Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged Booster, Happy New Year, New Home, Photography, selfie on December 30, 2021| 4 Comments »
A Dog Walk in January; My First Outing to a Store in February; Our March Vacation in Hawaii
In April We Begin the Search for a Home; First Time Dining Indoors in May; A Music Video in June
Ada’s Cypress in July; We Fly to LA in August; Another Dog Walk in Historic Nashville for September
October We Find a House; Boosted in November, Thank You Dolly Parton!; Another New Haircut Selfie in December! Happy and Healthy 2022, It’s Getting Better All the Time
Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged Fairy House, Grandparenting, Music, myth on December 27, 2021| 1 Comment »
While Bob was gone fetching the Grands, my ears picked up a new word. Yesterday was Day Three of Grandparenting while my daughter works in her ER that is once again filled with Covid. Her shifts coincide with the Groom’s stretch of 24/7 Medical ICU coverage. Our system is that one of us drives to their house at daybreak, and returns mid-morning with the children and a certain puppy. Then the fun begins. We are committed to not making plans, and eating as much chocolate as we like.
But first, over coffee and the CBS Sunday Morning show, I heard a piece about the John Denver song, “Country Road.” The man who wrote the song was actually from Massachusetts, but he thought West Virginia fit the lyrics better. It starts out “Almost Heaven” and is universally loved because it’s about a longing for home, a kind of homesickness that is tinged with sadness – aka the Welsh word Hiraeth.
“One attempt to describe hiraeth in English says that it is “a longing to be where your spirit lives.” This description makes some sense out of the combination of words that describe this feeling. The place where your spirit feels most at home may be a physical location that you can return to at any time, or it may be more nostalgic of a home, not attached to a place, but a time from the past that you can only return to by revisiting old memories. Maybe your spirits home could even be neither of the above, one from which you are not only separated by space.”
https://www.felinfach.com/blogs/blog/hiraeth
There is no other word for Hiraeth in any language except ancient Cornish and Breton. It seems the Celts have a deep understanding of loss, one that transcends time. My immediate thought was that I’d like to be able to hug people again, to shake hands and maybe even give and get a peck on the cheek. I’d like to not wonder if I’ll need to wear a mask before I walk out the door. I’d like to return to a place where a virus wasn’t ruining running my life!
But just then the kids arrived. Could they check out the snack drawer? Who wants to play Mancala? And I swiftly returned to the present holiday/nana/camp routine. After all, we’d collected some fairy bark, moss and feathers and had to start building a fairy house. We even found a gold shell casing from a gun on our Christmas hike. I smiled when the Pumpkin turned it into a vase for some tiny flowers. He was enthralled with Bob’s Dremel tool as they carved notches into sticks.
The Bride’s hospital had so many nurses call out sick, with Covid, they had to merge the fast track into the main ER. The Groom’s ICU is expected to open another unit soon. When will the waves of illness and death stop? What will the next variant bring? I know which neighbor’s child is not vaccinated. We shake our heads and tell the Grands that some people just don’t believe in science. So we have to hang tight, to stay within our pod, again.
Today is Day Four. I don’t know how our “little doctors” (Ada’s term) do this, putting on their N95s and doing battle with a disease of the mind and body. Every day, without glory this time. No pans are banging on rooftops, no dinners are being delivered, not even on Christmas. Still, I believe we will return home someday and the secret route isn’t in memory. Hiraeth is a harmony of the soul and the spirit. Despite all the construction on our street, I can envision myself in our new/old house. We’ve already picked out the plumbing!
Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged children, Fun, Grandparents!, Magic, myth, Nashville on December 20, 2021| 1 Comment »
While the drum-up to Christmas and a New Year continues, I thought I’d share my thoughts on filling this school vacation with a little fun. Since the Bride always works on Christmas, and a few days after, and the Groom will be busy in the Medical ICU, Bob and I will be on deck with the Grands. We split our time with the other set of Grandparents who are arriving today.
At first I thought, ‘YAY, now that the children are vaccinated, we can go ice skating/movie watching/golf swinging!’ Or maybe even honky-tonking!
But then my better angel prevailed. I discovered an English website entirely devoted to folklore! And activities that include magic and fairies fall right within my wheelhouse! https://folklorethursday.com/childlore/top-10-fun-folklore-activities-children-grown-ups/
With that in mind, and some local lore thrown in, here are my top seven:
So Merry Christmas to All and may your school vacation be filled with Joy and not too many action/adventure/activities this year. It’s best to relax and rest and keep a little of that lockdown mentality intact for everyone.
Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged Catholic Church, Covid, history, Nashville, Plague, Relics, Saints, St Roch on December 17, 2021| 2 Comments »
My Catholic school background leaves me baffled.
Memories come and go, but feelings remain and for me, boredom was predominant. Memorizing prayers and counting bricks in the building across the street filled my days, punctuated by feelings of humiliation. Nuns stood guard over desks with arms folded under their cassocks. They were prepared to smack a ruler behind a girl’s knee for chewing gum, or pull the small hairs at the back of a boy’s head for launching paper airplanes. Once I had to stand in a corner, with my back to the class, for speaking to a boy.
It’s no wonder when the time came to pick out my very own saint’s name for Confirmation, I chose Dolores – Our Lady of Sorrows, patron saint of the suffering.
But this isn’t a story about me… This week Bob, my newly-discovered-retired MD-social butterfly, attended a ceremony outside Germantown’s Catholic Church to dedicate its newly restored steeple. The Assumption Church, built in 1845, was severely damaged during the March 2020 tornado; it lost many stained glass windows and roofs and needed major structural repairs. Since then, every time I drive by the church and the rectory, I’m struck by another glittery new copper gutter or roofline.
Finally the repairs have been completed! Rising many stories above the red brick, Southern Victorian homes of our neighborhood, the steeple was replaced to the sound of cheers and bagpipes. Most surprising to Bob, everybody got down on their knees in the street to pray!
“The steeple exists to point to God to remind us, you know, God is in his heavens. And then really the purpose of a steeple is to support a cross. And the cross now is going back up over Germantown and so that for us is very important.”
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/a-symbol-of-hope-nashville-catholic-church-restores-steeple-after-tornadoes
“Do you know anything about relics?” Bob asked me when he returned.
I tried to look knowledgable. “Sure,” I said. “It’s like a toenail of a saint.” Of course it might be a piece of cloth the saint actually wore too. Then Bob was happy to report that there is a third level of reliquary – something the saint touched!
“Like the bed Washington may have slept in?” I chimed.
It turns out that the cross that was hoisted above the church’s new steeple holds a First Class relic from St Roch! It’s a piece of his bone! Now if that didn’t get my old Catholic juices churning. I’d never heard of this Roch, and so some digging googling was required. Born in Montpelier, France (1348 – 1379), St Roch is the patron Saint of many things, but first and foremost it’s PLAGUES!!!
The story goes that he was born into money, the son of a governor, but set out for Rome as a poor confessor during an epidemic of the Bubonic Plague. Supposedly, he would make the sign of the cross over people suffering and they would miraculously recover. He survived the “Black Death” himself and went into prisons and public hospitals to minister to the sick; Roch was known to casually lift his pants leg up to show his scarred “buboes.” Which is why some of his statues look vaguely naughty…
And even though Roch is also the patron of dogs and Single Men, I refuse to think the worst! Just as we are ready to bid adieu to Covid, Omicron sweeps in during this festive season. Just as our children and Grands are being vaccinated, we are warned of a January surge in cases and deaths. I don’t know about you, but if praying to a piece of bone in a cross up the street might help end this pandemic, I’m all in.
Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged HBO Max, money, Politics, Power, Psychology, Succession on December 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Admittedly I’m late to the party, but once I found I could stream HBO Max, I dove into “Succession!” I’ve never anticipated watching a TV show this much – not even “The Morning Show.”
Succession seems like a modern day “Dynasty,” only taking place in New York instead of Texas. Ruled by Logan, a ruthless Rupert Murdoch type character, it’s about a top 1% media family with power/money issues instead of oil. Bob has no interest in watching, calling it a “melodrama” with disdain. I’m only half way through the first season, but I just had to Tweet a quote last night from Tom to long-lost cousin, Topsider-wearing Greg:
“I’ll show you how to be rich.”
This was after they both ate a sparrow whole at a fancy restaurant. I was pretty surprised when that Tweet started getting hundreds of hits, until I realized that last night was the season finale of the third season. I’m lucky if a few people read any single Tweet of mine.
Since social media has taken the place of a water cooler, Succession has been all over different platforms this morning. An online newspaper actually had a quiz with quotes, and you had to guess if a real Billionaire said them or a fictional Logan Roy family member. Someone on Twitter asked which character you would most identify with on the series. I’m wondering what its popularity is saying about us as a country.
If I’ve had too much breaking news for one day, I used to turn to TCM movies from the Depression era. The actors speak with an upper-crust accent, as if Piccadilly Circus met Times Square. The women are always glamorous and rich, or scheming to get rich. Everybody’s smoking, all the time. The black and white film only serves to accentuate their luxurious lifestyle, jumping in and out of big black limos in white satin gowns.
I can picture the Flapper at that time, her short platinum hair curled into Marcel waves.
In other words, 30s and 40s films were aspirational for the working man who was down on his luck. You could see a movie for a quarter and escape into a make-believe world of wealth and privilege. Goodness would usually win the day; Fred Astaire would marry the girl. So maybe watching Succession now, after almost two years of lockdowns, masks and finally a booster, is helping us feel better about ourselves.
Money isn’t buying the Roys love. In fact, I’m not sure if any of the characters know what love is; of the four Roy adult siblings only “Shiv” (short for Shavaun) is getting married. And even she’s not so sure it’s a good idea. Right now Shiv and Tom’s lawyers are looking over the pre-nup. We can all sit back and say,
“Look what money does, look at that dysfunction, at least our family isn’t that screwed up.”
In my family I was taught you don’t lend money to other family members, you give them a “gift.” If they pay you back that’s fine, but no worries if they don’t. You’re not holding a grudge that way. Great Grandma Ada felt the same way, because she knew firsthand about such things after her divorce. She would tell me how her sister Mary would drive out to NJ for a visit and put a hundred dollar bill or two in her pocket.
Children who grow up expecting a trust fund can become twisted. They expect the helicopter ride out of town, why should they be stuck in traffic? They never have to face any consequences for their actions. I remember an interview with Anderson Cooper, where he said growing up everyone thought he was a wealthy Vanderbilt – when in fact, his mother was terrible with money and they often lived hand to mouth – although, I’m sure that hand had a pretty nice diamond on it.
I’m grateful this weekend’s path of tornadoes passed us by this time. We spent two hours in our somewhat safe place Friday night texting with the Bride. Seeing the devastation in other states is heartbreaking. I remember the wads of pink insulation sprinkled through fences in Nashville, right before Covid hit, the power line poles split in two like pick-up sticks.
“Life is not knights on horseback. It’s a number on a piece of paper. It’s a fight for a knife in the mud.” (One of the Roys)
Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged Dogs, Imagination, Psychology, reality, Religion, Trump on December 10, 2021| 2 Comments »
Did you have an imaginary friend when you were young? I don’t mean Santa or the Tooth Fairy; more like an apparition about your own age to hang out with. I didn’t, my children certainly didn’t, and so far the Grands haven’t mentioned it. Then why do I feel like a good proportion of adults in our country are living with or within a delusion of some sort?
Some believe that Mr T is still president. Some even believe that there is a Democratic cabal of pedophiles running things. Blaming ‘the other’ for the unexplainable isn’t anything new; we burned many witches to death in Salem don’t forget. But thanks to social media, crazy talk can spread like a wildfire today.
“In 2020, QAnon supporters flooded social media with false information about Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter protests and the presidential election, and recruited legions of new believers to their ranks. A December poll by NPR and Ipsos found that 17 percent of Americans believed that the core falsehood of QAnon — that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media” — was true.”
https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html
Okay, 17% doesn’t seem too bad, until you realize that means about 55 MILLION people! This is not counting the rest of the Republican party who may know the BIG LIE isn’t real, but don’t have enough courage to say so… because of money, power, getting primaried or just plain fear of Mr T and his gun-toting followers.
So nearly half of the country is committed to chaos and disinformation, while the other half is busy trying to get T’s staff to honor a Congressional subpoena in order to get to the bottom of the BIG LIE that led to the insurrection on January 6th.
Mark Meadows, Chief of Staff (2020-2021), can write a tell-all book about his time in T’s White House, and also sue the Senate Judiciary Committee after they plan contempt hearings against him? How does that work, first you pretend to comply with the investigation, and then you have a change of heart? I feel like we’re in a hall of mirrors, which way should we turn, what is real and what isn’t?
This morning I asked Bob why the planners of the Jan 6 insurrection aren’t being called “traitors?” Is it too strong a word? Because Charlottesville was just a rehearsal, while storming Congress in January was a well planned and financed Hail Mary. We need to convict these domestic terrorists, these traitors, before we find ourselves in an authoritarian state.
I recently met a married couple, two women. One was a Protestant preacher and the other was an Episcopalian priest, and no we didn’t walk into a bar. We talked on a porch and they told me that their beliefs only differ on one thing – whether the eucharist is actually the body and blood of Christ.
A loving couple with such a fundamental difference between symbols and reality, and who were gently humorous about it, left me with hope for the human race. That one person can hold conflicting beliefs is normal, you can be a practicing Catholic and still believe in a woman’s right to choice.
But can you call yourself an American and still believe that Mr T actually won the election and/or should be the next president? I mean I kinda believed that Bush stole the election from Gore, but I didn’t buy a gun or storm the Capitol.
Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged Gun control, Oxford, School shootings, students, Tornadoes on December 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »
“The big issue is the access to the weapon itself,” a CNN anchor said about the recent Oxford school shooting. It’s been over 20 years of school massacres, and our legislators haven’t figured it out yet? IT”S THE GUNS – and also parents who buy guns for their 15 year old boy.
I feel like I’ve been living in a war zone. Random gunfire sometimes at night, random explosions from demolition down the block that shake the house, and right across the street a crew is stripping the facade off an apartment building with a water problem. Generators buzz in my ear all day, punctuated by large objects dropping into the dumpster outside my living room window.
Add in Covid, and it’s non-stop stress living in the city. Our quiet, cozy cottage won’t be ready until sometime in March, so we just grin and bear it.
But hearing about another Parkland, another Sandy Hook, another Columbine tested my reserve. As an ex-school board member, I finally heard someone explain what happened on the day his parents refused to take their little shooter home. The day he murdered four students. Their child had been drawing violent, bloody images and searching online for ammo, so he was sent to the school’s guidance office!
The Oxford Supervisor, a guy probably making 6 figures, said that there had been NO disciplinary actions involving the shooter, so he never spent a day in detention. So what? Let’s face it, kids draw crazy stuff, but if teachers reported this boy it had to be pretty bad. I trust teachers. Of course, the school wants to avoid liability now, but why didn’t they alert administration then? If a Principal had been called, and not a Counselor, he would have had his bag and locker searched, and then the police would arrive and confiscate the gun.
His parents would have helped him check into the local juvenile facility – and four students would be alive today. Their parents shopping for Christmas presents instead of coffins.
If staying awake, worrying about kids and guns wasn’t enough, last night we had two weather fronts come through Nashville – we were trumpeted to bed with thunder, and the lightening was blinding. Bob got on his iPad and checked the radar, “Oh, this will be over in 10 minutes,” he said. Mind you, he knew I had a dream the night before about a tornado, but so far we were only under a tornado “watch.” Which means the wind and temperature conditions are ready and waiting to start spinning a vortex around you, so activate that amygdala! WATCH OUT.
We are currently puppy sitting the Bride’s Frenchie who looks like Winston Churchill, so let’s call him “W” or “Dub-ya.” He is one brave and chill pooch, who didn’t understand why Ms Bean was pacing and whining. Luckily, W’s snoring eased us into sleep, but when Bean started rambling again around 4 am, combined with wind and thunder, my post-tornado-stress kicked into hard drive?
I quickly went to my safe space.
Nope, I wish. We don’t have a safe space in this city farmhouse flanked by an apartment construction zone with flapping tarps and yellow crime tape strung like party lights.
What I DID do at 4:03 am was gather the pups and head downstairs for some coffee and local TV, and lo and behold, our tornado watch had turned into a “Tornado Warning!” But before you start worrying, don’t cry for me since I’m here to tell the tale. This second storm was moving fast, about 55 MPH, and the warning didn’t include our county. Two adjacent counties had debris flying around, so the cute weather girl in a tight-fitting dress told us to stay vigilant. Because a “warning,” unlike a watch, means they’ve spotted a tornado!
I wish we could calibrate the likelihood of a mass shooting as well as we follow storms to predict tornadoes. If you’re worried about a student searching for ammo, you watch him. And if he starts drawing bloody, violent images, you warn the right people. Better yet, don’t buy metal detectors for our schools and ask our teachers to carry weapons. Pass real gun control legislation. Enough is enough.
Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged abortion, School shootings, SCOTUS on December 4, 2021| 2 Comments »
Before and after our Zoom Pilates on Wednesday, I made the mistake of listening to the SCOTUS discuss Mississippi’s attempt to uphold a ban on abortions at 15 weeks.
At first, I was happy that Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked if this was not, after all, a religious question. “YES” I yelled at poor Bob. Don’t let these Christian conservatives determine the argument; this is not about when life begins – it’s about when certain groups of people believe that life begins. Besides, some Catholics and Jews (and Sikhs and Muslims and Hindus and….. and…..) would answer that question differently. The separation of church and state is fundamental to our democracy.
In reality, this court case is about the government trying to control a woman’s body.
“The right of a woman to choose, the right to control her own body, has been clearly set since Casey and never challenged,” Justice Sotomayor said, referencing the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which affirmed Roe, in response to comments by Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart.
“You want us to reject that line of viability and adopt something different.”
I was impressed. I was hopeful. Then Justice Amy Coney Barrett started to ask questions. And she was wondering if so-called “Safe Haven Laws” wouldn’t suffice for a woman experiencing an unwanted pregnancy.
What exactly was she getting at? It dawned on me that she was referring to a theoretical mother carrying to term, and then just dropping her baby off at the local fire department, like a Door Dash order, no questions asked.
Having both biological and adopted children herself, Barrett spoke as if she had a direct line to God, which she probably thinks she has! Whatever could be the problem with carrying and delivering a baby, only to immediately give it up for adoption? She thinks that would be the easiest choice, which means either she’s been totally indoctrinated by her fundamentalist faith, or perhaps she is exhibiting psychopathic thinking. And she sounds so sweet…
Yes, choosing to have an abortion isn’t easy. And it’s even harder if you happen to be marginalized to begin with – a woman loses the possibility of a child – one she was too young or too poor to raise… or maybe one that was a result of being raped. Or maybe she is carrying a child who would never survive because of genetic abnormalities. But being forced to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth, and then relinquish a child to adoption, let’s just say that’s another kind of hell. It’s a Handmaid kinda hell.
“The trauma doesn’t just affect mothers, either. Researchers have a term for what children who are adopted, even as infants, may suffer from later in life: “relinquishment trauma.” The premise is that babies bond with their mothers in utero and become familiar with their behaviors. When their first caretaker is not the biological mother, they register the difference and the stress of it has lasting effects.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/opinion/adoption-supreme-court-amy-coney-barrett.html
My sister Kay recently told me how hard it was for her to travel to my foster parents’ house during our Year of Living Dangerously, and stay with me for the summer while I got used to my new caretaker/parents. The Flapper slept and cared for my father in the dining room after his brain surgery, He was only 47 when he died. My crib was in Kay’s room, she was just 14 years old at the time. Still, she always told me she loved me and that I was her real baby doll. I can still hear the pain in her voice when she talks about leaving me in Dover, NJ and returning to Scranton.
Did I suffer from relinquishment trauma? Certainly my sister and the Flapper did. And the mother of Bob’s newly discovered niece absolutely felt that loss deeply so many years ago. Her name is also Kay, a woman who has become a friend, who searched for her child (Dicky’s daughter) for years after her conservative, religious parents sent her away to give birth over 50 years ago. She would never forget her daughter.
Maybe I held on too tight to my children. Certainly my early life as a foster child factored into my choice to stay at home and raise them, to give them a sense of belonging. But I also wanted my daughter to feel as if her future was unlimited. She could be free to do anything she wanted! And she is currently working at steering her group into granting paid parental leave for everyone, male and female, doctors and NPs. I’m so dang proud of her.
We won’t know the outcome of the SCOTUS case until next June probably. We have a lot of work to do until then, to fix gerrymandering and the filibuster, to assure the right to vote, to pass gun control laws so that our children and grandchildren won’t have to fear their school rooms. But we are Americans and we can do hard things.
MountainMornings 