Mending Myself

I love to mend, to repair and fix things.  I tinker with a needle and thread, glue, duct tape and wire, always with a smile on my face. I smile because it feels like I am a conduit for a redemption.  If I am not successful, there is still satisfaction in knowing I tried before I released the item to the trash, or better still recycled any lovely parts to repair the next thing.

Harder to mend myself. I suffer from two kinds of rheumatoid arthritis: ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic  arthritis.  Much of the time I'm feeling a bit broken. I can't move the way I'd like and I have pain that wears me out.

I struggle to find the ways to mend myself.  Too much rest is not good, but over exercising the inflamed areas merely exacerbates the inflammation.  The recommendations for diet and alternative treatments are myriad and often conflicting. One by one, I test the recommendations that make the most sense, that seem possible.  

While mending, I struggle also to remain cheerful and polite to the suggestions that come.  Struggle to remain cheerful within reason, to remain authentic without whining or asking too much of those who offer help.  Struggle to know when to ask for help with the mending. 

I look for new doctors when old ones prove unsatisfactory.  It's a tough to discern which is my dissatisfaction due to the reality of a disease, and what is the doctor not listening. Knowing the difference is a delicate balance. Always I am testing myself, as I try to mend.  My initial perceptions are sometimes clouded by false hope, misinformation, lack of patience, and other human follies. 

Often my perceptions are sometimes spot on.  I love to mend and I want to heal to the extent I can, to use the wisdom and parts of this disease to build something of my life.  There have been limitations, perhaps too many to share.  Some are temporary losses of range of motion, others life-changing, grief-inducing: permanent body changes.

Part of the way to mend myself is to go inward and listen to the teacher there.  It requires silence, self-acceptance and at the same time a modicum of self-discipline.  Just when I want to cosset myself, I need to stretch the fabric of my being taut, to pull the needle through and begin the sewing that will mend me.

Though I may be acting reserved and inward, it is not that I'm sad. I'm happy because I'm working on mending.  It requires all the strength I have.

Unsentimental Poem for Mothers

Advice to Myself
A Poem by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs at the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew in a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls under the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzle
or the doll's tiny shoes, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic.
Go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementoes.
Don't sort the paperclips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience.

Blogger's note:

This lovely poem is not just for those of us who are mothers of human beings, but those of us who mother art, who run businesses, teach school, run for office, write novels, wait tables, nurse the sick, doctor the unfirm, and tend to the myriad responsibilities that accompany our womanhood. 

May you all be blessed with uninsulated, authentic experience.

English Class Blues

The following is a recollection  from my years as an ELL Instructor, the names changed and personalities composited to protect student identities.

A boy who had come to the U.S.A. from Russia once asked me. "What is 'have the blues?'"  

"The blues is to be sad. It is a sad feeling, called 'the blues'"

If there is a sad feeling called the blues, he wanted to know, was there a happy feeling called "the reds"? 

"No, there is not - not in usual speech." I fished for a consolation to his obvious disappointment. "You can say someone is 'in the pink.'" 

"Pink?  This is to be very happy?"

"In the pink can mean either healthy - or happy."

"Then someone is 'in the red' he is very happy - or very, very healthy! I am red!"  He poked the delicate  shoulder of our Ukrainian beauty.  "You are blues, Oleysa!" 

She ignored him, eyes focused on her workbook, the tip of her blonde braid twirled around her drawing pencil.  Typically she said little in class, but her written work was sterling.

Rarely finishing written assignments, Ivan usually worked the room. He felt entitled to admiration, strutting his superiority while tormenting the girls relentlessly.  Olesya rarely rose to the bait.

A sibling's disability, a sick grandmother, left behind in Ukraine - by age eleven, the slight girl had lived lifetimes, her gentle stoicism as compelling as Ivan's mercurial charm. She lived with her aunt and several cousins in a small apartment, twin baby cousins waking her in the night with their crying.

Ivan's American stepfather met the boy's divorcee mother on a worldwide business trip. His instant family moved to a spacious home and American luxury.  Ivan had the advantage but Olesya was his star competitor.

"Red is rich." Ivan pointed to his cheek. "I am right?"

"No," I sighed. "To be in the red, means you owe money."

"I already know red. I know! Okay."

Olesya rolled her eyes. "He don't know nothing."

Ivan snatched her pencil, scribbling red slashes across his notebook, until the lead snapped.

Her eyes welled.

I remembered; the colored pencils were a gift from the left-behind grandmother.

Ivan waited, shoulders cringed around his ears. Beside his notebook lay a battery operated pencil sharpener, just one of the parade of new gadgets Ivan brought to class.

My eyebrows raised with meaningful disapproval, I rapped his desk with my knuckles.

Ivan shoved the pencil sharpener toward Olesya.

For a moment she just stared at the contraption. Then, with slow, delighted precision she sharpened the eight pencils, each tip to a pinpoint, laying them out in a fanned row across her desk. With a pleased grunt, she unscrewed the sharpener, and emptied the shavings onto Ivan's red-slashed notebook.

Ivan stared at the pile of colorful shavings, closed the notebook and slipped it into his backpack.  Crossing his arms over his chest, he announced. "Blue is also opposite of red. Rich. Like my dad. He is blue. My dad is in blue."

"Better to say - your dad is in the black - to be in the black is to be making money. To get rich.  We will be in the black if we sell everything in the store." As I spoke, Olesya laid her pencils in rainbow order in the pencil box.

 Ivan's lips puckered, emitting a rude sputter. "English! It is made up by drunks in the street."

A rare, radiant smile lit Olesya's face. "Ivan got blues. I am so pink!"

Frugality without Fear

So, we're going to the fair tomorrow: The Oregon Country Fair.  The fair's all about nostalgia for Hippie days. So close to Eugene there still are Hippies, growing out of their teens and into adulthood, grown-up enough to dress up in tie-dye, ethnic prints, and henna tattoos.  Flower children 40 years later! Wanting to be a child again is definitely a sign of being grown-up and then some.  Having had enough of being grown up, I find myself wanting to be a child tomorrow.

I have to be frugal, but I don't want to over think it.  I long to wander lustily among all the food stands, which will be sending out delicious odors, certain that some of the delicacies are for me.  I want to feel I can have anything, any time, if I just wish it so, as I blink at things artisans twinkle in my direction.  If I find a Gypsy to read my palm, or if a wizard is offering hot-air balloon rides, I want to tell myself, "Why not?"  

The Land of Oz, or any other wonderland, including a fair, is just an illusion - but no more an illusion than money itself, which is useful, but only if we agree to give it value. Not having money, or the fear of not having it can be paralyzing, especially after a long period of deprivation, loss, or during an all-prevailing recession, where even the well-off seem to tighten their belts.  I don't want to live in fear.

But I want to be wise.

I want to practice frugality without fear, trusting that there is and always will be enough.  As I count out the last of my coins, I want to believe that I've had quite as good a time as those with more left to jingle.  

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft performance

Jewels like Water

Hi Friends,
Underlined is the link to a 30-second video I made featuring some of my jewelry designs.
Jewels like Water
Thank you for following Salt! Light! Tomatoes!
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
~Emily Dickinson
Have a wonderful week.
~Claire

Everyone is Crazy

A friend, having read me a volume of woes, asked, "Do you think I'm crazy?"

I sighed, seeking the right words.

How to answer that question, I still wonder?

Should I be truthful and say, "Yes, today, you are definitely crazy - and in the worst possible way.  I hardly know what to do with what you're saying.  I am a little bit frightened. If I had a straight jacket, I might slip it on you, because every time you swing your arms, I wonder if I had better duck."

Of course, I didn't say that.

"You're just neurotic, like all of us." I said. "You just don't know what to do with these big feelings."

And tomorrow, that very friend who spilled craziness like molten lava, tomorrow may respond to life with cool logic.  Tomorrow the sun could shine and lift the gloom.

Wouldn't doom a friend to doubt his or her sanity, because of a moment's eruption, or even a month of insane Sundays - I could not say one thing with certainty - except that my friend's home was a mess.  As they say, a hot mess.  I know what to do with messy places; clean 'em up!

So, I tidied up the friend's room, mopped the floors, cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, did a couple of loads of laundry, and wondered, would he or she put the clothes away, or would they join the morass on the bedroom floor?

I wondered, how soon would life again strew the tidiness and smudge the floors?  I wondered if what I had to offer was enough for the day?  I wondered if it helped.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" My friend asked, and I didn't know what to say. Maybe I failed my friend in some way by not saying yes - by not saying no.

The world is a very hard place and sometimes, the best answer is not words, but actions.

We're all a little crazy, aren't we?  Some more than others, fall through the cracks in sanity's bumpy sidewalk.  We can only hope to help each other, those of us thick enough to keep going along without getting lost.  Then the fall will not be so far, and the landing will be softer, if not perfect.

This world can and should break our hearts and lead us to desperate acts of kindness, when we aren't sure what to do, but do it anyway.