Jackson

Some blogger I turned out to be. After all the moaning I did about universal health care you'd think I'd have weighed in when it was finally, finally passed. So here's me weighing in: whew. It ain't all I hoped for, but it are something, a "big fucking deal," as Joe B. would say. Did say.

My granddaugher continues to delight, amaze, and occasioinally tax her Nana and Grandpa. Yesterday, she made up for all the taxing with an original song about how much she loves her Nana and our lunches together 3 days a week. So you can see that I am doomed. Just doomed. I love her so.

Today, though, I feel like writing about my tom cat, Jackson. Jackson is dying. Formerly a 20+ pound, yet sleek, powerhouse of a feline, he is just a frail wisp. We've stopped weighing him. His lustrous black coat is thin and dryish, an enormous, horrible, inoperable tumor bulges from his abdomen on one side, threatening to topple him. His kidneys are weakening, and his anemia seems to have reached a point of no return. We are alert for the day when he does topple, can't rise, can't walk. It nears.

But right now he gamely trots out to the back fence of our yard at every opportunity, and lays dreamily in the sun and breeze. When we call to him he comes, quite simply, and the love, trust, and effort that takes each time is almost more precious than I can bear. Though he sometimes seems lost, confused, and unsure of what to do next, hearing his name in our voices always brings him back to us. It breaks my heart that he will soon go where our voices no longer hold such sway.

He's changed a lot physically and behaviorally. This morning I found him sleeping in the litter box. Night before last he pooped on our bed. Always a big foodie, he eats like a bird now, if at all. His lover's eyes remain as seductive and insistent as ever, though. I hold his little skeleton in my arms, those flecked green eyes seek mine, and a gentle purr vibrates from his heart to mine.

Fourteen years feels to me like a pretty short stay, but it seems that's all Jackson has been given. I think he's had a good life. And now that I'm 61, death doesn't seem quite so foreign and far away as it once did. Where Jackson goes soon, I will also go before too long a time. However unreasonably, I hold out the hope that we will meet again. I don't know anything, of course, except that we are going to miss him so very much.

Our sweet boy.

My Granddaughter

One of the reasons, besides laziness, that I haven't posted much recently is that my daughter, Shelley, and granddaughter, Eloen, have moved here from California. It's a big transition for all of us and we've all been eager, if not downright anxious, to see Eloen happy and settled here. I think she is, now, even though when she plays with her puzzle map of the United States she likes to move Texas and California closer together.

The real point of this post, though, is just to wax rapturous for a moment, as only a grandmother can, about this wonderful child, what a gift she is, how enriched my life has beome because she is here. She is a walking reminder of what living in the moment is like, what it is to be really, truly brave, and how much fun being alive is. Bright as a button, scary bright, she taps into the child in each of us with her questions, her invitations, and her enthusiasm, and staggers us with her thoughtful observations.

She loves her Nana and Grandpa fiercely; and how surprising to be thought really interesting and important at our advanced ages!

All of who and how she is, of course, has been facilitated by her mother. It is because of Shelley that Eloen accurately applies words like "glorious" and "lovely" to the people and things she loves, and embodies both those qualities herself.

I think I can predict that there will be more on Eloen to come. Stay tuned...

Reflections on a Vigil

I went to another vigil in support of health care reform tonight. Some of my friends have said recently that they are sick of vigils and think we should get loud and take to the streets, that the term "vigil" brings to mind "wake." I tend to think they are right. Yet I'm glad I went, soley because of my belief that showing up is better than not showing up most of the time.

It was depressing, though. There were a bunch of anti-health care people all around and among us, carrying the usual fear-mongering "oh my god we're going to be socialists and die" posters. A man had one of those "scary" Obama masks on with a poster to match. When someone in a passing car screamed "Fuck Obama!" they all laughed long and loud, including the elderly woman carrying a "God Help Us" banner. I found myself wondering if I would have responded similarly a year ago if someone had yelled "Fuck Bush!" at a protest. Or if I would have infiltrated someone else's event and tried to dominate and take over the location. Answer: I'm not sure. I'd like to think not, but then I was not having charitable thoughts toward those, er, racist assholes, this evening. Thankfully, I neither said or did anything toward them. Well, when my friend and I drove off we yelled "HEALTH CARE NOW" at them. I felt a little better after that for some reason.

The most depressing part, however, were the stories from people from our group, people whose health and wealth had been decimated by this insane system. And they actually have insurance. That's the killer -- you can bankrupt yourself paying for health insurance, then lose everything when your insurance company doesn't keep its promise, a double-edged sword.

I wished that the people bemoaning socialism would have strolled on over and listened, then responded with their solutions for those folks, for me. Or at least just said, "We don't care if you go broke or die. Fuck Obama. Fuck you." Then I'd at least know.

I know I don't wish them dead or broke, so, you know, whew.

Well, I think the title of this piece holds up pretty well: "Reflections" indeed. That's all I got.

Now I'm Pissed

I've been reading the hysteria associated with health care reform for many moons now, with a mixture of bewilderment, amusement, and ire. Not sure why, but a letter from some woman in Haltom City on the editorial page of the Dallas Morning News was the proverbial straw that broke my aching, underinsured back.

Her brilliant conclusion, massive evidence to the contrary, was that anyone uninsured was either too lazy to work or here illegally, and her tax dollars were already being spent giving them free medical care.

Thank you. Thank you very much, you effing moron.

My husband is self-employed and I am his only other employee. We work hard, and have always paid our bills and taken care of our family. We are in reasonably good health (no, we do not smoke) and we pay...are you ready...$20,000 a year for a catastrophic policy. With the economy and our business struggling, we are now paying for that coverage from our dwindling savings. Every month we think we may drop it, but what if one of us does get seriously ill or hurt?

But, hey! Miss Haltom City, with her tiny little mind and her smug little world, can surely explain to me why I deserve nothing better. Bitch, please.

The Poetry of Children

I was aware today of how lucky I am that the way I make my living allows me to enter and observe the inner worlds of children. Some days I'm just doing the job, and that is both exhausting and satisfying. Then there are days when, for example, I really know, in that transcendent way of knowing, that the sandbox is a sacred place, where pain is purged, fears disappear, buried treasures are discovered.

Today a little girl who has been abused drew three tear drops on a paper and wrote inside them the names of the three babies in the playroom she was tending.

Another child told me that her baby brother won't share their mom with her. She asked me to hold her so she could be a baby, too.

One boy whose mother just found out he'd been abused and was acting to protect him, played with the lion family. The mother lion was shielding her baby from a menacing dragon.

Some days I remember that I work in a temple, a witness to the ablutions, the pain, the poetry of children. And I am grateful.

Letters From Home

Veering wildly from things political, I would like to reflect (in a meandering fashion) on the cleaning out of a closest this weekend. One of the seldom reported blessings of being a disorganized person is that when you go through boxes you can make wonderful discoveries, because you have no real idea or memory of what you originally placed in the boxes.

Such was my experience Saturday. I found the usual hodge-podge of my daughters' art and stories from elementary school, always a treasure-trove. I found boxes and boxes and more boxes of pictures with no semblance of order which, really, I will put in albums some day. Really.

But by far my favorite find was a wooden box of old letters. There was no rhyme or reason to this particular grouping of missives. There was one from me to a friend just before I left for college when I was seventeen (how did I get that back?). There was one from me to my dad just weeks before I got married in 1973, and one from my grandmother to my mother just weeks after my parents' wedding (everyone was still talking about how lovely it was) in 1930. There were multiple letters from my mother to her family when, as a girl, she and a friend went on a trip to Colorado. Her detailed accounts of what they saw, who they met, how often they bathed, where they ate, just radiate with girlish excitement. Her life stretched before her with endless promise. She begged for letters from home, and promised on her part to save some stories for the telling. Can you imagine sending and receiving multiple letters while on vacation?

There was one to me from daddy which detailed his use of a new fertilizer and asked if they could borrow my typewriter (the one they bought me for college) over the summer.

I think my favorite was one from my dad to my mom in the early years of their marriage. He was writing to her on the day he buried his grandmother, and spoke of how he wept at her grave, how he and a cousin held his mother up during the service. He called my mother "baby."

We have in our family letters that my brothers wrote when they were in the Air Force and Navy serving abroad. Those letters were like gold, and everyone clamored for their turn to read the latest from John or Tom. It went like this: John wrote my parents. My parents either sent or brought the letter to Mom and Dolly (my grandparents), Mommee (my paternal grandmother), Aunt Maurine and Uncle Joe, my other Uncle Joe -- you get the picture; and then finally, after everyone had greedily read them over and over, they came back to my parents for safe-keeping. Those letters were valuable currency.

It saddens me (and I realize I am not original in this lament) that future generations won't stumble across such jewels when they clean out their closets. I love email, skype, cell phones, and everything that makes staying in touch with friends and family so quick and easy, but there is just nothing like unfolding an aged, much handled, oft-read, piece of paper and reading love in and between the lines from folks long gone, including myself at seventeen, or at twenty-four.

Every year I vow that I will hand-write notes and letters, but I rarely do. And don't you miss the excitement of the postman coming, looking for familiar handwriting from someone dear as you shuffle through bills and ads? Now, aside from the occasional baby-shower thank you note, nothing personal comes my way via the U. S. mail, and that saddens me, too.

But in 1966, after my mother and brother dropped me off at college, I received these words from my mom, " Everything seems so unreal about your being in college. I feel all numb and would really like to bawl but won't let myself...I haven't the words to tell you how proud we are of you and the confidence we have in you...may God bless and keep you."

Message received, Mom. Thanks.

More On The Prize

I think you are right, Laura, that Obama did not wish for this prize now, and would as soon not have it. I don't think we can know if he feels "used," as you suggest, however. I have read the remarks of the committee members who voted for him and found them to be genuine in their assessment of and appreciation for the impact Obama's candidacy and election have made on the world. They are bewildered that we can't see that ourselves.

It certainly factors in that Obama is "not George W. Bush," but it is more than that. John McCain would have been an improvement over Bush -- hell, so many people would have been an improvement over Bush -- but none of them would likely be getting the Nobel Prize right now.

Samar and Mortenson are incredible humanitarians and deserving of the highest forms of recognition. But in the bigger picture, Obama helped this country and the world turn a corner in the direction of justice and peace. I don't mean to imply that Obama is some perfect person or savior -- he most certainly is not , and has disappointed me more than once -- but he is the right person at the right moment in history with a vision that is moving us in that direction. That's why I think giving him this honor (and, as you say, by extension the nation who put him in office) is wonderful. I don't know what the prize means to him, but his receiving it resonates with the majority of the planet.