As a girl, my parents were sure to mention that Martin Sheen was a Catholic, and how he created his acting name from Rev. Fulton Sheen.  And the character Jeb Bartlett, played by Sheen, is a devout Catholic.  I’ve always wondered why the creator of this show had this strong thread within the show. Could be simply that it adds a bit of gravitas to the show, so it’s for drama’s sake, but I’m inclined to think that it came from character development with Mr. Sheen. And the audience, getting to look behind the fictitious doors at the White House, wants to see a spiritually centered president.

It’s fun to see how technology has grown since this show. The characters have cell phones with antennas and separate pagers. The computers are large CRT screens, only CJ seems to have a laptop and you don’t see her carrying it around. This TV president nominates a Latino for the Supreme Court, albeit a male, but it is a step.

But what made me pause right now between episodes on a Friday night is my ‘aha!’ moment.  I’ve been keenly aware this past year or so, that women access to health care is shriveling. Use the term “legitimate rape” uttered by elected officials who are lawyers, who know, should know, that rape of any kind is a felony.  I had hoped that this disturbing course of thought in our day to day culture would evaporate after the Presidential election but it did not.

Watching this television show, created in a time when traditional networks crafted beautiful programs and gave them time to take hold, I see our future. I see where we are and why women of all kinds and colors are being attacked again only for our gender, and that is the Republican Party is afraid the next president will be a woman.  It may be they fear, distrust Hilary Clinton.  I don’t know.  But it’s really fun to think about stealing their thunder.

2011 ended and 2012, started with a trip to my favorite poetry workshop in San Miguel de Allende. Took a car, then a plane, then a bus, then another bus and then a taxi much of which I had to do in my get-along Spanish. Nine hours of travel and I’m finally in the old-school style hotel, signing things. My friend Jennifer Clement, who created this wonderful week of poetry, walks in the lobby, “I have wormsalt!”

“Wormsalt, Jennifer?” I have not been in the lobby more than five minutes. She is in black velvet with candlelight hair, pulled softly to the back, with curls. I have not seen her in a years time.

“Yes! Wormsalt for the mescal!”  I took one of the plastic Dixie cups from her hand, touched my finger in what looked like damp sand, licked my finger and knocked back the liquor. My whole body smiled.

“Wow! You tossed that back!”

Nodding: “Well I’ve been traveling about ten hours at this point.” I tried the wormsalt again. . .it reminded me of swimming in the Atlantic and licking my lips when I came out of the water. “How’d you know I was here?” I asked Jennifer.

“Oh, I told them I wanted to know the second you arrived. We’re up on the patio, come get another drink! Then we’ll go to dinner and then fireworks at the Jardin!” Off she went to rejoin the small party and I went to my room. Changed into something more festive with salt and smokey mescal still on my tongue.  One year started and the new one began as I made my way back to the hotel, smiling at strangers, fireworks over head.

Nice, sweet, delicious memory. Woven into this week are moments of absolute confusion, chronic pain and old buttons. Woven into this week are threads like silk that shine and lay soft in my heart. New friends, skulking about the former home to the nuns. . . a midnight cloister walk. . . poems and readings and good food. I went home exhausted. A cluttered brain and somewhat defeated.

I had spent 2o11 ‘working’ on myself. I worked hard at work. I wanted so much to have 2012 be new. But I was stuck. . . and felt entirely alone with my confusion of who I am. Who am I now?

And the year brought me to Boston and my husband got to know our grandson. And then I helped the ‘kids’ pack up and move to a place near Boulder.  I drove with my son from Austin to Boulder and it was sweet. . . he was loving every inch of the thousand mile drive.  A drive, and week or so there, I was done. All done. Done in. It was sad and huge awareness that I don’t have the physical reserves that I had BC.  This came at 52, when I had always thought I’d have that awareness at 62.

The summer I had my sister here, my home, for six weeks. She was lost and needed quiet to figure out what’s best for her. As sisters we squabbled a little but mostly we drank red wine and laughed and poked around thrift stores.  Then after my adventure in moving, my other sister (by marriage) came for five days. She and I rearrange furniture and danced at night with my husband’s band.

This year, I found a choir. I found singing, my first and forever love, and oh god it was hard. Like Mexico hard, confusion and in articulation.  Wanting to belong and scared to death of belonging then to be rejected. . . but I went. I went and showed up. Every Wednesday night, choir then dancing at my favorite bar in Austin, Donn’s Depot.  I would leave choir mentally exhausted. . .just as I had been in my workshops in Mexico.

And then it got better.  This feeling of belonging filled me without the fear.  I could belong somewhere on Wednesday nights and that was great. And the pastor of this church wore clogs and quoted poetry in sermons. I can listen. I could follow.

Before 2012 ended, somewhere around Thanksgiving I realized I was happy in my own skin for the first time in what seems years. I am not the person I was before . . .I could not return to the past but in letting go, fully, I found a me.

In this finding are friends, steadfast and true. Some new, some old dear friends. In the kitchen my husband holding me saying: “I miss your laugh” early in the year and then “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had” later in the year.   A year when I felt like a family again with my son and daughter-in-law and grandson.

And, here I am, mid-way through the first month of 2013, focused on what I am and what fills my life with work and work with life. Cliche, perhaps. I still have a high-maintenance body I deal with every day. I get muddled and stuck. . . but I no longer judge myself for this and won’t hang with those who do.  But the best part is , I have a sense of potential in my life, sense of wonder. And how I have missed this. How I have longed to feel like this.

What else can I say?

Reblogged from Extract(s):

Am I the worst teacher ever?
I will not waste chalk.

If I have the guts to leave the teaching profession and open that muffin store,
I will finish what I sta

What if the substitute is smarter and prettier than I am?
I will not yell “She’s Dead” during roll call.

If only my husband had been a better husband or our marriage counselor 
had been a better marriage counselor or the two of them weren’t so cute together.

Rape is an act of violence and against all laws proscribed by human beings. I was ‘date-raped’ at 23 and for years I thought I did something wrong. I ran in my head a litany of shoulds and coulds. I blamed myself and internally I thought I was ugly and ‘used’.

It happened at a huge house party in a small city in Massachusetts. I did not report it because I took me years to call it rape. When I left the party I told a girlfriend, she said to me: “Isn’t that what you wanted?” For years I had no women friends. I let no one in. I told no one. I spent the next five years in a relationship with a man where everything looked fine on the outside.

When he slapped me around. I ended it. My mother didn’t understand why I could leave someone with a good job and nice care. I got therapy and started going to 12 step meetings. This redeemed my life. Gave me a guide back to myself. Taught me what it is to be loved and how to love. It taught me how to trust.

Every time I hear the word RAPE used on television like it’s nothing I get sick to my stomach. Every time I see the word on FB or social networking as a meme. I get angry. I fear the ignorance spewed on progressive and conservative news outlets. I applaud the doctors willing to take of all of women’s medical needs.

Carrying a fetus to term from an act of violence is not a choice. . . it is morally reprehensible. I know what choice is. I chose to be a mother, single, at 20. And I thank God everyday that I am a Mom.

I am your sister. I am your mother. I am your cousin. I am your wife. I am your friend. I am any one. I am everyone. And I scare people with my resilience.

Note to those who know me. . .you probably don’t know this about me.  I am sorry that you hear this story from this post. But I have grown more weary and more angry these past few weeks. I hope you understand. . .  enough is enough. I can no longer be so silent.

I love Molly. I love her David. And for the past few weeks, I’ve been saying this poem in my mind because there is nothing can do. There is a helplessness we all feel in the presence of horrible disease, the times I want to DO something, the only thing I can do is pray, meditate, hold in my mind that no matter the sequence of events: this too shall pass.

That all who’s lives are touched by the disease that will take whatever it can, it cannot take memories, cannot take love, cannot take true friends, cannot take our spirits. Some of us survive the horrible treatments, even watch our bodies slip and fail only to return. Some of us pass to the next path. We all overcome cancer. WE all overcome and find comfort in unexpected ways.

LET EVENING COME
By Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

First was I heard from a dear friend whom I have not seen in years. She would be in Austin and San Antonio on business this past Thurs and Friday. The only way we could connect was to meet at the Austin airport Friday afternoon. OK. I had her cell number but alas alack it was in my FB messages.

Second was this. Read slowly for I will type fast. I had my six month regular set of appointments at M.D Anderson scheduled for Thursday and Friday mornings. EARLY. My husband I and are accustomed to these schedules and we worked it out so he could work his favorite gig (Donn’s Depot Wednesday night).

The plan was he would drive after the gig, leaving Austin around 1:30 and we’d arrive at our friend’s home around 4:30. He’d sleep in on Thursday morning because he didn’t need to go that day. I’d manage on my own with CT scan and blood work and such. Friday he’d get up early and go to the hospital with me for the EDG. . .which required anesthesia so some one had to sign me out.

That was the plan. So we were driving down RT 71, familiar route, and a mile west of the intersection of RT 21, the Caravan makes that ‘blown tire noise’. . .you know the one. Except the tire was shredded. Charlie called AAA. They were to call back. Oh the stars were beautiful as we where somewhere that looks a lot like nowhere.

We were of mixed emotions. I was gnashing my teeth some as I wanted to get these tests done. After twenty minutes go by I ask him to call again. A different person responds with, “The local people won’t come change a tire at this time of night.”  My husband is a patient man and accepts this answer, they are working on finding another company who will come. AAA will call us back!

A sheriff’s car comes up behind us, asks a few questions, asks us to move the car further off the road and then goes away.

A stranger pulls up just after the Sheriff in a beat up car but I am not judging a man by his car for ours is 13 years old with 206K miles. But it’s 2:45 AM and I am leery of this and grateful I am not alone. He’s helpful in attitude not in deed. Off he goes!

I am working really hard on not being pissy. I am finding the stars wonderful and there is this lovely scent in the air from some plant growing on the side of the road. I am thinking my sister will love the stars in this area when she moves here. I am thinking every pleasant though I can but beneath these thoughts are: “Charlie needs to call them again! I worked out this schedule so it works.” Sitting in the passenger seat, my darling husband comes to the window and I say something snarky and pause, he said something and I said something, he paused. . .to which I said, “You’re supposed to have something funny right now” And he said: “I was trying to think of something intelligent AND funny.”  To which I replied, “Well you’re not good at that!”  Peals of laughter. Release of tension.

“Why don’t we just try to change it?” and he gets out his lug-nut-remover-tool and those nuts ain’t going anywhere. . .so he calls AAA. And as he is talking to them, he looks under the car for the spare, “My spare is gone!” He says to the phone and to himself. . .”It’s not there.” And his face was so dumbfounded. . .you have to understand, he’s always ready for emergencies. . .his car is an extension of himself to some degree. A third time, still looking at where the spare should be, “I HAVE NO SPARE!”.  I start sniffling and coughing.

I have been enjoying the scent and now I am discovering whatever it is, I am allergic. I am coughing and snufffling. He calls our friend at this point, some time after 3:00 AM. I dig in my purse for my asthma inhaler, and any kind of antihistamine. . .took them. Took my Clonopin which I should have earlier. . .the weazing eases up. We are still on the side of the road and it’s coming up to 4:00 AM. I am stupid tired. I am tired and stupid. I am frustrated beyond words.

And then the sheriff’s care comes back around, different guy, asks for Charlie’s license and the Tow Truck arrives! It is 4:15. He says, “He giving you a hard time?” and we say no, just doing his job. . .the car gets attached to the tow truck and we are headed back to Austin. We are going home. In the cab small talk ensues.

This and that. That and this. . .but what it comes around to is he is from Rhode Island! He’s been in Texas seven years. Then I say my family comes from Fall River, MA. . .as does his. The world just shrunk a little. He says, his name is Machado. . .I say, Steven Machado. . .he says, ‘That’s my cousin.’  It’s five in the friggin’ morning, and his cousin and I went to high school together. WHAT! There was other chit-chat about television shows (He’s a Firefly fan!) and then we’re home.

I go in the house, try to reach MD Anderson to leave messages to no avail. I send a message via computer. . .drink warm milk, I got chilled in the wait. Went to bed at slept until ten.

I did get to do part of my tests on Thursday afternoon, which allowed me to get the invasive, important exam done on Friday.

And I didn’t call my friend Jennifer who now understands why!

Reblogged from AMMIBLOG:

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“No, it is not I, it is somebody else who is suffering,
I would not have been able to bear what happened”

Ossuary (a prologue)

Gone long enough
your flesh remains
only on paper arranged and ordered.

I play God and create
memory as art –
but if I could I’d have your bones.

No ash, no grave
but a complete form…

Read more… 1,710 more words

So Friday I walked distance long enough and hot enough. In her ‘box’ she and I visited and caught up on grandchildren between customers. Background note for my northern readers: these snow cones are not crunched up ice it is ice shaved so fine it’s like perfect snowball snow but if you had to shovel this kind of snow, it would just suck.

Now, back to 95 degrees and I’m sipping something my friend handed me, wasn’t sure what it was but it was kind of like ice-tea over snow. A young couple came up, you know those people who are attractive and self-possessed, with social graces. They made a point of telling my friend this was their favorite snow-cone trailer and they go out of their way to get there.

I was feeling chatty I made a comment, she asked a question and then I found out they spent their honeymoon in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. . . apparently Thailand is over-rated, Angkor Wat was all they really saw of Cambodia but Viet Nam was amazing. Another question and then conversation ensued about the use of dash vs a parenthetical expression or when can one actually use a dash.

The well toned good looking new husband turns out went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. . . BA in Arts and Letters. “Wait, you have a degree from Wesleyan and you’re asking this question? What do you do?”

“I’m a cop.”

“Really, Austin Police? You’re kidding.” And his wife say, yup, he’s a cop who has a degree in arts and letters. Now here I was thinking: this feels almost like a joke. So we’re sipping snow, she had cream on her pina colada flavored and I am thinking I need to try that.

The young husband says: “So have you read much French or Russian literature?” I am at a corner of busy and high traffic, the trailer on the far corner of a large parking lot for a Tex-Mex restaurant, rush hour has more and more cars on the boulevard, and he says: “Have you actually read ‘Proust” and finished it?” He slurps a spoon of red snow and all I can do is laugh our loud.

Proust. “In all honesty, no, I haven’t,” I finally reply, “Great sentences though and I love madelines”. He admitted to the fact he keeps trying. We both have read Victor Hugo and talked about how bawdy the Medieval writers could be. (My mind going: you’re an Austin cop!) And then we talked about Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Tolstoy. I told him about the newer translations by a married couple.

He said he was going to try “War & Peace” to which I told him I refuse to read that but I am giving “Ulysses” a try. And then they were done with the snow in the Texas heat and took off in their modest dusty vehicle.

I did not ask the questions I wanted to: Why a cop? Why Texas? I grew up not many miles from where they attended university as did my husband. But these two are my son’s age and could have followed a more traditional path, what used to be a path to upper-middle class homes in towns with good public schools. A path of a year in Europe immersed in a language and culture, or law school.

I wanted to but I have many younger friends who took that path and are in serious debt. I didn’t ask his wife what she did, maybe they live here because she’s a doctoral student. But I didn’t ask because when I blurted in my oh so graceful way: “Wait. You’re a cop asking me about parenthetical expressions?” and his wife looked at him and said, “Yup! Degree in Arts and Letters and he’s a cop,” her expression both amused and proud.

After they left, I tried another new food. . .snow cone with peach syrup topped with cream. Oh yum. Austin at it’s best.

My sister identifies herself as born-again Christian, socially conservative, hippy-Mom and former physical therapist. While she was here she showed me a book that she was re-reading, Christy by Catharine Marshall. I remembered the book around the house when we were much younger but I didn’t know that it was a book that gave shape and words to her own faith.

The following poem is the price of writing that helped shape my own faith. It is not one of the world’s great poems but to an eleven year old who was in love with the obvious music of older poems, it had a great impact for it was an echo from the little Catholic church we were raised in: “do unto others”. . .”faith without works”. . .”love thy neighbor”.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said
“What writest thou?” —The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

I know now this Abou is probably Arabic, and/or Muslim.  I rather like that in fact. Years after that poem was just a part of my mind, I worked for a couple of years in a Jewish deli where I came to know the holidays and customs of that faith. (I also picked up a bit of Yiddish.)  Time in anonymous meetings lifted me out of dogma and into a self-defined faith.

What we have together as sisters is a faith in each other and a deep understanding of who we once were, and where we are going. Perhaps this is a by-product of being in our 50′s but I know it’s more for we have had very hard times. We’ve gone long time without speaking and when we did it was difficult.  Today, we laugh and dance and sip wine watching food shows. ;lkio