Imagine Being Helpful

What follows is a dream and that is all it is.

Imagine…

Every time a company started dumping safe chemicals onto the land or into the water in safe amounts, hundreds of people went there and scooped up a jar or bucket or plastic deli container of the safe chemicals in safe amounts and dumped it on  the company’s offices and the CEO’s homes and the parking lots and flower gardens and lawns of those people’s properties who started those projects.

Imagine that…

And every time a legislator or commissioner or PAC member voted to allow safe amounts of safe chemicals to be spilled onto the land or into the water, hundreds of people went there and scooped up a jar or bucket or plastic deli container of the safe chemicals in safe amounts and dumped it on the parking lots and flower gardens and lawns of those public servants who are working so hard to protect the public.

Imagine all those people’s lawns and flowers and vegetables and clean driveways were helped by the safe amounts of safe chemicals poured thereon by the helpful hundreds of citizens who sought to let them experience the joys of safe amounts of safe chemicals on the earth and in the water.

Imagine that….

Imagine…

That was only a dream, but it was a good one.

Thanksgiving 2014

While trying to be thankful…

I must suspend sentimentality for the past.

          In the 1960’s, my definition of the holiday season was set. Family was large and met every year precisely when the matriarch had planned. With it came a subconscious set of values about the meaning of celebration.

          People bemoan the loss of “family values” today. It serves to resurrect an image of Norman Rockwell contentedness, and a guilty sense that we should try to fit the image. We aren’t those people. A day to put our feet up and relax together does not inspire me to put together a picturesque meal for 20. I tried to be the matriarch a few times and was never very happy with the results. First there was the coordination of schedules, then hours of manual labor, and a huge mess to deal with afterward. It didn’t taste like Grandma’s meal anyway! I have a new respect for the determination of my mother and grandmother. I have also realized that they weren’t working outside the home the day before the party.

          Today I sit with my husband as a turkey breast roasts in the oven, boxes of Stove Top stuffing and the stir and bake Campbell’s green bean casserole wait by the stove. We manage to copy the basic appearance of a traditional meal, but it doesn’t capture that sense of overabundance, security, and clannish community we used to enjoy. We aren’t financially secure the way my parents were. Their mortgage was nearly paid, their healthcare covered by Dad’s employer. It is easy to worry that we have no windfall and that the loss of health or jobs could leave us without resources. Gratitude doesn’t come as easily as it used to for me.

           But if I let go of the American Thanksgiving of the 20^th Century, I can be happy. John and I are ready to watch the Eagles together – and they have been playing really well. Woody is getting good grades and staying out of trouble. I will be able to visit my sister later knowing she is secure and managing to take care of our mother without losing her mind. I can avoid playing a video game and write something sometimes. It is the things that go right that I am grateful for. In 1965, I could never have imagined being grateful for things that come without trimmings – or Norman Rockefeller (er- Rockwell) iconography.

          Happy Thursday off, everybody. It is going to be another good day.

Ebola: Let me get this straight...

          A man enters an emergency room with a fever, everyone says "ummmm...." and they send him home. Later he is admitted to the hospital; nurses using quarantine protocols, make a mistake and are immediately quarantined. The man's family is quarantined. One of the nurses travelled, so they start back-tracking and identifying who she came in contact with and ask them to monitor their symptoms. We guess they did, and everyone's OK. Everyone who knew they had been at risk, anyway.
          Now, a nurse has gone to Liberia to help people with Ebola. Why? She is compassionate, she knows their lives are it risk, she wants to help them. She comes home. She knows she isn't contagious, and has decided not to voluntarily follow the State Health Dept.'s recommendations. Her compassion for others is no longer as strong as her certainty that she has Ebola all sussed out.
          In January, a student registers at HACC. I have no way of knowing he was in a foreign country and travelled on an airplane with a person who decided that waiting 10, l4, or 21 days to make sure there was no virus incubating in his or her body was unreasonable, inconvenient, excessive - whatever. This person comes down with a horrendous fever and coughs on my future student's in-flight dinner. This student starts my class 2 days later. He or she is respected, valued, and instructed to the best of my ability. Fourteen days into class, the student stops attending. Two days after that government health workers enter my class in haz-mat gear and start taking our temperatures. They suggest we suspend the class for 2 weeks and start making a list of the people we have been in contact with since the beginning of the semester.
          Question: who should be at the top of my list? My bed-ridden, 90-year old mother, or my son, and my husband. I guess all 63 students in my other classes, the people in the English Department, my co-workers at Kitchen Kettle....
          Thank God nobody violated that airplane traveller's Constitutional or Human or God-given Rights.  

          Today, I am not frightened. I will not live in fear. I know that anyone can die at any moment. I've heard that comforting solution to all life's problems. "You could be hit by a bus tomorrow! Worrying won't help." This is different. This is one of the few things in life that could be controlled - or at least suppressed! If I die of cancer, a heart attack, a bus - that's life! I accept that.
          The idea, however, that a person who could prevent infecting others decides he or she doesn't feel like following directions (I know a few people like that) and takes me and the people I love and work with down with me, well, I have a problem with that. I have a BIG problem with that.

          This much I know for certain. If there were any chance that I could possibly be a risk of infection to other people, I would do the quarantine. Hell, I'd probably double it just to be sure.

       

On Civility at Costco

As to politeness … I would venture to call it benevolence in trifles, or the preference of others to ourselves, in little, daily, hourly occurrences in the commerce of life… What is it but sacrificing ourselves in such trifles to the convenience and pleasure of others? And this constitutes true politeness. It is a perpetual attention—by habit it grows easy and natural to us—to the little wants of those we are with. -Earl of Chatham

Can we talk?

                I was never a great fan of Joan Rivers. She could be hilarious, but she was often nastier than Don Rickles. Humor that demeaned people, personally, was never satisfactory to me. Caricatures, types, yes. The guy on the set after the joke – no.

                Of course, I was young when she was in her hey-day. I was learning manners; the concept of being polite was fresh in my mind. Seeing outright rude behavior on television was confusing to me. I thought I wasn’t supposed to laugh at these things.

                Which brings me to my story.

                I was in Costco. There were 5 registers open and 5 or more people in line at each one. A man went to open a 6^th register, and I could see what was about to happen. A rather imposing woman had just come around the corner with a cart piled above her head. She walked directly through a line and up to the newly opened register.

                I was furious. I was not opposed to waiting. If someone with one or two things had been behind me, I would have let them go ahead of me. In fact, I do that in the grocery store fairly often. This was very different. She was obviously not in a hurry. She left her cart in the middle of traffic to buy a hot dog once she was through. She had to talk for a while to the man at the counter, and the man called a second clerk over to talk about her food. She must have had some weighty questions about her hot dog.

                And we all just watched in amazement. I looked around. There might have been four people blissfully unaware of this aberrant behavior, but the rest of us were glaring. It was the crowd rule in action. When surrounded by others, we don’t want to be the one who complains. I was very close to complaining when she walked in front of me to the register. Once she was there, I thought it was too late. Not true.

                I waited for three people to check out before I headed out into the parking lot, and fate placed her car just two cars from mine. She was only beginning to put her purchases in her car. It must have taken a good 10 minutes for her to eat that hot dog to be loading her car when I was. I waited to watch an SUV race through the pedestrian walkway before I advanced toward the … woman. There were at least 4 very nasty words in that ellipsis by now, having various animals like pigs and cows included. A few scenarios passed through my mind. One was ( gasp, how did that happen?) losing control of my cart and ramming her side door, nearly missing her large behind. I won’t tell you about my other fantasies. After all,I didn’t do the things I might have.

                Instead, as I started to pass her, she turned to me, smiled and attempted to start a conversation. She invited me to communicate with her! I have no idea what was wrong with her: poor intelligence, parental negligence, a bank account so big the rest of us were not worthy of her notice. Whatever it was, she sealed the deal there. I looked her in the eyes  and said,”I am one of the 20 people you just walked in front of at the registers, and I have no desire to talk to you.” And I kept walking.

               I heard her say something about, “you and the horse you rode in on” and now used my deeply and angrily sarcastic voice,  “Yeah, I got that, lady.” I didn’t even call her a bitch. I was VERY, VERY good, believe me. But what  in the world allows someone, anyone, to think her behavior was not totally outrageous? Did that m&$$%*#$@er  f*(*#Eing asshole flunk kindergarten?

                This is where I go wrong. After it is over, the damn thing just won’t go away. I have to make an effort to push this insolence from my mind and see the good and the happy around me again. So I went to Lowe’s where a lovely lady helped me find a weed-whacker and I bought it and a few mums to polish off my recovery.

                Joan Rivers is gone; there is Kathy Griffon to take her place. Some people would say I am not patient or kind or I should have ignored the rude woman at Costco, or being nice would have made me feel so much better. I won’t say what I think about that because I am being good, and you have been kind enough to read this. But the truth is I was hurt by that woman. I was made to feel inconsequential, invisible, unworthy… I could go on. And I am old enough by now to have learned that being kind to people who do not deserve it isn’t doing anyone any favors.

                I like what Lord Chesterfield had to say to his son.

“Good manners are to particular societies what good morals are to society in general—their cement and their security.”

Porch Thoughts: 13 June 2014

Today’s weather is the definition of ‘unsettled.’ The sun comes out, goes in, thunder rumbles, the sun comes out… I am unsettled as well. I wonder if it was the distant energy of lightening that woke me with a feeling of anxiety. It was a sense of missing something, having to hurry somewhere when there was nowhere to go.

Maybe it was because of an unsettled night that hadn’t been shaken off in my dreams. Last night our dog, my closest buddy, had trouble coming up the stairs. He has missed steps before, but he missed them all. His back legs don’t quite hit the stair and he pauses, tries again, makes it, moves on. I lifted him on the bed and he breathed quickly, his heart beat fast for a long time. John and I kept petting him, afraid his little 13 year-old body was giving out. He is better today, but his health is becoming an obsession. Sometimes it takes some effort to shake it off.

Today I am going to my mother’s to help wash her hair. She is slowly becoming bed-ridden. Still refusing a bed-side toilet or Depends, my sister continues to help her to the bathroom then sometimes out to the living room to eat and doze in her chair. The gradual loss of autonomy and memory is death’s advance. Creeping.

I guess a slow advance is easier than the sudden shock of loss. Or not. The bandage is a soft unwinding, but it is also so much longer than the band aid. There are so many more moments of pause and assessment. How is she today? How far have we come? How far do we have to go?

It is unsettling. And it gives me a new appreciation for the care-taker, my sister. Being close to the process is not comforting. It is exhausting, the definition of creeping into grief. 

The clouds have moved in. Thunder rumbles. How soon will the sun return?

Porch Thoughts, 3 June 2014

You have probably heard of Punxsatawney Phil and Octorara Orphie. I would like to introduce you to Grandview Gary, if I could find him. I last saw him by the shed in our neighbor’s yard, sunning himself and chewing some clover. He – or she – is a very happy ground hog. I do apologize if Gary is a girl; we just haven’t been formally  introduced.

I like Gary. I think he is rather young; he isn’t nearly as big as those famous guys on TV. He has a lovely big nose and long brown fur. His tail is about eight inches long and furry as well. He was scurrying along the fence beside the alley when I first saw him. He stopped at the corner of the shed and stood up to look around. His paws brushed the wall while he looked up at the roof. I said, “hello,” but he seemed very shy. He ducked behind the red paneling, but poked his nose out after a few minutes. Then he stepped away from his cover and stretched out on the grass on his belly. I respected his wish for privacy and didn’t try to engage him in conversation again.

 Seeing Gary has answered a few questions we’ve had lately. We had several near sightings -those flashes at the corner of the eye, just a few leaves moving where you thought you saw something . Thank goodness it wasn’t a rat. Our bird bath is actually a row of three bowls at different levels, and the lower two have been full of mulch and soil every morning.  Apparently, Gary takes a little bath during the night. He must be tripping our motion detecting light as well. Maybe he sings show tunes while bathing in the spotlight.

I made my husband promise me he wouldn’t hurt my new friend before I told him about Gary.  I was thinking of calling the PA Wildlife Management Department, but I’m not sure I trust them. I would like to see Gary trapped and released out in state game lands. He probably lived in the area at the end of the block where new houses appear daily. He deserves a new home. There are probably quite a few animals in need of relocation from that old farm. They had squatter’s rights in my opinion. 

Gary reminds me of my Dad. Not because of his appearance! Sometimes when we were riding in the car, Dad would spot a ground hog just off the road, running out into a field. While pointing him out, Dad said that they run as though they are singing “tweedle-dee-dee, tweedle-dee-dee.”  If you ever see a ground hog run, you’ll know it’s true. Dad also called them gophers or whistle pigs; I don’t know why, but I am grateful for his lessons. For this is the magic my parents gave me as a child. Ground hogs sang while they ran, raccoons were wearing masks. Animals belonged here, and in some places we didn’t belong – the space was theirs. Dad taught us to care about animals and monitor our behavior in their world. And although we had a home in the suburbs, we had no concept of running out of space. We were surrounded by woods and farmland. We believed there was room enough for everybody, and we could all get along.

So Gary is welcomed to my yard, until we can get him to a safer place for young ground hogs. He has every right to some tasty flowers and a long, cool drink. And if he really needs a bath, I’ll see if I can find a bigger tub. Then I’ll camp out and watch for the show.