white noise

The Dr. sleeps with the radio on – our local NPR affiliate runs the BBC – all night long. White noise for him, by day (via a steady stream of CNN, HLN and the like) and by night, are voices commenting on world affairs.  After all, it is his bread and butter to know what is happening around the globe.  Sometimes in the darkness, I can tell what time it is without looking at the clock by counting the times I’ve heard the stories on repeat – they are on a cycle that runs three times. Those aren’t my favorite nights.  I don’t blame him for my insomnia because as many times as not, the talking heads don’t bother me at all and despite all the yakking, I sleep fairly well.

A few years ago some friends in LA introduced us to genius little white noise machines that they had in each bedroom.  Just cranking those puppies up regardless of whatever else was happening in the house (usually late night recording sessions involving a dozen or so people in and out- so LA for us artsy fartsy types) the cacophony was so masked that sleep was just an instant away.  I was officially addicted.  Once back home I got one of these by Brookstone called Tranquil Moments ® Sound Machine for Sleep that sits on my bedside table.  There are nights when both the radio and the white noise machine are going.  If I’ve been working with words during the day then I need to quiet the voices at night. No more words – no talking…just noise.

If it is too quiet I am distracted by the constant hum of the tinnitus I think I’ve inherited from Billy.  Oh, it could be meds, it could be impending deafness inherited from the Mrs. or it could be insanity…but I can hear it right now throbbing it’s way through the veins and vessels in my head like little subway trains using my ears as tunnels.  The word in Spanish is a perfect onomatopoeia for what it sounds like to me – zumbar: to hum, buzz or whirr.  (When pronounced in Castilian that “z” becomes a “th” sound.)

The subject of white noise came up when Shop Girl’s friends from Spain were visiting.  She has a nice machine in her bedroom and suggested the use of said device for the jet-lagged duo so as to drown out Donny Diva’s squawking for a midnight snack.  They just guffawed at the preposterous notion that you could actually sleep better by piping noise into your ears.  It is all around us whether we notice it or not…on planes, in the malls, in office spaces…almost everywhere.  I love the fact that to muffle certain noises all you have to do is add ALL noise to it.  That IS white noise.

There is another kind of white noise affecting my life these days – snow – drowning out voices in my head telling me what I should be doing.  It’s either been here by the foot or along the lakeshore by the multiple feet or dumping right along the southern edge of the lake, making stretches of the highways impassible or not advisable at best.  It almost seems like I’ve been on vacation with this extended time at home since Christmas.  The Mrs. has survived just fine thanks to the kindness of a good friend from church who stepped in during my absence – doing a grocery run and sorting through a week’s worth of pills.  These people have saved my skin on more than one occasion and I am very grateful.

There have been moments where adding just one more voice of worry to the chorus ringing in my head (“Is she eating enough?,” “Has she remembered to take her pills?,” “Will she try to drive somewhere in this weather?”) has begun to work like a white noise machine.  By adding more things that I can’t do anything about – it’s actually calmed me down and relaxed me in a weird sort of way.  It’s helped me to focus.  I have more energy.  It’s like getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep!

Maybe it is because I’ve turned my nervous energy toward my own basement for once and have donated about a dozen boxes of stuff and thrown away an extra eight bags of garbage in the last two weeks.  I can hardly wait till next week when I get started on a new facet of my winter project. I found a place that will take the twenty-plus boxes of books collecting dust and donates them to schools and libraries around the world.  To think that someone can actually USE all those tomes we bought instead of spending money on groceries during the Dr.’s years of graduate and post-grad work –  really makes me happy.

With each box and bag I carry out of this house – it is like white noise music to my ears.  By Spring, maybe Donny Diva and I will both be sleeping through the night.

a moving day

I’ve been doing a lot of looking over my shoulder these days.  Moving always does that to me.  This one wasn’t my move but one I fully participated in.  The experience always has me thinking back over the 22 some odd moves the Dr. and I have made…some before Best Boy and Shop Girl were around – but most after.

I was about the age Shop Girl is right now when after 5 moves in less than 5 years I got a taste of a big move.  It was time to pack up our things for our overseas adventure in Spain.  Best Boy was two and a few months – Shop Girl a hearty 7 months old when a semi-truck pulled up to the front door to haul away the air freight shipment I had prepared.  Each box had to be weighed, measured, a bill of lading prepared in triplicate, customs paper work and off it went.  That sentence actually took me months to do and seconds to write.  I remember standing behind a screen door with tears running down my face from exhaustion and fear of a new life I knew nothing about – trying to explain to the 2 year old where all his toys had gone.

That was only the beginning.  I know a thing or two about packing.  The next handful of places never lasted more than 4 years and some as short as 3 months.  I could pack for a week or a month or a year at the drop of a hat.  A dozen years after that first trip over the pond, I watched as the things most precious to us were loaded into a 12 foot sea-worthy container headed back to the States with Spain at our backs.

Not one of them has been pretty.  Some I’ve been glad to move on and leave the particular space with a whole hearted “good riddance” – others with fond tears flowing but none without a good bit of trauma.  Everytime your life is dragged out of the dark cupboards and closets, basements and out from under beds it is traumatic.  To touch everything you own and visually and mentally assess it as it gets prepared for its new place is exhausting.

Shop Girl’s experience last week was no different…except maybe adding the stress of adjusting to less sleep than she’s ever had in her life as the mom of a month old baby and continuing to deal with the whack job of a landlord that started this whole mess. It was no wonder that in a brief pause between truck loads, with no one else around but me and Donny Diva – she collapsed into wrenching sobs when she looked at the chaos starting to take shape as a livingroom and she said, “I’m home!”

I knew what she meant.  She gets to start where it took me forty years to get to.  She gets to give Donny Diva a bedroom to call his own.  She won’t be playing Goldilocks like I did for most of my life.

It wasn’t a pretty move – a smooth move – an organized move.  One small U-haul truck, a handful of able bodied friends and family, the sunshine of a Saturday post-blizzard, the job got done…moving all the personal belongings of a new family from one rented space to their own 6 blocks away.  She has a long winter ahead to organize closets and decide where things should best go.

I wish that all this first-hand experience would have taught me to travel lightly through life.  I fear it hasn’t but I also detect a change.  I’m no longer responsible for Best Boy and Shop Girl’s things.  What is left in the basement will get offered then tossed.  They haven’t asked for it in 10 years – they probably don’t care.  But up until now – I didn’t feel like I had the right to throw away their past – the bits and pieces of the places we’ve lived.  We can’t drive by those apartments, tiny houses  and condos, the place where they planted a tree in the yard, point a finger to remember those days so I chose to drag some pieces with us.  I’m not sorry I did…I’m just ready to move on.

If I have learned anything from this last year of sorting through Billy’s life – it is that disorganization leads to waste…I buy another doo-hickey when I can’t find the one I think I have. In my effort to hold on to things that SOMEONE might need SOMETIME – others could be getting benefit from it now if I’d just get it packed into the car and drive to the closest donation drop box.

Oh, and Shop Girl…I’ll drop off your boxed wedding dress tomorrow.

For good visuals of how I’d like to live from now on..check out Shop Girl’s producer/musician friend Evan Slamka’s video with Marjorie Fair’s Empty Room and then be a good Do-Bee and donate a box of junk you keep dragging around.

winter or hell?

Early the other morning as I was driving down to the Mrs.’ place, NPR was my travel companion as is the norm.  A story came on that instantly brought tears to my eyes and I had to really concentrate on staying on the road because I couldn’t see.  It was about summer nights in Spain.

There were a million things that flooded my mind – the first being a popular word play that pokes fun of the two seasons in Spain: invierno (winter) and infierno (hell). Sirocco winds blowing off the Sahara desert during these months would make it feel as if we had moved into a convection oven.

Air conditioning was a luxury that was never part of any of our living situations.  Persianas are plastic or metal horizontal slats mounted outside the windows which could be lowered completely to black out all light or left part way up allowing some airflow. These were lifesavers.  I always loved the polka dot shadows they cast on the walls or the clacking sound they’d make with the slightest breeze.  Especially during these weeks of July, the white noise commentary of the Tour filled dark rooms on suffocating afternoons.  Everyone would move at a snail’s pace so as not to expend unnecessary energy.

It wasn’t until after 8 p.m. that the sun’s arc would be at a tolerable degree in the sky so as to not singe our eyebrows. The persianas would be rolled up letting in any smidgen of breeze.  Little by little the streets came alive.  The darker it got outside – the more people would be on the streets.

Nights that Best Boy and Shop Girl would still be out playing hide-and-go seek or some other foolishness at midnight were the norm.  It was no cause for worry.  It wasn’t dangerous.  No one was going to call Child Protective Services on us.  Half the population of the pueblo was out on the streets soaking in whatever cool the darkness afforded.

Mornings were quiet – given everyone’s love of pushing the envelope on the circadian rhythm thing.  Maybe that pattern really resonated with my ruling planet being the Moon and I got stuck in the cycle. Here so many years later I’d still rather be awake at 2 a.m. and sound asleep till just before noon.

But I don’t live there any more.  Nor do I live in a neighborhood that I’d let my young kids play outside at midnight.  I learned a long time ago that it was wasted energy to pine away for where I’m NOT.  It’s best for me to recognize the good and the bad in each place – see its uniqueness and live in the space that I am physically present in at the time.  Being bi-cultural means embracing the tension.  Easier said than done.

When I was in Spain, I missed the four distinct seasons of the Midwest.  Surviving the rabbit hole winters here in Michigan makes me long for the Mediterranean light.  The acrid smell of scorched earth during the drought month of August in Spain would make me fantasize about standing out in a raging thunderstorm along the shores of Lake Michigan.  And now – one of these nights where a blast of Canadian chill makes for what is referred to as “good sleeping weather” here makes me think of those days when I’d roll around toasting like a corn dog in bed all night long in Madrid.

The best part of experiencing culture is the part that you do when you are viewing it from a distance.  I have journals filled with all the frustration I was really feeling on so many levels during those days – but now all it takes to turn me to mush is to remind me of all the things I took for granted.  So my Catch 22 is winter or hell…hell or winter…or hell, why not winter?  Two more months till Fall.

on death and dying

Within the first few years of our adventures in Spain, my in-laws began an outreach to guys who were HIV positive.  It was the early to mid-1980’s and there wasn’t as much information about the whole subject like there is now.  All I knew was that when my kids went to spend the night at Yaya and Yayo’s – they’d be there with a couple of guys with AIDS.

Those “guys” became family and when the time came for one of them in particular, we took Best Boy and Shop Girl up to the hospital to say good-bye.  The nurses were flabbergasted that we had the kids with us – let alone that we were on the AIDS floor.  They were coming to say farewell to an “uncle”.

Somewhere along in that time frame,  Billy had cancer…so did my sister.  Reeling from all that reality, somewhere, somehow I got my hands on a book that has stuck with me all these years later.  Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying was an early work that brought attention to how we process grief.  The Kübler-Ross model showed how the five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – are normal responses to dealing with the news of terminal illness and catastrophic loss.

The thing that really stuck with me is that people move through these stages on their own time.  You can’t move someone along – you can’t force them to the next step.  Nor do the steps come in perfect sequence.  One day you can be sent backwards for a matter of days or hours and the next instant be further along in the process.

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays…all names flashed before us on Headline News these days.  But my heart weighs heavier with Best Boy’s friend and business partner dealing with the news that he may or may not have 10 more years as he lives with an inoperable brain tumor.

We are all here – really.  We have no guarantees about the next breath. We just don’t know where our individual timeline drops off the page of life as we know it.  I’m entering into the time of year already when I first started blogging thinking I had more time for fun with Billy.  I look at pictures now – taken about a year ago – and think back to how I had no idea that we’d run out of space so quickly.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.”  (Elizabeth Kübler-Ross)

There have been dark days and I’m sure there will be darker yet to come…sometimes I feel like it’s just a tiny flickering candle behind the frame but a little bit of light is still light.

Bittersweet

It started all quite innocently…Shop Girl had come to Indiana with me for a visit with the Mrs.  On our way out of town she wanted to find a little “something something” to celebrate School Boy’s first unofficial Father’s Day.

Since we are all about shopping local – we headed to the downtown’s quaint re-purposed storefronts.  Funny, this one sits just a door or two away from where the 1893 City Directory lists LeClair & McNiece had their grocery store at 8 South Washington.  Obviously, Shop Girl has it coursing through her veins.

Peering down the street to where the Premier Theater used to stand and over my shoulder into the recesses of my memory,  I was transported to a Saturday matinee  in 1971 – having imbibed some magical candy – friends and I entered the fantastical world of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Now on this unseasonably hot day, almost 4 decades later I step inside this virtual Turkish Delight.

Much wiser now, I realize that eye-candy is just as rich if not richer than the stuff I could be melting on my tongue.  We tried to take it all in…perusing and pressing close to the glass cases in search of that special something.

It was the kind of place that had every kind of penny candy – reminding me that I used to tight-fist some of the change Billy would give me for the Sunday School offering…surreptitiously stealing down the alley to a corner store, I could be licking my lips and standing at the car looking innocent enough by the time the rest of the family got there.

Protestant Guilt would have me wondering why I never choked to death on that candy purchased with monies intended for the hand of  missionary Edith Witherspoon somewhere deep in the Congo.  I stole from the Lord’s work.  Karma came ’round as I dug my way through missionary closets and spent countless Sunday mornings with the Children’s Church set.

Shop Girl carefully examined each nook and cranny in search of the perfect token.  None was to be found that would express what she was trying to convey.  But, alas, she realized that “we” (she and baby? she and I?? all three of us perhaps???) needed a “little goodie” for ourselves.

Nothing but the warmed lava cake would do.  Taken back to the fact that I wasn’t shopping for Father’s Day…I missed Billy something awful.

He never was much of a cake or cookie eater.  When he DID eat chocolate cake – it was first sprinkled with salt.  Apple pie wasn’t complete without cheese.  He liked his vanilla ice cream plain and simple – like spoonful by spoonful right out of the freezer.  One of the biggest surprises in hospice was when he asked for chocolate ice cream – a sure sign there was a major shift in the universe happening.

If I had been looking to buy him something in this sweet shoppe – I would have had to ask for the jar of anise candies.  On their first visit to Spain back in 1986 or ’87, he found a hard candy that tickled his fancy.  I remember him taking all the black jelly beans when we were kids.  He loved liquorice.  Did he really  – or was it just that he learned to take what everyone else turned their noses up at?  Liquorice and anise aren’t the same thing – but they fall in that family of distinctive tastes.

In tiny corner stores all over Spain, anise candies come in a variety of sizes and shapes.  He found one he really got enthusiastic about and for the dozen or so years that followed, I would never head Stateside for a visit without a kilo or more in tow – just for him.  He kept a secret stash all these years and every time my kids would walk into his house – they would be presented with a few pieces to put in their pockets before we left.

A few weeks ago, before Shop Girl and I left for LA, some friends were over for a tapas feast.  As I reached my hand in the antique Spanish alacena (breakfront / hutch) to retreive a half a dozen espresso cups, I found where I had been stashing away some of the candies Billy would give me on my weekly visits in the last few years.  I had entirely forgotten that they were there – and it was if an invisible arm extended from behind the glass door had grabbed me by my throat and started strangling me.  I quickly recovered so as not to ruin the evening with my personal drama and set the cup aside.  I decided to leave the candy out where I could see it during the following days – and to eat one every time I felt like it.  I ate the last one the other day.

Life goes on…even when I momentarily choke on the memories.  Billy never made a big deal about days like Father’s Day.  He was hard, in my opinion, to buy for.  So there were more Father’s Days than NOT, that a card was all he got from me.  I want to wallow a bit today.  I don’t want to move on.  There have been lots of days in the last month – with my voice strong and clear – I’ve chirped out, “My Dad passed away last August and I…” without missing a beat.

The sweet side of yesterday’s bitterness was being able to hug my best friend’s dad and to wish him a Happy Father’s Day.  Seeing her – visiting for an hour with her folks and her husband – made Father’s Day for me.  I miss my Daddy.

p.s. Thanks Designer Desserts…it was a trip!

BTW check this place out if you are looking for a place that does the kind of thing you see on Ace of Cakes but for a fraction of the price.

Go Valpo!

runway blues

Hovering above the tarmac in my uncomfortable seat, I can see each crack.  Signage seems easy enough to follow.  Double yellow lane lines have their meaning.  Orange vested people wave their arms to further direct. If I had to walk out of here – I see my first major hurdle would be the mountains just in the distance.

Only a minute or two later, gathered speed lifts me to another vista.  The stables where Shop Girl used to take riding lessons.  Still recognizable – I can trace the roads and turns I’d take to get her there.

Before long, things blur – get tinier and tinier -when they are really getting bigger and bigger.  A different patchwork comes into view.  If my directional sense is intact – I can still identify which roads lead where.

Within another blink of an eye, I can see a larger picture.

I need that today.  If feel like I am staring at the weeds between the cracks of the runway.  I know there is a bigger picture – a greater design…and some altitude would be helpful to see where these roads really end up.

los petrificados

Around the corner from our hotel in Madrid as we stumbled out on another adventure two shorts weeks ago, we were stopped short in our tracks by this amazing human statue.  I wished I could have been there to watch them set up as I can’t imagine how they have the thing put together.  There they were – still as stone…until someone would drop a coin in their coffer and the guy on the right would open his eyes and look right at you.  We stood there in the warm Sunday morning sun watching, amazed and like we’ve done from the beginning – Shop Girl was chosen to be the coin dropper.

“The Petrified Ones” – to petrify : to convert into stone or a stony substance; benumb or paralyze with astonishment, horror, or other strong emotion; to make rigid or inert; harden; deaden; to become petrified.  Theirs was just a great get-up, make-up and sitting really really still for long stretches at a time.  

Over the course of my life, I have been able to observe my creative cycles.  It used to terrify me when I couldn’t think a creative thought much less write something down. As Shop Girl started writing music – I watched the same process and found myself telling her to be patient – it would come back.  It always does.  I haven’t felt like writing.  I’ve been taking in other’s writing.

Being still is not dead time. It is not wasted or worthless. Think of all the observation that human statue was doing.  He was having as much fun as all the people watching him all day long.  

Part of this time away for me was binge reading.  Back on December 13, 2006, I heard a radio interview with an author on the Diane Rehm show that intrigued me. Thank God for the internet and archived shows – I did some investigation and found what I was looking for about a week before we left.  

A used book store around the corner had four of the Adriana Trigiani books I was looking for which I read while we were gone.  Last week I went to the library and found four more.  All those characters are dancing in my head.  I devoured every one of her books in month’s time.  Like a package of Oreos – if you eat the entire thing at one sitting – it’s over.  

It’s been a fun physical and mental vacation.  I’ve had my quiet escape.  In a few hours, the Dr. will board a plane for a 15 hour plus jaunt that will bring him back home.  You know what that means for me if I’ve spent the last two weeks reading while he was gone.  My suitcase is still beside my bed untouched where I dropped it the day we got home.  I have 24 hours to be anything BUT a human statue.  Now someone has to drop a coin in the box – ‘coz I gotta get a move on!

for the birds

You can move from one world to the other in a matter of hours but it often takes longer for the soul to catch up.  I am still incapable of getting to that writing place in my head.  There is too much noise.  I must need to be really really bored to write anything at all.

I went to the funeral for a friend’s mom today.  I didn’t really know her personally but I know her son. My barely seven month old scar of Billy’s funeral was surprisingly tender. The tears flowed easily – the music was familiar.  While I sat there thinking about death, I knew friends were at a doctor’s office hearing the heartbeat of their first baby. Life doesn’t quit.  

I’m pretty much toast for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t mind being back in that park, sitting on that bench just watching the pigeons do their pigeon thing all afternoon long – just like I was doing a week and a day ago.  Another eight days and I’ll be in a different place emotionally…maybe better, maybe worse.  I won’t know till I get there.

I’m trying to remember how it felt watching the traffic zip by while I had nowhere better to be and no greater dilemma than deciding in which café to have our afternoon coffee.  That brain space was very much appreciated.  Right now, I will go downstairs to get my coffee but I might hurt my cat first.  She’s laying at my head and thinks it is bath time.  That incessant licking is going to get her locked in the basement. I’m not very zen right now.

quick turns

My propensity for pre-dawn wanderings is irrespective of time zone.  Just 48 hours ago, I grabbed book 4 of 4 I had taken on the adventure and quietly found my way down to the lobby.  I love being the only one awake in my house and I love being in quiet hotel lobbies with the occasional third shift housekeeping staff to say “hello” to.

I finished the book in those early morning hours of our last day in Madrid. Good thing too.  Arriving back home in the Great North at midnight, you’d think we’d fall into bed and sleep for a day or so to catch up.  But still functioning in hotel mode, we had a quick turn.

A “quick turn” is when a hotel is at capacity and the same number of people checking out is the about the same number of rooms you need ready for check-in a few hours later.  Thus, the staff is stretched and stressed trying to work as fast and efficiently as possible to keep everyone happy.

That was our day yesterday.  I had about 5 hours to stretch out in MY bed – the one that is right on so many levels – before I was up doing two weeks worth of laundry that had to be put back in the Dr.’s suitcase within a few hours before his next departure.  A few appointments, a few trips to restock depleted travel sized toiletries – and by pre-dawn this morning we were back at the airport.

I will probably enjoy this vacation as much now that I am home as I did when I was there.  Pictures will be savored and shared.  I will now begin to engage my brain and get back spending my pre-dawn wanderings with you.  

(1 – (U/c)2)1/2

Einstein – time/space physics-and lots of other things I will never understand.  Oh, and one more…the weird thing is that nothing feels weird.  You step back into a space where you just know things and you don’t know how you know.  Maybe your brain was just hybernating.  On a mini-road trip you see the barrels stacked beside the road.

Here is where you will get things that taste just as they should.

Coca-Cola is sweeter even if you are drinking it beside a busy national highway heavy with truck traffic.  But that is part of what you already know.  The food is home made and it will be good.

And there will always be lentejas (lentil stew).  And you will eat and eat and eat and be happy.

And when a bus of jubilado day-trippers (retirees) spills it’s contents out on the sidewalk – the priority for some is to get today’s lottery tickets before they stand in the line at the bathroom and gossip about Fulana. But I knew that too. “Es para hoy!”