Ten Things I Love (I've Been Tagged)

Latebreaking: There seems to be some question whether the assignment was "Ten Things I Love" or "Ten Things That Make Me Happy". I need to state I processed it as "Ten Things I Love". If I'd done it the other way, I'd have had a list of things that impact me far less than these. If I muffed the assignment, please give me credit for earnestness, sincerity and hard work both on myself and with myself.

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My original post before I wondered if I'd muffed the assignment:

I am usually up for a challenge and I'm almost always up for fun and games. I like connecting with others and learning new things ~ these are major themes in my life and my writing. So when blogging friend Kass threw down the gauntlet, I was ready to rumble. I put two blog posts that were almost ready on the back burner. I grabbed a pencil, some scratch paper and I began to scratch.

I knew immediately that I would not list my family, my lover or my job. Of course, I love all of those. It goes without saying. They occupy a level above Ten Things I Love. Within two minutes I'd made a list of seventeen things I love (I may have to do this exercise twice!). I struggled to pare it down to the requisite ten. I quickly made an association: my ten subjects include some of the labels I use most frequently on my blog. Hmmmm . . . . so I write about what I love. And then something washed over me that made me feel sad. When I look at the list of ten, I realize I am not actively engaged in some of them. I am avoiding some of them. I'm doing some of them only half-way. A revelation: find happiness by jumping deeply into the things one loves.

In no particular order (in fact I thought to list them alphabetically to eliminate any perceived order) here are ten things I love.

I love my physical well-being. I make a pilgrimage every Sunday of life to Fresh & Easy to buy good food for myself. This is more than "grocery shopping". It is a celebration of self. I fuel myself with foods that support my well-being. I walk many miles every day, regardless of conditions. Sometimes it isn't very pleasant. But I never fail to feel grateful I can do this. I hike and climb in the desert for the pure joy of it. At my desk every day, I set a timer to remind me to get up and move my body. I use weights, a wobble board, a light-flashing hula hoop and resistance bands. I indulge myself with frequent massages that help ease my body from what life has done to it. It wasn't always this way. I have 215 specific, well-identified reasons to be grateful for how well my body serves me.

I love to write. I am a person compelled to tell things. I need to tell my stories, my history and my observations of the day. I have a strong urge to share the funny things that happened, to rant about the injustices and unkindnesses I observed. I love rich, colorful, plummy words and I like to make language art with them. I want to retell conversations, and sometimes the written version is better than the actual dialogue. Writing letters and journals, essays and post-hearing briefs have all been part of my tapestry. But writing a blog has been an epiphany to me. Imagine writing and having other human beings comment about it! For me, comments don't need to be false-positives. I've let nasty comments in, too. It's more important - to me - to simply have another human being react and interact. Blogging is the best new thing I took on in 2009.

I love music. I surround myself with it nearly constantly. I'm like millions of other people who would say music is important to them. I might say I take that up a notch. When I hear a song I know, I am quickly transported to the time and place I occupied when I first learned it. Say something (anything) to me and I can often pop out some snippet of lyrics to highlight what you've said. I'm not stupid, but I regard some song lyrics as a rallying cry for life ~ it's an appreciation of the songwriter's ability to weave words into images. I am tattooed with a short version of the most profound lyrics I know. So, from Pachelbel to Pure Prairie League, the Bangles to my Beatles, Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan, R.E.M. to the Rolling Stones and the Backstreet Boys to Beethoven, I have loved it all [except rap]. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose one's hearing. Do you suppose the songs would play on in one's head?

I love my animals. I share life with two cats (Virginia Woolf and Dylan) and two birds (Bloomsbury and Benson). My father says I "over love" my animals, attributing to them qualities they do not possess. My father also says it would be a good life to live as one of Leslie's pets. It fulfills me to be the sole caretaker of another creature. I feed them and clean them and take them to the veterinarian when necessary. I brush the cats and clip their claws. I clean the spittle from the birds' mirror so they can continue to chirp while admiring themselves in its reflection. I buy good feed and palatial bird homes and the preferred type of cat litter. I provide toys and catnip that are mostly ignored and bird toys that are eagerly employed. It sounds like I have to do a lot and spend a little money, doesn't it? I talk to these beautiful fellow animals of the universe and each of the four looks at me as if I am brilliant when I speak. As if what I have to say matters. None of them has ever been cruel or done a thing to hurt me in any way. It's a dynamic that works beautifully. I provide the basic needs for their lives. They grace my presence with all their beauty and their trust in me.

I love venerable things. I call items with history "venerable things". These need not be priceless antiques. Ordinary household articles of long ago pull me more than a Renaissance painting. I like to handle venerable things and think about other human beings who may have handled them. I wonder if the venerable thing had special meaning to its owner, or was it simply "the potato masher"? I buy venerable things at estate sales and curiosity shops. I decorate my home and office with them. Sometimes I am fortunate to find some lovely vintage item I can wear as clothing or jewelry. Some of my favorite venerable things: my grandmother's 1917 high school graduation gift - a lavaliere that now belongs to me and will belong to Amber someday; my circa 1800 cut glass inkwell with tortoiseshell lid; a pair of eyeglass frames from about 1920. These frames are perfectly round and beautifully crafted. I want to wear them so badly it nearly makes me weep. I cannot find an eyeglass dispenser willing to try to put lenses in the frames. They fear what material the frames may be made from and whether it will hold up to today's methods of making glasses. I shall keep looking. I want those frames on my face. I want to think about the other human who wore them.

I love to be creative. This is one of the loves that makes me sad. For I am not doing it. OK, I'm writing. And I aimed my camera at some beautiful things. On one camp-out. But I am not using fabric in any way, even though I may own the lion's share of the world's stores of fabric. The sewing machine gathers dust and there are no pins sticking in the carpet. I haven't needle-pricked a fingertip for longer than I'd like to admit. The seashells used to fashion angel ornaments languish in closed bins among the shining ribbons and "jewels" meant to render them beautiful. The rubber stamps and archival ink containers lie idle and my embosser hasn't been plugged in for far too long. My cardstock and envelopes and embellishments are lined up neatly in their dustproof containers. Maybe forever, never to be touched again? Those I love enjoy receiving cards I've made. Why am I giving shitty store-bought cards to people I want to present with beauty and the creative part of my love?

I love to read. My mother, my daughter and I each began to read on our own, only nominally guided, at the age of 4. We are strong right-brainers who enjoy words and process information by reading. "Don't show me how to do it. Let me read the instructions!" I am surrounded by men who learn things by looking at a television. That doesn't work for me. When I look at a screen to learn something new, I take it in just like everyone else. Eyeball deep. When I read to learn something new, I absorb it into every part of me. I rabidly attack Prevention when it arrives every few weeks, completely reading it in one sitting. I have more self-help books than I can name, and I read and re-read them. I have many books that are old friends to me, some dating back to the 1960s. I try to give each of them a spin every year. I have virtually visited many places in the world I'll likely never actually see ~ by reading about them. Probably my favorite books are biographies. I'll read one about pretty much any person. This feeds the need not only to read, but it also puts me in the "connecting with others" mode that I love. the ability to read anything ever committed to writing, uncensored, is about as good as life gets. Whatever is intriguing, one can go find out about it.

I love learning new things. When I started my current job, I had a first-ever experience. It took me longer to catch on than I would have hoped or expected. I've always been a pretty quick study. I was about to turn 55 and I attributed the slight lag to my age. I am a bit kinder to myself now. I was entering a field I knew nothing about, managed by software I'd never used. I'd never held a sales position and had to learn that, too. Maybe I wasn't so slow! I was given a good, curious mind and I have many of the qualities of a terrier dog - some things may stump this chump, but I just keep digging until I find what I was going for. I'm afraid my learning process may not be pretty in its execution, rather like the making of sausages and law. It pleases me to learn new things. I wanted to know how to create a website and how html code works - I learned. I wanted to learn to blog. I've done so. I hope I never lose curiosity, even as I slow in my capacity to quickly grasp new things.

I love the desert. I will not be able to tell the reader why I love the desert. I've struggled for hours for those words that will not come. So I shall tell what I love about the desert. I love the loose sandy trails that make a hike feel torturous. I like the rocky hikes that scare me when the boulders shift beneath my feet. I like the drops so long I have to sit down and scoot myself down the rockface on my backside. I like to roast in my own juices in the sharp sun, eking out that one last camping trip in May before temperatures force the summer camping break. I like the snowflakes that fell and melted on my warm, bare skin as I struggled to help put the rainfly on the tent at 2:00 a.m. without my glasses. I love that I lay in 75 mph winds for hours, trying to sleep, weeping in fear, and surviving it. I love the way the coffee tastes differently out there. I love that I know how to pitch a tent, fuel and operate lanterns and a stove, make a safe campfire, follow a map. I like to poke around old mineshafts and find interesting treasures. I love that little creatures allow me to hold them and seem to enjoy my company. I love knowing how to identify animal tracks and desert flora. When I breathe in the presence of the petroglyphs, I feel like I'm in church. When I hike through a broad vista of cactus flowers, I know I have gone to a better place. It's an extreme environment. Harsh. One has to develop skills. I was a city girl. The desert opens its arms to anyone tough enough to survive in it. I thrive in it.

I love connecting with others. Human beings fascinate me. Almost all of them. I have felt like an alien visitor all of my life, however, because I don't feel as if I really understand other people. Therefore, I study them carefully. My friend and I laugh about something. If someone said, "Hey there's a great author from the 20th century named Hemingway", my friend would want to read Hemingway. I would want to read the biography so I'd know about the person Hemingway was. If my pink bus were an actual bus, I'd be the small woman at the back, surrounded by her bags of stuff, craning her neck to check out all the other passengers, taking notes. I study people and I try to find some place where I might make a connection with them. It excites me to find the fragile strand of commonality between me and another person. The electrical connection makes me feel alive and normal and . . . not so different from anyone else. Not alien.

CHALLENGE: I didn't think this exercise up. I was tagged. I'm officially tagging anyone who reads this to go do it for yourself. It's a good, introspective time spent with oneself. Tree, I'm specifically tagging you. Maybe you can't do it right now. But do it sometime. Do the short version. It might help you find your way. It helped me find mine.

In my ears right now: It runs long. It is worth listening to. It is like church music played on a pipe organ. She's got the pipes.

Some photo credits: J. D. Morehouse

Granny-O and Transportation

By the time they had the first several children, Granny and Grandpa led a busy life. Granny spoke of meal preparation when the family was at its largest: frying 4 chickens, cooking 10 pounds of potatoes, serving 2 loaves of bread and a gallon of milk . . . that was for one meal. There were clothes to be made, from the underwear all the way out, and laundered and ironed. A house to clean, several children at different schools, once there was a sizable age span. It was determined that great efficiency could be attained if Granny could drive a car and combine errands.

It happened that Aunt Ruth was left at home with all the younger siblings while Grandpa and Granny went out in the Model A. They were gone less than an hour. No other driving lesson ever took place. No one still living today knows what happened during that time. She was able to handle certain types of machinery and implements well - a sewing machine, hand tools, kitchen gadgets, hatchet to slaughter the chickens for dinner and not at the cost of her own digits . . . but apparently not a car. My Granny never did drive an automobile, but - by God - she could get around.

First there was the walking: she walked longer, farther, older than most people. After Grandpa died, she was content with walking to the grocery market and pulling her purchases home in her granny cart. Sure, she liked it when one of us came along in a car and she could make bigger purchases, but she didn't complain. Once, when Grandpa was in the hospital in the winter, she walked to visit him with her umbrella against the rain. The belt to his bathrobe had dipped into the toilet and he was a fastidious man. She walked home with her umbrella against the rain, washed the belt, ironed it and wrapped it in plastic. She walked back to the hospital to deliver it to him. She was 70 years old and the hospital was 3 miles away. She still had to walk herself on back home, too!

But Granny's true transportation forte was riding the buses. There was nowhere in Los Angeles County that Granny couldn't travel with ease and speed. She knew all the routes, where to take a transfer and what time the next bus came. Throughout her 60s, she took the bus to visit her daughters and grandchildren a couple of days a week. From Santa Monica to Long Beach and West L.A. to Pomona, rode Granny with her bags. While riding on the Freeway Flyer, she'd piece quilts. When her stop was near, she'd take off her thimble and put away the fabric pieces. After pulling the cord to indicate she wanted the next stop, she'd gather the bags, typically containing her quilting, National Geographic magazines to be shared, a layer cake she'd made, outgrown clothing from one cousin to be given to another.

Ex and I had set up housekeeping and, like most teens, we had nothing to start with. Granny boarded the Greyhound and headed for L.A. with more luggage than the law allowed. There was some concern that the VW Beetle wasn't going to be able to handle Granny, Limes, Ex and all the luggage, but we managed. Think: Jed, Granny, Jethro and Ellie May pulling into Beverly Hills. The 72-year-old woman had packed and transported everything from a CorningWare coffee maker to bath towels, from sheets to a hand mixer. We could actually survive and even thrive for years on what she'd brought. On the Greyhound bus!

When I was in elementary school,I loved Wednesdays because that's the day Granny took the bus to our house. When I came home from school, she'd be in the living room, piecing a quilt, talking with my mother, waiting for me. We'd visit and talk. My Granny and I never ran out of things to talk about. There was never silence between us because there were too many things to be said. At 4:30, we'd start packing Granny up. We'd wait to hear the toot of the Helms Bakery truck pulling up in front of our place. My mother and I carried Granny's bags. The Helms man always handed me a free cookie and took Granny's elbow to help her up into the truck. Once firmly lodged in the truck, she'd take hold of the brass handle and ride standing to the bus stop. Mr. Helms transported her that way for years. 4:45 on Wednesdays, so she could get home and make Grandpa's dinner by 6:00.

This post started with just snippets of memories. The soundtrack might be "the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round." I think this is my concluding thought, though: little inconveniences such as walking 12 miles in the rain (in four separate 3-mile spurts) to wash and iron a man's bathrobe belt, or hauling bags and bags of stuff 25 miles aross Los Angeles County on the bus while keeping one's hands busy with quilting in the moments unclaimed by other demands . . . . didn't stop her from doing what she needed to do. I don't believe I ever heard her complain about anything. Not once. She just did what she did, and didn't let much get in her way.

Last Saturday night as I took a life step, I was sent an e-mail that said, "I am so proud of you. You do what needs to be done!" Oh, my dear one, I am an amateur, an abecedarian, a dilettante. But she's an inspiration and I can learn!

In my ears right now: The Who - Magic Bus. What else? Maybe Magical Mystery Tour would also be appropriate.

Something that charmed me: Finding an image online of a genuine Helms Bakery truck. They were beautifully appointed with oak cabinetry and drawers and they smelled as good as the wares they were carrying. Little old ladies didn't need to be concerned about accepting a ride to the bus stop with one of the gentlemen in white uniforms.

Granny-O

The Blair Family of Park City, Tennessee

Fall of 1900

My granny is the infant in her mother's lap

She was born December 7, 1899


My granny was my unconditional love giver. She lived a long life filled with every kind of pain and joy. She shared both of those with me. She did not see me through rose-colored glasses, but loved me anyway. She was a woman who was ahead of her times in many ways. She also steadfastly refused to modern up in other ways. She was both intelligent and educated (for her time and station). She was a quilter whose hands were busy with needle and fabric always. She sewed from necessity - she had a dozen children to dress. When they were grown and gone, she sewed Barbie cothes year-round to give to all the granddaughters at their birthdays and Christmas. The woman handcrafted Barbie slips, bras and undies and then repeated the process times 20!

I couldn't possibly blog about Granny in one fell swoop and be done with it. She lived 87 years and I had her for 34. That story can't be quickly told. So I shall do it in bits and pieces.

You see in the photograph the Blair family. Martha Snyder Dugan Blair (my great-grandmother) gave birth to 14 children. You see the 4 who survived. The two boys in the back are the Dugans. Their father died. Martha loved him deeply. The man in the picture is John Blair. He is the father to Granny and Uncle Ralph standing next to him. Martha did not love him. Granny always said, "Well, if she didn't love him, I wonder what that makes Ralph and me?" No, Ralph did not blink when the camera shutter snapped. He was blinded by the measles at about 18 months of age. He was a wonderful, fascinating man and I'll blog about him, too, but this is about my granny.

The Blairs were poor as Ralph and Granny always told it, but they also stressed that they never went hungry, never went without coats against the cold, always had shoes. There are numerous portraits and snapshots of them, so they obviously visited photographers when they went to town or when one came by. They look decently (not ostentatiously) dressed in the photos. They lived rurally. They were not farmers, but Martha kept chickens and a cow, maybe a pig. Oddly, for I have a very rich oral, written and photographic family history, I cannot tell you what John Blair did for work or money. I know absolutely nothing about him. None of his dozen grandchildren ever laid eyes on him.

Granny was the youngest child and Martha was about 40 when she was born. Martha pampered this only daughter and loved her dearly until, as Granny told it for 87 years, she (Granny) began to have opinions of her own. Martha was made of stern stuff, and you don't see the possibility of a smile on her face in the photo. Not even feminine softness. She did not tolerate differences of opinion well. Uncle Ralph never married until he was 58 years old and Martha had died. She wouldn't have approved of anyone, so he didn't take it on.

I have many, many Granny anecdotes to tell, but I think I'll end this post with some words about the end of her life and how good she was to me. A plain talker, my Granny would take on difficult subjects without fear. There came a time to talk about her mortality. I am a bit of a phobe (all right, in my younger years I was hugely phobic) about hospitals, illness, funerals. She knew that well. For about the last 5 years of her life, she told me many, many times that ours had been the best relationship of her life and she did not want me hanging out at a hospital or seeing her for the last time at a funeral. She gave me permission not to go through that. Over and over again.

She fell and broke her hip minutes after the Broncos lost the Super Bowl in 1987. Aunt Pat teased her after surgery the next day. "Mother, you didn't have to throw yourself down just because they lost." She seemed to be doing well. Until the pneumonia came. She was on a respirator and could not speak, but she was alert. The relatives were called in. Granny adored Ex. Not just because he was my husband. They just clicked. Ex went up to the hospital bed. "Granny do you recognize me? Do you know who I am?" Blink. Blink. "Do you know who my wife is?" Blink. Blink. "Do you know why she is not here with me to visit you?" Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.

She held on for 2 weeks. Aunt Pat called at 2:00 a.m. to say she had left us and joined Grandpa. I called Ex who was in San Jose at training. He had just been hired by the union. He was devastated. I went to the funeral. He needed me. I grew from it.

In my ears right now: "When It's Springtime in the Rockies". My Granny loved that song. I learned to play it - for her - for my first piano recital. She made me a blue dress to wear with a big satin bow on the back.

Something that charmed me today: A sweet exchange of very early e-mails, that reminded me I am loved and cared for.