Self Control; Control of Self

Every day presents a new crossroads, new decisions to be made, new options to be considered.  Every day I have the opportunity to make my life different from the life I had the day before.  Every day that I choose to remain the same, I affirm my prior decisions.  Every time I make a different choice, I affirm my creativity.  The possibilities are infinite, the time is limited, and I must choose wisely.

Prologue

I cannot go on avoiding some of the unpleasant perceptions of my childhood.  I refer to them as “perceptions” to allow forgiveness to those involved on the chance that my childish self erred.  Since those perceptions permeate and distort my perceptions in my adulthood, and since I will soon be sixty years old, I must stop to deconstruct those perceptions and clear the path for the next twenty years or so.  To that end, the anecdotes begin with The Time She Laughed at My Book.

            I don’t actually remember when I began writing, but I think it must have been shortly after I learned to read fluently.  I was about five when I could pick up a children’s book and clearly see the movie in my head, even when I read without moving my lips.  My earliest memories involve books, reading, and storytelling, just like those of millions of other biblio- and logophiles.  I had plenty of time to read because I was often ill with asthma, bronchitis, allergies, and whatever childhood disease of the month was floating through the late 1950’s.  I remember reading under the blankets with a flashlight, only to have both the flashlight and the book confiscated by a frustrated parent.  I remember lying in the darkness of my bed retelling the stories to siblings who shared the bedroom but did not yet read.  I exceeded the maximum number of books every week when I went to the library check out desk, but continued to try to take home more than just five volumes.

I especially remember the two weeks when I was seven lying in a darkened room while measles took its turn in my spindly body.  I was desperately bored and wanted to read while confined to the cave of a bedroom off the kitchen.  “If you read when you have red measles, you will go blind.”  As I couldn’t think of anything worse, I gave up the blue cloth-bound copy of An Illustrated Book of Children’s Literature that I had tucked between the twin bed and the wall.  I entertained myself instead by making up my own stories.

            Like all the other eight-year-old girls I knew then and many of the eight-year-old girls I’ve met subsequently, I was crazy about horses.  I read every book that mentioned horses, both fiction and nonfiction, that could be found on the shelves of first the classroom and then the school library.  I don’t remember if National Velvet first entered my world as a book or as a film, but either way I whipped my imaginary Pie over every jump and along every backstretch of the Grand National whenever I was outdoors.  I sometimes rode in the house while watching television (Walt Disney Presents had some great horse stories back then) or when I was so inspired by the words on the page that I was no longer able to be still.

            My book began, “’Sal, Sal!  Come in for supper now!’  Mrs. Masson called from the open screen door.”  I had spent hours at my parents’ little black manual Royal typewriter. I remember typing every word laboriously, frustrated that my fingers didn’t know their way around the keyboard fast enough to keep up with the images in my head.  I knew I was writing a book, and to that end, I used carbon paper to capture a second copy for my future readers.  It took forever.  In fact, Sal’s family name became Masson instead of Mason because of an early typographical error. Erasing both the original manuscript and the carbon copy would create a mess, and I had already started over once.  Books didn’t have mistakes in them.  I didn’t know about double-spacing, but I did know about indenting and proper punctuation, including in dialogue, and I knew that each paragraph had to tell its own little story.  We hadn’t mastered those mechanics in school; I knew them because I had seen the pattern repeated dozens and dozens of times in books.  Since all the different authors used the same patterns, I knew that to be an author, too I must use them.

            I distinctly remember walking into the kitchen with its clear birch cabinets and trendy turquoise oven and cook top and handing the first chapter of my book, all three pages, to my mother to read.  I have no recollection of what she said after she stopped laughing, nor do I know why she laughed.  As an adult, I have played through that particular perception repeatedly, inserting my mature knowledge into the situation: she was delighted; she didn’t know how painful ill-timed laughter could be; she was caught off-guard by this precocious skinny child with asthma and couldn’t help herself; she was mocking.  My perception at the time, and to this day, is the last.  From that time on, I only shared my work on demand.  I don’t recall writing any more stories after that except for those required for school assignments, although I might have.  I wrote funny poetry later on, things that were intended to rouse laughter, including a self-published collection of silly rhymes based on our fifth grade study of A Child’s Garden of Verses.  The collection was called, “A Birdseye View of Vegetables.”

A mushroom is really a kind of a fungus

A fact you know doubt have been told,

However, I’ve found there are many among us

Who think it’s a kind of a mold.

But I’m glad they are called what they are

Because of a dish that some people make,

For it’s nicer to say, “On your meat you have mushroom sauce,”

Than, “Hey, you have mold on your steak!”

There were some about broccoli, peas, and one about asparagus that was already self-censored because I wanted to write about how it made your pee smell, but I didn’t dare.

            I wrote a few short stories between marriages (there were three), and

I began writing again in earnest during my third husband’s premature and drawn-out death by cancer.  During that hellish time, I wrote what would later be referred to as a blog, a series of nightly email messages to a list of dozens who forwarded it around the world.  For a while I filled journal after journal with observations that reek of grief, self-pity, and booze.  I have gone through periodic dry spells when I am either struck wordless by depression or else too undisciplined to get to work on time, let alone something as demanding as writing.

            These last several weeks, however, as I begin to comprehend that I’m on the last leg of my steeplechase, and as I grieve the slow leave-taking of the witty father I love, and as I read the wonderful words of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, I know that it is time for me to write.  It has always been time for me to write.  This time there is a book, and this time people will laugh when I want them to laugh.  My writing will be faithful to all of my perceptions, mundane, triumphant, and tragic, because they are the only truth I know.

            

Teeth

The 20-Teens at 60(copyright 2012):  Teeth

            I am really getting worried about my teeth.  I had great teeth as a kid:  gleaming, straight and with no cavities. My parents were young and dental insurance was hard to come by, so dental care consisted of twice daily brushing, not eating candy, and regular visits from the Tooth Fairy.  When I was about six, I remember going to the dentist to have my upper baby teeth pulled because the next set had taken its position at full attention behind them.  I don’t remember much about that episode other than it was really scary, really painful, and cost my parents a large amount of their meager income.

Since then I have been haunted by nightmares of losing my teeth, and as I became an adult, those dreadful dreams were set in increasingly humiliating locales.  As a new teacher, I not only dreamt every August of being unclothed behind the podium, (aka “The Teacher’s Nightmare”), but in it my teeth waggled insecurely in their sockets. Facing a class of grinning second graders could send me home with a panic attack, so instead I taught high school.  In my slumbers, I’d be giving some profound presentation at an international conference when I would be reduced to mumbling and forced to send my fingers into my mouth to retrieve yet another lost bicuspid.  When I could finally afford excellent dental insurance, I used it regularly to prevent the possibility of either a repeat of the extraction or the manifestation of the night terrors.

Like millions of others in this wonderful, inequitable, yet equal nation of ours, I find myself in my sixties after decades in the workforce without the funds or the insurance (pension plans dropped coverage decades ago) to take care of my teeth when I most need the care.  Years of enthusiastic brushing led to weakened enamel (who knew?).  Old fillings are giving way, requiring root canals and crowns.  My smile is still bright and sincere, but now I am awakened by dreams of tooth loss that are too close to reality to be ignored.  Every person I see during my daily adventures who lacks any piece of the complete dental mosaic inspires me to bite down gently and inhale through my teeth to make sure they are all still there.  Any hint of dental pain sends me to debating the pros and cons of tooth loss versus financial disaster.

So what is to be done?  I ask this on both a micro- and a macro- level:  what can be done to help aging Americans in today’s unexpected circumstances to keep their teeth as long as possible? Medicare won’t cover routine dental care but will pay if a botched extraction results in infection.  It will cover dental care if the lack of dental care prevents treatment of an unrelated severe condition (like___???).  In other words, Medicare won’t pay for prevention, but it’ll cover the things that are about to kill you.  Some friends and family have gone to Mexico for their dental work, but many of us who worked so hard and have lost so much in The Great Recession will simply eat softer food.  I wonder if there is any chance we can get care from Bernie Madoff’s prison dentist?

I will continue to be grateful for the affordable (just) dental plan that sends me to a smudgy office in a nearby strip mall.  If it comes down to saving a tooth or making a house payment, however, I may have to really ponder.  My smile has helped me to teach, to learn, to love, and to face life’s tragedies; it only makes sense to continue to take care of my best feature first.  And while it is true that one cannot live in a grin, you sure as heck can’t chew with a house.  In the meantime, I’ll continue to brush (and floss), not eat candy, and hope that our national medical and dental care dilemmas can be resolved before The Tooth Fairy starts visiting again.

More on Homelessness

As a few of you know, I took in a homeless individual whom I had known for almost 30 years.  During the seven months he was here, I learned a great deal about homeless culture (he had been on and off the streets for the last 10 years California, Idaho, and Hawaii).  He spent some time with many of the local waterfront homeless and shared their stories with me.  The culture is fascinating and is far more complex than simply folks who are down on their luck.  

I spent days at shelters for homeless individuals talking to directors and to the clients.  "Do-gooders," "churchies," "Junior Leaguers," or "charity ladies" were mocked unless they were in attendance day in and day out, cleaned up puke, and personally handed out the food.  Shelters take families first, then single individuals; shelters are exclusively faith-based as per the political preference for such facilities, and as such have requirements like the ones previously cited.  Homeless individuals who are disabled refer to their monthly support checks as their "crazy money," i.e., funding because of their diagnosed mental illness.  All of the mentally ill with whom my friend and I had contact self-medicated with non-prescribed substances.  Those who do not qualify for crazy money or Social Security (all who were eligible drew their SS at 62), were designated as panhandlers.  There is a strict hierarchy for preferred sleeping areas.  I will not share in this forum how they disposed of their waste (dumpster diving is not recommended unless it's a restaurant dumpster.  Do not open boxes you find in other dumpsters). 

Homeless individuals create small cohorts for protection and sustenance, each group consisting of crazy money recipients, recyclers, panhandlers, and ideally someone willing to turn tricks, and a SS recipient.  This provides a regular source of income for the group until about the third week of every month.  At that point, depending on their individual needs, they may turn to soup kitchens and church meals.  My friend was a lifelong vegetarian (whodathunk) and was forced from time to time to eat ground beef, pork, chicken, or turkey as part of the food provided.  It upset him, but his choice was violating his beliefs or suffering malnutrition and starvation.  

Burglary was restricted to checking for unlocked doors and open windows, so-called "crimes of convenience."  Since the entire community numbs the pain with their individual substance of choice, the idea of planning anything other than who would be panhandling for the day was out of the question.  Whenever possible, shoplifting was done by all members of the group, even those who had once been middle class homeowners, business owners, and family men, like my friend.  The attitude was, "They shoulda taken better precautions."

Homeless cohorts will do their best to protect the weakest in the group, but my friend, the oldest at 68, was often left to be beaten and robbed of his money by other younger or better armed groups.  Protection was best guaranteed by providing alcohol (or drugs if one had access) to the group when money was available, but sometimes the memories were short.  Women must have a male protector even if they are lesbians as the violence ignores sexuality.  

Rehab programs are referred to as "spin dries," and are, according to my friend, completely ineffectual.  Attendance at AA and NA meetings, whether court-ordered, shelter-ordered, or family-ordered, usually end with a shared 40 (40 ounce beer) on the way home from the meeting (at least the meetings on Tennessee Street).  There are several conveniently located liquor stores on the way back to the waterfront.

Being cold is treated by passing out.  Doesn't take but one pint of Takxa (sp?) vodka ($1.95) to put you under if you've been drinking beer or smoking week all day.  It apparently gets one through the coldest part of the night, and then it's time to go recycling, checking doors, parking lots like the Bay Terrace, hitting up restaurant dumpsters for food or wine, etc. until dawn.  After dawn, the job in most cities, if you're not a panhandler, is to keep moving so you don't get cited for vagrancy.  Here in Vallejo, that isn't a problem.  

Sometimes, if things have been really bad for a while, an individual may choose to get arrested to provide her/himself with the proverbial "three hots and a cot."  If one is lucky and chronic drunkenness or drug use is determined, one is sent to "spin dry" where health can be somewhat restored and one can contact family if one chooses. 

This is just a synopsis of the pages of notes I have taken from personal observance and first-hand narrative.  It is a much bigger problem than creating a tent city.  The LA experiment was well-intended, but created even greater problems.  We are (thank god) not LA or SF or any other metropolis, but our issues are proportionally as big.  

I mean no disrespect to those who dedicate time to helping the homeless, and I know that for at least a few days of the month, their help is greatly appreciated by the members of the targeted community.  But the bottom line is:  something must be done.  Current interventions do not work.  Is this a law enforcement issue?  Is this a human rights issue?  Is this a morality issue?  Is this a substance abuse issue?  I think it can be agreed that on some level or another it is at least a public health and quite possibly a public safety issue.  The question is:  what next?

June 17, 2012

The cannons thundered from the waterfront less than a block away.  The dog looked up in concern, turning to her for reassurance that all was still well.  The haze over the bay had been lingering for days now, and the endless and repetitive song of a nearby mockingbird was becoming part of the ambient sound scape.  Occasionally the recently-fledged peregrine falcons would fly over, crying out like the sophomores they were to hunting.  All four hens in the garden continued their scratching and pecking as though the small squadron above were hummingbirds in the jasmine.  Apparently, the falcons were as harmless as the cannon fire.  It was Pirate Festival weekend, and sun burnt buccaneers were swarming the ferry terminal staging swordfights, walking planks, and groping their buxom wenches.  Traditionally, there was a great consumption of ale as well.

            She had a small desire to join the festivities, but felt obligated to do at least fifteen minutes or one page of writing in order to keep her recent vow to become a writer.  She changed the formatting on the word processing program to “double space,” but it made little difference.  “Anne Lamott I am not,” she wrote,

“Nor ever shall it be so.  I am instead an empty head,” and she ran out of thought.  It rhymed with “Lamott,” but she needed a rhyme for “be so,” so she gave up.

            She looked out the window.  The river was frequently her muse, as was the mountain, as well as her strangely functional family.  To call them a muse seemed an oxymoron.  Do muses cause such frustration?  Do they hurt your feelings like that?  Which muse is responsible for humiliation and depression?  Is it the same one that provides the sense of humor?  One of them is surely responsible for perseverance, as evidenced by her continual confidence in her ability to be a good wife in the face of the two divorces.  It was this gift of denial that had kept her from stepping off of one of the conveniently located bridges here in the Bay Area.  She was absolutely certain that there was a book, or a play, or a decent poem in her somewhere.  The challenge was to find it and release it without losing control of what it might bring with it.

            While toweling her hair earlier, she had thought about naming her next dog Yorick.  She was amazed that she had remembered that.  Ann Lamott carried around index cards.  She could never find hers.  She wished she had a tape recorder built into her head for conveniently taking down ideas.  They came at her from all directions at all times of the day.  Lately the ideas were bombarding her activities like the cannons bombarding the pirate schooner down the river.  There were no cannonballs, but a whole lot of smoke and noise. 

            She left a message with her therapist; it was time for an appointment.   According to Ann Lamott, this feeling of either impending or encompassing insanity is common among writers.  According to the many authors she read, ugly families were too.  Augustin Burroughs and the Sedaris siblings kind of had the corner on that market.  Besides, at sixty, she still lived in fear of her mother’s fury if any of the family secrets were liberated.  She didn’t want to be hateful, she just wanted to be truthful, but she knew her mother wouldn’t get it.  She also knew that her sister, from whom she hadn’t heard in days, wouldn’t speak to her again.  Another syllogism of her life:  if she told the truth about the relations who rarely spoke to her anyway, she’d never hear from them again.  “Why do I even care?”  She hoped she didn’t have to wait long for the appointment.

            She suddenly realized she had written two full pages.  She could get out of her chair now.  She had accomplished something besides showering, cleaning her desk, and vowing to write.  She had actually written.  How about that.  Did that make her a writer, or like the pirate costumes, would the entity be retired after the weekend?

            

My Relationship with the Sun

            Prior to my skin cancer diagnosis, my relationship with the sun was very laissez faire.  I loved being outdoors, but was never one of those teenaged girls who broiled in baby oil all summer.  I played in the sun as a child, worked in the sun from time to time as an adult, and never considered the sun to be anything other than the provider of beneficent energy.  I only remember one summer, the last one as a classroom teacher, when I spent every day at the beach and developed a really deep tan, believing that tan pudginess was better than white pudginess.  I have no idea what, if anything, the sun considered me to be.

            Now, however, I find myself having to avoid exposure to direct sunlight.  It reminds me of the days when my parents would order me to stay away from certain friends whom I thought were fun and they thought were dangerous. I haven’t yet completely automatized my habits now post-cancer.  I purchased two fabulous floppy hats, and I sometimes forget to wear them.  I have sunscreen that makes my skin feel horrible, so I don’t put it on every day.  Now, six months after the procedure to remove the basal cell invasion, I can hardly see the scar, so I don’t have the visual prompt to cover up.  Besides, seeing the scar involves looking in the mirror and if I’m not going to work, I rarely look in the mirror.

            The sun and I have had to work out a new agreement.  It goes something like this:  the sun continues to rise and set, providing warmth and energy and light, and I am reminded by its presence that I must protect my light olive skin.  I hope that all the people I love will develop a new agreement with those things that give them pleasure but cause them potential harm:  sun, cigarettes, alcohol.  I want to be here, sitting in the shade enjoying the day with those people for many more years, my relationship with the sun not withstanding.