of recently installing an elaborate rainwater harvesting system for a local woman. When finished, he declared she had the purest drinking water in town. “Oh, I’m not going to drink it,” she replied. “It’s for washing my hair!”

It softens hair. Farm animals thrive on it. Trees and flowers flourish on it. (The hundreds of gallons of water I sprayed on my garden produced nothing; then one downpour and the dormant seeds finally sprouted!)

Equipment and pipes last longer because rainwater produces no scale. It’s free from pollutants as well as salts, minerals, and other natural and man-made contaminants. Washing requires less soap. Harvesting rain diminishes flooding, erosion, and the flow to storm-water drains. It reduces demand on municipal water supplies.

After collection equipment is installed (for us this is a row of 3-5 gallon buckets we’ve collected roadside or from kitty-litter buying friends), rain is free.

Except for a prayer or two for more of it!

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Separation Bookends

“I can do it” (implying “better than you can”) is an utterance we hear almost as soon as toddlers can speak in full sentences. Sometimes before! (“me do! me do!”)

From toddler-ignorance through young adult-flamboyance, there’s an egoistic (not as edgy as egotistic) assumption about competence. It underlies myriad actions around authority figures.

In studying phases of development, we learn that much of childhood’s “terrible twos” has to do with individuation. The child must come to see herself as separate from Mother, with whom she most likely was once “one.” She refuses to do what’s asked of her. She learns to say “No.” (Though she doesn’t hear “No” when it’s directed at her.)

It’s a good thing, this “No, let me do it” that frustrates adults (especially when they’re in a hurry!). Her little personality is developing and we watch mostly in awe of her comprehension and courage. We gaze at the miracle of a rosebud unfurling petal by petal to the glory of full-bloom.

When she’s fully her own person, she’s able to accept the flow of others into and out of her life without being shaken. The better she is at maintaining equilibrium, the stronger society deems her to be. Adults who are this centered are often able to be friends with their parents, and with many others their parents’ age.

Then something happens in late adulthood. Her own grown daughter sees a petal drop from the full bloom that is her mom, or her dad. She flicks it away before anyone notices. She doesn’t remember it herself. Then two or three more fall. She mentions it to her husband and to her children. They’ve all noticed Grandma isn’t the same. Maybe the next time she sees her parents, she removes some drying petals preemptively – before they fall – preserving the beauty she remembers and sees as no one else does.

She refines her “Let me do it for you” voice after noticing the pained response it brought at first. Her dad is “losing it,” too. Her mom can’t manage on her own. They’re forgetting how to do things they once taught her to do. They prattle on, free-associating from topic to topic. They don’t recall our most-cherished conversations and activities from decades ago…yet we do.

On the long end of life, it isn’t the beginner saying, “Let me do it.” It’s that toddler, all grown up, after a wedge of life in between when Mom was smart and brilliant and beautiful and able to do anything and now. Now Mom is “toddling,” teetering on the downward slope of life. The younger adult is pulling the tool from his or her elder’s hands, saying “I can do it better.”

The process is the same. The child had to learn how to get along without the adult, to some extent, in order to become an adult. Nowa middle-aged adult, she or he begins to see the frailties of those of decades more experience and for the same reasons pulls away.

Those of us watching our parents and best friends losing skills and memories and reasoning have to once again individuate. Without realizing why, we let a harsh word or impatient glance escape.

We think we’re being helpful out of compassion for their weaknesses. What we’re really doing is separating ourselves from our inability to live without them. We are also learning how to die.

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