Category: Uncategorized

What kind of a person would I be to leave you now?

My old friend, Arman, came over this morning and brought some fresh lentil dal. It was still warm. It’s loaded with chunks of fresh ginger and jalapen̈o, which makes it pretty fiery. It’s really delicious. I wish I had some fresh veggies, but all I’ve got is some lettuce. That will have to do.

I’ve been down now for 11 days with a hip flexor injury. Arman has been very present for this while he is having some terrible health issues of his own. I have determined off and on for the last, more than 20 years, to kick him to the curb, and I have occasionally. Once I did for more than five years. But then he always came back into my life but at different levels. In the beginning, as a lover. Now like an old friend.

When I had cancer back in 2004/2005, he was there for me the entire time, but then as a lover. He was there while I lost my hair, threw up and peed and pooped with little control… He was there through weekly chemo treatments, with a bloody wound, that went from my netherlands all the way up to my boobs and a sore and irritated port in my chest.

He would sit with me at home and take naps with me for hours, and take me for rides for entertainment, since I couldn’t even walk. He took me sometimes to a nude beach on the Columbia to bask in the sun to dry out my wounds. Once I could finally keep liquids down, we’d stop at a Mcminamin’s and I would drink coffee with cream and a shot of brandy.

He never once said a negative word about my bruised, punctured and battered body. He never complained once about me losing my waist length golden hair. He celebrated with me when my hair began to come in, rubbing it gently with the palms of his hands.

I had only known him for 6 months when I was diagnosed with a killer cancer. I knew I was going to be extremely sick and that I might not even make it. I told him that he didn’t need to stick around for this. He just answered gently in his melodic Indian accent, “What kind of a person would I be to leave you now?” And so he stayed and loved me through it all.

For 24 years, he has never stopped calling me, even when I would be so angry with him that I would beg him to stop. No one in this world has made me more angry and more frustrated than Arman. Part of it has been the incompatibility of our two cultures. Other issues such as personal style, educational and economic levels, his culture’s attitude towards women, all presented huge obstacles to our relationship. But he never gave up. He is still a part of my life, as frustrated as I still get with him.

So now it’s my turn. At 72, he has developed serious health issues. This once healthy and robust man seems to be falling apart. As a restaurant owner, he never once missed a day of work in 27 years. He was a long distance bike enthusiast. He was a runner. But now disease is racking his body. From day-to-day, it’s one thing after another with doctors visits, hospital stays and handfuls of prescription drugs. Yet, he just keeps going. He still makes me delicious indian food. This morning, he brought me the lentil dal. On other days, he might show up with ice cream or other Indian dishes.

He is a Sikh who believes that god is in control of everything, therefore he doesn’t complain. Whatever happens in his life, be it good or bad, he gives god thanks. He has tried fervently to get me to believe in god, and is mildly frustrated with me that I can’t seem to find a reason to believe that there even is a god. Not only does he believe in his religion, he attends temple regularly. As well, he’s a believer in the traditions of his culture. Though he has been in the United States for over 30 years, his language skills are just barely sufficient. He has relied heavily on other people (mostly women) to help him through business dealings and health issues.

That has been my role in his life for decades. There have been times when I’ve been glad to assist and other times when I have resented his reliance on me and other times when I rejected this role and stepped away from him. When legal issues came up, I helped him, but I helped him in unveiled great anger. For one egregious violation, I even charged him hourly for my work, claiming I was done with free assistance. I lost all trust and respect for him.

Arman has a lot of street smarts, to the point where he could run a successful business for over twenty years. And yet so stupid in other ways. We were and always had been unequally yoked. I, an educated, career-oriented woman, who never had even a scrape with the law, and he having had, to date, 6 ugly charges against him. All of these charges were warranted because of his volition. The last time in court with him, I was embarrassed, in front of the judge, the lawyers and the district attorney, that I was even associated with him. I told myself then, that I would never again involve myself in any of his legal battles. But, as they say, money talks. It was aggravating to me that, though he was guilty on all counts, that his high powered lawyers helped him to walk away Scott free. I thought that if he could only suffer the consequences of his actions once, that he might change. Arman is not a bad person, just ignorant in some ways.

But maybe there is something real about karma. Now he’s suffering. Really suffering. But not to his mind. God is in charge, and his god knows what he’s doing.

It’s not that I feel responsible or obligated to help him through this difficult time in his life. But I cannot forget all of the years that I’ve known him and his incredible kindness when I was going through my cancer journey. He’s a selfish man. And yet, in some ways, he’s incredibly generous. He’s a stubborn man and set in his ways and yet, has never given up on me. You might accuse me of the many times I acquiesced when I should have walked away. But I didn’t, and here we are now. He’s sick.

And I will say, like he did to me so many years ago, “What kind of a person would I be to leave you now?”

PS: i have changed the name to protect the innocent or shall we say the guilty?. To those who know me and have been with me throughout this journey, will know who i’m talking about. But for those who don’t, know that I am talking about a real person.

Let’s Not Walk Softly

You Tracy and Me

Let’s not walk softly as though on hallowed ground.

Let’s walk boldly and talk of love.

Love, so young, careless, unbound.

Love, so foolish. Yet love that brought forth life.

A tiny seed began to grow secretly, quietly in a dark and lonely room.

This seed became… begun in love, reckless, foolish, and too soon.

A spark of passion warm and light, a seed burst forth,

And out of love came you.

How easy it is for children at play to make another life.

It took no thought, just passion.

Then a spark, barely visible,

Became a fire when you came so sudden.

It was you dear child, a heart, joined to mine… forever.
.

When Giants Came A’Calling

An ominous sky

While sitting here in my chair by the open door, suddenly the scent of rain hit me and I lifted my head to look outside to see that it was pouring. We were expecting a storm with thunder and lightening… the precursor to rain all week long.

I’m so happy, otherwise if we don’t get enough rain in Oregon and Washington we are going to be on fire this summer. Blessed rain. This is the Pacific Northwest and I am not a stranger to rain nor to thunderstorms.

Though I have lived where there was big sky, there’s something about being four stories up where you feel like you could touch the sky. I’m not just four stories up, I am on a knoll on the side of Rocky Butte… an extinct volcano cone.

My view is mostly sky but it’s even broader than that. Stretching up to the sky are giant Douglas fir and deciduous trees of all kinds including the beautiful spring blossoming cherry and plum. It’s been a spectacular spring.

But beyond that, I can see busy Sandy Boulevard and beyond to the airport and beyond that to the Columbia River and even beyond that into Washington. Then the eye travels up into the sky.

Really, I think besides not having to pay utilities, I moved into this small apartment because of the view. The living room wall is mostly glass leading to a Juliet balcony. My view is unobstructed.

Though there is nature all around, which includes the heavily forested Grotto next door and the Rocky Butte Nature Park,  the sounds of traffic and of the airport creates an urban soundgarden.

From my favorite chair at the door, I watch hawks and crows and every kind of small bird… some even land on the railing of my balcony. This panorama makes me wish I had my mom’s old binoculars.

But what holds my attention most is the sky. From my vantage point, I have been watching some of the most spectacular Portland sunsets that I’ve been privileged to witness. I’ve always lived, while in Portland, on the city streets and we’re surrounded by hills. So to the East and to the West we rarely see the sunsets and the sunrises except for the amazing colors reflected up onto the clouds.

That is not to say that we don’t have stunning sunsets because we do but there’s something about being up higher that changes the view. One’s perspective is altered.

So back to Friday’s sky and the storms. Most of you who know me, know that I’m afraid of everything. And nothing more pronounced and intense than of nature.

Quoting Georgia O’Keeffe, I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life… and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I have wanted to do. Because I have felt this way for most of my life, it has been such a comfort to read such a quote from an artist that I so admire.

I have been bold and brave. I survived two illnesses that nearly killed me and yet I have hiked up mountains, swam in the ocean and big rivers, ridden mountain bikes, I’ve traveled alone throughout Mexico, and attended four universities and had an exciting career. And yet fear was my constant companion.

For the first time I think, I felt fear of the sky yesterday night. The black clouds came out of the North, dragging curtains of heavy rain, darkening what had been a sunny day. They came in low towards me roiling and lumbering appearing like angry giants. Out towards the West there was a line of clear sky over the hills where lightning flashed repeatedly.

Those dark entities seemed creature like or perhaps more like wild spirits. But too heavy to be ghost or spirit like. More like giants whose arms and hands could reach down through the clouds to carry one away. I stood my ground, not looking away but marveling at their power as they seemed likely to soon engulf my house.

I was mesmerized and watched the clouds and the pouring rain until night came on, melding Darkness with Darkness, and until all that was left was the flashing light out over the West Hills, too far away to be audible.

Did those creatures carrying their cloaks of grey and the blackest clouds think of me as bold and brave as I stood my ground against them? I believe it’s possible.

What to Do About a Cat

But is she happy?
Fran Ham and Yum Yum

As you would know if you follow my blog, when I moved from our large four-story house, repleat with our dog, Yum Yum and our two cats, Eris and Fran Ham, I brought Fran Ham with me to live in my small apartment.

Fran Ham is a very lovely cat. She’s big, not unusually so, but enough so that her nickname is “Chonky”.  As you can see from the photo, she is a medium-haired tabby. She wears white stockings and a white dicky but the rest of her is a lovely gray and golden and black coat of distinctive patterns.

She is very affectionate and loves to sit on one’s lap and talks incessantly in kind of a high squeaky chatter, and will follow one anywhere never stopping to take a breath. It seems she has much to report.

She’s very insistent about her meal schedule and lets you know, in no uncertain terms, that breakfast, lunch, 3:00 pm high tea, dinner, and before-bedtime snacks are due. She does this by, instead of her high-pitched conversational tone, she begins to wail quite loudly, walking, one might say insistently, between the refrigerator, her bowl, all the while, circling your legs. She is not to be denied.

When she came to us from a sister of a friend, she had been leash trained and box trained and was strictly an indoor cat. But being the people that we are, we did not deny her access to the outdoors through the cat door from the very beginning. She was well-mannered and came and went at will and never wandered far from the yard.

Though Eris, tiny warrior cat, was brought home first from the Humane Society (in an attempt to clear out the mice in the attic, which she promptly did), Fran Ham wanted to be Top Dog. Right away she started slapping Eris around, hiding and stalking her, jumping out of corners and pouncing from tables causing a terrible racket. Such a cat fight you have never heard.

Eris…Tiny warrior cat
Eris… After a mouse

Fran Ham won. To our chagrin Eris acquiesced. She began to walk along the perimeters of the rooms and gave up her favorite sleeping places and even gave up her food before she was finished. But she never stopped being the warrior kitty. She continued to bring in mostly mice and the occasional large rat that stalked our neighbor’s chicken coops.

Eris is tiny with large green eyes, a pink nose, a pink mouth with long sharp dagger like teeth and has never grown larger than a kitten. Why she gave in to Fran Ham is beyond me. Maybe it was the size differential and that was all.

So now the cats no longer cohabitate. From what I’ve seen and from what Hannah says, Eris is a much happier cat now that she doesn’t have to contend with Fran Ham jumping on her and slapping her and taking her food and bogarting her way into Eris’s favorite sleeping places.

But it was sadly certain that in the first month of living with only me, no other members of the family, and no dog, and no access to the outdoors, that Fran Ham was lonely and not the happy contented cat that she was. And perhaps she also missed tormenting Eris.

At times Franny would lie in my arms and look at me with the most forlorn look in her eyes. But there was naught to do since we were in the same boat, having moved away from home and family. I’m sure she saw that same look on my face.

It’s been over 2 months now and we are slowly adjusting. But curiously, when family comes to visit or when anybody comes into the apartment, Fran goes under the bed and refuses to come out. There’s only one exception and that is if Ancel (geandson) comes over on his own and the two of them greet each other with great affection.

I too, Fran Ham, get misty-eyed after a visit with family. But one thing is certain, that I am glad to have you as my companion. We’ll be fine.

What’s That Chemical smell?

The secret

The culprits

I’ve been noticing what I thought was a toxic chemical smell since moving into my new apartment… I thought. That was my first mistake.

I thought it was coming from my refrigerator like “freon” or something. Like a responsible tenant, I put in a work order for the maintenance guys to come up and take a look.

One guy came in and said he could kind of smell something. But it wasn’t the refrigerator, he assured me.

He sent up the main maintenance guy and the head staff person, clipboard in hand. After pulling the refrigerator out from the wall and opening all the cabinets and closets, they also said they couldn’t smell anything but thought that perhaps it was my plethora of jars of herbs and spices.

So they sent up another staff member, head financial officer, who they said has a better sense of smell. She said, “What I’m smelling is something like old fruit, you know when it begins to decompose”. I said, “No possible way, everything I have is fresh”.

She kept looking around, not willing to give up. Finally she opened up one of my vegetable drawers and sure enough, when she moved my bag of lemons, they were rotting, molding and off-gassing.

Well, as you might imagine, I was embarrassed. From what I could see looking into that drawer, they were fine. I swore everything in my refrigerator was fresh. But obviously not. They were busy hiding a secret. How could I have missed this?

There’s still some residual odor but I’ll make sure that it’s just the lemons. Because to me it smelled like a chemical. I even claimed the smell was giving me a headache.

Of course, fruit, when it off-gases and ferments, puts off a chemical smell, like ammonia. It’s definitely a chemical process. Right?

The worst part of this is that I alerted the entire staff of the apartment facility. All but the leasing agent showed up. I can just hear them now, “You know that new tenant? Did you hear what she did?”  I’m probably marked as “that crazy person in #409”.

I’ll laugh about this later but right now it doesn’t seem so funny.

I’m fine with Watching the World Go By

I’m Fine

I’m fine with watching the world go by.

I don’t feel the need to have ideas, projects and goals.

What could possibly be wrong with just sitting and staring out the window,

And enjoying a hot cup of anything for hours on end?

What interest have I in your wars, in your criminal activities, in your hatred and your lies?

What care I for your struggles for wealth and domineering power?

In what interest do I share with you for  generations of ownership of property and land?

I’ve had a pleasant life of accomplishments, work and study, love and family,

With never a desire or intent to hurt a living soul, without hatred for anything.

And now I am content to sit and watch the world go by.

Do your worst because, I will no longer participate. I will no longer try to save you or try to change you.

It’s my time to rest and reflect. And so that is what I will do… like birds of a feather.

My protest in silence.

Sharing the Small Things

I most definitely must resist texting friends and family about mundane daily thoughts and happenings so as not to bore them.

I woke today almost at noon after falling asleep after 4 am. I had a sleepless night, thanks to chocolate. I never worry at this. I know I can sleep eventually. And so I listen to meditations, wisdom talkers and utter foolishness.

I found that sleeping in the early morning hours until late morning are some of my most valued times of deep rest. The dreams are more vivid and profound. I seem to go deeply, deeply asleep and am not easily woke. I wake with a sense of  deep rest, my body relaxed, maybe even a little bit out of body and refreshed.

I wake hungry and look forward to my first cup of coffee of the day.  I’m anxious to check in on social media to see if anyone has something to say about anything. I wonder if anyone is wondering about me,

I wonder if I’ve had a call or a text asking if I’m over the flu, how the unpacking is going and if I’m feeling settled yet, if I’m ready yet to meet for lunch and checking if I’m ready to go back to the pool anytime soon.

My first thought is to text somebody, and to say, ” I couldn’t sleep last night, so I just woke up and it’s already past noon.” I want to tell them that I’m planning on unpacking more dishes today. But perhaps these aren’t the things that people look forward to reading.

Then, why are these the things I want to share? I want to tell somebody that the blue sky is mottled with soft scattered clouds of beige and grey, that I can see the hills beyond the river.

I want to tell somebody that it’s imbolc, and actually there are already the first signs of spring. That I’ve given up insisting that spring comes only on a certain calendar date and not before, in spite of what my eyes tell me.

I want to share with someone that the palm I brought home from Arizona is living, and that a hummingbird came to my door. I want to explain that I’m still not knitting. I want to say that I’m too tired from moving.

And there are thousands of other things I want to share. And so dear reader, you are my someone with whom I can share these thousand and one things.

I hope you don’t mind my sharing of small things, of this, that and the other thing. I hope it brings you closer to the meaning of life. That it is these small things that make up a life.

So, feel free to share with me, dear friend, your small things. I’m waiting to hear them.

In My New Home

My view is such a wide expanse of sky that I can watch as clouds break and pools of sun move across the landscape.

Where I am home in a white box of five hundred and sixty six square feet.

Exactly

Where a lifetime of gathering objects of beauty is reduced to twenty boxes.

Exactly

Where I look for nooks and crannies where I can find comfort in the familiar.

Where I used to gather belongings and those I love, now I discard of necessity.

Where four stories up, I have a view. Birds fly across the sky, from tree to tree.

Where everything else has diminished, the sky is expansive and reminds me,

That I am not diminished.

Now That I’m Old. Where Am I Going?

My loft: packing up

After 13 years of living together with my daughter in a big old house in NE Portland, with my two grandchildren, it’s time for us to part ways. The children are grown and my daughter is seeking her freedom.

If it were plausible and possible, I would stay here for the rest of my life. But now that I’m 77 years old, it’s time for me to have found cheaper digs and fewer stairs.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m full of trepidation about my physical well – being. I survived polio at 5 years old that left me with a weak right arm, the deltoid not having survived the paralysis. I also survived a terrible bout with cancer and 8 months of chemo when I was 56 years old. One does not escape cancer or chemo unscathed.

I’ve had a very eventful and adventurous life. I went full bore into it. Because of this, my body, my soul, my head and my heart are full of memories. I realize now that there are fewer years ahead of me than are behind me and I fully enjoy reminiscing and writing about my life.

I have said this before and I’ll say it again. I’m not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of living. Age is taking its toll on me with crackling joints and weakening muscles, a slower and less elegant gait and increasing girth.

I understand fully our vulnerability. We are assailed on all sides by decline and a world made very scary by other humans, natural disasters and accidents and by other living things and the intervention of technology. But I have lived bravely and brightly.

So because of my age, I admit to some fear about moving on my own into unfamiliar territory and at this age, when I am not in my prime… not even close to it. And we are living in uncertain times. Let’s not get into politics, except to say:

I would be foolish to not wonder if this country will continue to support me with MY Social Security and MY retirement fund, which I have earned and are not a hand out from the government.

What began this story was when a friend asked if I were worried about my daughter going basically on her own without children and without me. I responded with a resounding, NO! and here’s why:

At her age, I had been divorced. Had started going to university. Spent a year in Mexico, including a semester at the University of Queretero and traveled throughout Mexico with the curator of the Museum of Art of the same cty.

Upon returning I had an amazing 3 year affair with a beautiful Cuban. Moved to Tallahassee on a fellowship, traveled cross country on a train. I found shortly after one semester that the deep south was not for me.

So I moved to Santa Monica to attend UCLA on another fellowship. By that time, I had finished 11 years of university at 5 different schools. I moved back to Portland and started a beautiful career at OHSU as their first and only professional archivist, retiring after 16 years.

When I moved back to Portland, I moved my mother in with me. Fell for an Indian Sikh. Had cancer and survived surgery, and 8 months of chemo. My mother and I lived together 8 years when she passed away. She stayed at home with me until the day she passed.

Since moving back to Portland, I had moved 4 times by the time I moved in here with my daughter. And now, here I am, moving again, not totally by choice.

So do I have any worries concerning my daughter?

She is made up of the same stuff as I am and maybe more. It’s her story so without giving any detail, I will just say, she got her massage therapy license while she raised two children alone and finished her BS degree. She’s now Spa Drector where she has worked as lead therapist for 14 years. She supports herself. She’s physically healthy and strong.

Nope, I’m not worried about her at all, any more than any mother would. For sure this is more about me than about her. But when my friend asked, if I was worried about this time of change, it caused me to reflect on life. Actually, I look forward to hearing about her adventures from here on out, about her brave and bright life.

Forced Words. Hurt.

The grating dissonance of a poem that is supposed to rhyme,

But does not.

Forced words. Hurt.

A flow of words appearing in prose, don’t.

Yet well placed words, like river rocks,

Just the right distance apart as you leap from one to another,

Safely reaching the other side.

That exhilarating feeling of not having gotten wet.

Those words have fallen naturally into place,

Just as those river rocks, being forced only by nature,

By water and earth’s movements,

Creating kind of a chaotic beauty that human hands could never form.

Pleasing to the eyes and to the ears as the water that gives life, rushes over them.