Bathroom urgency

I am just a few days away from my trip to Ghana. I am now positively humming with excitement. My husband calls it bathroom urgency -- that feeling you get when your goal is in sight. At any rate, I have handled it by sewing furiously. I cut almost all the fabric my friend brought me from her trip to Ghana and made it up into dresses. I am taking at least two of them with me on the trip. One which is very elegant will be for a fancy party on day two. The remaining ones are casual and light. I have a dress form which can be adjusted to fit your exact measurements. I call her Zelda. Zelda looks exactly like me except she's not quite as lumpy. So I make fewer mistakes in choosing patterns and making adjustments. Also I can hem without help. Mostly, though I like to put things on Zelda because she never has water weight gain, her stomach is always sucked in, and she never gets those weird wrinkles in her neck. The clothes look like they do on the mannequins in the store. Then when I put them on I think they still look like that, so it's all good. Here's Zelda in the dress.
Doesn't she look gorgeous?

Africa Bound

Since my college days I have wanted to visit Ghana. I have had several opportunities to go to Ghana and one to go to Senegal. Both fell through at the last minute. Now I finally am going! I have my visa, I have my group of girlfriends and come the end of July we are Africa bound! The group I'm going with is out of Syracuse, so I will be driving up there with my very patient husband to meet them. VPH will then spend a couple of days surrounded by bossy, talkative Black women. Since he is a very quiet person, this is always a challenging experience. Oh well, afterward he will get two weeks of peace and quiet to recuperate. Meanwhile I get to travel through the country visiting a school, a women's cooperative and lots and lots of fabric vendors. We will go to a party hosted by a UN representative, visit the Elmina slave castle and shop for fabric. We will stay at a national arts school, visit a village that specializes in basket weaving and did I mention we will shop for fabric? I am, as many of my friends know, addicted to textiles. This was the big draw for me. Previously a friend (who is going on this trip a well) went to Ghana and I pressed money and instructions on her. She came back with gorgeous fabric for me which only served to whet my appetite. I recently visited Syracuse and received a bargaining tutorial from an experienced shopper, so I'm all set. I'll be sure to blog about it and post pictures when I get back!

Tales From the Trenches

We're into day 7 of the big snow. Our mayor whom I refer to as Opie has finally figured out how to deal with snow. Opie was president of city council when our real mayor passed away. No one really cares who's mayor of Pittsburgh except when something goes wrong. Opie is this young dumb guy that they made president of city council when they couldn't agree on a real person to do it. So Opie was just standing there and the mayor thing fell on him. The sad part is that the citizens of the burgh recently reelected him because -- let's say it together -- nobody cares who is mayor of Pittsburgh.

But I digress. Anyway, Opie finally got all the roads cleared but my suburban school district is still suffering with downed power lines and broken water mains. So I have no school tomorrow. A full week off is great, but we will pay for it next week when all the little ones come back wound up like tops. It will be like the first week of school all over again. It's a good thing they're cute. My beloved and I went out today to run errands, mail bills and go to the gym. We were scheduled to drive to DC to see my daughter at college this weekend. Beloved was revved to go because he will drive in anything, but I chickened out so we called and moved our hotel reservations. HRH was disappointed but bounced back when we said we will reschedule for two weeks from now. So for now it's more books, more food and maybe a nice dinner for Valentine's day. Life is good.

Snow days

I have been snowed in since last Friday evening. I left school around 2:00 and made my way home after stopping for a few supplies. I got in just ahead of the storm. Pittsburgh is a northern city but apparently our city fathers are in denial about that. We are never fully prepared for snow and a blizzard of this magnitude pretty much shuts us down. The suburban school district where I teach but do not live suffered major power outages and water main breaks which have yet to be repaired as the snow continues to come down.

My husband dug us out and we had a couple of opportunities to go out between snows to get essentials: books, food, books. The beautiful northern magnolia in our front yard lost several large branches and was responsible for the loss of cable service. I mourn the tree more than the television. I hope an arborist can save it. Meanwhile I am discovering something disturbing about myself. I do not want to leave my house. I am enjoying just puttering around fixing things, cleaning, cooking huge pots of soup, baking bread, inviting the next door neighbors over for waffles. It's fine with me if I only get out twice in 5 days. This is scary. I always thought of myself as more social than this. My husband is the perfect companion as he is quiet and likes to read even more than I do. He eats what I cook, helps me work on things, and thinks my company is just fine. We got out one day to go to the gym and a movie, and then yesterday I bought an exercise DVD to keep myself going. I spent yesterday afternoon at the book store spending my birthday money which had been burning a hole in my pocket. I already had a stack of books from the library and from paperback swap. I could last at least another week. Food is not a problem as I have stores of ingredients and shelves of cookbooks.

I'm not sure what this says about me, but I have decided to enjoy my solitude and wait for the thaw.

Driving Lessons

We were in Tennessee for a while over Christmas and when we came back I had to return the rental car. Since our 19 year-old daughter is now driving she followed me in her father's car while I drove the rental. I had studiously avoided driving with Chloe since she got her license last year. Her father and her uncle kept telling me what a good driver she is, but having witnessed one too many toddler (and teenaged) melt downs on her part, I just didn't have the confidence I might have.

Well, I was driving along and periodically glancing in the rear view mirror. She was following at a safe distance and a reasonable speed. She had her hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head and her new very cool glasses on. She looked like the responsible college student she is. When we left the rental place I got in the passenger side and watched as she navigated the roadway. She drives like a grown up. It's amazing. She stopped for a bagel and asked very politely if I'd like anything. I waited in the car and thought about this change. Chloe had a rough and characteristically dramatic adjustment to college. But in the past few weeks she's had one of those miraculous maturity leaps which have become her trademark. I'm getting a glimpse, now, of the kind of adult she will be. She is always going to be flamboyant and probably headstrong. I'm sure she'll be high maintenance in relationships. But she's also extremely generous, funny, loyal and kind. Her first semester of college went fairly well. Her grades aren't terrible, but there's room for improvement. She was upset but not unduly so about that. Chloe has always had a remarkably positive outlook and a good sense of self esteem. Those are two of the things I've always loved the best about her.

So I guess I'll be riding in the car with her on a regular basis now. And when I'm too old and senile to drive myself anymore I can sit back and let her have the wheel.

Nerd Genetics

I was aware when I was in high school that I was a nerd. Really, how many teenagers could give you the hierarchy of all the kings and queens of the entire British Isles? What I didn't realize was that it's not something that you outgrow.

According to Wikipedia a nerd refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obsure interests rather than engaging in more social or popular activities. Oh, God, I really didn't need the confirmation, but there it is. While I hope that I have learned to throw a realistic cloak over my social awkwardness, I still find myself drawn to obscure, esoteric pursuits to the exclusion of most normal activities. (That may be one reason that I was hesitant to start blogging--the possibility that I might take it to some bizarre extreme.)

My friends, both then and now, are very sweet and understanding about my peculiar disconnect from reality. They even treat me like a normal person, but despite their kind efforts, I am frequently reminded that I am a nerd. There are those awkward moments when I hear myself making inane conversation because I know the moment calls for conversation but I have no clue what I should say! Then I scurry back to playing my brain games until something or someone forces me out again.

If I thought it was tough being a teenage nerd, I didn't reckon on what it would be like to be a middle-age nerd! I really didn't mind getting caught wearing two different color socks when I was sixteen. Now I have to adopt a whole persona that acts like it's cool to wear mismatched clothing and forget what day of the week it is. I'm aware that I'm not totally dysfunctional, but I have more than my fair share of moments when I'm not completely in touch with what's going on around me. If it weren't for the fact that I was exactly the same as an adolescent, I might think I was slipping into early senility.

Stressful situations, an abundance of which seem to fill my life currently, bring out my nerdy tendencies. It is so much easier to scuttle into my shell and play word games and read books about existential questions regarding consciousness (An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman--great book). Social is hard. Pretending to be normal is hard--pretending being the operative word. Someone pointed out recently that my tote-bag with its side pocket full of pens was exposing my inner nerd--if they only knew!

As if all of these revelations were not disturbing enough, I have had the dismaying realization that nerdiness may be genetic. My eldest son, who has always exhibited too many similarities to his mother, threw a birthday party this week for H.P. Lovecraft, dead sci-fi, horror writer. The party included streamers, partyware, and themed food offerings--including a Cthulhu cake (creepy tentacled monster creation of Lovecraft's). While I was delightfully tickled with his bizarre creativity, I had a thump-your-head-V8 moment when I realized I had given birth to a next generation nerd. Wow, I wonder what kind of karma you accumulate for that!

Empty Nest

The day before yesterday I went to visit an elderly relative who is dying. She is my husband's cousin by marriage. When I married into this family there was a bit of tension seeing as I was not Jewish and not White. Other than that they liked me fine. Several of the older women in the family welcomed me and made me feel as if this was going to be fine. Shirley was one of them. She herself was something of an interloper having been married before and not being Jewish. Even though she was accepting of me, Shirley was never easy to be friends with. She has always been very guarded and sometimes a little paranoid. I told my husband a while back that trying to be her friend is like hugging a porcupine. But I like her just the same. I tend to like difficult people. That's a good thing since my daughter is also extremely difficult in a different way. She is the poster child for oppositional behavior. Said daughter left for college in DC last weekend. She is four hours away. The separation was as full of drama as every transition HRH has ever endured or made us endure. It was not pleasant.

So yesterday I was in Whole Foods and suddenly was overcome by this terrible feeling of loss. I realized that it had to do with Shirley and my daughter. I teared up and this very nice lady asked me if I was OK. I do not do public displays of emotion so I was very embarrassed. When I got to the car, though, I started to laugh. Here I was tearing up over the loss of two of the most exasperating people in my life. I should be happy that my daughter is on her own. I mean raising her has been like riding a wild bull. And Shirley is 84 and having the end of life experience she has always said she wanted -- no fanfare, no heroic efforts. She looked peaceful when my husband and I went to say goodbye. I understand being upset about Shirley -- no one is ever really ready to lose someone they are fond of. But I could not at first understand why I got so emotional about my daughter. Then I realized that I am mourning the fact that I have exhausted all possibility of having that fantasy mothering experience we all want. You know the one where your every move is perfect and you have this magical, mystical bond with your sweet compliant daughter. Ah well.

I remember a boy from Northern Ireland who was my friend in graduate school at Vanderbilt. Mike used to say "You can't pick who you fall for." He was talking about romantic relationships. But I think it goes for parenthood too. We don't pick our children. They come to us and we love them. As soon as someone puts a child in your arms or in your life and says "This one is yours" a switch goes off and you are lost. My daughter is adopted and when they brought her out and we looked at each other, we came to an agreement. She promised to be my child, and in return for the privilege of being a mom, she reached in my chest and took out my heart. And then she proceeded to stomp on it. She didn't mean to. It's just what children do. When they get hurt you bleed, when they get sick you nearly die. When they turn into teenagers and say the things that teenagers say you are devastated. There is a casual cruelty of which only a well loved child is capable. They are so supremely sure of their parents' love that they don't feel the need to guard their words. I realized this the first time I reprimanded my daughter for saying something hurtful to me. She looked confused. Mommies' feelings don't get hurt.

I have never loved another human being with the intensity I feel for my daughter. It is the same love I felt coming from my own mother to me. It is the only way I know to be with a child, and it is the most painful experience I have ever had. I had my daughter out in public when she was about five. We were in an ice cream shop and Chloe was being her usual self. I was constantly having to correct and corral her. This required a delicate balance of firmness and cajoling in order to avoid a scene. There was an older Black couple sitting there and the husband kept looking at me with that smile that made me know he wanted to say something. Finally he said "You need to have another one so you don't love this one so much." I think he might have been right, although at the time I barely had the energy to deal with the one I had.

So she's in DC holding the better part of my heart in her hand. I have a picture of her walking away with her roommate. They walk away from us without any idea that we are frightened and worried and sad. If had known what my mother was really feeling when I left home I would never have been able to go. I think mothers are the strongest people on earth, and the best actresses. We let the most precious thing we have walk away from us to a place where we can't protect them and we smile while we do it. My mother did it more than once. That makes her a super hero. If she were still alive I would call her up and apologize (again) for all the times I must have stomped on her heart. But being Mama she probably wouldn't even acknowledge that it hurt.

Deep Space Anomalies

This week I feel almost as if I have fulfilled a childhood dream of being launched into space, but unfortunately something has gone very, very wrong. Instead of soaring through the stars, I seem to have been propelled into a losing battle with a black hole. School started back, and, despite rumors to the contrary, teachers are just as reticent as students to return. It has been particularly stressful this year since our system is going through a number of substantial changes. Lots of rethinking and replanning, not to mention lots of paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. This week has been crazy busy, and the 175 little darlings that have wandered in and out of my room have merged into a blur of t-shirts with questionable slogans and names like Kaitlin, Katlyn, Katelynn, Catelyn, Caitlin, and . . . well you get the idea. I have spent so many hours at work that I am now making less than minimum wage--an encouraging use of my master's degree! I moved way past exhausted somewhere around 9 am on Monday. I have discovered muscles that I didn't know I had and ways to make them hurt that I didn't think were possible. Who knew that glaring over the top of your glasses could make muscles in your neck seize up? So I find myself tired, in physical and emotional pain, and adrift amidst the darkness of a deep space anomaly. What could be worse? I could have the realization that it's only Wednesday!

Nuts

It appears that I am getting closer and closer to being that crazy old woman with cats. I putter around my house grousing at the world in general, the state of my finances in specifics, and my ex in expletives. No one listens. Well, occasionally the cats will deign to appear interested, but I know better--I may be crazy, but I'm not senile. . .yet. I've managed to work myself into a near-constant state of anxiety. What I really hate about it is that my brain still functions fairly well, and I'm quite aware of what I'm doing. I just can't seem to stop.

I believe I'm about to corner the market on imagining unique worst case scenarios--like being bitten by a rabid possum while putting garbage on my back deck or drowning in my shower or giving myself brain damage by pulling a five-pound trifle bowl off on my head. I'm up to at least a half dozen apocalyptic fantasies per day. I'm not sure why I feel compelled to borrow trouble as it were. Like most of us these days, I have the prerequisite amount of trouble and hardship--personal, work, financial, etc.--without imagining anything! But, no! I have to go and be paranoid and create bizarre possibilities for death and destruction. Okay, so maybe not death and destruction, more like miserable mayhem.

Regardless, there is obviously something wrong with me. My youngest son delights in telling me to chill. He has no idea how much I would love to do just that. If I weren't certain that I'd end up in the emergency room, I'd try yoga. Drugs just make me see things, like fluorescent green spiders. Many of the more common stress relievers are not possible or not working.

Maybe I should just face the fact that I'm nuts and enjoy it.

Here kitty, kitty!

Finding My peeps

I have been working really hard to come to terms with my appearance as I age. This is not as bad as it sounds. I actually look pretty good. But I used to be a dancer and weighed 117 pounds. I also used to be 22 years old, so I shouldn't be surprised. Anyway, I have been taking various aerobics classes at my new gym and trying to get used to moving a considerably larger and much older body around. Since I also have a very twisted sense of humor this has led me to burst out laughing a couple times in class. It's ok, though, since I'm taking zumba classes and people just think you're really happy to be there.

A couple of Sundays ago I stumbled upon an 8:30 am class taught by a professional dancer in her fifties. I went in and everyone came over and gave me what turns out to be their standard interview. It's like a secret little club over there and they don't let everyone in. It's made up of former dancers in their fifties. This woman's movement vocabulary is very similar to the one I was trained in (Graham, Cunningham, Dunham). It was wonderful to hear those words and see that my body remembered what is was supposed to do even if it took some adjustments to do it. To have someone say "feet in fifth please" rather than "ok put your right foot like this" is a relief and a wonder. To have someone know what fifth looks like and appreciate the need to modify it to third was beyond my wildest dreams. It was like when my daughter and I found the zumba class populated entirely by big girls. We walked in, everyone looked at each other and we all burst out laughing. It was great. We spent the class smirking at the skinny teacher and laughing. Most fun I've had standing up in years.

Anyway, I'll continue the search for my cohort.

Wish me luck.

Child of the South

My father celebrated his 74th birthday today. He's amazing; both he and my mother can run circles around most of the people I know--both physically and mentally. They work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labors in their own special way. Once they've put in a full day of work, they like to chill on their porch, reading or just enjoying the surrounding woods and wildlife. They endowed my sister and me with their love of reading and their enjoyment and appreciation of the beautiful southern landscapes that we call home. They gave us every possible opportunity to be unfettered southern children, at home with the sun and the wind and the woods. They inspire me in so many ways.



I am a child of the South--
rural child on the porch,
with lemonade and calloused feet,
grass-stained knees
and sun-bleached hair.
I hug warm breezes close
and slap laughing kisses
on each sultry, sun-blessed day.
I am my mama's child--
kitchen imp
with doughy fingers
and flour-dusted hair,
fashion queen
in lavender taffeta,
floppy high heels,
and jaunty hat.
I am Daddy's darling--
high priestess
held aloft on broad shoulders
to worship sun and sea,
precious cargo
tucked in with downy covers,
kisses, and whipsered prayers.
I am a child of the South--
rural child sleeping sound
with starlight and moonlight
in the magnolia-scented evening.


Happy birthday, Dad!

Chicory

I've decided that I want to be as resilient as wild chicory. Every spring I watch those beautiful pale blue flowers bloom along the roadsides and wild places. Inevitably as they reach their peak, road crews come along with their monstrous mowers and strip them away. It always makes my heart ache a little to see them disappear. But I only have to be patient and give them a few weeks to regroup, and then there they are again, their periwinkle faces bobbing on their spindly stems.

I feel as though I have been run over by a mower or two during the last couple of weeks. A conference, a workshop, hours and hours at my desk scrambling to get ready for a new school year and a plethora of changes. I love teaching, but life as a high school teacher seems to become more difficult with each passing year. I can deal with the changing nature of the young people I teach--life changes and so do the creatures that inhabit it! It is often a challenge to translate the current adolescent mind and its accompanying angst, but that keeps the job interesting! What I have more difficulty with is the apparent illogic and ineptness of the policy makers in the field of education.

There is such a focus on student performance on high stakes testing that true learning often gets lost in the shuffle. These two things are not mutually exclusive, but I can't understand why it's not obvious to everyone that the focus has to first be on learning--then the testing takes care of itself. Many of the policy dictates that educators are dealing with right now have a tendency to be counterintuitive. We are often asked to use convoluted methods to tackle problems that would be better confronted head on. It can all be exhausting and potentially demoralizing.

So I think about chicory. It is so beautiful and seemingly fragile, but it doesn't give up. Maybe I should plant a twig or two on my desk as a reminder.

Intrigued

I've been doing my homework--reading blogs, lots of blogs. What I'm struck by is the supreme self confidence with which people blog. They post the good, the bad, the mediocre, even the drivel, and, let's face it, we all descend into drivel now and again. It doesn't seem to matter what the content or quality; bloggers are remarkably self-confident and bold. They throw themselves and their ideas, itineraries, and ignominies right out onto the web for all to see. I am amazed, intrigued, and inspired. But not quite emboldened yet. Hence I am posting on a blog that has seen no traffic for about nine months. What can I say--I'm an inveterate coward. (Baby steps, Joy, baby steps!)

The repressed cultural anthropologist in me has become totally fascinated by the blogging phenomenon. This is human communication unlike anything we've ever known. It has created human communities unlike anything we've ever known. I am fascinated that individuals are allowing so much access to themselves, opening themselves up to a world of strangers in ways we seem incapable of doing face to face, even across our dining room tables!

While I find myself sitting here on the edge of the pool, unwilling to do more than swirl a toe in the water, I am absolutely enthralled by the swimmers--the fearlessness, the grace, the occasional antics. Blog on, blithe spirits, blog on!

Fear of Writing

I still find myself overwhelmed by the sheer nakedness of posting. Joy does so effortlessly, a blithe author on the web. I find the whole process almost painfully arduous. Of course, it is this very fear of exposure that has kept me scribbling in notebooks and journals all these years--scribbling that is always tucked away in drawers rather than shared. It is very possible that I have never been published because I have never truly made an effort to be. Apparently I find that more palatable than not being published because my writing has been found wanting! Just to prove to myself that I can break bad habits, I offer up a scribbling to share.

Fear

Sometimes it's hard
to even contemplate
the commitment
of pen on paper.
It's frightening
to allow the flow of ink
to shackle you
to word and thought.
The bold gallop
across parchment
scatters shadows
and rends your veil.
It drags you shivering
and exposed into the light
and chides you
for your reticence.
No matter how weighty
the poetry or prose,
the letters are too spare
to hide the quivering soul
and the fiery mind
whose coupling
gave them life.

--Tina

Flight

Growing up I didn't dance. This was not because I didn't like to dance. It was because I was shy and had been told by a more assertive cousin that I was without rhythm. I rarely danced in public until I went away to college. During my freshman year I took a modern dance class to fulfill my P.E. requirement. In that class I discovered that not only could I dance, but I was fairly good at it. Over the next four years I developed a dancer's body and a dancer's sensibilities. I continued to perform with a small regional company after graduation and even took classes during graduate school.

There were problems from the start. I had been a very thin and extremely sickly teenager, and my physical problems continued throughout my twenties and thirties. In my late twenties I had to stop dancing altogether because I just didn't have the stamina for it anymore. Meanwhile I married a man who couldn't dance and didn't like to embarrass himself, so even my social dancing days ended.

Over the years I had surgery to correct my chronic health problem. I developed a thyroid problem that caused me to gain and lose weight capriciously; I adopted a child and changed careers several times. The career changes necessitated my going back to graduate school twice. All this led me to where I am now. Looking at me you see an overweight middle aged slightly frumpy Black woman. No one would ever believe that I used to be a dancer.

I remember reading years ago about a therapist in New York who specialized in helping dancers get over the trauma of ending their careers. I remember thinking how silly that was. Life goes on. People who use their bodies must realize that they can't go on forever. I didn't think about dancing again except in passing.

But this afternoon in a moment of idleness I engaged in a very dangerous pastime. I googled a long lost friend. Therese was a dancer with me in college. She had had an interesting life even then. She was in her mid twenties and I was 19 when we met. Like me, Therese came to dance without a lot of prior training. But she was really good. She was also strikingly beautiful with pale skin and masses of curly red hair. When I typed her name into the Google search box, she came up immediately. I clicked on the link and there she was. She is still dancing. In the pictures she looked as if her body had barely aged. There were beautiful shots of her soaring through the air. She does aerial work now. She looked strong and graceful and completely at home in her body. As I looked at the pictures and read about Therese's life, I found myself overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and loss. I remember what it felt like to be able to move that way. I remember being able to rise off the floor and fly across a room. Sometimes, when I dream, I still can.

These days I take Zumba classes. I follow along with the class leaders and ignore the fat lady in the mirror. I spend a lot of time on treadmills and elliptical machines. I fight against my endocrine problems trying to hold the line against morbid obesity. Most of the time I'm okay with this, but sometimes I'm hit by just how much I miss that other version of myself -- the one who was light and strong and graceful; the one who could fly.

Becoming 50

It's My Party

by Tina

I am about to turn fifty. With my students and friends, I joke about being old, but alone, in the eerie silence of dawn, I find myself agonizing over where I am in the span of my life. My anxiety actually has nothing to do with being x-number of years old; other than a handful of minor complaints, I don’t feel that I’m at death’s door or any such morbid thought. Instead, what I find myself anxious about is what I am not doing at age fifty. My anxiety is little more than unfulfilled expectations.

Looking back over the span of my life, I have to chuckle at myself for dragging this cloud of disappointment around with me. If I am honest, my life has been a series of unfulfilled expectations, almost from the beginning. Why I would choose only the latest in the series to go into a major decline over probably bears some contemplation.

If we are honest, most of us would probably find that our childhoods, no matter how idyllic, were a series of unfulfilled expectations. It is in truth the nature of the beast. Children can imagine almost anything and usually do. This, in turn, leads them to expect almost anything. Few if any of those childhood expectations will be realized. At six, I truly expected one day to discover within myself the mental and physical ability to fly—without benefit of machine. Needless to say, that expectation remains unfulfilled. On a more prosaic level, I expected to be a brilliant, awarding-winning doctor—didn’t happen. It is normal for us to go through an entire gamut of expectations as children—about our futures, our families, our own abilities. It is equally normal to have the majority of those expectations unmet, unfulfilled. It’s not considered a tragedy; it’s growing up.

Even as we leave childhood, however, and venture into adolescence, the threshold of adulthood, we have expectations which more often than not are never realized. Whether they be meeting and marrying prince charming or having an award-winning career, rarely do the road maps envisioned in adolescence hold up to reality. There are always unmarked obstacles and detours. In high school, I was overwhelmed by offers to attend colleges such as Bryn Mawr and Northwestern. I ended up at a local public university. By late in my teens, I envisioned myself on a quest to achieve fame and fortune as an award-winning writer. Two years out of college I was married to a local airplane mechanic, trudging along his chosen path to fame and fortune.

While in retrospect, the results of many of these unfulfilled expectations may sound dull and depressing, in reality we are very adaptable creatures. We compensate and adjust and most often try to carve out the best niche for ourselves in whatever pond we land in. I created an entire universe around family and children. Idyllic it was not, but it was for the most part busy and full and interesting. I still found time to write, and I still entertained notions of one day being a nationally-recognized author. Along with that expectation, however, I had discovered an entirely new set of expectations—watching my children grow and thrive and succeed, growing old with my mate, achieving enough financial security to sit on the back porch and watch the sun set in peace and tranquility. Those expectations fell victim to betrayal and divorce.

Now on the precipice of fifty, I sit contemplating the plethora of unfulfilled expectations that have adorned my life. The crotchety old woman in me wants to wag her finger and shout, “See, see! Just one disappointment after another!” There are moments, days, that it is not only easy to hear her, it is impossible to shut her out. I sigh, I sob, I fret over how I got to be where I am now. I blame life, I blame my ex, I blame myself, and I wallow in despair. I can throw an absolutely brilliant pity party.

Fortunately for everyone, however, my optimistic super-ego comes to the rescue. It picks me up, dusts me off, and gives me a firm whack on the back. “You’re not dead,” it points out. “There’s life in the old girl yet!” Despite everything, I find myself chuckling over my own doom and gloom. Everyone has unfulfilled expectations; they are a part of the human condition. They go with the territory, like birth, death, and spoiled milk—they happen.

So I reexamine this anxiety I have about what I’m not doing at age fifty. It’s true enough that I’m not doing what I expected to be doing—not what I expected when I was ten or twenty or thirty or even forty. But, then, neither was I doing what I expected when I was any of those ages either. Life truly is an unfolding mystery that most often defies game plans and road maps and even simple expectations. What can I expect as I turn fifty? Who knows? What do I hope as I turn fifty? I hope that I can greet each day with joy and curiosity and the energy to tackle the unexpected.

By popular demand

So now that Joy has asked me to post the pictures I can do so with impunity. This one is a rose I call the prom queen because it blooms early and fades fast.

The sunken garden. This was where the patio used to be so I'm amending the soil to make it more fertile. For now, it's struggling a little. But the rock wall is here and the heliobore.

The rest of the pictures are just documentation for what my garden looks like in June. This is the point at which I am on a mulch induced high. I think that I am the best gardener in the world. I am considering quitting my job and becoming a landscape designer. I have visions of moving to England and growing roses and boxwood. It passes by the end of July when I am very very tired of my compost pile. Now (in August) with the hurricane induced rains settling in and all the stuff that needs to be mown, cut back or debugged, I am back to my senses. This patio is at the very back of the yard. I have lots of pictures of individual plants but I won't bore you here. The thing is that I am truly happy in my garden. I tend to be a very strident person sometimes. Dr. Husband says it's because I have an overdeveloped sense of justice. I think that's probably the case. I tend to get exercised about big issues like education and health care. Then I go on a rant and before you know it my blood pressure's up, my heart rate has increased and I'm breathing hard. It's like a little aerobic exercise.
In my garden I can focus on little things like how to get rid of aphids without insecticidal soap. (It only takes a garden hose and a little determination). And in the garden I can let go of my need to fix things. Mother nature has a way of putting us in our place. People are friendlier when they happen upon you working in a garden. They seem to think you're nicer than maybe you are. Now everybody just be glad I don't like cats.



jackie

My herb garden

My temperamental hybrid

We're building a rock wall. That's the royal we as in my husband collects the rocks, hauls the rocks and stacks the rocks. Then I tell him I want them someplace else. It's a wonderful backdrop for the hellebore on the other side.

Channeling Martha

OK, my neighbor is right. I am the love child of Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker. I have spent two weeks of my first real summer vacation as a teacher painting my livingroom. But it is sooo gorgeous. Then I spent two days catching up with deadheading in the garden. AND I LIKED IT! This is not right. But I am doomed. I even took pictures to document the garden so I can plan what to plant for next year. You may laugh, but mark my words. If you plant just one rhododendron and it lives, you too will become a gardener. I will spare you all the pictures for now. I may not be able to hold out forever, though, as I have become one of those people who names her roses.

jackie

Foul-Weather Friends

An interesting aspect of Jackie's and my friendship is that we have been there for each other during more bad times than good. We're always there for each other emotionally with support, jokes, and understanding; however, physically we seen to be present for the sad times. Perhaps it has to do with how we met since I was lurking at play auditions to find people to compete on the speech and drama team (NFL). I'd never seen Jackie before and recognized her talent. She didn't get a part, so I caught up with her outside the theater and said I knew she probably didn't want to think about it then but that if she were interested in the forensics team, to come by my room and let me know. She answered that I was right and that she was not interested in thinking about it then. I wasn't sure I'd hear from her, but she did come by my room and became an outstanding competitor and leader on the team. We were just getting organized then and had to learn by doing. Jackie, Tina, and a few others hung in there and were like sponges soaking up what they needed to know. They got tired of hearing the phrase "learning experience." Those two excelled and went on to the state eventually, with Tina's winning first place in poetry interpretation her senior year with "Tommy" by Rudyard Kipling. But I digress. Jackie started out in dramatic interpretation with a gut-wrenching piece about a Black mother (cannot remember the title - help with this, Jackie) and then was Antigone her senior year, winning second place in the district tournament.

Our friendships were forged during these years since I was learning along with them. I said soemthing to Tina about how I was so young then but didn't know it. Tina said, "Oh, we knew it." That's funny but quite true, I'm sure.

Jackie used to baby-sit with Brian for me, so they got close, too. Years later I was there at the funerals for her mother and grandmother, but not for her wedding. I did make it to her daughter's naming ceremony but not for her Bas Mitzvah - not good for a godmother. It was excruciating for those closest to her when she got her MBA and such a celebration when she finished it. I was worried when she went back to school for her teaching degree, but fortunately that was pain-free. She was here sitting out on the patio with Paige, Gena, and me drinking wine the night before the phone call when I got my lymphoma diagnosis. Gena and I went to a movie (I'd refer you to the Mission Impossible curse posts on my other blog but they didn't make the transition of the new version, so I'll just say that MI2 was released when my lymphoma changed to a more aggressive kind. Fortunately, nothing bad happened when MI3 came out because I didn't see it unless we count Tom Cruise getting more publicity.) the next day, but Jackie was around for me to call. There are many more examples of our foul-weather friendship, but you get the idea.

Molly Ivins

I was on yahoo! and found that Molly Ivins died of breast cancer. I did not read much of her writing directly, but got many good quotes from her through Joy. It's always sad to see a witty woman take her leave. Especially now we need people who can speak their minds.