The first day is the hardest

I got fired an hour ago. It's probably not a good time to write a blog post; on the other hand, I've got the time now. A month ago, I lectured the Developmental Psych students on the stages of adulthood and the definition of "career consolidation." I have never had a real career -- only for short periods of time have I gone to the same place, same desk, to do the same task. There's been a lot of waitressing, temping in offices, and substitute teaching. The last few years have been the most balanced -- though it seems to the children that I've been gone a lot, I actually worked less than 40 hours a week, and the work(s) itself was balanced in the energy & thought requirements. There was usually a day or two, or a day plus an afternoon, at home in the garden, and weekends could be focussed on family, cookies, ironing, and reading. I told my DevPsych class that, in the middle of "middle adulthood," I had finally achieved what felt like career consolidation. Well..... it's a good thing there is no crystal ball in my kitchen.

I could go on a rant here, about the lack of communication about changing rules and standards, or the boss with a mental illness or two (to borrow a line from As Good As It Gets: we both give mental health a bad name!). But what does that do for me? There is no gain in that. I'll focus on the fact that I'm getting a month's severance pay, and that I have time during the holiday season, and that I can (and did already!!) accept that odd-hour adjunct gig teaching ITV Sociology. A letter is coming, said the committee that greeted me at the office door this morning. They provided boxes and didn't need to go through them: they trust me they said. Ahhhhh.... the tension, worry, daymares, perhaps actual angst is over. That's a good thing.

So, today, I'll do what I was going to do at the other job (babysitting a phone was a primary task) -- grade papers, complete grade reports, set up a Ch. 14 game for class, prepare for the scout meeting tomorrow. And I'll finish that silly mystery novel. And clean the bathroom and water the plants. And I get to work -- at a job I love to do! -- tonight. When I go to bed tonight, the day will seem like a good and productive one (cover the crystal ball!). The sun is shining. That's a good thing. Add "Walk The Dog" to the Do-List.

Maps and Journeys

I am reading a book called The Island of Lost Maps about cartographic crime. The author does a wonderful job of interweaving the metaphor "Maps" into a story about the histories of certain maps and about one certain map-thief. Maps are the portrait of, the reason for, and the story of journeys of both the soul and the body. Add in this quotation from a recent email from my brother, who is establishing a foundation "for good works" in our mother's name: "I have a variety of personal reactions when I read such stories as these. I think, "Oh, everything I want to do is already being done." I also think, "If a 14 year old girl can raise that much money, and a pastor plunks down everything he has, how can I set my sights any lower?" And then I worry, too, that I won't achieve what these ordinary folks have achieved with such apparent aplomb. I suppose the only thing to do is just keep at it."

I am busy these days living on several types of time. The healthcare debate promises either little change (the version that passed last night won't change lives for many people) or huge change (assassination and revolution): I fear for my country and weep for the fading of optimistic belief in the mirage called "American Dream." My inheritance from my mother will be used to buy my house from the bank -- that's telescoping about 15 years of my life into the minutes it takes to sign the check and seal the envelope. I have (finally!) set a teaching schedule for the spring, still a few months away, one that promises both periodic flurries of never-home busyness and new challenges relating to pedogogy. Spring will also bring the execution of those plans made in the days of waning summer and of frigid winter.... And, today, on a day when I have to look at a calendar to find out what the date is, and when the sunshine is saying through the window "Come quickly! I'll be gone soon," I am making a list of what must be done before bedtime.

I have been working on my lectures about the various stages of "adulthood" (as set out by our textbook). I think I'm in, or due for, a mid-life crisis. Perhaps I had one and didn't notice. I am aware that my clock is ticking. I am aware that I think about dying more often than I used to (eg., the mortgage will mature in 2024 and my first thought is that I might not be here to see it -- math is not one of my skills). Because of my experience with my mother's passing, I see the files of banking and insurances and children's college funds in a whole new light ("Oh, I should organize those!"). But, to my own confusion and fascination, I am at the same time eager to see what the next corner brings. If this is what age 50 feels like, what will it be like to be 65? Can I really eat & exercise enough to forestall disintegration? I ask my young-adult students, "What is old?" Am I a grown-up yet? One assignment in this class will be to write an obituary for yourself. What do I want on my headstone? In the end, at the end, what will I turn out to be? This is a journey that doesn't allow maps.

Autumn is just the end of the chapter

The anniversary of Mom's death was September 22nd, and her house was sold a week later. We have lived through the many firsts of new grief, and the house is -- gone, no more Christmas gatherings there, few reasons to ever return to that city -- that is the end of a chapter.

The last of the tomatoes were eaten or canned, and we had a meal of peas; the fishing started to get difficult, plus windy and cold; the wood ricks were brought up from the basement and EA cleaned the chimney. I put straw thickly on top of the new strawberries and asparagus (-gi?) and spent some time getting the new potting room organized (the table is not yet in, and that space is taken up with drying dahlia & canna tubers). Fall is coming (it's at least 50 degrees today with sunshine!) -- and that is an end of a chapter.

I spent (too) much time these last few months realizing that my LIFE book has only a few chapters left: each body system did an old-age hiccup and then settled into a new "normal." In impulsive rebellion, I picked out new plastic eyeglass frames: sort of like Elvis Costello's, and not so impulsively, I really am going to buy the zipper hightops: it's BOGO month. I read alot, so I naturally begin to see life and its myriad adventures (and those misadventures!) as being set between covers, with chapter breaks intermittently providing a false sense of resolution. Many chapters ended this fall and I feel grief in different degrees, yet -- like those #$&%* squirrels -- I feel at the very same a sense of excitement, about what takes up the space in my head, the hours on my calendar, or this blog spot. I'm waiting for confirmation of my spring teaching schedule; the garden catalogs have been arriving in the mail (another compost bin, I think, and I will try planting potatoes under the little-used clothesline); my gynecologist and I have made a pact to get out with our friends twice as often as we do now (that will equal two times: social networking does not come easily to workaholics with odd artistic and political perspectives). I discovered that I actually waiting to see how well I fare this winter, depression-wise, and if the new tricks I've been reading about will really work (Item 1: abundant plastic plants in my windowless office -done). A chapter has ended. OK, lots of chapters have ended. And every one is followed by a new page.

Suicide is a right

It's Thursday. That's the day after the two long days, and it's a long day itself. I feel a bit creaky. Last night, I introduced a film (PBS, Independent Lens: A Fishing Story) and suggested to my young students that they were the foundation of my future, that they - in this class - needed to learn to recognize ethnocentrism and the human tendency to make "groups," and to distinguish between pluralism, assimilation, and tolerance, because they - future policy-makers and citizens - had to figure out to reduce/avoid/resolve conflicts between the myriad groups that exist, locally/nationally/globally. I frequently refer to my elderly-ness, and I (increasingly) sound more querulous as I demand they step up to the plate and learn enough to take care of me in my tarnished years.

So it's Thursday, which is also a day with chunks of time to prepare for future lectures. I will be teaching 'AGING' in two classes this fall. Gotta find some interesting, shake-them-in-their-flipflops kind of videos and articles. I found this in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/europe/24britain.html?ref=todayspaper.

From the age of 16, I have pondered the What-If's and the paradoxes I encounter. What's worse: to be smart and ugly, or dumb and beautiful? (That took up a lot of thought time a few decades ago!). Now, I wonder what's worse: to lose motor coordination and other physical abilities (like my sight) or to lose my awareness of the moment and memories? One of the things that my mother and I discussed in the year before her death, was the right to die. She seemed to feel that taking her own life would cause undeserved stress and angst among her family and loved ones. So dying had to be a natural occurrence. But she did have admiration for the strength of character that led the elderly Eskimos to the iceberg. My thinking (at this distance in time from the dying) is that I have the right to hold as much control as I am able to hold over the dying, and the death. (Cynicism alert: That may be more control than I will have over the distribution of my stuff and the way I am celebrated in ceremony.) If my life isn't worth living -- and surely, I am the one who gets to decide that! -- then I have the right to end it. Right?

Did you see Maureen Dowd's column this weekend? Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20dowd.html. It's about happiness, or lack thereof, in women over the age of "mid-life." Men get happier, and women get less happy (not to say "sad"). Dowd quotes a few studies, and concurs with their speculation that unhappiness is due to the huge number of options that women have today. The options collection creates a whirlpool of "What If's" and women are exhausted from trying to do everything. I wonder, in addition to the options, if it's The Potent Spell. According to that book, scientists and doctors have been telling women for a very long time that their efforts outside of the home, beyond the hearth, are futile and mis-guided, and -- at the same time -- that their role as mothers is the absolutely most important thing they can do for society, and it is so very easy to screw it up.

Now, with two out of the nest and the other one flying soon, it appears that my re-defined mothering job is to dole out money, send little love-packages, and worry when appropriate (I don't have time to worry any more about kids getting mugged in big cities, and anyway, all the worry in the world didn't stop it from happening). So, now what, for me? If I can claim any success at all at mothering, it may be that my children do not live at home AND still communicate with me regularly. They seem to be able to find friends, make a social life, clean their own bathrooms, feed themselves using kitchen appliances, and earn positive remarks from important people in their new lives (daughter got a promotion, son made the Dean's List). My "potent spell" may be mitigated by my success, but I can't fill my days considering that success or checking up those successful children. I think that if I were left bereft of a purpose in life, I would get very unhappy. So, I'm flopping around emotionally a little bit, trying to see the path that goes on into my older-age. There are a lot of options in existence these days -- but I'm thinking that there are several I can't see yet.

I seek answers from friends, I look eagerly for comments to this blog, I collect various articles about "successful aging." Sometimes I find a clue in what I'm reading. Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener includes this declaration: "Gardening is an undiluted pleasure for me. I enjoy every phase of it from pawing through seed catalogs to harvesting the fruit.... I like feeling the sun in my bones and clean air in my lungs, I like feeling my muscles stretch till they ache.... The act of gardening repays its labors...."

Children may not do that. Wage-Work often doesn't have a recognizable return on your investment. Marriage may have its moments, but it does not have a day-by-day guarantee. If my 101-year old paternal grandmother and her 93-year old maternal counterpart were any indication, living longer just to be "old" is not worth the candles on the cake: it's lonely and frustrating on many levels. So, even growing old "successfully" may not have a return on the labor involved (is our societal obsession with youth a new "potent spell"?). The Nantucket Gardener writes to Jefferson, who said at age 68 "Though an old man, I am but a young gardener," that we are all young gardeners: "Gardeners are ageless and the gardens we create go on forever." I have to figure out, I think, how to be the Best Of Myself, regardless of age, children, marital happiness, or any known measure of success. I want to be like humus: ever bettering and entertaining more worms, and contributing to the rampant growth in those who come in contact with me. The new potting room in the basement now has shelves of canned vegs, a cupboard of seeds, and lots of potential. The piccalilli jars all sealed yesterday, I got the rainbow tulips planted, and I ate a handful of raspberries. What's next?

Horrors in Life

The topic at my AA meeting last night was "Relapse." A new woman showed up, and told the tale of her several months of glorious sobriety, all crushed last week when she tied one on at a local concert. Everyone at the table except me & Bill & Lisa have been through the morning-after-you-wrecked-your-life. Though I have more than two decades in the program, I recognize that I am only one drink away from the wreck. What I ponder, when the topic is "Relapse," is what will cause me to lift that glass and take that drink? You know what they say: it ain't the first one that kills you, but it's the first one that makes you forget what you know.

My son was mugged yesterday, in the big city where he lives. He reported that the cops told him he handled it just right. A little joke, and hand over the Ipod and wallet. He did all the follow-up with the bank and the insurance and the school ID office. I suggested to him that he has now experienced VULNERABILITY, and that's probably a good thing, since the world is imploding around us and desperate people roam the streets. Charity is a great thing, if it's voluntary. Desperate people have nothing to lose. He's a statistic now. The issue is the vulnerability. I consider vulnerability to be one of the horrors in life. I like to be in control! The idea that a madman with a gun (or a banana- who thinks clearly at that moment?) can take my control and make me vulnerable, is a horror. I'm reading The Potent Spell about the horrors that mothers live with -- our children, their very existence, makes us vulnerable to several horrors. My children are grown, so that means I've missed several of the horrors. Now they fly out of the nest into their own lives -- and there is a long list of horrors I get to NOT think about now.

For good or ill, I tend to avoid thinking about horrors. It just makes them bigger, I rationalize. But what not thinking about them really does is protect my illusion of being in control and invulnerable. I wrote in an earlier posting about my recent breast lumpectomy. My brother responded: "You never mentioned it, but this must have been a a major moment in life when mortality passes by the window, blurred but pronounced. A glimpse. Frightening, inscrutable, and lordly. Like a monolith." And he's right, I didn't tell anyone except the Hubby, who had to get up with me at 5:00 AM and drive me to the hospital. Not thinking about the outcome, not even entertaining in conversation or writing that the outcome might be really scary -- this was a way to stay in control. "Don't borrow trouble" is an old saying; "Tomorrow comes soon enough." If the biopsy results had been bad... well, then we talk about it. Then we deal with it. Then we feel the emotions. Until then, I'll just block it all out, take one day (or one minute) at a time, and stay busy with the things that give me joy, strength, and peace (today's do-list: pickles, move the compost bin, haul the old National Geographics to the dump, iron my white shirts, grade some Sociology quizzes....). Tomorrow's list isn't yet made.

Girl Talk

I went kayaking today with my girlfriends, Moment and Lovelace. Those are nicknames, assigned today. Moment teaches me with her enthusiasm for "now" how to relax into the mood of the moment, whether it is one filled with quiet appreciation for silence or one that is hilariously noisy. There is only a very little innuendo in Lovelace's nickname. She loves, and is a quiet force of affirmation and acceptance. And she's pretty, and frilly, and lacey. After regretfully declining several invitations earlier this year, I took time away from garden and books today -- one of the last of the best of fall -- and it was worth every minute.

There is firstly, the gift of time. Selfish time, girl talk time, outdoors-not-working time, sunny but not too hot time, gentle exercise time, making relationships deeper and stronger time. Secondly, there was the forced acknowledgment of NOW: no way to make the river go any faster. I do not give up control easily. It is good for me to do that once in a while. Thirdly, there was the sugary frosting of empathy and sympathy. I spend energy, I think, in not whining, in not asking for help, in what I call acceptance of The Is, but what is really (thank you, Kathleen Norris) resignation, acquiesence, denial. It was a treat to hear "Oh, poor you!" and "Me, too!" Girls talk in mid-life about the same things they talked about when they were teens. We floated and snacked, and smoked cigars, while wearing sombreros.

I made a list earlier this summer of the things that gave to me some sort of energy. I love my garden, all the various bits of it. I cherish my books, the old favorites and the new discoveries. I really love my work: I feel valuable and valued, as well as challenged. I am looking forward to figuring out how to make pickles, sew a quilt, write the novel, weld a lawn ornament, and become part of the Sizzling Seniors. I assert that I recognize the importance of relationships, but I realized in reviewing the list that I do not give them the same importance as gardening, reading, and working. Not sibling ones. Not girl ones. Not even sex, and not even my bestest friend forever (aka BFF). I'm not sure that I take those people for granted -- nay, I think of them almost every day, and treasure the time gift-shopping, and react to emails or news stories with both my reaction and imagining their reactions. It's just that I don't take from those relationships the same breath or vitamins that I find alone, doing my favorite things. I'm not sure how to fix that, but I think I need to.

Here's a reminder: http://wimp.com/sweetinspiration. Let me always taste the coffee. That is the nectar of the gods, life's blood, the essence of living. It is the juice, baby.