Spring. And rain. And in my deepest being a reflection of what’s happening in the deeper earth. I’m struggling.
And so I go back into my stacks of poetry, looking to remember who I’ve been as a way of beginning to find who I am becoming. Age 71. Still becoming. Spring, again.
For lack of anything else to say
I’m posting here a poem a day,
Most are old and conjure years
rife with hopes and dreams and fears.
Rippling through my flow of time,
they maybe sing, but never rhyme.
Perhaps someday they’ll fill a book.
If not, it’s just some chance I took.
A poem from my 30th year:
Riding the Heartland Current
When the sun finally slips
through the clouds
spilling into that lake
in high Wyoming,
it is only a matter of time before
the muddy waters reach Montana,
where the Missouri gorges itself
on the Jefferson, Calatin, and Madison,
binding its fate to the press
of a season’s passion.
Along the banks at Bismarck,
Spring becomes a time for waiting.
And even at bold St Louis,
bright fishing boats
hold to their moorings,
sheltered from the sudden currents
that rush Spring’s murky dreams
toward the hungry Mississippi.
It is never wise
to swim the dark Missouri;
As everyone in Nebraska knows
the mud must run its course
through each Missouri Spring.
1970 elf
It’s March 11, 2011.
There was a terrible earthquake in Pacific Ocean today, and Japan is being hit with 30 foot waves. Tsunamis of various sizes are headed toward both North and South America. Untold lives are being destroyed even as I write this.
Rebellion and unrest in the Middle East and Africa continues to escalate, as untold lives are being destroyed even as I write this.
The state of Wisconsin is leading the way toward an America I’m not going to want to live in, and untold lives are being destroyed even as I write this.
It is my 71st birthday today, and, as I watch and listen to the devastating events going on all around me, I am grateful for the life I have right now, uneventful ‘tho it often is.
And that’s why today, on my 71st birthday, I am filling out forms to be a hospice volunteer — because I am used to doing useful things and need to do something useful with the time I have left.
When I moved here to be with my daughter and family two years ago — after almost a decade of care-giving and 40 years of various other “useful” jobs — I thought that I would be happy hanging-out, relaxing, reading, doing my crafts, gabbing with my daughter, playing with my grandson.
Well, I’ve been doing that for two years, and now I’m ready to get on with some kind of more useful life.
There are about five nursing homes in my immediate area, all of which have hospice units. I’ve been on the receiving end of hospice services as a family member through both my dad’s and mom’s illnesses. I know, from experience, what kind of support people in that situation need. And, since I was an undertaker’s daughter, death has been a part of my life since I was born. It is as though I am coming full circle.
I’m not doing this for altruistic reasons. My reasons are rather selfish. I need to interact with and meet other people (and I discovered that the gym and senior citizen center are just not my style); I need to do something useful.
And that “usefulness” might even spill over to my creative crafting, since I would be interested in making the kind of “memory pillow” that I made for my mother for others who might find them comforting.
So, at 71 I’m shifting gears yet another time so that my time here has meaning for me. My mother lived until she was 94. I don’t know if I’ll last that long, but, while I’m here, I want to be engaged with the world in a more meaningful way.
For my birthday dinner, my daughter is making my favorites: shrimp scampi and key lime cheesecake.
It’s my 71st birthday, and, even as I write this, my life is good. But as I watch the news on CNN, I wonder — for how long?
While I believe that the above quote is true, that’s not the reason I haven’t been blogging here.
The main reason is that I’ve been setting up a WordPress.com blog for my 50th college reunion as a way of generating some nostalgic interest among my former classmates — in hopes of getting them to attend. The reunion isn’t until the Fall, and the site won’t go live until May, but I’ve been brushing up on html codes so that I can add a little pizzazz to the look of the site. I don’t have a great design eye, but, using a simple WordPress template as the basis, I’ve been able to figure out how to insert lines to break sections and how to format a table within a page, and how to do some other tweaking that I wanted to do. I actually like doing this stuff, and hours can go by before I notice that my butt’s numb from sitting so long.
The other reason is that I’m figuring how to knit a sweater on a bias. I have a pattern, but I’ve had to change the stitch count because I’m using a different yarn. I’m sure getting my math-phobic brain some exercise.
Then, of course, there’s my FaceBook games of Scrabble, Lexulous, and Wordscraper, which I also do for brain exercise. And lately I’ve been doing an online picture puzzles as well.
I’m reading mystery novels and listening to an unabridged audio version of The Help, recommended by a friend and downloaded from my library. The narrative is totally engrossing, pulling me into the lives of everyday people whose lives were affected by the Civil Rights turmoil of the early 60s.
I just finished reading (for a book club I hope to join later this month) Home Repair, which has a story line very close to my own life’s narrative.
It is definitely great to be retired so that I can have this fun playing.
I did notice, however, that the taxes on my Social Security went up. Now, that doesn’t make for much fun.
I have to remind myself that it could always be worse.
This is the kind of day for skiing or snowshoeing or snow-fort building. But I don’t do any of them. I can’t seem to even walk very far these days.
But today, with the sky a clear blue and a sun that has finally left the falling snow behind, I bundle up and get myself outside for the first time in weeks. I take a short walk around a few blocks — just about as much as my joints can take today.
When I come back to the house, I haul out a stool and sit on the small porch. I close my eyes. For a moment I am back in my babyhood carriage — the old kind from the 40s, with an oil cloth cover that rolls up to my chin, so that I am warm and snuggly inside, even though my nose is cold. The sun is warm and bright on my closed eyelids. I want to be a child again.
I think of my mother — how young and happy she was when she pushed me in that carriage — how disappointment and dementia drained from her spirit what was the best of her. I think of her because her 95th birthday would have been this month; she would have made it had she lived for three more months. But it’s just as well that she didn’t; those months would have only extended her hell on earth.
I could sit here all day, pretending. But I have a math challenge to confront — figuring out how to use a sweater pattern I like but using a different weight yarn and different size needles. It’s all algebra, but math-challenged that I am, I have to work myself up to grappling with setting up the equations. I can’t seem to keep my body in shape, but I try to do so with my brain.
I do have to deal with my body, though, despite the back problems. I’m hoping I can try the “chair yoga” this week at the senior center in town — that is if it’s not canceled again because of a another snow storm. And I’ve begun firing up my wii around 4 p.m. every day just to do some balance and aerobic exercises, which I seem to sorely need.
We are all waiting for spring. But for today, I’ll take the sun on snow.
“What,” you’re thinking, “is plarn?”
If you’re a crafter or recycler, you might know what “plarn” is. If not, here’s a definition:
Plarn is a creative way to recycle plastic bags by turning it into yarn. Plastic bags made into yarn = plarn. Green crafter’s have been using plarn in place of traditional yarn to crochet and knit all sorts of items.
I started experimenting with plarn last summer,when I improvised a crocheted tote bag for groceries.
The bag was easy to make; making the plarn with which to make a bag, however easy, is tedious and time-consuming — a good thing with which to occupy your hands while watching television so that you keep your hands out of the potato chip bag.
Now, switching to the “brain training” part of this post.
In a recent post at Time Goes By, “Our Plastic Brains — Even in Old Age,” Ronni Bennett reports:
Earlier this month, The New York Times published an essay from Dr.[Oliver] Sacks about how our brains are almost miraculous in their ability to stretch, adapt, overcome injury, retrain themselves and perform feats we could not imagine before.
In addition to giving me an excuse for talking to myself, the TGB post got me thinking about the brain benefits of learning to make and combine knitted geometric shapes.. I could have used regular yarn, but using up our plastic bags gave me a practical point to my creative math exercises.
I started off trying to separate my plastic bags by color. I had a lot of red and white bags from Target, CVS, and Macy’s, so that’s what I started with. Using instructions from a wonderfully simple book, “No-Pattern Knits” (which I bought used cheap from Amazon.com), I made one right triangle, and then added another triangle to make a square (which is one side of the tote bag).
You can see from the photo that the knitted ridges go one way on one triangle and another way on the second triangle. That’s where the Pythagorean Theorum has to be used as well as some algebra to figure out number of stitches for xxx number of inches. I did the second triangle wrong the first time and had to rip it out and figure it out all over again — finally correctly. To make the square into a rectangle, I knitted extra rows on each side of the square.
I was never terribly good at — or interested in — math, and spatial relations was the part of the IQ test I always did the worst at. But combining my passion for knitting with a necessity to use math skills has become a fun way to keep training my brain.
For the second side, I wanted an asymmetrical look, so I used up some bags of other colors and made a mitered square that I positioned as a diamond — with other triangles knitted off the edges to form a large square. Then I added on to one side of the square to make an rectangle.
I made the tote/purse a size in which I could fit a purse organizer that I had purchased a while ago that was too big for the purses I already own. I attached the purse organizer to the inside of the plarn puse with sticky-back velcro.
Plarn is tricky to work with in some ways. The strips can stretch and break as you work, and if you sew it with regular thread, the thread can cut through the plastic. So whenever the plarn purse’s construction required me to sew something, I sewed with a strip of plarn and a yarn needle.
I have every intention of actually using this plarn purse. If nothing else, it’s a conversation piece.
If I ever make another one, I’m going to spend some time coordinating and combining the plastic strips to vary the colors. It’s all a learning process. Good for my brain.
Watching Kathy Bates in “Harry’s Law.” Gray hair, a few extra pounds, well-dressed, feisty and female. It’s about time.
went out to romp in the snow. unfortunately, my age came with me.
They finished taking down the 100+ year old oak today. Most of it was dead, its brittle limbs threatening roofs and wires and hoop-shooting. If it had grown in the middle of the woods, it would still be standing there, biding its time. But our houses grew around it, and so it was only a matter of time.
A young salesgirl called me “honey” today. No one should call an elder woman with gray hair “honey.” Next time I won’t let it go. (See this.)