You Never Know, Does One?

A sunny day at the KVI beach It is the season of Lent in the Christian church, a time of reflection, penitence, and self-denial, one object of these practices being humility. I have mentioned before that my definition of humility is to have a clear, true perception of yourself, which does not mean self-bashing or delusions of grandeur, but rather an objective view of who you are. I think it’s impossible to be objective about yourself when you’re looking from inside your own head, but where else can you stand? It’s worth the effort to try. If you’re lying to yourself about who you are, whether you’re lying about being more than you are or less than you are, you’re lying. Living a lie makes nonsense of your life, so clear your head as well as you can, and see what you can see. One good way to clear your head is to take a walk. Yesterday was sunny, one of those early false spring days, and Marley the dog and I went down to the KVI beach for a walk. The sun was hot on my back and the wind was cold in my face as we went. Marley ecstatically sniffed practically every blade of grass, and left her own mite of communication in a spot which I now think of as Poop Central for dogs on KVI beach. When I walk on the beach I am looking for where I would run in the event of a large earthquake and tsunami. If this makes me neurotic and paranoid, so be it. This paranoia is based on my knowledge that these things have happened here in the past, and could happen again. I took the Vashon 101 class a few years ago in which one of the lecturers took glee in telling us that when the Seattle Fault lets go, we will have about four minutes before the tsunami hits Vashon. So now when I walk on the beach, hobbling along on my arthritic joints and assisted by my walking stick (thank you, Becky), I am calculating: how far could I go in four minutes? Is that a trail up the bluff there in the salal? Would my worn-out knees allow me to get up to safety in a hurry? Should I stand there and kiss the world good-bye and watch the wave come to take me? Then I tell myself that while there will be an earthquake, the likelihood of it happening right this minute is slim. I’ve been walking on these beaches for over 40 years now. So far so good. I go back to limping along, picking up rocks that catch my eye, as well as things people have left behind. Yesterday’s haul: twenty white pebbles for my garden cairn, one pair of plaid sleep pants (size XL), and a pink plastic clothes pin. In 1966 I lived in Alameda (another island) and commuted to San Francisco on the AC Transit. Every day on the way home as we crossed the Bay Bridge, I would worry. What if there was an earthquake? What if the bridge collapsed? Mind you, I’d lived near the San Andreas Fault all my life, and had experienced many quakes, though no really large ones at that time. The large earthquake came later, in February, 1971, in Los Angeles. It gave me respect for earthquakes and what they can do. I moved up here in 1973, thinking that I was getting away from earthquakes. That’s how ignorant I was at the time. But getting back to my story… On October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m., the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. The San Andreas Fault shifted in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and guess what? A section of the Bay Bridge collapsed. One woman died when her car plummeted into the gap. All other vehicles were turned around and sent back to San Francisco. Meanwhile, in Oakland, the double-decker Cyprus freeway, which had been part of my daily commute in 1966, collapsed on itself, and 42 people died. I had never worried about that freeway collapsing, only the Bay Bridge. In retrospect, I’d say my paranoia was at least partially not paranoia, but the worst that happened when the earthquake hit was not something I had foreseen, or worried about. That’s the thing about worry and paranoia – you are preparing to defend yourself from what you imagine, and you might have it all, or partially, wrong. You never know. There was no earthquake while I was at the beach yesterday. The dog and I made it back to the car fine. I took some snapshots of the sunny scene so I could look at them on days like today, when the overcast is high and white and unbroken. Is my head clearer for yesterday’s walk? I find that head clearing needs to be done every day for best results. The dog likes to clear her head, too, so we’ll go out walking again today. I wish you a blessed Lent, if Christianity is your spiritual practice, and a clear head regardless of your spiritual practice.

After a Mammogram

There is a joke that if the genders took turns having babies – if the woman had the first, the man had the second, and the woman had the third, there would never be any fourth babies. I thought about that this morning as I drove home from having a mammogram. If men had to put their secondary sexual characteristics between a couple of flat plates and have them squeezed flat while being told that compression is necessary for a good reading, they’d get busy and invent a better way to take a look at the inner man. As it is, men don’t get compressed in this fashion and women are encouraged to get a mammogram every year or two. I encourage any women inventors and researchers to get busy on inventing a better way to look at the inner woman. Getting machine-mangled while the technician calls me “honey” and “dear” and pushes me this way and that, telling me to turn my feet this way and my arm that way and my chin a third way, is not my idea of a great way to spend the morning, but I went and did it out of a sense of duty, and oh yeah, because I had a lumpectomy a couple of years ago and it’s good to keep an eye on these things. I was told I’d hear from my doctor in ten days or so, and I can wait. When I was younger I would panic at the thought of having cancer, and rightly so – I was too young to die. Now – well, let me tell you a story. I was online one night when an ad from Swedish Hospital popped up encouraging me to take a quiz to see what my greatest health threat might be. I figured I knew already – I’m fat. I’ve been told to lose weight and get my cholesterol down for years. So I took their quiz, and according to Swedish – and they claim they know – my biggest health risk is my age. It’s not the fat, the cholesterol, the angina, the lurking type II diabetes, the lingering effects of injuries, the lung congestion, the fatigue, all the conditions I worry about which I wonder, “Which one is the bullet with my name on it?” No, my greatest threat now is that I’m old. That’s the bullet. We used to say that people died of old age, and no one thought much about it. Now the cause of death is detected and people die of pneumonia or its effects, or myocardial infarction, or renal failure, or complications of cancer or its treatment, or whatever. There’s usually a name for what finally gets you. Saying that we lived it up until we were used up is not a medical label. Too bad. We used to have a sense that a person went when it was their time. Now it’s that one medical condition that could not be cured and took you down like a cheetah leaping on a wheezing gazelle. We’ve lost the big picture. Ah, well. It’s easy to think about such things when coming home from a diagnostic test. I was told I’d hear from my doctor in ten days or so. Until then I live in the limbo of unknowing – didja find anything? Or not? I want to hear what the result has usually been over time: I’m fine, and I can go on my yippy-skippy way and not think about it for another year or two. Unfortunately, the last time I had this test, three years ago, there was something found, and that led to surgery and a recovery that seemed to take a long, long time. It was tedious, friends. A person gets tired of waiting rooms and magazines full of helpful advice on how to be healthy, all left lying around for perusal by people who wouldn’t be there if they were healthy. I think it’s the smiling models in these magazines that annoy me the most. Have you noticed how the people in drug ads are always grinning like they won the lottery? “I have cancer/heart disease/erectile dysfunction/bipolar disorder but I couldn’t be any barking happier because I am using this drug!” Aah, that’s enough out of me for one day. I have ten days to live in ignorance, and I plan to enjoy those ten days. If the results are negative, hallelujah. If they’re not, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Either way I’m going to keep sitting out on the kitchen porch in the morning, drinking my coffee and listening to the birds sing. And that’s the truth. Post Script: I have been called and asked to come in for further images, on the side which had surgery three years ago. So I'll be going in for that this week. Stay tuned, but I'm really hoping that will be the end of it.

Dogs, Dialysis, and Deep Valleys

A dog with dense molecules About 4:30 this morning my husband and I were lying there petting the dog and talking about our random sleep schedules. He is hooked up to his dialysis machine at night, and it makes various beeps and boops, with accompanying blinking lights, so he tends to be awake often during the night. I read in bed, and sometimes am awake until after two, depending on how gripping the narrative is, or how insomniac I am. I hear him waking, fiddling with the dialysis machine, and drifting back to sleep. Sometimes the machine wakes me up, too, and we have these early morning conversations. We were discussing whether our sleep has become so off and on because of our age, our medications, his machine, the dog, or, our best guess, all of these things. Rick and I have one of those foam mattresses that are all the thing these days. I bought it at the discount store a few years ago. It is probably the most comfortable mattress we’ve ever had. No hard pressure points for arthritic limbs and joints, and it practically hugs you and says, “There, there, baby, you get your rest,” when you lie down on it. Ah, we sigh, and snuggle in, and the dog snuggles in next to us. There are downsides to this cuddly mattress. The dog tends to slide in my direction during the night. Some nights I wake up clinging to the edge of the mattress. Garrison Keillor used to do ads for the “Deep Valley” bed, an old mattress with a sag in the middle that rolled the occupants of the bed toward each other. The foam mattress does not have a deep valley, but it does dip where you and the dog lie on it. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a dog abhors leaving you any space in bed. I know the truth of this when I wake up in the wee hours being pushed over the edge by the impressive bulk of our affectionate pit bull. She looked so small the day we met her. After living with an 85-pound Doberman-Pit Bull and a 60-pound Collabrador, Marley looked downright petite. We soon learned that she has what my husband calls “dense molecules.” Marley may not look very big, but she is a chunk of muscle, and when she hops up on the bed and lies down it’s a lot like sharing the space with a sack of wet cement. There is another problem with a soft mattress. After a while your back protests at the lack of support and you can develop muscle cramps and spasms. So sometimes I nap on the floor. A few hours on a flat hard surface and my back is much happier. I think the reason for this is that the human body slept on the ground or the floor, without much padding, for centuries. We’re not designed for soft and comfy. We’re designed for hard and unyielding. When I lie on the floor, I note in passing, the dog does not join me. She stays up on the nice soft couch. I think of the mattress ads I’ve seen, with a body, usually an attractive, height-weight proportional female silhouette, lying on a mattress. The illustration points out how the mattress shapes itself to the contours of the human body, going up at the waist and down at the hip and shoulder, a perfect fit for every physical idiosyncrasy. There is never a dog in these ads.

Listen up: we are not made for beds that shape themselves to us. We are made to sleep on the floor or the ground, with the dogs cuddled up next to us so we supply each other body heat, perhaps next to a fire that stays lit all night if we’re lucky. That’s my theory. I heard when I was young, “Old people don’t need as much sleep.” Well, phooey. I think we need as much sleep, but we don’t get it, at least in one stretch. When my mom was in her later years, she was always dozing off in her chair while watching TV. I understand that now. If you get eight hours of sleep in a row, do not have medical machines keeping you alive, and don’t have a dog pushing you off the bed, you have none of these complaints. Congratulations. I’m happy for you. But I don’t want to hear about it.

For Better, For Worse, For Lunch

Sometime in the last couple of years I saw a young standup comic, a guy, riffing on relationships, which is a pretty reliable comic vein to mine. He said that no one he knew looked at people who had been together for 30 years and thought, “Man, I gotta get me some of that.” That is the perspective of a young person, for whom sexy appearance is all. Yep, when we’re young we all want to have the zip and appeal of a 1958 Porsche Speedster, although in fact most of us could be more aptly compared to a 1958 Nash Metropolitan. By the time you’ve been married for over 30 years you’re more like a 1959 Cadillac – you’re wide, you have tail fins, your mileage is pretty high and your miles per gallon are pretty low, and the repairs and maintenance are murder. You know what else you are after thirty years? A really comfortable ride. Rick and I have been married for going on thirty-four years now, and I have to say I’m pretty happy I’ve got me some of that. It’s after thirty years, when attrition has set in to your physical being and you have to do what my spiritual director calls the “spiritual heavy lifting of later life,” that you are glad if you are fortunate enough to have your one true friend by your side. We are currently in that period of adjustment that takes place whenever one of us goes through a major change. In this case, he is now retired and is at home full time. That’s a pretty big change. For most of our married life, he was gone at work. There is an old joke that goes like this: the wife of a retired man says, “I married him for better or for worse, not for lunch.” This joke dates from the days when the traditional roles were more defined and adhered to. The man went to work and the woman stayed home. When he retired he came home and started sticking his nose into what had been her well-oiled and organized life. Resentment ensued. It’s no mystery why retired guys get part-time jobs, or play a lot of golf, or spend a lot of time out in the shop, or are otherwise processed out of the house. Their marriages depend on them getting out from underfoot. I am not criticizing this paradigm. We all make our bargains with life, and live with the consequences. I am glad that Rick and I don’t have that situation. We were friends for years before we became romantically involved, and that bedrock friendship has been a saving grace over the years. It was always there, no matter what happened. The friendship and the smart ass remarks – that’s what we’ve always had. It may not be Paris, but it’s worked for us. So now that he’s home, it turns out we still enjoy each other’s company, and we’re returning to the comedy that was our friendship back at the beginning. For example, when I get out of bed to go down the hall and return to find that the dog has slithered into my warm spot, Rick suggests we should have named her “401K,” because I have to roll her over. Rick and I are blessed in each other, we think. Still, it is weird having him at home all the time, probably more for him than for me. Our friend John once explained to me that this is how it is, especially for men. The job is your identity, it’s what you do and it’s who you are, and your whole life is centered on it. I started laughing as John explained this, and told him that I have never, not once in my life, felt that way about a job. For me a job was a way to pay bills so I could go on singing and writing, and buy some shoes for the kids. I abhorred workplace politics. I wanted to do my job and go home, where my real life is. Now real life is at home for both of us. It’s a change. Last night I called a friend whom I was going to visit today. I asked if her husband would be home, because if he was, I’d bring Rick along so the two of them could meet. I know that Rick and my friend’s husband have some things in common, starting with growing up as military brats. As I waited on the phone while my friend talked to her husband about my bringing Rick to visit, I suddenly had this thought: I feel like I am arranging a play date for my husband. When I told him that, he laughed. I’m going to have to watch that tendency to arrange things for him, though. I know we’ll both be happier if I mind my own business and let him mind his. That’s the kind of thing you realize after the first thirty years together, and if you’re fortunate, you’ll get yourself some of that.

Our Own Personal Fiscal Cliff (with a Segue into Chicken Heart Stew)

This year, on top of the holiday stress, we are looking at my husband’s being laid off from his job. He plans to make the best of the cards he has been dealt by calling himself retired. The man is 67, after all, and on dialysis. People have retired with less justification. Over the years I’ve heard many people talk about how they wished they could live and work on the island. This is the dream – not to have to commute, but to live here in paradise all day, every day, and only leave when absolutely necessary. Rick and I have lived that dream. The only fly in the “live and work on the island” ointment is that most jobs pay lower wages than you’d get on the mainland for the same work, and most jobs do not have benefits or pension plans. You accept those conditions because you’re so gosh darned lucky to have a job on the island, and most island businesses can’t afford benefits and pensions, anyway. Like some others who have lived the dream, we will now have an income from Social Security and nothing else. I keep crunching the numbers and it looks like we’ll be fine, except for not having any money in the budget for food. I’m not sure how we’re going to roll with this. I am thinking lentils, peas, and beans. This is okay. Lots of people become unintentional vegetarians after they become unintentionally retired. We’re okay. We have a home, and good friends and family, and it turns out that all those platitudes about friends, family, and love being the things that really count are true. The one about having your health is true, too, but that ship has sailed for us, so, eh. The non-vegetarian recipe I’ll be making a lot is chicken heart stew. In November of 1977 I did a folk concert tour in the interior of British Columbia. While I was there winter set in. I learned the joy of using an outhouse at -20 Celsius, which in Fahrenheit terms is, “really really cold.” I arrived for my last concert in Prince George, B.C. and took a taxi to the house where I was being put up. When I got there, I found a note from my absent hostess welcoming me, saying she’d be back later and to help myself to some chicken heart stew that was simmering on the wood stove. It was the first time I’d ever heard of chicken heart stew. I was a little worried. There was an “eeyew” factor. I dipped up a bowl and ate it and liked it a lot. When I got home to the island I tried to re-create it, and it became a family staple over the years. Even the kids liked it. It’s a great warm cheap stew for a January night. Here it is: Chicken Heart Stew, a la Casa Tuel Take a package of chicken hearts and rinse the hearts in cold water, then throw them in a pot of water and bring it to a boil. Simmer them on medium for 45 minutes or so, skimming any foamy sludge that forms on the top and throwing it away, unless you’re one of those creative people who has a good use for boiling chicken heart sludge. While the hearts boil, chop up: One green pepper, seeds and membrane removed One onion One large carrot Two stalks of celery Add them to the stew after that first 45 minutes. Let the stew simmer for a further 15 minutes. Drain the vegetables and hearts, reserving the stock. While they’re draining, make gravy.

Here's a picture of my gravy whisk. My mom had one. By the end of her life, the metal on the bottom was worn thin from decades of whisking. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a medium skillet, add 2 tablespoons of flour, and let the flour cook in the butter until it turns light brown, stirring constantly, 3 or 4 minutes of so. Mix in one cup of the stock you reserved, and you can throw in a little white wine if you’d like, to make your gravy. Add the drained hearts and vegetables to the gravy and season to taste. We eat it with a savory blend – Italian seasoning for example. If it’s not wet enough to suit you, or if you need to stretch the recipe to go around to more bowls, add as much of the stock as you wish. You can eat it on its own, or add toast, corn bread, and/or a salad if you like, same as any other stew or soup. So there you go, a good cheap winter meal if you’re not quite committed to that vegetarian diet, which I’m not. Enjoy.

Egg Cups

This image is from the website eHow Mom: How to make egg cups http://www.ehow.com/how_8030726_make-egg-cups.html Breakfast this morning was a piece of toast and a boiled egg, a little pullet pellet of protein. Have I mentioned that I finally realized why people ate boiled eggs in little egg cups, scraping the egg out of the shell with a spoon? Never could understand how that method arose. Why not shell the darn egg and eat it? It finally came to me: The eggs were fresh, perhaps laid that morning in the family chicken coop (or “slave quarters” as I once heard a back-to-the-land hippie describe his chicken coop back in the 70s) out back of the house. A fresh egg clings to its shell, not like the warehoused eggs we buy at the supermarket now. When we, through some fluke of merchandising, get a fresh egg and boil it, we curse it as we try to free it from its shell, losing chunks of our breakfast in the effort. An old egg is easier to peel when it’s boiled. The membrane between shell and egg separates easily and we get what we think of as a proper boiled egg, a smooth shining white oval, ready to be salted or buttered or chopped into salad and consumed. A fresh egg – well, you might as well stand it up in a holder, crack off the end, and scoop out the contents with a spoon. And so was born a whole line of dining crockery. That’s the trouble with coming in to the movie late, my friends. You have to figure out the plot backwards. Egg cups.

End of the Year Sweeping Up

Illustration by Rick Tuel It is time to call it a year, and in the spirit of tidying up and finishing the unfinished, here are a few items I never got around to this year: First of all, you commuters, walkers, joggers, students, and bicyclists: wake up and wear something reflective. I am not a commuter, but I am a commuter enabler. I frequently give my son a ride to the ferry in the morning and pick him up in the evening. It is astonishing to me how many people are out on our public thoroughfares in the dark, wearing dark clothing. People suddenly appear in my headlights in or beside the road, which provides me a good cardiovascular workout, but holy carp, kids, it’s scary. To those of you who wear reflective clothes or vests or shoes and carry flashlights or other beacons to show you are there, thank you. You cannot wear too much of this stuff. If you are a bicyclist with a tiny little white light in front and a tiny little red light in back, you need to know that you cannot be seen. You need to slap reflective tape on every surface of your bike as well as your clothing. Please. Be mindful of how hard it is to see you. Don’t take for granted that drivers will see and avoid you. Be mindful of the terrible fragility of your human body. You will not win an argument with a car. It does not matter that you have the right of way or that you or your survivors can sue someone after the fact. Living a healthy life in an unbroken body is more to be desired than a broken or dead body and revenge. Trust me on this. Make yourself visible. Second, I have recently signed on as a volunteer for VIPP. One of VIPP’s pressing needs is for foster homes for dogs awaiting adoption. My husband and I recently took in a foster dog, and experienced the major pitfall of fostering: we fell in love with the dog and now she’s part of our family. As pitfalls go, not so bad, (our pitfall is pit bull, which I’ve been trying to resist saying but have failed) but we’ll have to be a little more hard headed for our next foster. You’ll be hearing more about fostering animals in the months to come, but for now I ask you to consider whether you have room in your home to provide a safe temporary home for a deserving pup. Think about it, and if you think you might be able to do it, look into it by contacting VIPP at dogs@vipp.org. Third, I was listening to God recently – most of you would call this meditating, being quiet and paying attention to what comes – and here is what I heard: preach tolerance. This little nugget of instruction has made me acknowledge to myself that, oh yeah, I do preach, don’t I? And I do preach tolerance. How often have I said here that we’re all in this together? I am ever mindful that the practice of tolerance is counter to my own human nature which is naturally inclined to be judgmental, jealous, and self-serving. I know I’m not alone in my reactive human nature. So you’ll be hearing more about that, too, but for now I leave you with this major contribution from a minor prophet: “…what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8b Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, or whatever it is you are or are not celebrating. I wish you well. Try to be tolerant of people who wish you well, even if they don’t say it the way you’d prefer, okay?