Crow Talk

Christmas Eve, In the Morning

2008-12-24T06:15:00.001-08:00

It's the morning of Christmas Eve and I am worried the store will run out of the precise food items I need today. What is that? I think it has to do with these bleak grey-white skies, with this seemingly endless snowfall.

Because, yes, I got up and it was snowing again. We have been buried in ice and snow now for 2 weeks. Last weekend, it snowed Friday morning through Sunday night. Yes, I am sick of shoveling. I had the simple realization that snow simply gets in the way. In fact, inclement winter weather itself gets in the way of my life, especially as I walk everywhere. By tonight, this snow is supposed to have turned to rain. Rain! What the fuck. Honestly. I like to walk to Christmas Eve worship, and I was very much looking forward to seeing our lovely church, with candlelit luminarias lining the driveway, softly surrounded by snow. So now I am praying the rain will pass us by. Yes, praying. Dear God, may it please not rain this night so that my daughter and I may have our annual walk to and from church. How selfish is that? (Though it isn't like I am asking for a pony, or even a Porsche.) What it is is an indication of how desperately sick I am of this weather. Must be a sign of age, of wishing for the carefree ease of warm days when a person can simply run out the front door barefoot and go wherever she pleases.

Earlier I was out back re-filling the bird feeder with black oil sunflower seeds. I have been very careful and conscientious in keeping the feeder filled as best I can, because while I might be annoyed and inconvenienced by this bleak weather, the little birds, who have no warm house to go into, nor pots of tea to brew, nor soft blankets to snuggle under, nor even warm, waterproof boots, are out in it all the time. So, I filled the feeder, spilled some piles of seed on the ground for the mourning doves and other ground feeders, and moved the suet cage to a better place inside the branches of the apple tree, a place with more available perches around the suet. Then I retraced my steps in the foot deep holes that are my footprints back up the hill, and as I went, I heard a watery warble of birdsong unlike any I had ever heard before. It came from up high, perhaps from the large old tree next door. I looked, but could not see, and yet, I could certainly hear. A lovely, woodwind--flutey--call, that sounded, as best as my human language could mangle such music into verbiage, like 'Pretty bird." So I said to this bird I could not see, "How lovely! Where are you? And thank you! Pretty bird, pretty bird."

And the bird sang back, "Pretty bird."

And I called back, "Pretty bird."

And so we did this as I stood in the gently falling snow, in a hushed world of white and black and grey, until I finally came back to my senses and went into the house to dogs eagerly awaiting biscuits. They knew I would have to unlace and remove my boots first, always much too lengthy a process for their ever challenged (but mellowing with age) dog patience, and then brush off my pants, and then carry my boots into the other room to place them on newspaper to melt. They watched me with dark, reproachful eyes reflecting light shining out from somewhere to meet their dark gazes but where that light came from was something I could never quite say.

But what I was thinking of, as I sidestepped dog demands, what I was pondering was that transcendent moment with the unfamiliar bird, that strange visitor to our backyard bird buffet, and it briefly seemed to me that the birds, collectively, were thanking me for my efforts to keep them fed as best I can.

This wasn't a grand eloquent, Aren't-I-great? kind of thought, but a realization of a simple truth: that one single human person, tired and cranky by the end of the day (often tired and cranky even at the beginning of the day!)--that one single human person making the effort to consistently and simply place seed out into the snow can help nurture and nourish the collective world of birds. It has to do with helping to keep life strong. And life, like light, is a warm thing, a bright thing. And so, this faithful feeding of the birds is also a little like lighting candles in the dark, and as the candles join together in a network of light, all the world becomes just that much brighter and warmer.

It is upon as simple a belief as this that faith rests. That what we do, no matter how big, no matter how small, how visible or invisible, how private, secret, or blazing the headlines, that what we do to care for and nurture others, always matters.

Always. Matters.

"God is light and in him there is no darkness at all." 1 John 1:5

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out." John 1:5

Blessings of light in this season of apparent darkness, to you, one and all.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Image courtesy of minnesotapublicradio.org

What I Saw in the Light of the Ice

2008-12-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

I just survived 30 hours of no heat or electricity. That also means I cannot cook--no tea! Last night the temperatures got down around 5F. I had spent part of the evening in a dim room lit by an array of scented candles--not any of them the same scent, quite the potpourri and not always a harmony of scents. I sat near the window and watched cars go by, the white of their headlights illuminating the ice as if from within. I talked on the phone to my mother. Around 6:30, I took the dogs and myself to bed. The dogs had been wild all night, not understanding a thing. Cold! No lights! Why? Little Bear and Bumby roughhoused and made puppy noises on the floor behind me, despite their elderly years. Bumby chewed my mitten like a puppy as I talked on the phone. Yes, I wore mittens. Heavy sheepskin mittens. I also wore a hat, two pairs of soft, warm pants, a sports bra, an undershirt, a turtleneck, a flannel shirt, a cotton sweater, a thermal shirt, a sweatshirt, a heavy wool sweater, and my bathrobe. Heavy sheepskin slipper boots. I had covered the fish tanks in blankets, 3 blankets each. I put towels over the African violets and the Rex begonia. I set the kitchen faucet to dripping so that the pipes would not freeze. I brought 2 candles into my room to read by. I wore my hat and mittens to bed. But just before that, I got a phone call from the power company. An automated message told me the outage was quite severe and I should call my local authorities so as to be able to locate a shelter. Somehow that message did nothing to reassure me that the power might be back on soon.

It was warmer in my small room this morning than in the rest of the house. One human, 2 dogs, and a cat shut in together generate a fair amount of heat in an enclosed room, especially with blankets hung over the windows. When I came out into the hall, the cold felt like a slight slap. My breath steamed out ahead of me. I persevered. The back door knob was frozen shut and I could not open the back door to let out the dogs. I exhaled on the doorknob until my warm breath finally thawed it enough to open it, but it was still stiff and persnickety, so I turned it to the open position and left it like that, using only the dead bolt lock to secure the door shut.

For my morning prayers and devotions these past 2 powerless mornings, I have drank a cup of water when I would usually drink tea as I prayed prayers of gratitude, and have my own small version of Communion--the time when I remember God loves me and feeds me and always takes care of me. This morning's devotion began with a reading of Psalm 23. How apt. You are there, God! You pop up in unexpected places just when I am about to fall into the blandest pit of despair. And the reading was about exactly that--falling into a pit, or, in this case, a well. An African writer told a tale of a donkey falling into an abandoned well, and instead of being rescued, the people decide to fill the well in, with the donkey trapped inside! The donkey brays and shakes off the successive shovels full of sand that land on her back. As she shakes off the sand, the well gradually fills up beneath her, and finally she is able to step out to safety. The writer writes, " When trials befall us, God listens when we cry out and helps us to persevere."

I clung to that thought, 'God helps us to persevere', for the rest of the morning. My spirits were descending with the cold. I hadn't had much to eat. Mostly I huddled under blankets with a book and dozed. It takes a lot of energy to keep warm, and the dogs still expected at least one of their daily walks. They were wild children last night not only because of the cold and the dark, but also because I had not taken them outside for our evening walk. It was cold outside, and cold inside! Why would I want to step out into the cold and dark when my house holds the same, if only to a lesser degree? Part of being able to venture forth out into the coldest dark night is the knowledge a brightly lit warm house awaits you on your return! Without that, why bother stepping out at all?

But this morning we walked. The world was a'gleam and a'glimmer with new day sun shining heavenly golden blue, and iced trees shimmered like a crystal forest from a magical world. I had never seen such light. Despite the intense cold, I stopped and took in this scene of wonder and beauty with my eyes, my heart, my mind, my soul. This kind of beauty is a rare thing, a gift only an iced over frozen world can bestow. It heartened me in a way the cold of my house did not. I began to remember all that I could be grateful for despite this time of solitary deprivation : I had enough food to feed the animals, including the birds outside. I had enough blankets to secure the fish tanks and myself, and hand towels to cover the tender plants. I had some hot water in the tank. I had crackers to eat along with cheese or peanut butter or sardines. My phone worked. The water worked. I had several good books from the library to read. I had plenty of candles, seconds brought home from work. I had my dogs and cats to cheer me and to warm me. (I also discovered an interesting thing: cats growling at one another sound like the furnace turning on.)

When I came back inside, I decided to use that precious hot water to take a bath, to immerse my stiffened and chilled body into hot water and stay there as it gradually cooled. Filling the tub used it all up. And when I came out, warm, but feeling the full weight of my exhaustion and ready to simply go back to bed to wait this time of trial out, the power came back on. Yes! I yelled for joy! I yelled, Thanks! I did a little happy dance. And then I made myself the first of several pots of tea.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Image: "Ice Storm '98 Vermont" by Gary Stanley

Don't You Get Cat Hair On My Casket!

2008-12-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Dotty is short, and very round. She wheezes. She walks with a cane. She is overweight, she has 'sugar', as some of the folks around here call diabetes, and she has very little confidence. She was raised by a woman who belittled her at every turn and razed any fledgling Dotty-confidence right to the ground and then stomped and salted that earth for good measure. Dotty will never think highly of herself, and she will rarely think well of herself. Her mother did a good job making sure of that.

Dotty worries. Dotty procrastinates as a way to deal with her worry. Dotty has a ready smile and a good heart. She sings in the choir. She can sign either alto or soprano as needed. After years of sitting in the alto section with us, she switched over to the soprano side when 2 people had dropped out. She used to perform in community theater musicals, but the most recent contribution she made to local theatrics was to work backstage. She has pretty much given all of that, and a lot else, up.

She got a cat several years ago, and even though she lived in her own apartment, she was terrified to tell her mother or her son she had a cat. She was in her 50's then. She is in her early 60's now and seems like a woman 15 years older.

From about the age of 10 onwards, Dotty's son was raised by her mother. Dotty's husband had left her when her son was quite young, a toddler. He had had to have surgery for a hare lip, and remained a very shy child, especially once he got into school and was teased for his scar. Since Dotty had to work full-time to support them, he went to his grandparent's house after school. Eventually Dotty's mother strong armed Dotty into believing she couldn't really do a good job raising him, having to work and all, and that the boy should just live with her. Dotty, having no confidence, acquiesced, of course.

Her son was idolized by his grandmother, and she gave all the nurturing love and attention she denied her daughter to her daughter's son. She was so good to him. He grew up into a gentle, sweet, funny man. He teaches music at the elementary school. He directs our choir. He has a warm baritone voice and a sly and wily sense of humor. He was very fortunate to get a teaching job in his home town and lives in his grandmother's house yet.

Two years ago, his grandmother had to be hospitalized after a small stroke. Alzheimer's Disease set in quickly and she never returned to their little house, staying in the hospital until a nursing home bed opened up. About a year ago, Dotty moved in with her son. He takes just as good care of her as he did his Grandma. He was raised right, trained for the role, in fact. He has a good and gentle heart.

Sometimes, Dotty is frankly a mess. She will come to church wearing a stretchy black cardigan, with silvery bright rhinestone buttons, that is also covered in cat hair. She likes the colors green and orange. She often dresses in shirts of horizontal stripes wrapping around her pudgy body. Her hair is cut short like a man's. It isn't flattering. But, her hair is also very thick and very straight, a gingery color, with hardly any grey. It sits like a thick cap above her chubby, round face. She will complain that her sugar is high as she eats her third doughnut. She doesn't take good care of herself, and why should she? She has known for years that she doesn't matter.

Grandma died this week. It was also Dotty's birthday this week. And guess what? They held the funeral on Dotty's birthday. (I wish I was making this up.) I had a small hissy fit with our pastor over it, but no one besides me seemed to think it was a bad thing to have Dotty's mother's funeral on Dotty's birthday. In fact, I was told, Dotty said it was okay. Of course Dotty would say that, I almost yelled. Why does no one but me see the tragedy in this? Why does no one but me understand that from now on, on every single birthday she has left, Dotty will remember it as the day of her mother's funeral?

The sanctuary of our church is upstairs. When you enter the foyer, stair cases wind up to the left and the right. Just ahead is a glass case full of historic items related to the church. It is a venerable old church, the first in the village, founded by the wealthy Dutchman who set up a plantation settlement in this one time wilderness, a settlement raided, razed and burned twice during the conflicts with the French in Quebec, what history books call 'The French-Indian War'. The existent church records date from after the Revolutionary War, because earlier records were destroyed in the fires of the raids. It is the church that, at one time, the first families of this village were proud to join. It was the 'status' church. Now it is probably the church with the smallest amount of members, a church that always hovers on the rim of financial ruin. It has beautiful stained glass windows though, and a sanctuary that holds love like light in its acoustically perfect space.

On either side of the glass case are 2 doors leading into our fellowship hall. On the morning of Dotty's birthday, it was in that very space that the funeral director had parked her mother's powder blue casket, on the far right hand side, for the calling hours. Dotty was the first one at the left side door, to meet and greet, and also the furthest away from her mother in her blue box. Dotty wore that same stretchy black cardigan with the rhinestone buttons over a black top and black pants. She had her pink cane held firmly in her left hand. She seemed to have gotten most of the cat hairs off of her sweater. I took her in my arms--she is barely 5 feet tall--and held her in a warm hug. I kissed her fat cheek and I told her that I loved her. (I do! Whenever I see Dotty, I see a little girl with a hopeful light in her eyes, and I want to put strong, protective arms around her.) She said, "I know, I know you do." She seemed unable to accept this direct gift of affection. It lay like a hot potato in her hand. What should she do with this? Finally she sighed and said, "We love you too."

I asked her how she was doing, and she said she was fine for the moment, but wasn't sure how she would be later, during the service. She thought she might fall apart. I told her not to worry, that she was surrounded by people who would gladly hold her up. She gave me that quizzical look again, and then I moved on to greet her son. I told him what I had told his mom, that I love them both, and his eyes overflowed with tears and he said they loved me too.

I did not go over to the powder blue box to look on the deceased.

During the memorial service, Dotty's son spoke clearly, eloquently and emotionally about his grandmother and all she had given him and taught him about life. He cried a lot as he spoke about this woman he loved and admired so much, and I could not help but look at the back of Dotty, her schlumpy rounded shoulders up there ahead of me, as she listened to her son praise his grandmother with the same words someone might use to describe their mother.

But Dotty is used to that. She knows she's nobody. And her family, and our church, reinforced that by allowing Dotty's mother's funeral to be held on Dotty's birthday.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Our First Night Back

2008-10-02T05:23:00.000-07:00

The children's home sits atop a hill, much like a castle might sit, commanding a hillside, with clear views to the 4 directions. The drive up there winds around that hill. It is an unpaved path of creamy, slightly rusty, slightly yellow limestone, crushed and pressed by countless tires, a strip of green growing up between. And so, when our bus arrives, it is dark, it is night, it is nearly 10 o'clock. We have arrived later than usual, but the kids are all about, running out, walking out, to meet us, to greet us. Arnella approaches me steadily, her eyes on my face, her arms outstretched. She loves it that I remember her name, always, every year I remember her name. And there are new faces too, children we have not yet met, smiling, greeting, calling out, laughing, reaching out to us. The kids are eager to grab our bags, to help us carry them in. They are clambering all over the bus, all over us. Several of us have returned to the home for consecutive years, and others of us are new, and still others have come but many years before. None of that matters to the kids. They are simply overjoyed with welcoming us. As are we in greeting them. It is a crazy time when we first arrive, and I love it.

I don't see all my friends yet. Not all come out in the first rush of greeting. Some of the kids are slow to open their hearts again, and that is understandable. I always think about that -- what is it like to open in love and then to be left again when our week is over? How is it for the kids and the staff after we leave? Are the kids harder to deal with? Does it make more work for the staff? Does our leaving re-open old wounds of abandonment in the kids? These are questions I may never know the answer to, and they are not thoughts I have on arrival. I am not thinking, I am alight with joy and my eyes are seeking familiar faces.

So, we have carried boxes of water in and out, deposited our bags. It isn't quite time to eat yet and I feel like I am still going in and out, back and forth, seeing what is here and what is there, and who is here and who is there. On one of my trips back inside, I feel a tentative touch on my arm, from behind. I turn to look and it is Morris, dear Morris, whom I love. I do. I love that boy. He is simple and quiet and sweet and well accustomed to being overlooked and mistreated. He is quiet and shy again now, his eyes alight with tears. We greet each other softly--he is not a boy to reach out and grab up in a hug, he is all bones and angled arms and he is not comfortable in an embrace. Our smiles are huge, though, and our eyes are speaking what our shy words do not. One of the first things he asks me is when I am leaving. When am I leaving!? I just got here! But it is because he has something to tell me, he has to tell me he is playing drums in church on Sunday (today is Tuesday) and he wants to make sure I will still be there to see him play. Of course I will be there, I assure him, and then I tell him how happy I am he has been practicing the drums in the year's time since I saw him last, when I asked Kevin, a young man who also grew up in the children's home and who lives nearby yet, to teach Morris the drums, to promise me he would, and he did.

This is so important a thing, he has to tell me that first. He too has remembered all that he and I shared the year before -- when this shy boy opened up and revealed a talent for music and for art, a crazy sense of humor and love of singing, this boy who had been so quiet all the years before, and even now, if you did not know him, in his tentative shyness and stammered attempts to communicate with me, you would think him unable to say more than 5 words. But he has a vastness inside him that is kept mainly out of reach, hidden, safe, and yes, overlooked. He is accustomed to being overlooked, and probably he prefers it that way, as he is easy prey for the mean and the vicious, because he is so gentle, so simple, so quiet. He shows his agitation and nervousness when he is attacked by other kids only by twitching and itching. He never fights back, never raises his voice. He skitters away and keeps to the edges, and oh how I recognize all these traits in him, how familiar they are to me, though he and I are not the same, we share much in our approaches to life and to survival.

I do know what a fragile walk I must walk with him, balancing how to love and attend to him with a caution that comes from knowing I must leave again, knowing that I cannot make it all right for him. I can shed some light along his way. I am happy when others of our group reach out to him, but I also know he relates to me as he would a mother or a teacher, always seeking me out and asking me to watch, "Watch, Miss" as he draws or coasts downhill on a bike. So this small meeting of ours, our quietly ecstatic reunion, would look like nothing much to an outside observer -- it is but a brief touch, a small conversation, four eyes bright with tears shining in the night, and yet to us it is huge, it is so much. And I have had to trust, in faith, that God holds Morris in his hands as one of his own beloved children, an orphan at the mercy of a world that often offers little mercy at all. I have to trust that God is using me, my hands, my heart, my mind, to share his love with this gangly boy, and that when I fly away home again at the end of the week, God will continue to fill in the spaces of Morris' life, that other kind people will reach out for and care for and shelter him. I have to trust, in faith. I have to. God uses us in ways we might never imagine, until we offer ourselves up to be used by him. And it isn't all hearts and flowers and joyous love, it is also heartbreak and tears and fearful attempts at trusting, the agony of vulnerability. The naked edge of opening our hearts even though we know what heartbreak feels like and we don't like it, but we do it anyway because that is life. Life lived passionately. Passion as in suffering too--Christ's passion, intense emotion, the heart exposed in love. It is all that.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

A Few Facts, Random, Yet True

2008-09-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

I found a huge, large, really big earthworm in my bathroom the other evening. Where did that come from? P the cat was sitting in front of it, idly tapping at it. It writhed. I picked it up with my back scratcher; I carried it outside. Slightly unsettling event.

I finally fixed my front porch light. The bulb had blown and the rust on the screws holding it all together was remarkably strong. Amazing what a bit of WD-40 and some borrowed pliers can do. Slightly empowering event.

These people running for President and all their talking heads scare the crap out of me. Some of them more than others--like, the old man former POW and his babe. And, I don't understand the economy. No, really. None of this is pretty. I actually wasn't even going to vote this year, as I feel there are nefarious behind the scenes manipulations of the democratic process going on and that our votes are but a puppet show, shadow play, a diversion while the truly evil ones, obsessed with holding power, force outcomes on us. Just like the terrorists manage to attack us in ways we might never expect, we decent people, because they are so unimaginably awful, these behind the scenes manipulators make things happen the way they want it to happen and cover their tracks very well. They are very good at throwing shit. And, you know what? I don't care if you think I am unreasonably paranoid, or if you think I sound crazy. Anyway, I do plan to vote this year, and what changed my mind about that was the old man former POW's babe. She scares the beejeezus out of me. I will vote even if it is like throwing pebbles at tanks. I have to do something. I got the mysterious earthworm out of my bathroom. I fixed my light, and changed a 20 year old bulb previously imprisoned by strong old rust. I don't believe God involves himself in our political process, but I do believe good people have to keep trying even when it seems futile.

Getting Back to Jamaica

2008-09-28T05:15:00.000-07:00

This past July, I made my 4th trip to Jamaica, to stay and work for a week at a home for children up in the mountains -- approximately 2 hours northwest of Kingston. Overall this year, we had a very good week there. Our difficulties came primarily during our travels. N, a 16 year old from our church making her first visit, was traveling with only a green card for ID. She had no passport. Her parents insisted it would be fine. Sometimes it was, and sometimes it wasn't.

We had little trouble leaving from the airport closest to home, since N's step-mom convinced the bag check in people it was okay for her to travel with just the green card. It did take her 20 minutes to do that, however (and what she knew then, and never told us at the time, was that once when she traveled back from the Caribbean with N, they were detained overnight in Puerto Rico because of N's scanty documentation). Once we got to North Carolina it was a different matter. The descent into Charlotte was long and bumpy and made me quite nauseous. I spent most of that time breathing deeply and slowly and holding on to the seat in front of me, hoping not to vomit. I was regretting that can of spicy tomato juice I drank earlier -- it had seemed like such a good idea at the time! Once we landed, we had to scurry fast to our next gate, where our plane was already boarding. What I needed most was clean, cool, fresh air, but that was not possible in the airport. What I smelled was stale recycled inside air and diesel fumes. I kept walking, and tried not to think about it.

We got to our gate and lined up to board. I was almost to the door of the plane when another of our travelers called to me, telling me N, our 16 year old, was being refused boarding. So, several of us tromped back to help out with the situation.

N is native to the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia. She came to the States 6 years ago to join her dad, step-mom, and half sisters. She was already talking to him on D's cell phone, and I could hear his deep, emotional voice from where I stood talking to the woman behind the counter. I told her N was cleared at the first airport. She told me the first airport dropped the ball and they were sending her back. Five of us from our group stood there looking at the woman, and she refused to look back at any of us. She did consent to call a supervisor, as we were not going away, a large group of us, holding up the plane. N asked me to talk to her dad. He was irate, but in a nice way, insisting she could travel just on her green card. I replied in frustrated yet consoling tones. What could I do? I wished I could hand the phone to the airline employee and let him harangue her. But, she was busy talking to her supervisor. Who said that Yes, N could fly on her green card. Yay!!! So off we went.

Everything went smoothly for N after that. She passed through customs in Jamaica with no problem, though others of our group weren't so lucky, and we had to wait for them while they answered innumerable questions about our plans and destination. We spent the time admiring the changes to Sangster International Airport, most of them begun when the Cricket World Cup was played in various Caribbean nations 2 years ago.

Finally we were all together again, all 9 of us, and we got our bags, and then had only the last hurdle to clear, getting those big bags full of donations and supplies inspected and approved. Some of us got through easily, some of us not. I did not. The woman who inspected the big bag I carried full of donated clothing, balls, crayons, pens and candies insisted I unpack everything. This was a very large green canvas duffel. She had me unwrap every bag, open up the boxes of crayons, and explain to her what we planned to do with these items. Were we selling them? What was their value? And I sweetly, albeit obsequiously-- in the hopes that'd gain me a measure of mercy (it didn't) -- explained the items were donated, for the ORPHANS, as gifts to them.

Finally we came to a box of ballpoint pens. What are these, she wanted to know. Pens, I told her, purple ball point pens. Purple!? she exclaimed, I need blue. (I had already seen her take away some toys from the suitcase of the Jamaican family who had preceded me in the line -- for her grandkids?)

And so it went, until finally she signed the paper and let me through, leaving me with lots of clothing, balls, and crayons all disassembled and falling all over and needing to be somehow put back into the duffel.

My predicament was proving to be somewhat of a spectator sport for the younger members of our group, who watched me struggle but did not lend a hand. Finally, B, the group leader, came over and helped me. She had had her own problems in her own line because W, the man traveling with us, had gotten angry and nasty with the custom's people. But finally! Off we went, outside into the heat and air that smelled like burning plastic, hazy smoke hanging low over the hills rising up from the coast at Montego Bay. The area outside the airport doors is always crowded with people. I love it. I love Jamaica. I love how there are always people everywhere, hanging out, talking on cell phones, eating, being.

We found Peat, our bus driver, loaded up, and off we went. Our trip went smoothly on the newly resurfaced and paved Queen's Highway that traverses the northern shore of the island (another legacy of the World Cup). B wanted to stop at the food market in Ocho Rios (Ochi), and so after several hour's drive time, we pulled into the familiar parking lot beside the Straw Market and went over to General Foods. B wanted to get popcorn and oil and a few other food items. I followed along, always happy to check out the stuff in the store. B was already in that place of losing her mind and I already had no patience for it, despite my best intentions to be a support to her. Every suggestion made to her to help her resolve perceived difficulties was met with 5 or 6 reasons why that would't work either. She is always that way. I knew it but already couldn't deal with it, and yet, thankfully, M, 21 and full of youthful vigor, was up to the challenge. She replied to B's whining with the same answers I had already given B and B had already shot down, and I snickered to myself while also admiring M's efforts. Finally B decided that she had to have a certain size bag of popcorn and that market simply did not have it. Maybe Seow's across the street would have that certain size bag.

So. N and M and B and I all tromped across the busy street to Seow's. I really didn't want to go in and decided to wait out front with the bags of oil B had bought at General Foods. N decided to stay with me and M accompanied B. As N and I stood there, watching the busy life of Ochi going by, a young beggar woman, dressed like a boy, smelling of pee, and seeming fairly mentally ill to my eye, insisted we give her money. Just give her some money so she can get a patty. I kept apologizing and saying no, I had no money (white! American! of course you have money! who are you trying to fool! was what was in her eyes). This went round and round until another woman came over and told the young begging woman to leave us alone. To go away and leave us alone. She went away down the street a bit.

I decided to cross the street and stand someplace else to wait for B and M. The woman who helped us had also crossed over and I thanked her. She told me that the young beggar woman would have finally begun taking off all her clothes to get us to give her money. And she was still there, across the street, watching us, and following us. With the clear instinct of the crazy, she knew she had unnerved me. I decided to go stand by the bus. B and M would find us there, and B would simply have to understand why we walked away from Seow's.

I felt a little guilty about not giving the woman any money. And this guilt tagged along with me as I walked back to the bus and was met by a drunken, angry vendor from the Straw Market. He insisted I come in and look at his wares. I said No (again!) and he harangued and harassed for for a little bit. I looked him in the eye and answered him very directly and he got angrier and I got scared but I wasn't backing down. Finally he abruptly shifted his focus away from me to D, a woman in her early 40s from the other church, and he was nice to her! Why wasn't he nice to me? I had had it. All tangled up in crazy emotions, tired from being up since 3am and traveling all day into now the early evening, being sick and all the rest of it, I got into the bus to hide.

B never found the 'right' sized bag of popcorn she wanted, but M convinced her to buy what was there. They returned and gave me a funny look for going away. When I explained why, I felt like they didn't believe me. But my emotions were all messed up by then, and probably my judgment was a bit skewed too. We sat awhile longer there in Ochi, way longer than we had planned to, while B and some others tried to get the cell phone to work. It never did work, not in the way she wanted it to. We couldn't call anyone in Jamaica, only back home in the States. Not that she ever let us use it!

But sitting there for what felt like forever made us late for getting to the children's home. Much of the drive was in the darkness, and once we turned up into the mountains at Port Maria, the road became very, very windy and bumpy. As usual. Usually it doesn't bother me. M has the problem with motion sickness, but she was well dosed on Dramamine. As the journey in the darkness progressed, I started feeling sick again, sick like I had felt on the plane. That really was a wonder to me, because it had never happened before. I couldn't figure out why it suddenly bothered me so much, but I felt progressively sicker and sicker, despite my attempts at deep, slow breathing and staying very still. I finally got to a point where I was deciding where I would vomit: in my denim shirt? In my carry on? Wasn't there a puke bucket under a seat somewhere?

And then good sense somehow prevailed and I simply asked Peat to stop the bus because I felt sick. So he did. And I got out and sat on these concrete steps that smelled of dog pee and bus exhaust and thought, This isn't much better, is it?

But at least I wasn't moving anymore. I gathered myself as best I could, and then got back on the bus. There was a small building just up ahead where Peat said he could get me some over-proof rum if I wanted, and I could rub it on my head, it would make me feel better. Mostly the suggestion made me laugh. I told him if he got me rum I certainly would not rub it on my head. He continued to speak consolingly and calmly to me in his beautiful smooth voice, in his good natured way. We were actually only about 10 minutes away from the children's home and seeing the familiar lights and pale colored limestone gravel driveway distracted my mind away from my nausea and lifted my heart up high. We were there! I felt happy; I felt excited, eager to see cherished friends, and to make new ones.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

fits

2008-09-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

a white bear sits
on the green side of the hill
holding a red
red
rose. 'my heart,'

cries the crow
as she leaps into a sky
torn open by flame. the bear
glances aside
and feels her shadow fall
onto the silence of grass
stretching upward. 'where

does my life
fit into all this, where
does my life fit?'

who asks this? not crow,
nor bear,
nor rose,
nor sky,
and grass sings only
what the earth
might wish
to speak,
(just as a dog
might laugh as he trots aside
to shit on a well tended
lawn) and yet,
who might be so uncertain
as to where her life

might fit into all this?
who?
for even if white bears
might sometimes wish
the red roses
they hold were instead
rainbow dappled ice,
they sit tight anyway and

the crows yelling
while leaping
into skies aflame with yet
another day
bound to become falling ash
never question whether it
(the leaping, the yelling)
is worth it --
they know where they are -- they know
how they fit --

encompassed inside them
is this knowing. it rides
their blood tides, it shines
from their eyes, it tints
feather, fur, leaf edge and cloud
tendril. there is simply
no room
for questions as vain
and silly
as this.
so,
who asks?

foolish human, naked
wanderer, lost
and yet found, blind but
not deaf, willing and yet
unable
to get it, to get this, what all
the rest of it knows without thinking,
without pausing to ask.
for in the pause
is the losing, in the asking
is the losing, in the thinking
is the ridiculous loss
of what every living being
is born with, given by earth, by breath, by sun shade and
star fall.
moon hovers and shelters every last single one of us, and so
to ask, 'where do i fit'
is to refuse the banquet spread before you,
to scorn the feast, to be boor,
fool.

crow is no fool. crow,
bear, even dog knows
the world
is one big sandwich. they do not question.
they eat.
grass eats earth
and sky breathes plant and
sun feeds moon
while quenching itself.

we
are it
and it
all fits.

A Bit of Weirdness

2008-09-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

I stepped into a time machine today. Inadvertently. Maybe it would be more precise to say a trap door opened beneath my feet and I fell into the past.

It happened like this.

I was at work. The phone rang. I answered it as I always do, "Good Afternoon, blahblah blah blah...." and the voice on the other end, a man, knew it was me but I did not know who he was. After a bit of confused and unbalanced verbal back and forth, I realized it was an old friend of my parents'. He and his wife are visiting my mother for the weekend. It was hardly 2pm, but my mother and his wife had been drinking. I knew that. I simply knew that. And as I heard them in the background while the man gently harassed (gently, and yet, with a trace of menace) me for not knowing who he was, I suddenly was the 8 year old kid with the crazy drunk parents up to who knows what chaos creating madness. Them over there, sitting and drinking and verbally harassing us kids. I always knew, and know, those people could explode at any time.

Those friends have 3 kids. We'd spend weekends together, us kids being kids while the adults sat around and drank and drank, marathon drinking sessions lasting from early afternoon until well after midnight. My mother can do that, sit and drink and talk for hours, hours, hours, and then go to bed at 2 am and get up in the morning and function, and even do it all over again. Back in the day they'd be smoking cigarettes too, and maybe playing cards. And, they probably wouldn't explode on us all gathered together for a friendly weekend like that, but afterwards, after we left, on the trip home.....

As a child, I was well acquainted with catching hell in the car. I was well acquainted with the terror that lives in private family spaces.

This might sound like a simple thing. But I was catapulted back into a bad old past, a place of being bullied and harassed and prodded by guilt. Of adults who acted badly towards children, then blamed the children for their bad behavior, and laid guilt like a blanket soaked in gasoline over us if we dared speak up for ourselves, dared call the bad behavior by its true name. I heard all that in the man's voice today. I heard the uncomfortable heat of that in the laughing banter behind him, of my mother and her friend, already tipsy by 2pm and still hours of drinking yet before them. I didn't try to feel like an 8 year old again, I simply did, despite the fact I am 50 and I talked to him in the smoothed polished voice of a woman skilled in handling crazy people, the very polite, measured cadences that keep the volatile calm. Saying, "I really need to get back to work now, but it is so great to hear from you. Thank you for calling." Smooth as satin kid gloves, smooth as pearls. I have left that world behind and I will do anything I can to keep it far away, over there.

The thing is, I have had 2 good talks with my mother lately. She wasn't drinking and our emotions never ran the conversation. We said things that needed to be said, and a bridge of toothpick sized trust was built between us. Something after nothing for so many years. But after that call today, to me at work, of all places--part of my mind kept insisting, "This simply isn't appropriate'--I remembered, she still is crazy, and I still need to keep her far away, over there.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

MotherGuilt

2008-09-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

So, everyone says, How was your trip to Boston? They ask me that with an excited gleam in their eye, as if I had fun, or should have....

...because that was the trip to bring my daughter to college. And here is my truthful answer: it was emotional, it was exhausting, I wanted to go home. The trip was expensive, and I had left the dogs home unattended. Overnight. Bad mother. Bad dog mother.

And I felt so guilty. I felt guilty because we aren't wealthy. I couldn't really afford the trip out there, couldn't afford meals out, couldn't afford to buy her little tables and shelving units for her room. Couldn't afford to stay out there 2 or 3 nights like the other parents, in the fancy hotel right near the college. Couldn't afford to spend the afternoon after she was all moved in out wandering the city shopping, buying lunch and then dinner out. Couldn't afford to then stay the entire next day after to attend day long parental orientation events. (Parent orientation? I kept thinking, Why? I am not going to college. But there we were, surrounded by the newest sociological phenomenon, 'helicopter parents', hovering over their kids' lives like the TV news team, noting, recording, commenting, and shepherding.)

And yet, what did I do every time I felt guilty? I gave her cash, the cash I had brought with me to buy us meals and whatnot. Just handed it over. Here take this, and I pray you will be okay. I pray you won't be homesick and you won't be mad at me and you will find friends immediately and will fit in and everything will work out gloriously well for you. As for me, this city is making me crazy and tired and all these emotions rushing around inside me like a crazed herd of unmilked Holsteins are leaving me exhausted and wishing I was in my little house drinking tea with soymilk and yelling at the cats to leave me alone.

So, there's the truthful answer to the question, How was your trip to Boston?

I hope you all still like me.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Where Have I Been?

2008-09-20T05:06:00.000-07:00

Let's just say the computer company that is named after a fruit (and in my case that fruit should be re-named Lemon) will not be asking to me do a commercial for them very soon. If ever. Their competition might, however, should they ever learn of the twists and tangles of tech support and the repair processs I have been traversing. I was ready to go over to their side, by last Saturday, as I was on the phone yet again with tech support.

I told the person there, "I am going to put this thing in its box and drop it in the river. And then I am heading to Best Buy to get an eMachine."

And he replied, with a faint note of horror, "Oh, no. Don't do that."

And I thought, what is this -- a computer company, or a cult?

And now, after replacing nearly all the parts, and even failing to put some of them back in--yes! the repair service center, their very own, failed to replace my RAM! (honestly, I am not imaginatively gifted enough to be making this shit up), the machine seems to be fixed, seems to be working better than it ever has in the 2 years I have owned it. But I am still not ready to say, Yes, it's fixed. Time will tell.....

So, soon I will return to the mindset of this blog. I can only say for certain that the mornings are cool and foggy, with the sun golden, set high like a brilliant softly rounded topaz gem amidst a bright blue clarity of sky, all of it floating above the tangles of soft grey mist. I hear Canada geese up there, wending their way back south, but taking their time about it as they always do. The leaves on the trees are all still green.

Here on earth, I see a mother deer and her twin older babies out amongst the meadow grass at the tree's edge, the youngsters foolish and curious and unaware of the potential threat of human and dog. They are that intense orange color of summer's end. Their large ears flip and flap as they stare at us with big, dark eyes, so beautiful, so beautiful.

As I turn up the hill again, back into the mist sprawling beneath the old trees, I see a large crow, inky black, perched atop a large grey gravestone. The crow is babbling and chortling to itself as it preens its shining feathers dappled by beads of early day fog. The sunlight pierces that fog in pale golden shafts at random angles and in crazed patterns of new day light.

I emerge from the trees and stop and stand and look out and up at the very top branches of a venerable old tree, its leaves vividly green and tipped by amber gold. The sky is that devastatingly bright September blue, a northern shade, truly.

All this tells me, softly, fiercely, how deeply I am blessed.

May you know that too, today and any day, in whatever way the message comes through to you.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Off to the East

2008-08-30T04:50:00.000-07:00

My daughter is heading off to college today. It is roughly a 4 hour drive to the east. A friend has graciously agreed to drive us. We will spend the night in a hotel that my employers paid for, as a gift to me in appreciation for all my hard work for them this summer. And then tomorrow, between the hours of 1 and 2, we will move my daughter in to this new phase of her life.

I have had many thoughts and emotions about this, not surprisingly, what with my only child going off to school. Part of my mind is awhirl in the sense of how fast time has gone by, when in fact, the years passed as years will and were not sped up by some magic or technological process. It goes fast, and yet, we lived every minute of it.

I can easily say I never expected to raise a child alone, and I can also easily say I did not expect to help her reach for and achieve her life goals alone either. I had thought her Fuckhead Father (FF) would have done the right thing and helped with her expenses. But no. His selfishness has reached a new peak, and I am not wasting any more thought or space on that pathetic fact.

We haven't had an easy summer of it, her and I. Like with most things in her life, what people told me I could expect simply did not happen. When she was a baby and we lived on the farm with FF, people told me how wonderful it is she can grow up in such a delightful place, surrounded by trees and fields and nature. As it turned out, she doesn't actually like being outside all that much, and prefers urban stimulation to nature's sights, sounds, and scents. This summer people told me how wonderful it will be to do things with her and make memories with her, but it turned out she was, for the most part, surly and uncommunicative and largely ungrateful. I am sure it was her way of distancing herself from me, as I have also in my own ways begun to distance myself from her.

She has had her own small freak-outs. She isn't one to talk about her emotions much, but she has changed the color of her hair 3 times in the span of a month.

Last night she came home from a concert, her last outing with a high school friend -- the only high school friend left in town as her college starts even later than my daughter's -- and she began to panic, saying she could not believe it was time to leave already and she is not ready and she has so much to do and blah blah. I told her she had plenty of time, and once she gets there, she and all the other people on her floor, and in her suite, will all be in the same boat. I think she will be fine. I think she is coming into herself. I think this college will provide her with the best opportunity she could hope for, and I think the place is a good fit. We have all day today to get there, to sleep over, and to finally move in early tomorrow afternoon.

When I got up this morning, all her stuff is packed, ready, and assembled here in the livingroom, needing only to be put in the back of our friend's car.

It is my wish that my daughter grows into her beautiful, regal, swan self, and that she begins to trust herself and have confidence in her abilities. She is beautiful; she is intelligent; she is talented-- and hopefully one day, awareness of all those gifts will awaken in her.

I am grateful to have been blessed all these years with as gentle and dignified a spirit as hers to nurture and care for. She has always seemed older than her years to me, even as a baby. I would hold her in my arms and look into her wise, old eyes and have to consciously remind myself that even though I perceive an old, old soul in her, her tiny body is but a few months old. It has always been that way -- me needing to remind myself that even though I see the elder spirit in her, to herself she is what she is, the present chronological age she knows herself to be.

As for me, I am letting her go into the east, the place of the rising sun, of the gift of light, of the dawning of consciousness. And, I will look to the east every morning, after I climb this hill with my dogs, and I will send wishes for peace and contentment, prayers of love and protection her way. The wind will carry them, I trust, and wrap them safely around her.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

photo: Winter Sunrise, courtesy of freefoto.com

Bumby and the Blackberries

2008-08-22T06:06:00.000-07:00

There's a wild blackberry patch on our early morning walk. Both the dogs like to pick and eat the berries. However, Bumby, who is now a 9 year old shaggy grey mess of a mongrel (not unlike myself were I to stop coloring my hair...) delights in the berries with a joy that wiggles her entire body with anticipated delight. She grabs the berries with her front teeth, she gobbles, her tail wags and her whole body curves in an ecstatic dance.

Little Bear, now 10 and generally more serious in his outlook, likes the berries too, and yet he eats with a single minded focus, moving in a straight line, direct and intent on the prize--much like the sled dog he is, pacing steadily along a straight track.

But Bumby's childlike joy! What a sight to see! And as with children, I have to finally say, 'Okay, time to go...", and I pull them away, as they stretch back, eyes looking longingly at the berries.

I do love dogs.

Sunshine

2008-08-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

I can wake up any morning feeling like utter crap, rumpled and stained by bad dreams, or coated in the stale bread crumbs of old worries, but as soon as I get outside and up the hill and see the new day's sunlight tinting the mist an amber gold, and smell the freshness of the night's last moist exhalations coating the grass, and rest my eyes on the myriad shades of green plant life reaching up to the light all around me, I am refreshed, I am renewed -- as new as the day.

Which somehow reminds me -- how about those Jamaican athletes tearing up the track at the Olympics? Given the fact Jamaica is an island of great monetary poverty and has one of the highest murder rates in the world (according to the UN), what brilliant rays of sunshine and hope these brilliant athletes are. And I must say that when I heard how Usain Bolt finished the 100m, looking back, seeing everyone far behind and slowing up in laughter and joy, despite not yet reaching the finish line (and imagine what a time he might have had if he'd kept charging on instead of beginning to celebrate) I thought, how Jamaican of him.....

When I was in Jamaica in July, my special friend Morris and I had a lot of fun drawing on concrete and stones with sidewalk chalk. He drew a heart and then began to write: "Jesus love me and send (h)is sun to shine'. (Jamaicans don't pronounce the letter 'h' -- that's why he wrote 'is' instead of 'his'.)

(Morris, by the way, is roughly 15. I have written of him before. No one knows his true age or birth date, and he and his sister Kerry Ann, are true orphans, with no family to claim them. Which is a sadder thing in Jamaica, where it seems like everyone is connected to someone else somehow. Morris is also what people there call 'simple'. He is one of the sweetest, gentlest souls I have ever encountered.)

I was so inspired by him that I drew a bright yellow star on a large round stone sticking out of the ground. I wrote the word 'Shine' beneath it. And when Morris repeated the word 'shine', I told him he shines, I told him when he smiles, he shines.

Our days are full of shining stars. May you see them, may you greet them, may you know them, and may you shine right back at them.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"...And the Sun Shines"

2008-08-19T04:49:00.000-07:00

I went to the Childen's Home in Jamaica this past July again, my 4th trip. And I do plan to write about it here. I only just began transcribing my journal yesterday. The depth of my emotions surrounding the trip this year is stupendous. It has taken me a lot of time to even be able to begin to put it into words. Going back into the journal was almost like diving deep into an underwater city; there is still so much there that is yet untouched, much less brought up to the surface and the light.

To our partner church, it is a mission trip with A, B, C goals. Receipts are expected, measurable results demanded. To our church, it is a journey of the heart. We go to connect with people, to hug and hold and listen to children who are accustomed to being overlooked. I have real relationships happening there now, after 4 visits. My heart has opened and I have come to love in a way I never allow myself to love here, in the north. Hard to explain. There is an immediacy, a directness, an authenticity to the expression of the people I encounter there. Whereas here, people wear more masks, hide behind artifice and social forms. It is an elaborate dance of subterfuge. Not so there. And it is a relief and a joy.

I love Jamaica. I am at home there. I did a little experiment on the bus ride back down to Ochi after we had left the kids. The windows were open. I smiled at every man I saw, and every man I saw, regardless of age, looked right back at me and smiled in return. Openly, like sunshine.

Before I left, I found an explanation of the colors of the Jamaican flag, the yellow, green, and black. This is what I found: "Hardship there is, but the land is green, and the sun shines."

To be continued.

Until next time, I remain your friend, Rozenkraai

I Told the Sky How Annoyed I Was

2008-08-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

I just went through a freaky full moon. I just went through a week from hell. I just walked through the fires and tread the raging waters, carrying a balloon as I went, alternately angry and racked with laughter. Where to begin?

18 years ago, when my daughter was born? Life certainly changed then. And now she is informing me she is legally an adult and can drink in Canada, she can drink in Mexico, she can get a tattoo and work as a stripper. She can vote and go to war. Good for you, I think. But can you put your clothes away?

Her birthday was Tuesday. She has been so odd, so difficult to please all summer that I, veteran of abuse that I am, found myself with confidence whittled away to a bare shred of finest gossamer spider web nothing. Buy her a gift? And watch her lip subtly curl in a sneer? No. Not up for that. Gave her money and took her out for a meal. The rain poured as we went, though the western sky was sunny and clear and so we walked beneath the arch of a great rainbow. She thought it was there for her, and I thought it was there for me. Mothers remember their children's birthdays in a slightly different light.

We got through the meal and she didn't sneer or roll her eyes. A good thing. It has been a summer of such. She is off to college in 2 weeks. She is living more in the then than in the now. It's how she deals with it. This change, massive, like a continent altered by earthquake or hurricane.

The next day, with steamy condescension in her voice, she lectured me on perceived realities ahead. Her tone clearly said, You are stupid, and I don't need your help. And so I very calmly told her how her summer long sneers and sighs and nothing is good enough for this princess affected me, chipping away at my confidence until I did not even know what to give her for her birthday. I had given other gifts this summer that were met with 'So what'. And I told her that. All very matter-of-factly I told her that, and I told her more, and then I took myself off to my room, to read and be very far away from ungrateful changeling children becoming women, gawky chicks becoming regal swans and yet not as graceful as they will be once they have had more practice.

That night I dreamt of a beautiful silvery city, shining by a misty white and softly blue ocean. The edge of the world. I was driving her there. And I knew then, I was ready to let her go.

That was Wednesday. By Thursday, she was making an effort to be pleasant. I made an effort to be appreciative. Throughout this time, the rain fell while the sun shone, thunder boomed out of a blue sky, and the moon grew fuller, lighting up the midnight sky.

Friday morning, 5:45am. I open the back door and hook the tie-out to Little Bear's collar. I shut the door, attend to the morning tasks, hear him lunge at a cat, most likely, and then his woof, farther away. I opened the door, went down the porch steps and found his collar, broken, attached to the lead, the one I got special, the one that can take 1700 pounds worth of lunge. The lead held; the collar failed--the second he had broken this year.

When Little Bear runs away, it is an opportunity for panic. He kills cats, given the opportunity. He plays smart ass with the cars. He will not let me catch him. He rolls in stink and he eats nasty unnameable objects. But that morning, I felt a true sense of God's peace within me, and I was not worried--I thought I would first have my tea and my devotions, my Scripture reading, and my prayers. Then I would take out Bumby on a lead and try to find him.

And so we went. And Little Bear, intrigued, followed us. He came close enough for me to catch him, but Bumby leapt at him, and so, he skittered off. That pissed me off. I dragged Bumby back to the house, and made her go in. She barked, she yipped, I heard her through the window. I saw Little Bear up the hill. I set off after him. I kept going up, looking for him, and when I got nearly to the top, I happened to look back down the hill, and I see Little Bear crossing the road back into our driveway. Which meant I had to hoof it all the way back down to try to get him. As I walked back, I looked up at the sky, and I said to God, in an angry tone, "I really do not need this." If I were in a movie I would have shaken my fist at the sky too.

I must say here, that despite all this drama, I had wakened with a sense of calm. And that calm was still inside me, but it was eroding fast. My sense, my faith, that all would be well was slipping away from me.

So here comes Little Bear, back up the hill towards me, but over across the way. I live on a fairly busy road by small town standards. He had already lunged out at a passing truck and made me scream his name. I kept talking to him as he came up nearer to me. I had angled completely across the road by this time.

Little Bear is wild and wily for a domesticated dog. He will not ever come to me. What he will do is he will stop long enough to let me come to him. And so he did, under the ruse of sniffing at a tuft of grass. He let me approach him and praise him and stroke him and put the leash around his neck. Then we went back to the house and got Bumby and had our walk.

All this to say, God was testing me. God was waiting to see if I lost my cool and panicked. I almost did. God wasn't through with me either.

I got home and discovered the phone line was dead. I already did not have a working computer, and now no phone either. I called it in to the phone company and the computer voice told me it would be fixed by 5pm, Monday. 3 days away. Yippee.

The rest of the day was the usual crap. Work. Walking. I drove a borrowed car with a cracked windshield to get Little Bear a new collar. My daughter went with her Fuckhead Father (FF) for the weekend. I went to bed when it got dark, reading a thick novel, eloquent, beautiful, tragic and cruel.

Around 1am I heard a tremendous cat fight. It sounded awfully close, like maybe it was even inside. I got up to go out and look. The screen in the kitchen window was gone! I did a quick head count of the cats and discovered one was gone. I shut the window fast, and found flip flops and went outside, into the heavy dewey wet, into the silvery moonlight, like walking into water. I looked for the screen. It was nowhere I could see. I called the cat. I walked down into the yard, calling his name, softly. I went back inside and got Little Bear, wanting to see how he would react once he was outside. He acted as if nothing were amiss. I looked for the screen some more, I circled the house calling the cat. Finally I went back inside. And there was the cat standing in the kitchen. Where had he been? I wedged a wooden spoon in the window to make sure it stayed shut, for I was properly freaked out by then, thinking how easy it was for someone, any one, anything, to get into the house--and with the dead phone, I was utterly unable to call 911. I went back to bed and prayed prayers of thanksgiving to God while hearing another cat fight continuing on outside my window. I was so mindfully thankful we were all inside and safe. Thankful no cats had jumped out the window into the night, thankful no cats or rabid raccoons or whatevers had jumped in the window into the house!

I was grateful and mindful of all our blessings. But I was also slightly rattled out of my mind, as were the cats long into the next day. Even so, God had spoken to me yet again, in the deep of the night, lit by a silvery moon, God had called to me to respond, and I rose from my sleep and stepped into the darkness and I responded and never felt afraid, just saw what needed to be done, and did it. (Though as I did it, a part of my mind reminded me of how such scenes play out in movies, with the woman taken unawares by creepy men or space aliens hiding in the vines. A part of my mind was also thinking, as I walked through the cold wet grass calling the missing cat that actually I wouldn't mind having one cat less, that it'd be a bit of a relief.)

I had been having a crisis of faith all week. Exhausted, frustrated, discouraged. Saying to the Lord, "I believe; help my unbelief". He heard me. It was rough and rocky and potentially scary but I felt like I was being tested, tested to a deeper level of faith in the one God who loves and cares for us, who holds us in the palm of his hands, who shelters us under his great wings. Ragged and rattled, I had lost the feel of that assurance, but by the end of Friday into Saturday, I most securely had it back.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Back

2008-08-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

I have been away for far too long. So much has happened, so much has changed. I will be adding entries here again soon. For now, I leave you with a haiku:

the river tells me
always keep moving forward
singing as you go.

spring from the north

2008-03-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

the rain fell but did not wash away all the snow, back to the river, as i had hoped it would. and yet as we walked, there was bare ground visible, and plenty of it. squishy and wet, the mud scented by the passing of countless feet, two legs, four legs. the dogs were delirious with it. so much so they broke out in a crazed dance, running joyful circles, turning, leaping, catching up snow in their mouths and eating it, pantingly, smilingly. the wind was out of the north but it was not cold and biting; it was fresh, damp, alive. it felt like a vital caress, a sounding back to life, a bath with strong hands gently smoothing away my fears. it felt like a wily angel sending mixed messages of hope and necessary darkness. i thought of jacob wrestling all night with that fierce angel at the river. the encounter left him sore and lame. perhaps what i have perceived as demons out to destroy me are only fierce and wily angels out to trick me back to full throated life? goading me to defiance and humility?

Dr. Freud's Penis

2008-03-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl, I used to take baths with my cousin Kip. He was a great pal. His mom was nuts and an abuser; she was the man in the wheelchair's cousin. His dad was my mother's cousin, both of them nasty too, but in a whole other way--they were nasty with their talk, with their minds, not so much with their hands. Kip was a sweet boy, and we had simple, innocent childish fun together. His mother sexually abused me, at the age when I was too young to make sense of it, or even to tell on her--just like the man in the wheelchair did. (And it did not take me long to learn that telling on the adult never ever led to anything good for me.) I can only imagine what she did to Kip, or for how long. Or if at all. Maybe she liked messing with girls better. I know she was obsessed with her own genitalia--she stayed in my room when they came to visit and I accidentally walked in on her masturbating there. I backed out of that room so fast, and went somewhere and hid. I was really scared.

(One of the precursors to my last breakdown was the hypnotherapy sessions I was having with a therapist who had just learned the technique and liked to practice it on me. Little did she (or I!) know what a huge monster it would call to the surface in me, as times of Kip's mom abusing me began to surface in bits and pieces of memory and body sensation. It was painful and sickening and totally rocked me right off my foundations. After the breakdown, and my participation in the day program at the psych hospital, where I had told them of the hypnotherapy and the woman's inability to handle the consequences of it, I ended up telling that therapist what had happened to me, and how her practicing on me contributed to it--the memory of the uncomfortable angle of my neck as Kip's mom held me down on the table, of the sunlight shining into my face and the smell of the cigarette smoke lazily coiling up beside us making me queasy. I remembered that she always volunteered to go change my diaper so that she could manipulate me to orgasm. I remembered all that and it sent me right off the edge of the known earth. I told all the therapists that in the hopes they would not perpetuate such treatment on anyone else ever again.)

Anyway, they used to put us in the bath together. Knowing what a pervert his mother was (she died of cancer a few years ago and I was not sorry, in fact I thought, 'Serves her right.'), she probably hoped Kip and I would engage in some hanky panky so she could watch and get off on it. We didn't. Despite what the adults did to us, we were still innocent children.

All this is a long winded introduction into saying, when I was a small girl I knew about penises. And this is what I thought about penises, Dr. Freud. I thought that as boys grew older, their penises got smaller and smaller and finally dissolved so that by the time they were adults, we all looked the same.

At the time I was 6 or 7, my best friend was named Doreen and she came from a gigantic Irish American family who lived down the other end of the street. She had several older brothers. She knew the truth about penises. So, when I told her my theory about dissolving penises, she laughed really hard, and then she set me straight about that--saving me future embarrassment.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Flat Line

2008-02-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

I had the sense early this morning that my life is a flat line, a bleak horizon. I felt the demons of fear and despair gnawing at me, and I became overwhelmed. Now all I want to do is stay home and tidy up and reclaim the sense that I have some control over my life. (Do I? And will cleaning the floor and keeping guard here, making sure all is tidy and safe, is that really going to make it all better?)

My daughter went out with friends last night. I woke at 4am and saw the lights were still on in the living room, so I got up and went out there to discover she was not yet home. I went over to the phone and saw there had been 14 calls. My instant fear was something bad had happened and the state police had tried to call me all those times. I need glasses (and can't afford them!) and the light was dim so I could not read the numbers on the caller ID. That frustrated me! That was when I discovered the lamp right near the phone had been knocked over by the cats and the bulb lay shattered in the corner. I fumbled with the phone and dialed my voice mail number, and then was subjected to a mandatory message from the phone company all about how they are going to upgrade the voice mail service. I had to sit through that endless blather while I waited in fear and frustration, feeling very much like a Bad Mother because I didn't stay out on the couch instead of going into bed so that I would be able to hear the phone. Finally I was able to listen to my messages, and there she was telling me of a change in plans and where she was going, but it all sounded a bit vague to my worried ears. She said she would continue to try to call me, which she did do; that's why there were 14 calls.

I turned out the lights. I went back to bed. I felt like a Bad Mother. Because I have depression, because it sucks my energy and I need to sleep. Because I have just one phone and it is on the other end of the house. Because I close my bedroom door so that cats won't come in and bother me with their nonsense. I battered and berated myself. And finally, I realized I was succumbing to the lure of the dark demons; they were swarming me like hungry fish. I tried to console myself. I told myself that if the state police really needed to get a hold of me, they would have come pounding on my door. But I wasn't very deeply consoled; the light inside me was too dim. So then my fears seized the opportunity and began spiraling my thoughts into dizziness, conjuring potential financial disasters and all the many other ways I live on a very fine edge, trusting in faith to be held up by God, trusting in faith that anything that comes will be nothing I cannot handle. Except it all felt very skimpy there in the dark as I clutched a stuffed bear to my heart, talking to God but not sure anyone was hearing me just then, and I felt just as much like a lonely shivering child with too thin a blanket as I ever have. That was when I realized I am very overwhelmed by trying to hold my life together--that, in fact, it feels like a fucking disaster and a mess-- and I am too ashamed to tell anyone that fact.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

I Know Why

2008-02-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

There is an article in today's New York Times written by Patricia Cohen and entitled 'Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers'. There has been, she writes, "an unusually large increase in suicides among middle-aged Americans in recent years. Just why thousands of men and women have crossed the line between enduring life’s burdens and surrendering to them is a painful question for their loved ones. But for officials, it is a surprising and baffling public health mystery."

Remember a few posts back when I talked about how I used to wonder why Virginia Woolf killed herself at middle age, because when I was young I always thought if you could make it this far, you had somehow made it? Read on.

"Linda Cronin was 43 and working in a gym when she gulped down a lethal dose of prescription drugs in her Denver apartment in 2006, after battling eating disorders and depression for years."

"Ms. Cronin explained in a note that she had struggled with an inexplicable gloom that would leave her cowering tearfully in a closet as early as age 9. After attempting suicide before, she had checked into a residential treatment program not long before she died, but after a month, her insurance ran out. Her parents had offered to continue the payments, but her sister, Kelly Gifford, said Ms. Cronin did not want to burden them.

Ms. Gifford added, “I think she just got sick of trying to get better.”'

"For women 45 to 54, the (suicide) rate leapt 31 percent."

"Without a “psychological autopsy” into someone’s mental health, Dr. Caine said, “we’re kind of in the dark.”

"And although an unusual event might cause the suicide rate to spike, like in Thailand after Asia’s economic collapse in 1997, suicide much more frequently punctuates a long series of troubles — mental illness, substance abuse, unemployment, failed romances."

Many depressives appear very competent on the surface, and are often very accomplished people. What with the stigma surrounding mental health issues (the nice way to say mental illness), most of us have learned to conceal as much as possible the times when we are feeling bad--to put a good face on things. Until our energy runs out and the depression gets too strong, that is, and we can't keep up the facade anymore.

People who have not themselves suffered from true chronic depression simply do not know what it is like to have yourself taken over by this dark monster that numbs sensation, turns a regular day into an endurance event, saps your vitality, makes you crabby and irritable and unable to enjoy life or to believe you are worthy of love. I even know that that monster could lead me to my death and that my loving friends would feel sad and bad and wonder what more they could have done for me. And the answer would be: "Nothing! You did your best for me!" They just don't understand the power of depression.

I have recently been absolutely surrounded by loving friends, eager to show me kindness and affection. And the hardest thing is, when I feel bad like I have been feeling, I really cannot comprehend their loving words or their affectionate efforts on my behalf. I keep thinking they will one day see the 'real me' and realize they should never have wasted their time on me. As if I am the monster, living behind a solid dark grey rock wall, somewhere behind my heart, somewhere in the center of my brain, and their loving attentions are waves of sound and light reverberating against that rock. Or, it is like I am trapped behind a wall of ice and their kind words are pebbles tossed at the ice. I can only hear the ticking of the pebbles striking the ice, I cannot comprehend the heat of the love and affection inside them.

My hope is always for the day when I begin to feel better and those walls begin to fall down.

But I also know that even when the walls fall down, they never stay down, and eventually I am trapped back behind them again.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Photo: 'Star' by Rozenkraai)

Providence

2008-02-16T14:52:00.000-08:00

I have made some pretty dumb decisions. One of them was to move to Providence after college. The real plan was to move back to Boston, where I had lived for several years after high school. But I took the train to Providence, because my mother and her husband lived relatively nearby, and I was going to stay with them while I looked for a place in Boston. I walked out of the train station, looked at the city spread out before me and said, "This looks nice. I'll stay here."

Big mistake. It was like living in a foreign country and it turned out to be one of the worst years of my life, no small thing in a life of many bad years. I think it seemed all the worse because I had just come from a few very good years at a small college in a beautiful rural area. I had just come from a few years of thriving and feeling nurtured. But, all things must pass, as they say, and it was time to move on. I mean, me, stay in a place where things were going well? Too scary! Things going well is just the precursor to things going to shit! And even though I had such high hopes for myself by then, I was just as lost as ever.

I found an apartment (they called them 'tenements' there) on the third floor above a fish restaurant in an Italian neighborhood. There is another Italian neighborhood in that city that is semi-famous and kind of a tourist attraction. This was not that one. This was the shabbier version. The apartment was permeated with the oily smell of fried fish. The building swayed when big trucks rumbled by. The previous tenants had not cleaned out the refrigerator, and it was full of rotted food. But it was the only place I could get with 6 cats in tow. I also think I got the place because one of the guys in the rental office liked me, but I was in no way ready to get all friendly with an unknown, quiet man who had a loyal German shepherd following him everywhere. My neighbor below me was a very elderly woman who told me all she could eat was bread soaked in coffee or milk, "like a baby", as she said. I think she was related to the people who owned the building. The woman across the way from me was originally from Pittsburgh and had 2 young sons, and a husband who was there sometimes, but mostly not. He was Hispanic. She was Irish American, and she spoke as if she was raised by people with heavy brogues. The older boy was bright and sweet, and the younger one was sweet and had autism and was mostly locked away in his own mind.

She was pretty much locked away there too. She could not drive, she had no car, she waited around for him to come home and give her money. He did not give her much. He kept a lot of it for himself and used it at the dog track. I would talk to her on the steps by the door we used to enter the place--it led out into the parking lot, right beside the dumpster. She'd stay out there smoking cigarettes, watching the boys play on the black top. I was having a really hard time finding a job, so I spent a bit of time talking to her. I played with the boys too, and got the younger one to say the word balloon--he said it "ba-doon". We had a game where we would stomp on balloons. He really liked it.

That July was hot. The black top parking lot radiated up the heat in shimmery waves. She began to talk more and more about how badly he treated her. She became feverish in her speech, and somewhat irrational. She told me she was keeping a knife by her bed. She told me she saw the devil out on the fire escape looking in at her with fiery red eyes. She locked the boys in their room at night with a hook and eye lock. It finally got so bad she had told the husband to get out and to stay away.

That July the full moon came up mean and red. Reminded me of the old Creedence Clearwater song, "I see a bad moon a'risin....' It was hot, it was humid, it was nasty. I was soaked in sweat in my bed as I tried to sleep. At some point I heard sirens and feet stomping up and down the stairs. On my bedroom walls, I saw the flashing blue lights from police cars and could hear their radios. I stayed in my bed. I did not get up and look. I did not move. I stayed very still and quiet, like a child when the adults are fighting and I want them to not be reminded of my presence.

But sometime the next day there was a knock at my door. There was my neighbor. She had on a really pretty sun dress. It was cream colored with spaghetti straps and was patterned with flowers, blue and lavender and green, a little yellow, a little red. She was bruised all over--huge dark purple bruises on her face and shoulders and chest. She had a black eye. Quite unselfconsciously, she told me all about her husband sneaking in the night before. He wore sneakers, she said, and crept in. He crept in and he began to beat her. He didn't know she had the knife beside her bed, and she used it. She stabbed him. She killed him. She finished her story by saying, "I don't know how I will get that stain out of my rug."

Her public defender was a sad looking man with a bad toupee and a skin ailment that gave him white spots. He came to talk to me. He sat at my kitchen table and tape recorded what I said. When he asked me if I thought she had acted in self-defense, I had said, "Oh, absolutely, yes."

I'll bet you think I am making this up.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Tasty

2008-02-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

Dare I say this? Yes, I do dare.

Last Sunday, one of the liturgical readings was from Genesis, chapter 3. That's the Eve and the Serpent and the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden section. Yes, that story. The one we women have been paying for for centuries--'the woman made me do it, Lord, really she did, she said it tasted good.' Well, I heard it in a new way. I heard this. I heard that when they ate of the forbidden fruit, they became able to discern the difference between good and evil. They became like God, in that regard. The serpent did not lie and Eve knew a good deal when she heard it. And lazy Adam, he should have thanked her for what she did. Because, given the choice between childlike innocence all my life, and the ability to look at the complexities of the world with discernment and judgment, with free will and the ability to respond to challenges as I see fit, I would eat the fruit too. I would prefer to be an actor, an enactor, than a passive child, waiting to be rescued, waiting for some one else to figure out what we do next. It's like all those TV shows with the male hero and the woman sidekick and whenever the shit hits the fan, the woman turns to him and screeches, What do we do now???

(Of course, I haven't had the luxury of a male hero to protect me and make all the hard decisions for me, especially when things got rough. Actually, more often than not, they got rough because of the male 'hero'. And so it is to God and to Jesus that I turn for help; I turn to that wisdom voice inside me, that which is commonly called 'the Holy Spirit', Jesus' last gift to us humans as we fretted and wrung our hands at the thought of him leaving us. He hasn't left us, for as he says at the end of Matthew's Gospel, "For I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.")

And sure, God was mad at Eve and Adam. God is mad a lot in the Old Testament. They broke his rule. He threw them out of the garden. Nothing new in that. I know what that feels like. I have been broken and banished and abandoned and humiliated myself. We humans, we all still break God's rules. Seems to be part of our human nature, and not just feminine human nature. Maybe that's why that's one of the very first stories, after the creation, in the whole Bible. Because it is basic and fundamental.

And so is this: God still loves us. God still gives us endless chances to get it right. Because it is up to us to get it right, actively. Not to sit there and wait for God to swoop in and fix it all. We have to make an effort to meet God at least half-way--and we do that by making an effort to do the right thing, to live mindfully and consciously, an ability given to us by Mother Eve who said, 'Hey, taste this fruit. It's good.'

Okay so now it's crazy time again, and I lose you here. Because after listening to all that about Eve and the Serpent, and then listening to the part in Matthew's Gospel about Jesus being tempted by the Evil One during his own 40 days in the desert--facing down Satan with Scripture, no less--, and then thinking about how it is now Lent, a season when people who participate in this part of the Christian walk face our own sources of temptation--be they an enticing food or a bad habit or a bad attitude or a negative way of thinking or whatever (pick your favorite!)--I thought I heard the sound of giant slithering snakes right there in our sanctuary. My eyes were closed as I listened to our Pastor pray prayers of thanksgiving and intercession, and I heard that slithery sound and not knowing what it was, I saw with my inner vision the sight of giant black snakes slithering up and down the pews: the visible symbols of all our temptations.

Because we are all tempted in how so ever many ways. Even more so during Lent, when we have turned our spiritual attentions that way. When we fast and pray and strive and walk that lonely walk with Jesus. It is not a bad thing, to struggle and to be tempted. It is a human thing. And we are the children of the great God who lets us struggle and fall and rise again and so learn from the falling, the great God who forgives us our fumbling attempts to be nearer to him. The great God who gave us Jesus, finest most divine teacher of them all to embody our human weakness and be at one with us, he who was wrongly arrested and tortured and humiliated and abandoned and finally hung up on a cross to die.

He did not run away. He stuck it out. He could have run away that night in Gethsemane Garden, he knew they were coming to get him, he had plenty of time to go. But no. He stayed, he stayed and he spent the time praying-- for us, for goodness sake.

And, he did not deny who he was. Pilate asked him if he was the King of the Jews, and Jesus replied, "So you say." Like, do your worst, Pilate, do your worst, let's get this over with. (Of course it was his own people who demanded such savage justice for one they considered a blasphemer extraordinaire, and it is NOT anti-Semitic to say that. Read it in all the Gospel versions: Pilate put the decision to the Jewish authorities. Politically expedient of him, really, being a Roman authority in an occupied land. He didn't want open rebellion.) And so, my sweet Jesus hung up there and he died and the sky was split asunder and the women wept. He was taken down and put away in a stone tomb. And a couple of days later, he rose again. He rose again. He showed us by facing his fear and his tormentors, he showed us by rising again, the magnificent power of our great God's blazingly glorious love, a love that defies the darkness of sin and death. A love that transcends temptation and all our puny human badness. And in our Protestant tradition, we are forgiven by God's grace through our faith in Jesus, in knowing that he was God's beloved son and he came to earth as a gift of love to us.

What they did to Jesus was so bad--and yet, he forgave them. He forgave them, and from the cross his asked God to forgive them, and he even forgave his own closest disciples who denied they knew him and ran away from him in his time of need. People still keep doing bad stuff like that to each other and to children and animals and to the planet every single day. Every single moment of every single day. And God still loves us, and gives us every single moment the chance to reverse our ways and begin to treat one another with love. To live the knowledge of the difference between good and evil acts. It is up to us. Truly. We simply have to get over ourselves, and do it.

Anyway. The snakes? Turns out the battery in the microphone needed changing. Nearly everyone I asked said, 'Oh yeah, I heard that, I thought it was a problem with the sound system.'

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Image: painting by William Blake, 'Eve Tempted by the Serpent', Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

His Birthday Too

2008-02-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

We just had a birthday, Little Bear and me. I am 50; he is 10. Milestones for us both. It was 10 years ago that I packed it up and left the X. We moved out on Halloween weekend. On the advice of a friend, my daughter was staying at her friend's house that weekend, and they were having pure Halloween fun. That left Little Bear, The Empress (cat), and me that first night in our new home, the second floor of that old tumble down house that was nice once but in shabby disrepair now. The tenants downstairs were moving in that weekend too. He needed to do some plumbing repairs and shut off the water. So we were waterless after our grubby move, but I dealt with it, like I deal with everything, by enduring. Little Bear was young then, about 8 months old. He barked at every sound. He jumped up in the window to look out at whatever sparked his interest down on the street below. He got caught in the cord of my new lamp and pulled it off the table. I told him to shut up, I picked up the lamp and put it in a different spot, I got back in bed and tried to sleep. I did what I do: pick up the pieces, and start over again.

As the weather got colder, and the days shorter, I would awaken early to the company of the dog and the cat. Little Bear's bed was at the foot of my bed, my futon on the floor. The Empress would sleep with me. In the cold and the increasing dark, Little Bear and I would head out first thing for a walk, so he could pee and sniff and stretch his legs. I couldn't just let him out the back door; we had virtually no yard. And so we'd walk. Five times a day, at least, I would take him for a walk so he could do what he needed to do. I was used to the unlimited access to the outdoors that country living provides, but I was in the village now, and wasn't sure of everyone's turf. So, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, right before work, right after work, and after supper. It kept me occupied and it kept me distracted. I could focus on him and not focus on the cold, my loneliness, my uncertainty, the solitude of this new stage in my life--this constant time of improvisation, on my own with a child depending on me. I had been on my own before but not with the responsibility of a daughter. I had to make sure things were right. I had to provide a good environment for her. I did not expect her to endure like I did, or sleep at the foot of my bed like a dog. I did not want her to know how hard or how scary it was for me. She was just 8 years old. I did not want her to have adult sized worries. I did not let her see how hard it was for me. And now that she is older, and acts all unconcerned about how hard things are for me, I have to get over my annoyance and remind myself why: I made it that way. I succeeded at not laying my worries on her. I let her be a child.

Anyway, that made Little Bear my main emotional support. My puppy, now 10 years old. I look at him and see a major stage in my life, a time of huge transition, challenge, and accomplishment. I was so alone when I first moved to this village. But I had a warm, loving dog to brighten up the cold, dark dawns. I am prey to anxiety when I first wake up. His happy face and his daily good morning kiss--he still does it, comes over and licks me when he sees I am awake--chase the worries back into their dark webs in the obscure corners they originate from.

The other thing I see when I look back over this 10 years past is the home I found in this village when I followed the white light of my meditative vision to the big old brick church on the corner. The one with the pretty windows. The one with the sweet faced woman pastor robed in white with a rainbow stole around her neck, a woman who lives her faith, who shines the light of Jesus' love and responds with compassionate kindness to all who seek her attention. She does! She is the Real Deal. And so, that church is such a welcoming place. I could feel the love and the warmth the first time I walked into that sanctuary. I have friends there, solid friends, like family, only better because they are people trying to follow the light of the values Jesus taught them--love unconditionally, forgive, be compassionate, be kind. ("I was a stranger and you welcomed me in..." Matthew 25:35b) I am anchored in my life thanks partly to them. I have brightness and laughter thanks partly to them. They welcomed me in. They didn't judge me or disbelieve me. They let me be me. In their loving space, I have healed. They, and Little Bear and Bumby and my daughter and all the other critters who live here have helped me re-root myself so that I might thrive on this sunny hillside above the river, my heart's home.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

('Rozenkraai and Little Bear' photo by my daughter)

Gentle Gifts

2008-02-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

It would be wrong for me to say I expect kindness, because the fact is, I don't expect it. Some people might, but I don't, and so when it comes my way, I am always deeply touched, moved to tears, heart warmed. I guess, I expect things to be hard, and for people to be indifferent, if not mean. Just the way I am.

But when kindness comes, I treasure it. The acts, the words. A driver who stops and lets me cross. A friend who drives 2 hours simply to lend me a book she thinks I will benefit from. The check out girl at the market who expresses concern at me carrying a heavy load of groceries home. A teacher in high school who took the time to treat my poetry as the gift it was, and helped me try to get it submitted for publication (and honestly commiserated with me when it wasn't). A friend's mom who consoled me with kind words and a cute card when I lost a school election that she knew took a lot of courage for me to even run for (and my own mother never even commented on any of it). I found an unexpected gift from a friend today, a bag full of thoughtfully chosen goodies given to me simply because she loves me, and knows I have been having a rough time. A woman at church goes out of her way every Sunday to find me and hug me and press her cheek against mine. Another acquaintance says, "Yay!" and shows the thumbs up sign every time he sees me. Kind words, well wishes, gentle actions, common courtesies, even. Lights in the murk to remind me I really am not that bad a person. I hold these lights in my mind for as long as I can, and I examine them again and again, like splendid and brilliant pieces of gleaming treasure. I turn them over and over and around again, examining them carefully from all sides, memorizing their details.

I even got some unexpected kindness from myself this week. I came home early one afternoon, not feeling well, and I stayed home the next day too. I allowed myself to not feel well without kicking myself in the ass for not being perfect. I allowed myself time to rest and renew, I gave myself permission to stop trying to hold the world up on my shoulders in fear that my life will all come crashing down and people won't like me anymore if I don't. And with that time, that space, that rest, came a realization: that when I despise myself for being ill, for not being perfect, for being depressed and tired and sad and then deny myself the care I need, I do to myself what my parents and the X used to do to me, and I feel shamed all over again for having needs. I re-create that raw emotional pain and it sears me and tears me up inside and makes everything harder than it already was.

And you know what? I am not going to do that to myself anymore!

Or as a friend said, after I shared this beautiful revelation with her: Be a happy train wreck. God will still love you.

Talk about unexpected kindness.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

('Trippy Petunias' photo by Rozenkraai)

Fighting Dogs

2008-02-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

That's a photo from today's 'New York Times' (taken by Garrett Davis) of a man named John Garcia and a dog named Georgia. It comes from an article called 'Given Reprieve, N.F.L. Star's Dogs Find Kindness' written by Juliet Macur.

Georgia used to 'live' at Michael Vick's Bad Newz Kennels, a kind of concentration camp for pit bulls forced to be fighting dogs. (Pit bulls are actually, officially, American Staffordshire terriers, and they are a lively, intelligent, and affectionate breed of dog, especially when treated well and not traumatized and abused into bad ass dogs-- into fighters.) Georgia is fortunate because now she lives at the Best Friends Animal Society sanctuary in Utah, where Mr. Garcia is the assistant dog care manager, and where she is being rescued, rehabilitated, and loved back to a semblance of normal doggy life. In essence, she and the other dogs rescued from Vick's kennel are being treated for PTSD. They are survivors of torture and abuse.

She has no teeth. They were all removed, they surmise, so that she would be a more willing breeder. Found at Vick's hellhole kennel were stands where female dogs were tied up and forced to mate with males. The staff at the sanctuary suspect she tried to bite the males while being raped, and so, her teeth were removed--all 42 of them. According to the article, "Having those teeth extracted, Dr. McMillan and other vets said, must have been excruciating. Even with medication, dogs are in pain after losing one tooth, which may take more than an hour of digging, prying and leveling to pull."

Dr. Frank McMillan is the Best Friends veterinarian. According to the 'Times' article, he is also "an expert on the emotional health of animals, who edited the textbook “Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals.” " He is also quoted as saying he is "most worried about Georgia".

She "barks incessantly at her doghouse." She rolls "her toys so obsessively her nose is rubbed raw." The article goes on to describe her this way: "A quick survey of Georgia, a caramel-colored pit bull mix with cropped ears and soulful brown eyes, offers a road map to a difficult life. Her tongue juts from the left side of her mouth because her jaw, once broken, healed at an awkward angle. Her tail zigzags.

"Scars from puncture wounds on her face, legs and torso reveal that she was a fighter. Her misshapen, dangling teats show that she might have been such a successful, vicious competitor that she was forcibly bred, her new handlers suspect, again and again."

This is only part of the story. There are 21 other former fighting dogs at the sanctuary in Utah, and an additional 25 others are in foster care throughout the country. Only one had to be euthanized because he was irreversibly aggressive towards people. Michael Vick is in Leavenworth Federal prison, serving a 23 month sentence for his part in this canine nightmare, and he "agreed to pay $928,073 for evaluation and care of all the dogs." says the article. Each of the dogs at the Utah sanctuary have had $18,275 paid for their lifetime care. Though the hope is that one day they could be adopted out to families, the reality of that is very small. Only one of them was assessed to be adoptable, and Vick contributed just $5000 towards his care.

The article goes on to state: “These dogs have been beaten and starved and tortured, and they have every reason not to trust us,” Mr. Garcia said as Georgia crawled onto his lap, melted into him for an afternoon nap and began to snore. “But deep down, they love us and still want to be with us. It is amazing how resilient they are.”

It has been well documented that people who abuse animals often easily move on to abusing children and other people they consider weaker than themselves. I have more hope for sweet Georgia, who still somehow knows how to love, than I do for Michael Vick and other people who perpetuate such hurtful abuse upon relatively powerless others and consider it sport.

Interestingly, the 'Times' ran this article in the pro football section of the Sports page on the day before the Super Bowl.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Truly Tearless

2008-02-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

Okay I am a little 'off topic' here this morning, but I almost could not believe my eyes when I saw an AFP article about scientists in New Zealand developing a tearless onion. What is wrong with people? Must we remove anything that might cause us harmless discomfort? What a bunch of spineless self-absorbed babies we are all becoming. Suck it up, people! It's just an onion, for goodness sake. Why don't we apply our science to real ills, like the harm and damage we do to each other and to our beautiful mother planet every single day. We actually do have the technology, if applied properly, to turn back the environmental devastation happening, and even to apply our own wit to becoming more compassionate and caring individuals who do not put their own self-interest first. We do! (You could start with re-thinking how you use that gas hog in your driveway, but I won't go there, just now.) But, honestly, tearless onions. How about we are truly tearless because we are no longer sending women with Down's Syndrome out as suicide bombers (this past week in Baghdad, look it up), or sending out dogs or roosters to fight to the death so we can gamble over the results. (See my post--above-- on the heartbreaking yet hopeful article in today's 'New York Times' about former NFL player Michael Vick's fighting dogs and what has happened to them since he was convicted on federal dog fighting charges and sent to prison.) How about we show poor messed up Britney Spears some compassion and stop ogling her sufferings and feeling superior because she isn't us or one of our own daughters? (Think of one of your worst moments, and imagine it recorded by the press and broadcast all around the world.) Yes, I have been reading too much news again, but come on, let's try and get our priorities straight.

(photo compliments of the UMassAmherst website.)

gifts

2008-02-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

in the early morning soft,
she brought me a gift.
it was wrapped in gauze--
a bandage filled
with sweet moss.
she placed it on my forehead as I slept
and sprinkled it with buds
of dried lavender, dusty,
ancient, alive. they fell
like vivid tears
beneath the bones of my eyes.

in the early morning grey
and rainswept,
he brought me a name.
he breathed it into my ear
as i turned twisted
in fleece , tangled in wool.
his breath was the froth
leaping forth from a sea
that covered this earth
before the stories began.

and then, my dreams
enclosed me in a fiery fever.
my heart was a horse
trapped in that fire,
its panicked hooves
drumming out the pain
of their fear inside me.
the softness fled.
the grey rain was replaced

by the blonde dawn,
and i rose forgetful, a vine
twining to the light. his name
lay on my tongue like a pearl
upon an oyster, salty-slick
and bright. her bandage of moss
fell into my hands
like seed strewn by finches
eager for lunch.

i looked to the east.
i spoke to the light: i am nourished, i said,
and i am named. will i still get lost?

a wasp on the windowsill
took my words and carried them upon her twinkling wings
back to her nest of mud
hidden beneath the roof beams, and there
she laid them to rest.

that was when my heart replied:
there is no more getting lost. because
i am pierced
directly
through my garnet-dark center,
by an arrow green feathered,
black shafted, and swift. i am pierced. and so,
i am found. i am named.
and in any wilderness,
i am nourished.

Escaping the House

2008-01-30T08:48:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about how my Gram used to say things like, "I'd be better off dead," and how distressed those words would make me feel. Her depression was a secret thing, for the most part, something quiet, blending into the background, just as she did. It got worse in the years she lived alone, with no one to take care of. She had raised 4 kids, she had kept chickens and a garden and cared for my grandfather all his life and on into the last days when he was sick with cancer up in bed. Caring for others gave shape to her life, but once everyone was gone, she lost that shape and kind of closed in on herself. But she always smiled and had this tiny laugh that she punctuated most of her sentences with. She'd say something and then do this "heh heh heh" thing at the end of it. As if to say, don't take me too seriously here, me with my opinions. She loved to talk current events and politics, always called Ronald Reagan "that old fool". I don't know. She was the one who always got up and did all the dishes while everyone else sat around the table and talked and drank some more--grateful someone was doing the dirty work, but kind of taking her for granted too.

One Christmas Eve, her usually dependable white 1969 Dodge Dart died, and she couldn't make the 1 1/2 hour trip down to our house. When she called us and told us, she was all dismissive of herself, like, don't bother about me. That was a time when the man in the wheelchair was a real hero. He rose to the occasion quite gallantly and told her we would drive up there and pick her up. She pooh-poohed all that, saying 'don't bother, I am not worth it' kind of stuff. But she was worth it! She was my Gram and we all loved her so much and Christmas would not be Christmas without her quiet, gentle presence there. I always remember feeling so grateful to him for doing that, for doing the right thing while my mother cringed and wrung her hands and made whimpery sounds. I remember that ride in the dark night lit with bright Christmas lights as a magical ride, with her in the back seat beside me. It was one of the rare times when a man in the family actually did the right thing, actually reached out and helped one of the women, actually showed some moral strength and backbone, and I felt both grateful and awed. He did have a code of honor that he tried to impart to me now and then, except he usually used his fists to do it, and so the message came out all tangled up in pain and shame, because he was himself all tangled up in pain and shame. But that night, it was like magic, and it was right and noble and it worked.

My mother was essentially a teenager, if not a child, and I think she dealt (deals) with her own form of depression. When she was married to the man in the wheelchair, she spent her mornings lying on her side on the floor in the living room, in front of the TV, watching game shows. Quiz programs, she still calls them. She would lie there in her night gown until it was time to get up and get ready for work. She worked afternoons. The house was always kind of a comfy, cluttery mess, kind of like mine is now, except without the cat and dog hair.

She was fundamentally unable to deal with crisis and expected everyone else to pick up the slack. One time my cousin spilled an entire can of dark brown stain over his head. He was about 2 years old, and he was out on our back porch and reached up for the can that had been placed on the rail, without its lid on tight. My mother probably left it there. She always left jars and bottles open on the counter. She'd fix a sandwich and leave the mayonnaise jar there, with its lid askew. She liked to paint rooms and stain wood, so she probably left that can of brown stain there too. Anyway, he toddled over to the back door, his mouth a wide open O of a cry, his sparsely haired little blonde head stained deep brown. My mother panicked. She started dancing around and flapping her hands and screaming. I got a wash cloth, went over to the door, opened it, picked him up, carried him over to the sink, wet the cloth, and started cleaning his head, while she flipped out all over like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off.

Another time the man in the wheelchair was lying in bed on a Saturday morning and he started making this really weird and disturbing sound like a dog makes when it has something caught in its throat. She had just gotten out of the shower and she flew out of the bathroom into the hall. My room was at the end of the hall and I was leaning back against the headboard of my bed reading. My door was open and so I was treated to the sight of my naked and slightly overweight mother hopping up and down, water droplets flying everywhere as she screeched at me to run to one of the neighbor's houses for help. He was a volunteer fireman. I found it all slightly ridiculous, never mind seeing something I never ever needed to see. And the man in the wheelchair was fine, and I don't even remember if the neighbor even came over, so burned into my memory is the sight of my ridiculous naked mother and my disdain for her. I felt such contempt for her by then. Kids really do need their parents to be the grown up ones.

It is experiences like these that led me to be a natural crisis counselor, calm and cool and able to see what needs to be done. I fall apart afterward, privately, when no one can see--I do have needs of my own, after all. But when I was a kid, I saved myself by getting myself out of the house as much as I could. I ran through the woods and fields with the dog, or rode my bike for miles and miles on the back country roads, singing a James Taylor song ('Country Road'):

"Take to the highways, won't you lend me your name,
Your way and my way seem to be one and the same.
Mama don't understand it,
she wants to know where I've been.
I have to some kind of natural born fool
to want to pass that way again.
But you know I can feel it,
child, yeah,
on a country road......."

The other morning, out early with the dogs, something in the freshness of the air reminded me of the freedom and a thing vaguely like joy I felt as as child when I ran wild outside. I keep forgetting it in my later life of worrying and trying to hold things together. And even though some mornings I feel like a prisoner of my life, a person bound and tied and being dragged along behind those dogs, I am glad a whiff of something in the air suddenly reminded me of the freedom that I once felt in the open air, when I was a kid, gleefully escaping the house, escaping the madness and the powerlessness and the insult and the injury, escaping all that into the fresh air of hope and a kind of freedom--because when you are young, the horizon is truly boundless and it beckons and you know that once you can grow up and move on you will have such a great life. This is before you learn the horizon is only an illusion, and that the past drags its boney mess along behind you everywhere you go, like a skeleton with its claws around your neck, hanging on and rattling along behind. Because I didn't yet know how wrecked I was, and am, and how I have to keep trying to overcome the damage of the past. It's kind of like the land after an earthquake--it is changed forever, it will never be what it was before the quake, and even if another quake comes long and changes it yet again, it will still never be what it was before the damage hit. And I don't even know what I was before the damage hit. It all started so early. But sometimes I get glimpses of something grand in me, and think, oh yes, I might have been that.

"Sail on home to Jesus wont you good girls and boys,
I'm all in pieces, you can have your own choice.
But I can hear a heavenly band full of angels
And they're coming to set me free.
I dont know nothing bout the why or when,
But I can tell that its bound to be,
Because I could feel it, child, yeah
On a country road....."

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Why I Don't Have Health Insurance

2008-01-29T19:23:00.000-08:00

I know, you are probably thinking, what the hell is wrong with this woman? Can't she do anything right? Sorry. Shouldn't put words in your mind. I am not feeling very well, yet, still. I looked at the soft and lovely sunrise sky this morning and thought it looked like the twilight, not the dawn. Time for bed, not the time for fresh beginnings. That's what these sad, tired eyes see.

Anyway, I was conversing online with an English friend, and he had just seen the movie "Sicko", Michael Moore's film about the health care debacle here in the United States. And I realized, I have my own health care (or lack of it) tale of indignation and woe to tell.

I used to have health insurance. I am fortunate to live in a state that has comprehensive coverage for children and families. I qualified for that plan until I became too poor for it. Yes, too poor. After the Vampyr left, my household income was cut in half, and my health insurance that was covered by a private company and by Medicaid, the state program, became strictly the province of Medicaid. Medicaid is funded totally by the state, from taxes, I think. But once a person dips well below the poverty line, as I did, if she has children, she is eligible strictly for Medicaid.

However, the state is not so generous once you descend to this level and it looks for any and everyone to pay part of your insurance. I began to get letters from Social Services, and so did my boss. They wanted to know how much money I had in the bank. They got nosey about my assets. They wanted to know if my employer had a health insurance plan. He does, and it costs as much as one of my paychecks per month to be a part of it. Then, they got into my divorce papers and saw that in there, it was stipulated that the X is beholden to put our daughter on his health insurance plan if he has one. They told me I had to take him to court so that they could question him about that. They sent me the necessary papers to file with the court. Also required was a certified copy of our divorce, something I could only get at the County Clerk's Office, many miles away. Being without a car, my boss drove me there at the same time he took his son for his violin lesson. I went to the Clerk's Office and paid the $5 and got the copy. I had a friend notarize the papers and I sent them in.

I really did not want to face the X in court. I also did not want to take time off from work and lose pay just to appear in court. But the state said they wanted to question him in court about his own health insurance, if he had any. If he didn't, they planned to require him to report to them monthly about whether he had gotten insurance yet or not.

In the meantime, I called Social Services and told them my divorce was a domestic violence case, and that I really did not want to face the X in court. They said I did not have to appear, that a representative of Social Services would be there in my stead. Big sigh of relief, albeit a short one, because.....

...the papers were returned to me by the court. They instructed me that they needed a certified copy of my separation agreement, not my divorce. I had simply been following the instructions given me by Social Services. I knew the county charged $2 a page for copies, and that my separation agreement was over 40 pages long. I called Social Services and told them that if I was poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, did they truly think I had $80 to piss away on copies? $80 was about how much I spent on groceries a week. I asked them to provide the court with the copy of my separation agreement that they had in their files. They refused. So I refused. They cited me as 'non-compliant' and took away our Medicaid coverage.

The kicker is my daughter told me the X now has health insurance, and that she asked him to put her on it but he always makes excuses. He is so cheap! And so negligent as a parent. I hate him. I do. I had the thought last night that one of the loneliest things a person (this person) can do is raise a child alone. It just isn't right, it ain't even natural, but it is my life.

There's a part in the song "Fallen Angel" by Robbie Robertson (he was a member of the group The Band and is a Six Nations Reserve Mohawk) where he says: "Gotta play the hand that's dealt ya/That's what the old man always said."

Even if it mostly feels like an exercise in damage control.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Slices of Time

2008-01-27T15:48:00.000-08:00

One of the old ladies in church today told me I look like a teenager. That was kinda scary. But I suppose to a nearly 90 year old, a nearly 50 year old can look like a teenager. Still, it's dignity I would like to embody as I age, not the restless search for the lost bloom of beautiful youth. That said, it is also a true thing that inside my head I still feel like I am 17. Perhaps some of that inner me is projected out onto my face, and my bearing, into my speech and my attitudes? And so, though it is not now, it is still present and able to be seen?

We have a couple of 90 year olds in our church, and they amaze me. They are younger acting, and healthier, than some who are 20 years younger than them. It is obvious we can do things to maintain our health but I wonder about other factors. How much does heredity play a part, or how about one's attitude towards life and the challenges it poses? How old we feel inside? And how much control do we as individuals have over physical aging? Do we have any?

I have often read that people who believe in a loving God who cares for them, and who have an active faith and prayer life, are often healthier. People who count their blessings and respond with gratitude for those blessings rather than bemoaning all that is missing or wrong tend to respond to life's challenges in more positive and creative ways than those who believe themselves damned and doomed. It makes sense! A relationship with the divine creates a bond of love, and when that relationship is nurtured like any living thing, it bequeaths a gift of life to us. Not that disease never happens, or tragedy, or hardship, but a prayerful approach, a faithful and grateful approach, an approach that believes the universe is benevolent rather than hostile can work miracles from time to time, and give us a resilience that cannot be gotten in any other way. I can testify myself that without faith in a loving God I would have killed myself by now. And I believe that bond of love transcends time and space. I believe that in love all things are one.

Sometimes when I am in the church alone, cleaning, I see ghosts sitting in the pews. Mostly I see old ladies, and they are oblivious to my presence. When I first started cleaning the church several years ago, I often saw a tall, slender pastor dressed in black. He has blonde hair. He looked back at me as if surprised I could see him. I don't see him so much anymore. Often I feel the presence of someone else in the sanctuary with me, but I am not seeing the praying ghosts so much anymore. I saw my mother's husband, briefly, shortly after he died. It was like he was stopping in for a quick glimpse of me, then blipped away.

I am sensitive to how people and places feel--it is something I perceive with my body. I think it is a more primitive form of perception, and one that is subtle and dependable, and key to survival. I trust it infallibly. The sanctuary of this church feels warm and welcoming. I feel love there. I feel the assembled prayers of many years, and I can easily understand why some spirits might want to bide their time there. It is a timeless sort of place, a beautiful old building on the National Historic Register, well preserved and loved. The emotions of joy and sorrow have been strongly expressed in that sanctuary for almost 200 years, and they have accumulated in the space like moisture inside a jar.

I have seen ghosts all my life. When I was a child, they scared me. Actually, for most of my life, they scared me. At some point, I realized they were not interested in me, and were going about their own business, and I wasn't frightened of them anymore. The building I work in has a ghost, a man in black I have seen from time to time. My sense is he had something to do with the theatre space upstairs. There is a historic house in town, dating to the Revolutionary War, and when I visited it, I felt the presence of something, and felt compelled to enter an empty and boring closet that had no door. Later I asked one of the park rangers about the ghost in the house, and he told me the ghost stayed in the closet upstairs. Apparently he was a traitor who was hung, and his skull was kept in a box on the mantle in the parlor downstairs. After the Park Service finally buried his bones, he stopped inhabiting the house.

When I was a teen, I had a friend who lived in a very old farmhouse. One night we were in her room, and her closet door opened. The closet was a very large one, a walk-in sized space under the eaves at the back of the house. When the door opened of its own accord, she calmly told me that it was "Seth", the ghost who lived in the house, he was its original builder and inhabitant. She calmly looked over towards the door and told him it was alright, that he could come out, and the door shut.

I slept over that night, and in the morning I awakened to discover I had walked in my sleep and found myself on the floor of that very same closet.

When I bought this house, I saw on older woman in a housecoat standing in the hallway, looking back at me in my bedroom. It felt like she had loved living in this house once, and was checking me out, making sure I was okay and that I would take good care of her home. I must be doing a good enough job because I have never seen her again. Another time I was standing in the kitchen and saw a Hessian mercenary soldier from the Revolutionary War standing there. This hillside was the site of their campground. My daughter insists there is a ghost in her bathroom, and her toilet does make odd sounds from time to time (Moaning Myrtle?), and it might not seem like much, but I mention it because my own childhood friend used to say the gurgling of the radiator in her room had to do with her ghost Seth.

I have read that spirits often stay in places they loved. I have often wondered if perhaps all time exists simultaneously. Picture time as a loaf of bread, and the different ages of time as slices. Maybe, sometimes, we simply can see the other slices. Or, something like that.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Happy Dog Dance

2008-01-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

I have been doing a bit of the Happy Dog Dance the past couple of weeks. It is a way of faking it when I when I feel so vile inside. It is a safe way to make myself behave in socially acceptable ways when I feel unable to do that. When I am feeling ill and unable to accept myself, when I am feeling ashamed of being depressed and cranky, when I am afraid that people will be mean to me if they realize I am ill and vulnerable (shades of the childhood and monsters of the X!), and so I have to hide it. Regardless of the pathetic little exercise that it may be, The Happy Dog Dance provides the perfect disguise!

I really don't like myself when I am not well and I know that partly because that is when I become most intolerant of the weaknesses of others. That is when I am unable to stand the company of others who I know deal with mental illness and I want to put as much distance between myself and them as I can. When compassion is not something I am able to feel anymore, especially not for myself. Actually, the truth is, I can't stand anybody then, not anybody, including and especially me. The world becomes a very dark place, and I want to embrace that darkness, let it take me into its soft arms and carry me away.

The mechanics of the Happy Dog Dance is this: I act appropriately, even in an approval-seeking manner, when the truth is I feel like a burning toxic waste dump inside, when I feel, in actuality, like complete and total crap. The fact is, the dance is an exhausting exercise at a time when I am already depleted.

Ah, January, how I hate you.

The interesting thing about this January's manifestation of a depressive episode, as compared to last January's (because physiologically this is the time when a combination of environmental factors do their worst to me and my brain chemistry lurches into that bad place) is that this is a more agitated episode. Last year, in the depth of January, month that I hate (because of the cold, because of the dark, because of the uncomfortable quality of the cold and the dark; tired by this time of wearing heavy boots and lots of socks, of being constantly hyper-vigilant about hidden patches of ice as I walk down the hill impelled by gravity or back up the hill burdened by gravity and laden with groceries; tired of meticulously stuffing newspaper into the crack along the edge of the back door where the cold slithers in like an ice-white snake; tired of strategically planning out my wardrobe every damn day, which shirts shall I layer and in what combination and can I still wear this really great warm one or does it stink and should I wear long underwear too, and damn these boots are good in the snow but they hurt my right big toe, or maybe it is just my right big toe hurts regardless anyway, and damn my lower back and left hip are stiff from the cold and the damp--get the picture?), last year I was brain dead, disoriented, and confused. So mornings I used coffee to jump start my brain, to melt the permafrost residing there.

I don't generally drink coffee, the caffeine jolt is a bit much. But I do use it, as a drug, selectively--Yes, mental health providers, I DO self-medicate!--when my brain needs something to turn it on, or if I have to attend a boring meeting at night where I will be expected to have the capacity to think. Last January's depression was the sleepy, stupid, brain dead kind. This one however, is a whole other beast. A beast that I must conceal within the Happy Dog Dance!

This one is angry, and irritable, and despairing in a painful way--I have been feeling so much emotional pain inside. It is the pain that makes me nasty and grouchy and irritable. I am occasionally shooting off my mouth in ways I never tend to do, little closet approval seeker that I am. I think most people don't notice, but I do, and I horrify myself (I think I am still expecting the man in the wheelchair to come swinging in from out of nowhere and pummel me with his big scary arms). So, this year, I am using alcohol to numb the edge of the pain. Unfortunately I can only do that after work, usually when I am cooking supper, as I nibble food to keep the alcohol from hitting me too quickly. Because I haven't had much of an appetite with this depression either, and so I often have that first beer when I haven't had much to eat all day. I even had 2 with supper before choir rehearsal this week. Because people, being people--even if they are kindly and sweet, maybe because they are kindly and sweet!-- annoy me in general, and it is a sure and certain thing that my epitaph should read: 'She did not suffer fools gladly, when she suffered them at all.'

So, the Happy Dog Dance fits into all this quite nicely. At work, for example, when I wear my customer service hat, and someone is whining on the phone about their candle order and what I really want to say is: ' Get a grip. These are candles, people, not medicines for dying children, not food for the starving millions.' But I say, 'I am sorry this isn't working out in the way you had hoped, how can we help you with this?' (Though the Dog Dance did fail me at least once last week, and I did hang up on an especially trying customer.)

Or when the young developmentally disabled man (or whatever his deal is, we still haven't quite figured that out, all I can say is he is not 'all there' upstairs) who works there thinks he is really very smart and decides to mop the floor in the middle of our busy work area, while we are busy working there, and sighs and mutters in deep unhappiness because we are walking where he just mopped, and I want to say: 'What do you expect, you idiot, you half wit, mopping where people are working?' But I say, 'Man, that must be so annoying when people walk where you just mopped!'

Or when my boss, he of the charmed life, was bragging and gloating about how they were stopped for speeding, while zooming home from their fabulous weekend in the city, but the trooper did not give them a ticket for that, instead they got a ticket for having the windows on their very expensive, top of the line, Mercedes wagon tinted too dark, and the dealer actually fixed the windows for free! so the whole thing will cost him nothing! and he won't get any points on his license! and isn't that great? And while I want to say, 'Why do you get all the breaks, you fat little fool?', I am actually wagging my tail and saying, with my big pink doggy tongue lolling, 'Yes, that is great, you are so fortunate...'.

I make myself sick. I become the happy dog, smiling and wagging my idiot tail, and saying pleasing things to people I would just as soon bite. It works. The pathetic little dance works. And it makes me so tired.

But the alternative could be worse, it could be something like this: my unhappy dogs the other morning, doing a decidedly unhappy dog dance of their own together. We were just back from our walk, almost to the house, about the time when my big toe is numb and yet sore from the boot or my own creeping age and I just want to get back into the house and thaw out my frozen cheeks, and Bumby does too because she is pulling extra hard. She knows there is a biscuit waiting for her, once we are back inside. And Little Bear has his own little game going on, he is trying to grab that last frozen cat turd and eat it, because he thinks I won't notice. We were right about there when the minister of the Methodist Church was making her solitary morning pilgrimage up the hill in her bright and pretty pink coat, all bundled up like a monk and barely visible inside her hood. She is a tiny woman and she is very sweet and she is always cheerful, never says 'Isnt' it a crap day?', like I want to say. So there she was and I began spilling my idiot guts, because I perceived a sympathetic listener, maybe, even one with some special prayer pull with the Big Guy Upstairs, and I am telling her how I hate January and why, all the while despising myself for revealing my weakness so blatantly, and as I am blathering on like this, the dogs don't like my attention diverted away from them and our daily task, and so, mental toddlers that they are, they start rough housing. Well, Little bear started it, and Bumby was up for it, but as I kept running my mouth like a stupid weak fool, they escalated until Little Bear was in it for real and Bumby ain't taking any of that crap from him and they are dog fighting in earnest and I am somehow telling them, without faking it, in measured tones, how Very Bad this all is, while trying to disentangle them. Finally I simply let go of Bumby's leash but she kept coming in for another bite at Little Bear anyway, and he was so up for it, he never met a fight he will ever back down from, oh no that wild mountain bear will go to the very bloody end, and, somehow, finally, I managed a semblance of separation and Bumby was just ahead of us with her tail between her legs, looking back, still primed to defend herself, and I was still constantly chanting, Very Bad You Are Both Very Bad, and so into the house we went, the pink garbed emissary of God forgotten behind us. And no, they did not get any biscuits that morning.

Oh yes I do so hate January.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

lit from within

2008-01-23T14:24:00.000-08:00

broken winged angels,
lit from within by moonlight crashing open
upon their crystalline hearts,
are walking by the darkened houses.
i see them slogging up
through the same snow
i struggle with
in my flimsy shoes, fingers crossed in the hope
there is no ice hiding
beneath. (but oh, what grace
in the flow of my body then, as it slips
into gravity defying movement intent on
keeping me soundly on my feet!)
the angels are capable
of such magnificent grace,
despite their broken-ness. i have much
to learn
from them, and they would teach me,
because they are kind.

i hear the crazed tongues of coyotes
calling from the trailer park
out back, in the cold morning light,
above the new snow, softly unbroken.
even my dog, wild mountain bear that he is,
dares not reply to their kind of wildness.
it is more finely delirious
than any
he could summon
from his sled dog heart. and yet,
both our hearts begin to dance
to that coyote cadence, naturally,
secretly, loud and yet
hidden safely within soft dark spaces.

at the bottom of the hill,
the fat prince wears a dingy coat of lizard green
and gloats of his great, good fortune--how the world
welcomes and rewards him! and yet
he truly cannot understand
why we do not share his joy. his life is charmed.
but his heart is lean and stringy and his lips are greasy
and he should not brag so
in the face of our hunger.

we are all of us
out of place. we have lost
what maps we had.
they have fallen to sodden pieces
in the solace of too many tear-scented baths.
we have stopped too long
by the roadside, hoping for
sure footing around the next turn.
we have lingered too long learning songs
in the shade of the dying elms.
our wings are broken, our songs are crazed,
our shoes too thin for the terrain.
our hunger is a constant slow burning
buzzing smoke beneath our skins.
and no, we cannot share the fat prince’s joy.
and so we must keep walking
before our hearts are silenced by
the burden of too much frost, too much ice
lying hidden beneath the surface, secretly lighting us
from within.

Ramblings of a Disordered Mind

2008-01-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

I think I have to stop reading the news. So much pain. So much hurt. So many innocent lives trashed and damaged and cut open and destroyed--animal, vegetable, and mineral. I can't take it. I begin to think the world is getting worse, but it isn't getting worse. It's always been this bad. I can find ancient Biblical accounts of newborn baby boys being slaughtered by jealous kings, or of contemporary Chinese women aborting female fetuses simply because they are female. Or of girl children in India being set on fire, simply for being girls. Of boys in the Middle East and Africa forced into becoming soldiers, killing and raping machines, before they have barely reached puberty. I can find current day stories of women cutting open other women and stealing their unborn babies, or of fathers throwing their screaming children off bridges--not to mention the countless puppies and kittens that are thrown off the bridge right here in this village every month of the year. I can read historical accounts of white conquerors committing genocide on magnificent civilizations in the Americas, I can find rivers gorged with blood and brains dashed open on walls anyplace I care to look. There is cruelty and inhumanity everywhere. Women killed by their lovers, children killed by their parents, animals treated as if they were an old rug to be tossed out in the garbage. And the lies! The unaccountability of all the liars, denying the evidence of their own actions. I always used to wonder why Virginia Woolf committed suicide at an older age, as she did. I used to think that if you could make it that far, to age 59, that you had made it somehow, that you had passed the worst, and so you would live on (someone told me she despaired of Nazism and the imminence of another world war). But as I approach my own half century, I see plainly that I despair even more of the world, even more than I ever did. It looks worse and it looks like it will not get better. That no one will fix it, that the greed will not end, that people will not stop putting their own self-interested selfishness first. I start to feel crazier as I try to save what there is to be saved, what there is within my reach to be saved. I do without so that others might have more. I am very alone. I look more and more like the village crazy woman, and I feel like it too. And people continue to drive overly large gas guzzling vehicles everywhere, even onto places where once there was the respectful knowledge that cars are not driven here, that here is a place where we walk. No, now it is as if people think they have the right to drive wherever they want to. And they keep shopping, buying more crap, and eating more lousy fast food. They go on as if it will always be this way and that there will be no consequences to pay. While I despair and put out seed for birds, hoping that will soften the effects of climate change and global degradation. The Brazilian rain forest is razed so that more cattle can graze to be slaughtered and sold so McDonald's can sell more fatty burgers to fat people who have to go on disability because their health is so bad because they are clueless about how to take care of themselves. Perhaps it is me who is the idiot: I do not get rich from owning stock in companies that do unethical things to peoples and the planet. I do not get rich. I can barely save, and I never get ahead. And yes, I do give money away so that others may have something. I do. I know the world is manipulated by powers far wilier and craftier and more rapacious than me. Perhaps I am a fool. Perhaps I am insane. Perhaps I should simply stop reading the news and listen more to the stars, to the beating of hearts, to the song of the wind, to the whisper of God inside me. Perhaps I should simply rest in the knowledge that yes, I am a fool, rest content in that, and keep on trying to save what I can. Perhaps I should embrace my inner idiot and find shelter in the disordered spaces where all the misfits gather, stubbornly singing songs of love. All you children, all you half-wits, dreamers, poets, broken winged angels, solitary singers, crazed saints, let us huddle round this fire and share this day old bread.

Feminizz

2008-01-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

Watching all this presidential race blather between Hillary and Obama really reminds me that we women still have a long way to go, baby. For all his changechangechange and hopehopehope talk, Obama really isn't very nice to Hillary, as a woman. I refer to that seminal moment during the debate where he and Edwards ganged up on Hillary, and he tossed her a bone as he condescendingly said, "You're likable enough."

As a woman myself, I am sensitive to that kind of condescending talk. I know the sting of trying to play rough with the boys and the boys showing no mercy. But somehow, there is something fundamentally flawed in that 'no mercy' approach that equates a kind of strength and rightness and victory with might and power used, well, mercilessly. It applies in sports, it applies in wars and in the predator/prey world of nature, but really, is that the kind of world we want to be building here? Isn't it what we should be leaving in the past, as we truly try to create a future based on hope and change and peace and love and all that hippie twaddle that still makes my heart sing?

My childhood friend Bernadette and I used to play badminton, endlessly, on summer afternoons, ponking the birdie back and forth in long volleys over her mother's clothesline. The point was to keep the volley going, not to beat each other. But we were both spirited athletes, and we made it challenging, though not impossible, to volley the birdie back. And then one day Greg came along and we invited him to play, and he did not get into the spirit of the marathon volleying, no, he slammed it here and there so that he would win points. But the fact is, he did not get the point, that we were not playing for points, and he got bored fast and we were so relieved when he left. Because it wasn't any fun playing his way.

When I was about 6 years old, I had gotten a new pair of sneakers. They were red, and I felt FAST in them. I ran up and down the side walk in front of our house in short sprints, feeling oh so fast. Finally a boy came along, he was a bit older than me, and feisty little thing that I was in my new red sneakers, I challenged him to a race. I was so fast in those red sneakers, I knew I would blow his doors off. And, yeah, he blew me away, and I got a reality check but I was not daunted.

In third grade I challenged some boys to a race on the playground at recess and I almost won that one except I had on stupid--but pretty--black patent leather shoes. They were the shoes that went with my former Easter dress, a lovely low-waisted light lavender frock with lace up the front that I happened to be wearing that day. And right at the finish line out there on the playground of the old school house with the great view of the mountains that we third graders were relegated to while the new school building was being built, right there at the finish where I had victory in my long legged stance, I slipped in those silly, but pretty, shoes and fell on my ass and lost. But the point is, except for the girly shoes, I would have won.

I think my attitude about challenging males might have formed with the man in the wheelchair. I think my tiny toddler self was quite insulted and angered by his brutal treatment of me, and when I challenged a boy, I was also challenging that tyrant in the wheelchair who came into my life one day and started bullying and bossing me. I could kick and kick at that wheelchair but never dent it, I could even land a shot on his leg and he would never feel it, but if I stupidly let myself get too close he would scoop me up in his big scary arms, and beat the crap out of me. And my mother backed him up because he was The Man. So, I was pretty much primed for feminism when it came along.

The really big deal for us girls came in 1970, when I was in 7th grade, and we were suddenly allowed to wear pants to school. After that, I never looked back and I rarely ever wore a dress again. Jeans from there on out, except for later on in high school when different colored corduroy Levis became popular. Prior to that we had been allowed to wear pants for One Special Day Only in 6th grade. That was the day we were all heading out to plant trees on the new nature trail. I was so excited! Except it rained that day, and we frail female flowers were told we had to stay in while the rough tough little boys got to go out in the rain and plant the trees. I think you can guess how angry this wild little mixed-breed Indian was that day, seething with that hot Italian blood that always got me into so much trouble with the family. Man, was I mad, fuming mad, steam out of my ears mad.

I know feminism has changed a lot since I cut my teeth on it back in the 70's. Back then we wanted to not be judged by what we looked like, and these days it seems like it is all about what we look like. We wanted to not have to wear skirts and make up and bras and shave our body hair. We wanted the focus to be on the inner person, and on allowing everyone the opportunity to participate in the activities they chose to participate in, regardless of what they had between their legs. For girls of my generation, the big breakthrough was Title IX in sports, a law that said schools had to let girls play on boys' teams if there was not a girls' team offered in that sport. It meant equality would be real, instead of a beautiful dream. In my school, it meant girls could now run cross country with the boys, and boys could compete on the gymnastics team with the girls. There were no girls gunning for the football team, or for wrestling, though currently, in my daughter's school there is a girl wrestling with the boys, and she kicks ass.

I know feminism has broadened to say if girls want to wear stupid, but pretty, shoes they can and that does not make them any less of a feminist. That if a woman wants to be a stripper and play with men in that way that does not make her any less of a feminist. What feminism is really saying is women can be who they are, whatever they are and however they dress, and still have the right to be taken seriously. To not be treated like children, or like toys. Inclusion has gotten hyper inclusive, and that is a good, if yet idealistic, thing! But back in our days, it was those shoes and those degrading, to us, professions we were trying to escape. High heels and girdles and make up and finding validation in the approval of men. It seemed so clear to me then--because we had less choice then than we do now.

My friend Bernadette joined the Navy after high school. The recruiter lured her in by telling her she could be a jet mechanic, and she was so psyched by that. Once she made it though basic training, however, she was relegated to clerical jobs, one after another. She ended up stationed in Japan and one of her duties was to sign up the men for the fire fighting course. Since she was asked so many questions about the course, she applied for permission to take the course on the grounds that she would then be able to adequately answer the questions. They let her take the course, but they would not let her be a fire fighter. They put a picture of her wielding the fire hose in the navy newspaper--did they find it somehow kinky? Knowing what I now know of men, I have to say, Probably! She sent me a copy, anyway, she was so proud she was the first woman to take the course, but she had to settle for that. She had to settle for being a short-lived novelty topic, a possible turn-on, the chick who took the fire fighting course.

Whatever feminism is anymore is all mixed up to me. I can't keep up with the changes and the permutations. But I do understand this much, and clearly--that what has not changed is the core truth that regardless of gender we should be able to do whatever it is we aspire to do. Women are still breaking through those barriers. And other people are still trying to hold them back. I have read in the press of Republican supporters of McCain publicly referring to Hillary as a "bitch", but no one has yet dared to use the n-word about Obama, in public anyway. As if to say, it is okay to be sexist, but we are too enlightened--or scared--to show our true racist colors. We are scared of the men of color but we are not scared of the women, because they are just women, silly women in silly shoes and the make up and the hair and all the rest of it they use to deny us our power. Because women are powerful, and every one of us who has a mother knows in our heart of hearts the utter beauty and terrible truth of that all-encompassing power. But you know what else? Where sexism lurks, racism isn't too far behind. Along with anti-Semitism and all the rest of the hateful 'ism' demons that are eager to destroy a peaceful world.

Or what is the phrase I read once? Yes. Cutting off someone else's head to make yourself feel taller.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

yes. and you?

2008-01-13T17:31:00.000-08:00

the stone mothers stand
with folded arms.
they are wrapped in wisps of smoke
billowing as skirts
around them.

the fathers
are fire. they consume the children. their screams
are open mouthed caverns of silence
echoing into the dawn. do you hear this?
do you see the opals of their eyes
nestling together in the ashes?

the hawk is awake
but she busies herself
finding breakfast. she floats
above the milky smoke
curling like silken strands
of baby fine hair around pearl white
ears. the sunrise is a blush
above sharp indigo hills
and a river entangled in mist.
there is safety
in their distance, in their keeping
to their own concerns.

you might do that too,
so you just won’t see. your dawn is outshone
by the bluish glow within the glassy frames
enthroned at the ends of your beds--
that space where flat faces smirk above alabaster teeth and
dictate stories in a sleepy drone
punctuated by simulacrums of honest emotion,
like vocal punctuation marks cueing you into moments of caring.
awwww, maybe. or, owwwwww.
and you are distracted, efficiently insulated
from the sharp sided human madness
happening simultaneously right here.
yes, right here. there are

frail things crushed beneath the massive treads
of our great vehicles as we speed away into illusions
of magnificent busy purpose. there are broken children
just 25 feet away, women bruised and apathetic,
men defeated into explosions of deadly impotence.
there are lives imploding all around us
in waves that do not reach the national
signals. do they deserve invisibility?
probably not but apparently, sometimes, yes. the powerlessness
of invisibility. the invisibility
of powerlessness. they are still here anyway,
even if we don’t see. our neighbors.
still here. right here. not just way over there. no.

and so what
responsibility must you take for this, this
disaster of humans murdering every sacred thing
and not even eating
the remains? what is
your response?

because the world is blood scented. can’t you smell it? of course not.
but she is. like a slaughterhouse.
she is drenched, she is saturated, and yet
she keeps drinking it in. what choice does she have,
this earth, but to submit? what choice?
she is bound
beneath us and our great busy plans,
our beautiful preoccupations,
our stinking chemicals, our splendid
metal chariots, our portfolio of investments,
and yes, our fragile glassy dreams.
because that is the truth of it,
that is what the outline of the bones
lying just below the surface
of our vanity
tells us :

that all that is wild,
and all that is innocent,
is bound
and gagged
beneath us.

Infinitely Fragile

2008-01-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

I had such an insight as I walked home from cleaning the church this afternoon. I could only think it might have partly been the influence of Ishmael. His is our pastor's son. He is developmentally disabled--what used to be called mentally retarded except that is no longer the accepted term to describe people like him. He is, in so many ways, indescribable. He is 24. He likes to come over to the church and keep me company when I clean. We have this little schtick we do. It goes like this. He says, "What are you doing?" and he snickers a little.

And I answer, "Cleaning."

"Why?" (Small snicker.)

"Because it's my job."

"You like it?" (Slight guffaw.)

"Sometimes."

Every week, the same banter. One time it happened when I was cleaning earlier than usual on a Saturday, because there was a wedding that afternoon. Ishmael was attending the wedding; his mom is our Pastor; it was the son of one of our church families who was getting married. The next day Ishmael's dad Matthew told me that as part of the ceremony, the flower girl threw rose petals on the floor as she walked up the aisle. When Ishmael saw that, he stood up in his pew. He yelled, "Hey! Stop that! Rozenkraai just cleaned that floor this morning!"

And when the wedding was over, he walked through the church and picked up every single petal from the floor.

Anyway, I have often thought Ishmael is a gentle angel sent here to teach us new ways to love. He has bright blue eyes and a sweet, open face. He has been raised with loving kindness and consideration. He is gentle, and funny, stubborn and loud, and he lopes around the village looking for bottles and cans. He takes off on his parents, he disappears for hours just when they want him home. Some people leave the bottles and cans in bags on the porch for him, and others he just finds. He has an amazing memory for where he saw them on the roadside as he rode by in the car or the bus that takes him to his work program. The church collects them, and Ishmael and his dad do all the leg work of sorting through and rinsing them and then returning them to the store for the deposit money. We use that money to fund our Jamaica mission trip. Without their hard, weekly work and dedication, we wouldn't be able to go.

Anyway, it was after I had finished cleaning the church and visiting with Ishmael today, that I saw a woman walking down the hill as I was walking up. She looked as harried and preoccupied as I often feel myself as I travel up and down this hill. And suddenly it seemed as if the world grew brighter, and I had a flash of insight. 'People are so infinitely fragile', I thought, 'so completely breakable. All people. Every single one, not just the ones I like.' And nestled in the center of that thought was a bright core of compassion, complete compassion for my fellow human sufferers such as I never feel. And I thought, 'If I could only hold onto this depth of understanding and compassion, I would be such a kind and forgiving person.'

But I really can't hold onto it like that. I know I can't. I also know I wouldn't always want to. But what I can do is remember it, and try, (or try to try, as Bart Simpson once promised to do). Because several minutes after that glowing, golden, holy moment of divine insight, a car passed me by, too close, and I stopped and glared at the driver as I always do when that happens and I feel threatened and disrespected. I had quite naturally returned to my usual snarky self.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Softly Present

2008-01-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

My Gram has come to visit me from time to time throughout the years since her death in 1990, the year my daughter was born. She died 2 months after my daughter was born. She had gone to my mother's for the Fourth of July, and they had gone to a parade. My mother adores parades, for reasons I will never understand. It was Death Valley hot that day; I remember it well, I was 8 months pregnant and still living on the land. Literally. We were still in that old camper-trailer called The Strange Boat, while the X was still taking his sweet time getting the house finished, and it was a sweat box. I had sat in the shade in a lawn chair for as long as I could stand it, and then when the afternoon heat had peaked, we rode in the car to a supermarket so we could be in the air conditioning. My Gram, meanwhile, was suffering from heat exhaustion in the bright sun at the parade, but of course, told no one of her distress. She did not say, Could we move to the shade? Could we go home? Could we find some AC? No, she would never ever do that. So, instead, she got deathly overheated, and then had a heart attack in her sleep that night. She did not die, but only 10% of her heart capacity remained, so she couldn't do much besides lie in bed.

She couldn't get up to go to the bathroom, and as much as my mother wanted to take care of her mother at home, she found it intensely difficult to change her own mother's diapers. To do that after working all day at her job. To get up in the morning and face that first thing. To do all that. No. So the decision was made to put my Gram in the hospital, where she was catheterized and fed these milkshake type drinks. And there she was, far away from the home she had lived in for over 50 years, essentially waiting to die.

My daughter was born in August, after a long labor and an eventual emergency c-section. I wasn't up for the 2 hour trip to my mother's city to visit my Gram until early October. My Gram had lost a lot of weight, and had beautiful high cheekbones I had never been able to see in her soft, plump face before. She had not been able to dye her hair anymore either, naturally, and so she had long white roots beneath the dark brown hair. Her green eyes with brown centers, just like mine, were as big and bright as ever, however. And I did not know if I would see her again. So I told her how beautiful her cheekbones were. I told her how important and precious she was to me my whole life. I am happy I had the opportunity to say those things to her. The one thing I did not do was bring my infant daughter upstairs into that hospital ward full of all kinds of sick people so my Gram could see her. I still don't know if I made the right choice. My Gram wanted to see her only great-grandchild and yet was also accustomed to not having what she wanted. I did not want to risk my infant's health. Which door do you choose?

Anyway, my Gram had been hanging in there for months now, alone with the TV when no one was there visiting. The person we all knew she really wanted to see was my uncle, her first born son. He lived way out west, and he kept putting off visiting her. I have always thought he was stingy with his feelings and does not do reality very well. I think he could not face his mother's mortality. My mother had told me he had had trouble believing she had had a heart attack. His mind is a black and white and orderly place full of neat lines and divisions and the reality of this was not fitting in very well there--only 50 year old male executives had heart attacks. But as time dragged on, it became inevitable that he would have to fly east and visit, and so he finally did.

He came a week after I had visited her in October. He saw her in the hospital and then he went back to my mother's house and started drinking. A lot. I have seen him take an 8 ounce glass, fill it with ice and then fill it with gin. Within 24 hours, the hospital called to tell them my Gram had begun to die in earnest. He did not want to go be with her. He refused. My mother wanted to go but since she is not one to ever seriously challenge the dictates of The Men, she couldn't. Like a child, she couldn't. So my Gram died alone, her family soaking in alcohol less than a mile away.

We had all suspected she was just biding her time, waiting for him to show up. She was quietly angry he had not come to visit her in all that time, and had made her wait like that.

I always wished I could have been there with her at the very end. Death does not frighten me. I would have sang to her. I would have sang "Amazing Grace" to her. I would have tried to help her not be afraid. Because apparently she was afraid, and she did not have a smooth departure out of this life.

My Gram's body was cremated, and her first born son packed her ashes into his suitcase and took them back west. He eventually took them up to Idaho, up into the Sawtooth Mountains she loved, and scattered them there. There was no memorial service other than what he might have said into the wind on his solitary journey up there. We really are an odd lot, this family of mine.

But, as I said, I have felt her with me many times since her body died. When I lived with the X and was going through such hard, lonely times, I would suddenly feel her soft, loving presence around me. I still do. It feels like being wrapped inside a sun warmed yellowish pink rose. It feels like being held in soft yet strong arms of love. Sometimes, I will be standing there doing dishes, looking out the window at the ski mountain to the south--it was the same at her house, the window was over the sink and she could stand and do dishes and gaze up at the hills she had grown up in--and it will suddenly feel as if I am in her house, feel and smell the exact same way. Or sometimes in our church, I will come up the back stairs to the chancel or the altar area and it will smell just like it did when I walked in her front door. Or I will be sitting there with the choir in the chancel during worship, and I will feel her near me, feel her softly present beside me.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Zoo Mothers

2008-01-12T09:35:00.000-08:00

I had recently read in the UK newspaper The Guardian, about a polar bear mother named Vera in the Nuernberg, Germany zoo. Apparently there are a few schools of thought floating around out there about polar bear mothers in zoos. One of them says, let the mother have time with her babies so she can bond with them and raise them. The other says, polar bear mothers in zoos tend to, more often than not, kill and eat their babies, so take the babies away ASAP and rear them by hand--that is, bottle feed them. Apparently there is a polar bear cub named Knut who lives in the Berlin zoo who was taken away from his mother and hand reared, and so survived, and he became quite the little star of the zoo and attracted all kinds of attention (that is, money) and visitors to the zoo. Certain animal rights activists, however, weren't happy about little Knut being taken from his mother and hand reared, saying it was perhaps unfair to the new mother and also unnatural. To my mind, is it zoos themselves that are unnatural here. Anyway---

---the Nuernberg zoo had decided to let Vera have time to bond with her cubs. She had twins, and unfortunately, during her allowed bonding time she killed and ate one of them. She had begun to batter and abuse the surviving cub prior to killing and eating him too, and so they took him away. The other point raised by the article was whether Vera, this mother bear, was showing good maternal instincts.

What do you think? Because you know sure as the sun does shine that I am now going to tell you what I think!

I think she was showing completely sound maternal instincts, or as sound as she can living in captivity. Captivity itself may have unhinged her slightly. It would me! Because it is the fact of the captivity that is the focal point of this. Of course these zoo animals know they are in captivity! Could the zoo environment of central Germany--unless it were in an arid desert region-- be any father from the vast white icy openness of the Arctic? Not to mention the smallness of their 'pens'--no matter how big any zoo enclosure is, it ain't the vast Arctic plain. The bears know this, and I am guessing that knowing just might stress them out a bit. And that stress tells them they are not in a fit environment to rear their young. Can they dive into the water and hunt seals? Can they curl up in a furry ball on the ice on a sub zero night and listen to the aurora whispering above them? Can they come and go as they please? Are they allowed their natural bear solitude? These animals aren't stupid and no zoo is ever gonna fool them into thinking they are at home. And God forbid we ever give up our what appears to be natural human GREED and actually do something to protect their habitat.

The other issue here is the one that says a mother has a right, has the wit, has the brain to decide whether she is able to rear her child. I came of age in the 70's, the early days after the dawn of feminism, equal rights, and the right to choose whether or not a pregnancy would be carried to term--abortion rights. Only a mother knows whether she has the resources and support to raise her children adequately. That said, she should then be able to make the informed decision of whether she will have those children, or not. I myself will come clean here and say I have had 2 abortions over the course of my adult life. The first pregnancy happened when I was in my early 20s and was using alcohol and marijuana quite heavily. I was living in a very unstable lifestyle, and was an emotional and mental wreck. I knew there was no way I could raise a baby. Besides that, I had my doubts whether that fetus was a healthy one, considering how I was abusing my body.

The second abortion came when I was married to the X (sex happens even in bad relationships, but as we are all adults here, we all already probably know that). Pretty soon after he found out I was pregnant, he became more abusive than ever, physically abusive, and pushed and shoved me to the ground several times. That was when I decided to avail myself of the services the local domestic violence office offered. I talked with a counselor there, and she advised me to decide, first thing, about the pregnancy and what I was going to do about that. I was almost 39 and the pregnancy, coupled with the constant stress of living with him, was making me feel even more exhausted and sick. I felt isolated, overwhelmed and panicked. There was no one I wanted to tell about the pregnancy because I felt so stupid and ashamed for even letting myself get into that situation (conveniently forgetting the fact it takes 2 to make a baby--but how easy, when living with someone who makes you feel like shit on a daily basis, how easy to do just the very same thing to yourself). I decided to have another abortion.

That abortion was a disaster. I had it in a clinic while hearing right-to-life protesters chant outside. Thankfully, I had had very supportive dreams that very morning. I dreamt of a buffalo mother coming to me, I heard her sound and heavy footsteps on the earth, and she communicated to me from the powers of that earth that everything was alright, that what I was doing was not wrong. I also dreamt of a young man, dark like me, who stood behind me braiding my hair as I explained to him why I did not have the energy to rear him. I apologized to him. He looked at me with dark loving eyes and communicated forgiveness. Had I not had those dreams, a very hard day might have been that much harder. I might have been sunk. Because, for me, it is a different thing entirely to have an abortion after having already had a child. I knew things only a woman who has given birth can know.

I had complications after the procedure and bled and bled for over a week and finally had to undergo the procedure a second time to fix what went wrong the first time. The experience was a deeper hardship piled upon a mountain of hardship. But it also galvanized me inside and created in me the determination to get out of that marriage. It provided my turning point. From that time on, I worked on getting my daughter and myself out. It took me 2 years. I saved up hidden cash in a box in my underwear drawer. The box contained a pewter Virgin Mary given to me as a Christmas gift by a friend's mother. Besides cash, I was building up courage inside myself. I knew things had gotten as bad as I could stand and that knowing gave me the impetus and momentum I needed to go. I had made a hard, but right, choice, for me and for my children, in my life--my life that was my own captive situation, my own zoo existence.

Vera the polar bear, in her wild wisdom, was also fulfilling that kind of choice. It is a behavior choice that repeats among animals all over the world-- among domesticated animals as well as among animals in their natural habitats, and not only by the mothers. Father lions, as an example, often kill and eat the male cubs, because the lion society of prides cannot support too many males. We humans easily forget that we too are animals-- we are quite clever animals in forgetting that--and we also quite often forget there are many, many kinds of wisdom making up the patchwork of this planet. Not all of this wisdom concerns the civilized life. Some of it is quite wild, in fact, and does not concern humans at all. Dare I say that all these wisdoms be honored equally?

Yes, I do dare say that.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Photo of Vera and one of her cubs from: AP Photo/Hans-Martin Issler)

Backson

2008-01-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

In one of the "Winnie-the-Pooh" stories, Christopher Robin writes a note to tell his friends that he will be away for a bit, and he ends it by saying: "Bisy. Backson."

I am not particularly 'bisy' except with the burdens of life, but I will definitely be 'backson.' I am tired and feeling not quite able to hold myself up. Time to crawl under the covers with a book and a stuffed bear, and rest. Wish I had a northern cave to hibernate in, but with these crazy climate changes, even the bears aren't being allowed the true winter rest they are entitled to.

(the photo is one making the rounds of the internet, it is a sunset/moonrise--or sunrise/moonset-- over antarctica)

Homer

2008-01-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

I had a little fish for awhile and his name was Homer. I got him and 2 other fish one intensely cold Sunday in January 4 years ago, the kind of cold day up north here when the high for the day is 5F. The pet store has a buy one-get-another-of-the-same-kind-free deal on Sundays, and Homer and his sister Joy are some kind of Ryukin goldfish, bred to have shortened bodies and fat bellies. It is all for the look, this breeding, and it causes problems for the fish themselves because the fat belly compacts the internal organs--particularly the swim bladder, the reason fish are buoyant at all--too tightly.

I got a third fish that day too, because it was all alone in its tank and was very pretty. It is a pearl scale Sarassa and I call her Pearl. She is a more aggressive fish that the other two. Her solitary state appealed to my heart that day as I was motiviated by extreme self-pity. The Vampyr had just left, and even though it was the right thing, I still felt bereft and alone and lost and loser-ish (another relationship failure!), and also very sorry for myself. Self-pity is a hairy monster that lives and breeds in my mother's side of the family. It is an odious emotion that I am working very hard to eradicate in myself. And at that time, I was thick in the throes of it. So I decided to go find some little fish that no one wanted after the holiday shopping. The little unwanted leftovers of the market economy!

Homer was deformed, that's why no one wanted him. His body was so compacted, he could not maintain himself in a horizontal position and his nose was always diving into the gravel. He was unstable in general, as if his internal gyroscope was all out of whack. He would float helplessly upside down and bob all around the tank. And originally his name was not Homer--it was Hope, because I honestly hoped he would not die. And Pearl's original name was Peace, until it became clear she was anything but peaceful.

As time went on, it became more and more clear that little Homer's disabilty was a liability in the world of that tank. Pearl was uneasy with anything that seemed not normal, and would push at him and nudge him and drive him away from the food. Homer was stressed out, and began to have infections--his tail fin began to rot, and he still bobbed all over, and one day I got home from work to discover him all bleeding. The other fish had been pecking and attacking him--as if to eat him. Because they would eat him--goldfish are scavengers and cannibals. Meat is meat to them.

I quickly got a large coffee mug and scooped little Homer out of the tank. I found a clean 5 gallon plastic bucket in the bathroom closet, filled it half way with water, and put little Homer, mug and all, into it. Homer stayed inside the shelter of his mug. I also put some tea tree oil in the water to help him begin to heal. Then I rushed off to the pet store to buy him a proper tank--it would take at least 24 hours for that tank to be ready for him, and he was fine in the bucket, in his mug, until then.

And so Homer lived with his mug shelter in a 5 gallon tank on the bathroom counter. I talked to him all the time, told him how wonderful and strong he was. His tail fin had rotted almost completely off, but the tea tree medication I used is phenomenal, and with time, his fin grew completely back. But then new health woes arose for little Homer. Suddenly his swim bladder would not contract, and he was stuck floating at the surface of the water. It was difficult to feed him then, as I had been using sinking pellets, but I found some flakes of fish food, and cut a sharp edge on a plastic cord, and would skewer the flakes onto that and hold it near Homer until he got the idea. And he did get the idea, and so after that, he and I shared a 20 minute feeding ritual twice a day as I would try to keep the tissue thin flakes on the cord and he would try to gobble them with some accuracy. I also did this with thawed out peas.

I have to say here that Homer was always a very cheerful and happy little fish. He knew me, and would wiggle around when I came to his tank. Despite his limitations, he never despaired and was always eager to eat. I started singing to him too, his own little song, roughly based on a Christmas anthem our choir had sung at our annual concert. I would sing: "Look at that fish shine in the night/Look at that fish shine in the night/Look at that fish shine in the night/Showin' the way to Bethlehem...."

He loved it. He always responded by swimming lopsided circles.

One day I came in to feed him and his swim bladder had contracted, and he was now lying on the bottom of the tank. So at least he could eat the sinking pellets again, but I missed our daily meal together! Some days I wasn't sure if he was alive or not and I would stand there looking at him and would then see his eye twitch in my direction. Pretty much every time I went into the bathroom I expected him to be dead, and was immensely reassured by that little eye twitch. He was still happy and hopeful, still managed to move around despite being trapped on the bottom in the gravel. He was vigorous despite his deformity, and he taught me a lot about remaining cheerful despite circumstances that are less than ideal. He was always happy and friendly, and always eager to eat.

Eventually tumors began to grow on his head. And one morning, about a week after my mother's current husband had died, in November 2 years ago, little Homer lay very, very still in his tank, and his little eye did not twitch in my direction, and he was gone. I knew in my heart that he was now swimming freely and gracefully and happily someplace else. He had lived 2 years despite all his health woes.

(Incidentally, his 'sister' Joy has since had her swim bladder fail, and she now lives in Homer's old tank, but I brought it out here and it sits amidst the plants and the sunshine on the dining room table. She has been that way for over a year now, and while she does not have Homer's sparkling personality, she is surviving quite nicely.)

I buried him under my heirloom apple tree ( the variety is called Sops of Wine) in a hole that immediately filled with water because we had had a lot of rain and the ground water was high in that spot. I loved little Homer, he taught me so much, his tiny shining self. Look at that fish shine in the night!

Koo-koo Time

2008-01-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

I think people who do not themselves experience mental illness and mood disorders caused by chemical imbalances in the brain really understand what it is like to have them. I think they do not understand that sometimes something changes and takes over inside and it does not ask me if I want to go along for the ride. It simply holds me hostage. I have often likened it to a feeling of something dark--like cold water--rising inside me, and I am helpless to stop it. When I have a fairly good presence of mind and feel it coming, like a cold, I can take measures to care for myself, to cut myself some slack and give myself some breaks. Sometimes I try my best to not fight it and rise to the top of it and float along on it. If I fight it my anxiety tends to rise and that creates a whole other segment to the hostage drama. Kind of like, the hostage taker was doing just fine holding the hostage and screaming his crazy demands, but now he hears the rescue helicopters outside and sees the SWAT team sniper on the roof, and uh oh, watch out, hoo boy, he might just let loose and do something really crazy.

(Not to mention the role hormones can play in this insane little dance. Call them the loose cannon of the hostage taking team.)

I know what it feels like to have my emotions run me, instead of the other way around. For so many years, that was a way of life. Being healthy-ish has been a cumulative process extending over roughly 30 years. It has been a process of following a mindful path of healing and reaching a plateau, and then coasting along for a few years thinking I am finally okay (I would say it was my revised self), and then hitting some crazy awful challenge that causes the bottom to drop out of my resilience. Over the years, my journey of healing has visited and resided for many years in all these places: Yoga, meditation, therapy, exercise, spiritual disciplines and paths. Growing medicinal plants and using them. Nurturing and caring for others. Creating art. Running with wolves. Writing. Using alcohol or marijuana, often to excess (drug and alcohol abuse! what the professionals in the business call, "self-medicating behaviors", a definite red flag on their 'why this person may need our help' list!). Singing. Relaxing hot baths scented with lavender essential oil. Finding someone to love. Hard core pharmaceutical medication and psych hospital programs. I am old enough, and experienced enough, to now know I can never say Oh yes, I am all better now. Faith in a loving Father God who protects me and nurtures me in a way no man on this earth ever has has also created in me a very stable sense of peace and serenity. That said, I still know there are times when my brain goes numb and shuts down or I get really nasty or lethargic or apathetic, can't concentrate, or am just so sad. Or am just so tired. When I feel like I am trapped behind glass.

I have had at least 3 breakdowns in my life. The last one was the largest and the scariest. I could not function. Period. I would sit and stare for extended periods of time quite nicely though. I was afraid to leave my house. I decided the world did not have enough cake in it and began baking a cake a week and eating it. I gained weight, I painted my toenails the same colors as the meds I was taking. The supermarket was too confusing, too scary. I lost my job. I lay in bed, like a bleached out half drowned creature washed up in the surf. I was lost, empty, my brain was a maze of static. I could not take my daughter school shopping because the noise and buzz of the mall coalesced into a hazy fog that filled my vision and left me standing mute, like a zombie, confused and disoriented. It was not a matter of snapping out of it or getting over myself. My brain was koo-koo and I was held hostage, gagged and bound and muzzy headed. I was out of control. I did not pay my bills. I went nuts with a credit card. I fell headlong into debt. I dropped out of my church life. I wandered from job to job trying to get something of myself back. That was in 2002. I am only now able to say, I think I am over that one.

I think being abused from such a young age ongoing through my entire childhood and adolescence has much to do with this lifelong struggle with haywire brain chemistry and warped coping mechanisms, with heredity playing a smaller supporting role. I read once of a study of concentration camp survivors' brains--their brain chemistry differed from those who had not undergone such hell on earth. In the same way, my brain chemistry is not balanced. I have gone through times where the waters rose so high as to drown me and I have depended on the stabilizing effects of the hard core pharmaceuticals--trazadone, wellbutrin, celexa, prozac, lexapro. There was even an anti-psychotic called zyprexa thrown in there when I was in full blown breakdown koo-koo time, because I was coming to learn that when there was too much external stimuli, my brain often simply can not process it all and goes into fight or flight mode. And so, I would (do) think people were (are) sneaking up on me when they weren't (aren't) and I hear my name called when it wasnt (isn't).

Another thing that affected the health of my brain was the serious binge drinking I did throughout my adolescence--often drinking to black out stage. That went on into my 20s. The brain is still a growing, developing organ on into our 20s! Then there was many years of heavy marijuana use that, while it opened my mind to new levels of perception and let me create awesome poetry and experience music in a whole new dimensional framework, it also left me having psychotic moments when I was sure there were actual scary monsters down at the end of the hall and no one could convince me other wise. (I heard some guy say this once: Sure, pot opens up a door in your mind. But it is always the same door.)

I have tended to stay away from the hard core pharmaceutical psych meds when I can manage it because they are very toxic to the system in general, and really burden the liver. I have found that a program of herbs and vitamins specifically intended to enhance and nourish the brain has worked best for me. I still get depressed. No doubt about it. I don't think any pill can ever make it go away forever, not the chronic--rather than situational--kind of depression and PTSD I have. I also do not lead a life most people would consider normal. I do not leave this village for months at a time! I walk up and down this hill and that is about it. I limit my contact with people--they exhaust me. I do not go out into hyper stimulating scenes, malls, bars, cities. I call myself the village idiot. I do not lead a life that others would seek to emulate, in fact, I know people think me odd and that is okay because they are right. The village idiot life works for me--it helps me stay healthy.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Epiphany

2008-01-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

People tend to say, "Oh, I had an epiphany," when what they mean is some sudden realization came upon them, swooped down upon them and they saw things in a new light. I am looking at my old dictionary here, and it says epiphany means, "A revelatory manifestation of a divine being." Not exactly the same as having a new insight. More like The Revelation, rather than a revelation.

Unless you do not believe in divine beings, of course. Unless you worship humanity over all, and then, I guess, your own newly generated idea would seem pretty fine--a revelation!, if not downright divine. Humans do so love themselves and their things!

Oh, don't mind me. I am here at home in the descending twilight wishing someone would come along and say, "How about I make you a cup of tea?" And then I get to sit there while the water boils and the tea steeps and the soy milk is added and the bag is removed, and the tea is served to me. I would not have to get up once! Not once. I could sit and enjoy. Sounds like luxury to me.

Some of us are meant to be served, and some of us are meant to do the serving. Guess which camp I fall into?

It's okay! Really. And so, anyway....

...We celebrated capital-E Epiphany in church today, the remembering of the 3 Wise Men, the learned astronomers of Persia arriving to visit the infant Jesus. They had prognosticated the birth of this divine being, this Messiah, this Emmanuel or God-With-Us (not God far away and up there, back turned and uncaring, but right here, with us!). They had travelled many months across unfamiliar terrain to reach the baby around the time of his birth. They had stopped by King Herod's place along the way to see what he knew of this divine baby, did he know where he was he born? Herod had heard rumors of Bethlehem, and pointed them that way. But he did not know exactly where this upstart, this infant threat to his power might be. So as they left, he asked them to return to him and tell him where the baby lay.

They were guided on their way by a bright light in the sky--it led them directly to the stable of Jesus's birth. But they never returned to Herod; one of them had had a dream warning them not to go back. And they heeded that dream. For Herod would have killed that baby boy. And when Herod realized they had not returned to him, old despot that he was, he ordered that all the newborn baby boys be sought out and killed. Every single one. Crude and effective--he wasn't taking any chances. And yet, somehow the Holy Family was warned of this, and so they fled to Egypt, and lived there for many years.

Journeys in the dark, lights in the sky, dreams, visions, holy children, timely escapes. Pretty far out stuff. I read of these wonders and glories and mysteries and my heart soars. Whether or not the language is symbolic or literal, reportage straight and true or metaphor and creative imagery, the heart of the story shines forth. Something pretty special happened in the days when that particular baby was born, so special in fact, the story is still being told.

The poet Christina Rosetti wrote the lyrics to a song called 'In The Bleak Mid Winter'. Gustav Holst provided the score. And some of the lyrics recall the Wise Astronomers who travelled so far to see this miraculous newborn being, and the precious gifts they brought to him. But what Rosetti says is this:

"What shall I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb.
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part.
Yet what I can I give him;
I give him my heart."

That's why I don't mind so much being one of those who do the serving. Because love is what it is all about. How about that for an epiphany?

Vampyr

2008-01-05T18:03:00.000-08:00

I haven't talked about him much. Because he terrifies me. Like any vampire, I fear the simple mention of him can summon him. Not that he has been around for a very long time. But I never know. Consider this: there was the morning I could not find my bright blue fleece slipper socks, the ones I always wear. They were not beside my bed where I always leave them when I take them off at night. Just not there. So I went down the hall and let out Bumby. And then when I opened the back door to let her back in, there were my socks, out on the back porch, lying there neatly folded.

For 3 days I thought myself insane. Because it was harder to accept the concrete truth of a very spooky man: he had come into my house, taken the socks, waited outside in the dawn, placed them just so, right where I would find them. Bumby knew him, she would never bark at him. He would speak to her softly, maybe give her a treat. He is brilliant, in his odd and twisted way, an eccentric genius even. And he probably thought it was funny, his little prank, sneaking into and around my house. He would also deny ever doing it, if accused.

But he did it. I know he did. I knew he had been creeping around my house! I had seen tracks in the snow and heard weird noises in the dark outside my bedroom window. I had recently asked him to give me back the key to my front door that he had, never once thinking he would make himself a copy, creep into my house, and mess with my mind a little bit more. After I let myself believe the truth of the blue fleece slipper socks, I asked the X to put a new dead bolt lock on the front door. And I lock it every time I go out, even yet, all these years later.

I have always had a tolerance for odd people. I was brought up with such human oddities, I learned not to judge them by their oddness. That has changed. I am much less tolerant about who I let into my personal sphere. The Vampyr is the reason for that.

And why do I call him the Vampyr? You might be wondering that. Because he stayed up most of the night, lurking around. He was good at quiet stealth. Also because he was pale and said some of his ancestors came from the Transylvania region of the Carpathian Mountains. But primarily because he fed off my vitality. He was like the X in that he was attracted to my strength, and he fed off that strength, and then when I was not strong anymore, when I was ill and in need--I had my last major breakdown while he was here, big surprise, eh?--he resented me and would not help me. And then I told him to leave, because he had to go. He refused to help out around here and his unhappiness was poisoning the atmosphere, and I had enough poison inside me to deal with already. Also, he broke things I held dear, secretly, but I have talked about that in an earlier blog.

He had an affinity for UFOs and extra-terrestrials. He believes in their reality and knows all the types of creatures and why they come here, what they want. He wants one to come and take him away. He has wanted it most of his life. (He also believed he could become immortal by eating an expensive food supplement made from gold and purported to be the actual manna the ancient Israelites ate in the desert during their 40 years of Moses leading them to the promised land. That, and he was so convinced the world was going to end in early 2000, he stashed away his possessions, enough to homestead a new place-- a castle in fact!, deep within the wilds of the forested mountains to the north. His own promised land. He literally bankrupted himself with credit cards used to acquire all he would need in his brave new world. I am not making this up. And yes, I know--now--he is nuts, and not in a fun way. But he is smart, he is oh so smart, wily coyote smart. It got so I believed he had actually been picked up by some ship and maybe even had some kind of homing device inserted into his brain. Because while he was around, especially the last summer he was around, I myself became convinced there were aliens all around this area. And that they were around me, because of him, and I was terrified by that.

The potential reality of aliens and UFOs have always terrified me. That stuff just scares the crap out of me--with the exception of Spielberg's film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", that is. The night after I saw the movie 'Signs', a movie everyone I know laughs at and says to me, "I can't believe that scared you!", I was convinced those very same aliens were in my room. I heard them talking their weird clicking language, I saw one standing in the doorway and another looking in the window. I was out of my mind with fear.

Another night I dreamt a huge and horrible dark ship was hovering over the ski mountain to the south. The dream was as clear as a vision. The Vampyr got home--he worked nights, of course!--and told me that as he was driving back he saw a beautiful shining white ship hovering over the ski mountain to the south. He was overjoyed by the sight of it.

There was more stuff, all too weird. I can't even say it, you would never believe me, it is that weird. Maybe another time, another story. And, maybe not.

I ran into him last summer. I had not seen him for a very long time. He had been stalking me for awhile, early mornings when the dogs and I walked, but then he went away, and I heard no more about him, and I hoped he had left the area. Anyway, last summer, I had the use of a car and I went to the supermarket across the river. It was an odd day, I was feeling kind of unbalanced and unhappy. In the market, I was standing in front of a cold case, trying to decide on which iced tea to buy my daughter. Suddenly a face, right up in mine. The Vampyr, only he has shaved his head. I hate shaved heads (unless, of course, you are Jean Luc Picard--'Star Trek' is great! And, aliens in unrealistic, futuristic settings don't scare me). He chirped, "Hey."

I reeled back. I swallowed hard. I looked up at him, my mean face on. I growled low in my throat: "Get the hell away from me."

And he did, quick as that. Gone, saying, "Noooooo," as he went . Truly. I only wish I was making this up, but why would I make up such yuck?

One last bit of yuck: after he left, I had a terrifying dream, being in a car at night, with him, careening down a twisting mountain road and coming on a fearful accident scene. No one else there, only the silence of death, lurid red light and headlights blazing, and ruined bodies and blood, so much blood. A scene of horror, all black and yellow and red. That's part of what he has inside of him. That kind of terror and gore. So much yuck. So much more I could tell. But probably not. This has been more than enough. Twisted. Who knows what went awry in him, or what happened to him. He is not normal! And for so long, that was okay with me. I even prided myself on my tolerance. But not anymore, not like that, and not within the sphere of my life. Get the hell away from me, indeed.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

love rises

2008-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

i want to go down to the lowlands
and watch the flood waters rise.
my old black dog would guide me there.
he knows it well; he’s a water dog,
accustomed to paddling out into the wet depths and returning home
again, feathered death cradled gently in his soft mouth.

i want to sit amidst the sharp black rocks,
obsidian glass shining in iridescent circles
of night. i see the dog’s face reflected there.
he smiles at me, he wags his tail slowly, he acts as if he approves of my choice.
but it’s only a ruse to let me think i make the choices,
not him. because in fact
we can’t stay long
in this shining black place,
in these rocks. they are no place to rest.
they conjure me back to the pain of living, and he can’t have that.

he is a lazy, fat dog. he would sleep all day
on into the midnight spiral of solitary stars
whispering songs that have never been named
by our kind. he loves the solace of heavy quilts, of rising waters,
of the many faces and forms of sleep.
he exhales warm breath into my nostrils,
puts his big paw on my face.
he would hold me fast there
as the darkness comes and fills all the spaces.

he would bring me rounded river stones,
smoothly grey and faintly black, with which to fill my pockets.
he would set me spinning into the lavender grey twilight,
so sweet, so vast, no stars arisen yet, no crescent moon
to catch my hands upon so that i might hang there,
grasping that last sharp sliver of silvery white light.
no, he would not allow me that,

that fleeting promise of light. he would rather rend my flesh to bones
amidst obsidian knives, and eat my tough old woman heart.
he would rather savor hot garnet flecks
of this ancestral blood, this fleeting fire,
this, my life. he would much rather
fill my mouth with the sweetness of death
infused in green river water.
he would kiss the life right out of me. he loves me that much!
he does! for he has walked beside me all my life, taking care,
like a guide dog, to keep me out of the brightness and well inside the shadows.
he is keeping me safe, out of the glare of that light.
keeping me safe. it is what he knows.
and he will abide with me,
faithfully, to the end of all walking.
he is the celestial bear
wearing the guise
of a fat black dog.
and he will see me safely home.

because,
without him,
i must face the sunrise in gladness,
singing songs of praise.
i must claim my power. i must tend and serve the eastern light.
i can do this! i can!
but it is a lonely place. for no one can know the truth of this life.
no one
can know. and so, without him,
i must meet all the smiling faces, all the bared teeth,
all the voices and the clamor. i must put on a face and participate
in the madness of humanity.
it exhausts me. i hate it.
may i rest forever in the solace of a solitude attended
by animals and spirits. may i rest forever
inside the celestial bear.

Jamaican Dogs

2007-12-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

Dogs are all over the place in Jamaica. I have never met any who were actual pets and lived in the house, though I am sure some of them live that way. Just as I have become familiar with a certain segment of Jamaica by coming to know the people at the children's home, and also the family of our bus driver, I have only come to know a certain segment of Jamaican dogs.

And this segment is all over the place on the paths beaten and unbeaten by tourists. They run loose and they do not wear collars. They sleep curled up on the side of the road; they rest their heads on curbs as cars whoosh by at the gas station. They sleep on graves in the cemetery. They are un-neutered males with swinging balls and females with large swinging nipples. Rarely have I seen puppies. I think, in the absence of the funds to spay and neuter the dogs, the method of preferred population control is neglect. Sick puppies die. The strong survive. Such is the way of it.

The dogs I have known don't let you pet them very much. I don't try to pet them either. And I love dogs! But these dogs have skin ailments and who knows what other kinds of parasites and whatnot. They also bite. They do not seek human companionship. They don't run up to you in that friendly way, smiling and wagging their tails. They have each other, they run in little packs. They have their alpha males and females and their low-down-on-the-pecking-order youngsters. They have scars of bites on their muzzles, their sides, their thighs. They know exactly what it feels like to be kicked. The kids at the children's home think it is great fun to maltreat the dogs until they cry. They think it is funny. I have seen them chase them and kick them and hold them down and slam their heads in gates. I have seen them corner them and beat them and laugh while the dogs cry. When we tell the kids to stop it, they laugh and run off, only to come back later and do it again. Once I was asked by one of the older girls (this was Evelyn, 15 years old and a bed wetter, low down on the pecking order herself, treated badly by the other smarter girls, the savvy girls), "It is wrong to hurt the dogs, Miss?"

"Yes."

"But we think it is funny, Miss."

"Would you want someone to do that to you?"

"No, Miss."

"Well then, neither do the dogs."

Last summer the children's home had 11 dogs. One or two of them were the grown up pups we had seen the year before. The director uses them for security. She also lets some of the girls 'adopt' a favorite pup and care for it. By which she means, the girl feeds that pup. There is no bonding in the sense we understand with a pet. No playtime, no walks, no cuddling up together. None of that. And only minimal care. They get the leftover food. They get scraps tossed to them, chicken bones, stuff we are told not to feed them here. The alpha male of the pack, the one the kids call the "King Dog" had a perversely swollen ear last summer. It was blown up like a balloon. It bothered him. He tilted his head to the side and rubbed his ear on things. He came up to me with a pleading look in his eyes and tried to rub the ear on my leg. He sat close to me. He wanted help. There was nothing I could do. We asked about him and were told, oh yes, he will be taken to the vet.

Uh huh.

I had promised myself that this year I would not look at the dogs. But it is impossible! They are everywhere! On the bus ride up, a terrified female running for her life on a dark narrow road, trying to avoid speeding cars. In the center of the town of Port Maria (a place our driver Peat tells us is cursed because once they killed a mermaid there), in the very middle of the road, a road lit by the lurid red light of the KFC and congested with cars and people walking, and with trotting packs of dogs, there is a pair who have just mated, but they are still stuck together in that way that happens before their muscles relax. They are twisted at an odd angle and joined at the genitals. They have embarrassed doggy expressions, tongues lolling.

Or the last day of our visit, 2 years ago. It is at the end of worship at the large concrete church with wide open windows. We walk out of the shade into the sunshine and there is a white dog lying on the cool marble of the top front step. She is emaciated. She lies on her side, licking away at an open wound in her belly. Open, so that you can see the organs inside. The wound is very clean and she is definitely dying. Was she drawn to the prayers and the singing? Why is she there? And why can't I help her? Because I can't. I am not a vet. Nor do I have the luxury of of being able to do something for her as I would here at home! I do not have drugs to euthanize her. I can't take her anywhere for help. She must simply die, of infection, or attacked by other dogs, or killed by a car on the road.

Or the 2 litters of pups born at the home, within a week of each other, that same year. Twelve puppies in all, and I know that next year I will not meet 12 new dogs. The kids handle them all the time, even when they are too small to be moved (but I see one of the girls moving them, the whole litter, she carries the tiny pups in her hand wrapped in a plastic bag, and I wonder, is she going to go somewhere and suffocate them?). If they die, they die. Sometimes it is the mothers who die, suddenly outcast from the pack, not let close to the food, staggering around alone and emaciated, accustomed to kicks and thrown stones. We gave just such a young female applesauce one year; it was what we had to give her. She was too afraid to eat it. We feel moved to respond but our responses are too small and too feeble. Too self serving, perhaps, gestures to make us feel better. There, we did something. And even though the affluence we bring to the place is more than material-- it is an affluence of spirit--, we can clearly see that material affluence or the lack of it is at the base of survival. It is only when everyone has enough that everyone can have enough. Until then, it is the strong who prosper and cruelty becomes a game of power, a way of showing you are strong. That is true not just in the bare bones reality of a children's home in an impoverished island nation. It is just as true here--we are simply buffered from much of it because of the relativity involved. Here in the US, the poor have more than the poor of other nations. That is the relativity of scarcity. It is a continuum, like any other.

So, it isn't just the children that tear at my heart there. And honestly, by the time I get home from a Jamaican mission trip, I am so overwhelmed by unattended suffering, that I cannot stand to see even wilted plants as I walk down the hill to work. I want to water every single one. I want to feed and tend and love all who are in need. And I can't. It takes me months to get over this trip, it takes me months to grow into the person I will become after experiencing what I have experienced. It takes me months to assimilate what I have learned and seen. I tell myself, This is only the Caribbean! Imagine the scale of suffering in Africa, or parts of Asia! And just like the Grinch in the Dr. Suess story, my heart stretches and grows. I hope it makes me a better person. I hope it makes me more able to share the healing light of love. Otherwise, what is the point?

Rest in Peace, Tatiana

2007-12-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

Quote from New York Times article dated Dec. 28, 2007: "Big cat experts have said Tatiana must have been taunted and provoked to attack."

(photo courtesy of San Francisco Zoo)

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 4

2007-12-27T09:50:00.000-08:00

The third trip to Jamaica almost didn't happen. We had gotten advance word from the trip leader that extensive renovations were being done on the children's home, and that the kids would not be there. Rather, there would be a construction crew from Kingston staying there. People from our church raised the issue of safety. I raised the issue of if there are no kids, surely what is the point of going? Our pastor told us she had our permission to not go, despite the fact we had already paid the bulk of the money to the church we partner with on this mission. I called the leader back and told her our side of it. She was flabbergasted and upset. She tried to assure me that there would surely be some kids there--albeit only half of them, and that we would be safe, because of course the work crew would not be staying on the grounds. I reported all this back to the people on our end, and we decided to go. There were 2 of us traveling that year--a young woman I had traveled with on the previous 2 trips, and of course myself.

All that said, this was also definitely the year I was telling myself, Last trip. This will be my last trip. I hadn't slept for a month prior to leaving, my anxiety was so strong. After the difficulties with the girls the year before, and the physical and mental exhaustion I had felt, I did not think I could do this trip again. I was still depressed but I was at least taking the vitamin/herbal supplements that help me stay on a somewhat even keel.

We were in customs longer than usual, it felt like, and we got to the children's home quite late. It was very dark. We drove up the dirt road that circled the hill upon which the home sits, and arrived on a scene that was desolate and bleak. Looming beside us was the gutted home. Live electrical wires hung down in front of the bus. No one came out to greet us. No one. We got out to silence. The young woman traveling with me turned to me and her face was full of sadness and anger mixed. Finally, some of the work crew guys filtered out from the building they were staying in and began to pull up those dangling wires. I could see stars through the roof beams in the home. It was very quiet. Normally the windows are lit up and the dogs are barking and clamoring around and the kids run out to greet us and help carry our bags. We silently unloaded the bus. I was holding back a huge I TOLD YOU SO for the group leader. That huge 'I told you so' would accompany us for many days, sitting in the room with us like an invisible elephant.

Eventually the cook came out to find us. She told us the children--the ones who were not at camp or staying with relatives for a brief holiday-- had all been moved to a house over a mile away. Only the boys were staying up there, along with the director and the guidance counselor and the cook. There were 4 boys. One of them was Morris. They had not been able to find a local home to place him in. I felt so relieved for him.

After I put my stuff in the room I was staying in--we took the best room, we figured the leader owed us at least that--, I heard the guidance counselor outside. I went out to greet her. The boys were with her. Two of them were very small, and the smallest, Germaine, told me he was cold! So I scooped him in my ams and held him to warm him. He was shivering! There was another boy named Ricardo who was partially deaf, a boy named Dominique who had been there all the years I had visited, and there was Morris, smiling at me. I said hello to him and I could tell by the light in his eyes that he remembered me. But it was time for them to go to bed and for me to go eat. I told the guidance counselor we were very happy to be there and very excited to be with the children. She assured me they were excited to see us too.

Morris and his sister kerry Ann are not the kind of kids you run over to and scoop up in a hug. They are the kind of kids who flinch at physical contact. They are the kind of kids you approach slowly. The look in their eyes that says, "Why are you paying attention to me?" never quite goes away. I would grow very close to both of them this trip. It was not something I had planned. It simply happened. Partly because there were half as many kids there as usual, and so we could pay even closer attention to the 15 or so who were there. Also our contact with them was limited since they were staying over a mile away, and we had to catch rides over there as our group leader did not have the physical stamina to walk over there. So, the time we had with them was quality time. When we are with them all day and into the night, it quite frankly gets exhausting. There are so many of them and they are so lively and needy. We saw them for only a few hours a day this trip. I missed them terribly! It was sad without them around. And so, when I was with them, I made the most of the time.

I was also fortunate to get to see Morris first thing in the morning before he and the other boys were brought down to be with the rest of the kids. We had some special moments together, sharing a piece of sugar cane, or talking about singing. This was after I had found out he really could talk! He could talk and he could sing and he could drum and he could draw really, really well. As I waited for our breakfast to be ready one hot morning, Morris sat beside me and sang me all his favorite reggae songs. Every single one. He sang shyly, looking at his feet, and I sat beside him, head tilted toward him so I could hear his soft voice. I did not look in his eyes as he sang; I did not want to embarrass him.

On another day we had brought the children sidewalk chalk and they had drawn on the concrete all around the house they were staying in. It was then I discovered Morris drew very well. He drew an anime character he liked, and he also drew some pictures to some simple rhymes he had created. The drawing came after we had spent time making pinwheels with the kids. We made them from plastic straws and colored copier paper that they had decorated with crayons and colored pencils and ink stamps. We had stood in front of the house hoping a breeze would come and spin the pinwheels. We had called out to the wind, asking it to blow for us. Sometimes it did. The joy on the children's faces when the wind spun their pinwheels was a glorious thing to see and feel. Their simple delight was something we all felt, and treasured.

On another day, I discovered Morris had a talent for drumming. He later told me he drummed at a concert at the church. I noticed after worship on our last day there that he was busy helping the church musician, Kevin, put away the drum set. Kevin also grew up in the children's home. He is a tall, quiet young man of about 22 who has a kind handsome face, and who remembers the songs he was taught by the group when he was a small boy. He told us those songs were the first music he ever learned. He plays drums and keyboard during worship. After I saw how Morris helped out after worship, I asked Kevin to work with Morris and teach him to drum. He said he would if he had the time.

The van arrived at the church to take the girls back to their house. I went to say good-bye to Kerry Ann. She had already asked me several times during the week whether I would come back next year: "You come back next year, Miss?"

The first time she had asked me, I had hesitated in my response. She saw that. She asked me again. I hesitated again, and then I said, "Yes. Yes, I will come back next year." My decision had been made, even though I was not 100% certain how I felt about it! After that she began to insist, "You stay here, Miss. You stay here." She said it again to me after church. But we both knew I had to leave, just as she knew she had to go back to the house in the van waiting outside. I told her I loved her. I told her I would come see her next year. I told her I would be thinking of her, and that I would miss her and Morris both. I reached out and hugged her. She was like a bundle of branches on my arms. She looked at me with skeptical eyes. I wondered what she thought of those words of mine, I love you.

We walked back to the home. I told Morris we were leaving that day. We had made some more pinwheels and gave them to the boys. Morris likes blue. I had made him a special one, all blue. I found some candy and gave that to him and the boys too. Every time I walked into the residence, his eyes would follow me. He knew I was leaving, but when? I assured him every time I got up that I would be right back. And then, the bus came earlier than we had expected it. As soon as I saw it, tears stung my eyes-- even though my mind was thinking I would not come back next year, my heart apparently had other plans. I turned to Morris to say good-bye, to tell him I loved him and that I would miss him. He started to cry. My heart broke at the sight of his tears. I thought, have I done something wrong to make this sweet, innocent boy cry? If loving someone is wrong, then yes. If paying attention to a shining star previously hidden by clouds is wrong, then yes. I felt helpless in the face of his tears. Another member of our group came over and patted Morris on the back. Kevin also stood nearby, looking on with kind dark eyes. He knew the taste of these sad good-byes. I turned to Morris and said, "You sing and drum, Morris. You sing and drum while I am away, and I will see you next year. Okay?"

Then I looked up at Kevin and asked him again to teach Morris to drum. He said, "Yes." I replied, "Promise?" He nodded and said, "Promise."

I got on the bus. Through the front window I could see Morris standing with the others. It looked like he was looking my way, so I raised my hand in a farewell wave. He raised his hand back. We drove away. I cried for a long time. I cried, and I prayed.

While praying, I came to realize a new level of faith. That as God cares for me, so too will he care for Morris and Kerry Ann. I must have faith in that, that as he shelters me under his great wings, so too does he shelter them. And that as he guided me for the past 3 years, (despite myself sometimes!), to be with the children in Jamaica, and to do his work there by loving his orphan children, so too will he be caring for them, all the year round. And even though Morris may not even be there when I go back this coming July, I will keep faith, I will go back. Kerry Ann will still be there, and I told her, as I told her brother, that I will come back to see them next year. I will keep faith.

They are in my prayers every day.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 3

2007-12-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

The next year was very different. It felt different. I had approached the trip with an uneasy sense of foreboding that had started with the new year. Nothing I could explain. Some of it was the depression, for sure. I hadn't been taking the herbal/vitamin supplements I often use, and needed to get back on them. (But that was a matter of finances, as usual!) And yet, there was more to my uneasy feelings than that. When we had arrived in Jamaica and began the long bus ride, I looked out the window at the wandering goats and the congregating people and the ubiquitous dogs curled up asleep on the roadsides, and it felt like something was different--darker. Near the resort areas, I saw more people living under blue tarps. As we got further into the mountains, and the foliage became dense and dark, I would see solitary men looming from that darkness. I saw dark abandoned houses. I also saw fields with barefoot young men playing soccer in the twilight. This was World Cup soccer summer, and everyone everywhere on that island was playing.

Like 3 year old Trevon, the cook's grandson. He presented me with a tiny round plastic red ball and we kicked it back and forth, in the heat, for over an hour. This was while the other women were distributing outfits to the other children. This was a half day long project that sounds simple enough but is actually exhausting. The kids are brought in in groups arranged by age and size. They get their new clothes, they try them on, we oooh and ahhh and trot them outside to stand them beneath the poinciana and take their picture. The kids whose turn it is not yet wait very impatiently, and I was outside with them, as there were plenty enough women inside, doing the clothing thing. It all went very well until we got to the teen girls. We had already gotten a heads up about them from the home's guidance counselor. We had met with her one morning to see what particular areas she wanted us to work with the kids on. Reading? Math? No, how about you have a talk with the older girls about appropriate relationships and not having sex until marriage.

Okay. Suddenly I understood the strange men looming in the fields around the home. The home is in an isolated small town, kind of hanging off the edge of it. There is no secure fence, no compound, no protected area. We had already had a night of listening to the dogs bark in a frenzy for hours only to be told in the morning that someone had come and stolen all the water from the cistern, water that had just been delivered and purchased the day before. This is the kind of poverty we were in the midst of--the kind that steals water. And while that water had been delivered, we women were padlocked into our residence building and not let out until the men had left. The trouble with the teen girls, you see--it was like they were in heat, and all the neighboring males could smell it and were on the scene. Just like that. Yes. In fact. And so, the children's home director was taking no chances with our young white women being visible.

And so, the same girls who had been sweet and friendly the year before were all hooded eyes and surly mouths. They had eyes only for the teen boys traveling with us, but not for us older women--the boys were friends and we were authority figures. The boys were freedom and fun and we were surely not. They were bitchy and competitive with one another, and only more so with us. It was tricky and difficult-- and we were supposed to talk to them about sex? After they had sniffed and picked their noses at the outfits we had brought, had stood there with downcast eyes, loudly transmitting their dislike? These were girls who had cut open their shirts to reveal cleavage. They were running wild with the town boys up playing soccer on the upper field. They would grudgingly return to do bead projects with us with their eyes wild and triumphant and their shirts half unbuttoned, their young breasts clearly visible beneath.

So it was with great relief we retreated to the soft comforts of the younger children, and also of the ones called "simple". The ones who up here we would diagnose as developmentally delayed or disabled and would have treatment plans for. In Jamaica, they are called "simple", and what kind of life awaits them, I can only guess at and even then I cannot make a good guess. There was sweet sad Dido, and Kerry Ann and Morris. Kerry Ann and Morris are siblings, they have the same birthday and they are happy and proud that they share the same birthday but they also say they are not twins. Well, Kerry Ann says it--I don't think Morris knows what twins means. At any rate, who knows if they are twins or not? They were simply given the same birth date to make it all easier for the administrator. When we did bead projects with the older girls, after having spent the morning with them trying to have the relationship talk, we used seed beads and had real jewelry making findings and supplies. With the younger children, we used plastic string and big fat plastic beads. Kerry Ann was a teen but she did beads with the little kids, as did her brother Morris. They are only a year or 2 apart, if they aren't, in fact, actually twins. I sat beside Kerry Ann and helped her thread each bead onto the strand, one by one. It was quiet, calm, simple work, and I loved it, and she enjoyed my patient attention. She made a beautiful necklace, and later on, with the generosity typical of so many of the children at the home, she gave it to one of the girls in our group.

I hadn't yet gotten to know Morris as well as I know him now. At that time, I knew him as a sweet and shy boy with a big smile, and didn't really think he could talk much. He seemed to be a boy who was quite accustomed to being overlooked and ignored. All I had ever heard him say was, "Yes, Miss" and "No, Miss" and who replied "Fine, Miss" when asked how he was. On our last night there, when we were waiting for the Kentucky Fried Chicken we had purchased for the kids for supper to arrive, (it took hours and hours, as many things in Jamaica seem to), we had waited for so long that the cook had cut up watermelon for us and had a bag of small mangoes for the kids. Morris stood patiently by the girl who was handing them out and never said a word, just waited. Kerry Ann finally spoke up for him and told the girl to give him a mango, then turned to me with a mischievous light in her eye and laughingly said, "Morris does not talk."

And so I thought Morris does not talk. Later on when there was a second piece of watermelon offered to me, I took it and gave it to Morris on the sly. His joy lit up the night. See, I have come to know Morris better as time has passed, and I love him now with a love that pierces my heart. Because he is simple and sweet and I can do nothing for him but visit him and pay attention to him, enjoy him and pray for him. We had been told that summer that he would have to leave the home because of his age (all boys leave at 13) but that he couldn't go to the boys orphanage--they knew he would not do well there, and they did not want to separate him from his sister. They are 2 of the true orphans there. The director was hoping to find a home nearby where Morris could live. After learning this, we had put together a bag of clothing and snacks for him, with a note inside that we had all signed, not that he can read, but, you know. The whole situation worried me greatly. What would happen to that sweet boy?

On our last morning there, a Sunday, I left our building to go over to where the men were staying to tell them breakfast was ready. It was one of the only days when the clouds had parted and I could actually see the panorama of mountains on the horizon. It was blue and glorious! It was also the day we would all go to church together, and so we were dressed up in nicer church clothes. Besides the mountains, I also saw Morris sitting up in the dining hall window, looking over at our building. He had on a blue button up shirt, and looked very nice. As soon as he saw me, his face lit up in a great big smile and he waved to me. He had been sitting there waiting for one of us to come out! That smile lit my heart. The memory of it still does. I love that boy. And it is a love that breaks my heart. And that truly is another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 2

2007-12-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

Most of the kids aren't orphans, even though it is called a mission trip to an orphanage. That is how I always heard it described in our church. Roughly 5 of the 33 usually in residence are "true orphans". The rest are abandoned, one way or another. Some of them have mothers living nearby who cannot afford to raise them. They and their siblings by different dads ("baby daddies") all live in the home. Many of the children there are siblings or cousins. Some of them have parents in other countries, like England, working and sending them expensive gifts. This is apparently a very common situation for children in Jamaica, being left behind while parents emigrate for work. I learned this during the hurricane, when one of the boys, Winston, came out wearing a very expensive wool sweater he said his mother had sent him from England. The next year, the dad had sent him a nice bicycle. Even though he lived there with his brother, Nordido--Dido for short--, the gifts always came to Winston. The last year I visited, both boys were gone, off to England apparently, to be put in boarding schools there. I had spent a lot of time with Dido the summer previously. He was a melancholy boy who had a kind of delay to his speech. He would hang on me as much as he could, literally put his arms around my neck and hang. He is the one, in the picture above, hanging on me and looking so sad.

But back to that first year, the year of the hurricane. The kids had a television now, a fact that shocked some of the veterans of the trip. It was in the living room of the house, a dank, dim place that smelled of piss. I think it was the couches that smelled like that. The kids would congregate in there all day and watch TV, especially with the rain outside. The girls enjoyed fixing each other's hair. They would endlessly fix and play with anyone's hair, and they really liked our white people's hair. Combing and braiding and pony tailing, endlessly. The TV allowed us to watch updates on the storm. We hadn't taken it very seriously the first day or so, but by the time we found out it had been named Dennis, we knew that was a bad thing. What we did not know, but that our loved ones back home knew, was that it was a giant whopper of a storm and it was heading directly for where we were. What we did not know was that loved ones at home were worried and crying and asking everyone they could to pray for us. And what I do know is that prayer works, because that storm took a right turn north and skirted the island, and that what would have been a great big category 4 storm became a category 1 or 2. Still windy and rainy enough that the schools on the island were closed and all the little children had to say inside for fear they would blow away. Still big enough that the electricity was pretty much out all the time. Our biggest concern was not so much damage to the old stone building we were staying in, nor even flooding since we were up so high. Our concerns were trees down and blocking roads, or the main road that paralleled the northern coastline being washed out and our return home being delayed. Because Montego Bay is on the exact opposite end of the island from where we were. We travel a good 5 hours all the way across the island on that northern coast, until turning south, straight up into the mountains.

The TV actually did not tell us all that much about that storm itself. It told us, in an endlessly repeated message being run along the bottom of the screen, how to secure our dwelling places with plywood and plastic and duct tape. Bits of the Psalms ran interspersed with these messages, scripture proclaiming God's great protection during wind and rain. The messages also told us that when we had finished securing our own dwellings, we should then go out and help our neighbors secure theirs.

The carpenter traveling with us got up early and quietly put plywood over all the windows. We moved all our possessions out in the sheltered hallway in case the windows flooded. We filled buckets of water so we could flush the toilets. We sat in the dark and sang hymns and read the same psalms that had been broadcast on the TV. The wind roared. Roared. Water lashed and pelted the walls and windows. The room did begin to flood. People swept the water into the bathroom. We did not sleep much that night. In the morning, we noticed the quiet and the calm of the eye passing over. We could hear not roaring wind but cows mooing, and we knew that to be a good thing. We went out and saw branches down all over. The dogs that hung around the place were huddled together in a sheltered alcove on the porch. These aren't nice dogs that you want to go pet. They are suspicious and snappy and have skin conditions. They are the kinds of dogs you toss food to, but don't expect any kind of tail wagging happy companionship from. Suddenly the wind picked up again, but in the exact opposite direction. Trees that had been blowing horizontally to the left were now bending to the right. It truly was amazing. We hadn't seen hide nor hair of the Irish since before the storm had began. We could only wonder where they were hiding. They would surface again soon enough, however--most certainly at mealtime.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 1

2007-12-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

The last week or so, the daytime temperature has been just a bit above freezing. Consequently, the snow is heavy, and wet. It exhales chill damp. The damp hangs in the air, trapped by the low grey clouds. Chills me to the bone. All that helps is hot baths, activity, hot tea, wool sweaters, long underwear. At some point I surrender to it, and wrapped in a blanket, I read, or write. I let my mind transport me someplace else. Like Jamaica, where it is never cold, not for us northerners. It gets down to about the mid 70s there winters, enough to make the children want to put on sweaters. That's what we call a really nice day up here.

The first summer I visited the children's home up in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, the most mountainous and most Christian Caribbean island, according to our friend and bus driver Peat, there was a hurricane on the way. We had landed in Montego Bay, taken our usual 2 hours to get our bags full of clothing and crafts and toys and educational materials through customs. (Prior to this, we had stood for about 1 1/2 hours in a long zig-zagging snake of a line, cooled by fans that look like props from a Humphrey Bogart movie, to present our documents to enter the country.) At that time, the customs area was in the same spot where the bags were coming directly in from the planes outside. It was hot and humid and smelled strongly of jet exhaust in there. We always seem to get into the wrong line, and scurry back and forth across the wide area, until we finally settle into what we were certain is the 'right' line. That never changes. That, and the fact we then stand there, and stand there, and stand there, slumped and leaning onto our loaded baggage carts. The customs people don't like the looks of our bags. That never changes either. They go through them, all of them, very carefully. They threaten not to let us through, all the while eyeing an especially nice new pair of sneakers. We give them the sneakers; they stamp our paperwork, they let us through.

We get upstairs and rush off to the bathroom. It is always this way. The bathroom is narrow, with several stalls. It doesn't smell so great. The floor is always wet with spilled over yuck from the toilets. This improved only when the Cricket World Cup came to the Caribbean region in 2007. Major renovations were done to the airport then. Our group leader uses her cell phone to call her husband back home and tell him we have arrived safely. He tells her he has been watching the weather channel and a hurricane is heading for Jamaica. Did we know that?

She asks the bus driver, it is Melvin, Peat's assistant, about it. Has he heard anything? His answer: "No problem, mon. This is Jamaica." And he laughs. I will come to learn that this is what all the resort and tourist workers say to tourists, it is their stock in trade, reassuring worried white people, calming them with a simple stereotype of Jamaican life. It is part of the illusion the tourist industry has created to hide the fact of Jamaica being the murder capital of the world, hiding the fact of the tremendous poverty there, hiding the fact the huge resorts that depend on this illusion are all owned by foreign nationals and that the Jamaicans who work there are paid a pittance, when they are paid at all. "No problem, mon." Just stay within our resort walls, and ride our buses and do not leave your group.

It is not the same in the mountains where we go. We are the only white people up there. There are no tourists up there. Just us and the locals, going about their daily living. That first year, with the hurricane, named Dennis, by the way, there is also another group already staying for a week at the home. They are from northern Ireland. They are standoffish, as a whole, and they take all the food before we can get to it. They resent our presence. We try to make nice. I did. They avert their eyes, they cut us out of activities. I think to myself, "Is it Bush? Is it Iraq?" I can't understand why they are so unfriendly. We are there for the same reasons, to help out--we are a group of enthusiastic youth, teachers and carpenters--, and to be with the kids. Is it the kids (along with the food) that they do not want to share?

Because the kids are the reason I am there. I hadn't ever planned on taking the mission trip to Jamaica. I had always wondered why people from our church went at all. I had always wondered why they said so little about it when they got back. Some of them only went once, and never talked about it. It was supposed to be hot and buggy and smelly and nauseating and nasty somehow. No way did I want to go. (I had done an internet search of the children's home before leaving, and all I could find was reports of allegations of staff people and boys having sex with the dogs. Did I tell anyone this? No.)

But then our pastor asked me if I would go. There were 2 youth already planning to go and they needed an adult to accompany them. The church would pay for the entire thing. It would not cost me any more than what I needed to buy food while en route and to get a few things at the market our last day there, if I wanted, and also if I wanted, $15 to go climb a waterfall, another tourist attraction we would participate in our last day there, the day we tried to transition back to normalcy, whatever that is. Or was. Because the mission trip to Jamaica changes a person, inside and out. It may take months, it may take a moment, but you do not come back the same person you were when you left. Nuh uh, not at all.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Shine On, Solitary Star

2007-12-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

We all know this holiday season tends to bring out the worst in people, despite (and perhaps because of) all the fa la la la las and be of good cheers, gift giving, merrymaking, mistletoe-kissing and the rest of it. I have happily managed to somehow skate above all of it, the melancholy I mean, the snarly nastiness, the stressed out insanity. I do keep the holiday low key, focusing on church rather than on shopping; focusing on the deep truth of light returning during the darkest season; focusing more on singing and being happy with friends, the warmth of their presence, the shared expressions of affection. But I am just as connected to other humans, though I sometimes wish I wasn't, and I am sensitive to the reigning spirit of a time, and yesterday the melancholy caught up with me. It had been dogging my steps for a few days now, getting perilously close the moment I admitted to myself, "This is not an easy time of year to be a solitary person."

Because solitude is the burden, the cross, that I bear. Sometimes joyfully. Sometimes, however, it feels like an icy cold weight, hissing words of despair.

With this chronic depression, I have often felt damped down by the holiday season and what I felt to be its incessant demand that we Be of Good Cheer, that we celebrate family and loved ones (even when they are a source of sadness and pain). That we were supposed to be happy, damn it, and if we weren't, then we were doing something wrong. Placing my attention on the deeper spiritual light of the season--be it pagan celebrations of the Solstice, or of the birth of Christ, or even on the gloriously huge full moon I witnessed setting in a lavender grey western sky this morning, have helped me stay on the brighter side of the line. Focusing on the light, whatever its source. Until yesterday, that is, as I said.

Maybe because it was such a dankly grey and dismal day! It was raining, a light icy rain falling on a half foot of snow. I was thankful my friend Krystal gave me a ride home from church. She and some other friends and I had shared in the lighting of the Advent candle of peace. We had told our assembled congregation that we believe true peace happens when we have peace within our own hearts, despite what is going on around us. Anyway, she let me off and I came into the house, plugged in the Christmas tree lights, and lit the white candle that sits beside my little Nativity scene. It is carved of white and softly orange soapstone, and came from Peru. I like how the candlelight shines into the tiny stable filled with animals, shepherds, wise men and the holy family--they are all praying, even the baby Jesus! I see the candle flame as the light of the glorious solitary star that lit the way to baby Jesus's stable bed. I like the tiny colored lights on my tree too. The strand of lights is longer than the tree can bear and so I loop it around to decorate the front window too. My tree is a potted Norfolk Island pine, about 4 feet tall. I had bought it at K-Mart in a tacky holiday pot when it was about 4 inches tall, 9 years ago, our first Christmas alone after leaving the farm. The tree is adorned simply-- with the lights, with snowflakes I had crocheted from thread many years ago when I lived with the X (crafts were one way I kept myself relatively sane during that harrowing time), tiny icicles, strands of iridescent purple beads, and small ornaments. I do not want to overwhelm the tree, and it looks so lovely and elegant, decorated so simply.

I put on a CD of Celtic Christmas music, mostly instrumental, and started cleaning the 3 aquariums. The music proved to intensify my melancholy, I soon realized. I began to have thoughts, like Scrooge, of Christmases past, of loved ones long gone, of times when I was younger and still hopeful and still happy enough with the presence of my Grandmother nearby, my Aunt, her boys when they were children. The closeness, the familiarity, the tradition and its suggestion of permanence and safety. All that is gone now. My daughter is growing older and farther away from me. I have been alone these many days, decorating the house and the tree, wrapping gifts, planning meals and buying the ingredients I need to make the Christmas Mousse Pie. She has not shared in any of this with me and I recollected times when she was small and her eyes were bright with reflected lights. That first Christmas alone, when we had walked home from Christmas Eve candlelight worship and discovered gifts left for us on our front porch. From whom? Santa? Or the Christmas she and Little Bear and I were at my Aunt's, just us because everyone was sick with a stomach flu. Times gone by, never to return. Thinking all this, I looked at Bumby, such a constant, loving companion, asleep there on my bed, and I thought of how someday she too will be gone. And I will still be here, present, feeling somehow eternal inside, and still solitary, yes, still solitary.

Blah! I went out and changed the music. I should know better than to listen to CDs with photos of snow covered ruined churches on them! I finished cleaning the aquariums, I made myself some food, I wrapped my daughter's gifts. I took care of myself, rested when I felt tired, settled on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. I lit more candles, I turned on more lights. I consigned the shadows to obscurity for a time. They always come back, but as it says in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 5 : "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out."

Hallelujah and Amen.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Image is a photo of Canis Major, the Christmas star.)

Love Came Down

2007-12-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

christmas lights

if i saw that star,
huge blazing mass
of fiery light falling
down from the dark of God’s deepest heart,
i might throw myself down to clutch the earth,
its safe and heavy mass of solid form like the body
of my mother when i ran and hid from scary men and
in my hands would be
the crumbling scent of leaf rotting away from summer’s
laughing fatness.
if i saw that light in a dead winter sky
i would not shout and sing glad hallelujahs
because i would simply be too stupid,
too scared, too much a blind animal
holding fast to my tiny life.

so imagine the shepherds, dozing on such a night,
sheep finally gathered together and huddled
safe in a clump of sheep scented warmth.
i don't think they turned to one another and murmured
Oh good it is the Angel of God come to tell us good news.
i don't think they said that. they needed to hear it first
from the angel herself,
after she had quieted their terror.

and so, i don't expect miracles even tho i crave them.
and in this season of hopeful lights twinkling against a darkness that might
have teeth,
i cozy up in what quilts of comfort i can find.
once inside, i imagine that fiery light,
and i listen for the angels. they speak so softly, like a mouse’s sigh.
usually i am dozing in darkness when they come, and i have forgotten all about listening, and i don't even know what it is i am hearing.
that is when a softness brushes my cheek, brushes my forehead,
and i am able again to love this dumb animal self of mine,

who even despite twinkling beacons of hope and ancient sacred messages,
even despite rare and simple human kindnesses,
is still blinded by terror and made breathless by despair,
still falls flat and helpless into familiar darkness,
trembling before love’s message
dressed in light and reaching down
to soften this heart of stone.

Wedding Cake

2007-12-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

My Gram had 2 couches in her living room. Except she didn't call them couches, she called them davenports. I remember sitting on one of them with her and using my index finger to carefully scrape the icing off the bottom of one of those porcelain bride and grooms that go on top of a wedding cake. It was a special treat she had brought especially for me. I was about 3 years old at the time.

I must be part elephant, because that memory stayed with me. I pondered it all through my childhood--just whose wedding ornament was that? I had seen my parent's wedding pictures, and had looked for their ornament atop their wedding cake, and it definitely looked very much the same. I had been presented with a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit in with the picture of my life as I knew it. I knew the story of how they met, how mutual married cousins (that is, my mother's cousin was married to my step-father's cousin) fixed them up, the young widow with a toddler and the recently tragically injured man. They had so much in common really, 2 small town kids who had suffered so much so soon. So, one weekend afternoon, when I was about 10, I gathered my courage and went out into the kitchen where my parents were wreathed in coils of cigarette smoke, sitting at the table doing whatever it was they did, and told them the memory, and asked them what it meant.

The man in the wheelchair tightened his brakes, picked up a pencil lying nearby, and began doodling on the edge of the newspaper. He was a lefty, and he drew quite well. My mother swallowed deeply several times. Her eyes flicked from side to side like she was looking for the exit, but then she rallied her inner forces, and began to speak. She told me it was a deep, deep secret that I was never, ever supposed to tell.

A secret, deep and dark! The best kind. I loved secrets. Secrets were a form of currency in our house. They always meant power for the one who held them. They were like dragon's treasure, worth hoarding. And worth revealing, when the time, when the person, when the situation, was right.

She told me she had been married before. My eyes widened. That man was actually my father, but he had been killed when I was a baby. So sad! She talked about it as if it were a very shameful thing, which, I suppose it was, for her, and yet her voice also betrayed a hint of a thrill. She went on to say the man in the wheelchair had adopted me, and that my original birth certificate was locked up in a safe place where no one would ever find it or see it again. I pictured some obscure vault in an anonymous building in a city far away where all the secret birth certificates were locked up.

This was a lot to digest. I went back into my room. Then I came back out. What was my last name? She told me. It was an Italian name. And as the years went by, and I became angrier at their twisted treatment of me, their assaults on my mind and heart, they would blame my temper on my "Italian blood." Not on the fact they were making me crazy. Stuff like this: another Saturday afternoon, and they must have been bored. I was in my room playing veterinarian with my stuffed animals, and hear them frantically calling me. I rush down the hall to the kitchen and there is my step-father with blood coming out of his nose. He says. "Look what your mother did to me! She hit me!"

Well, she also hit me. They both did, so none of this was out of the realm of possibility. But still, I was a bit shocked. Because usually it was just me they hit, not each other. In fact, I had never seen them hit each other, so this was a new twist. In the past, just nasty words flew between them. So, there I am, standing there, pondering all this carefully while hiding my reaction. Being careful and playing it very, very cool, because I knew where their fights led once I walked into the room. They led straight to me. Apparently my mother isn't having enough fun with this, my poker faced non-reaction. So, she reaches over and scoops up a glob of blood onto her finger, and puts her finger in her mouth and eats it.

It's ketchup. Their laughter chased me all the way back to the safety, the sanity of my room.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

How We Lived

2007-12-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

When I first got together with the X, it was early August, and we lived on the land he had recently bought, 47 acres, former night pasture of a dairy farm, with hills and woods, and ponds and a stream, on a dirt road. He planned to start another organic vegetable farm. He had lost his last farm in his divorce. I had been farming that entire summer, and the autumn before, with Janelle, over across the river. I had the opportunity to continue on with her, as partners, or have my own farm with him, in a deeper partnership. Of course I went for that. It wasn't very nice of me. I did to her what girlfriends in high school did to me whenever they got boyfriends--ditched her. Even though I had such high hopes for my life with the X, that was no excuse for leaving her behind. But, she forgave me for it. I think in her heart she knew she would have done the same thing, given the chance. She loved the X, like most people in the organic farming community did, and still do. He is an impressive, charismatic man. He sure has them all fooled.

We lived in an old camper trailer in a grove of trees tucked up beside a pond. He called it the 'strange boat' after a Waterboys' song. We had no running water, we used an outhouse, and as long as the weather was warm enough, we bathed in the pond. It was great. I saw double rainbows. I saw the moon turn red during a lunar eclipse. Monarch butterflies landed on my hands and stayed there, fanning their wings. It was magical. I felt so blessed.

Of course, I couldn't have my dog close by, and he got strangely controlling and unpredictably upset at times, but I ignored that. I knew from the women in my family, my mother in particular, that part of living with men you loved was putting up with their crap. And I was so In Love.

I spent that winter of my pregnancy in the strange boat. It was the fourth coldest winter on record at that time. We heated it with a stinky old kerosene heater that burned dirty and left us with sooty faces when we woke up. I would blow my nose mornings and black oily soot filled the tissue. One frigid winter night I walked out to use the outhouse (being pregnant, I had to pee a lot). The skies were full of stars blazing in brilliance. I would think how blessed I was to be able to see such a night sky. The moon shone full and bright. My shadow fell on a little mouse. The mouse actually screamed and ran away.

I worried about not having enough to eat to support the pregnancy. I could cook on the burners of the stove, but not use the oven, and I liked to make dishes that had to be baked. So, I would pile the dogs in the car and go out for chocolate milkshakes or turkey subs. I took expensive vitamins with lots of herbs in them that I got from my friend who owned a natural foods store. They were the same kind his own wife took. She had taken one look at pregnant me and said, "Oh, a love child! I was a love child!" (She later left my friend and their 4 sons for a man 20 years younger than her. They went to California.)

It was so unbelievably cold that winter, but I got used to it. The baby kept me warm too. We heated up water to wash. A woman neighbor asked me if my skin was dry from the intense cold, and I laughingly, truthfully, told her, I didn't wash enough to get dry skin.

On my birthday in February, I waited around to do something with him. It was snowy and cold. He stayed in bed all day, ignoring me. I sat and read and drank raspberry leaf tea. I walked around with the dogs in the woods and fields. I wondered why he was like that, thought he would change with time. I hoped he would come around. I guess I thought maybe because it was my birthday and I was pregnant too that we might do something special.

He finally got the house structure to the point where we had a bathroom in there. The phone was in there too, and a washing machine. A shower stall and a double sink. I would carry the dish pan full of dishes up and down the hill to the house. One time the dog Yoko crashed into me and I fell down flat, dishes and all. She blind sided me. Scared the crap out of me. I folded like the proverbial pregnant house of cards.

We were able to move into the house a week before my due date, but it was an empty space with kitchen cabinets and a bathroom on a concrete slab. He never got the furniture out of storage except for a bed and a kitchen table and chairs. And this old straight backed chair. I guess I kept waiting for him to come to his senses and get the furniture, but he didn't. I ended up having an emergency c-section after 36 hours of labor, and I came home to that bed, that table, that straight backed chair. Because of the surgery, I couldn't climb the stairs to our bedroom where his flat old hard-as-a-rock futon was. Just as well. We all slept downstairs in the bed in what was to be our daughter's room. I really was too tired to complain about the state of things, too dumbfounded, in a way, that he didn't do something to remedy the situation, since I obviously couldn't. But I was also too engrossed in caring for my daughter to even want to complain--because there she was, this miracle! I think I thought, too, that if I didn't complain, he would admire me more.

He went down to the state capital one warm autumn day to some lobbying event for organic farming. While there, he talked a TV news crew into coming up to the farm. Imagine what that woman reporter, in her styled hair and little dress and high heels, must have thought when she entered that empty house, with a concrete floor and no trim, a clothesline strung across the room above a picnic table with dog beds underneath it serving as his desk and me there, sitting in that straight backed chair cradling my infant. (Not to mention there were absolutely no crops in that summer! None.) Here all that time I was thinking he was the crazy, deluded one for dragging a TV news crew up there to our domestic nothingness, while I should have been thinking that I was the crazy one for not getting in my car and driving as far and as fast as I could. But, I was In Love, I thought I would live there forever, and I had no reason not to believe it would not get better.

I need to point out here that this is a man with a bachelor's degree from a private college, who came from a family that sent its kids to boarding school so that they would become judges and lawyers. His grandparents lived in a house that had a name, for goodness sake. Only rich people name their houses. His grandfather, the Judge, was one of 5 men who actually bought their town. His mother spent her entire life living off the proceeds of her trust fund. All I can say is, What the hell?

My step-father had a crazy brother who lived on an isolated back road in an unfinished house and had various grandiose schemes, like turning his place into an elite pheasant preserve for hunters from the city. He had lots and lots of dogs running all over. The house seemed to always be surrounded by muck and mud. He'd make dressing for holidays, stuffing you might call it, that had whole hard kernels of corn in it, like unpopped popcorn kernels. My mother said one time we were all hanging out in the unfinished garage at his place and she idly glanced into a bucket beside her lawn chair and discovered it was full of dead puppies. As the years went by, I came to realize I had married someone very much like that crazy old uncle. The X never, ever finished that house in the 10 years I lived there, never even put on the siding, just left it with the tarpaper exposed, and with scaffolding up on the west end of the house (the cats used to climb that scaffolding to yowl at the bedroom window so I would let them in. That, or they'd climb it to do midnight Gestapo raids on nests full of innocent baby birds and I'd lay there frozen and appalled, listening to them kill the terrified birds.) But, by the time I knew I had indeed married Uncle Arthur, I was on my way out. The antique Adirondack chairs my grandfather had built and which had been given to me after my grandmother died had already fallen to pieces because he wouldn't let me bring them inside winters, and I had already had a nervous breakdown and become anemic from the stress, but my dear friend Frieda gave me a check for $1000 shortly after I told her I was leaving him. I was on my way out of there. It would be many years before I felt healed and whole again, but I was on my way.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Bear

2007-12-10T07:17:00.000-08:00

testimony for the bear

he waits nearby
he’s always there
he’s not my lover
he’s more than my friend

he showed me the high mountain pass
we will take to the sky,
to the spirit road home.
it’s the same mountain
in the drawing of the horse
my friend greg gave me, years ago,
after i had told him about
power animals. i was working
at the large white university then
and i had dreamt of the horse, tied, harnessed, blinkered,
pulling away, upset and afraid, and had told
greg the dream as we sat
eating lunch under the pines, a rabbit nibbling clover
nearby. i had told him the horse
was my body
and that the job,
despite the good money,
was making me sick. greg gave me
the drawing after i had finally quit,
after he had finally given up
trying to convince me to stay. in it, the horse is free, strong and unafraid.
the mountain is behind. greg was not my lover,
but he is my friend.

and him, when he showed me the mountain,
he wore a grey t shirt and dark blue gym shorts.
he looked like the guy who teaches
the kids in the city, or on the rez,
how to play basketball. drumming the ball up and down
on crumbled asphalt, pounded earth, a lonely hoop
bolted to a board up high. no net.
it was the first time
i had truly seen him. he’s big and dark,
big as a bear. his hair is cut short. we wear
the same scar. it’s clear no one messes with him~~

~~while i worked yesterday
i knew he was just outside
playing bones with the others
near the creek, and that later they filtered
over into the shade to fish.

he likes this old river town. it is full of his kind,
spirits who dearly love a place.
he likes to smell the water, to feel the green light falling
into alcoves of earth breathing out sweetness. so do i.
we are at peace here, our enemies have fled. and so
we call this place home, for now.

he’s been with me all my life
and only now that i am healed
can i see him
can i know with my heart he is there
can i know his joy too
and his need for me to be
okay

only now do i know
it’s because of him that dogs leashed to humans
trotting merrily up the hill
back away from me in alarm,
legs stiff,
noses twitching very carefully,
very deliberately.
they are thinking
maybe they’ll give me a bite.
i stay very still,
speak to them in soft tones of love. i try not
to show my teeth.

there are only two dogs who don't do that:
the akita, a bear himself, smiling and asian.
he looks at me appraisingly,
with something like amused respect
in his eyes.
and little annie across the road,
black and white boston wearing
pretty sweaters and a purple collar,
she lives with women who love her like a baby.
she knows nothing of bears and she sees only a kind woman
in me--

because it’s the bear they smell
and maybe even see,
the bear in me and
the spirit that is him.
we are united on this walk--
sometimes standing tall on two legs,
sometimes down on all fours--
picking our way through a broken
ugly world.
we are opportunistic
eaters, wary
of humans, solitary travelers
wending our way back
somewhere. only now that i am solid and whole,
do i know this.
only now that i know this,
do i feel solid
and whole.

Lighting the Dark

2007-12-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

The days are getting shorter, the nights longer. It is cold, not above freezing all week. Our world is covered in snow and ice and the colors have dimmed and become muted. It seems somber when the skies remain grey for days. It is cold and damp, and tiresome. Everything is more of an effort, and seems to take more time. I can't just run out the door in my shorts and t-shirt and flip flops and skip down the hill. I dress in layers. I plan the layers very carefully so that I will be warm all day. A camisole undershirt, a turtleneck, a warm and fuzzy long sleeved t-shirt over that, and then a heavy soft flannel shirt, and then a cardigan over that. Long underwear bottoms under my jeans, and sometimes 2 pairs of socks if one of them is thin. I pick the shoes that will best keep me from slipping on the ice (I hope!), and then, when it is time to go, I choose which jacket is best for the weather, which scarf, which hat, which gloves, or would mittens be warmer today? It takes time, and it takes thought. I don't want to get cold and I don't want to get sick, and I certainly don't want to fall.

It is the time of increasing darkness, the time when our northern hearts yearn for the light. Houses decorated in bright white and twinkly colored lights cheer my weary, frosted spirits as I walk home from work, laden with groceries. I had to walk home in the road all week, because the sidewalks were slick and treacherous. I prayed a car did not hit me in the half-dark--some of them come pretty close, as if to confirm my unworthiness as someone who must walk up the hill, bearing burdens. When I am already tired I can become easily discouraged and feel humiliated and sad. A loser in the contest of who has more material things. That is a contest I honestly have no interest in participating in, but I am sensitive too, and feel it when I am treated with disrespect, even anonymously, simply for being who I am.

I fell twice this week. I am usually pretty balanced on my feet. But for 2 consecutive mornings, on my walk with the dogs, I fell. Both times I had lost my concentration, distracted by something else. The first day I was thinking about our next move--crossing the road. It is a tricky spot where cars come up over the hill quite suddenly, if they are going too fast, and I was shifting my focus to looking for the glow of oncoming lights and listening for a car's approach. It was then that Little Bear, eager to get to the Field of the Big Tree, pulled to go across. And zip, that patch of snow beside Barbara's mailbox was actually ice and down I went. The next day, I was right near the cathedral of Norway spruces, and I was beginning to cross over off the cemetery path and onto the grass where the footing was better, but I was also beginning to say Psalm 23 aloud and was focusing more on that. Little Bear made another sudden lunge to go sniff and pee on a tree, and down I went again. That was a worse fall that left me banged up, scraped, and stiff. It left me thinking irrationally, thinking that those damn dogs will never weaken and age, while I will. Because I never fall. I focus my concentration on staying on my feet. The first one was bad enough and pulled a muscle in my leg, but the second one, happening the very next day, really rattled me. It made me feel old.

(This is Little Bear's season of glory. Just as the Indian in me needs to do certain things--like to be out at dawn, greeting the sunrise, every single day of the year, the sled dog in him hits the snow in a specific stance and gait and off he goes. Pulling. Pulling me. If it isn't icy, I can give him a run he will enjoy. But when it is icy, I am pulling on the brakes constantly. He wants to run and duck his head down and scoop up snow in his mouth and chew it as he goes. It is a beautiful thing to see, how he finds a track and goes for it, despite never being trained in it. It is simply part of who he is. I told the vet once that he was generally a very good dog, but sometimes is really unmanageable. And she replied, "That's the Husky in him, he can't help it.")

And so now as we enter the season of increasing darkness, we focus our eyes on the light. Holiday lights decorating houses, candlelight from menorahs brightening the table as the family shares a meal--Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, happening right now. In our faith tradition, we sing of the glory of God coming to earth as a tiny baby, in a lowly stable, in a place no one would expect God to be. The images of our Christmas stories are full of bright lights in the darkness, and I think especially of the blazing star that told of the baby Jesus's birth, the star that learned men followed for thousands of miles so to find that baby boy. I am dismayed when I hear these stories dismissed as fantasy and fairy tales. But even if a person chooses to read them that way, they are stories full of images of hope and joy, of peace and love, of glory found in humble, unexpected places.

We are all following some story, that is the way human minds work, in language and imagery. In our Native tradition, we say we ARE our stories, and that without our stories, we are lost. So, some people follow stories of wealth and accruing material things, and there their hearts are. Others follow lights in the darkness, a brilliantly shining star leading them to find hope in unexpected places. Perhaps I am blessed because I have been touched by spirit. I am enthralled by mystery and look for beacons in the dark. My life has been too full of dark. And so I reach eagerly for the light, a celestial light, a natural, supernatural light, the light of God's love made manifest, a gift to us. The human made world, the world that excludes God and the miracles of the Christmas stories--the world that turns the holiday into merely a shopping and eating fest--is a place of shadows and mirrors, of people endlessly admiring themselves and what they have made. How tiresome and empty I find it. Give me a solitary star shining in the darkest night. I will gladly stand out in the snow and brave the ice with my unruly dogs so that my heart be filled with such a light.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Thanks to NASA for the image of the Pleiades. The Cherokee believe the light of higher consciousness came to earth from these stars.)

Wet

2007-12-05T18:00:00.000-08:00

Because I walk so much, I sometimes get caught out in storms. I don't always mean to, but sometimes it simply happens that way. Two summers ago, I had left work and walked over to the library to return some books. I could see a tremendous storm building up in the west, I could feel the excitement and tension in the air preceding it. The librarian, an elderly woman named Jean who knits colorful sweaters for teddy bears and sells them to raise funds for a children's camp up in the mountains, told me I should wait it out, as the rain had just begun to patter down as I was turning to go. I decided to head out anyway.

I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't thinking. I feel compelled to be out in these great storms. They have something to give me and to communicate to me. It is like a relative has come visiting, and I need to go greet him. We Mohawk believe we are related to the storms that rise so dramatically out of the west, and so, when I hear thunder, if circumstances allow, I go outside and greet the storm. Nothing fancy, just a "Hello, Grandfather Thunder," and a "Welcome, we have missed you."

I felt the softly cool touch of the rain as I went down the library steps, and as I made my way to the corner, the rain pressed down harder on my skin and hair. And despite my desire to be out in the storm, I was also feeling slightly worried and fretful about being caught out in the rain like that, for the whole village to see, like a crazy person! Didn't I know better? (Obviously not.)

That day had been dreadfully hot and sticky, as it often is here in July, and the rain felt brightly cold and thrilling. As I turned the corner around a large well-trimmed hedge, I came upon two kids, a boy and a girl, around 8 and 10 years old. The boy was on his bike and he was shirtless. The girl was lagging further back, walking along in the wet. I called out to the boy, as he was nearer by, "It's raining!"

And he sang out, "Doesn't It feel great?"

His joy in the moment brought me straight back to my own truth: Yes! It did feel great, and I was excited to be out in it!

And yet I hurried on, thinking I might make it home before the storm got too strong, but as I turned into the alley I take as a short cut (this village is crisscrossed with alleys, back from the days when people had sheds and barns out back, and now instead of housing their animals out there, they park their cars there), the rain was pouring on down. The sky was a'rumble with thunder and a'glitter with lightning. The storm was full upon us, I could feel its life vibrating all around me. I decided to shelter under the leaves of a small maple beside a barn. I huddled up close to the trunk of the tree, and it afforded me shelter for a brief time, but as the leaves got wetter and wetter in the deluge, I got wetter and wetter too. It finally got to the point where I knew I was getting almost as wet under the tree, just standing there, as I would if I kept walking home, so I decided to head on out again. I took off my slippery flip flops and stuffed them into my backpack.

The rain was pelting me now, and I was chattering and laughing to myself about it, partly out of self-consciousness because I was still worried about what people would think if they saw me out there. It was such a powerful storm! It was crazy rain, lunatic rain, driving down and pouring down and pelting the earth and washing it all furiously clean. But its power also reminded me to talk to Grandfather Thunder, and so whenever I heard another great BOOM and rumble, I spoke words of greeting and gratitude for the rain to him, and I told him I had missed him and that the earth had missed him and was thirsty for the blessing of the rain. No one heard me, or probably even saw me, despite my worries, for I truly was the only person out there walking through it!

I kept heading along south, marvelling at the water cascading down the hill. When I turned right to continue up the hill, towards the west, the power of the rain was truly awe inspiring. It was flashing and flooding down the hill like a great river of wild water horses, a brilliant stream of wet. I was quite soaked by then--as soaked, in fact, as if I had been swimming. That gave me new reason to feel self-conscious because my bra was plain to see under my soaked t-shirt, and in my modesty I was holding the shirt out away from my skin so all the people who were not out there couldn't see it too.

When I got near to Ray's house, I saw his son out under the maple on their small bit of lawn. He is about my age, and he is a wreck of a man. I don't know what happended to him to make him that way, but he looks like a lightning struck survivior barely hanging on to vitality. His long hair is grey and his skin is grey and he sits on the step and smokes and talks quietly to the cat and looks like gloom personified. He is a creature of the shadows who often scurried away at my approach, as if my friendly greeting and smile was a bit too much, a bit too bright, to bear. It got so I felt bad whenever he did that, and toned down my greetings in the hope he would not run away. But he ran away anyway. So there he was, out on the lawn in the storm like King Lear on the blasted heath except he was not raging. Rather, he was shirtless, and his head was thrown back, and rain was cascading down his skinny body. 'Two crazies out in the storm,' is what I thought to myself in that lightning bright instant of recognition. He looked at me then. He met my eye and he saw me clearly. He smiled. I smiled back, and then I laughed aloud at the fact of the two of us there, and as I laughed he called out, "Wet!"

We were like two birds meeting, the walking crow laughing, the great standing crane answering with a loud crane squawk.

Ever since then, when I pass by and he is out on the step smoking, he doesn't hurry away. He looks at me, he meets my eye, and he responds to my quiet, "Hey," with a soft grunt.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Why I Don't Have A Car--Part 2

2007-12-03T07:43:00.000-08:00

I need to say at the outset that here in the United States, in this part of the United States, not having a car creates great limitations. We are not a nation known for fantastic public transportation systems, unless you live in a city like New York or Boston. Local rail lines were torn out 75 years ago, at least, so that we could become a nation of gas hogs driving everywhere we want, whenever we want. In this rural village, the only public transportation available is a weekly bus that arrives around 11 AM every Wednesday and goes to the shopping mall 12 miles away. It returns 3 hours later. Other than that, it is a matter of asking a friend for a lift, borrowing a car, calling a cab--very expensive!--or using your own 2 legs. I walk. If I can't walk, and can't get a ride, I do without. It is as simple as that.

So, back to the ticket. I spoke to a friend who had had some seat belts replaced in her car and what she told me confirmed what I had already suspected: it is a very expensive thing to have done. As it was, I was not having a good time of it financially. The Vampyr had moved out the previous January and I was still learning the effects of that on my personal economy. He had been paying half the household expenses. I was learning the hard way that November is the month I begin to run out of money. In fact, after I paid my car insurance bill that November, I had no money left to speak of until my next pay check, and could not make my mortgage payment. That got me down on my knees. I crawled to our pastor and asked her, in tears, tears of shame, feeling like such a big fat stupid loser, if the Community Relief Fund would give me the money for my payment. (This fund is administered by the local churches and is available to help with personal emergencies just like mine.)

There was no way I could get Fred repaired to satisfy the requirements of the ticket. I knew the car would have to be taken off the road. I couldn't afford to keep it anyway, even without the repair. (That's what so many people don't understand about my car-less-ness--it isn't so much the getting of a car, it is the keeping of a car.) I decided to donate Fred to charity. I made arrangements with the National Kidney Foundation to do just that. Fred wasn't worth much, and would probably be sold for scrap. That fact made me sad but I had to stop anthropomorphizing about the car and just suck it up. (I still feel bad when I see trucks carrying crushed cars passing by on the main road, and avert my eyes in the same way as I do when I see dead animals on the roadside.)

So, I took the car off the road. I removed the plates and sent them back to the state. I cancelled the insurance. I called the National Kidney Foundation. And I asked my friend to go to court with me. I had never been to court before, except for my divorce, or when I accompanied clients there when I worked in crisis counseling. I was scared! I prayed a lot.

The night of court, I dressed nicely and conservatively. Judges like that. They like it if you are polite and respectful too. I used to counsel my clients that, and I saw it work, time after time. The legal system is a game like any other, and the best players often win. It was November by the time we went to court. It was 6PM and it was rainy and cold and dark. I sat in town court with the drunk drivers and the repeat offenders and the bad boys and girls up on their various charges. When it was my turn, I walked up the the judge, a man I vaguely knew and had actually voted for--this is a very small town! I looked him in the eye and told him I did not run a red light, the light was yellow. I told him I could not afford repairs to the car and had donated it to charity. He said that since "my" trooper was not in court that night, I would have to come back, and talk to the officer about it.

Same deal, 2 weeks later. "My" trooper is not there again, but another trooper was. He was so young! What was I doing there, pleading with children in uniforms? Anyway, I told him the same facts I had told the judge. I looked him square in the eye. And was finally rewarded with an ACOD, though he questioned me repeatedly and really made me wonder if I was going to get my way with this. The facts of an ACOD are this: be a good girl for 6 months, and the charges would be dropped at the end of that time.

Being a person who tends to keep a low profile, doing that would be easy, especially without a car. Or, as they say in Jamaica, "No problem, mon."

And I really do not mind not having a car. I tend to worry about cars. They sit there in my driveway and always seem to need something. Insurance, gas, oil change, inspection. They need to be driven to keep the battery charged. They need to have the snow and ice scraped and brushed off of them. People have lent me their extra cars (extra cars! yes! that is how crazy this world is!) for extended periods over these past 3 years, and I am never comfortable with that. (I have had to learn to ask people for help, I have had to learn to reach out. To trust. That has been hard. It is still hard, but is getting easier as time goes by and I see that there are some people who truly care, who aren't mean, and who won't use my need against me. Imagine that.) I worry about cars. I don't need one. I have come to truly enjoy the simplicity of my life without a car. I am in great shape from walking, and I have cut out so many extraneous trips and silly whatnot. I feel like Thoreau at Walden Pond, finding the universe right here in my own backyard.

Of course, it wasn't always like that. I whined for awhile, I played the pity card. Poor me, I am so poor I cannot even afford a car. I am quite over all that, thank goodness. How disgusting I was. Though I must confess, some nights after work, when I am very tired, I walk home up the hill with a backpack full of groceries on my back and another bag or two in my hands, and I feel like a stupid little loser. Losers walk everywhere, losers and nutcases and weirdoes. Even the very poor, most of them, call cabs. It's crazy.

The biggest thing about walking, at first, was that I had to greet people. I had to see things, like cats I knew dead in the road. I had to respond. I could not just zip by, all sealed up in my vehicle, music blaring, ignoring the world. I can't ignore the world when I walk. I have to see that Ray is ill again and not looking so great, but still going to his job cleaning toilets at the harness track because his wife and son are sicker. I have to see that Ron has his entire extended family living in his tiny apartment now, and the son's girlfriend is indeed pregnant. I have to see that the little grey stray cat had another litter of kittens and a couple of them look sick enough to die. Stray dogs run right up to me and ask me to take them home. I can't just zip by all that anymore, unseeing. It's not an easy thing. It forces me to respond. It forces me to care. It forces me to be a better person, even when I hate it.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Why I Don't Have A Car--Part 1

2007-12-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

There's nothing politically correct, or radically environmentalist about it. It is not because I might be a solitary visionary crazy woman who spends too much time talking to the spirits. I don't have a car because I can't afford a car. I don't have a car because I would rather have my own house than have a car. It has been 3 years since I acknowledged that fact, with true relief. But events also precipitated that action of giving up the car. I probably would not have had the courage to have simply done it on my own.

I called the car Fred. Fred Escort, a humble hardworking 1993 Ford station wagon, silver grey. Fred was faithful. Fred ferried us everywhere we needed to go. Fred never broke down and left us stranded. Fred's starter had quit awhile back, and the Vampyr had rigged up this massive mess of wire and duct tape on the dashboard near the driver's side door. I had to put the 2 ends of the wires together to create a spark every time I started Fred. I covered the mess with a towel so no one, like a cop, would see it. The last time I got the car inspected, the local mechanic who did it for me, a bit of an outlaw himself, said, "If you get pulled over, those wires were not there when I inspected this car."

It was a deal.

Fred also had bad seat belts. When I had first left the farm, I was working for some silversmiths who had a studio in their house, and I would bring Little Bear to work with me, but he stayed out in the car all day. I'd open the back hatch so he could hop in and out. He was still a pup and he got bored. He chewed up most of the shoulder harnesses. The one on the driver's side had a big knot tied in it but was still usable. I myself was always a scofflaw in regard to seat belt use. By which I mean, I didn't use them as a rule. (I grew up in the free wheeling 70's--who uses belts? Who wears helmets? Sissies, that's who!) Anyway, I made my daughter use it, however, and had rigged it so the driver's side shoulder harness reached over to her side.

Okay, it is an afternoon in late October, 3 years ago, and I was having a bad day. I needed to get to the supermarket, and the car needed gas. I ran down back to the shed and got the gas can for the lawnmower and put what little gas was left in that into the car's tank. I had exactly $2.87 in my wallet, and now that there was something more than fumes in the gas tank, I could make it down the hill to the gas station where I would put that $2.87 worth into the tank.

That accomplished, I pulled back out into the road to go to the market. My daughter was with me. We got to the light where I would take a left to head on over the bridge, and the light turned yellow. I went for it. I turned the corner. I looked in my rear view mirror, and yes, there was a state trooper behind me, in his big blue car with his big red lights on telling me to pull over. I was not having a good day. I quickly put on the lap belt, pulled to the side near the old canal, then reached around and grabbed the towel from the floor behind me. I threw it over the mess of wires on the dash and then dug out my license and registration.

He really did swagger over to the car, and he really looked both Fred and me over with a disdainful sneery face, like maybe we were some kind of trash. He told me I ran the red light. I told him it was yellow. He asked me why I did not have on a shoulder harness. I told him it was broken and I could not afford to get it fixed, but pointed out to him that I was wearing the lap belt. He took my documents and strutted back to his car. I actually sat there thinking he might show me some mercy. Kind of like a kid believing in fairy tales. Kind of like a desperate woman having a very bad day and hoping it won't actually get worse even though it looks like it's gonna.

I got a ticket for running a red light and for not having proper seat belts. He told me that if I got the belts repaired and came to court with proof of that, that charge might be dropped. He wasn't nice. He did look at me like I was some sort of old hippie woman garbage, in my rusting old Ford. I took the ticket, thinking, "Oh yes, you will see me in court.'

I am many things but I try not to be a fool. I do not need to piss away what little money I have on traffic tickets. That light was yellow. That cop was an asshole. Yes, he would see me again in court.

And that, my friends, is another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Heaven Within

2007-12-01T08:28:00.000-08:00

Spirit speaks to me mornings, sometimes, as the dogs and I walk. Sometimes it is because I have managed to clear a space inside me, managed to still the clamoring voices and echoes in my mind, so that I can hear. Sometimes it is because Spirit speaks undeniably loudly--as a voice inside my head, or in an elemental force, the wind, a storm, the waves--, and I have finally, as I near my 50th year, learned to listen.

A couple of mornings ago, as I walked beneath the black fringed Norway spruces that create a holy space, a vestige, a mere whisper of what the great groves must have once been, a space the cathedrals sought, perhaps, to mimic, it was as if the waters of clear understanding inside me rose and spilled over and suddenly I knew something important. I knew as I spoke Psalm 23 as a prayer, I knew as I spoke the Lord's Prayer, I knew that heaven lives within me, that the Kingdom of God is a place inside me, and I have felt it growing ever stronger and stronger inside me, as God has transformed me from within during these months and years that I have sought to know God's will and to follow it. It manifests itself as sweet, sweet calm, as peace within despite what is happening around me. I knew that God's heavenly kingdom is not something we necessarily find only after we die, but that we can know and embody right now, as we live this earthly life.

Going to the orphanage in Jamaica changes me like that, every trip, every time. The change takes months, like water trickling inside a wall, slowly eroding it away until it crumbles and falls. Case in point: I have loved to hate my boss. I have issues with authority figures (big surprise, considering what my parents were like). Last winter, I had gotten to such an unhappy place in my job, I had asked my dear friend and Pastor for help. She asked me if I ever pray for him. I told her I had no idea what to pray for about him--he apparently has everything! And she gently suggested I pray for clarity about the nature of our relationship, that I pray for peace in that place. So I did. And despite the delight I took in making fun of him and complaining about him, that peace began to rise like water inside me, and I began to be able to co-exist with this person who had offended me so greatly in the past. I was able to see him for the flawed human he is, instead of some puffed up egomaniac, and forgive him for that. And then, about a month ago, something even stronger happened.

He was going on and on, bragging about why something of his was so much better than something of mine. The usual scenario for me to think "Asshole", and shut him out of my mind. But then, in a pesky moment of insight, I saw him for the little boy he was and often still is, a little boy who dearly needs to know--for whatever reasons--that what he has IS, in fact, better than what other people have. And in that moment of compassionate vision, my heart expanded, a wall inside me crumbled and fell, and I was able to see him as a person just like me--flawed, of course!,--but not so bad, really not so bad. And I thought, "Damn! Now I won't be able to make fun of him, ever again!"

More than that, even, I find myself feeling affection and compassion for him as he struggles with the challenges his own life offers him. I can look at him and see the little boy in his eyes, a very sweet, endearing little boy! I can see his kind heart, and when he does act like the asshole he can be (as we all can be sometimes), I am able to chide him and tease him, and laugh with him--not at him, in some private sneering little place, a place where resentment festers and grows and real dislike can take root and flourish.

So the question is now, how do we do this, all of us, how do we find this heaven within, so that we can look out at the world with such compassion that our enemies become friends? How do we do that? Because I can't do it with every one who annoys me, and I certainly cannot even do it for people who have really hurt me, like my mother. Or, perhaps I can, but I just don't want to. Yet. Because I know I am a work in progress, and God isn't finished with me yet.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Another Poem

2007-12-01T05:19:00.000-08:00

the deer at dawn

in the weak grey dawn
it was motion mostly
and phantom at that,
but the dog knew without pausing to think
and told me too
with a sharp yank.

the deer crossed the road and flashed its tail and
leapt the fence into the cemetery where
the catholics lay their dead.
it bounded over graves and scattered silk
flowers. it leapt again the silvery latticed fence,
and then the hedgerow brown and brambled,
alighting in the pasture, where the hay had been cut and newly put
away. the hunters would be prowling out there
in days to come. i wondered, did the deer
know that

or did the deer know only the scent of us
and the yip of the dog disappointed.

in the flight
of the moment,
did the deer know relief,
or perhaps even ecstasy,

or did it know just the drum of its heart,
the beads of morning misting its eyelashes,
and the sweetly sharp and pungent meadow
beneath its feet?

(thanks to RH for the drawing of this poem, notice the tiny deer running away in the upper right?)

The Breath of God

2007-11-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

It was in Jamaica that I came to truly understand the wind as the breath of God. The seeds were sown a year previously by an older Jamaican woman preaching in church and reminding us to be mindful of God's caring presence. She said that when we are outside and it is so hot, and we feel that cooling breeze on the back of our neck, that is the breath of God. Jamaica is very hot in July, when I am there, even up in the mountains. The wind blows often, and even the wind is hot. But the wind is welcome and blessed relief, even when it is hot. It lifts sweaty strands of hair from my neck, like the soft hand of someone who loves me, and sends fresh air to me there.

I travel to an orphanage in Jamaica every July. It is far up in the mountains, far away from any place tourists visit. We are usually the only white people up there. The people in that area are traditional and conservative in their manners and their outlook. No dreadlocks, no talks of Rasta, very little reggae. In fact, they look askance at Rastafarians, as if they are people to be avoided. (The orphanage director once explained to me that her dogs, all 11 of them, never even barked at the Rastafarian man doing construction on the main building, and she wondered at that, thinking maybe he was an okay guy.) These mountain people are people of faith, people who have not had much and who work hard for what they do have. They get up early and work long days into the night and they know how to pace themselves. Even the elders among them work hard, and it is difficult to discern the true age of most of them.

Before I traveled to Jamaica this year, I was worried. Quite worried. So much so I had not been sleeping well for a month before the trip, though I did not realize that was the reason at the time. (Only after I got home again, and could sleep, did I understand.) The depression had been riding me for a full year, at least. It had dogged my every movement on the previous year's trip, and I knew I was now held firmly between its jaws. I worried about that, about how I would be able to function in a group of people where it is hard to hide our shortcomings, in a place where the heat brings out what we might wish to hide away inside. There's no faking it in Jamaica--even the natives i have encountered there are direct in their responses. And since this was my third trip, some of the people traveling with us had traveled with me before, and so, they knew me. They knew me in the context of the Jamaica mission trip, what I was capable of, and what they could count on me for. They knew when I was angry at the arrogance and judgmental attitude of a new traveler, and was trying to hide it with polite sounding words.

(Mission trip. I know the images those words evoke. Forget them. The people we stay with in Jamaica are better Christians than I am. They know their Scripture by heart, and they know their hymns. We go there to sing and play and do craft projects with the children, and to assist in construction projects.)

One night, at our end-of-the-day wrap-up session, the aforementioned new traveler began to question our motives on this trip, and to complain it was not 'spiritual' enough. He challenged us, wondering why we were all here. His sneering tone, along with his refusal to participate in some of the activities, angered me, and I responded to his challenge. I laid open the facts of my life. I told him I am nobody. I explained how I live below the poverty level and raise my daughter alone, how I have known abuse and abandonment in my life. I explained that I understand how some of these children feel, being abandoned and abused themselves. I come on this trip, I told him, with fire in my eyes, to simply be with these kids, to love them and listen to them and let them know someone hears them, someone sees them, someone appreciates them. I said that, and more, and at the end of the meeting, I turned to flee from the room in tears, because I had exposed my vulnerability to a judgmental stranger and I was afraid.

But the group leader caught my arm just as I was leaving, and she held me and whispered in my ear, "Don't ever say that you are nobody."

And she cried, and I cried, and then I ran into my room and hid.

The next morning, I went out early. There weren't many people around. I walked down to the playground and climbed up the tallest piece of equipment there, and sat facing into the wind. I began my morning prayer, and I talked earnestly to God about my fears and about how paralyzed and turned to stone I had felt because of the depression. I sang. The wind caressed my face, lifted my hair, soothed and smoothed my ragged edges. And I heard the voice of spirit say to me, "God fills all your empty spaces. You are not alone. You are not nobody. You are not without. God fills all your empty spaces."

I cried some more. I felt the wind. I knew it truly as the breath of God, breathing love and life into me.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Heart of Stone

2007-11-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the Bible the Lord says, I will take your heart of stone and give you a heart for love alone. When it comes to my feelings about my mother, and my heart of stone concerning her, God has his work cut out for him.

In our community recently, a baby was abused and beaten over 2 days and finally died. He was 7 months old. The boyfriend killed him, and the mother neglected him. She came home from work to find her baby with 2 black eyes and a split lip and a bruised head, and did she take him for medical help? No. She took him shopping. She knew the boyfriend had perpetrated those grievous injuries on that baby, and what did she do? Let him babysit her son again the next day. By the time she got home that night the baby was unconscious and in cardiac arrest. She took him to the hospital that time, where he was resuscitated, but was already brain dead. A ventilator kept him alive through the next day while the family wailed and prayed and had the baby baptized and then finally the ventilator was shut off and the baby died.

I went to that baby's funeral. I know the family of the mother. I know the mother. She was arrested, and she was bailed out. She has subsequently been charged with 2 counts of manslaughter, among other charges of neglect and endangerment, 2 counts for the 2 days she neglected to get her baby care while the boyfriend continued to choke and pummel and bite him. Plenty of people I know well are making excuses for her. I am not able to make excuses for her. She failed to protect her baby. Period. I sat there at that funeral--even seen a baby's coffin, by the way? Not very big. Kind of the size of a large cooler, it sat atop our communion table. Anyway, I sat there listening to the pastor say how much this baby was loved, and I felt sheer white rage. People around me sobbed and cried and I was rigid with anger.

I have zero tolerance for child abuse, and zero tolerance for adults who fail to protect children, especially their own. And I know why: because my mother failed to protect me. That fact has made me an angry she-bear when it comes to the protection of the very small and helpless. The mother of this baby, from what she told police at the time, was more concerned with the welfare of her boyfriend, who she also says wasn't actually her boyfriend because her real boyfriend, the baby's father, is currently in prison.

That baby, sadly and aptly enough, was buried in the dusk, on a hillside, in the cold. One basket of flowers marks the spot. I visited it the morning after the burial. It was snowing and sleeting at the time, it was dim and grey. Sadder images could not be used in a poem, images of the beaten-to-death baby's grave in the cold and the half-dark. I do believe that baby is safe and warm now, in God's loving arms.

And no, my mother's neglect did not lead to my death. To mental illness and suicidal tendencies and a life long struggle to stay healthy, but not to my death. It has led to me knowing what I know: we must protect the small and the helpless, we simply must. No excuses.

And therein resides my heart of stone.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Sweet Floral Magic

2007-11-23T19:28:00.000-08:00

I wrote this article in late 1999, for an organic farming publication. I was playing around on the internet tonight, googling my own name like the egomaniac I am, and found it had been archived in several university libraries. This was written when I had yet one dog and two cats, and was still renting the second floor of that old rundown house. I had not had the breakdown that struck me like lightning and changed me so dramatically in 2002. I had not met and become involved with the Vampyr. I don't think I could write an article like this anymore.

Flowers feed the spirit. They bring us home. They are ciphers proclaiming the primacy of life. And they want us to smile—at them. (They do!) Because they are smiling at us, smiling and beaming bright tones of hope and of life. Smiling and saying, “Rest your mind on me a minute, and be glad.”

For 10 years I farmed, living amidst flowers (such beauties!) I’d planted, or who had lived there first, or who had invited themselves in. I learned another language gathering borage blossoms in the morning while honeybees droned contentedly beside me, or while watching butterflies dancing above the echinacea. I learned a secret the day I found a mouse’s cache of sunflower seeds nestled in the crook of a huge hairy leaf. Gold finches swaying on chicory stalks amidst constellations of Queen Ann’s lace was as divine a vision as I’d ever hoped to witness. Violets and trout lilies, asters and marsh marigolds, trillium and hepatica, nicotiana, tithonia, lavatera, rudbeckia, verbena, butterfly weed, these and so many others were sweet and happy friends.

And now I live in town, in a small old village that was settled in the mid-1600’s and burnt down and savaged twice during that strange dark time called the French and Indian War. It’s a village that sits directly on the western bank of the upper Hudson River and whose location once served as a major transportation center—a confluence of trails and waterways linking the Iroquois and Algonquin peoples meets here. And it’s living in this village, walking down streets lined with maples and oaks so venerable and huge, that I see impatiens and petunias in hanging baskets; portulaca in clay pots on wrought iron tables; morning glories twining up trellises beneath porch rails; fancy dahlias lining a walk; tiger lilies rounding the corner; zinnias half as tall as me flaming brilliant pink and orange along the sidewalk; foxglove peering between the slats of a fence; and scarlet geraniums in urns flanking a statue of the Virgin in a cobblestone grotto. Easygoing, friendly neighborhood varieties.

And then there’s the datura that volunteers in my neighbor’s garden. It’s a variety the likes of which I’ve never seen before, tall like Jimsonweed but many- branched as a moon lily, and its ivory white blossoms stink. Then when it blooms at moonrise, those tubular flowers shine lunar-luminescent and make me remember the wonder and the mystery of all plants who grow wherever the hell they want to. Like the pokeweed with its deeper-than-wine-dark berries clustered in cascading falls filling an abandoned greenhouse across from the Dutch Reformed Church. I figure I may not live on the land anymore, but the land is still right there under my feet, and while these tamed and chastened flowers, these wild and wily survivors may not
necessarily sing out in the strength of biodiversity, still they do sing. They sing and they whisper, they hum and they yell, and their song is a song of life’s magic.

Like over by Fish Creek where the dog and I walk every morning early to greet the new day’s light, there’s a little cove tucked in behind some oaks. And in that shady nook 100 yards or so up from the dam’s spillway, gleaming like the purest yellow
sunshine radiance, is a clump of 4 foot tall Japanese irises. How’d they get there?—so stately and exotic and elegant amidst the trash left by partying teens and people fishing who just don’t pick up after themselves. A little ways beyond are blue flags
opening up their own version of stubby stateliness to the sky. Just a few of them, enough to remind anyone who’d care to notice of this land’s wild antecedents, here at the edge of town.

Walking up the rise away from the creek, it’s easy to see agriculture’s imprint on the land, because to get back up to the road, you have to pass through pasture abloom with the subtle hues of red clover, vetch, birds foot trefoil, and goldenrod. These
aren’t very flashy plants. They don’t seem to try to catch my eye. Their purpose is not that they be noticed, necessarily. They are earnestly fixing nitrogen and attracting bees—not human admiration for their aesthetic charms (lovely as they all are
anyway). I get the sense they wouldn’t much care if I appreciated their beauty or not. They’re too busy. Unlike the
ornamentals of the neighborhood, so many of whom are prohibited by patent from propagating without a license. Their genetic heritage is copyrighted; their unique charms have a monetary value controlled by corporate entities far, far away from this little village. So what would these idle lovelies be busy with? They are specifically bred to be eye-catchingly beautiful. And so in order to fulfill their particular biological destinies, these ornamentals are hoping you’ll notice.

I noticed, one afternoon during the summer as I walked up to the school to pick up my daughter. A bright fuschia-pink geranium hanging along a porch rail winked and smiled down at me and I smiled back and in an instant of irrational insight I realized that was exactly what the bright blossoms wanted of me—that I lighten up and smile back. I told my daughter this as we walked back home; it was no news to her.

These town flowers (like the town crows who let me get up close and listen to them talk about how great it feels to fly) are used to being around all us people with our comings and goings and busy preoccupations. And they do want us to open up and smile at their loveliness. Even seemingly haughty cleome, with her hairy sticky stems and her hard to recognize face amongst her petals, sways in satisfaction when her beauty gives us pause, penetrates our preoccupation, and we stand enraptured by her loveliness, seeing for a moment...only her.

Flowers make magic. It is as if they are messengers from the strange and wondrous faerie realm that hopes to hear our voices breaking into twinkling laughter, into sighs of wonder— wonder at the vision of them, our eyes crinkling in the momentary
abandon of delight. Flowers are emissaries of light and loveliness, and, please, not merely the sex organs of plants. But then, genitals are doorways, mysterious portals of life’s encompassing power and majesty, of life’s hope and powerful triumph over
death and despair.

I work in an office now, and some days I am so engrossed in my work I forget there even is an outside, much less go out in it. So the flowers I see there, for the most part, are fine thoroughbreds shipped thousands of miles from hothouses in different continents and time zones, sent to deliver messages of love. White tulips in January, arrayed with neon bright heather in a clear glass vase— looking very much like inspiration for a still life painting. Exotic giant daisies whose names I didn’t catch, with deep brown velvet eyes and petals of burnt sienna atop 3 foot stems thick as corn stalks. And how all of us in that workplace sigh and fawn and ooh and ahh over the sight, the presence, of these delicate lovelies in our midst. The only other
natural phenomenon that can set us off so are the infants of some of our clients, sweet bright babies with the cosmos still swirling in their wise, dark eyes. We smile at them and when they smile back, our hearts flow over with the soft heat of happiness. How like flowers, these babies—so delicate, so true, such palpable reminders of life’s determined gentle
joy. How like babies, these flowers—faces bright with trust and hope. Both beckon us to soften, to stay still a moment and recognize the sweet magic and the quiet joy everywhere all around us, suffusing every moment with its peace—no matter where we are.

The Man in the Chair

2007-11-23T09:25:00.000-08:00

Our house had a ramp. None of my friends' houses had a ramp. We had extra-wide doorways and hallways. (In fact, when I was looking at this house to buy it--it has a very similar layout to my childhood home--this thought came to me unbidden: The hallway is not wide enough for a wheelchair to pass through.)

Our car had hand controls for the brake and gas pedals too. We drove all the way down to some weird place called City Island where they were put in--a custom job. When my step-father, the man in the wheelchair, first got out of the VA Hospital in the Bronx, a chamber of horrors my mother had dragged me through at much too tender an age, I am probably still at too tender an age for such sights and smells of suffering, he stayed close to friends he had met there, and so had connections like this shop in City Island where hand controls for the cars of the disabled were made. Because this was the early 1960s, and handicapped awareness was not a concept. Sensitivity to the needs of the disabled was not an ethic. Not. No special parking spaces or ramps or bathrooms or doors--nothing. Nada. Not a thing. No.

He was very adept at bumping up and down curbs. He had a way of tilting the chair back on 2 wheels to get down them. He could even bounce down 2 or 3 steps if he had to. He got up curbs with someone giving him a push from the back. If the curb was low enough, he could simply tilt the chair back up onto the curb and then bull his way with the strength of his arms pushing the wheels up and over it. If there was no one with him to help him, he would sit and wait for someone to come by who looked able to help. Then he would call out, "Hey chief, hey chief--can you give me a hand here." Not a question, really, but a statement. To say it was a massively humbling experience is to understate an obvious truth. He was disabled but he was fatally proud. You could see it in his face. I often thought in another lifetime, he could have been a king. He was larger than life, even in his injury. And people liked him, and they liked the fact they had a friend, like him. It made them look good that they were friends with the disabled guy. They made a special space for him at the high school basketball games, and mostly all of my friends simply liked him a lot.

I still remember a family vacation we took with my Aunt and her family. There was a particular restaurant they wanted to eat in one night. But it had steps, a lot of steps. Arrangements were made for my uncle and some men from the restaurant to carry him up the back steps and bring him in through the kitchen. He was not a small man, either. If he could have stood, he would have been well over 6 feet. He had a massive chest and big forearms, both from all the years of pushing the chair, but also from years of milking cows on the farm where he grew up. Only the lower half of his body was small--the long legs with no muscle anymore and his feet in useless shoes (the final pair of shoes he wore were brown suede with laces that came up over his ankles and he called them his 'fruit boots'). The color of his legs and feet were bad; their circulation was compromised. Eventually he got pressure sores on his butt, despite his sheepskin seat and special pillows, that left him bed-ridden most of the day, tilted to the side with his ass in the air. That was in the last years though, before he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 40, the same way both his parents died. Heredity and a bad accident, he had such a burden to carry in life. It always made me wonder about karma, and the effects of past lifetimes. Was it simply a random thing, the tragic pattern of his life? My mind always looked for reasons, for meaning behind the suffering. Still does, and I have come to conclude that sometimes there is meaning, and sometimes, there just isn't.

He did not always carry the burden of his life gracefully or well, but how many people would? He drank too much, he always drank too much, it was a drunken driving accident that broke his back and left him paralyzed from the waist down. The other guy in the car, his friend, walked away from the crash (and later died an old alcoholic in a nursing home, practically abandoned by the family he had hurt so many times with his drinking. But he could be so funny and so gentle too, he taught me to swim, at age 10, when I had despaired of ever learning and could not relax in the water-- he was the one who taught a little bundle of nerves like me to relax in the water). My step-father, with a grievous back injury, was carried away from the accident scene in a blanket. Who knew about back boards for back injuries in that volunteer rescue squad in a poor rural county in the late 1950's?

His paraplegic friends all drank too much too. A lot of my childhood was spent in their company, them and their wives all at someone's house--often ours, and I was the only kid, these guys were functionally impotent--for the weekend, drinking and smoking and snacking and playing cards for pennies. My mother would cook up a big pot of chili or spaghetti and meatballs and Italian sausage for supper. I would sit at the table most of the day and listen to their dirty talk and wise ass humor. Much of their humor was dark and often directed at themselves, and I learned a lot of dark truths and dark survival skills from it. They called themselves 'gimps'. They were a fraternity of people the rest of the world preferred not to see, or stared at all too rudely. I got used to it as a small child, people staring at him like he was some freak sitting there in his chair, instead of a big farm boy who had gotten into a bad accident. They tended to see the chair and not the person. I got used to it. I knew the person, and after awhile, I never saw the chair. I didn't see any of the chairs anymore, just as I did not see how the one friend who had been paralyzed from his shoulder blades down in a diving accident could not cut his own food, or the amputated stumps of the friends of later years, men who came back from Vietnam missing limbs. I remember one guy, a double amputee (both legs), never used his chair in private. When he wanted to leave the card game to go to the john, he'd hop down onto the floor and locomote along somehow on his hands. What I remember thinking was how strong he was.

When these guys in the chairs got up in the morning, they'd wear a towel over their legs. They were naked underneath them. They did not wear boxers or briefs--getting into pants was difficult enough. My step-father had several beach towels just for this morning time. One friend of theirs wore a wash cloth. I became quite adept at not seeing him from the waist down. And the smells I learned to ignore--the morning smell of an unwashed alcoholic paraplegic is something that could be used as a torture technique.

Every couple of weeks, he would monopolize the bathroom on a Saturday for hours, washing and doing whatever he did in there. Lots of splashing sounds. Tricky for a small kid who just needed to pee. I would wait and wait and wait until he got to some point in his ablutions that he could take a break and let me use the bathroom. I would sit in there holding my breath and not looking at the stuff scattered all around the sink.

These guys were permanently catheterized. They had a bag on their legs where the urine trickled in all day. They called it a duck. Many times on road trips, we would pull over by the side of the road (because there was no public bathroom anywhere his chair would fit inside) and he would slide across the front bench seat to the passenger side and stick out his leg, pull up his pants a bit, and unclamp the clip on the tube of the duck and let the dark, bad smelling urine gush out onto the roadside. Something else I learned to ignore. Suffice it to say, the people I knew with spinal cord injuries did not have healthy bodies!

These guys played wheelchair basketball though. They participated in handicapped games. We went to those every summer. There were races in wheelchairs and swimming. My step-father was actually on a wheelchair basketball team (he had been a small town basketball star in high school) that competed in the Pan-American Games. He went to Cuba with the American team back in the late 50's, before it was illegal to travel there.

And, yeah, he used the strength of his big scary arms to beat me and the dog, sometimes brutally. He stuck his big, rough fingers in places on my body where they did not belong. He humiliated and shamed me. He also helped me with my math homework. When I was very small, I would stand on the foot pedals of his chair when we were out shopping, and I would ride along there. He taught me to tie my shoes as we sat in the car waiting for my mother at some store. Except he was a lefty, and taught me left-handed, and it took me years to figure out why my bows never looked as nice as the other kids. When I played field hockey in high school, he came to my games. He could not get across the grass to the field, but he parked as close as he could in the parking lot and watched with binoculars.

Besides the scars of abuse, living with him gave me a compassion that runs deep. It gave me eyes that tend to see the inner person first and a mind that does not judge people by their appearances (though I have learned with age that, in some cases, judging by appearances can be precisely the right thing to do). It gave me the ability to have extended conversations with almost anyone. I look in their eyes and talk with the spirit residing in there. I am proud that I am able to do this. And the fact of that gift, that ability, almost brings me to a place where I can forgive him the hurt he did me.

Almost.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Thanks Giving

2007-11-22T09:31:00.000-08:00

It is grey and dank this morning. But the furnace works, and I can pay the natural gas bill, and our house is sound and tight. I have covered the windows that let in cold air with heavy plastic that I get free at work (it lines boxes of cardboard tubes we use in packaging). I have food enough to eat and tea enough to drink, and I bought a pumpkin pie that was made at our church by women who have a talent for baking. It helps raise money for the church and it provides my daughter and me with an incredible large pumpkin pie decorated with pie crust cut out in leaf shapes. Very lovely! I plan to eat a piece for breakfast, holding it in my hand, no plate, no fork. My Grandma made incredible pies, and every incredible pie I encounter on my walk through life brings me back to her.

Thanksgiving at her house is a memory of scents and tastes and colors. And of warmth. Walking out of the cold into the back door after the long car ride, I was always greeted by the scent of the pine wood walls and of her homemade yeast rolls. She would roll the raised dough into balls and put 3 of them into the spaces of a muffin tin and bake them. She would buy brilliantly green baby sweet gherkins, just for me, and she would make vibrant cranberry orange relish, fresh, just for me. Such colors, and so shiny! There would be scalloped oysters topped with crackers for my Grandpa and scalloped corn for my mother. And lemon meringue pie for my Aunt.

To make the relish, she would clamp the heavy metal food grinder to the wooden counter curving out just above her radio, always playing WGY. She would fit it with the right sized plate, grind the cranberries, and then the oranges, and then sweeten it all with sugar. I loved to push the fruit down into the grinder as she turned the crank (the cranberries would go Pop!), and to watch the ground fruit pour out into the bowl set beneath the grinder. A kid easily amused, I guess.

She would also make a small mincemeat pie just for her and the man in the wheelchair. It even had beef in it, hence the name, mince meat. (One of our pie baking church ladies made mince pie for our annual Harvest Supper, and she made hers from green tomatoes. Who knew the many manifestations of mince pie? Not me, I won't touch the stuff.) Along with the mince and the lemon meringue, she would bake apple and pumpkin pies. She had been baking pies since she was 12, and she did not even need to measure out the ingredients for the crust, just did it all by hand, the day before, from memory.

The metal grinder would be washed and dried and used again to grind up the turkey giblets to be put into the gravy. I loved that job. I would strip the meat from the turkey neck (eating the choicest strips), I would shove in the gizzard and the liver and the heart and the neck meat into the grinder and watch in fascination as it came out, transformed!, from the opening in the grinder. I loved that giblet meat. Loved it. So did my Grandpa, and he and I had worked out a deal to share the gizzards. When I was very small, and did not know--yet--it disgusted people so, I would eat every single inch of the drumstick, save the bone itself. I even cracked out the marrow and ate that. All I can say is, I guess it is the Indian in me that had to eat like that. A throwback, my mother called me then, and calls me yet. (They had their own myths and legends of Indian blood, this Dutch-German clan, ever since my Grandpa's aunt had begun researching a family tree and then abruptly stopped her research, not liking what she had found, apparently, but never telling anyone why. And so the speculation of Indian blood began. My mother had her own version of that, however. She insisted we were part African-American. In fact, she and the man in the wheelchair told me my own creation myth: That they had found me in a greasy bag in the garbage in the Bronx, and that when I turned 10, I would turn into a black person. When I replied that we were not black people, my mother flattened her nose with her index finger, as if she looked black African then, and said, 'See?")

Today my daughter and I will be walking down the hill to share Thanksgiving dinner with friends. My friend grew up in a big family on a Michigan orchard, and her husband grew up in a big missionary family in Hong Kong. Her 2 sons--the younger a young man with developmental disabilities, and the older a sweet and earnest idealist currently living in Brooklyn--will be there, along with the older son's girlfriend. She is Swiss/Czech, but raised in the US, and she teaches ESL to immigrant children in Brooklyn. She and I often have friendly arguments over whether Jamaican children should be in her class (I say yes and she says no). Also invited is a young man from our community who lived all his life in Las Vegas and ended up here because of an internet romance, but once he arrived, the lady in question took one look at him and said, No way. (He doesn't always brush his teeth and a stroke has made it so he walks funny.) She promptly fixed him up with an abused, mentally ill woman, but he and she have since divorced. A combination of her incestuous relationship with her uncle and her need to walk into the river fully dressed at 3 AM drove him out of that relationship. He is sweet and polite and smart. He has very strong faith in God and that helps him survive. We have that in common! Anyway, of such sad and colorful truths are real life composed.

My contribution to the feast will be cranberries served in a beautiful clear glass dish that belonged to my Grandma's mother and cooked in a way my daughter loves them. She has always loved cranberries since she was very small. I would keep the unused portion of a bag of raw berries in the freezer, and she would toddle over asking for a 'cranbear'. ( What is it with kids and sour things? Sometimes they just love them!) A creative culinary challenge faces me in this year's cooking of the cranberries. I usually cook the whole berries in apple juice and honey until they pop, but I forgot to buy the juice yesterday (too busy buying Newcastle Brown Ale, but that is another story). So, my sweetening options are these: honey, brown sugar, grape jelly, orange juice. I am leaning towards a combination of honey, orange juice and a bit of grape jelly. We shall see.

I also prepared a feast for my bird friends, laying out for them in 3 feeders a repast of their favorite black oil sunflower seeds. I have added 2 feeders this year. Along with the usual one out on the back porch, tucked in amidst angel's trumpet and woody nightshade vines, (that's the one I can see from my dining room table), I hung one out in the sumac. I told the sumac that since it is a persistent yet uninvited resident of my bit of earth here, defying all attempts of mine to mow it and hack it away, it might as well be useful. Hence, a feeder now hangs there. I also have a small feeder on the front porch made by a Jamaican man from a coconut. It has 2 parrot type birds rising up on either side of it, and an opening carved out that creates a kind of coconut cave where I put the seed. Even if the birds don't visit the feeders today, they have an open invitation to feast here. I am thankful for those birds, for their cheerful little lives, chirping and sticking together even when the coldest wind blows drifts of snow and the world is half-mad with darkness. I am thankful for all the plants and other critters who inhabit my world and make it a place full of spontaneity and life. As I am thankful for the many friends who love me despite my cranky, grouchy ways, and solitary eccentricities.

But now I need to go cook those berries.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

The Fairlands

2007-11-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

My grandmother was an only child like me. For part of her childhood, she lived with her grandparents way up in the hills in a place the locals called The Fairlands. And, yes, it was so fair and so beautiful up there, with an incredible view to the north of high mountain peaks. It was a place of alternating stands of trees and green and golden meadows, of ponds and brambly berry patches and far flung farm houses and barns. She lived on her grandparents' farm. Her mother had left her there to go find work in other places.

The farm had a pond where they would fish and catch bull frogs for supper. Her grandparents came from solid Dutch, German, and French lineage, and they had a lot of kids. My Gram spent her days with an aunt who was very close to her own age. They walked several miles to a one room school. She told me when they went out berry picking in the hot sun, they would be careful to cover their arms with long sleeves and their heads with broad brimmed hats so that they would not get tan--because rich people had fine white skin, and only poor laborers got tanned. They did not want to look like poor laborers. When she outgrew the one room school, she went alone down into the valley to the nearest small town to attend the high school. But she was embarassed by her homemade country clothes and was afraid the town kids would laugh at her. So she quit school and worked instead. She always regretted quitting school. She was uneducated but she was certainly not stupid.

The story was always told that my grandmother's father was killed before she was born. But when I was doing geneaological research several years ago, I found no death records for the man whose last name my grandmother carried before she married, not at the time when she was a baby. None at all. I also found no marriage record for her mother and father. My grandmother was born in 1914.

The story my grandmother told me about her father's death, told to her by her mother, sounds made up to me now, but also apt. She said the man was walking back to be with them around the time she was born. He had been gone but he was coming back. As he came, he fell from a railroad bridge, and was impaled on a spike--right through the heart.

Sounds to me like a story an abandoned, embittered, unmarried mother might tell her child.

Anyway, like I said, my grandmother was an only child, just like me. Her mother married several times throughout her life, but she never had any more children. And when I was very young, 2 or so, my mother wanted to leave me with her and my grandfather while she went off with her new husband--the man in the wheelchair--in a white Oldsmobile covertible with red interior. My Gram said no. She said no because she had been left behind by her mother and subsequently felt like her mother never wanted her. (She often said she felt like no one really wanted her, and that she never really belonged anywhere. I have often felt exactly the same way. A family legacy, I suppose. She had depression too, another legacy.) And even though she was doing what she thought best for me, I would have been better off staying with her and my Grandpa and my aunt, who was 12 when I was born. It was Major Trauma for me to leave them. I loved them so much. They never yelled at me, or spoke to me unkindly, or beat me, or touched me inappropriately. They never ever thrust me into terrifying chaos. I also loved their old country house on a sloping hill with the ditch full of wild mint across the road. I loved the tall hollyhocks my Grandma grew and the Montmorency cherry tree and grape vines out back. She would can those tart pie cherries and keep them in jars in the cold cellar. I would eagerly follow her down the wooden steps into the cellar where the big wringer washer stood, and she would swing open the cold cellar door and get me a jar of cherries. I would eat them in a dish, red like lips and just as firm and delicious, in amber juice.

I loved the little succulent plants called hens-and-chickens that she had planted in her flower bed. I loved to smell the peony blossoms in June, and watch the way the ants helped the buds to open. The sweet, rosy scent of peonies still brings me straight back to that time of my childhood, and I remember how my Grandma and I would play around saying the word peony, saying pee-nee instead.

My Grandpa had built a picnic house down back, and it had a fireplace. I loved to play in there, I loved its screen door and the sound the door made when it swung shut, impelled by a big spring. My Grandpa had also built a large swing, the kind with two seats facing each other, and you could sit and talk and gently rock back and forth. He too had had to leave school early to go work. He came from a family of 10 kids, and had to help support the family. He was also very smart, and he read a lot. He taught me about continental drift and the whole Pangaea theory back in 1965, when he was sick in bed with cancer and I had climbed up beside him with the new globe I had been given. My family always told me that when I was a toddler and could not quite walk yet, he would hold my hands in his and walk me around and around and around. He was proud of his Dutch heritage and made a point of always eating Gouda cheese in the red wax. That cheese in wax fascinated me, I did not know anyone else who ate cheese that came in red wax, and could you eat this wax? (Not really.) He died when I was 8, so I only had a few years with him, but what good years they were. I still remember how he said 'winda' instead of window, and said the days of the week ending in the word 'dee' instead of day. My Aunt still talks that way. He also used to stand on the front porch afternoons and shoot starlings with bird shot while we waited for the school bus to bring home my aunt. He had rheumatoid arthritis really bad--another family legacy, and he was all crippled up by his late 40s. He got around on metal crutches, and he was only 59 when he died, from cancer.

I did not love the garter snakes that lived in the stone wall so much, they always scared the crap out of me. It seems like I would look down and-blah!--there one would be, all coiled in a spiral, or poking its head out from a shadowy space in the grey field stone. One morning when I was about 10, and was spending some time with my Gram, I went outside to the back garage, the one that had at one time been my Grandpa's wood working shop, to get something from the car, but was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a snake making its leisurely way in front of the garage door. I ran back in and told my Gram, and she got right up and went into the mud room and took a rake from the closet and went out there and coiled that snake up in the rake, and carried it across the road and shook it out into the ditch. She was so brave, my Grandma!

I also loved to tag along behind my teenaged aunt and her girlfriend from across the road. I loved the tiny cones that fell from the tall hemlocks lining the driveway. I loved the large lichen covered rocks beneath the red pines along the back fence line. I loved the big, tall chicken house next door, and the neighbors who kept those chickens. The Mrs. next door had a parrot! He sat on a big ring on her glassed-in front porch during the warm weather.

Early mornings when my teenage mother would sleep 'til noon, practically, I would let myself out of our apartment over the other garage--a mother-in-law apartment, as that kind of arrangement is sometimes called, and, in fact, my Grandpa did build it for his mother-in-law to live in. She had since moved on up the road a bit to live with her brother and sister-in-law, probably to make room for my recently widowed mother and me. I would walk across the grass in all weathers, barefoot in the dew in the summer, and across crusty frost in my feet pajamas in November, and go inside my grandparents' house. They were early risers like me, and we would all sit down to a breakfast of Thomas's English muffins. My Grandpa would drink Red Rose tea from a brown one-cup teapot, a pot I still use today, though I dropped the lid when I lived with the X and it shattered on the concrete floor (seems like lots of stuff shattered in my years with the X).

One morning, my Grandma had forgotten to unlock the back door, and so when I padded my way across the grass and climbed the back steps to the door leading to the mud room, a room panelled with real knotty pine boards, and with big closets filled with red and black checked hunting jackets and winter coats and snow shovels and rakes and a shot gun or two, though mostly the guns were kept behind the cellar door, I could not get in! I rattled and rattled that door knob, and then, undaunted, I made my stubborn little way over to the house next door, the house of the parrot. Mrs. Parrot let me in and I visited a bit with her before she took my hand and led me back to my grandparents' and knocked so loudly they had to hear and let me in. I myself never thought to knock. And my Grandma felt so bad she had forgotten to unlock the back door for me! She always said that, because this was one of our favorite stories to share, and we repeated it to ourselves and the rest of the family for years and years.

In later years, when my parents and I would come back from the disgusting city place we lived in to visit my grandparents (I always knew we were getting closer when I could spy mountains from my back seat perch in the white car), they would always set me up in a roll-away bed at the foot of their big bed. They had a beautiful heavy wool Hudson's Bay point blanket on their bed, a white one with 5 points and one broad red, yellow, black, and green stripe across the top. That blanket is on my bed now. I would lay there in my roll-away bed, in the chilly room, under lots of blankets, and I would look up in the dark and see neon colored snakes twining along in the space where the ceiling met the wall. I would sometimes awaken to witness large prehistoric fish swimming through the room. As an adult I read of how William Blake saw angels peeping through the leaves of trees and smiling at him when he was a child, and I would remember the snakes and the fish. And wonder just what the hell that was all about. But, I suppose, that is another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Bumby the Fat Girl

2007-11-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

So Bumby ran away for awhile during our walk this morning. When I had gotten to the place on the hill, after the meadow, before the cemetery, the place where I always stop to put her back on the leash, she was not there. It was foggy and dark and I couldn't see her. I did not hear the jingle of the tags on her collar. I called her and called her. I didn't want to call out too much because it was very early and there are houses nearby with people in them, presumably sleeping. But she didn't come. I waited for a bit, then decided to walk on. But even as we went on, Little Bear and I, I was still listening for the jingle and trying to see her dark grey form down the hill in the dark.

I was worried and distracted as I walked through the cathedral of Norway spruces, fringed black towers in the early grey dark. That is usually a place of peace for me, where I find the stillness inside myself, but not so much today. I have been on the edge of worry and self-blaming for too many days now, and Bumby disappearing like that wasn't helping anything inside me stay calm. The evening before I had noticed the Mother Cat had slash wounds on her head and ear, and she hadn't been cleaning them. One of them looked swollen and abscessed and as I felt it, it broke open and I was able to wipe out the pus with a tissue. But it was still worrisome, the fact she wasn't grooming herself. (Give me a reason, any reason! I am always primed for disaster to strike again.) My daughter began vehemently insisting I not let the Mother Cat outside anymore, but the cat is half feral, and while she was a good mother once, she hates her babies now, she hates all the cats in the house. She won't use the litter box and she growls and is upset all the time she is in, unless she is sleeping. So I have to let her out for a bit, which I did do this morning but with the plan of finding her before I went to work, and bringing her back in.

Also one of the fish had been ailing over the weekend, all loopy and lethargic, and I had been blaming myself for that too. I had lost track in my mind of when I had last changed the water in her tank. But she was better yesterday, thank goodness. Adding all this to my recent financial nightmare and my concerns and disputes with my daughter, I am feeling a bit raggedy around the edges. My black crow feathers are rather ruffled. It doesn't appear anything will come along to smooth them back down anytime soon either.

Work yesterday wasn't any better. My employers were away enjoying a day off in the city, and that left me to open up and get things rolling, that left me to look after the developmentally disabled young man who works there, and that left me to look after the mentally ill widow who also works there. Believe me, my employers do not pay me enough for all that I am expected to handle and to do. Anyway, she freaked out and flipped out early on in the day when I had given her a new job to do. While I was endeavoring to teach it to her (feeling a lot like a vocational therapist), the phone rang and it was a customer wanting to order something from our retail store. The call made me remember I had forgotten to open the store, because I was busy trying to teach Deidre the new task. So, then I had to go back and forth between the store and the phone so as to be able to tell the woman exactly what shape and color Chinese vases (I recited 'chocolate brown, celery green, sky blue, yellow' over and over as I walked back to the phone) we had left, because she wanted to buy 4 of them. I am very good at customer service, so good in fact, I should be given an Emmy or a Tony or an Oscar for my daily performances. Actually a lot of my life is a daily performance, because I often feel so ragged and bereft inside. By the time I got back to Deidre she was over by the windows panicking because she could not see well enough to do the new job. She decided to go home and get her glasses. And her bottle of water! she exclaimed loudly. She had forgotten her bottle of water!

By the time she got back, precisely 12 minutes later, she informed me, she had calmed down and settled in and was okay for the rest of her 3 hours there. By the time work was finished for me, many hours after that, I walked home in the gathering gloom as some poet so aptly named it, feeling bleak and sad. Feeling alone, feeling like I needed some tender loving care but also knowing that was like wishing for world peace--it just ain't gonna happen.

Honestly, I wish I was making this all up but, wah wah wah, it's all true.

So, Bumby ran away and then she had this particular madwoman to contend with when she finally had re-traced our steps and caught up with us. She was slurping and licking her chops in an extremely disgusting manner and I knew then she had been busy eating something. Something dead, or fecal, in nature. I told her she was a disgusting fat girl. I told her that a few times. She walked most of the way home with her tail down (who likes being called a disgusting fat girl?). She knew I was unhappy but, I am sure, in her limited doggy way, she did not know precisely why.

Bumby is a mess. (A shaggy, grey mess, not unlike me before I colored my hair.) She is beautiful inside, loving, empathetic, loyal. But she is also terrier-stubborn and a pig for anything vaguely edible. She came from the animal shelter where she had been living for 3 months (it is a no-kill shelter) because no one wanted her. Her coat is long and tangled most of the time--she is a messy, shaggy dog. She looks like a fat girl but she actually isn't--she is quite muscular and sturdy. She had been abandoned as a pup and ran around a city north of here before being injured and taken to a vet. She lived at the vet's for one month and no one claimed her. Then she went to the shelter, and still no one claimed her, or wanted her.

We came to the shelter a week before I was moving ino the house I had just managed to buy and I was still wondering if this was some unconscious child of alcoholics' self-sabotage attempt on my part. For some insane reason, I was planning to adopt a different dog that a friend had told us about. That friend had also called ahead to the shelter (she had an 'in' there) and told them to expect us because we were "a very good home" for this particular little male mongrel. Except Little Bear had other plans. Seems he doesn't like other boy dogs, and that was the day we found out. He snapped at the little male mongrel and they told us no way would they let us have that dog. Then my daughter started to cry. She was almost 10 then, and she thought we were adopting a dog! She cried and the staff said, go look at the other dogs. So I did. There were so many of them. Finally a staff person brought out Bumby. She was the only one of the 35 dogs there that was not barking. I always remember that because, now that she lives here, she barks really loudly at nothing any chance she gets. My daughter took her outside for a walk . They paraded her past the cats to show me she liked cats. So we ended up with Bumby. I didn't really want her but I would never tell her that. She is very sensitive.

This is how sensitive she is. Once when I was crying and sad, bent over in a chair, my face in my hands, tears leaking out, wondering why I was so alone in this life, a dog toy was sudddenly thrust in my face. That was Bumby telling me she loves me and I am not alone and here's a toy, so let's play! She always tells me she loves me, a million ways every day. Sometimes I don't realize how upset I am until I realize Bumby has been sticking to my side like glue, trying to crawl into my lap when I sit down. I truly think, if she was able, she'd make me a cup of tea and give me some of the TLC I crave. And when she knows I am upset with her because she rolled in something stinky or ate turds out of the cat box, she goes under the couch until I feel better. Or it is time to eat. Or time for bed. Whichever comes first. She is a very forgiving soul and has plenty to teach a grouchy old crow like me. Like, about forgiveness! Starting with myself.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

My First Daughter

2007-11-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

My friend Janelle has a wry, dry wit. She was the first person I farmed with, before I met the X. Actually, I met the X at Janelle's farm; he was working for her then. She introduced me to him. I had recently quit my job at the university library and was doing an extended volunteer stint on Janelle's organic vegetable farm. I was still married to my first husband, but not for long.

Anyway, it was Janelle who said my dog Marley would always be my first daughter. She had said this when I was pregnant and none of us knew whether the baby I carried was a girl or a boy. For my part, I was positive he was a boy. So much for that kind of intuition, eh?

Marley was half purebred yellow Lab and half what I called 'wild dog of the Helderbergs'. Her father was apparently some rambling black Shepherd mix who met her mom when her mom was in her first heat ever. Marley came out brindled, mostly black with wavy golden stripes, floppy ears, a long tail, and a ridge of fur running straight down her muzzle to her nose. She was my girl, my puppy, my love. I adored her. She went with me to as many places as I could take her and I never, ever had to worry about her running away. She always stayed close by my side. If she was out in the yard, and I looked out the window, she would immediately turn my way, alert to the fact I was seeking her with my eyes. Me and Marley, we were tight. We slept together, we rambled the woods and fields together, rode in the car, visited friends, went camping and explored the world.

When I left my first husband, and ended up with the X, he put a wedge between Marley and me. No longer were we allowed to sleep together. She had to stay outside with his dog, Yoko, in the dog pen. Marley didn't like that, and neither did I, and so, for the longest time, Marley slept in my car. It was familiar space to her and it smelled like us. She liked that. Eventually he relented so that the dogs could sleep in the house, and then they had their own beds downstairs--but they were not even allowed to come into the bedroom. And I did not dare invite her in.

But during the day, as I worked in the greenhouse and fields outside, we were inseperable. People often commented when they came to the farm that if you wanted to find me, you just had to look for the dogs. We were always all together, the 3 of us.

I know now what I could never have known then, that it is a terrible mistake to sacrifice a loving, loyal dog for the love of a man who shuts that dog out of your room. Doesn't that sound silly and stupid and obvious in hindsight? Because she always loved me, and he didn't. I will never do that again. Ever. Because all her life, even to the very end of her life, even after I had left her behind, she trusted me absolutely and completely.

Maybe I should not have left her behind when I left him. That was a very difficult decision and I am still not sure if I would have done it differently. Because Yoko loved Marley so much and I did not want to break them up. Also, Marley was so old (13--old for a large dog) and out of it by the time I left, I thought she would be okay without me.

About a year after I had left, my daughter was having her bi-monthly weekend visit with her father. She was 9 then. She called me on the phone to tell me Marley had collapsed and could not get up. She was very upset and crying. I said I would be right over. I got into my old Ford station wagon and drove the 5 miles to his place. I asked him to help me lift Marley into the back of my car, and he refused at first, saying it would hurt his back. I told him I could not lift her myself, and pleaded with him to help me, and he finally did.

As I drove her to the vet, I sang to her all the way over. This is what I sang:

'Midnight has come
I hear music
And I'll keep on singing'

over and over again.

When we got to the vet, I went inside and was relieved to see my friend Sue who worked as a vet technician was working that day, and she came out to the car with me to get Marley. We carried her inside and got her up on an examining table. The vet, another very kindly woman I had known for many years, came in and examined Marley thoroughly with kind and competent hands, and finally told me they could probably put her on fluids and stabilize her, but she would not get better. She said dogs can mask their illnesses for quite some time, and by the time they collapse like this, they are pretty far gone. As was Marley. She left it up to me to decide whether I would have Marley euthanized, but she was supportive and loving as I grappled with the decision.

And so we would put my girl Marley to sleep, as we call it to tell the kids. As the vet went and prepared the injection of sodium phenobarbitol, I stroked Marley's soft silky head and ears and spoke softly to her. She had been quivering the whole time we had been there. I stroked her and whispered in her ear that she was a very good girl and she was going home soon. As I whispered to her, she became calm and stopped shaking. By the time the vet administered the injection, she was relaxed in my arms, ready to go home.

The X told me a week or so later that he was awakened in the night by the sound of Yoko, howling mournfully, missing her dear companion Marley.

Her ashes are in a box. I keep it in my bedroom, right beside my bed.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Icy Hard

2007-11-10T18:43:00.000-08:00

I was sitting at the table, reading a bit, drinking a cup of hot apple cider vinegar and honey. I had recently gotten back from my job cleaning the church. I had spent a fair amount of time, halfway through vacuuming the sanctuary, sitting at the piano and working on our anthem for this Sunday. I plunked out the alto part with my right index finger and thumb as I worked through the measures I hadn't quite learned yet. It is a lovely acapella piece by someone named Zingarelli, sung in 4 parts. I hadn't gone to choir practice this week, as that was one of my days from hell. This was a very hard week for me emotionally. My daughter worried me almost constantly with her behavior, and I have some scary financial problems. By the time Thursday night rolled around, I was feeling angry and sad and tired and resentful. Feeling like everyone just wants a piece of me, that no one cares about my needs but only about what I could do for them. Still fast in the flush of PTSD flashbacks--the pure emotional kind--because actually no one was really doing that to me, and that if I had reached out for help, friends would have helped me.

Anyway, I haven't been singing at all since I have been feeling so bad, and I didn't warm up before working on the Zingarelli. My throat was feeling rough when I got home, and nothing works better than the cider vinegar and honey. I usually drink a cup or two every day in the colder weather to help my throat. I was enjoying the relief of the hot drink and reading a bit of Rick Bragg's "All Over but the Shoutin". He was talking about his mean, damaged, alcoholic father, and suddenly a harsh memory rose up in my mind like a scary monster surfacing from black waters.

I want to say first that I do not enjoy emotional pain, though I am accustomed to it. Sometimes it is so familiar I do not actually realize I am in the midst of it, and I think sometimes I actually look for it, unconsciously. Because, for obvious reasons, it became a familiar state of being and if I wasn't in it, then where was I? As I get healther, by degrees, I recognize it better and protect myself from it more. I think part of that is I still do not completely trust feeling peaceful, as if something will surely come along and shatter that peace, so if I am already in pain, I am ready for anything, right? It is exhausting, to say the least. However, emotional pain has an edge to it that I would not call enjoyable exactly, but that can be somehow addictive, and I think that I am not alone in seeking it out sometimes. I think many people in our wacked out culture seek it too, in all kinds of ways. I am somewhat ashamed by my own participation in that, but, in this instance, I wasn't looking for it. Or maybe I was: Bragg's memoir is full of pain but written, crafted, so beautifully, and with such a fine sense of dark humor that he and I are kin of a sort, having been raised in a similar wasteland. Reading another survivor's memories can help make sense of something that felt largely senseless at the time, for me anyway, and so transforms--redeems?--something ugly into something beautiful. It also creates a sense of connection, of not having suffered alone. A function of art. Anyway, I digress hugely. Forgive me. This memory, one I haven't thought of in a very long time, demanded my attention, and now I have to tell it, hopefully to put it to rest as best I can.

We had had a lot of snow. My daughter was 3 or 4 and she had the cutest little pink snowsuit. She was (is) such a beautiful child, and her joy in life was a pure and wonderful thing. She was like a happy songbird, chattering away in her little girl language. We were all outside, the X and I shovelling the most recent snowfall from the driveway, a wide expanse that sloped steeply up to the road. It was a lot of work. There were really high piles of snow packed in on the sides of the road, pushed there by the plow, and we had had to dig through that first before we could begin to throw up snow onto it. I remember the sight of my daughter as a brilliant spot of vibrant pink in a very white world. What I don't remember is what set off the X, but suddenly we were arguing and he shoved me out into the road and grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved my face into the snowbank. He crushed my face into the icy hardness and held it there. I remember the sound of my daughter sobbing and screaming and trying to catch her own breath as I thought to myself, 'This time I am going to die. I am really going to die."

But I didn't die. I got really scared and couldn't breathe and flailed in panic, but I did not die. He finally let me go, and I gasped for breath like someone surfacing from deep water and I staggered over to my terrified little daughter. As I picked her up and held her close and rocked her slowly back and forth, making quiet, soothing sounds, he said to me, "Look what you did to her."

No, he didn't say it, he spit out the words, contemptuous and hard, bloody broken teeth, shards of dirty ice, huge crystals of bitter rock salt. I stood there stunned by what he had just said, not to mention reeling from what he had just did, holding my little one in my arms, and you can be sure I was crying too. He turned away from both of us as if we were too disgusting for words, and he went into the house. By the time I got up my courage to go in too, he acted like nothing unusual had happened.

I wish I was making this up. And maybe you can see, that when my daughter's behavior worries me now, I can't help but think about then.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Solitary Dance, Part One

2007-11-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

The older I get, and the more people I get to know, the more I see how really no one's life has worked out in the way they had hoped it would. And that how we handle that says a lot about individual character.

One big thing I never thought I would be doing is raising a child on my own. (She really isn't even a child now, but this challenging changeling creature, part young woman, part teen, part child.) The fear of trying to do that, and my own lack of confidence in myself at being able to do that very thing, kept me trapped with the X for many years. I believed that living as his hostage was preferable to raising my daughter alone, not to mention managing to keep a roof over our heads, and all that that entails.

Circumstances finally forced me out of that house. Once I had served him divorce papers, he began to turn his abusive mind and hands away from me and on to her. I tried to get an Order of Protection from Family Court, but had the bad fortune to get a substitute judge on the Friday before Labor Day who implied I was 'trailer trash" (he asked if we lived in a trailer) and told me that since the X had not verbally threatened to kill either one of us, he would not grant me my order. He also very astutely said, "It sounds to me like you are just trying to get this guy out of there."

Oh, if only I were making this all up at an attempt at satire and comedy.

So, I very quickly found us an apartment I could afford, the second floor of an old house that had once been nice but had fallen into a condemnable state. I could hear every move made by the tenants downstairs along with every word spoken. When they fought one night at 2am, I realized their bed was right under mine and so I dragged mine across the room. The furnace belched out black soot onto our walls and smelled bad, and when it was very cold, I would worry the house would burn down while I was at work. The pipes froze and the hot water was not very hot and not very ample. When I gave my daughter a bath, I filled the tub with kettles of water heated on the stove. I gave her the warmest room, a cozy space with carpet on the floor and a south facing window. A room with a good window, unlike most of the rest of the windows that were broken and I had to mend with newspaper and plastic to keep out the cold as best I could.

I moved there with Little Bear, who was still a pup, and our oldest cat, a tortoise shell named the Empress who was not much more than a kitten herself at the time. I did not bring my beloved dog Marley because she was so old then, because I did not think she could make it up the 13 very steep steps to our place. She was also beloved company for the X's dog, Yoko, as they were bonded pals-- Yoko had known Marley since Yoko was a pup. It was not an easy decision, by any means, especially since Marley died a year later partly due to the X's benign neglect. But that is another story.

Little Bear and I would get up very early and walk, out of necessity. The house had virtually no yard. I could not just tie him out. I walked him 5 or 6 times a day between work and meals and sleep. The river was nearby and that was a wonderful place to walk to--he and I enjoyed it very much. When winter came and we were out very early in the deep cold, I got myself a good parka with a hood that I zipped and snapped myself inside of and so felt protected from the world.

The house was on a quiet street in this quiet village and the Catholic Church was just across the way. Its bells rang 18 times every morning at 7. I loved to watch the sun rise through the branches of a large old tree that sheltered many birds and embraced the front of the house. I loved to listen to the sound of the waterfall at the dam just a short walk away. Its sound pervaded the air at all times. I had a kind and friendly neighbor next door who proved to be another angel on my walk of life. Her own son, a baby at the time, has autism and Down's Syndrome. She was yet another example to me of a person who does not have much but will always share what she has with others. Sisters in suffering and heartbreak, we do tend to find one another and support one another. She has a husband too, a hard working, quiet guy who helped me out when I needed tools or a truck.

This was the time when I found our church too. I had the sense that once my daughter was a teen, I would need the support of a community. One night I was doing some meditations involving white light. I had recently come to realize white light is the light of Christ. As I sat there visualizing white light, wrapping it around me, and my daughter, and our home space, that light suddenly took a turn of its own and led my mind up the street to the church on the corner. It was a church that had drawn my attention in the past. I had walked by many times and wondered what the lovely stained glass windows, illustrating scenes with grapes and flowers and books, would look like from the inside. I had seen the pastor standing outside in her white robe, with a rainbow colored stole around her neck. The place seemed filled with light, and the sign out front simply said: "Welcome." During the meditation, the church was revealed to me as the place filled with the light of love that I had sensed it to be. So I decided to check it out as soon as my daughter was away one weekend with the X. I was skeptical then, as I am now, at what people create when they band together in the name of organized religion, and was going to choose carefully. But I had the sense that with the white light as my guide, I was not being steered the wrong way.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Legacy

2007-11-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a lovely legacy of the damage inflicted by years of abuse--times like this when I feel dreadfuly alone, isolated, cut off. Stuck on my own little ice floe and floating farther and farther away. It is an inner reality that belies what the eye sees on the external face of things. I look calm. I look cool. That is a learned behavior. Showing distress or need only brought me greater trouble when I was a child and when I was with the X. Being vulnerable was a bad thing, a victim place; it made me prey. And so, I look cool. I look calm. I look like I have no needs at all. But inside, I am a howling mad woman in a raging thunderstorm, tramping the wild heath as the wind drives the rain in horizontal gusts, and I am screaming in despair. (Yes. Imagine the energy it takes to keep that inside. And now you know why I am always so tired.)

There are certain kinds of abuse we never completely heal from. Kind of like when someone is in a disfiguring accident and lose an arm or a leg or an eye or part of their face. You go on, you function, but you are never the same. You are altered for the rest of your life. Sexual abuse does that. Repeated physical, emotional, mental abuse does that. Years of mind games and beatings. Years of heartbreak and emotional pain. Neglect. Disrespect at a phenomenal level. The injuries to trust. They change us, inside, into forms different from the ones we started out with. We learn to go on--or not--just as an amputee learns to function without a right hand or half a left leg.

I can say this with certainty: if I did not have the spirits, in all their many forms--Holy, animal, ancestral, earthy, angelic--if I did not have them to lead me and guide me and touch me and comfort me and remind me, I would be dead. If I were an atheist or an existentialist, I would be dead. I need to believe there is something greater than this earthly life, this worldly structure of human ego run amok, this place that only the eye can see. I need to believe there is something greater than this world obsessed with satisfying itself, this human world so intent on acquisition. Because that, for the most part, has been not so great. In fact, it has been a huge disappointment, a place of hollow emptiness, betrayal, and pain. Heartbreak. Cruelty. I need to believe there is more than this, that what I feel with my heart and see with my inner vision and hear with my inner sense of hearing is true. Because it is true, it has touched me and saved me countless times. It has spoken to me, and taught me truths. Without the spirits, I would be dead. They have touched me, and so, I live.

What is it that impells us over and over again to go on seeking love? Is the heart so blind? And now I must ask you this: now that I have revealed this part of myself to you, will you abandon me too?

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai