Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Migration, mother

"What took you so long." She looked up at me from her wheelchair, her arms hanging limply in her lap. She was positioned in the doorway of her rehab hospital room, her sneakered feet rocking the chair while she waited.

I had traveled for 18 and a half hours the day before, rising at 1:30 a.m.. I had perservered through eight hours in confining airplane seats being vibrated by the roar of jet engines. I had arrived in Florida in the dark, argued with the first rental car agency, driven the second rental car out of the airport with a GPS that still thought I was in Washington, arrived hungry at my brother's house after they had gone to bed. I had made myself get up early this morning so that I could stop at my mother's apartment to pick up some clean clothes and her mail on the way to the rehab center.

I leaned over to give her a kiss on the forehead. "Hi, Mom," I said.

My mother had been on my mind when I decided to move to Bellingham, as far away from her home in Florida as one could get within the lower 48 states. I intended to go visit her as often as I had when I lived in Kentucky. A year ago, my sister-in-law said to me, "Your Mommy needs to live nearer to a daughter," but I had cried when she had said it, cried about not wanting to be that daughter. For the last five years, my brother and sister-in-law have lived near our mother, providing a port in the storm for her as she aged. Even after my mother had burned her bridges with my sister-in-law, I've been counting on the combination of my brother's attention (now scaled-back) and the facility's professional care to be enough...to fill in the gaps, to notice what is going on, to offer assistance, to keep her company.

This summer she turned 95. This fall brought a concoction of bad luck: three unrelated hospital stays, my brother's new job with 10 hour shifts, and my mother's inevitable age related decline. The chemistry changed. I felt an urgency to fly to her side after one particularly confused telephone conversation, my mother chattering happily away about nonsensical events, unable to touch down from her dreams.

My personal heroes have been people who have migrated long distances against great odds. A young Jewish boy who walked over the Alps to Italy, a 19 year old woman who migrated from El Salvador to the US via Mexico in the hands of smugglers, early European Americans who walked across the deserts and mountains in search of a better life out west. My admiration for those who migrate at the end of their lives increased when we moved to Bellingham. Those journeys had plenty of outcomes, both tragedies and triumphs. I think of the strength and conviction that these journeys required, as well as the risks that the leaders took.

Leadership is the same, no matter what the journey--piping up with my vision, convincing my family to listen, and possibly to agree, getting a plan together, asking my sister to fly with her, asking another sister to help move her furniture out of the apartment, working on the details, envisioning it one way, modifying the vision, talking to administrators, hearing suggestions from my brother, changing the plan again, making a decision. I feel out in front on this one. I feel the burden of possibly making the wrong choice, of being criticized for advancing my plan. I'm not used to stepping out in this way, but I am acting out a conviction, a belief that it is right to ask our mother to move across the country in her 95th year, leaving behind her church and her community. I have sprung a maternal feeling towards my mother. I didn’t want to leave her so far away in Florida, and I want to shape her world and protect her as much as possible.

I broke some ice with my mother, some ice in me, to hug her and tell her that I wanted her to move to Bellingham to be near me. I had been by her side at important transitions in the last 20 years, but this experience is different.

Now she is my hero. When the elevator doors opened at SeaTac, there they were:  my sister pushing my mother in her wheelchair. I rushed to hug them and get out my line:  "Welcome to Washington."  She met me with a smile and stories about the flight. As we drove her through Seattle, she was excited to see hills (there are none in Florida), colorfully adorned big buses and tall buildings. Later, she marveled at the beauty as we twisted our way up and over the Chuckanut Mountains.

I never did get my Christmas cards out this year.  I love every card we received. I barely got the house cleaned and decorated before Christmas.  I bought few presents, but I've received a lot this year...My brother, Doug, who helped send her off at the airport with a new fluffy blanket from his wife, Mimi. The strong men who lifted my mother into her airplane seat.  My sister, Mari, and my niece, Anja, who re-scheduled their Christmas to fly with her from Florida to Washington.  The social worker who met us in the parking lot to welcome her to Mt. Baker Care Center.  Lynne, with energy for finding facilities and supporting me every step of the way. Friends who went to the Care Center to welcome my mother before they had even met her.  My siblings who encouraged her. My sister, Peg, who packed up her apartment. My mother who has flirted with the male social worker and made jokes with the therapists. My mother's spirit, 95 years young, unflagged, pushing on. An inspiration to me.

Sky, our mom Cooie, Mari
Merry Christmas to you.  I hope your gifts were priceless too.

Monday, October 10, 2011

In memory of Martha Post

He waited for her to leave work. He watched as she got in her car and put it in reverse. He shot her in the face and chest. When her foot slipped from the brake pedal, her car starting moving backwards from its parking spot, jumped the curb, struck a tree branch, propelled itself across the street and smashed into another car. She was slumped in the driver’s seat, bloody.

If I drew a portrait of Martha, I would put a fair-haired middle aged woman across a crowded room from me. She would be gathering in her three daughters and her doctor husband. Her elderly parents would move to be closer to her. Her friends and co-workers, colleagues in her medical practice, would gravitate towards her. Her patients, who would fill much of this space, would quietly push to be closer. This space would be intermingled with friends from her faith community, people also on an earnest journey, turned to watch her. I would see sunlight from a high window light up her face. I would hear piano music like the music that I have heard so many times flow from her talented hands.

I didn’t plan to believe, but I felt belief creep into my bones with each uplifting phrase or touching musical moment during the service. Martha was part of that transforming energy. Her graceful hands at the keyboard, her humble focus on the music director, her easy smile and the inspired music filled that sanctuary with another source of healing. I didn’t know if God was loving and gracious, but my heart relaxed and my soul responded when I closed my eyes and resonated with those words.

Years since I have seen Martha: three
Distance from my home to hers: 2542 miles.
Time it took for the news to reach us: 15 hours, approximately.
Number of sentences in the email: three
Time before the funeral: 4 days
Time before the suspect was arrested: 6 days
Time since this happened: 6 weeks
Time for anger to fade: unknown
Time to understand God: unknown

Monday, September 12, 2011

What a summer it was

OK, I’ve taken the summer off from writing and what a summer it was.


Lighthouse at Lime Kiln
 We visited San Juan Island (a two hour boatride) for the first time, in pursuit of whales. If Orca whales are in your blood, San Juan Island would be the place to live. Many have gone before you. When we saw orcas this summer, first from the deck of a commercial cruise boat and then again from our kayak, we realized that you don’t have to be particularly good at spotting orcas, just look in the direction of the fleet of whale watching boats that are tracking them from dawn to dusk. Being on a commercial tour boat in the midst of a pack of similar boats did not dampen the thrill of hearing the whales breathe and snort, and watching them surface and dive, even occasionally spyhopping—raising their body out of the water to look at what’s ahead. Within seconds of spotting the whales, the captain of our tour boat began to identify the individual whales that we were seeing. A shared body of knowledge has been recorded about each member of each of the three resident pods of Orcas in the San Juan Islands.


The whales, the sea, the mountains
 I liked knowing that we were looking at the K pod, I liked hearing the captain identify individual whales by the pattern of the dorsal fin and saddle patch, and I liked standing in the crowd hushed by the sight of the whales, whispering and exclaiming, the boat listing as we all rushed to one side for the best vantage point. I liked being out on the expansive inland waters that make up the Salish Sea, knowing where we were by looking at the profile of the islands as we passed by, or the Olympic Mountains in the distance. The whales seem undistracted by us, the fleet of gawkers on the surface, as we stayed the legal 200 yards away, keeping pace with them as they swam.

Launching the kayak, Smallpox Bay
A week later, when we spied orcas from our kayak in Haro Strait, I liked knowing that they were headed for the deep water and the surrounding sills where they hunt salmon near Lime Kiln State Park on San Juan Island. I like thinking about the runs of salmon on which the whales feed (salmon that we saw up close weeks later at the fish ladders at Chittenden Locks in Seattle, prehistoric looking fish with prominent hooked noses, wriggling to hold their place against the current, summoning energy to jump up the next run of the 21 steps that will take them from the sea water of Puget Sound to the fresh water of Lake Union).  I liked being in our kayak bobbing close to the rocky shore in the kelp bed, simpatico with the marine forest, simpatico with the water, the sun, the clear air. Two in a kayak, simpatico with each other.


Bagley Lakes

We took full advantage of the string of spectacular days which August gifted us, sunny balmy days tumbling one after another like the weather knew it should be paying us back for our cold July. We shared these prime days with our welcome visitors from Eugene and Lexington. I did manage to squeeze in work on Fridays and alternate Saturdays. With so much natural beauty surrounding us here in Bellingham, we were able to hike along Bagley Lakes high near Mt. Baker, dunk in a crystal clear pool in snow-melt-fed Whatcom Creek at the end of our street, and paddle with our visitor in local Lake Padden. I still made it to work on time. Somebody has to bring home some bacon.

 

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Getting away from the booms



I am not convinced that average American citizens, particularly those with xy chromosomes, have enough common sense to be trusted with fireworks. Supposedly the Prefrontal Cortex area of the brain, which controls judgment, impulse control, management of aggression, self regulation, and social skills has a blossoming period around the age of 12, followed by a period of pruning through adolescence.  By adulthood, the Prefrontal Cortex is up and running.

Then what explains this behavior that we see on July 4th? In our neighborhood, the celebration started several days before the anniversary of our nation's independence, with an increasing crescendo of booms coming from all directions, far and near, some, too near.

I recognize as I write that I am operating out of the limbic system in my brain (source of sex, rage, fear and emotions). Neighbors who are normally responsible and considerate invested hundreds of dollars in devices (many illegal) that explode like mortars, send projectiles of hot embers flying and leave debris all over the street, our yards and our roofs. Yes, they are magical.  But the magic wears thin when the show goes on too long. The Humane Society sends warnings to pet owners.  People with PTSD are left to cope the best they can. Reports of casualties were printed in the newspaper before Monday even arrived. Our friend down the street set her junipers on fire while igniting a legal firework with her young daughters watching. In Washington state, many fireworks are legal. Illegal fireworks are readily available from the reservations, and the city ordinance restricting all of them to the 4th is ignored.

I take all this personally because our dog, Winnie, interprets every boom as a gunshot aimed at her.  Starting on noon on Friday, (after the first explosion) until the temporary quiet next morning, she lay under the bed, glassy eyed and panting.  No amount of coaxing, commanding or comforting changed her mind.  She was too afraid to go outside to pee, and she went almost 48 hours without eating.  When the fireworks all happen on one day, we can cope.  This year, the fireworks season was five days long. (Oops, just heard some more.  Make that six days.)

This year we did what seemed to be the only logical solution: we went camping.  We chose a site in the national forest at the foot of Mt. Baker, alongside the rushing and thus noisy Nooksack River, which was overflowing with the spring snow melt from the mountain.

So, now, returning to the topic of brain function, I will increase my experience of happiness 25% by expressing gratitude.  The effect of the fireworks on Winnie prompted us to go camping, but the fireworks were mostly forgotten once we arrived in the old growth forest.  We parked our (new A-frame popup) camper right next to a gi-normous Douglas fir, and within sight of the milky colored river.  We were treated to a colorful display of wildflowers along the paths and along the riverbanks.  We met other campers who were giving their dogs a respite from the booms. Our friends joined us and we hiked, ate, talked, ate, built fires, slept late, took pictures, and totally enjoyed ourselves.  When we drove up as far as we could on Mt. Baker, we laughed  and cheered as the dogs played maddog in the snow.  Fireworks were forgotten in the majesty of the mountain peaks.

Thank you, fellow Americans, for a memorable 4th of July afterall.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Don't read this

You might not want to read this if you haven’t gotten to fall asleep listening to waves crashing recently. Or if you haven’t camped on the beach front, so you can see the waves as you eat breakfast, and step out your door onto sand each morning. Or if you haven’t spent the last few minutes of daylight on the beach watching the sun burn up the horizon as it dips below the silvery water for the night.


We spent the better part of last week on the Oregon coast, under sunny May skies, appreciated all the more after our cold wet winter. We spent our days exploring places with names like Hobbit Beach, Devil’s Churn and Seal Rock. In the process, we got to spend time around trees like a 500 year old Sitka Spruce and the massive many armed Incense Cedars. And at the Oregon Coast Acquarium in Newport we got to see those pelagic creatures who are hard to get close to: Tufted Puffins, Rhinoceros Auklets, Common Murres, Oystercatchers and Pigeon Guillemots.

Don’t read this if you are still working. You probably scoff at someone who gets to sleep as late as they want to and stay up as late as they feel like, and still gets to take a vacation. Retirement has its hardships. I mean, all that stress of deciding what your life is all about now that you aren’t structuring it around earning money. All those decisions to be made about what to do today. All those fancy, dress-up clothes languishing in one corner of my closet. All those soft comfortable pants getting threadbare from being worn every day.

So last week, we had a lovely vacation to Oregon, part of it visiting our old Kentucky friend Barbara, her partner Hyla and her son Alfonzo in Eugene, and part of it on the lovely peaceful Oregon coast. If you haven’t had the fun of being with old friends, or spending the day looking at wildflowers, I highly recommend it.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Second spring, or whatever happened to Sky and Lynne anyway?


Daffodil fields in Skagit County, Washington

Like many people everywhere, we are impatient for spring to blossom into warmer temperatures and sunny skies. Unlike last year, when both Lynne and I thought we had won the jackpot because of the very balmy winter in Bellingham, we had a certifiable winter this year: more snow, some periods of temperatures in the teens, and more grey skies than one would choose. Yesterday, we had such a beautiful blue day, full of sun, that we put our tomato starts outside to soak up the rays. We also worked outside, sifting dirt.

Living in Kentucky, I never heard of sifting dirt. Nor did I ever expect to live on a glacial moraine. Yet here we are, living in a part of Bellingham called Alabama Hill, a hill high enough to give us our view of shimmering Bellingham Bay, outlined by Lummi Island, Orcas Island and the San Juans. The price we pay for daily mesmerizing sunsets is soil made up of rocks and clay. Isn’t soil this poor illegal? OK, so the glacier left it 10,000 years ago (before the laws were made), scraping the rocks off the surface and carrying them along as it expanded. The glacier created this hill that we live on. That fact makes our yard seem so…prehistoric. That’s kind of how I feel, as I dump buckets of “soil” onto the screen we have set up on two saw horses, and sweep the soil back and forth with my gloved hand, seeking out the rocks that remain. I toss the rocks into a bucket on the side. It fills up distressingly fast. Amazingly, the neighbors a few doors down are willing to take this rock off our hands, as much as we have to give them. We willingly comply, with an exchange of an odd collection of plastic buckets, heavy with rock when we give them to the neighbors, empty and willing to be refilled when they come back.

The transformation of our back yard has been a huge project. We knew that it would be and that explains why we waited almost two years to start. The interior of our house is very habitable now, as the result of Lynne’s continuous efforts. The front yard has flourished, as I have taken an interest in gardening, much easier to do in a climate free of mosquitoes and intense heat. But we kept wavering about the back yard, which was covered, fence to fence, with an 80 foot deck, built 25 years ago. Had we wanted to play shuffleboard in our retirement, the deck would have been ideal. Even ping pong would have worked, if the breeze wouldn’t have lifted the ball over the privacy fence, or over the new roof, or into the Douglas Fir. None of these options were top on our list, so we asked ReStore to deconstruct our deck. We paid them for their efforts, and had the satisfaction of knowing that 50% of the wood was resold, sparing the county dump yet another pile of construction debris.

What was left when the old deck was gone, was a completely barren back yard with a steep slope. The advantage of glacial till and clay, we have learned, is that no weeds will grow on it! That’s kind of like a booby prize. If no weeds will grow on it, what about plants that we want, such as blueberries, apple trees, Marion berries and lilacs? How can we garden out there if we can’t get up and down the slope?


We found the help of a local landscaping company to build two retaining walls for us, and to install some handsome basalt steps to make the slope accessible. Did I mention looking out at an excavator parked under our living room picture window? Did I mention that once they had totally torn up our yard, the weather turned rainy and they couldn’t come back for a week? Did I mention the portable toilet that was in our driveway for the duration?


Our new retaining walls and terrace!



The “hardscaping” is done now. We have beautiful sweeping stone steps and a garden terrace to show off. As of this week we have something else new: a very sharp looking two tiered Timbertek deck, the second tier offering an enhanced view of the bay and the San Juan Islands. This deck (almost done) was built, mostly in the rain, by our 69 year old carpenter, Gerry Hiley, who, if possible, is even more of a perfectionist than Lynne. Between the two of them, this deck should be nominated for some award, or possibly displayed on the pages of Better Homes and Garden. Soon to come: railings with glass panels. Already done: a new fence along the south end of the yard.
Our visitors:  Nora and Julie with Lynne in Seattle

We started our project in March. We hoped to have it finished by mid-April, when we had visitors from Kentucky. Here we are at the beginning of May, and we have hope that this week will see the completion of the deck. Already we have accumulated plants to fill in around the new retaining walls and the new deck. But before that, back to sifting dirt.



Gerry Hiley, our carpenter extraordinaire
Lynne happy!
Winnie gives a smile of approval


Saturday, February 26, 2011

Floating with alligators

A liitle nest of six inch alligator babies makes a cute picture, lined up in the sun, motionless (cute to some, scary to others). The straggly-haired young man renting the kayaks assured us that the alligators would leave us alone. We accepted his reassurance, even laughed at his imitation of manatee mothers giving alligators the evil eye. We signed all the release forms, selected our paddles and donned our life vests. He outlined the suggested routes on the map. Go this way and it’ll take you four hours. Go to the lagoon and you can see the birds. Float here and watch for the manatees coming up for a breath. Then his expression changed.

“ Do not get out of the kayaks,” he said, looking directly in our eyes, “unless you can see clear to the bottom of the river, and you have a sandy beach with no logs or vegetation around.” He delivered this speech with urgency, punctuating the words, like "not" and "clear" and "sandy". Then he repeated it.


Alligator families have some similarities with human families: there’s that coziness of all the cute babies together on the log, there’s the mother lurking nearby in the water, keeping a watchful eye out against predators, many of whom have baby alligator on the menu. But an alligator baby doesn’t want to know that Daddy is coming for a visit, since the largest threat to young alligators are adult alligators.


And…there’s that mouthful of teeth, 80 impressive tools when they open their jaw...the bone crushing jaw that snatches up Great Blue Herons with one gulp. There’s the amazing stillness of reptiles. Alligators warming themselves in the sun look ever so much like discarded tires, the treads appearing in the brush on the side of the river, or submerged in the bed of sea lettuce. And then you follow the tread and notice the eyes, just at the water line, watching you…The legs, ready to propel the alligator. Giving them a wide berth, they don’t usually budge as we glide by, but we do on occasion see them slither into the water.

On our kayak ride we never saw the bottom of the river, as the water of the St. John’s River is colored by tannin which turns the water a dark brown. Nor did we ever see a sandy beach clear of vegetation, which did leave us scratching our heads about the kayak wrangler’s warning about getting out of the kayak. Both elements appeared when we returned to the beach at the end of our paddle. Ever enthusiastic, he emerged from his hut just in time to inquire about our trip and help us beach the boats.

The presence of alligators served to make our gentle paddle ever more a better story. The Sandhill Cranes, the Red Shouldered Hawks, the Little Blue Herons, the Yellow-bellied Sliders, the promise of manatees, the cypress trees, the knees of the cypress trees, the Spanish moss, time with old friends, and at the end of the day, the setting sun, all contributed to the richness of our adventure at Blue Spring State Park in Orange City, Florida. A welcome respite from the winter of 2011.