Herban Sprawl

This past year I experienced a disappointment. Not a little one, mind you. Rather the kind that makes a person suck in her breath and wonder ‘what the hell just happened here?’ The result was spending way too much time and energy contemplating the situation and wondering what to do about it. The answer, by the way, was that I knew I couldn’t do anything about it, but like all worrywarts, I seem to be programmed to ruminate ad nauseum regardless.

Some time ago I was given a set of angel cards by an interesting lady who reads tarot cards. During one of the rounds of cleaning my “awfiss,” the angel cards surfaced and I pulled one. This has been going on for several months now. I pull a card, park it on my computer keyboard and think about it. It’s been a helpful exercise for meditation, actually, even though it probably sounds pretty flaky. My most recent card is Acceptance and I’ve had it here for a few weeks now, trying to figure out the message. Today, while I was enjoying a Christmas Eve bubble bath, it came to me.

Part of my confusion stemmed from the picture on the card, because it seemed to be suggesting I do something in order to be accepting. But today the idea that wafted up into my consciousness from the fragrant  bubbles was that I had already done what was in the picture and that now I just needed to accept the fact that “it is what it is.”

Like a lot of people, I worry about being fair. I worry about being kind. I also worry about having a reputation for being outspoken. It’s a fairly earned one, but it also comes with a guarantee that when I’m wrong about something, I am not afraid to admit it and make amends, if I can. So my discomfort has been a matter of worrying that I had failed in one of those areas. However a word floated up out of the lavender bubbles. Betrayal.

I am a huge whodunit fan. I roar through mysteries left and right. My grandma read true crime, my mother loved mysteries, and I am likewise addicted. Mysteries generally involve a murder, but murder isn’t the pivot for any of those plots. It’s betrayal. Either someone has been betrayed, is being betrayed, suspects betrayal, is contemplating betrayal of someone else or is intent upon preventing a possible betrayal. Whatever the case, betrayal is bad news. Suspicion of betrayal erodes even the best of human relationships. Fear of betrayal causes relationships to slide into the sewer toute suite.  And that’s what the bubbles revealed to me. I felt betrayed.

Trying to forgive a wrongdoing is hard work, but make that wrongdoing some form of betrayal and it’s darn near impossible. It doesn’t stop us from the effort, nor should it. To err is human, to forgive divine. Or, as my wise little mom would exhort, “Forgive and forget!” Mom had it right, but betrayal is tough, especially when the betrayal came after having done everything possible to be good to that other person. And I’m not talking about being good to someone in order to elicit something in return - no indeed. I’m talking about the kind of good we are to those we love and care about - the unconditional variety.

So as I luxuriated in my bubbles, I considered the situation. I’d left the door open, I had continued to do as I had always done. I’d made a concerted effort to behave as though nothing was the matter and I was still feeling pain. The answer is clear. Acceptance. Acceptance of a situation having shifted, acceptance that some people are clueless about having caused pain (myself included), and acceptance that things are going to be different. My door needs to remain open, but I have to accept that things won’t go back to where they were before. As Cherie wisely commented when I told her about my discovery, “It is what it is. You can’t change it. You did what you could. Now you just have to accept it and move on.”

The next time I feel guilty about buying an expensive bottle of Perlier Lavender Bubble Bath, I’m going to weigh it against the cost of a therapist. I’m thinking a hot bubble bath is not only cheaper, but much more satisfying!

I was in Bang and Lily’s nail salon yesterday, having my feet attended to when a perfectly charming elderly lady struck up a conversation over the color of polish I had selected. She loved it. “What’s that called?” she asked.

“O’Hare and Nails,” I replied. “It’s one of the Chicago series of colors that they are phasing out. This might be the last bottle.”

“I always get the same one,” she mused. “Cotton Candy.”

“But that’s a nice neutral one, I think. I get neutrals on my fingers and colors on my toes.”

“She look good in red!” chimed in one of the technicians who’d seen me out with my new red cloche.

“Do you wear red?! Really?” The lady was getting really interested in this conversation. “Red is such a cheerful color!”

“I think so, too, but you have to be so careful because two red things look good together in one light, then you go outside and they clash.”

The lady said she likes black because it goes with everything. This led to my laughing that I hadn’t worn black until my niece nudged me and insisted I didn’t look all that bad in it. “But I do, unless I have on serious make-up!”

My technician was following this with a lot of interest. Her technician, who has done my feet and nails many times was amused. Mine asked, “You don’t like black?”

Okay, for the record, I like it only for the fact that it is proper for funerals, and black slacks or skirts can go with a lot of things. Beyond that, I’m just not crazy about black clothes. It’s too somber and, might I add, dreary. Black for bridesmaid dresses is, in my opinion, boring. It’s almost like those dresses weren’t important enough to select a good color.

Several years ago, I noticed that my niece’s closet was wall-to-wall black, but the truth is, she worked in retail and black is probably best in that line. She looks fine in black, but if you asked me to choose a color for her, that would not be it. I teased her about it at the time, but I really did understand that her age group was crazy for black. That’s when she insisted I didn’t look too bad in it.

I’ve since come to realize that people who stick to black often have what I call a black and white attitude about life. There are no shades of grey and no areas of ambivalence where one might shift about, changing one’s mind. I can’t imagine that way of thinking, but by golly, there are a lot of folks out there who only see things as black or white. They cannot conceive of grey areas, and if I were to expound on the shades of grey - the warm tones, the cool tones - I’d probably get some pretty strange looks!

Decorating with black and white is interesting, but ever notice how a magazine picture of one of those rooms looks so cold and clinical? Toss in a red cased glass vase with a spray of red flowers, though, and the room comes to life. In our case, a black and white bathroom gained a flock of flamingos. Never fails to elicit laughter for first time visitors.

I like color. I’m not particularly good with color, but I know what I like. I also know what I don’t like. But there are shades in between that are downright yummy. For example, orange. I will never pick something that is orange. But then there are the shades of orange like peach or pumpkin or bittersweet or the skin of a sweet potato that has brown scumbled through it. Those are neat.

When it comes to reds, GM is the king of red vehicles. My 1969 Pontiac was a most luscious shade of cool red…. and Bubba Doc used to have a candy apple red Buick convertible that was the stuff his teen-aged dreams were made of. The most striking Vettes were red. The other auto makers had red cars, but GM had the lock on THE reds. That, it turns out, is one of three things on which my father and I were ever in complete agreement!

I measure reds by that Pontiac. It’s caused many a saleslady to dissolve in giggles, which pleases me to no end. It’s always nice to bring a smile to someone whose feet and lower back are killing her. O’Hare and Nails is just such a shade of red and I’m going to be sad when that last bottle is gone. And wearing red is fun. That new hat of mine has honestly made heads turn. It’s cute and it’s bright. I see smiles when I wear it. And that was worth buying a new tube of lipstick to go with it!

Think of it: Rudolph with a foglight yellow nose? Nope. No way. N’uh-uh.

It’s the RamaHanaYulaChristmaKwan season and with the economy being such a downer, we need all the cheer we can get. Bring on the colors!

18 December 2009

The Star City is expecting a weather event. It’s coming up from the Gulf, so the chance for ‘participation’ has increased to the point where even having Elvis as a greeter at the Wally did not tame the masses who decimated the milk, eggs and bread shelves.

I know how absolutely insane this must sound to my Midwestern compatriots, but this, my friends, is the way it works down here in the Appalachians. If we get a forecast for snow and it looks to be coming from y’all’s territory, we pretty much blow it off down here in the Roanoke River Valley bowl. That kind of stuff doesn’t make it past the Greenbrier resort. We might add an extra bottle of wine to the shopping cart, but we don’t get worried.

But tell us the storm will be coming up from the Big Easy, and we go into a frenzy. Suddenly it’s the Weather Channel 24/7, switching to Robin Reed in the middle of a football game (no lie!) and checking Kevin Myatt’s weather blog at roanoke.com on a more or less constant basis. Right now the percentages are high, but it’s the other stuff that we are aware of that cause us to get ready.

It’s cold out. I popped out while the House Goddess was finishing up with her magic act in order to procure soup meat, celery and carrots. The Food Lahn (Lion for those who need a translation) was jammed, and the milk shelves were lookin’ puny. Every single line had a checker and there were managers bagging like their hands were on fire. I nabbed the last of the soup meat, and I swear there had been a pile of it the day before yesterday. The guy in the meat department told me to get it then because snow was in the forecast and there’d be nothing left by the weekend. I made him into a clairvoyant and trundled out with four pounds of good shanks and a couple of oxtails for fun.

The line went quickly, as the checkers spent a lot less time being distracted by the Food Lion dictum to greet each customer as s/he walks in the door. Thank heaven. It’s a stupid policy to start with and I’d rather my checker pay attention to the business at hand. If Food Lion wants people greeted at the door, let ‘em hire Elvis like Wally did.

Anyway, like I said, it was cold, so I lifted my big Eyetalian schnozzola to the skies to see if I could smell snow. Not a whiff. My arthritic knees are not proving to be accurate barometers, but the sinus above my left eye is Old Reliable. I heard elderly ladies in the store sharing their barometric anatomy stories, and believe me, there is nothing funnier than two ladies, all made up and sensibly attired for cold weather, comparing notes on which is better for snow (”Oh, my right foot from after that accident I had.”) or rain (”Now, I’m here to tell you, my left elbow…”) and which has turned into the acid test for any major precipitation (”My sister’s back. It’s never wrong.”).

In the old days, I could always smell snow and the schnozz never lied. When people still heated with coal, there was a difference in the way the air smelled and I had only to have my dad sniff it to learn what it was like. It’s unforgettable, and old Midwesterners are really good at distinguishing between a blizzard and a light snowfall. Nowadays, it’s harder, but you can still kind of tell.

The preparation doesn’t end at the grocery store, however. I forgot to make sure we had four D batteries, so I need to have a look around, and if necessary, may have friends grab some for me on their way up from Franklin county. The batteries are for the Coleman light. The branches of our holly are loaded with berries and they are resting on the power line that runs to the house. I need to go out with the long branch trimmer and see what I can do.

There will be people cruising around town with loads of firewood in the beds of their pick-ups. Some folks hit the pet store and load up on cat litter for their sedans. I saw a guy with several bags of marshmallows, two gallons of milk and a box of cocoa. (He has the right priorities!) The rack with snow shovels was empty, and my guess is that Wally has sold every last snow toy already.

The schools let out two hours early and the line at the gas station last night was causing some impatience. I had been in line, pulled up to the pump and some ass in an SUV (that’s redundant, isn’t it…ass and SUV in the same sentence…) got mad because I pulled up when he tried to turn in. Hell, I was right on Anne’s bumper because I saw him cruising for a place where he could cut in front of someone. Don’t mess with Red Rocket, dude. So he got in line behind me (finally got some manners), and no sooner did I run the card when he got antsy. I put the nozzle in, set the little whatchamacallit to let it fill, and went to the front seat to put away the card. He revved his engine. I sauntered back. Red Rocket was thirsty and I just leaned against her, waiting. The next thing I knew, he tore off like a bat out of hell. The guy at the next pump leaned around to see what was going on. I rolled my eyes. He laughed and then we both laughed at another asshole in an SUV as SHE tried to cut off someone while blabbing on her cellphone and was thwarted by a yellow Bug.

I survived the Blizzard of ‘79 in Chicago, so snow rage is not new to me. I could teach some of these people a thing or two about what happens when somebody cleans out a parking place, barricades it with kitchen chairs, brooms and stuff when they have to leave it, and return to find you have thrown their stuff aside and taken their spot. Ooph! Not cool. You just do not take someone else’s spot like that. Bad manners and foolish to boot. You could return to find your car with no tires, shot full of bullet holes and shoved into a snowbank at the end of the block!

However, here in the Star City, we’re a bit different. The minute the snow starts, there will be gangs of guys in trucks cruising around just dying to pull cars out of ditches. It’s their winter raison d’etre, for heaven’s sake! The power will inevitably go out, there will be a huge pot of soup burbling on the stove and my Swede and I will relax with books. We will sleep in the living room in front of the gas logs with cats burrowed under the eiderdown with us. And I’ll be pleased that I remember which box has the longjohns.

Stay warm, y’all!

3 December 2009

A friend just sent me an article by Barbara Ehrenreich about the Pink Ribbon Cult. It was, as ever, an astute summary of the situation with women’s health issues. As a breast cancer survivor, she is uniquely positioned to make the point that women rolled over and played dead about the Stupak Amendment that removed our reproductive rights through insurance maneuvers, yet are up in arms about the study that has shown mammograms to be of little help.

As a card-carrying liberal female, I have to concur with Ehrenreich. I want to know the causes of breast cancer. I was in the high risk group, thanks to my mother’s death from it at age 55 in 1970. I was 19. It was an impressionable experience because this was before chemo.

Then, one day after my annual exam with Dr. Garst (a saint!), as he handed me my mammogram prescription, we were talking about aches and pains and I told him about how my mother had gotten really bad bursitits in her shoulder after a spirited game of horseshoes. Our family doctor sent her to Chicago to have cobalt treatments in that shoulder. “Was she right or left-handed?” “Right.” “Which breast was diagnosed first?” “Right.” “You aren’t high risk, Hon. They were using cobalt for all kinds of stuff back then and then figured out it was causing cancer! Hell, they were using it on KIDS!”

I had to have a biopsy after a mammogram detected spots. I was a wreck, and let me tell you, they didn’t call me with the results within 24 hours… THAT policy is now way different because nobody in Carilion wanted to deal with ANYBODY like me ever again. [If I helped even one other woman by raising hell the way I did, I will consider the experience worthwhile.] It turned out to be calcifications.

What bothers me is that women will talk about these experiences, but not the horrors they lived through with unwanted pregnancies. The stigma that has been attached to abortions is incredible. Yet, according to an article Ellen Goodman wrote, if you have a group of women collected somewhere, one in three of them has had one. The Stupak Amendment would never have passed if women weren’t treated like pariahs for having had abortions.

I have said this before in this space. Women just will NOT talk about abortion from a first hand point of view. Case in point: me.

Yep. I got pregnant when I was in no way shape or form able to shoulder the responsibility of having a child. Was it a hard decision to make? No. Have I ever regretted it? No. What motivated me to do that? Respect for the life that child and knowing it would never have a decent mother, be economically safe and possibly be born with defects because I was taking the pill at the time. It was a no brainer for me.

But how many women have enough nerve to stand up with me and admit this? Precious few, and I can already hear the breath being sucked in by the people around me who have never known. Sorry to disappoint you all, but at 58, there are certain things I am willing to fight for. Legal abortion without financial restrictions is necessary and it is OUR RIGHT. I am disgusted by the number of women who are so goddammed selfish and fearful that they won’t speak up. Take off those stupid pink ribbons and start marching for the rights of women who, like I was, are in no position to have children. It is far braver of them to admit this and deal with the problem before it becomes another statistic of child poverty, or worse.

And before the right wingnuts paint me as a child-hater or child-murderer, let me assure you I do love children. During the 20+ years I spent as a public school teacher, I loved hundreds of them and sometimes I was the only one doing the loving. The older I got, the more I realized what a wise decision I had made.

Today, I am experiencing the same feelings gay people have when they take the plunge and come out. My own family has been unaware of this, so those of them who are regular readers are in for a shock. But it was time to put my money where my mouth has been about starting the dialogue. There is no way that miserable and woman-hating amendment would have passed if women had been the first to put aside their pride and privacy to talk about this issue. We’ll talk openly about our HRT, or lack thereof, we’ll talk openly about mammograms and other matters related to our plumbing, but talk about having had an abortion? Nope. Most emphatically not.

We’re the ones who have allowed the stigma to be attached to this, so if we lose our rights, maybe it’s our own damn fault.