My Attempt At College

For some reason my Mother thought it important to send me far away from home. I guess I should question that, but she had to convince my Dad that I would do just fine. I went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Now that is enough Colorado's, isn't it! I had to take remedial courses in the summer before going away in Math. I passed my SATs with the help. I had no idea what I wanted to do but did take Geology because I really like rocks. But at the time my advisor told me that most likely I would like being outside, and they just didn't send females into the field back then. So I change to Art. I should have taken just basics and be happy with that. (I hear dogs howling in the background as I write!) (Not werewolves!)

I arrived at college and remember vaguely being introduced to the school through orientation. Then the beer bust that I went to out in the woods. How I got there I will never know, and I had really never done beer before. But I survived that, and then ended up dating a Beta guy who was very persistent. My Mom had to call the Dean of Women to check up on me and find out if I was actually going to school. I did make some really cool friends who I hung out with on Sunday's, two guys and a couple of girls, and we went to a deli a few blocks away for sandwiches, mine usually liverwurst with mayonnaise, lettuce and wheat bread. Loved it! We would go to the Shove Chapel to hear one of the guys practice on the organ. We would lie on the choir benches below the pipes and bliss out! This I was happy with and not really with the persistent Beta guy. to be continued!

Aging Continued

I could weep and become ever more depressed as I feel my body not being able to adjust to my old active lifestyle. But it is just adjustment. I can still ride my bike, walk a bit, ski some, go up and down stairs, and keep my mind active with books, cross word puzzles, laughter, and research.I test myself at times and try to remember what I had eaten, and I keep a journal. I remove weeds but I have to stoop to do that as a knee doesn't want me to kneel quite yet. i found a Towhee nest the other day at the base of my poppies. There was one last year. The fledglings are almost ready to fly by the time we get back, thank goodness, as the cat likes stalking little squeaky things.

To age is to make it to the top of the life hill and start descending down the other side. It is to be told when you go in for a physical check up, 'oh you don't have to do that test anymore'. I get it, it won't matter and we won't fix it! I still monitor all those things in my mind as I don't want to go out debilitated and in pain! So what would I do? Deal with it. Since we have lived where we live, at least three people have taken the life force into their own hands and ended it. One swam out into the Bay until she could no longer swim and then washed up on shore. Another rowed out into the Bay and disappeared. And another shot herself in her car near the same Bay. I think my Dad just starved himself. He wanted one of us to bring him a gun and we wouldn't. So he stopped eating. He wanted to go but his life force wasn't ready so he had to take his own measures. In those last months we connected. I heard a lot of things he wanted to remember. Even though I was a woman, he could talk to me. He had an old fashioned opinion that women should be in the home, and that was all they were good for, homemaking! But maybe he found out finally that that wasn't so! So could I take my life force and remove it? I don't know.

One wants to age with some sort of dignity. If my mind goes, I won't know if I am dignified or not, and won't care. Others will have to deal with me and that is a hard thought. But as long as I can get up in the AM, shower, and dress and feed myself I will be happy. All the other things will fall into place.

So it is the body failing to do its job that determines your aging pattern. Changes occur. But my dream is that my husband and I can live in our house, take care of each other, and when we can't it will end. No burden to our kids, just happy memories. Going to have to work on this scenario and make sure it happens. A dog is softly breathing behind my chair. I looked and she has a paw over her muzzle. Pretty cute. I am so easy!

The Dog's Life

Aging will be continued! This morning into the fog and fine mist, the dog and I went into the back yard. I like to give the plants some water as the fog helps soak it down into the soil. The dog leaps out of the door enthusiastically unless I open, first the main door and then the screen, very slowly. If I open the door and screen briskly she thinks she must challenge something vile! The back corner of the yard which has wild roses, and a white lilac we brought from our other home 24 years ago, and thimble berry plants and snowberry that came with the lilac. It is home to some kind of troll in the dogs mind. She will go up there smartly if I go, but if not, she has to insinuate herself punctuated with barks and look backs until she can get up into the vicinity of the corner. I think perhaps she has seen a raccoon in my neighbors yard ghosting under their porch and gets bold with that sighting, but the troll has her flummoxed.

We are truly lucky to have a very happy dog. She likes to be with us, and things make her bounce and jump and chase. Of course, we provide lots to be happy about. There is regular food, warm beds, toys to chew on, bones in appropriate places, and sticks in the yard. And she has a sister cat who likes to taunt her into chasing games in the house or out. They both seem to adjust to our winter place and our summer place and it is all just fine. The cat stays inside in the winter home, and she goes outside in the summer home. And it seems to be no big thing getting used to her routines. She checks in with a meow when she comes back in from outside in summer, and she checks in with us at mealtimes in the winter and finds places to sleep, and games to play while awake.

Our dog is a large dog, but fearful of the unknown. A branch rustling can startle her, but if she sees what did the rustle, she stands right up to that. She is cautious with people but likes every dog she meets. If a dog snaps at her, she just steps away and goes on about her business. And then there is the corner of our yard! She is totally fixated on our routines and us as her people and that can be a problem as anything else upsets her. Her Mother was fearful of us as well and we should have known, but we had fallen in love and that was that.

Routine with animals is important. As long as those remain fairly constant, life is good. Having had dogs and cats all my life I find I cannot tolerate what I see as abuse of animals of any kind. They deserve just as much attention and kindness as humans. Oh, thats right, humans abuse themselves and are vicious and cruel forgetting compassion and respect. Humans perhaps have really doomed this planet to it demise. But perhaps the speechless animals can make it right again. Oh Oh, I have mounted the soapbox. And where did that term come from. Soapbox!

If you live with an animal most of your life, and can feel relaxed about their presence, they can feel your every mood. Building trust with an animal calls for attention, softness, kindness, and love. When our dog first was with us as a puppy she would rouse up and give a guttural sound in being surprised if disturbed. As time went on, this changed and we could bump her, or move a limb and she did not respond. We had built trust. Animals have to find out if they can trust you, and then act accordingly. Wouldn't it be nice if humans could do this without having to be armed? It appears it just takes time. Trust and you will feel good. Maybe even happy like our dog. I could get on the soapbox about arms, but I won't. NRA will be proved wrong one of these days. They will start shooting each other because none of us without arms will be left! That ought to get me in trouble. Pacifist! One shot deserves another, and on and on! Pacifist!

The Aging Phenomenom

I just finished a novel, 'Still Alice' concerning an well educated woman, Professor of Linguistics at Harvard who has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer Disease. She is 50. Well, I am into my 70's and can go whew for that! But it was indeed thought provoking. I found myself taking mental notes. I would also feel apprehensive, and then I would wonder about myself and the things that I would forget, the reasons behind my desire to organize my files and make notebooks noting where things are, what accounts we have, etc. Then I read the Obits! There I note that people either die young, below fifty, or they seem to make it into their 80's. Lots of people die from 'battling cancer'. God forbid that should happen now. I wonder if I would be up to the battle. Then I wonder, do these people move around much? The ones who make it into their 80's? We are still driving back and forth on trips that take 2-3 days, and so far we have been aware enough to notice if we think something might happen. But things do happen! Tires come off those big trucks. Things like blocks of wood fall off truck beds. Idiots throw things off bridges. Drunks are out there driving the wrong way on highways. But one thing, we don't drive at night. That narrows some things down. And the roads we travel on seem to be so empty a lot of the time, and they are four lanes. There are two big, well maybe three big city corridors to drive through, and they can be some kind of hell, but we make it by both being alert! Well, we try being alert. One lovely trip going from East to the West, we were in the Salt Lake City corridor, the beginning of it, 8 lanes here, and coming around a long gradual corner there in the road is an large metal shed that would hold bags of ice, but it has just fallen off a trailer into the middle of the middle lanes. If you can believe it, a person with no shirt on is coming out into traffic to do Lord knows what. The truck and trailer are on the right side of the road, and another person is standing looking at the trailer. Oops! The best thing to do is get out of there. We did!

So back to aging, but the above is an example of being alert. If no one else is alert, it could be one big mess. But driving in and around where you live gets to be easy, so you have to make yourself be alert. Driving to the Post Office I prod myself to look around me, watch for others, obey stop signs, lights, and whatever else might be out there. No nonchalance for me anymore. Once driving with my Father who was in his late 70's, he was driving, and managed to merge across six lanes after coming off a ramp on the left, and I swear he did not look at all, just kept merging. I know he didn't look because horns were going off all around us, and when he got to the far right lane so he could go off another ramp, traffic was stopped, he stopped abruptly and the license plate right in front of us was 'Yew Ram'. I almost peed my pants. Another lesson learned.

Missing parts

That should have gone on to say peanut butter, tomato, and mayonnaise sandwiches. I wrote two more paragraphs, and they disappeared. I will have to try and capture the muse once again, but that will happen tomorrow.

Earthquake of 1949

I was 11 years old. My Grandmother and I had gone to downtown Seattle to see a movie. We had gone up to the balcony to watch the movie, as my Grandmother preferred that place over being downstairs. I really can't remember what the movie was, but I know my Grandmother did not want me to tell my Mother what movie we had seen. We were well into the watching when we heard a sound, over and above the movie sound. It was a rumbling and it seemed to come from the back of the screen. Grandma said it sounded like maybe the boiler for the heat was acting up. After a few more moments of this sound we realized the balcony was vibrating. Grandma said it was time to get out. There were not a lot of people in the theatre, so it was easy to get out, no pushing or shoving, and very little panic or frightened talking. We got out on the street, and it seemed sort of dark, and then we both noticed the windows in the buildings around us. They were bowing in and out. Grandma said we had better get out of here, and remember, don't tell your Mother what movie were saw. Walking was weird, sort of like you were tipsy as the street was sort of undulating. My memory is poor from then on, but I imagine we finally walked to where we could get a bus and get back home.

The movie bit, not telling what it was, reminds me of taking my own Mother to Vancouver B.C. to see 'I Am Curious Yellow', and my Mother asking me if I was sure I knew what this movie was about. There was a scene up in a tree where a man and a women were getting very amorous. Once again, there was an astonished comment from my Mother, 'my goodness, how are they managing that?' I am not sure she was impressed.

Ah, the movies. I went and saw Avatar three times and was enthralled. It really hit a cord that twanged with me, and reminded me of my imagination when I was a child playing in the woods, with my next door neighbor, swimming in the Lake, and climbing trees that were twined with ivy that braided so we could swing from tree to tree bellowing like Tarzan, and then running down to the lake and plunging in to swim away into the lily pads to hide. We often skinny dipped, and then snuck up to one or the other house to make peanut butter, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise sandwiches. They tasted so good on a hot summer day. We would sit on the lawn and eat, laughing and telling each other jokes. Then it would be back to the woods or the lake. We could go into the neighbors boathouse and watch the bass swimming languidly under the dock. The light was just right slanting into the boathouse so the the fish seemed like we could reach down and touch them as they swam by. In actuality they probably would have bitten our fingers. We could be food.

Early mornings on the weekend we would meet and munching on something sweet, like a donut or something, we would cruise along the waterfront which was actually front yards down to the water and there would be dew on the grass, but we felt like explorers in new territory. I don't know if anyone saw us and were irritated, but it was a nice time of day.

I wrote a lot more here, but for some reason it did not get saved and it melted out of my brain. But I shall keep trying to find the thread.

My Old Home

While on a visit to the big city to see my youngest who flew down from the cold country up North to have a respite with a shopping spree, on the way back home we went by my old home on the Hill. It was a wet day, rain off and on, and evereything is so green this time of year, and the Rhodies are in full bloom all over, and I was sure the streets were way narrower than I remembered, we drove slowly by the house. I asked if we could stop and I would take pictures of the place for posterity. In front of the house is a triangle that divides a road that goes down hill from the narrow little street in front of the house. The Chestnut trees are huge, but the yard looked smaller, and a rhododendron by the door was enormous also. It is pink and beautiful.

As I stood there looking at the house and imagining the interior, the door opened and a young man with bare feet putting on a shirt stood there, and he said, 'hi'. I pardoned myself and just said I grew up in this house and I was taking pictures of the rhodie. He walked down the stairs, and over the grass in his bare feet, and I thought he must feel the cold. He said, 'hey, I grew up in this house also.' He gave me his name and asked me mine, and then a siamese cat came mewing out towards us. I said we had cats and dogs in this house, and he said, 'well, we are keeping up the tradition'. I told hims some little reminiscent stories, took a couple more pictures, and he said, 'my parents left for Europe, but if you come back down this was again, knock on the door cause I think my parents would like to meet you and here about when you lived here.' I said that I would, and left.

As a small girl, the yard was huge, and the streets wide, and the house huge, and it is now in perspective, but I remember every room in that house. I told the young man that my Dad hated the pigeons that roosted over his bedroom window, and was always at war with them. He said his Dad did the same thing. I just might go back!