Living in the 19th Century

So, dear hearts, how long was the electricity off at your house last week? In my neighborhood, it was out for almost exactly 53 hours. Give or take an hour. I woke up around 4 a.m. Monday when the power went out. That was the first day.

Fifty-three hours is a long time to go without my accustomed critter comforts. Yeah, I know, those of you who went longer are saying, “Poor baby.” Remember the Hannukah Eve storm when the whole island was out? We went five days without electricity that time. It  was tedious.

So here we were with no electricity, no internet, no hot water and therefore no laundry washed or dried, and ditto the dishes. The small stock of firewood I had was gone by the first night, and then I started buying bundles of wood at the grocery stores. It burned as fast as paper and put off about as much heat as paper.

Still, at least it was some heat, and I was able to boil water for coffee and for other uses. One of the plusses of my wood stove – I can cook on it.

There was a scary moment when a large branch broke off the big fir next to the house and crashed onto the roof. That sucker was a good thirty feet long and five inches in diameter at the trunk end, and took out parts of smaller trees as it came down. Yep, that was exciting. For some reason it did not knock the chimney over, for which I was grateful, and it didn’t break the window against which part of it came to rest. If you’re going to have big chunks of tree fall on your house, it was not so bad, but the impact made a big impression on my grandson and me, as well as the dog and the cat.

The hardest part for me was not being able to use my CPAP machine. I have sleep apnea, a condition in which I stop breathing. The CPAP machine blows a gentle breeze into my nose and mouth, and that keeps me breathing, and sleeping, and not dying. When I am unable to use the CPAP, I do not get much rest and drag through the next day fog-brained. I was unable to use the machine for two nights in a row.

Note: Next time I promise I will take my friends up on their offers to stay at their homes that do have power. I swear it. This time my grandson was coming down with a cold and I was reluctant to spread pestilence.

The second day we went up to town to charge our phones. Us and most of the rest of the island. I’ve never seen the library so crowded. I was so grateful that I got a 1997 Subaru named Belle back when I had the money to do so. Belle has served us well this week. Yay, Belle.

The third morning I was getting pretty fed up with living in the 19th century, even if I do have a Subaru now and we can go up to town to charge our phones. I was sitting on the couch close to the wood stove, sulking and feeling sorry for myself, when the lamp on the end table lit up.

Ah! Angel choirs singing, “Hallelujah!”

No longer powerless, my grandson and I plugged in all our electronic devices. To my astonishment, the internet was up, also. From the 19th century to the 21st century, just like that. So I got back to signing petitions and calling legislators, because I don’t care for the 19th century in my country and culture any more than in my living conditions.

I hope everyone is genuinely “empowered” now on the island, and that we all made it through without too much catastrophe.

A huge THANK YOU to all the repair people who were out day and night moving trees and branches and re-connecting wires and just generally getting us back into the 21st century. You people rock.

And I have the cold now, so that’s all I have to say.

Cedars and a Foolish Example

 The alders, the maples, the horse chestnut, and the apple tree have all lost their leaves. This is the time of year I can see some of the sky, though the evergreens still block some of the view.

The cedars and the firs stand tall and green on three sides of the house. There is a straight line of five cedars standing on the edge of my neighbors’ property. They were there when I arrived here almost forty years ago, and at that time there was a parallel row of five firs that marched along next to them on our side of the line.

The firs gave up and fell over years ago, probably because there was a drainage ditch that ran next to them, and eventually their roots could not hold on. So now the cedars stand alone. I was looking at them today, seeing how they have grown in almost forty years, broader in the trunk and taller in the sky.

Those trees have always been a mystery to me. It was clear that someone planted them on purpose in those two parallel lines a long time ago. Who, and why, and why in those lines and that place, are the mystery. I am pretty sure I will not find out the answers to those questions.

There is another cedar outside my bedroom window that was about seven feet tall, with spindly branches, when I came here in 1977. That tree is now about the size those cedars were then.

I especially love cedars, and I’m not sure why they seem so much more compelling to me – romantic, if you will – than the firs and hemlocks that also populate the forest. Those are perfectly good trees, some of them majestically tall, quietly doing their good work cleaning the air. But the cedars, with their flat fans of prehistoric-looking looking branches, hook me in somehow. Maybe it was that line from an Ian Tyson song, Summer Wages, that I sang long ago:

“Through the great fog bound straits where the cedars stand a-waitin’ …”

I learned the song about the time I moved up here, and I don’t know why. It is the song of a young man who loses his woman while he’s away working. Not exactly a natural choice for a woman singer/songwriter who was beginning to get uppity feminist ideas.

But the image of those cedars stuck with me, and I saw them here and up in Canada when I traveled there, and they surround me here at home.

What has that got to do with anything? I don’t know. To be honest, I’ve been awfully depressed and anxious lately, which is not unusual for me. There doesn’t have to be a reason. The trees seem to soothe and calm me. It was warm enough to sit on the kitchen porch and drink coffee this morning, and contemplate the sky and the trees.

Life seems so overwhelming sometimes. There’s my personal life, we won’t go into that today, and on top of that there’s the pass to which our country has come. Our new president seems to be declaring war on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and on Chicago.

Well, I heard he said he was going to send troops to Chicago, then said afterward he was “trying to open a dialogue.”

It makes me sad to think of the world in which my children and my grandchild live, and what’s to come. Not to mention my own fears about losing my Social Security and my Medicare. I don’t have much, and those two things are keeping me going. So, yeah, depression, anxiety, and a preference for the company of my dog and cedars.

The cat, now - he can go to hell. Just once I’d like to sleep through the night without him attacking my hands and arms like they’re his personal chew and claw toys.

In other news, spring is coming. Oh, it’s a little early to start dancing nude in the dell, but spring will come all the same. The crocuses, the crocosmia, the columbines, and of course the buttercups are all reaching for the sky. I love the foolhardiness of spring bulbs – every year they come up in January and I tell them, “Go back, it’s still cold,” but they persist and in a couple of months they’ll be blooming.

As usual, I shall follow their foolish example and persist, and maybe even, in time, bloom a little.

Changing the Things We Can

We went to court a few weeks ago to have my grandson’s name legally changed from what he was named at birth, when we all thought he was a girl, to the name he has been using the last two years.

The name change is part of the gender transition process, and an affirmation of who my grandson feels he really is. Each step toward making his external self more congruent with his internal self is a step toward peace for him.

For the rest of us – well, every milestone in the process of your transgender loved one’s transition requires an internal giving out and taking up of emotional slack for you, the parent/guardian/loved one. With each change it sinks in a little deeper that the original expectations you had are no more. The person you knew is gone, and before you is the exact same person, with a completely different identity.

You suck it up because you love the kid. You remind yourself that life is anything but predictable. After all, what else in your life turned out exactly the way you expected or planned? Your children who are not transgender handed you plenty of surprises, too, didn’t they?

So.

We showed up at court with paperwork in hand. We got in line. Copies were made of legal papers, and money was paid for the process. Then we filed into the courtroom to sit and wait our turn.

It looked like a slam dunk. Paperwork, check. Money paid, check. All that remained was to have the judge approve the name change.

The first couple of name changes, bam, no problem. Then we were called. I, as my grandson’s legal guardian and petitioner for the change, stood up with my grandson. The judge asked a few questions.

He asked if the birth parents approved of this name change. I answered yes, because we had spoken with his birth parents, who both currently are living in other states, and they were okay with it.

Then the judge allowed as it was possible to grant the name change, but he wasn’t going to do it that day. He wanted us to get written permission from the birth parents saying they were okay with the name change, and we would have to come back for another hearing in a few weeks with that paperwork before the name change would be granted.

Here’s how court works: the judge gets what the judge wants.

Fortunately my grandson’s father was coming to Vashon for Christmas, so I was able to get him to write his permission note while he was here. The other grandmother spoke with my grandson’s mother, and a note was obtained from her, as well. It was all looking good. I got up that morning expecting to go back to court.

Plot twist.

My grandson is a type 1 diabetic. On the morning of the second hearing to legally change his name, his blood sugar numbers were high, and a quick test showed he was shedding ketones. So he and I were off to the ER at Children’s Hospital to determine if he was going into diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA.

If left untreated DKA can kill you. You can look it up.

We spent six hours at the ER getting my grandson back on keel, and most of that time was spent waiting. Blood work was done which showed he had not gone into DKA. Yay.

Meanwhile, back at the courthouse, the other grandmother entered the parents’ permission notes into the case file, and the hearing was postponed until two days later.

Two days later a different judge, a woman this time, looked over all the paper work and granted my grandson his name change. I was surprised by what an emotional moment it was. I felt pure joy. So much so that my grandson thought I was being kind of lame.

Some places try to obstruct transgender people by refusing to allow name changes. I feel blessed to live in Pugetopolis, where the liberals roam. I’m glad we got the name change now, because I don’t know how the legal climate is going to change for LGBTQ people in the next four years.

I did not expect to have a type 1 diabetic grandchild. I did not expect my diabetic grandchild to be transgender. These are things I cannot change.

Sometimes it seems that life is all about making peace with what we can and cannot change, not to mention wrapping our heads around the changes we were not expecting. These are not original thoughts with me, but I’ve been pondering them a lot lately.