"Myellow? Are you there? Is this thing on??"

image here

Yesterday, I got an email from Ms A with her new phone number. It seems she has joined the 21st century and is consolidating her phone service and going cellular. My first thought was: Finally! This was the woman who refused to carry a cell phone, had one, never could find it, didn’t know the number…Which was terribly hard on someone like me who hasn’t had a land line in six years and has developed the cell phone habit. And that’s what it is really, a habit. For years I was able to meet up with people without having to call them minutes before arrival; find restaurants, shops and homes without the benefit of a telephone. As a teenager, I was even able to rendezvous with my mother if we went our separate ways shopping. Now it takes a phone call across Target from son to mother explaining where we are both are in relation to the front door. So what the heck happened? I would like to blame the “need” I have for a cell phone on a shift in the Earth’s space/time continuum but that would be too simple. Lazy is more the answer.

I had privately rolled my eyes at Ms. A because she didn’t have a cell phone. I mean, really! How did she manage to keep up with her two teenagers and her man? She had to be at home next to the phone if she wanted to speak to anyone. So to say I was delighted and smug when I read:

Hi All, I’ve moved up with the times and am bidding adieu to
the old times--a home land line. . .”

Was a gross understatement.

I was planning my sarcastic and pithy reply as I reached for my phone to change the contact number.

What happened next was pure Karma for being a smug Mean Girl.

I unlocked my phone and opened my contacts.
I opened Ms. A.
I clicked options
I scrolled
I scrolled
I scrolled
I scrolled
I re scrolled about sixty eight more times looking for a place to edit her phone number.
Not there.
I could erase the contact but I didn’t want to do that I just wanted to change the frakkin’ home number! I mean really…what the heck was “wrong” with this phone that it didn’t have that function. And I know I’ve changed numbers before because I accidentally changed Wally’s number by a digit and had to call Beav for his number a couple of years ago…more mumbling ensues. More scrolling and clearing and ending and I was almost to the point of just erasing her, after writing down her work number with paper and penso I could ask Wally to change it for me…when what did I see next to the last digit of her dear old land line--a number I was starting to feel sentimental about because she’s had it since returning from Central America to embark on a new and scary life post marriage--

A blinking cursor.

Like a 90 year old woman sitting at her new computer in 1996, I sigh a deep sigh of relief because I could manage this new fangled contraption I held in my hand and by God, I knew what Blinky The Cursor meant. I nervously tapped the clear button and watched a number disappear. Emboldened I tapped it nine more times until all the old numbers miraculously disappeared and Viola! I entered the new number and pushed "save". What's really cool, is this morning I checked and it is still in my phone! Is this a great century or what!

Needless to say, I didn’t send my sarcastic reply.

Contrary to What My Family Believes...

...I ain't dead yet. No sirree DAWG! I iz alive and barkin' and beggin' for all sorts of head scratches and bits of food. The moms got me some new medicine a couple of weeks ago and I feel like a young pup! Hooah! as my boy would say. Good thing this medicine worked and it takes like hot meat from the outside stove because I was a gonner. Lemme tell you, I could barely move around for the coughing. I sure was gonna miss everyone, too. Me and my boy Buddy have way too many dogs to bark at, squirrels to chase, bunnies to nom and Magpies who need payback.

Mommy called the payback thing: Karma. So today I was taking my second after breakfast nap (I didn't say I was all better, Ima old dog with the Cee Ahtch Eff and need frequent naps) when all the sudden Mommy appears at the door with a treat! A treat!! Yeah! ThatiswhatIamtalkinabout Yay! If Buddy had been over we would be doin' chest bumps! But as I'm hoisting this old body up off the cool grass I notice a big bunch of sticks that reminded me of the time I moved the woodpile into the middle of the yard because that was a better place for it and I was bored when I was a puppy...good times...good times...anyhow, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the big pile of sticks. So I decide the treat can wait and start ambling towards the sticks when Mommy starts screaming at me like she did when I had the little Not-A-Bunny-But-Like-A-Bunny in my mouth.
"Kipper get away! Get. Away. Now." she used her big mean Mom voice I hear when I've run away or one of my boys does something he isn't supposed to do.
Shoot, she always ruins the fun, doesn't she? Resistance was futile as she hauled me into to the house by my collar. Giving her the dying dog look with a little gack cough didn't change her mind,and making myself weigh as much as the mastiff down the street didn't work either. I don't understand Mommy, she gives me chicken skin, pop corn and crackers if I ask for them but she wouldn't let me sniff the baby birds in the nest near my favorite pee tree. Because I really just wanted to, you know, sniff them. It's not like I'm a cat and I've been told I have a 'soft mouth'. So I'm in the house and what's an old dog like me supposed to do? I got my favorite blue baby 'saur and walked from the front of the house to the back about eleventy million times hoping and thinking someone would lose their patience with me and just let me back outside. I was hoping Other Mom would come home and not see the big pile of sticks in the back yard and just let me outside so I could further, you know, investigate the situation with the fragrant birds. Didn't happen and no matter how hard I stared at the big window that opens, it wouldn't open.

Mommy talked into the little black box thing and found someone to come and take care of the birds and the nest. I tried to tell her I would be happy to take care of them but she wasn't paying any attention to me. Then told my other boy to take me upstairs when the doorbell rang. Upstairs? When the doorbell rings? That is so not my style or my job? My job is to make sure everyone who comes into the house gives me an ear scratch and possibly a belly rub! And this is the thanks a dying dog gets for his decade's worth of love and devotion. I have to go upstairs to bed and miss all the excitement. So I stayed put by the back door and was real quiet hoping I would become invisible. I was about to fall asleep when I noticed my two arch enemies poking their heads into the big pile of sticks where the little birds were! Those little birds belonged to my enemies! I had the perfect oppertunity to avenge the years of taunting and abuse I had suffered at their wings so I let Mommy know just how I felt and tried to say: "OH THE INJUSTICE OF THIS WORLD!! THOSE EVIL FOOD STEALING BIRDS THAT TEASE ME CAN PLAY WITH THE LITTLE BIRDS WHY CAN'T I?"

That's when Mommy leaned down and gave me an ear scratch while she explained Karma to me. "It's Karma, old boy, What goes around comes around...those naughty birds won't tease you anymore, now will they? Serves them right, losing their six children to bird rescue after the way they treated you. I bet they won't tag team your food and water ever again!"

I hope she's right because I'm feeling better but the old ticker isn't what it used to be and I can't be running after those pesky things. What a day. What a day and a half! I need a nap.

If you're in the 'hood give a holler over the fence and I'll bark back! For the time bein' at least. Can't keep this old dog down. Nope not the poison berries, the big moving car or the garage door or even the Cee Ahtch Eff with "pro-found card eomaglea"

Love,

Kipper the big-hearted dog and that ain't no metaphor, neither.

My Oldest Son Should Have Been Named Pinocchio

I know I’ve mentioned this before but I must say it again: I really wish I had been given a practice boy to make all my stupid parenting errors on; say the wrong thing to and subject to poor judgement calls. You know like the little ‘droid in AI. To hone this point of how terrible my judgement is sometimes, I must confess, as “Mother Of The Year”, I took the boys to see AI a few short months after I left their father and became Disneyland Mommy. Let me refresh your memory about this Spielberg vehicle: a couple has a son who is injured and in a vegetative state; the bereft couple buy a robot boy and the robot boy bonds with them just about the time the real boy wakes up and returns home. Mommy doesn’t have enough room in her heart for both boys and takes the robot boy for a “ride” into the woods. The robot boy is dumped and must fend for himself against all manner of bad robots and bad humans until he drowns and is left to eternally mourn his lost mother. Real feel good stuff. Because my kids weren’t screwed up enough by having a depressed mother who left home; I had to take them to a movie which depicts parents getting rid of a child. WTF was I thinking? I deposited a theoretical ten grand into each of their theoretical Therapy Accounts on the way home from the movie. On top of a completely inappropriate plot line, the movie was terribly long and unforgivably dull. (Today when I reminded Wally of this movie, I got a sardonic “good job, mom!”)

I was reminded of my need for a droid kid the other day when I took Beav out for his first driving lesson. After the lesson, I picked up Wally and he asked me how it went with Beav. I sort of shrugged my shoulders and told him it was easy. “Yeah, it’ll be easier with the smart kid,“ was his heartbreaking response. Fortunately, Good Mother kicked in and I launched into my oft delivered lecture of how just because someone does well in school doesn’t assure they will do well in life or are really all that “smart.“ I wouldn’t be delivering the lecture if the Cybertronics people had given me my own little Davey.

I taught Wally how to drive a few years ago and if I say so myself, I did an excellent job. He’s a pretty good driver for an impulsive 19.5 year old man. But getting him to this point wasn’t easy. It was sort of similar to…I don’t know…The Eighth Circle Of Parenting Hell. To say sitting on the right side of a teenager when they are learning to drive is scarier than crap is an understatement. My outings with Wally would go something like this:

Me: ohmgawd ohmgawd ohmgawd…slowdown slowdown slowdown…don’t brake so hard…look both ways…LOOK BOTH WAYS…SHI---Jesus! Don’t do that again!

I’m surprised the Oh My God strap is still attached above the passenger door after being repetitively yanked and grasped for about a year of student driving. But just like breast feeding, potty training, and the seventh grade I got through teaching a kid to drive and I’ll get through it again. Only this time. . . Don’t you love getting to say that with your second child? (Don’t you wish you could say it after you fuck up the droid kid, as you are pulling away from the rest stop where you dump him?) Only this time, I’m going to be more patient and relaxed. In fact, I was so relaxed and smug as Beav pulled away from the curb for the first time with me riding shot gun I could have taken a nap, mixed some cocktails , paid bills or blogged. I was even laissez-faire when he told me he had never driven before. Relaxed but incredulous. Wha? His dad had never let him drive? His brother hadn’t let him drive? What is it with my kids? They are both so goody two-shoed they never snuck their dad’s old Jag out for a joy ride. If my dad had had a cool car, he would have needed new tires for it by the time I was sixteen. As it was my friend Melody’s dad had a sporty vintage Volvo which sat in their garage like a temptress, begging us to take her out for a spin. Which we did. And we got caught but it was worth it because when you’re fifteen the moment is always worth it. Ask Wally about this, you can see it in his eye when asked about the two unsanctioned parties he had at Ward's when his dad and step mom were out of town.

Anyhow, my self-congratulatory lassitude lasted about a minute (just long enough to get the checkbook and the cocktail shaker out) before the internal dialogue started:

Me: ohgawdmovetotheleft movetotheleft ohgawd ohgawd herewego please don’t hit the parked car. Oh crap, he’s going to take off a mirror…LOOOK BOTH WAYS. Slow down…stop…NOT SO HARD DON”T BRAKE SO HARD…SHI-- Jesus why do I have to do this again

I’m very proud this go round the dialogue was internal and I graduated from clinging to the Oh My God strap to putting a grip of death on the right arm rest thingie. I just hope it doesn’t fall off over the next few months of driving lessons.

image is from filmcritics.com and is a shot from AI
*****************************
As a PSA addendum to this very digressive and rambly piece I want everyone to know how extremely proud I am of my oldest son. Wally didn’t make it completely through his AIT (Advanced Infantry Training) this fall and while he was disappointed he has to start over in six months, he is taking it like a man and placed the blame squarely on his own shoulders. A first for him. I think I’m proudest of the way he is moving through a tough life lesson with grace and dignity. My son left home August 31st a boy but just like all that Army hooah literature said, he returned to me a confident capable young man. I can’t imagine what he would have been like if he had graduated. Probably 19 going on 40 like Beav is 15 going on 45.

Putting It Out There

Friday, The Beav could barely disguise his unmitigated joy when I announced to him the sad news I had to put down the Honda. God does answer prayers because I know that kid prayed to Jesus the mechanic would tell me the Honda was terminal so he wouldn’t have to drive it. (I wonder how Jesus is doing with that PS 3 cuz I know how June is doing with it) When I got the news my first reaction was a panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach: Wally was coming home for a few months so how in the Hell were we going to coordinate two work schedules without killing each other. But I’m getting pretty good and taking deep breathes and pushing away the panic and invite hope in an effort to overwhelm the fear. This worked for about a nano second before my monkey brain took over and within about thirty minutes of spinning on the situation I had a picture of myself walking eight miles home in a foot of snow because Wally wasn’t answering his phone to avoid picking me up. I worried about the car all weekend, and vacillated between buying a hoopty, a new car for myself or just making do with sharing a car. All of the possible solutions irritated me because euthanizing the Honda wasn’t my idea and I hate unhappy surprises and I really hate not being in complete control of a situation. I was already concerned about the shape Wally was going to be in when he came home this week and dealing with stupid car issues was just One. More. Thing.

Once upon seven years ago, I would have looked at this situation as proof God really hated me and wanted me to suffer because that‘s how He rolls. Nowadays after I’ve become bored with worrying about situations I can usually hand it over to the Universe to do with it what it may. But I’m terribly impatient and if my Requests Of The Management aren’t answered with the answer I want to hear in a few hours I start to lose hope. And worry all over again. It’s like I’m sitting at a table with God and I slide a festively wrapped package towards him. I’ve wrapped up my worries with lavish wrapping paper and a large festive bow because I have spent so much time worrying about what’s inside, the box should look extra special. I slide the box slowly towards him, proud I’m giving a gift as big as the one in the box. But just as God starts to pull at the ribbon I hold my hand out and stop him from unwrapping it and snatch it away from him. I do this every time I ask the Universe to help me with something. I pull my lovely package or worry over the car back to my side of the table where I can unwrap it and rearrange it. I haven’t learned to leave the burden on the table. Like I’m as big as God and really what does he know I can manage this so much better? Ego much? Last week I was re-reading Plan B by Anne LaMott and one of the essays is about her son Sam‘s desire to meet his father. After they find him, she prays he will reach out to Sam and when it takes a long time she becomes angry with God. One thing leads to another and LaMott realized the lag time between asking and receiving was necessary. She says something so simple and so remarkable about this waiting, God needed time to work on it. Yesterday evening as I was leaving the parking garage at work I passed by my dream car which led me to think about the car issue and I was about to pull the package away from God again when I stopped myself with the words: “He is working on it.” And then all alone in the car, I prayed out loud (something I thought only crazy people did) “I don’t know what to do about this stupid car situation and I’m not expecting a car to fall out of the sky and hit me in the head but if I’m supposed to have a second car, point it out to me in a very concrete fashion, like with a sign on it: “Here’s the car June” but nothing opaque or woo-woo, so I don’t miss it. And could you make it before I’m walking home from the hospital after a long shift or Wally can’t take a job because it’s not on a bus line? Thank you”

This afternoon I was talking to Wally while he was waiting for his airplane very far from home and we were discussing the poor old Honda and I realized I hadn’t worried about it all day. As we talked about it, I realized I wasn’t starting to worry about it and I was aware of how good it felt to really let go of something. For the first time in a very long time I had really walked away from a burden without turning around and picking it back up again.

Tonight I received an email message: “I need to talk to you. Please call.” I responded to the message and I was offered a car that I can pick up in January it is neither a Hoopty or a Beater but a perfectly respectable and well cared for car. But because I am my own worst enemy, I almost didn’t accept the gift. I even wrestled with why the gift was given to me. Was it offered out of pity because I was whining about having a car payment? . . . What if I had guilted someone into giving me something. . . Could my pride allow me to accept the gift?

The Girl’s simple words were: “Just take it.” But I had to wrestle around with the idea of this gift a little longer until I realized not accepting a gift freely given is like denying someone’s compliment. You know how it is, someone tells you your shoes are cute and you say: “Oh these old things, I’m kind of sick of them.” It makes the other person feel sort of bad.

I realized I’m not good at receiving gifts. Part of leading a life of gratitude is accepting the gifts we are given and not turning them away. I’m all about offering thanks for the stuff that looks like a goodie and a treat but these last few weeks, I have been given disguised as bad things. My gut feeling tells me Wally’s return home is for a reason so big I can’t imagine it. Weird Hormone Boy I mean Beav’s attitude made me realize I was once the same kid and it‘s ok to be self centered at fifteen because he will grow out of it with a little guidance and some boundaries. This whole car situation helped me realize for the millionth time I have only first world problems. My poor sweet ailing dog has made me realize how close we are as a family despite the divorce. Finally, as a result of the insanity at work I have been given a clear picture of what I’m supposed to do with my career. Maybe I’ll get to a point of saying “thank you” rather than “help!” when I hit a bump in my road.

I also have seamless evidence God has a sense of humor because the car I will be driving this spring:


Mini van.


Verrryy funny God. But thanks.

"the dimension of stillness"

Ezra Pound/1916 photo by Alvin Langdon Coburn

THE GARDEN

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
Ezra Pound (1916)


I love poetry and whenever I discover a “new” poem I get a bit obsessed by it. This is my current obsession, likely because my theme this winter seems to be all about becoming a crone. A crone in the post modern sense of the word. Not the hooked nose-brewing up poison for unsuspecting maidens-sense of it.

“In her is the end of breeding”

When I read this poem the first time a week or so ago, my first conclusion was firmly rooted in an old school feminist lit criticism: Pound saw women who can’t breed as useless. Middle-aged women are useless, better off invisible…blah…blah…ageism…blah (Let’s all raise a fist in solidarity. . .)

After I finished my self inflicted eyeroll, I reread the poem and took a lighter view of it, one actually more in keeping to Pound’s sensibilities. In 1916 he was writing imagist pieces and finding inspiration in the Pre-Raphaelites. With this in mind, she is the symbol of a Goddess too perfect to breed. A bit more sympathetic but a stretch: “like trying to cross the rim of the Grand Canyon on a suspension bridge made of dental floss” (my favorite literature professor wrote that in the margin of a particularly terrible paper I wrote promoting some harebrained deconstructionist screed.. It made me laugh out loud and still does)

My final and favorite interpretation is a literal one: Pound observed a beautiful and genteel young woman walking through the park and their eyes met. She improperly held him in her. As he was about to speak to her; she suddenly turned away, raising her nose, sniffing at the idea he would dare speak to her in public. My interpretation is heavily influenced by all the romance novels I’ve read. Very simplistic and almost crosses into the realm of “precious”. I manage to back away from the preciousness by insisting on the feminist reading: By virtue of her sex and gender, this lonely woman is “dying” as a result of her independent and private leanings which are in opposition to the expectations placed upon her by virtue of her class. She was further a symbol of how society was changing and how women were changing. Big shoes for a little poem to fill.

I’m actually not a big fan of Pound. His Cantos string together beautiful and memorable phrases--like the title of this blog from Cantos XLIX--but I don‘t think I ever fully understood them. I remember attempting to understand the Cantos ions ago when I returned to school. It’s a big mess of a poem and some feel it was never completed. He draws on imagists, troubadours, economics, politics, his bitterness about the futility of war. Granted it’s very long but he tries to do everything in this poem and it makes my head hurt. Pound was also a vocal about his anti-Semitism and spewed his opinions on Italian radio during WW II. Once, I was chided by a Pound lover (see the professor from above) for failing to separate the artist’ politics from the art. At the end of his life, he expressed great regret for his political views during the war. Having just learned this a few years ago, I relaxed my knee jerk reaction of: “Ack!! It’s a poem by Pound, so it will be dangerous and hateful political ravings couched in weird images and nonsense! “ Now my reaction is: “Ack!! It’s Pound, I won’t get it!“ I’m relieved I didn’t get the Pound Brain Freeze when I stumbled on "The Garden".

I wish I were one of these people who reads a poem and immediately understand what the poet is trying to say. Most of the time I can’t interpret poetry without the aid of a PhD telling me what they think it means. Poems must be verrrryyyy simple and straightforward for me to grasp their meaning. Or they must be abstract and the art is simply the way the words are arranged and sound together. I can do that. I can suspend my hamster brain for a few minutes and just enjoy words and the images evoked for the sake of art. My wise and well-educated Oldest Friend told me she thinks unintelligible poems aren’t necessarily good poems. Of course I agree with her because it bruises my delicate ego when I can’t interpret a poem.

All of my feminist mumbo jumbo aside, I have imagined interpreting this poem through another artistic medium by setting up a picture: Huge piece of brightly colored sari silk blowing against a dirty graffiti covered wall. I think it would be interesting if the graffiti said: "Her boredom is exquisite and excessive" Maybe in Italian as a tribute to Pound‘s years in Italy.

I do know I never want to feel "exquisite boredom" especially if it is anything like exquisite pain. I wonder if Wally would be marked down for "poor usage" in his composition class if he called boredom exquisite?

Sweet poetry: the literal meanings of word are suspended for the sake of art.