Deja Vu

Thanks to my exceptional high school French teachers, my life has been enriched because of my basic knowledge of French. This knowledge especially comes in handy in my capacity as a medical transcriptionist. The average person might be surprised at how many French words and phrases pop up in medical transcription. Peau d'orange is one. Petit mal is another. And deja vu is another. (There are supposed to be accents in there, but with this blog formatting, I apparently don't have the option, at least I can't find the instructions.)

There is a funny story in our family about deja vu. We were all eating at a Cracker Barrel restaurant a few years ago and Rachel blurted out, "Oh my, I just had deja vu!" To which my mother replied, "The bathroom is that way."

I'm getting that feeling of deja vu, because tomorrow our new real estate agent is coming to the house so we can sign the contract papers. Wasn't it this time last year that we went through this? I can look back and remember our feelings - we had so much confidence and hope. After all, the house is so beautiful, we thought it would sell itself. Then came the problems, leading to discouragement, leading to despair, and we took the house off the market with the sole intention of just surviving the winter and trying again in the spring.

So here we are, almost March. I wouldn't quite call it spring here in Maine with several inches of snow on the ground, but it will come eventually. And it's deja vu.

Of course, there's another French phrase I run across in medical transcription - it's jamais vu. The opposite of deja vu, jamais vu means "never seen." Last year we never saw a person or family who went to the bank for a down payment. Last year we never saw someone in love with the house who could also afford it. Most importantly, last year we never saw Coastline Homes break ground for our new house.

Yes, I've had quite enough of deja vu for awhile. Bring on the jamais vu - and bonne chance to us!

Time Warp?

Does time really warp memory? Now that I'm 51 and counting, I wonder how many of my childhood memories are real and how many are embellished by time.

Memphis, my hometown, had snow yesterday. My sister and her family were so excited, as snow is a rare occurrence in Memphis. Then why do I remember many snows from my childhood? We have home movies of my sister and me having snowball fights and building snow forts. Did Memphis really have more frequent snows when we were growing up, or did Dad take the home movies of them because they were so rare?

My general feeling of snow in my childhood is that it was not frequent, but it was not rare, either. I didn't look on it as a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence; I expected it every once in awhile. My son-in-law, Chris, denigrates the idea that Memphis ever gets snow. I had to pull out pictures to prove it. Yes, we had snow. Plows - no. Snow - yes.

So I decided to do some Internet research. I can research a medical term with quick success, but trying to track down the snow history of Memphis was quite difficult. Everyone assumes when you ask for weather information that you want the forecast. Even typing in "history" gives me things like "This Day in Weather History," not at all the information I desire.

I did come up with the history of snow in Memphis on Christmas Day, however, from a study at Oak Ridge Laboratories in Tennessee. Here is what they said:

Records that go back to 1889 show that Memphis had a measurable amount of snow on Christmas only once in 107 years. That was in 1913 when 3.5 inches of snow fell on Christmas Day (1.4 inches was on the ground at 7:00 a.m. that day). Trace amounts (only a few flakes - not enough to measure), fell on seven occasions - 1914, 1918, 1926, 1948, 1975, 1980, and 1992.

There has been a few times when there was snow on the ground Christmas morning (from previous storms). The greatest was 1963 when 10 inches covered the city Christmas morning; 1962 had 2 inches on the ground, and there were patches of snow scattered around on Christmas morning in 1966.

Now this research only covers Christmas Day, not whole winters, which, of course, would have had more snow than this. However, the dates are significant. The 1960s. I consider this the decade of my childhood, basically when I was old enough to create memories, but before I was inducted into the semi-adult world of high school. So, yes, those home movies were not some technological manipulation of my Dad and his film splicer. Those were real snows and I was really enjoying them. My memory is vindicated.

And the walk home from school was long, too. So there.

As for my husband Ed, I'm not sure about his memory. When we shared our first Christmas together, we pulled out the stockings of our childhoods. The size of my stocking was generous, with a wide opening and wide foot, enough room to stuff whatever Santa had in mind. Ed's stocking was limp, skinny, with a hole at the top in which I could barely stick my small fist.

At the very beginning, Ed let me know what "Santa" should put in his stocking. Fruit and nuts. Besides the fact that such a Christmas offering would make me gag unless there was plentiful candy and other goodies accompanying it, I couldn't understand how Santa had given little Eddie his fruit and nut delicacies when he had to get them through that tiny opening in his stocking. I did not see how it was physically possible.

Then I learned more - Santa had not only brought him oranges and apples, but the oranges had always been navel oranges and they were GIANT. Huge, oversized, heavy, juicy navel oranges. Now, it was hard for me to stick a regular little orange in his pitiful stocking - but no way had a huge navel orange ever resided there. Couldn't happen, didn't happen. Physics or whatever science supervises that area of space and size would not have allowed it. I maybe could squeeze a couple of small apples and one small orange into it and that would be it. His stocking would then take on the appearance of an engorged snake who had just eaten several frogs which one could see as bulging lumps in his body.

To this day, Ed swears he got those giant navel oranges in his stocking every Christmas when he was growing up. He can't explain how he himself can't fit even one big orange in there today.

Next time you hear about the "magic of Christmas," don't scoff. If there can be snow in Memphis and giant oranges in Ed's skinny little stocking - anything can happen!

The Knowing

As I've mentioned before, I love the Serenity Prayer - to change the things you can, let go of the things you can't change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

That last part is frustrating. The knowing. As you know, I've had an undependable cable Internet connection for a month now. It would go in and out with no pattern and no predictability. Well, of course, I assumed it must be something I had done. I unplugged everything and plugged it back in. I made sure connections were tight and secure. I unplugged the wireless router and tried different cords. I had my son-in-law walk me through Mac network configurations. I called Matt constantly, begging for help.

Oh, I had already made an appointment with the cable provider, Adelphia, but that was a week away and I wanted it fixed NOW.

I couldn't even estimate how much time I spent trying to figure out things to experiment with. I unplugged the whole system and tried to move it to the exercise room and plug it in up there. I tried everything. Still, the Internet would come and go. Once the connection came back on immediately when I did some re-plugging, and I thought, All right! I fixed it! Then, of course, in a few minutes it was out again, so it was just coincidence.

I even went to Radio Shack and bought another modem, thinking maybe that would do it. Alas, Adelphia somehow knew I was trying to hook up an "unauthorized" modem, according to the message I got on the screen. I returned the modem.

Adelphia finally came yesterday. I was disheartened to see that I had my Internet connection when he got here. I was so afraid he would say, "Well, everything appears to be working; I'm leaving." But he checked the system out and found out that the cable had come loose from the pole outside. He spent about an hour here and fixed everything. Yay - I have reliable Internet again!

The frustrating part of it all was that I did not know if I had the power to change the situation or not. In the end, there was nothing I could have done, other than climb up the pole myself.
I spent a lot of time for nothing, all because I didn't know.

Some things we just know we can't change. I can't change Ed's aggravatingly slow energy level, I can't be assured the house will sell this spring, I can't go back and rewind my life and live it better, I can't be taller. No use worrying and fretting over that stuff. Some things we know good and well we can change, but for obscure reasons we haven't attempted the change. Other things are cloudy - do we have the power to change something or not? Might as well try.

I think that's one of the hardest parts of the Serenity Prayer. Knowing whether or not the energy and time you invest in an action can really effect change or not. So much of life, it seems to me, is operating blindly. Some of our greatest heroes in the past have lived and died without realizing the difference they made, whether their efforts were worth it, whether their lives made any difference. Years later, we realize they did make a difference. Even without that assurance, they did what they felt they had to do, whether it was compose music or lead a movement.

I guess that's just life. We have no guarantees, and sometimes we just don't know exactly what we have the capability of changing unless we try. Sometimes we are disappointed, and sometimes we are flat out astonished at the results.

Connections

Ed and I have been reading What the Bleep Do We Know? - and it's taking us a long time to get through it because it is so deep - and intriguing, as it ties in quantum physics with theology and philosophy and biology - a fascinating read.

One of the chapters in the book discusses one incredible organ - the brain. Here are some random facts:

• The brain is at least 1,000 times faster than the fastest supercomputer in the world.
• The brain contains as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way - about 100 billion.
• Number of synapses in cerebral cortex = 60 trillion.
• A sand-grain-sized piece of a brain contains 100,000 neurons and a billion synapses.
• The brain is always "on" - it never turns off or even rests throughout our entire life.
• The brain continually rewires itself throughout life.

It was the last statement that gave me pause. Here is their explanation:

A fundamental rule of neuroscience is that nerve cells that fire together, wire together. If you do something once, a loose connection of neurons will form a network in response, but if you don't repeat the behavior, it will not "carve a track" in the brain. When something is practiced over and over again, those nerve cells develop a stronger and stronger connection, and it gets easier and easier to fire that network.

If you keep hitting the repeat button in the neuronets, those habits become increasingly hardwired in the brain and are difficult to change. As a connection is used over and over, it gets stronger, better established, like forging a path through tall grass by walking it again and again. This can be advantageous - it's called learning - but it also can make it difficult to change an unwanted behavior pattern.

Luckily, there's a flip side: Nerve cells that don't fire together, no longer wire together. They lose their long-term relationship.

I found that quite interesting. It does explain a lot, doesn't it? It explains how habits are hard to break, but it also gives hope that once a habit is repeatedly overwritten, it will eventually lose its power. This is called "rewiring the brain."

I've been thinking about connections recently because my Internet connection - my connection to the world, basically - has been in and out, in and out, no pattern, no consistency, and this results in a highly frustrating situation. I may have the connection for 5 minutes or 5 hours, never knowing when I start typing if I will be able to finish the post.

I really miss that connection to the world. And it's more than just paying bills online, shopping online, or checking today's headlines and comics. It's the connection with people, friends and family, that I miss.

I even miss being able to look up a piece of trivia. Ed and I will have myriad discussions on countless subjects, and there will come a place in the conversation (or argument!) where it comes time to prove whether I'm right or he's right - then Google here I come. At other times, we are both trying to remember a name or fact, and neither one of our old brains can come up with it, so we look it up. Those of you who are our age remember having sets of encyclopedias in our houses, which, of course, were out of date the moment they were printed. But it was the only way we had to look up anything back then. Now encyclopedias come on a single disk and they are updated constantly. And this is in addition to all the free information you can get from the Internet itself.

I heard on the news recently that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has not made people less social. (A bleak picture had been painted of lonely, isolated people surfing the Internet instead of having relationships in real life.) Indeed, real life has emerged within the technology. It has in fact given people a wider group of friends from whom we receive advice, to whom we give advice, whom we encourage and support, with whom we cry and laugh and emphathize. The world-wide technological connection has not "depersonalized" us; it has widened our connection.

Well, I'm nearing the end of the post and I see the little lights on my modem are still bright green, and I haven't witnessed the dreaded "lights out" syndrome yet. Praise be! I do so like the connection!

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

I played piano for a few years at the local retirement home. My specialties were songs from the '20s through the '50s, as they are songs that I personally love and that the old folks appreciated too.

One of my favorite songs to play was "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." I thought of that song this morning as I awoke in the wee hours of the morning: "Couldn't sleep, and wouldn't sleep..." as the song goes. So I got up, showered, made a cup of hot tea, and sat down to watch PBS and quilt. The song, as is the case for most of us, kept going through my head. I decided that is a description of my life. Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

I am fascinated by the news. Yet, each news spot bothers and bewilders me more. So many angry people in the world! So much hate and intolerance! It's hard to fathom in my relatively quiet life. I'm bewitched - mesmerized - by all the stories and personalities. Every time I pick up a People magazine, I am bewildered again and again - because I don't recognize half the names of supposedly "famous" people. Ah, the difficulties of growing old and being "out of the loop."

Well, I can say I'm "in the loop" with my new cutting edge iMac. Now if Adelphia cable will just get by my house to fix my Internet connection....

I just don't know when to quit....

Matt and Sarah came by tonight to pick up the old computer and, of course, he had to sit down and check up on how my new iMac was going. It was a surprise to me, but apparently I had several applications open. I thought all I had to do was to click the red button in the corner and that was that. Apparently not. Matt patiently explained to me what the significance of open applications was and how to officially "quit" them, as he closed them one by one. All those programs were open yet not being used, taking memory and whatever else from my computer and not giving back anything in return.

Well, I guess I have the same problem in life. I don't know when to quit, don't know how to quit, and even worse, vacillate on whether I should quit. I'm not talking my job here, although I did harbor thoughts about that earlier this year. I'm talking about projects.

As I've said before, I'm the world's worst creator of UFOs (unfinished objects). I get great ideas and spurts of energy and go at something full force, but I soon put it away to start a new project. I don't "quit" - I just postpone. The project is still there, in my mind, and probably on a to-do list somewhere. UFOs like this can drain one's life force pretty quickly. I can name right now at least 4 projects that I have put away for "later" - and later never comes. Sometimes I just need to teach myself to give up, say, "OK, this is not apparently a priority in my life, nor is it very interesting at the moment. Maybe it's time to just let it go. Give it away. Use the materials for something else. Anything but let it sit in the corner or drawer, with my knowing full well I will never get around to completing it." There's a time for planning, a time for completion, and a time for outright burial. There's a sadness in quitting, but a release as well, I would imagine. I'll have to try it sometime. Works great on the iMac.

Going...going...

Now that I'm getting acclimated to my new iMac, I'm taking some time to reconstruct all my bookmarks for Internet sites. As I looked up my old high school, East High in Memphis, I stopped long enough to peruse the news of my class of 1972. I do believe a fourth of my class has died.

Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but there are certainly a lot of "see obituary" comments on the list of alumni. Ed, who is 8 years older than me, has always been amazed at how many of my classmates have passed away. He says, "Your class has more people dead than my class, and my class went to Vietnam!"

I would expect to see a lot of deaths if I were much older. But this can get depressing. Our class of 1972 is dwindling. We've had murders and suicides and accidents. We've had a lot of cancers. I can't help but think of all those lives cut short, especially my friend Bernie. And here I sit, relatively healthy and happy and so blessed.

For the first time, I scrolled through the 25th reunion pictures, grainy though they were. They weren't captioned, and even though the participants had name tags on, the pictures were never close enough to read them. I recognized for sure about 3 people. Of course, the 25th reunion was in 1997, and since then we've had a few more deaths. I didn't attend that reunion, as the trip from Maine was too much for me to handle the year after we moved up here, financially and job-wise. Maybe I'll make the next one. I'd better at least try, assuming I'm still around.

I do notice, though, that this focus I have on death has accelerated since I turned 50. Until I reviewed the alumnae list today, I had forgotten that there had been so many deaths of people my age. Usually in life, you think, "That's not fair!" when you get the short end of the stick. Yet, you can have the long end of the stick, look around, and still say, "That's not fair!"

"Why me?" doesn't always have to be said with resentment. Sometimes I look at my family, the love that surrounds me, the forgiveness and encouragement that envelop me, and sigh, "Why me?" Then my next thought is to live in the moment, to reach my goals, to hug my spouse and kids and grandkids, to call my mom and sister, and to live the life I've been given, all the while remembering that others were not so fortunate.

Our paths diverged from the moment of graduation, but never so much as when we have divided ourselves into those living here and those living "beyond." God bless the class of 1972.

Technical experiment

Now I'm testing a system whereby I create my post in a journal software program and publish it to the site. If all goes well, this will be posted to my blog. Then I can chalk up another success for the ole gray brain cells! If not, it's back to the drawing board.

Head trip

Now that I am back to semi-normal life with a new iMac computer, I have to pause to ponder some things. Specifically I wonder if there is only so much a 51-year-old brain can absorb without self-destructing.

I know they say that one way to keep a brain young and productive is to keep it active. Learn new ways of doing things (such as brushing your teeth with the toothbrush in your non-dominant hand). Memorize lists. Do crossword puzzles. Read. All these lifestyle changes are supposed to ward off dementia. I always figured that, as a medical transcriptionist, I learn enough new facts every day to fulfill my brain activity obligations.

Now, however, I find myself in an information jungle, and I only hope I am up to the task. In the first place, at work I am learning to transcribe in EAR, Electronic Ambulatory Record, new software our hospital is using for the medical office transcription. It is not well written. In fact, it is very poorly written, and I don't even need Matt's professional opinion on that - It's inept and clumsy and it reeks of inefficiency and bugs. It's my job to learn it, though, so I am. Score one more activity for my brain.

Also in the last couple of months, I have been studying for the Certified Medical Transcripionist exam. Talk about harrowing - I do believe the American Association for Medical Transcription misunderstood my goal and thought I wanted to become a physician. Some of this information is pre-med level. The fact that I won't get a pay raise if I get certified will not deter me, however. I'm determined to learn this stuff one way or another. Score two for the brain.

And now I am maneuvering my way around a Mac computer. That's a whole new world in itself. Fortunately, I have my son and son-in-law to help me, but in the end, it's my half-century-old brain that has to absorb and remember the information. (The first piece of information that was hard to absorb was the fact that I have over 14,000 photos. And Caroline and Charlotte are still under 3 years old? Wow!)

Can I really learn as well at 51 as I did when I was in high school or college? Apparently it's possible. Here's some food for thought from Psychology Today:

Time To Remember: Elderly people are likely to forget anything--from where they left their house keys to where they live.

That doesn't mean they have Alzheimer's disease. Studies by University of Colorado psychologists Matthew Sharps and Eugene Gollin show that, given time, older people can remember as much as college students do (Journal of Gerontology, Vol. 42, pp. 336-344).

"You see deficits in the aging mind, but these differences may not be very important," Sharps says. "How important to everyday life is the ability to do everything fast?"

In the first test, the researchers showed a black-and-white map of a room containing 40 common objects to 28 retired people aged 65 to 87. When later asked to recall where the objects were located on the map, the elderly recalled only a few. However, when they repeated the test in an actual room using the same objects, their recall improved-- to 25 objects or more.

By comparison, college students scored higher on the map test, but did no better than the elderly did in the room exercise.

In another test, elderly and young people viewed pairs of geometric figures presented from different perspectives. The task for both groups was to rotate these images in their minds to see if they were the same. Under time pressure, Sharps says, the elderly performed "horrendously." Without the stopwatch, however, the elderly did just as well as the college students did.

I have learned from this that I should have faith in my old brain to still function at a high level. I also learned to remove the "stopwatch" technique and allow myself more time to process all this new information. Now I need to ask Matt why my blog formatting options on the Mac have suddenly been drastically reduced from what they were on the PC. Hmmm... time for more new information!

Harmony

A few years ago, someone created a thread on one of my MT sites about favorite words. Medical transcriptionists in general love words, love spelling them, love pronouncing them and hearing them, love the history of words, and love how the words are placed together to form ideas.

Some words are just beautiful to my ears. Harmony is one of those words. Of course, here in the North they pronounce it "hahmony" which translates to "hominy" which leads to "grits." But, of course, I digress.

I grew up loving music, and being the daughter of a choir director, harmony was in my blood. Singing a solo is very enjoyable, but there is something fulfilling about blending my voice with another voice in a duet, and trios and quartets more so. Then you get to the full choir. If it's one of those days where everyone's voice is in good shape and no one is confused about what their correct notes are, the effect is magical. The sound soars across the sanctuary like a magnificent wave. The choir can feel the energy. The right song with the right harmony can send chills up the spines of the listeners.

It's a sign of getting older: You don't really appreciate the music of the younger generation.
There is some modern music that I like all right, but on the whole, I miss the harmony, the blend. The great hymns of the church provide that harmony "fix" for me.

I like to say sometimes that I have sung with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It's true - at least it's true when I sing along to their CD, which I can't help but doing. I work on Sundays now, and haven't been to church in ages. I miss singing with a choir. To take various voices of various people of various ages and talent and experience - and to combine them into one harmonious whole - it's a feeling like none other. It's OK to hear a choir, it's OK to hear a CD of a choir - but the real joy is being in a choir (and it helps to have a great director!).

Ed learned in seminary that the more hymns a congregations sings, the better, because it is a proven fact that the singing forces the congregation to breathe together, and those breaths in unison have a way of uniting the group, making them more receptive to the sermon and prayers and everything else that constitutes a church service. Maybe that's another benefit of being in a choir.

Of course, most congregational music is sung "in unison," which means everyone is singing the same melody and there is no harmony. That has its own value, providing a strength and force of every voice pulling together. And there is a place for unison.

But there is also a time for harmony - a time when we are a group not trying to sound as one voice, but as a blend of very different voices, each of us bringing our share.

I wish society as a whole could nurture that feeling of harmony - balance - beauty. When we all work together for a common goal, each lending our little voice (which is always unique, of course) to the other voices, hitting those perfect notes, that perfect blend. When that happens, it's pure heaven.

All is not lost, but....

The good news is: I have my repaired computer back. The bad news is: There is just data and Windows, no programs. The good news is: There is some data that managed to be retrieved. The bad news is: I can't find my Quicken CD to load in order to access my financial data and update it. The good news is: Most of my pictures were retrieved. The bad news is: I can't get an internet connection working, so the computer's value to me right now is just as a storage facility.

So here I am blogging on my work computer once more.

I am a record keeper. I get it from my dad, who kept records of every bill he ever paid, I think. I remember that every once in awhile, just for kicks, he would dig in some files and look up his utility bill from 15 years ago. He wrote dates in his hymnal by each hymn to record when the hymn was used (so he didn't repeat them too often; he was a choir director).

For several years, I kept a diary of sorts. After we moved to Maine, the habit dwindled away, mainly because I found myself writing the same boring schedule ("I worked today."). When Ed was an active pastor in Tennessee, and I didn't have a job except that of pastor's wife, my diaries were full of interesting things. I recorded everything about each church service, the sermon topic, the choir's music, general attendance at each church, etc. I wrote down every time we ate out, every night we went to a high school football game, what book I was reading, how much I exercised, my attempts at making homemade bread, what TV shows or movies we were watching. I wrote diligently about our vacation trips. I recorded car repairs, errands, things the kids were doing. I mentioned our visits to parishioners' homes.

Life was certainly full of things to record back then. The kids were still at home, which made a difference. I wrote letters to Rachel and Matt until they turned 18 years old, then had them bound as my gift to them. So back then, I was still writing down things for posterity.

I mention all this because, of all my Kodak digital pictures that could be salvaged off my computer, there is a month or so missing. August 2004. Ordinarily, if you asked me what I was doing in August 2004, I wouldn't know and wouldn't care. But now that August 2004 pictorial documentation is missing, I'm obsessed with what I did in August 2004.

My family can attest that I have a passion for photography. Rachel says I've taken more pictures of Caroline in one year than I took of Rachel in her whole life. The guy who restored my computer was amazed at the quantity of pictures on there. I guess, then, instead of documenting my life with journals now, I am documenting my life in pictures.

The pictures come in handy, too. I once had an disagreement with Ed over whether our couch had ever been in the front parlor. He said it hadn't, and I knew it had. So I dug through my pictures and triumphantly produced the evidence - there it was in the front parlor, sitting by the bow windows. After the picture proved my point, Ed did vaguely remember how our dog Rusty used to jump on the couch to look out those windows at the cats.

It's just this August 2004 business. My lost month. It's just a few days, yet it is bugging me, because now I know I don't know. Before last night, I didn't know I didn't know, but now I do. (I sound like politician-speak.)

So I've retrieved most of my photos, thank goodness, but I'm still without a working computer, at least one that does me any good, until my new Mac comes.

The good news is: I'm getting a Mac!

Personalizing death

When you get past 50 years old, thoughts of death are much more prevalent - not just of our own mortality, but also those we know and love. I know for my mom and her friends, attending funerals is almost a full-time job these days. When we were members of the Episcopal church, they told us the reason their funeral services were so similar was that death is the great equalizer. Whether king or pauper, each would receive basically the same funeral.

Of course, when it comes to obituaries, that theory does not hold. Your obituary usually is in direct correlation to how famous you were in life. And if you have the misfortune to die the same day a really famous person dies, I guess your death would be quite overshadowed.

I spent yesterday afternoon, still sans computer, watching a seminar on Lincoln, one of my favorite subjects. Specifically, the participants were lecturing on his assassination. I started wondering who else died on April 15, 1865. They are long forgotten, I suppose, and the date lives on primarily as the day Lincoln died.

Up here in Maine, I enjoy reading the obituaries. In Memphis, my hometown, the city is too large to have detailed obituaries (unless you're famous, of course), so the facts are sparse and the life (many times the remarkable life) is reduced to some dates, a place of employment, principal survivors, and funeral arrangements. When my grandfather died in Memphis, I can remember going with my sister to the newspaper, asking for a longer obituary for him, hopefully with a photo - something to intimate his unique life journey. They acquiesced, and ended up printing a great article about Paw-Paw's days as a radio pioneer and his other accomplishments.

Here in Ellsworth, a town of about 5000 in the winter, The Ellsworth American goes whole hog on obits. The local paper knows how to publish a life story. These stories were written by loved ones and are in amazing detail. The people mentioned here have lived, for the most part, ordinary lives - but they did live and love and had passions and interests and did make their mark on the world.

An obit from December especially struck me. For one thing, it was her age - 53. It says she died of cancer. I like it when they print the cause of death in this case. I am annoyed when a relatively young person dies and the obit says, "died unexpectedly..." Of what? I guess it's none of my business, but it leaves a hole in the story. For each obit is a story.

The 53-year-old, though, died of cancer. Here are some of the things said about her:

Janice was a vibrant and beautiful woman who lived her life with audacious courage and no small amount of wit and wisdom. Loved by many, Janice explored many areas. She could play clarinet, banjo, bongo drums and loved to dance. She loved music from doo-wop to classical. Janice also abbled in poetry and short stories. She did many kind of handiwork, including basketry. Janice was an accomplished decorator and created beautiful flower arrangements...

What a remarkable and talented person! I wish I had known her.

The center of her life was her soul-mate husband, Bucky, her children, and her extended family. The sanctuary for the family was her very unique and lovely home. There was always something wonderful cooking and several projects underway at Janice's house. Friends were welcomed and they came frequently, and never left emptyhanded. Generosity was a value that Janice lived by. She listened, offered advice, and provided any support available to her for a friend in need including money, transportation, lodging, clothes, jewelry, food, hugs, tears and laughter. Janice loved people and was geninely interested in the people she met. She was guileless and trusting and offered assistance whenever she saw an opening.

I read that and think of the hole there must be in the lives of those who had loved her.

She attended many births both in the family and with friends. New life was as high a priority for her as living life to the fullest. Janice held life as a whirlwind adventure and she never wasted a moment. She looked and leaped for all that caught her attention.

An amazing woman, wouldn't you say? It goes on to say that in the last two years, the only regret voiced through her surgeries and cancer treatments was the fact that she wouldn't be able to give her children and grandchildren the beautiful Christmas she wanted them to have. So the obit states at the end that in lieu of flowers, those wishing to can make a contribution to a fund to provide her children and grandchildren with a beautiful Christmas, Janice's last wish.

After I initially read that obit, I cut it out of the paper. Every time I read it, I shed a few tears. Without this full, personal obituary, I never would have known the name of Janice Louise Hastings Maddocks, for it, like other "ordinary" people, would have been relegated to a small paragraph which would not have done justice to her "extraordinary" life.

So in a sense, the local Ellsworth paper DOES adhere to the theory that death is the great equalizer. Those who are NOT famous or infamous are given the same treatment (in this case, a whole column from top to bottom of the page, with photo) as others. I like that.

Clutter revisited

I am still not the owner of a working computer, but am borrowing one in order to post.

By accident (serendipity!) today I came across an article online called "Clutter-Clearing and Your Authentic Self" by Stephanie Roberts. With such an intriguing title, it had to be interesting. Clutter is one of my visible weaknesses. (As an aside, I want to quote another article, specifically about cluttered desks: "Northeasterners are more organized than their Western, Central and Southern colleagues." I guess my desk et. al. was never told we had moved from Tennessee to Maine.)

The article by Roberts focuses on feng shui, which I know little about, but this part speaks to me so clearly that I must quote it:

Have you ever felt so discouraged, your life so out-of-control, the universe so unresponsive to your needs and desires, that you couldn't help it: you just had to clean up? By paying attention to these impulses we recognize the deep connection between our personal environment and our innermost selves. It's as though by shifting the arrangement of our belongings we hope to rearrange the molecules of our emotional lives as well.

Feng shui teaches us that our spaces both reflect and affect our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. When our homes become cluttered and disordered, other aspects of our lives tend to feel gridlocked as well. It's a chicken-and-egg kind of situation. Not only does a cluttered home reflect a distracted and cluttered mind, it also makes it hard to focus and think clearly. It gets easier and easier to stop making the item-by-item decisions that could put you back in control of the mess
and help you to feel more in control of your life.

Eventually, we give up. The task seems overwhelming, and the clutter is so pervasive that we can't figure out where to begin. We slog through our days thinking "someday when I have the time I've got to clean this up." Clutter clearing becomes an abstract goal that awaits a mythical future time when our calendars will be free of obligations, we will awaken one weekend morning well-rested and energized, and mysteriously through some unseen grace we will have acquired the focused clarity and enthusiasm that will finally inspire us to dive in and get it done. We wait for the moment to be right before we begin, so beginning never happens.

We're approaching the clutter challenge backwards when we think this way. Regaining a sense of clarity and order is more easily achieved by putting our space in order than by trying to order and control our thoughts in a disorganized space.

Clutter saps your energy and erodes your spirit. Clutter makes it difficult to get things done, enjoy peace and quiet, or spend time the way you really want to. It adds to your stress, slows you down and drains your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength. Clutter is disempowering.

The words saps and drains are only too well known to our generation. Does the expression "It sucks the life out of you" have meaning in your life, too? Energy is as precious a gift as time to us. For what is time without the energy to make use of it?

We have an effect on our environment, and it has its effect on us. I can read the statistics that state those who have a messy desk are more likely to make big money, and the messier the desk, the greater the genius. I am not a genius, however, and so far I don't see that a messy environment has afforded me any benefits.

My rationale is that I have too many interests, the accoutrements of which account for a majority of my clutter. My hobbies of piano and harp force me to acquire large piles of music.
My hobbies of quilting and sewing and cross-stitch similarly require accumulations of books, fabric, and other accessories. I receive several magazine subscriptions which I wish to save for other family members to read, so they have to sit somewhere. The newspaper, coupons to clip, bills to pay, papers to file - all pile up. And at my age, if I file it somewhere or "hide" it, I will definitely forget about its existence. "Things to do are things in view." That's my personal motto.

On top of all that, I am studying for the Certified Medical Transcriptionist exam, so I have that material sitting in a few handy places.

Oh, yes, I have rationales, but I have to cut through them because "it just ain't workin' for me."

The Roberts article goes on to talk about clutter in this way:

Opening the dictionary we see that "clutter" derives from the Old English word "clott", which means: "to cause to become blocked or obscured." Like a blood clot blocking circulation in our veins, clutter prevents energy from circulating through our homes and our lives.

That's pretty clear, and as a medical analogy, exceptionally understandable to me.

Well, it's one thing to work on while my computer is gone....

Prevention

"It's better to be safe than sorry." "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." How many times I have heard those expressions! Well, this week I was privileged to experience their wisdom for myself.

Part of the journey to simplicity, I have learned, is to de-stress your life as much as possible. Part of that involves prevention.

Prevention in itself can be stressful. It takes time and energy and probably money (doesn't everything important?). But the minor stress you experience in your act at prevention does not compare to the major stress you experience when the worst comes to the surface.

In my case, "worst" means a crashed computer.

Oh, there's a tiny glimmer of hope. (I haven't heard back yet from Jasper, the computer guru.) But I'm a realist at heart. The prognosis is not good for retrieving any kind of data from my computer.

I was complacent because I had Raid, the extra hard drive which was supposed to mirror the regular hard drive. But alas, nothing is ever guaranteed, and Raid failed along with its mirror image, and the first thought that went through my mind when I saw the dreaded screen which had the word FAILED in it a few times, was, "Oh no! I haven't backed up my pictures to CD since the middle of 2004!"

I have learned a valuable lesson. If I take a few minutes to back up data, I'll probably reap the benefits for less stress in the future. And that sounds like simplicity to me.

Young and Old

Baby Charlotte had a stressful first Christmas. She tested positive for RSV and spent Christmas night and today in the hospital. As a medical transcriptionist by trade, I am always ready to research information on anything medical, so I did some searches on the Internet about RSV. Doctors like to monitor RSV in infants because it can so often turn into pneumonia, which, of course, can be fatal at such a young age.

Charlotte only has one risk factor - that of her age (6 weeks). At a birth weight of 10-1/2 pounds, she definitely was not premature, nor did she have any other risk factors on the list. Only her neonate status.

I found it interesting that the very young are at risk for RSV - and the very old.

People my age are called the Sandwich Generation. Many of us are caring for children still at home and at the same time, having to care for aging parents. Both groups rely on us to be there, demanding our attention, energy, concern, money, and love.

Today I had to work, although it was understandably very hard to focus, as Charlott'e condition was very much on my mind. I transcribed a report of a 91-year-old woman. They admitted her to the hospital with the symptoms of pneumonia, to monitor her and try to catch the disease with antibiotics. As I listened to her diagnoses and plans for treatment, I was thinking about this old lady and young Charlotte, both having to be hospitalized for a respiratory illness because their health risk factors make them vulnerable.

Viruses that might visit the healthy adult population as a minor inconvenience suddenly become extremely dangerous when they fall into the very young and very old. Both the very young, and frequently the very old, are also totally dependent on others for their care, what the medical community calls their "activities of daily living" (bathing, dressing, toileting, etc.) So many of Hurricane Katrina's victims were poor, but the very old and very young - those who were dependent on others for their very lives - shouldered the most burden.

I once for fun rewrote all the Christmas carols from the viewpoint of an old man. The most provocative one, I think, was The Little Drummer Boy. In my version, the old man is looking at the Baby Jesus and remarks, "He has no teeth like me; he has no hair like me." Babies and old folks might have more in common than we realize!

It's the cycle of life. What goes around comes around. The alpha and omega. We are born dependent and we so often die dependent. And I guess it's just as frustrating for the baby as for the old person. It is hard to be so vulnerable, our very lives dependent on others' responsible (or irresponsible) natures. At these two extreme stages of life, some are blessed to have that support in place. Others, unfortunately, are not.

Ed, when he was a pastor, once visited the beside of a dying woman. He told me she was ready to go, and he knew that because she was in the fetal position. A fetal position - ready to leave the world she knew and be born again into another. From womb, back to womb.

I have heard it said that every society will be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. I think as individuals and as a society we need to be reminded every so often who fits in the "risk category" for that label and act accordingly.

Charlotte came home from the hospital this evening. I don't know what will happen to the 91-year-old lady. But she is in my heart as well.

Under the microscope

I had another opportunity to fool around with Photoshop, the editing software, this week. I was uploading another photo of myself to an MT site, and all of a sudden, my curiosity was piqued and I performed the greatest of fear feats, more horrible than King Kong, more scary than Fear Factor. I decided to use the microscope tool and zone in on my face.

Awash with the feeling that I definitely should not be doing it, I zoomed in on a pink spot I considered a defect. Then I zoomed a little more. Anyone with photo editing experience can deduce what I saw next. I saw no defect. I saw no skin, no face, no follicles, no cells. All I saw were pixels. Various color pixels. Unrecognizable pixels. Meaningless pixels.

Where was the defect? I even got geographically lost on my face. I couldn't even remember exactly where I was in the picture. My cheek? My chin? My forehead? Good grief!

I reversed the microscope and zoomed back out, then out some more. Ah, there I was! It was my face! With the defect! Clear as day!

I repeated the steps, zooming in, zooming out. The difference was amazing. The entire picture was made up of pixels (thousands? millions?) which, standing alone, had no identity and no meaning. But together, they made up my face.

It seemed kind of backwards, really. Usually the closer in you get to something, the larger the defect looms. Instead, on closer microscopic-like inspection, defect had virtually disappeared.

One of Ed's sermon involved a cross-stitch picture I had made (and never had framed). He showed the congregation the back of the picture. It was a mess of tangled threads and colors that twisted and criss-crossed with pieces of thread hanging off where they were cut. It was basically unrecognizable as a picture. He would say, "That's what our lives look like to us."
Then he turned the picture over and showed the congregation the front - a perfect, well-stitched picture. Then he would say, "And that's what our lives look like to God."

I am always brought to a new level in thinking when something like this happens. When you look at yourself (and humanity) through God's eyes, you see the recognizable picture. And somehow, the defects recede and you focus on the beauty of the picture. It's my wish for all of us this year.

Merry Christmas!

Light a candle

Every once in awhile in my reading I will come across an interesting tidbit that I feel led to share with others. In the latest issue of Oxygen, there is an article called "Your Key to Success in Life." One of those keys, the article maintains, is resiliency - the ability to bounce back after life knocks you down. By the time you are my age, you've had your share of those situations. In a perfect world, age brings wisdom, but not always, so I am always anxious to hear others' experiences about their ability to transcend failure and disappointment.

The woman quoted in this article is Dr. Carol Orsborn, speaker and author. Here's her take on not letting negative emotions defeat you: "It's important to feel your emotions, but sometimes when you're in a crisis situation you have to be able to set them aside momentarily," she says.

Admit to yourself how big the emotional wound is and buy a candle that matches how upset you are. Some upsets are little and require a birthday candle. Other upsets are worth bigger candles, which you can burn for an hour a night. As long as the candle burns, allow yourself to feel your emotions. When the candle burns out, it's time to move on.

I was impressed with this idea. So simple, yet potentially so effective.

When Ed was going to AA and getting sober, he was frequently warned about the "pity pot." "Get off the pity pot," they would say at meetings when a member would just have depressing and discouraging things to say and would not come out of a funk. My friend Bernie, before she died when she was in the last stages of hepatitis C, would ask her husband permission for a few minutes to complain, then it was over with and she resumed her usual positive attitude.

I really like the candle idea. It forces us to evaluate exactly how deep the hurt/offense/failure is (we usually tend to overestimate this), and it gives us a tool to allow ourselves to feel hurt and sorry for ourselves, but at the same time, allows us to move on with our life in a positive and productive way. Acknowledgement of the hurt, but not defeat - relinquishing the pity pot to its proper place. I thought that was interesting enough to share.

I Want That!

There's a TV show on the Home and Garden Television channel called "I Want That!" One of their ads for the show (I'm paraphrasing here) announced that the products featured on that show were things that yesterday you didn't know existed but today you just have to own. That's not the exact wording, but you get the gist. It sounds like a situation where you aren't thinking about cake, don't care about cake particularly, but you see a photo of a cake on the front of a magazine and suddenly you want cake. If you have had cake before, this one promises to be more delicious than anything you've ever tasted. If you have never had cake before, well, then you deserve some cake, now that you see it and have awakened to what you have been missing. Oh, yes, the marketing teams have done their research.

I've watched the show a couple of times, and it is truly amazing the inventions they are creating these days. I can understand how the marketing executives came up with that catchy title. I can imagine viewers watching the program, saying, "Hey! That looks handy!" "Such a great idea!" "I could really use that!" and finally, of course, "I need that!" No matter that I have lived 51 years very nicely without "that," thank you very much. All of a sudden it is a priority. The "want" list gets smaller as we transfer items over to the "need" list.

Recently I was out with Ed running errands, and I suddenly realized I had left the cell phone at home. Horrors! I was actually going to be away from the house without the cell phone! I could not be contacted! No matter that we had an answering machine at home to take messages - I had a few seconds of panic anyway. Then Ed, the ever practical Ed, turned to me and said, "A few years ago you didn't even have a cell phone. You got along wonderfully without it. You could actually drive locally without having to be available to someone who wanted to talk to you." And then Ed with a gasp, eyes wide, said sarcastically, "And you actually survived!"

I called Mother last night and she said Matt had called her on his cell phone while he was riding in his car (just the passenger; not driving). In the ensuing conversation, she talked about her amazement that someone could call from his car. We talked about the people in her generation (she is 82 years old) and all the technological changes they have experienced in their lifetimes.

"I Want That" certainly understands this. According to the show's web site, they "...showcase innovations for the home that are so new they almost haven't happened yet." And with each new technological advancement, whatever you own has become obsolete. Haven't you heard? They are building bigger, better, more complicated, more intriguing, more powerful things than whatever you have now. Don't you want to be on the cutting edge of invention? Don't you want to be the envy of all your friends? Don't you want to be the first on the block to own one?

I started thinking about how many things our generation owns that we consider necessities - the very things that in previous generations were things that were luxuries - or things that had never even been imagined yet, even in their wildest dreams.

A friend of ours is trying to sell her house. It is a modest one, in downtown Ellsworth. It looks like a good price and is in a good neighborhood. She confessed to me why she thinks it hasn't sold. "It has only one bathroom," she stated sadly. One bathroom! I grew up in a house with 3 other people and we all shared one bathroom and managed fine. Now it's a necessity, even in modest homes, to have at least 1-1/2 bathrooms, preferably 2. This big house of ours has 2-1/2 baths. I imagine there are some families who won't even consider a house with less than 3 bathrooms.

I'm not trying to judge what is necessity and what is luxury for everyone. I wouldn't presume to. But it is helpful sometimes to stop and think just what is considered a necessity in our lives and why. Some inventions in my lifetime, like seat belts and child car seats, are truly for society's welfare. Others, though, seem to be just one more way for me to throw away money in that elusive search for contentment and fulfillment.

Watch out, Seiko

It appears that a lot of folks have the same reaction to the latest round of Seiko watch ads that I have had. Disbelief. It's one of those times you just have to shake your head, because there's nothing that can be said. Nonetheless, I will try to say it anyway.

For the uninitiated, Seiko's latest commercials state a number of "facts." These "facts" rotate depending on the commercial (in print and TV) but they state things like this:

It's not your car. It's not your music. It's not your favorite color. It's not your neighborhood. It's not your perfume. It's your watch that tells the most about who you are.

Now, during the Christmas season, I expect to be inundated with senseless, moronic ads that try to entice the consumer by playing on greed, envy, lust, power - you name it. You have to admit, though, this is a new low.

I've talked a lot about Identity in this blog, and I can guarantee you it isn't revealed by the watch you wear. I'm sure most people know this, but Seiko is apparently trying to convince us otherwise. Or maybe they're pushing the envelope of advertising nonsense for the publicity.

Martin Marty of The Christian Century writes, "The most pathetic in a field rich in pathos is the Seiko ad pronouncing, 'It's not your shoes. It's not your car. It's not your music. It's your watch that tells most about who you are.'" There seem to be many bloggers and others posting on the Internet who are lambasting this senseless ad.

Of course, my background is in the church, and the Bible verse that came immediately to my mind during this ad was, "They will know you...by your love." But I guess that wouldn't sell jewelry.

Ah, the magic....

Not of Christmas ---- of Photoshop!

The family got together recently to take our annual family Christmas picture. This is a major feat, and the difficulty is compounded with every new individual in the photo. It's one more person who needs to have his/her eyes open, pleasant expression, hair in place, and all the other requirements of a decent family Christmas picture.

Now notice the picture to the left. Something is obviously awry.
I have my back to the camera, Ed is apparently creating mischief, Matt is either attacking or saving Sarah. The people on the couch are even worse! Is everyone trying to sabotage the photo I work so hard to create?

No, this is our "stupid" picture. It has been our tradition that after taking about 15-20 photos, for the final photo we are encouraged to assume "stupid" expressions and "stupid" positions for the "stupid" picture. It is the last photo of what is usually a lengthy and grueling photo shoot, and all involved are encouraged to let off some steam at having been made to sit for a long period of time with smiles on their faces.

Even in the "stupid" picture, you can see there is work to be done in the background. There are shadows behind the people standing up, a key rack on the wall and a framed picture that could be erased. Those (and other minor irregularities) were in the official photo, too. Not any more! Thanks to Matt, the geek king, I have learned how to use Photoshop and get rid of pesky things like pimples and flyaway hair (the flyaway part, not the hair, although I can do that, too). I can maneuver buttonholes, beards and bra straps. I can even add teeth! Hoo boy! I am invincible!

Seriously, though, my newly acquired skill did make me stop and think about the validity of this fact: We hear so often that the aging American woman cannot look at the models and actresses in magazines without thinking, "Why can't I look that good?" Well, heck, if I can do this minimal photo manipulation with Photoshop, I have to remember what the professionals can do with their editing software. The women you see in their photos don't even exist - at least not in that perfect form. I read once that those editors routinely enlarge the pupils of the models, creating a more "attractive" look. (And I thought inserting a tooth was the epitome of expertise!)

Just a reminder to all the aging women out there: Next time you see a gorgeous, perfect model in a magazine, say to yourself one word (and it helps if you do it with a moderate smirk) -
PHOTOSHOP.

So this is love?

Honestly, very little surprises me anymore. I was reading a magazine the other day and came upon a full-page ad. On the top of the page was this message:

What extraordinary love looks like.

For the first second of seeing the ad, that phrase was all I had noticed. Extraordinary love? What would you expect to see after that phrase? A photo of Mother Teresa ministering to the dying? A parent donating one of their children's organs? A little kid collecting thousands of stuffed animals for charity? Jimmy Carter building a Habitat for Humanity house? An old woman taking gentle care of a spouse with Alzheimer's? How about a newborn in its mother's arms? Maybe, because it's Christmas, a manger scene?

Well, if you guessed any of the above you guessed wrong. Under that phrase there was a huge color photograph of 3 Cartier rings dripping with diamonds.

Christmas seems to bring out the worst and the best of us all at the same time. We have enough problems at this time of year equating love with material things. Extraordinary love, indeed! Shame on you, Cartier!

Betrayed!!!

What's the closest relationship we have in this life? The one that makes us vulnerable, scared, surprised, aggravated, disappointed, ecstatic, or sad?

Yes, we have such a close relationship with our parents. Definitely our siblings. Also, our kids. And certainly, our spouses/partners.

What happens when we feel the most awful emotion of betrayal? The closer the relationship, the worse it is. Our vulnerability has been breached. Our love has been tested. We are innocent, we tell you, innocent!

Indeed, sometimes we are, and don't deserve betrayal. Yet sometimes our actions have instigated it and deep down we realize that this is true.

But most of the relationships above are limited. We will undoubtedly live part of our lives without one or the other. There is one relationship, though, that we are stuck with. Permanently, at least as long as this fleeting life can be called permanent - kind of an oxymoron, I know. At any rate, I think in your 40s and 50s you have to come to terms with this relationship, step back, observe, and - yes - eventually feel betrayed. The relationship I am talking about is the one between us and our bodies.

Most of us are ambling along in life just great, feeling wonderful, young, carefree - until one day we start realizing that we are on the downhill slope. We are slowly deteriorating. It certainly does not happen overnight. But it happens. And I, for one, don't like it.

Hey, Body, I thought we had a fairly good relationship! We've been through a lot, but come through OK, haven't we? In one piece? Not the worse for wear? We're in this together, Body. We're all we've got, and our goal is to live long and healthy, right? So what's this about cropping up with a thyroid nodule, hmmm? What's this about a bone scan that shows that my spine is weakening year by year? What's this about fat and wrinkles and muscle cramps and fatigue and gravitational droop and poor eyesight and decreased hearing and gray hair? What's that all about?

Betrayal! I shouted. How could you do this to me, after all I've done for you?

Oh yes, I was furious. I had every right to be! Then I stepped back and thought a minute and tried to observe my body's point of view. (I guess I had an "out-of-body experience.") What have I done for my body to turn on me? OK, I realize some of this is just the natural cycle of aging. As in any relationship, both sides grow and change and these things happen. But I am not innocent. Oh, no, after the things I have done (and not done), I can't weep innocently. I know what I have contributed to the breakdown of this relationship. I knew exactly what had been going wrong all those years. The ice cream and Cokes. The on-and-off exercise. The job of sitting all day. The face creams I bought but rarely used. The sunscreen I forgot to put on. The sleep I missed. The stress I did not alleviate.

Maybe it is really I who have betrayed my body. And now it's payback time.

It's a shame that the closest relationship of all has to ensure such betrayal - on both sides. My part in the betrayal especially hurts because, as most of us, I have always been blessed with no diseases and good health. And I have squandered many years of it, taking it for granted.

May we all give ourselves the perfect gift this Christmas season. Peace with our body, and a commitment to be "faithful" to it for as long as we are "together."

Sorry about that, Body. You deserve better.

Giving thanks

Although it is officially Thanksgiving today, I won't have mine until Saturday, when the kids can come home. They and their families are with their respective in-laws. It doesn't really bother me to put Thanksgiving off, because I am so proficient at procrastination that it feels normal to me to be late with something. Besides, it gave me a chance to work a few hours for a little extra money, and gave me time to watch the Macy's parade without keeping an eye on the oven to make sure the pies don't burn.

That said, today is Thanksgiving Day, and I wanted to post a short note. I am thankful that this web site offers me the opportunity to have a blog, for one thing. It's free publishing! Like keeping a journal, it requires me to process my thoughts every once in awhile - to try to make sense out of life; to remind myself of where I'm going and how I'm getting there; to remember that my life, no matter how mundane or anxiety-ridden, is still full of humor and wonder.

And, of course, a blog would not be a true blog without its readers. Chris is totally amused by my blog. He thinks I am having an Internet conversation with...well, mostly my sister. Au contraire, Chris - I have an extensive reader base! (I'm laughing here, but hey, you never know who is reading when anyone in the world can access it!) I know some folks have stumbled onto here by sheer accident, and others are just curious to find out what the old lady said today. Some people read this just to see what Caroline is up to, I would imagine. Some of my readers are family members; some are people I have never had the privilege to meet.

Nonetheless, I am thankful for each person who reads any of this, from those who have glanced at a single post to the others who are following this blog on a regular basis. By reading, you are helping me make sense out of my life, and for that, I am grateful. You are giving me a chance to reminisce, and for that I am grateful. You are giving me an opening to brag about my kids and grandkids, and for that I am grateful.

It's very intriguing to have Internet "relationships." Those of you who frequent various chat rooms and boards understand what I am talking about. My favorite medical transcription site in particular has brought together a diverse group of ladies with only one thing in common - our line of work. Most of us have never met anyone else on the site in person. We live all over the country, and some beyond that, and there is the high probability that we will never meet one another. Yet when one has a birthday, we all cheer, and when one has to tend to a sick father, we all give support, and when one's beloved pet dies, we all mourn. A strange kind of community - strangers, yet friends. We've shared gripes and craft projects and pictures of our children and grandchildren. We've posted about the perils of getting older, the anxiety of finding a new job, the frustration of poor dictators.

So in a way, I'm also thankful for the Internet. It has brought me to you (whoever you may be!) and you to me, in some unfathomable relationship that I will never understand and probably am only beginning to appreciate. Thanks for accompanying me on the journey.

Seeking treasure

While I was staying at the Beckwith house to help with new baby Charlotte, Rachel and I decided to take the baby on an excursion into Bangor, leaving Caroline home with Dad. Chris is one of those interactive dads who use their creative juices to, as he said, "raise the bar" for other babysitters (moms included, unfortunately, says Rachel). Accordingly, he decided they would have a treasure hunt.

He gathered some blank index cards and painstakingly drew very detailed pictures of places in the house, with an arrow to "mark the spot" where the next clue could be found. He started Caroline off at the refrigerator, where the first index card was attached. She examined the picture. As this idea was new to her, Chris initially had to give her leading questions to help her figure out what the treasure hunt exactly was and how it operated, but she learned quickly, going from one clue to the next.

The final index card showed a drawing of her bed, with an arrow pointing to the pillow. She felt all around the pillow, and finally lifted the pillow up and threw it back. There it was - the treasure - a wooden letter "I."

What kind of treasure is that, you might ask? As you wonder about the choice of such a mundane object, you may also consider this: Not only was this wooden treasure "untreasure-like" in its characteristics, it was something she already owned. Caroline owns a wooden puzzle which spells out her name in individual colored letters. The "I" had been missing for quite awhile, and all attempts to locate it had been fruitless. And there it was - right under her pillow - as if by magic!

Chris had the foresight to videotape the whole treasure hunt so Rachel and I could share in Caroline's adventure. He told us he had found the wayward "I" by accident, and instead of just giving it to her outright, he had decided to have some fun in the process. And Caroline truly enjoyed the hunt and the discovery of her precious "treasure."

Some experiences in life are hard to squeeze meaning from, like one of those diaper wipes that loses its moisture after sticking out of the little box too long in the air (I guess you can tell what I've been doing all week). Other experiences just ache to be commented on, and this, obviously is one of those.

We are all searching for life's meaning, the treasure that makes the journey worthwhile, interpreting clues on what to do next and where to go with our resources. Sometimes we need to be reminded that the journey itself is the adventure. And in the end, when we find that the "treasure" is something we already had inside of us the whole time, we are not disappointed, but instead are flat-out amazed! (Is it just coincidence that identity starts with an I?) The only regret is that it takes some of us so long to discover it.

There - I just had to say it. Sermon over!

Surprises

I've had my share of surprises in my life. Some were painful (who knew you couldn't point an activated firestarter gel bottle at your face and squeeze???) and some were great but almost gave me a heart attack (my sister from Memphis flew up for my 50th birthday and just walked into the room unannounced). I was ecstatic when Ed gave me my first Celtic harp a few years ago- what a wonderful surprise! I had an unwelcome surprise this past Sunday when I glanced down at my license plate and realized it was due to have registration renewed in August.

Of course, our major surprise in the recent past was the discovery at her birth that our new grandbaby was a girl!

I think Holiday Inn ran a series of commercials once with the theme, "The best surprise is no surprise." Sometimes that's true. But in general, I really enjoy surprises. When you become an adult, it's easy to lose that exciting feeling that anything could happen at any moment. I guess when you're little, that feeling is always positive because you can't think of anything bad that could happen. As an adult, we know that bad things can and do happen, and if you are a believer in Murphy's Law, bad things will happen. So we tend to lose that sense of the next surprise waiting around the corner.

There are some surprises that leap out at me, and then there are others that make their way slowly to the surface, and all at once I realize, "Hey! Look at that!" For instance, I am always surprised when I read our son Matt's blog. His intellect is totally amazing! Now as I write this, I don't want to sound as if I thought he was less smart or that he couldn't have written about such complex ideas. We always knew he was smart. But since he has reached adulthood, I still marvel at the way his brain works and how much creativity he has. If you are interested in computer programming and web site development or just technological ideas, you should check out his blog.

Matt also had to have dental surgery this week. The problem should have been taken care of when he was a young teenager, but alas, no one suggested it and now the situation was immediately in need of treatment. Matt went into the surgery and through the surgery with an adult attitude of acceptance. All I could think about was Matt as a little boy, having to have a baby tooth pulled (a painful thing, since it had an extremely long root), and wanting to give half the tooth fairy money to his sister. Exactly when was it that he grew up?

One of the running jokes in our family is the definition of swine. It has always been a desire of mine to consider every occasion a teaching experience and to make sure our children are literate. I am not referring to the ability to read, of course, but to a possession of a general knowledge that I feel literate adults should have in our society. This particular joke started in a local restaurant when I was eating with the kids and their spouses. We were discussing the proverb, "Don't throw pearls before swine," and I took it upon myself to ask the them (the kids, not the swine) if they knew what swine were. Well, what the heck did I know?! They didn't grow up on a farm! How many times in their lives would they have had an opportunity to learn what "swine" meant? I was immediately reprimanded for my audacity in asking such a stupid question. Of course they knew what "swine" meant! They were college-educated adults, for goodness' sake! They still bring that up and are still amazed that I was surprised at their knowledge. What do I know? I still call them "kids," as you can see!

I had one of those sneak-up-on-you surprises this week as I stayed with our daughter and son-in-law to help out with our 2-1/2-year-old granddaughter Caroline and the new baby Charlotte. Our daughter, Rachel, has always been more on the stubborn side, with little flexibility and little tolerance for disappointments and changes in plans. She has many virtues, but I never would have put patience at the top of the list! Having said that, this week I have seen Rachel handling with utmost patience and calm her overturned household, undone chores, lack of sleep, C-section recovery, crying baby, whining toddler, and of course, me, her temporary live-in mother. I have seen things that would drive anyone else to a hair-pulling nervous breakdown, and Rachel just smiled and did what needed to be done. I raised a girl and it took me this long to really, I mean really, see the woman she has become.

What a blessing it is when we get to see our "kids" as adults - intelligent, wise, patient, skilled, taking on that which needs to be done with minimal complaining, exhibiting the serenity of acceptance on an adult level. We raised them both, and I like to think we had something to do with the adults they have become.

Yeah, I kind of like surprises!

Home

During my many trips to and from Winterport to see my new grandbaby Charlotte and her family, I like to listen to Christmas music. I started doing that this year late; it was October before I started my Christmas music marathon, and it usually is September when I bring out the CD collection. I can't apologize for my rush - I just happen to love Christmas music. I think more than any other kind of music, it evokes powerful memories in most of us.

As soon as I had listened to "I'll Be Home for Christmas," I got out of the car, came into the house, and turned on the TV just in time to hear an ad for Wal-Mart, one of a series of ads featuring their slogan for this year, "Home for the Holidays." I believe deciding exactly where home is for us can be most confusing these days. If I'm home for Christmas, does that mean I am here in our Victorian house in Maine? Am I still in Maine but maybe at Rachel's house? Matt's apartment? Or, one of the more powerful images, am I in Memphis, Tennesee, on Josephine Street, where I grew up and where my mother still lives? Could I be in Collierville, Tennesses, at my sister's house? What if I'm just somewhere in Tennessee - is that being home for Christmas? And I can't forget Arkansas; it would certainly feel like home if I had my aunt and uncle and cousins together for Christmas (and one of those would have to be gathered in from another state!).

This year, as in other years, our family is sharing our kids with other families for Thanksgiving and Christmas. After all, when your children marry and some have children of their own, all of a sudden your family is enlarged tremendously, and the idea of home becomes fairly complicated. I think it becomes complicated even if you never have children. Once any two people unite in a relationship, there are more definitions of home added to the family dictionary. Can home be more than one place? Can we relinquish the idea of home being just a house or apartment?

Oh, it's easy when you're young. When I was a student at Lambuth College, and someone had asked me if I were going home for Christmas, I would have said, "Yes, indeed!" and I could have told you exactly where that home was located. When I married Ed, all of a sudden we had three homes - his, mine, and ours! My sister got married - and we added another home. We moved from a house in Memphis to parsonages all over Tennessee - each our home for a time, and each surrounded by friends we have left behind. Heck, during one transfer we had a "layover" and considered a Holiday Inn as home for 2 weeks! (I know hurricane victims are considering hotels home in terms of months, not weeks.) Now both our children are married and we have more homes added to the list. I think sometimes if I were truly going to be home for Christmas I would have to have St. Nicholas's magic of being everywhere at once.

And, of course, I could sum this all up in the famous saying, "Home is where the heart is." The older I get, the more I realize that whenever I am with family, I am home. Whenever I am with friends who love me, I am home. Again, the journey to simplicity keeps coming back to relationships, not things.

The problem a lot of folks my age face is the fact that not only are our family members living in other houses, but in today's world they are often living in other states or even other countries. In a way, that has expanded our view of home, but it also has made the actual possibility of everyone getting together more remote. And relatives are getting older, and time moves on, and we sometimes joke at funerals that it's a "reunion." It's sad that a reunion has to wait for a time like that.

We can't entirely dismiss buildings as a valid way to awaken home memories, however. Our memories are interwoven with places and people and things, and each has the power to touch a memory circuit in our brains enough that if we close our eyes, we are there again. Ed had an experience like that years ago when he was preaching. The congregation was singing "Silent Night," and all of a sudden, Ed says, he closed his eyes and the whole scene disappeared and he was back in his childhood church basement in Missouri, a boy of about 8 or 9 years old, singing that exact song. He insists this was not a memory per se; he was actually transported for just a minute to that basement.

So ideas of home cover much more than things and people present. Part of my home is my own childhood church, long burned down. Part of my home is my dad, my grandfather, and my great aunt, Aunt Bessie, and others who have passed away.

I'm glad the word home is broad enough to take all these meanings and give life to them. I'm glad the vivid memories I have of happy times and loved ones can still live in my heart. Sometimes home is indeed a state of mind. Of course, there's nothing like having my mom and sister present with me during the holidays. But I feel their love "across the miles," as the cards say, and I am thankful that love is strong enough to reach beyond distance, even beyond time itself...

"Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams.
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams."

Our Miracle

I remember when Ed preached on miracles. I also remember having a discussion on Bishop Spong's site about them, too. The gist of both discussions was that society too narrowly defines "miracle" as an event so totally out of the "ordinary" that divine intervention (which normally apparently is "out there somewhere" and keeps hands out of ordinary life) is the only way to explain it. Of course, that's not the case. Science has shown us the miracles in a leaf showing its true colors in the fall, a solid table consisting of active and moving subatomic particles, the complexity of the solar system and beyond, and the relatively recent relevations of mapping DNA.

Ed also preached that we think of birth as a miracle, but in reality, the very conception of a child is a miracle, and you would have to come to this conclusion if you study the mechanism of conception and all the obstacles built in to keep it from happening. It's a wonder babies get born at all!

But born they are, and last night we welcomed Charlotte Elise into the world, and now our world has changed again and will never be the same. During the short time we passed her around from person to person last night in the hospital room, we all agreed she seemed to have a calmer temperament than Caroline did at that age. Already she is showing her individuality.

Of course, all that may change, but right now it reminds us that she is indeed her unique self. I started to type "her little unique self," but with her weight at 10-1/2 pounds, I might be excused for omitting that word! General comments, though, were that she still seems little to us, despite her weight.

I think of Charlotte being our second grandchild, and think of Chris's mother, Alice, for whom Charlotte is a wonderful addition to several grandchildren, and I marvel at the miracle that each new baby is just like the first. The happy tears flow, the cycle of life continues.
I am blessed to be a part of it all.

Who will it be?

It's 5 a.m. and I have a vacation day from work. So why am I blogging instead of sleeping? Because my new grandbaby will be born today, and I am too excited to sleep.

Since I don't know Baby's gender yet, I will have to refer my new grandchild as "It" for the purpose of this post. Sorry, Baby, I don't mean to de-personify you. Our language just isn't sufficient for gender-neutral pronouns in this situation! Baby doesn't realize it yet, but today but in a few short hours, it will be leaving its secure world of the womb and be transported into a new world - strange, exciting, harsh, soothing, noisy - and it knows not what to expect. The only thing Baby will know is that all of a sudden it has to cry for its food, cry from discomfort, and be totally dependent on others for care.

This Baby will be lucky. It is being born into a close, loving family. It will be loved and cared for and encouraged. It will be taught numbers, letters, manners, respect, tolerance - and probably a little French along the way. It will be taught that "Daddy says sneaker; Mama says tennis shoe." It will be able easily to recognize Martin Luther King, Yoda, and Abraham Lincoln. These facts we know because this Baby's family has been successful in teaching these things to Caroline.

The mystery (and fun!) is in what we don't know. Because this Baby will certainly not be a carbon-copy of dear Caroline. Oh, no. Whether it is male or female, this Baby will have its own identity, its own interests and hobbies, its own little personality, and its own way of doing things.

I know from our children Matt and Rachel that no two kids are alike, and I am happy that each one of our kids has brought his and her unique identity to enrich our lives - as they have done so completely.

So what's next? Nobody knows! And that's the beauty of it! Welcome to the world, little Baby. Always remember that we love you for yourself, as we love Caroline for herself. The world will change for the better because of your existence, and we can hardly wait to see the kind of child you turn out to be. But the greatest thing about today is that we all will be relieved that you will finally have a NAME! It's been a long wait, and we are overjoyed! Love, Grammy

Working out from the middle

I spent the afternoon basting Rachel's quilt yesterday. I had moved the dining room table and chairs and spread the quilt out on the floor. Then I got down on my hands and knees with my needle, thread, and scissors, and started the arduous task of basting.

A quilt is like a sandwich; in fact, that's what they call it, a quilt sandwich. First I have to lay the backing fabric on the floor and smooth out the wrinkles. On top of that, I spread the batting, trying to keep the backing fabric smooth while smoothing out the batting. Finally, I put the quilt top on all of it and pinned everything together.

Pins are great (and oh so sharp!), but they serve as a temporary fixative. To keep the layers together long enough to get the quilt in a hoop, I must baste it with thread. Every quilter has her own basting preference (including other options besides thread) but I usually thread baste a vertical line down the middle, a horizontal line through the middle, a big "X" from corner to corner, then a grid few inches apart vertically and horizontally. (As a side note, my age came into play again, as I am having more trouble getting the thread into that tiny needle eye.) The key to basting and hand quilting a quilt is starting in the very center and working outward. It's awkward that way, especially on hands and knees all hunched over on the floor, but you have to start in the middle so you can smooth to the outside as you go. If you started from the outside edge, you'd have a big wad by the time you got to the middle.

Since I was sprawled across the floor and crawling here and there for most of the afternoon (and my muscle soreness proves it), I had plenty of time to think. Lately I have been doing some list-making (at which I excel but lack on the carrying-through part) about goals and priorities. I think that having your priorities in place is like basting from the middle. Once you start with good, solid, clear priorities, it's much easier to negotiate the rest of your life. In others words, you get a much better result starting in the middle and working out than starting out working in.

I am reading a great article called "The Power of Clarity" I found on the Internet. After I finish it and think about it, I'll post some reflection. In the meantime, I'll give my pin-stuck fingers a few days to heal, be there when my new grandbaby is born on Monday, and talk about goals and priorities later. After all, I think a new grandbaby just jumped to the top of my personal priority list!

Playing with the angels

I had something extraordinary happen to me at work today. I spent the day doing my job, but my mind was going over superficial aggravations about how the office was being run and who's getting away with what, etc., when I opened up an e-mail from someone who was sending me a sincere apology for her part in a working relationship/friendship rift that had been simmering since June. It was so totally unexpected that I just stopped typing and sat there for a few minutes.

One phrase in the e-mail jumped out at me. "Life is too short." I immediately thought about my friend, Bernie. Today would have been her 52nd birthday. She died at the age of 49 of hepatitis C that she received from a transfusion 20 years earlier during a C-section. She often joked about the fact that she was a longtime non-drinking Baptist and was ironically dying of liver disease.

Her real name was Kathleen Capon White, wife of Francis White, a nurse anesthetist in Memphis. I called her Bernie in high school, because in French class we had to adopt French names and she chose Bernadette. We met in 4th grade, grew up in school together, became Candy Stripers together. I was her matron of honor and she had served at our wedding a few years earlier. Her postpolio syndrome made it impossible for her play the piano, so she took up the dulcimer instead. She sang and played beautifully!

The last time I saw Bernie was at Rachel's wedding. Bernie was in the last stages of her hepatitis, but she insisted on flying up here for the wedding anyway. I didn't know at the time that I would never see her again on this earth. If she had lived, I know she would have been a faithful reader of my blog and I know also she would have had a creative blog of her own. She had much to share the world.

This is the way the world turns upside down. Before Bernie received her hepatitis diagnosis, I could have made an extensive list of people in our lives that I was sure would die before Bernie. Life does not follow logic, however. Now I feel her today over my shoulder, repeating, "Life is too short...for petty annoyances and grievances and complaints. Appreciate what you have."

I suppose I have a form of survivor's guilt. Bernie died before 50; I am 51 now. Bernie never saw her 3 children get married; I have seen both mine on their wedding days. Bernie never lived to enjoy a grandchild; I have my second one coming into the world on Monday. In a way, though, I feel as if she is living through me, and not only through me, but through Francis and her children and her music and her gorgeous cross-stitch pictures, and she is living through all those who have benefited from her life and love.

Happy birthday, Bernie! I miss you so much!

"Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills!"

On a recent trip to Bangor, I saw cars slow down in front of me and I groaned. I had forgotten about the never-ending construction, and after our heavy rains, I just knew the section of unpaved road would be bad. Following the lead of the other cars in front of me, I slowed down and together we winded our lethargic way across the uneven dirt.

I was on my way to meet Rachel and Caroline for toddlers' music class, and I didn't want to be late. I pride myself on my ability to be punctual (especially when Ed is not dragging his slow self with me) and I was mentally calculating how much later this road repair would make me. I was sure that every other driver was thinking the same thing. At that point, we all had something in common - frustrated impatience.

Finally the highway delivered us out of the construction zone, and all the drivers sped up to recover lost time. I pressed the accelerator, then had to release my foot immediately, because there before me was the most gorgeous display of fall foliage covering the mountains and nearby hills; it was splendor in gold! It took my breath away, and I slowed down. We've had a less-than-perfect autumn here in Maine, because the key ingredients to assure a colorful foliage season were lacking, and what the rain didn't destroy, the wind did. The color of the leaves that remained on the trees was on average not very brilliant. But the view on this stretch of highway was miraculously preserved.

I considered how my situation had reflected the busyness of our lives. We find ourselves in a boring waiting game and once the wait is over, we speed through the remaining journey in a mad rush to make up time - in the process, missing the gold. I thought it was so ironic that we drivers were required to crawl through the boring scenery, and just as the view turned spectacular, we were trying to drive so fast that most of us totally missed it. For me, it was when autumn 2005 redeemed itself - and I almost didn't notice.

Rachel is scheduled for her c-section next Monday. She told me that after Caroline was born, she was always looking ahead to the "firsts" - the first time she would roll over, the first time she would crawl, the first time she would walk. She said she really had looked forward to the time when Caroline could talk, and especially when she could say the word Mama. It was only when she began her second pregnancy, knowing it would be her last, that Rachel vowed to appreciate and enjoy each stage of the new baby's life, and not try to hurry through to the next milestone.

Ed says I have the most accidents when I go too fast. I also tend to miss some darn good scenery.