Beauty and Truth and The Khmer Rouge

I didn't mean to cry.  I was only asking a question.  There must have been something in the tone of my voice or the laughter in the audience, because the author turned and spoke from her heart to mine. It was magical.

Vaddey Ratner, a mere slip of a thing, is tremendous.  Her intellect, her passion, her insight, her willingness to share... to share and to hope that she's making a difference.... denizens, her presentation at the Literary Society luncheon was something to behold.

She analyzed her work as if we were sitting in Comp Lit 325,  not the Arizona Inn. We gauged the importance of her luscious depiction of the life she led, in the family compound,  In the Shadow of the Banyan, before Pol Pot.  Had we noticed changes in the sentence structure, the cadence, the word choices she made as her character drew further and further into herself? Reading aloud, drawing us deeper and deeper into the almost unimaginably bizarre world in which she found herself,  the room was totally still.  No background chatter, no silverware clatter, just rapt attention.

How could we not.  She inhabits every inch of the novel, having lived it herself.  Forced labor, planting in the rice paddies, building dikes to hold back the tide, losing color in her clothing, in her foodstuffs, in her life - we sat there, mesmerized, watching her quick smile and dancing eyes, listening to her words.  That she is here at all is a miracle.  That we were able to hear her was a joy.

The book scared me, at first.  Why would I want to plunge into the depths of human malignity? I carry enough sorrow just beneath my own surface.  I didn't want to add any more.  I needn't have worried; she understood and figured it out long before I began my own journey.  Just listen to some of what she had to say:

Why did I survive?  I never asked.  I was afraid to ask because I worried that no one would have an answer.

I had to relive the story to tell the tale.  Before I was a writer, I was a survivor.   

I went into Art to save myself.

It was like listening to myself.  Why am I here, and others are not?  The only answer lies within myself, and I, like Vaddey Ratner, use writing to save myself.  Listening to her say that small visions of beauty kept me going, I remembered being back on Douglas-the-couch, growing a new hip, mourning the loss of an innocent child, and smiling at the sun moving across the blue sky, chasing clouds with its rays. If there was beauty in the world, perhaps there was also a cushion on which to recline while examining the tale. The world cannot be altogether awful if there is such a spectacle before my eyes every afternoon.

Does that sound too lyrical?  Ratner wrote a meditation on life, love, language... the factual and the metaphysical. She has that effect on me, too, it seems.

In the Shadow of the Banyan pays homage to the spirits of those who did not survive the Khmer Rouge. That includes most of the author's large, extended, royal family. The details are wrenching. For Ratner, beauty and truth are inseparable. Incorporating that into trauma (which) was incomprehensible is the genius of her first novel. While searching for insight into the incomprehensible she presents the most awful facts through the eyes of a much loved child. In retelling the tale, she's reopening her own wounds for the greater good.  This is an act of mourning and communing with the ghosts of those who loved her, and whose love she returns with her work.

Like most survivors, she's resilient.  The word appears on her bio page, and it was the word I used when my tablemate asked me how she and I did it.  I think the ability to rebound from disaster is, in some ways, a statement about immutable character traits.

As I take responsibility (though not guilt nor blame) for Christina-Taylor's death, so she began an answer However I failed as a child to protect those I loved....  Murmured no's were rumbling through the audience, but I knew just what she meant. She was five when Pol Pot moved the entire population of Cambodia's cities into the countryside, creating the Killing Fields along the way.  A 9mm with an extended magazine showed up in the hands of a mentally ill man while I was holding hands in front of the grocery store.   Neither of us had the means to prevent the inevitable.  Neither of us will ever really believe it. Our situations defined powerlessness.  That doesn't change the facts.

But she didn't leave us there.  She went on to say that, though she may have failed in her childhood, she was honoring the spirits, her first and foremost audience for the book. The story opens with a scene of love, and that is what I took from the novel, in the end. Despite it all, she's alive.  That truth and beauty are truly inseparable.

But, it gets better. I asked her how she managed to be the least angry woman in the room. That was when she turned and gave me paragraphs and paragraphs of how she has no time or energy to be angry, although it would be easy enough to give in to it, at any time, anywhere.  She does not allow the anger access to her heart.  What lives there is  the despair... and that is where she expends her energy, rising above the despair.

And how does she do this, I wondered?

Borrow the beauty and strength from those around you.

Thanks for being here, denizens. I couldn't do it without you.

Random Thoughts - The February Gardening Edition

My fingers are covered in glochids. Tiny little pieces of cactus are burrowed beneath my tender flesh. They are invisible to the eye, poking me and stabbing me and then hiding as I search with my tweezers. I've tried scotch tape and duct tape and Gorilla tape and they are still there.  It may be time to get the epsom salts out for a good long hand soak.
*****
TBG suggested that my gloves were not up to the task of protecting my digits.... after he chastised me for not wearing gloves at all.  How could anything penetrate a protective covering, he wondered.  I thought back to the cactus nursery workers, with their masking tape covered gloves, trying to safeguard their flesh.

They didn't have any better luck than I did.
*****
I pruned the fan palms in the backyard this morning.  One is growing tall, the other is becoming wide. Both are very very happy in the amended soil bed, up against the pony wall.  With their roots sheltered from the direct rays of the sun, they never scorch.  With pavers on one side and the wall on the other, the roots are stymied and the branches flourish.  It's a bonus for the viewer and a problem for the pruner.  They can't be transplanted nor can the nodes be removed and used as starter plants; I've tried for five years and I am finished with the experiments.

The right plant in the right place .... that works until they get so happy that the right place becomes the too small place.  I fear that I am headed in that direction.
*****
I've never lived in a house for as many years as I've lived in this one.  I've never seen a garden grow to maturity under my own tender ministrations.  I'm at the point of replacing rather than enhancing, of repairing rather than installing, of trimming instead of hoping for growth.

I think I like it.  I'm not sure.
*****
I spent the morning admiring my trees and my agaves and removing the dead and dying paddle cacti. Was it too hot or too cold or too dry or just their time?  I don't know.  Neither did Ernie.  We chatted as we removed the mistletoe from the palo verdes, whole branches coming down because the infestation was too deep to prune away more gently.  There's something very satisfying about sawing off a branch and seeing healthy growth left behind.

How do I get the birds to stop pooping their mistletoe in my trees?  It's a mystery.
*****
The bluebells are sprouting bigger and bigger foliage, preparing to send their flower shoots up to the sky.  I know they will blossom when we're in Chicago visiting the kids. Perhaps JannyLou will take a picture or two for me and send it along.
*****
It used to be an effort to get down on the ground.  I couldn't squat for a quick second to grab an errant leaf or prune a recalcitrant branch.  Today, I found myself behind the fan palms, one hand braced on the wall, the other chopping off fronds, one foot planted on the patio pavers and one in the dirt.  I was rock steady, not wavering, not quivering, the only difficulty coming from the sharp leaves trying to blind me.

I had to stop and smile.  Progress is measured in different ways, at different times.  The best of these is when it smacks me in the head, reminding me out of the blue that I am getting better.

Now, if I could only keep the mistletoe out of the trees.........

Ah, Mimi

Her name is Lucia, but they call her Mimi.  She doesn't know why.  Neither did I. That was the over-arching theme of my first visit to the opera in Arizona.

Jean Jennings took me to The Marriage of Figaro in Detroit last year; that was my first opera since childhood.  With characters rushing all over, with intricate staging, with performers who acted along with the singing, it was a charming and lighthearted musical romp.

La Boheme, Pucini's walk on the wild-side, is darker and starker.  The set was minimal, the lighting dim, and our seats were very very very high up at The Music Hall.  Perhaps, had we been closer to the stage, I might have seen a facial expression or two.  Perhaps, had I remembered the lorgnette I bought for G'ma in the 1970's and rescued from the pod castle when she died, I would have experienced more of the emotional tugs and pulls.  As it was, from up in the rafters all I could feel was the distance.

Miss Vicki says that opera should be viewed as music, singing, story, and acting.... in that order. And so....

The music was outstanding; one of the advantages of sitting up high is that you can peer right down into the orchestra pit.  We were able to conduct along with the Maestro, to plunk pretend harp strings and bow our phantom violins, to watch the musicians ply their trade. I'm trying to train myself to recognize the different instruments by sound alone; the perch from above sent me well along my way.

The voices were better than mine, that's for sure, and there was no cracking on the high notes nor swallowing of the lower ones.  Still, there was nothing that compared to Renee Fleming's Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl. The leads are lovers in real life, too, and their embraces were the most moving pieces of the performance.  For the most part, though, they were static and relatively unexpressive in their body language and their voices.

I really wanted to cry.  I wanted to be like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, weeping with joy, transported to a plane of delight by the magic of the spectacle, aurally and visually.  I was open to the experience, willing to surrender to the moment, ready to be taken away.

Unfortunately, it never happened.

That's the thing about living outside of a major cultural mecca.  You take what you can get, and appreciate it for what it is worth.  There's no sense in complaining; the show did come to town, after all.  I did choose to live in an operatic wasteland.

Still, I was hoping for more.

Culture

I missed some of the jokes watching the Super Bowl yesterday.  I guess that makes me officially old. There was laughter on the screen while TBG and I were shaking our heads.  It didn't happen often, just frequently enough to be noticed.

The culture has passed us by.

Is thug just a replacement for the n word (a phrase that makes me gag as I type it since we're all saying it in our heads as we read it, anyway) ... and, if so, when did it happen and why did no one inform me?

Then, again, why do I think I have to be notified of a cultural shift?  The answer is obvious to me: my generation defined the culture, right up until technology took it away from us.  Before then, we had our fingers on the pulse of what was new, from the electric typewriter

to the first generation of portable personal music

through the DiscMan's CD's

and the ultra-cool, all-in-one Sony radio, 

right up until the iPod and the need to understand playlists and downloading and copyrights. 

It didn't used to be this hard.

It's not only on television that my cluelessness is brought home to me. The children's section of the book store still has Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal in the classics section, just as it did when I was young, and when my children were young.  But now, Where the Wild Things Are is sharing the shelf with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and that's just not right.

I try to keep up, but when my local radio station was sucked into a national, taped, generic conglomerate I lost my last link to current musical tastes.  NPR is not the place for such knowledge.  Nor is Sirius, nor XM.  I'm locked into what I know.  That's not a bad thing, as far as it goes.  The problem is that the rest of the world is moving on, and I am not.

Renee Fleming astounded the sportscasters with her powerful rendition of the national anthem. Her voice was an equal match for the fireworks and the fighter jets.  To me, that was culture.  I wonder if those on the other side of this divide are wondering why they'd never heard of her before?

Or, is that the prerogative of those of us on the downward slope of life?  I ask because, as I typed this post I began to realize that I really didn't care about being disconnected. Perhaps it is the reality of being a matriarch which sends me to this place of comfort with these limitations.

Then, again, if someone wants to send me a playlist of songs you feel I absolutely must know in order to be in and of the moment, I promise to give them a try.  I'm old, but I'm still breathing, after all.

Ben's Bells, Ralph Stanley, and The Littles

They don't like being referred to that way, the elementary school cohort in Amster's life. True individuals, they require different pieces of my attention.  Always have, always will, I imagine. That's what makes it interesting.

Because of a difference of opinion over child care, my presence was required on Thursday afternoon.  Somehow, life knows when to send me the means to soothe my soul. I was in need, and The Littles were there to help.

Off the bus and into The Schnozz, Kindle taken out and promptly put away as I declared my car an electronics free zone. No, not even just on the ride.  I kept to myself the fact that some of the most interesting conversations I've ever had have occurred just on the ride.

Train switches and round-abouts, bicycle riding and banjos and being the elder sibling, a little bit of teasing and tickling and a whole lot of laughing and we were in the parking lot.... because none of us had any quarters for the open meters surrounding our destination. The Littles help me figure out the Pay Here Machine, Miss Texas ran back to put the ticket on the dashboard, and, after a brief discussion about the difference between the visor and the dashboard, we were on our way.

The last time I brought them, I couldn't keep up.  On Thursday, we all tumbled in together.... noting the restroom on the way.

It's a beautiful, open, courtyard in the middle of downtown Tucson, where the temperatures were in the upper 60's and the sun was playing hide-and-seek between the clouds. The kids carted the supplies to the table

and started painting like old hands.

There was no poking or teasing.

There was serious concentration

and an eagerness to share  

the more interesting of the fired pieces we were able to decorate.

There's something about the atmosphere that brings out the best in everyone.

They were amazed that the activity came with no fee.

We're doing a good deed by making these beads.

The notion was a big one for little heads.

There was silence, and random nodding, and then, accompanying Ralph Stanley on his Pandora Radio station playing softly on my phone, were Messers 8 and 10, crooning that they, too, would Fly Away, oh Lordy

It was a moment, denizens.  

All the pieces of my life were coming together.

There was nothing to do but smile.

At ten minutes to closing, we cleaned up

and rinsed off

and admired our work. 

Do you see the smiley face?

We made a donation, 

I hugged Ben's mom, who was working but still had the time to applaud my BE KIND Ben's Bells' logo'd t-shirt,

we bought some Kindness Coins and a BE KIND hand and took a decal or two 

and I dropped them off at Amster's office, full of stories and Mom, listen as she and I smiled and hugged.

Life is good.

Doing good makes it even better.

Doing good with little ones..... for me, that's the very best of all.

Old And (definitely not) In The Way

Miss Vicki and I were in the presence of a legend last night.

No, it wasn't the aging hippie birthday boy with the blown out greying locks above his too tight plaid shirt. It was the bass player Miss Vicki saw toting his instrument into the theater as we arrived downtown for a before the show dinner.  It was also Dr. Ralph Stanley, 87 years young.

True, there was the occasional wandering around the stage when he was supposed to be singing at the microphone. A padded chair was center stage, and the whole audience exhaled in unison when, half way through the set, he managed to lower himself safely down onto the seat.  He looked frail and fragile and uncertain, until he opened his mouth.

His voice has always been high and reedy. There's none of the roundness his son, Ralph Stanley the Second, carries. There's a mournful, verse-repeating, church-like quality to it.  He told us that he learned to sing in his old Baptist church, a capella, praying to the Lord.  I'm listening to my Pandora Radio Ralph Stanley station as I type and I can't tell which tunes were recorded in the 1980's and which last year. Pandora's biography calls it high lonesome and I think they've got it right. 

When he began claw-picking the banjo, the way his mother taught him in 1930, the clock rolled back to his dark haired prime.  His spine loosened, his hand was a blur, his head was lost somewhere in the moment. So were we all.

It was a blue-grass savvy audience.  There was a lot of clapping along and shouted requests came from every corner of The Fox Theater. Each member of The Clinch Mountain Boys is an accomplished solo-artist in his own right, so it doesn't seem right to refer to them as the back-up band. The audience certainly did not regard them in that light; every artist had his moment, and the applause never wavered.

It was a long, wonderful set, the end to a long, wonderful evening.  We saw history and musical excellence and indulged in a little bit of hero worship.  It was perfect.

Back in the Saddle, Again

Apparently, my sugars are high.

How can this be true, I wondered, as did my little girl who emailed this query:

How are your sugars high? Genetics? You eat like, NO junk…

That's an affirmation I can get behind.  I don't like candy or chocolate.  I'll eat a piece of cake if it's yellow and your birthday, or a cookie or ten if JannyLou brings me her home-made goodies, but, in general, I'm a fruits and veggies, bread and cheese, kind of girl.

Yet, the numbers don't lie.  The blood was drawn in October and then, again, last Thursday.  I was properly hydrated, I'd fasted the requisite number of hours, and the truth was in the digits on the page.  Pre-diabetic is a frightening phrase.

The doctor was wonderful and reassuring but I was bummed.  Peeved.  Annoyed.  Scared. Luckily, TBG was able to ride to the rescue.

"Pre-diabetic" isn't like "incipient cataract," you realize.

No, I hadn't thought that deeply.  I was stuck on diabetic.

You can fix this, you know.

No, I didn't know.  I was wallowing in despair, feeling my body falling apart at the seams, out of control, ill, on a downward spiral, looking at a life of restrictions and concern.

Really, all you need to do is add sweaty exercise to your routine and you'll be fine.  

Sweaty exercise, he said.  Not my favorite thing in the world, aerobics and all that.  I find the treadmill and the elliptical to be among the world's most mind-numbing creations.  Feet move, but I get nowhere.  The gym has daytime junk tv showing me rich women giving away their clothes to foster children who may or may not need a sequined navy low cut formal gown and ESPN reprising the same three Super Bowl stories over and over again, tiring me with Richard Sherman and the weather in New Jersey. I am not amused.  Never have been, never will be.

I treated myself to purple memory foam ear buds since I couldn't find my pink-just-a-little-too-big-ones anywhere.  How I lost them is a mystery; they live in my glove compartment when they are not between my phone and my ear canals.  I tried to open the packaging in the car, but failed. Miserably.  Totally.  Completely.  There is no way anyone but Edward Scissorhands or Wolverine could get into that plastic.  Luckily, the gym had sharp tools and I was plugged in and ready to go in no time.

The first elliptical had moving arms.  I was using more upper body than lower, so I walked down the row to the five stable arm stations. Two heavily perspiring gentlemen were anchoring the ends of the area; I took the machine in the middle, wiped down the arms, pushed Manual and Go, and, for the first time since January, 2011, I was exercising aerobically.

It wasn't very much fun at all.

The arm rests are in the wrong position for a person of small stature. I was either two inches too high, thus engaging my shoulders, or three inches too low, which forced me to bend over and forward, pitching my hips and pelvis in an awkward angle. The rubber cover of the cool metal was behind my arms when I let them hang naturally, bent at the elbow.  I moved around, up, down, behind, and determined that comfort was never to be found.

Yet, I trudged on.  I set the angle of incline at 1 and the speed at 3 and I pressed my feet into the pedals.  I concentrated on even hips and shoulders, bemoaning the fact that there was no mirror to reflect my image and help me correct my posture.  I thought about pressing through my foot centers at the base of my toes and the edges of my heels.  I extended my legs fully, not allowing tightness to dictate the range of motion.  I battled my brain which was telling me that enough is enough. Sweat poured from every pore.

Ten minutes and I was gasping.  Tomorrow I'll go for fifteen, then twenty and twenty-five and I will never do less than I did the day before.  I will figure out a way to use the moveable arm machines without relying on my upper body to carry the weight.  I will reconfigure my music and my Pandora stations so that I have upbeat tunes to amuse me.  I will change those numbers, if changed they can be.

That's the plan.  I'll keep you posted.

PTSD, Integrative Medicine, Aggravation, and Me

I got a speeding ticket today.

I was the only car on the road, in either direction.  As soon as the cones started I slowed down to the speed limit.  Apparently, that wasn't enough for the nicest Sheriff ever, who didn't cite me for criminal fastness nor for going so quickly through a construction zone. That was kind and I'm not taking anything away from the gesture, but there was no danger to anyone because there was no one else around, the speed which inspired the ticket was the posted limit,  there was nary a construction worker on the scene, and I was finally going home after eight hours away.

I'm too aggravated to think through more than a paragraph at a time.  My brain refuses to let go of the angst. TBG tried to talk me down, reminding me that it's over, I can't make it not have happened, which is what I asked for when he offered anything at all, trying to put a smile on my face. He's right of course, but the aggravation has taken hold and is in no mood to let go.

I'm a bit vulnerable.  I had a two hour visit with a physician at the University of Arizona Medical Center's Center for Integrative Medicine, Andrew Weill's brainchild.  Integrative Medicine was one of the attractions of Tucson; I figured that any community willing to adopt Dr.Weill's attitude toward health and alternative modalities was a community willing to learn and grow.  After this morning's appointment, I can attest to the fact that there is no other form of medicine quite like it.

The doctor apologized for the table between us.  There were floor lamps and no overhead neon bulbs.  The floor was faux-wood and the exam table was as comfy as Douglas.  (Douglas is my couch, if you're new here.)  We talked for over an hour before he looked at the blood work and medical report I'd provided, before he listened to my heart or tested my reflexes.  He wanted to know about my diet, my sleep patterns, my supplements, my relaxation strategies.  He wasn't that interested in my structure, which was odd.  He was interested in how I intersected with life, which was odder.

He had some suggestions for me from the neck down, after reassuring me that I was doing a good job of meeting my body's post-perforation needs.  He wondered if I had taken the same amount of care from the neck up.... and I've been thinking about that ever since.

I haven't gone there because I know it will hurt.  I haven't gone there because I seemed to be doing just fine while ignoring it.  I haven't gone there because I don't want to cry.

I have someone, a fabulous therapist, a woman who will let me sob to my heart's content, and then gently nudge me toward congruity.  I could try meditation. I can look at the things which are blocking my healing. He seemed to be suggesting that it's more than a physical, myo-fascial tenseness impeding my gait.  I don't want to believe it, but, perhaps, the time has come to try.

Perhaps.

In the meantime, I will continue to wallow in the well of PTSD-enhanced misery over the fact that I broke the law and got caught.

So healthy.  I know.

Too Much of a Good Thing

The most surprising answer on the pre-test during my first Master Gardener class here in Arizona was this:

The most frequent cause of plant distress in the desert is overwatering.

Yes, denizens, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing... and I have the photos to prove it.

Apparently, too much perlite... old perlite... improperly stored perlite... leads to situations like this

as the extraneous pellets flee the saturated soil in the shallow pot,

and this 

as the soil clumps together in impenetrable clods

making it impossible for the roots to pick up any nutrients at all.

They are waterlogged, drowned, soggy, sodden, sorry things.

They're not much good as decorative plants.

And so, I was back at it yesterday.

I rescued what seemed salvageable and repotted it with brand new soil.

I tried to ignore the fact that the two containers I had not improved were doing just fine

as was the succulent I transplanted into the dirt on the north side of the house.

Apparently, too much tender loving care is the equivalent of a death knell for growing things in the desert.

Who knew? 

The answer, unfortunately, is I did.

I would type more but I must return to the nursery for more supplies.

Just because I failed once, does not mean that I will not try again.

Gardening in the desert requires an acceptance of disappointment.

I'm getting very good at that.

Grandma? Nannie? Bubba?

My baby is having a baby.  

She's gone from "looking like I ate too much for dinner this weekend" to having a small protrusion in the middle of her body.  Growing in size from a lentil to a grape to a plum to a kumquat, the baby is making its presence known.

Everything smells weird.  Her pants don't fit anymore - "not even close." She's over the super-exhaustion that accompanied the start of the adventure - "It's not that I wanted to sleep; I needed to sleep." Her 36 hours of nausea abated, and she's stopped wondering how anyone could be that sick for more than a day or so.  I try to keep quiet about the three or four months I spent hurling and napping while she was establishing herself in my body; she's already apologized.

SIR is proud and happy.  TBG and I are still searching for the words to describe our joy.  We find ourselves looking from one end of the couch to the other, grins plastered on our faces, grins having no relationship to the novel I'm reading or the game he is watching.  We nod, we grin harder, we go back to what we were doing.  Our hearts are full.

I've been signing letters as GMU - Grand Maternal Unit.  Grammu works for me as a name, but TBG is having issues with being Grandpooooooo.  I can't really blame him, though the rest of us are laughing pretty hard whenever we think about it.  I'd always thought I'd want to be Nannie, like TBG's grandmother, a shining star in the heaven that was his childhood, the name his mother chose for herself.

But, when I tried to sign it on a card to the newly enlarging family, my fingers wouldn't form the word. It feels like someone else.  It's not me.  

Bubba, Yiddish for grandmother and what I called G'ma's mother, has no relevance to my life today.  I loved her, but I don't need to rename myself in her honor.  And, unfortunately, the same thing goes for my own Grandma.  She was a woman who loved me, but she had an odd way of showing it.  There 

were strings attached to everything, even the hugs and kisses.  She and my mother had a contentious relationship held together by a fragile truce.  It's not the kind of scenario I'm envisioning for my future with Flapjack.

Yes, Flapjack.  Apparently, the cocoon encasing him requires regular infusions of Aunt Jemima and syrup.  SIR has offered to make them at home, pancakes being one of the food stuffs he creates with style, but Little Cuter prefers the restaurant variety.  TBG, upon hearing of her craving, cried out "Flapjack" and the name stuck.  

And now we wait and watch and wonder.  Her body is no longer her own.  She worries about another human who has no power to protect itself, who relies only on her for sustenance and care.  Her shape shifts and her moods swing and she worries.

Yesterday, sharing the picture at the top with us, she was delighted with the smile and the touchdown arms of her soon-to-be-born.  Is that fetus dancing? Smiling?  Waving hello?  Imitating the Grateful Dead head? I think it's all of the above.  That's a package of love and joy and potential, of wonderfulness and happiness and the completion of a cycle, of expectations and happiness and the continuation of the species and it's all happening right inside my little girl.  Ain't life grand?

Cursive Writing

They aren't teaching it anymore. I find that fact to be extremely upsetting. And no, I don't think I'm over-reacting. I am merely reporting another tear in the fabric of the cosmos, an earthquake in the course of civilization.  

How will my grandchildren sign their job applications, their loan documents, their love letters?  Will we revert back to the X?  Printing does not lend itself to flourishes, although Daddooooo did manage to embellish his otherwise illegible scrawl with the most beautiful g's imaginable.  They looked just like the ones this keyboard is sending to you.  

Those gardening tools I mentioned yesterday are still talking to me, it seems. My paternal unit is as upset as I am.

Some grown ups do not use cursive. G'ma was one of them.  Her printing was small and even and precise, just as one would expect of a woman trained as a kindergarten teacher.  Almost til the end of her life, that handwriting was a constant.  When the pen began to waver, when her letters began to sprawl across the bottom of the birthday cards, I was reminded that she was failing. Still, she was able to sign her name, because the pen didn't leave the paper quite as often.  She didn't lose track of where she was or where she was going.  The individual impressions of printing left her long before cursive's connectedness.

There's more to my annoyance than the signature. There's a cultural piece that's being ignored, as well. Learning cursive was a step taken along the road to becoming a grown-up.  Kids in the younger grades used pencils, fat ones in kindergarten and first, thinner ones at the end of first and all through second. Ink pens were not permitted until the third grade, when, in addition to being trusted to write something which could not be erased, we were initiated into the adult world of writing.

The alphabet was back on the classroom wall, only this time the serifs were longer and more fluid. Capital J's looked altogether new, as did S and G. Palmer Penmanship required precision, but it was more like dancing than prancing to me.  I fell in love with the feel of the pen on the paper.  I had a myriad of writing implements, fountain pens with turquoise ink refill capsules; one of those new BIC ball-points, although some teachers didn't allow them; an ink-sipping-pen.... one that used an actual ink bottle.  I got that one because I had an old desk, one with a hole in the top right corner for the ink well.  G'ma went to Back to School Night and thought it was only right that I have the appropriate instruments.

I perfected my signature over one lonely summer.  I worked on my initials. Three letters or two?... bold or girly?.... authoritative or inviting?  Printing offered no such diversions.  Cursive could be personalized and I was just the girl for the task.  It made me happy.  I felt like a big kid, like someone on the cusp of the rest of adulthood, developing the persona with which I would be associated.  Control was an elusive thing in my childhood; I relished the opportunity to create something of my own.

I'm still signing my name the same way; my married name was just added into the style I adopted in junior high.  It's an anchor to my youth, a connection between who I was and who I thought I would become and who I am today.  How sad that we'll educate an entire generation of children who will miss that rite of passage.

Out Front

... as in gardening, not politically or issue driven.  Titles are funny things, sometimes.

On the other hand, I do feel as if I am standing in front of an army of readers like theoretically-Anonymous, who are watching the snow fall while wrapped in blankets, frozen hands gradually un-thawing after shoveling snow. TBG and I decided long ago that we were too old for frigid winters, no matter how many family and friends we left behind.  Days like today reinforce the rightness of that choice. It's sixteen and seventeen degrees in Chicago and Foxboro as I type in shorts and a t-shirt... I'm just sayin'.....

Once again, I implore you not to hate me.  

*****

When I left you yesterday, I was exhausted from improving the back patio.  The following afternoon, my belly full of cheesy pizza, I tackled the front courtyard.  Bending and grease are unfortunate companions; I did a lot of stretching and belching. 

This is what was left 

after I removed these

 and these.

The copper bucket was a gift from TBG's parents to my parents on the occasion of our wedding.

I decide to rescue it from oblivion in a corner of the library and put it to good use.

All four of our parents are nodding their approval .... from the great beyond.

There's a lot of time to think when you're gardening.

It's a time for communing, especially when the tools I use came from my dad's shed.

They speak very clearly, sometimes.

I moved on to the spikier cacti,

ones with milky sap... annoying.... allergenic... glove requiring milky sap

and ones which wrap around others, leaving glochids and spines where they are least expected.

I spent the better part of the evening trying to remove invisible prickers from my fingers.

After that, it was time for some softer beauty, so I added some purple pansies to get this

with the fervent hope that the marigolds will do more than they have shown over the past fourmonths.  Yes, they were Halloween plants.

This stem should turn into a hibiscus; the roots are firmly embedded in the old soil.  I removed it carefully, adding new Black-Gold-cum-perlite to fill in the holes.  If it does come back, I'll be sure to show it to you.  For now, we'll just have to turn this side to the wall.

The other containers in the front were amended to enhance the other marigolds which did nothing

and the amaryllis bulbs which are now looking like Easter visitors, rather than December or Valentines as I had hoped.  The little orange violas will more than make up for their tardiness.

My respite over, it was time to install the ouchie transplants.

Back into my gloves went my hands, as I scraped stones and troweled dirt and spread roots liberally doused with hormones to enhance their experience in a hole filled with back fill and just enough new fill to remind them of life in the container.  Otherwise, I fear, the shock would be just too much to bear.  

These seem to be taking their time adjusting to their new environs.

It's a cruel hard world here in the desert Southwest.

Only the tough survive.

Volunteers like these blue bells, are happy and littering my yard with their foliage. 

I admired them as I stared at the next project - gladiolus bulbs.

They will grow 48"-60" tall, too much for a container.

The nursery insists they will do well in the ground.

All I have to do is excavate the packed dirt to a depth of 5".

Easier said than done, and a project for another day.

January Gardening in the Desert Southwest

Don't hate me.

I spent Sunday afternoon with my hands in the dirt, the warm sun on my back, the plants juicy and ready to be embedded in their new homes. I know that it's freezing cold where you are.... so I offer this as a salve for your senses. There are places in the country where the sun shines and the ground is ready for new offerings. It just doesn't happen in Chicago or Foxboro or Bloomington right now. 

I'm sorry.

These plant feet were the first items of business.  

The huge container which once held the now dead fan palm managed to keep the hibiscus alive and almost well throughout our short but noticeable winter. Unfortunately, the weight of the soil and water had pushed the original feet deep into a crevasse.  I lifted the pot, all by myself thank you very much, and found a small grey spider with a black dot on her back. I recoiled.  She stayed still. I decided to ignore her as I settled the bigger feet under the pot's edges.

I added another snapdragon

and replenished the old soil with a mixture of Black Gold and perlite.

The perlite, little white balls of absorbent material, retains water in the pot. It is the single most important factor in successful container gardening in my yard here in Tucson.  It gets really really really hot here, in case you've forgotten, and when the summer winds blow the combination dries out the soil faster than anyplace else I've ever gardened.  The perlite keeps the June and July waterings down to two a day.

Combining the warm soil, fresh from Rillito Nursery, and the cool, smooth, round pellets of perlite was nearly orgasmic.  I eschewed my gardening gloves and went in bare-handed.  My nails were filthy, my heart was full.

You can see the perlite in this photo, which I took to demonstrate the berm I created in the pot.  I made a pie crust edge to keep the water from running over the sides; it was silly but effective and, most important of all, it was fun to do.

Standing up, after untangling the never-kink (ha!) hose, I noticed this:

Look at those two feet planted firmly on the ground, casting perfectly straight shadows. 

It's the little victories which brighten my day, even if I have to use a wheeled cart to move my equipment from pillar to post.

By the time I was finished deadheading and refurbishing the soil and adding another snap dragon or two, the remaining containers were as happy as I was.

Tomorrow I'll share what I'm doing in the courtyard.

Right now, I'm going outside again.