Is It Just Me?

I have been feeling a sense of urgency to set things right lately.  I attributed it to the big bad diagnoses.  I want to make sure I tell people things I want them to know and then let them go.  I want to pass on knowledge before I forget it all.  I want to check things off my bucket list.

But yesterday I watched a bit of news on TV - always a mistake - and I started to wonder if maybe I feel this urgency because the whole dang world is actually falling apart.

I just can't quite get my mind around all that's going on.  My country is bombing and warring indiscriminately, because. . . . . well, I near as I can actually figure it out, it all comes down to oil.  My government is attacking unarmed Native Americans on their sacred land, because of oil.  Great rivers all over the globe are being killed by oil spills and the oceans are full of floating plastic islands Oh, yeah, plastic.  A petroleum product.  Places, including Oklahoma, which once only worried about the occasional twister, now have daily earthquakes due to drilling and fracking.  There is no such thing as "normal" weather anymore, because our misuse of resources, primarily oil,  is screwing up the planet's natural protection.

Of course, I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier but I know a few common sense things.

1. Oil, which runs in the veins of Mother Earth, took millions of years to make and we are using it faster than it's being created.  We're going to run out.
2. People can't drink oil, but we can't live without clean water.  
3. If you're driving full speed toward a cliff, it would be wise to take your foot off the accelerator.

So why is it that we can be horrible people in order to pipe oil, but can't figure out how to get water to  places in drought and being burned by fires?  Why don't we have solar collectors on every house? How is it that 54% of my country's budget is spent on defense?  Our infant mortality rate is  6 per 1,000.  The UK's is 3.8 per 1,000 and Japan's rate is 2.1 per 1,000.  Huffington Post says 14% of my country's adults can't read.  After teaching in a public high school, I am not surprised.  

We have some serious problems and they aren't going away.

Still. . . .what are we spending our money on?  "Defense."  Actually, that's a very bad word for military spending.   And what really bothers me is that even if we changed that budget item to "Waring for oil," which would perhaps be more correct, I don't think anyone would give a damn.   

But what do we watch on TV?  We keep up with people who are famous for being famous.  The channels are covered in the glorification of violence and disgusting behavior.  We are addicted to the drama, I guess.  We're concerned about who loves whom to the point of hatred.  We abdicate our responsibility to think to organizations who tell us their god is right and everyone else's god is dangerous.  

Not to put too fine a point on it, but everyone is nuts.  So I ask you, what do we do?

Holding on Tight

As usual, my sister and BIL hosted an incredible Thanksgiving.  It was our first without our mother.  We'd planned to all come to my house the day after for a wiener roast in the Garden of Many Groovy Things, an ongoing project I've been working on for many years.

My daughter and her family and I came back earlier than the rest of the group to prepare.  We did a bit of prep and we managed to get my hubs to urgent care.  He'd fallen and broken his ankle.  I was excited about people coming to my house, about my babies being there, and I was anxious about my husband's injury.  And to say I dropped the ball about the meal would be an understatement.

I didn't think about getting the buns out of the freezer or putting food in bowls, etc.  I didn't think about it.   Here I was with 11 people at my house, some of the most important people in my life, and I was supposed to be feeding them, but it wasn't in my head.

But get this, no body starved. I didn't really get a chance to feel panicky.  My family just did what needed to be done and we had such a fun time.  Never were there tastier hotdogs than these cooked on forks held over a fire, expertly tended by Brother Paul.  Jan brought outrageously good baked beans.  We all forgot the potato chips, but Nan brought yummy slaw.  We somehow remembered the recipe for S'mores.   We told the same jokes we've been telling for years and teased and loved on each other.  The wine flowed and the beer was cold.  The weather was absolutely perfect and the faerie lights on the rose arbor came on exactly at dusk.  As the evening cooled, we scooted closer to the fire and to each other.

Tim pronounced one of my lanterns dead before the gang gathered and another pooped out during the evening, but there were tiki torches and so many candles.  Bell fell asleep on her mom's lap, but Bump got to blow out the last of the candles as we put out the fire at the end of the night.

It was simply perfect.  This family is so goofy and so accepting that I think they don't care much that I have some holes in my brain.  In fact, they may not even notice.  I reckon I've always been a bit clumsy and absent minded.  To have siblings who can laugh at their own and each others imperfections is amazing.  We can do that because we all "own" each other.

Is that maturity?  Gathered around a campfire, laughing about belches and farts, we surely don't sound mature!  Maybe it has something to do with us being orphans now.  There are just the four of us, but there are ALL FOUR of us, and to me we feel like a unit more now than ever.   We're all aware that we aren't spring chickens so every moment we can celebrate together is precious.  Whew! It's a good thing we're all still so good-looking!

I love, love, love my brothers and my sister.  I love my extended family who could be with us and those who couldn't.  And I know that if one of us drops a ball, another of us will pick it up without even thinking about it.  Nobody has anything to prove, we're just too busy loving.

Pressed Between the Pages of My Mind

I've been thinking about the weird stuff I remember.  I think I remember distant things more acutely than the average bear.  I wonder if there is a connection.  Any neurologists reading this?

In first grade, one day Mrs. Read was out and we had a substitute teacher.  She wore a white dress with black polka dots and a black patent leather belt.  She had the tiniest waist ever.

Mrs. Munson lived in an apartment in the back of Dr. Kibbe's house.  She always caught me on May Day when I left a basket of violets on her doorstep and invited me in for tea.

I could draw a floor plan for Dr. Jones' apartment.  Her dog, a Boston Terrier, was named Molly.   I visited her now and then when I was in wee grades.

At age 15, sitting in the Woodbine Theatre with Mark, I became acutely aware that my elbow was rough and dry, and silently vowed to always lotion my elbows.

I was on a ferris wheel with some stranger downtown Carthage for the Bicentennial and the wheel stopped.  I saw my father on the ground talking to someone as he waited for me and I wanted to call to him, but I didn't want that strange boy to think I was a baby.  So instead of calling, "Papa,"  I called "Dad" and sort of tried to make it sound like "Dan."

Mom told me we didn't use Ivory Soap because in our water it would turn milky.

These are not significant, life-changing things.  I didn't even remember to always lotion my elbows.  I still don't.  These memories - and thousands more - are just snips of film that can be played in HD any ol' time.  So why can't I remember how long I worked at the place I last worked?  I know I couldn't find the office building now.  I remember some things from when I first worked there, but not the latter part.  I used to drive all over the upstate to jails and talk with prisoners and jailers and attorneys and judges and cops.  I couldn't find those jails now.  I couldn't even tell you what towns they were in.

Of course, I remember some significant things.  I remember a bad guy jumping across a table at me.  I remember being locked in a cell with a prisoner and no guard anywhere near.  I remember telling the "powers that be" not to let a certain man out.  But they did.  It was very bad.  I just don't remember the bulk.  I only remember the names of a few people with whom I worked and that's because I'm in touch with them.   Someone recently asked me how long it's been since I worked there and how long I worked there.  I really don't know.  I just don't.  Time is one of those things that my brain has not seen fit to hold onto well.

My neurologist says that I won't regain any of the memories I've lost but that the meds should help slow down losing more.  I don't routinely just believe what I'm told without questioning it.  So I'm thinking there must be things I can do (besides taking these pills) that will help.

I play Words with Friends.  I sing things I need to remember.  I constantly tell myself not to panic, it will be okay.  I have GPS.   I have a cell phone.  I have friends.  I savor memories, that is I purposefully remember things I can in great detail.  I remember how Dr. Jones' apartment smelled and how her voice sounded.  I make plans.  I make myself go places.  I try to learn new things.

But things take so much time and energy now.  Even writing this blog, which I think is important and which I want to do, takes so ding dang much of me.  I have to check everything.  I'm sure misspelled words are getting through as well as punctuation errors.  I felt so silly when I had to check whether the word was waist or waste.  I feel stupid when things like that happen and I know I'm not stupid.  I just forget the weirdest things.  And the things I remember are odd, too. They often seem so unimportant, but I'm very grateful for them.

And even when I press the "publish" button, I'm a little afraid that I've written gibberish, or that I'm repeating myself.  I don't re-read the last five posts before I write.  I probably should, but that would be stressful.  I recognize my writing style, but I don't remember writing things.

But you know what?  As scary and sad as this whole thing is for the most  part, it's also a bit intriguing.  I'm amazed at how a brain works - and how it doesn't.  I would like for the progression of this memory thief to be slow.  Perhaps recording my experience will be helpful to brain scientists everywhere.  Hey, maybe my grandkids will become neurologists and cure this thing.

Damned near anything could happen.  And I'm grateful.

Grief and Groceries

Today I did something I haven't done in quite a while.  I did a major grocery shopping trip.  It wasn't pretty.

I had my list and it was pretty much arranged in order of the store.  However, the first thing on my list I couldn't find.  Finally, with help from the produce dude, I discovered that the store was out of ginger root.  Well, that threw me.

"Okay, calm down, Fay.  It's a flipping grocery, you can do this."

So on I went, talking aloud to who knows what, just sort of encouraging myself down aisles of tons of stuff that no one actually needs.  I was befuddled by the variety of marshmallows.  It actually stopped me in my tracks.

"You only need marshmallows for S'mores.  So just get a bag of large ones."

"Why are there seven hot dogs in a package of Hebrew National?  Why seven?  Okay, so how many hot dogs do I need?    No!  I'm not going to cry.  Just grab some hot dogs and get on with it.  What's this?  Twelve hotdog buns in a package.  God, help me."

I'm sure that for most of my life I breezed through a grocery with very little thought or angst.  But those days are gone.  It's a major thing now.  It takes a long time to make a list and a very long time to negotiate my way through the grocery.  I was aware of people looking at me oddly.  Well, okay, I'm sort of used to that, but for different reasons, I guess.

I called my husband a couple of times for orientation.  He's good about that.  I had to crouch down to investigate cans of pumpkin.  Wouldn't you think they'd have that at eye level this time of year?  And for crying in a bucket, we're about to have Thanksgiving, put cans of French cut green beans, cans of cream of mushroom soup, and cans of French fried onion rings in one place.  How tough is that?

By the time I got to the checkout, the young woman checker probably realized she was earning her $9 per hour.  I was still talking to myself.  But by then I was sort of laughing to myself about talking  to myself.  I told the bagger that I could bag the stuff myself, in my own bags, because I'd read "Principles of Bagging."  I actually did read that pamphlet when my daughter was a teen and worked at a grocery.  Why I needed to say that aloud to a complete stranger who was only trying to do his job is a mystery.  It just popped right out of my mouth.

I made it home okay, but I was embarrassed.  This isn't a village, but it isn't a city either.  People are going to recognize me and realize that i'm a bit verklempt.   I suppose that's something I should be embarrassed about.  I dunno, really.

But I made it.  My husband picked up the few things I needed that I forgot to get, and no one is going to starve at our day after Thanksgiving wiener roast.  It makes more sense to me now, however, that I'm so consistently tired.  It takes so much energy to do things that I used to do by remote control - eyes closed.  Now I have to question decisions about things like what sort of marshmallows are appropriate or doing math to make buns and hotdogs come out even.

This is tough.  It's a loss and I grieve it.  But let's face it, it's also sort of funny.  I mean it would be really funny if it weren't so damned real.  I think I'll just pretend like it isn't real and laugh instead of cry.

I'm grateful I'm so dang cute.

Perfectly Letting Go

I had such a very hard time getting with it today.  I really don't know why, except that, it's just what I do all too often.  This afternoon I got out to the GMGT and decided I'd lay some pavers.  I figured it wouldn't be that bad, since I already had pavers there with large spaces between them.  All I had to do was rearrange and add some more pavers. I really should know better than to think any piece of the GMGT is going to be easy.

I'm sure you'll find it difficult to imagine, but the ground wasn't level.  Not even close.  And I soon remembered that the reason I left "planting" spaces between pavers in this section was because there were serious roots and rocks that would have to be removed before I could make the area anywhere near level.

I say "anywhere near level" now.  When I started out building the first patio section. I trusted my level completely.  I was a bit compulsive about it.  Somehow by the second, and now third area of patio, I don't so much care how level things are.  Level enough is plenty good enough.

My B.I.L. and my brother Paul, do things perfectly.  But they know me, and they know I don't  do things perfectly, and I'm pretty sure they love me anyway.  You see it isn't that THEY are perfect (well, they are pretty close, it's true) but they do projects like this perfectly. 

While trying to make my first patio section perfectly level, I often though of the time when one of my perfectionist nephews would see the patio, and I'd try to see it through his eyes.  I was genuinely anxious about what he would think about my work. Yep, I'm laughing now for a few reasons.

1. Since it's taken several years for me to build the Garden of Many Groovy Things on my very steeply sloping back yard, things have settled.  What was once level is no more.

2. The original plan for the garden bears absolutely no resemblance to the garden as it is now.  I decide often to change or add or move things and I do.  That's perfectly fine with me.  I don't expect it to ever be "done."  It's the building of it that is the joy.

3. It doesn't  matter anymore whether or not I get the approval of anyone.  I love my family.  Always will.  What they do with that knowledge is none of my damned business.

So I continue to build a little bit at a time, as energy permits.  I've raised the back retaining wall, which had sunk a bit and added more dirt and planted more plants.  Now I've begun covering the back wall, which is made of concrete block, with rocks that I continue to collect.  I've learned so much while doing this.  Things about building with concrete blocks, and stones, and cement, and pavers; and things about dirt, and clay, and roots, and rocks, and plants.  And lots and lots of things about me.  

I don't need perfection.  In fact, I really like funky.  There are little surprises and secrets all about the GMGT.  There are gaps in the walls just right for a bird nest or two.  There are initials of people and faces and symbols of all sorts hidden about.  People will either see them or they won't.  It doesn't matter.  I had fun putting them there. 

In five days, about a dozen of my fam will gather in the garden for a wiener roast.  We'll have candles and lanterns and torches and a fire in the fire pit, of course, but I reckon the warmth will come from this collection of imperfect people being together in my perfectly imperfect Garden of Many Groovy Things. We'll eat very common, simple food (yay S'mores!), and we'll laugh.  

Life is so short.  My advice is to always choose groovy over perfect.  Perfect takes up way too much time and is so much less fun than groovy.  Put some funk in your junk.  

I’m grateful for it all.

Mom and Me

Was it just a year ago that I was staying at my Mom's house?  I'm really bad with time.  And so very much has happened in the past year.  Anyway, for a while I spent time with Mom in her house when she was deciding to move to an assisted living apartment.

She had a very nice house, in which she lived for 15 years, by herself.  She had great neighbors and a special friend, with whom she shared a dog, Baxter.  Her friend, Derwood, would come in the morning and take Baxter, surely the most spoiled dog ever, out for a walk.  He'd spend the day with Mom and Baxter and then return to his farm house.  It was a good arrangement.  Sometimes after dinner and after Derwood went home, Mom would have dessert with her next door neighbor, an extremely nice widower.  In other words, Mom had a good thang going.

Then, as happened in her family, she began to get a bit confused.  Not always.  Mostly she was very sharp.  She continued to create beautiful quilts for all her grandchildren and great-grand children.  She continued to cook meals for herself and Derwood and Baxter, and she continued to have a very active life.

She was 92 when I went to stay with her for extended periods.  I wanted to spend time with her and she wanted help going through and getting rid of stuff.  Of course, she had shed most of her belongings when she moved from her Illinois home of 42 years, but she'd been in her North Carolina home for 15 years and you know how stuff accumulates.

In late summer and autumn we began encouraging her to consider assisted living apartments.  Most of the time she was fine, but now and then she'd forget to turn off the stove.  Eventually she sold her car.  I spent more time with her.  Nancy, my sister, was always Mom's anchor.  Nancy went to all Mom's doctor appointments with her, and she and her husband, Chip, enabled Mom to stay in her home long past the time when she would have been able to if Nan and Chip hadn't been so willing and able to assist her.

My position, my job in all this, was different.  Mom trusted Nancy completely, which is only right.  Nancy, who is a saint, made the drive through the mountains near daily to check on Mom, take her shopping, to see her doctor, etc.  I would go stay for a week or two at a time and observe Mom 24/7.  Because there were gaps in the time I spent with her, I noticed more, I think, than Nan.  It's sort of like that horrid experiment when you put a frog in a beaker of water and slowly raise the temperature until the frog boils.  It's easy not to notice the gradual decline of mental function when you are with it all the time.  I, however, would see changes.

There are a couple of other factors that came into play.  Nancy is just a kinder, gentler person than I and had a closer relationship with our mother.  Also, our mother, though she didn't finish high school, was one of the smartest people I've ever known and she could fake it with the best of them.

During the times I stayed with Mom, she often thought I was "the help."  She fired me more than once.  She told me to "get back to the kitchen and get to work." She asked me my name.  It can be funny, or it can be devastating, when your mother asks you what your name is.  I once yelled at her when I caught her about to take a drink from a bottle of hand cleaning gel.  She was very angry with me for yelling.  She constantly asked me when Nancy was going to come back.

The three of us went to her primary care physician during that time.  Her physician loved Mom and the feeling was mutual.  Mom would be dressed up nicely - she was quite the fashion plate - and really with it when she went to see the doctor.  I stayed in the room after Nan and Mom left and talked to the doc.  I told the doctor about forgetting to turn off the stove, about asking my name, about asking what cottage cheese was.  It's just so easy to want people to be well so badly that we overlook some things.  Mom was angry at me for "telling on her."

Nancy found a wonderful apartment for Mom and at the last minute Mom decided that she was just going to stay in her house.  We arranged help for Mom over and over again and she'd fire them over and over again.  She was as independent and stubborn as only a Shubert can be.  So Nan and I did what we had to do.  We brought in the big gun - Number One - Paul, her first born.  He talked to her on the phone and by the time Nan and I  arrived at her house, Mom was ready to move.

This is all so poignant now because I see so much of Mom in me.  I've taken over the pie baking for Thanksgiving.  I've saved so much of her fabric to make my opus quilt.  I even have her sewing machine, though I'm sure it will never perform for me the way it did for her for so many decades.

It's painful for me to admit that I've left the hose on over night.  I'm normally a bit of a nut about water conservation.  I sold my car because I had trouble with shifting and all the other details one has to do to drive.  I couldn't find my way across town anyway. I got lost on many occasions.  I have stood in the shower crying because I didn't know what I was supposed to do.  But for the most part, the simplification of my life, medication, and the endless support of my husband, family, and a few close friends, enables me to carry on, faking it with the best of them.   I've relearned much and I now drive an automatic transmission car around town using GPS.

I consider myself a pioneer in navigating this shit because I fully intend to continue writing about it.  There is also a whole other dimension to my condition, that I may get into at another time, but right now, I'm content to report how it feels to have my thinking dulled and my memories gone.

I can still be quite bitter about stolen memories.  I don't remember the first time I held Bump, my perfect grandson.  I have glimpses of memories from the past six or so years.  Much of it is just blank.  I'm not going to get that back.  I understand that.  But I really work at keeping those neurons popping  now.  I do what I can do.  I remember chuckling at work when I realized the true meaning of the phrase, "I've forgotten more about therapy than you know."

A friend told me today that he thinks I'm very fast-witted and sharp.  It's true.  I am.  Much of the time I am.  And I can tell you in detail what was going on in rural America in the 1970s, but don't ask me me too much about two weeks ago.  And as I said, I take after my Mama.  I started out smart and I  am one hell of an actress.  I'm an expert at interpersonal communication and the nuances that make all the difference.  But I can't trust that the words that come out of my mouth are what I intend and I can't remember squat from recent times.

I intend to continue to have adventures.  I intend to continue to travel and learn and experience.  I just realize now that I may need to take more pictures in order to remember my adventures.  I'm working on my photography skills.  (See, that was a bit of a joke, and you can laugh now.)

Whew!  Overall, it's just ding dang good that I'm still relatively smart, good looking, and fun to be with, eh?  I am grateful.  This is interesting, albeit confusing and frustrating and more than a bit sad.  Let's focus on the interesting.

Losing My Mind

I've been diagnosed with dementia and I take medication to slow it down.  It's a very strange thing to be aware of my brain fading.

I want to share it, record it, while I can.  Maybe that will be for decades more, who knows? I'm already afraid that sometimes I don't make sense and I'm embarrassed by the frequency of discovering, one way or another, that I'm repeating myself ad nauseam.  But the worst part is when I have moments of panic because I'm just lost.  Fortunately, it's not a frequent event.  But sometimes, in the shower or in the kitchen or even in bed at night, I just don't know what the heck I'm doing.  I can't orient.  It's bad enough to stand in my kitchen and have to think which drawer the flatware is kept, but it's downright terrifying to not know what flatware is about.

It's just my brain though.  Just as the other stuff that's going on is just my body.  The real me, the core of me is still in here.  Perhaps it can be thought of as an onion.  The outer skins are crinkly and brittle and falling off.  Big deal.  It happens.  A few layers down the juicier layers of the onion are starting to be brown and soft and not so great.  Eh. . . . . . so. . . . . it happens.  Sometimes though, when one cuts into a seemingly good onion, one finds that the outer layers seem okay, but the core of the onion is yuck.  I am thankful that at present, that is NOT me.

I think I'm thankful for that.  It's rather petrifying to think that there might come a time when the outer two thirds of the onion are rotten but the very center is still in here, trying to be oniony.  Possibly the worst thing I can think of is to be unable to communicate.

But if that is my lot, my destiny - whatever you want to call it - my lesson, then I will try to learn it.  My life has been so amazing that if now I fade away slowly rather than just have an aneurism blow suddenly or be hit by a meteor or something, I guess that, too, will be a worthwhile adventure.

That's a new concept for me and perhaps it will be a temporary one, but I believe there is a reason for even the silliest bits of life.  As my Hindu friend, Sushil, puts it, we should indulge Mother's play.  I don't know.  And I know I don't know.  

I do want to try to take you along on this journey, however.  If I rewrite the same thing 47 times in a row, please forgive me.  I actually can deal with that better than when I can't remember  the word I want.  And I can handle that better than when I can't remember what writing is about.

There is just so much of us that is not attached to words, and that is the part that I want so to communicate to you, in hopes that it will help someone else along the way.  I'm not much of a painter or sculpture.  I'm more of a wordsmith.  Irony.  Sometimes it sucks in a bad way.

There is another scary thing that is happening.  My personality is changing.  My emotions aren't always in order.  I don't know how else to explain it.  I don't like it, but I don't think I dislike it as much as those around me.  I'm pissing people off without meaning to.  Part of it is that I've lost my filter.  I never had a very good filter, but it's pretty much gone now.  Things just pop out.  Why did I tell my internist that his tie was awful?  We weren't discussing ties or fashion or anything along that line.  I just happened to notice it.  It was really very ugly.  And instead of just thinking it, it came right out of my mouth.

That's weird, because often the things I want to come out of my mouth just won't.  And sometimes something totally unrelated comes out.  It used to be just words.   I told my brother to bring his lawn chair, when I meant I wanted him to bring his chain saw.  But now sometimes a whole sentence, or string of words comes out and I only realize when I hear them that they have seemingly no relationship to what was in my head.  And all too often I say things that aren't even my words.  It's as if there are strings of words flying by all the time and now and then a string gets caught up and comes out of my mouth.  They aren't my words.  Just my mouth.

It's embarrassing and scary to write this stuff because I know how crazy it sounds.  Trust me, it sounds crazy because it is crazy.  All the little sparks and snaps and miracles that happen constantly in that grey and white organ in our skulls - all those things we never understand, but take for granted, are no longer things on which I'm able to rely.  It'll make a person a bit skittish, let me tell you.

But I hope to hang in here.  I'm so grateful that I'm so smart.  I think that will somehow help me explain what is happening.  Who knows, maybe it won't help at all.  We'll see, I guess.  I feel an urgency to try to share the journey.

Need

I was told by a lifelong friend today that I am needy.  Too needy.  In so many words she told me that I'd forgotten what it's like to be part of the real world, since I no longer work full time.  I no longer have to be nice and polite all the time.  She doesn't have the time nor energy to spend nurturing our friendship.  The strange thing - well the strange thing to me anyway - about this all is that I know she's right.

Since the diagnoses and the aging and the deaths and all the changes in the past year, I have felt an urgency - a need - to make things right with family and friends.  This transaction with my friend reminded me that perhaps that is not the need of my family and friends.  Maybe they are just fine with letting me go as things are.

Could it be that I am not actually the center of the Universe?

Of course, I've realized this before, probably even written about it, but you see I forget.  I forget all sorts of things.  I relearn lessons daily.  Sometimes hourly.  It's not unique to me.  It's unique, I think, to people who are willing to relearn.

So I step back and I look at my wants, behaviors, communications with as little ego involvement as possible and I realize that I'm okay with my neediness.  Actually it's more wantiness, I guess.  I would like to leave everyone I love on a good note.  A good, pure, perfect chord.  All I can actually do is sing my note.  I can't force anyone to chime in.

Oy, enough of the music analogies already.  And  you see, I realize that if my ego were totally out of it, I wouldn't care.  And I have been told that releasing my ego should be a goal.  I guess this all means that I'm not totally enlightened.  I'll just have to add that to a few other interesting imperfections.

Because you see, I'm not going to stop trying to make things right with people.  Oh, I'll stop nagging people who tell me they haven't the energy to spend on our friendship.  Unless I forget they told me to stop.  But my friendship and my love remain.  So sue me.

I'm grateful for the friendly and family times I've had.  That's all.  I'm just imperfect and grateful.

Nurturing Nerds

This past summer I gave my grandson, Bump, a book I got when I was a kid, Answers and More Answers.  It's a science book, but of course, it isn't quite up to date.  I thought that perhaps he'd get a kick out of it.  He said, "I think we should keep this at your house, Nana."  It awaits him at my house.

But today, I ordered Nat Geo for little kids for him and his sister, Bell.  I also ordered a journal for him that gives a weird fact per day and encourages him to write something weird he experienced each day.  I also ordered a couple of DVDs about animal facts.

I think it's important to feed, not only the saxophone and piano players in my grands, but to also feed their nerddom in general.  They are already facing so much culture via electronics, traditions, and school.  I want to balance all their coolness with a hearty dose of nerd.

Their lives are already so full, at ages two and five, that I wonder if there is much room left for wonder.  Wonder is, after all, the basis of all nerddom.  I mean, everyone falls and scrapes a knee, but to be able to watch the blood first come out and then coagulates and then forms a scab, and wonder at the body's healing process - THAT is something.  Everyone eventually learns to blow across the top of a bottle to make a sound, but to experiment with different levels of liquid to create different sounds - That is special.  Spinning a globe is great fun.  Realizing what a teensy, tiny speck we are in the galaxy even before we have the words to describe the sheer power of that realization - THAT is enlightenment.  Well, it's as step toward enlightenment anyway.

I think all babies are born enlightened, gifted, brilliant.  Unfortunately, I think it's usually taught right out of them.  Out of us.

My advice is this.  Learn to read, then never quit reading.  Read up high in trees and with your feet in mud and on the roof under stars.  Write about it.  Love yourself and others enough to read and write to and about them.  Embrace your nerddom.  Be proud of it.  Listen to all the music and wonder.  Never stop wondering.

Food for Thought

When I was growing up, it wasn't unusual for kids to go home from school for lunch.  Now, of course, that would be impossible.  Now kids are put on conveyor belts and run through a cafeteria that serves them a bunch of stuff that they eat very quickly because time can't be taken away from teaching.   And we've all seen how time spent teaching correlates with learning, right?

Why couldn't we try this?  Why couldn't we treat school lunches like something really important.  How about we serve really nutritious tasty meals and do it over the course of 75 minutes.  A teacher could sit with each table of students and they would learn table manners, nutrition, patience, and well, just a gazillion things in this relaxed environment.

I've heard people say that kids won't eat weird, nutritious meals, so why serve them that stuff?  Really.  I've heard parents say that.  Hmmmm.  Using that logic we could say that we don't use proper grammar at home, so why teach it at school?  We could say, no one at my house can do basic arithmetic, so why should my kids have to learn it?  Yep.  And pretty much that's what has happened.

I think we need to approach the whole school problem with this stuff called common sense.  Get rid of tenure.  Get rid of standardized tests. Have a big garden at every school so the students produce much of their own food while learning.  What can't be taught in a garden?  Be consistent in our messages - that is, don't tell kids in nutrition class why they shouldn't drink diet soda but sell it to them in the hallway.   Teach kids to be respectful by being respectful.

We need to learn basic skills.  We need to learn to read, use the web and other resources around us, but most of all we need to learn how to think for ourselves.  It seems to me that too much if focused on giving the right answer, and not enough focused on how to obtain the answer.  Life doesn't come with text books containing all the right answers.

And it seems to me that a good place to begin using common sense in schools is with lunch.  There really isn't much more basic to our lives than eating, we might as well learn to do it well.