Category: True Stories

Aging Gracefully

What does that phrase even mean?!

Not long ago I celebrated my 69th birthday. Shortly thereafter, a woman with whom I have only slight acquaintance (for reasons that will be totally apparent in just a moment) asked me when I was going to stop coloring my hair, allowing it to grow out to its natural white. Without engaging in the question of why this could possibly be any of her business, I retorted that I’d already covered this territory in a previous blog post, and if she really wanted to know the answer, she could read The Body I Inhabit. Since she never reads my blog, and wouldn’t be about to do so even if she really wanted my answer, I felt pretty certain this reply would shut down her prying. (I was wrong.)

What seemed most laughable, though, was that her question was triggered by the fact that I’d changed my hair color. After twenty years, I’d decided that the shade I’d been using was now too deep a color for my aging complexion. I’d updated it to a lighter shade of the same basic color. This was my first step in a planned transformation that would slowly permit my hair to transition to its genuine pure white. But as I disliked two-tone hair, roots a glaring shade different from the strands, I was going to take this action in phases.

Unfortunately, my evasion didn’t satisfy my officious friend, who lectured that I needed to “age gracefully”.

What does that phrase even mean, I now wondered? Aging is, in Western culture, a pretty despised condition; hence, the reason that I, once a young woman who’d used nothing more than lemon juice and chamomile to brighten my natural dark blonde, became a middle-aged woman who regularly dyed her hair to combat an onslaught of whitening strands. But though I’d originally begun coloring my hair because I felt it was almost expected in our youth-oriented society, the action slowly melded into my choice to do so because I enjoyed what I saw. The hair color that began and then continue to use for twenty years flattered my complexion as my natural shade had never done.

Was it only because my hair color was my most obvious attempt to disguise the rush of oncoming age, though, that this person felt comfortable in hectoring me? Or was it because she, just a few years older than I, had given up hair dye at about the age that I’d just reached? Was she resentful that I had not followed her lead? Did giving up a self-care routine equate with “aging gracefully”?

Shrugging at her comments, I launched into an irritable tirade. (Hey, she started it. If she didn’t want to listen to my remarks, then she shouldn’t have done so.)

“Well, I do facial exercises, too, to reduce the sagging. I whiten my teeth because years of coffee and tea have done their damage. I always used spot corrector on my freckles; now I slather it on my age spots, too. I use a depilatory every week on my facial hair because I don’t think female mustaches are attractive! There’s nothing I can do about my veiny hands, and I draw the line at cosmetic surgery, so I’m stuck with the rest of it. But I do these things because I want to feel comfortable with the image I see in the mirror: an aging woman who acknowledges that she’s no longer young but still enjoys putting some effort into her appearance. And that’s the crux of the matter—I enjoy it. It’s fun. When it becomes more trouble than it’s worth, I’ll quit. But in the meantime, I’ll color, correct, and fight.”

My outburst gained me raised eyebrows and put an end to the discussion. (Would that it had put an end to the relationship, too, but I couldn’t get that lucky.)

As I pointed out in that previous essay, all of my self-care routines are a form of self-love. Caring for my appearance is a healthy form of pride. Every five minutes of facial exercise or tooth whitening gel, each gentle massage of dark spot correcting cream or depilatory, says to me that the body I inhabit, despite onrushing age, is worthy of my attention. I am worthy of my attention.

Never having been, even at my best, any more than moderately attractive, I always put effort into my appearance. Plain I may have been and was, but I saw no reason to be sloppy, as well.

Now, aging, I see no reason to take any less care of my appearance merely because I am growing old. Call it vanity; call it pride; call it just a refusal to acknowledge the inevitable. It doesn’t matter. Eat right, exercise, die anyway… I’ll go down fighting the appearance of age tooth, nail and claw, enjoying every minute of the brawl.

If you’d like to read the original post on this topic, “The Body I Inhabit”, you can find it by scrolling to the Archives, below. It published on August 11, 2021.

Good Ideas!

It is so delightful to see someone scorned now vindicated!

Although they may not actually say the words, everyone loves the feeling of being able to announce, “I told you so!” Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah! I told you so! I was right and you were wrong!

And so it came to pass…

During the Great Recession of the early 2000s, I was working as the head Administrative Assistant for a very large division at the State of Indiana. I felt myself extremely fortunate to have a secure job during that perilous time, counting my blessings regularly. No raise? No problem. I’ve got a salary, and a lot of people right now don’t. We might be asked to take a partial work week? Again, no problem, I told my boss; I’m just happy to have a job.

My co-Admin in the division—we’ll call her Julia–felt the same way. The two of us got along well, working together easily. I appreciated her sense of humor and her willingness to dive in and get the work done, and we shared what others probably considered eccentric viewpoints on many matters. Julia was also one of those women who did not hold back when she had an opinion. People could think what they would of her; she would say what she thought.

So when the Great Recession of 2007 hit and bank bail-outs became the event du jour, well, Julia had an opinion. And “banks too large to fail” rubbed her (well, actually, a lot of us) the wrong way. She began referring to this government intervention as “ginormous” corporate bail-outs. (Ginormous was Julia’s favorite word. It drove me nuts, but she used it constantly. In this particular case, though, it was accurate and appropriate.)

Julia said, and said loudly, to anyone who would listen, that she had a better idea: If you’re going to give money to corporate America, then do it equitably: Give some, a lot, of that money to people. Not just to banks and big corporations; to the little guy in the street, the one hit hardest by recession. The person whose job was hanging by a thread—or gone completely. The mothers who couldn’t pay for childcare so they could get to office. Joe Schmoe who couldn’t afford gas for his car to drive to work. Jane Plain who didn’t have cash for groceries. Let the little people have and spend the money, and get the economy back on track by doing so.

Set up rules, she suggested, and, yes, she had an opinion for those, too. Incarcerated? Nope, you don’t get a cent. So rich you have a hundred tax loopholes? Nope, you’re getting your government funding in a shady manner. On disability, though, yeah; you probably need the cash more than anyone. So do the retirees on their pittance from Social Security; they’d done their bit, working for 40 or 50 years. But, otherwise, government, hand those funds out, but to people. Living entities, not corporations or banks.

I listened to Julia’s ideas, and nodded sagely. I thought she was onto something pretty smart. But I also immediately tapped onto the fact that only a few of us (mostly the underpaid serfs) agreed with her. Others, especially the top echelon types—division heads, supervisors, department managers– found Julia’s idea utterly absurd and absolutely hilarious. “Did you hear Julia’s plan?” one supervisor asked me, grinning broadly. “Yes. Yes, I did,” I answered mildly, my tone indicating nothing. The supervisor then began to expound on the nonsense of Julia’s scheme, while I continued to say nothing, keeping my expression quite neutral.

In the years following the Great Recession and all its bailouts, though, I thought often about Julia’s plan to save the nation. And I recalled it clearly, and with a genuinely wry twist of the lips, when I held in my hand the first of the checks willingly handed out to Jane Plain and all her next of kin during the economic ruin of Covid. Stimulus monies, they called them. Here’s a wad of cash for those of you who can’t leave home and go to work—who don’t have money for groceries—who have “ginormous” medical bills after battling Covid. Here you are, ma’am, sir—cash in hand. Go forth and spend it well and wisely and get our economy back on track.

Even better was the later plan (now so bitterly embattled) for student loan forgiveness. Excavate the little people from mounds of debt, debt incurred so that they could get the education necessary to find a decent job, but which now prevented them from actually living the lives that the decent job promised.

Put money into the hands of those earnest, hard workers who need it most, rather than grease the palm of yet one more shady, overpaid CEO.

Julia, they laughed at you, those bigwigs and VIPs, those key players and stuffed shirts. They mocked your idea, shaking their heads and chuckling.

But you were absolutely right.

Happy Administrative Professionals Day, all you smart, unappreciated people!

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like the essay “Tales of the Office: Jackass Bosses I Survived”. You can locate it by scrolling to the Archives, below. It published on April 27, 2022.

No Excuses

“If anyone causes one of these little ones…to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Matthew 18:6

(Note: This post references sexual abuse cases, which some readers may find disturbing.)

When I read that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had died, I could not deny a momentary response of schadenfreude. “On behalf of all the innocent victims of predatory child abusing priests,” I thought to myself, “I hope there’s a special corner of hell just for you, Joseph Ratzinger.” Then, acknowledging my hubris (… he that is without sin among you…), I admitted my fault with the very words I’d learned long ago as a Roman Catholic child: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

The irony is, of course, that I don’t even believe in hell, or in heaven, at least as I was taught of the two concepts. I do believe that we continue in spirit following the cessation of our physical bodies, and that we are required to review the successes and failures of our lifetime, and how much (or if) we grew in grace and goodness. That review is both our heaven and our hell.

Nevertheless, and while yet acknowledging that my opinionated response bore a karmic burden, I sat in judgement on Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict. Having read the conclusions of the Westphal Spilker Wastl report, I simply could not do otherwise. He knew. At least four times (and almost certainly more) he knew of the horrific abuse perpetrated upon innocent children. He could have acted. But he did nothing. He sheltered the abusers in preference to their victims. He protected the organization at all costs; at the cost of untold human suffering.

I kept flashing back to a discussion with an acquaintance, a very devout member of the Roman Catholic church, who explained to me why the priestly perpetrators of child sexual abuse had not been called to account at the time their crimes were discovered. They had, she pointed out, confessed, and been forgiven.

But what of their victims, I questioned her. What of the damaged, wounded children? She had an answer for that, too. “Back then, we just didn’t know. We didn’t know it would affect them for their whole lives. We thought children just got over stuff,” she remarked casually.

Despite my respect for this woman, I was utterly aghast. I might have further debated the question, but it was clear that any protest I made would be quite useless. She hadn’t merely sipped the Kool-Aid; she had drunk deeply of it. To her way of thinking, it mattered nothing that pastors, bishops, cardinals and popes had failed to report child sexual abuse to the proper criminal authorities, but instead quietly moved the abusers from one post to another. The predators, after all, had only to confess to be forgiven…and their victims ignored, silenced, discredited.

I longed to ask her, “Do you not remember the Roman Catholic concept of mortal sin? We were taught that it was the most terrible of sins; the one that, if a person died bearing that sin upon their soul, consigned them directly to hell. These little children, these innocent victims, were led into what they believed was mortal sin by the very religious figures they trusted! I cannot even grasp the agony of shame and confusion they must have endured. And when they dared to speak up, far from being given reassurance, counseling, comfort for their anguish, they weren’t even believed! They were belittled, silenced–even told that they had brought this upon themselves; that they, not their abusers, were the sinners.”

But I said nothing of this to the excusing woman. She had accepted the Church’s hypocrisy, for to believe otherwise would have shaken her worldview to its core. Older than I, and a devoted member of the Roman Catholic church for far longer than the mere 13 years I had adhered to it, it was much too late for her to change a lifetime of unquestioning acceptance of and obedience to the Church.

But there are, there never were, any excuses for what not just the Roman Catholic church, but many other religious organizations, allowed to happen to thousands of child victims. There is no justification for the cover-ups, the intimidation of witnesses, or the cossetting of sexual predators.

And so, hearing of Benedict’s death (and despite the fact that I, personally, was not one of these victims), I quietly accepted my karmic burden as I wished damnation upon him for the evil he knowingly, willingly, helped perpetuate.

I’m sure there are thousands of victims who did likewise.

Having left my childhood faith decades ago, I have formed and dedicated myself to a strong personal spirituality. Consequently, I acknowledge my fault—my sin, if you will–in playing God by pronouncing judgment upon the soul of Joseph Ratzinger. Therefore I hope, I genuinely pray, that the forgiveness I cannot personally extend to him, or to all the other priestly predators, is somehow waiting for them at the hands of a merciful Deity there on the Other Side.

If anyone recalls my post in response to Dr. Uju Anya (“When the Queen Died”, posted 10/19/22, viewable in the Archives)…guilty as charged! In my own defense, though, and quite unlike Dr. Anya, I acknowledge how judgemental is my condemnation; nor am I speaking of someone who was merely titular head of an organization, but an active participant in perpetuating evil. And, in the final analysis, I, quite unlike the good doctor, pray forgiveness for the evildoers.

Passive Aggressive Peanut Butter Pie

As promised in yesterday’s post, here is my recipe.  Years of making this pie have taught me not to use any generic substitutions for the specified ingredients.  Make this pie to give to YOUR most difficult relative, and when they go nuts over it, refuse to share the recipe!

1                8 oz. Package Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1/2             Heaping Cup Jif Creamy Peanut Butter
1 & 1/2      Cups Powdered Sugar (do not sift)
1                8 oz. Package Cool Whip
1                Keebler Oreo Crumb Crust
1                Small Bottle Hershey Syrup and/or Chocolate Curls

Cream together the cream cheese and peanut butter until smooth.  Slowly add powdered sugar, and 2/3 of the Cool Whip.  Turn into the crumb crust and smooth.  Top with remaining Cool Whip and blend the topping to the edges of the crust.  If you’re feeling fancy, make swirls and patterns in the topping.  Drizzle with Hershey’s Syrup, and/or scatter small chocolate curls or chocolate shot over the top.  Cover (you know this game, right?  You use the plastic press top from the Keebler crust to make a lid for the pie) and chill at least 3 hours or overnight.  Oh, and serve with more Hershey syrup for chocolate lovers to drizzle!  (Grandpa Bob used to like a little peanut butter pie with his chocolate syrup!)

The Joys of Passive Aggression!

I have definitely enjoyed my share of passive-aggressive behavior!

Not long ago I got sucked into a clickbait about windshield notes left on cars parked by people who seriously needed an extra session (or sessions!) of parking practice during driver’s ed. The notes were hilarious. I especially liked the ones which included simple diagrams. I really appreciated the time it must have taken to produce these little gems.

Like many people who avoid conflict at all costs, I understand, even approve, of passive aggression. Leaving an anonymous message when someone has upset me often seems like a really smart choice, especially in today’s violent, mannerless society. So, yes, I’ve left a parking note (or two, or five) on the windshield of various thoughtless asses, and have definitely enjoyed my share of other passive-aggressive behavior.

There was, for instance, the note I left blatantly on the building entry door of the apartments where I resided. I taped the poster-sized missive, written in heavy black felt tip pen, to the glass, where it would be visible to everyone entering or exiting the building:

“To the Couple in Apartment 4B:

WOW! That was some GREAT SEX you had last night!

Thank you for sharing it with all of us!”.

Then there was the harsh winter when the post office put out a warning that, if deep snow was not cleared in front of our condo mailboxes, our mail would not be delivered. Displeased with my Old Curmudgeon of a neighbor*, I considered our condos’ three side-by-side letterboxes before shoveling out my own mailbox and that of my other, inoffensive neighbor. Then, leaving the Curmudgeon’s box still encased in a tall, mail-proof glacier, I dusted off my hands and marched inside to drink hot chocolate.

That wasn’t the first time I’d used snow as a P/A weapon. At another apartment where I’d resided, we had no assigned parking spaces, but each still had our accustomed spots. I’d cleared my usual space after a snowstorm, and even helped my elderly neighbor with her customary spot. But when I returned home from work that evening, I found that my upstairs neighbor (young, strong, healthy, childless, and therefore without excuses), who’d always previously parked in his own place two slots down, had co-opted my beautifully-cleared parking space. Sighing, I took a hit off my asthma inhaler and, wheezing, began to dig through the now-frozen snow to unearth a new parking space. But I carried every shovelful of snow and carefully dumped it right behind his car. I scooped up a few spades’ worth of snow from the lawn, also, and tossed them on his windshield for good measure.

Apartment parking was a bone of contention almost everywhere I’d lived, though. One night I hustled out the door to hurry off for an evening meeting, only to find that I was blocked in by a moron who’d slewed diagonally into the space next to mine. With a vehicle also parked on the other side of my car, there was no room for me to exit. Fortunately, the individual parked to the other side of my car happened to come out. Seeing my dilemma, he not only moved his car to give me space to maneuver, but helped guide me past the diagonal car. However, when I returned home that evening, I was forced to park over a block away, since the only space left was the one made impassable by the moron.

Happily, though, just a few days before this incident, I’d purchased a lipstick which turned out to be a Very Bad Mistake. Now, using that unwanted tube, I carefully wrote in glossy, greasy magenta across his windshield, “LEARN HOW TO PARK, YOU CRETIN!”.

Parking at my condo hasn’t always exactly been a joy, either. Just as the mailboxes are grouped, the driveways of the three condos are diagonally conjoined, emptying out into a single area for entry/exit. Often, careless people pull in, blithely ignoring that each section actually leads to a specific condo. I returned home from the supermarket one afternoon to find an unknown SUV blocking my single-car garage.

Grumbling, I parked my car immediately behind the gas-guzzler and schlepped several shopping bags across the lawn to reach my front door. But when, an hour later, I heard irritated banging on that selfsame front door by the offending driver, I took my time both in answering the door and then slowly putting on my shoes before pretending to search for lost car keys and finally moving my car so that the offender could exit. Playing the dithering old lady, I smiled sweetly the entire time.

But the crowning jewel of my passive aggression probably occurred when a relative texted to ask for a recipe: the peanut butter pie that I have for over a decade brought to Thanksgiving dinner–the same Thanksgiving dinner from which she’d trounced my daughter and her family not once, but twice, due to a situation over which I had no control*. Now, considering her request, I responded calmly that this particular recipe was one that I never shared. No one was getting it until I died, I said.

Then I smiled evilly and sent the recipe to every other person I know.

Ah, the joys of passive aggression.

If you want to know the stories behind the Old Curmudgeon or the Thanksgiving Shunning, check the Archives for “There’s Always One”, 04/20/2020, and “Typhoid Mary, Covid Carrie”, 08/24/2022

A special issue of this blog tomorrow will carry the recipe for my Passive Aggressive Peanut Butter Pie!

Blessing the Hearth

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

The hearth was the center of the home.

A couple of years ago (pre-pandemic, when one still casually opened the front door to an unanticipated knock or ring of the doorbell by a stranger), I was accosted by a salesperson attempting to convince me to sign up for home insect control. Now, I’m not the sort of woman to simply slam the door in the face of some hapless huckster. I know that door-to-door sales work is a thankless job. So I usually allow them to get in a few (very few) words first before saying the obligatory, “I’m really not interested” and firmly shutting my front door.

But I did have a bit of trouble controlling my mirth when this young man gestured to the porch overhang, talking about all the spiderwebs that gathered at rarely-used front doors as family came and went through their attached garages. He pointed directly to the corners where such webs would be expected to lurk.

There were none. I mean NONE. Nope, those corners were free of spiderwebs, wasps nests, cobwebs, or cottonwood drifts from the blooming trees. It sort of put paid to his little demonstration. I grinned only a little as I told him I wasn’t interested and closed my front door on his bewildered face.

The only time I’d had greater enjoyment from a front porch peddler was the spring afternoon near Easter, when I’d opened the door to a proselytizer trying to drum up customers for a local church. He invited me to join with them on Easter Sunday to “celebrate Jesus’ death”. (Yes, he actually said that! I could not make this stuff up.) Now, it’s been a long while since I practiced organized religion, but even in my dim and distant memories of such Easter services lay the notion that we were joining to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. For this particular porch peddler occasion, I did not even attempt to stifle my astounded chuckles. But I digress….

You see, there were no webs or cottonwood or nests, or indeed, any detritus of any sort on my tiny front porch or its rafters because I regularly practice blessing the entryway to my home. Stepping out armed with a broom, I sweep away anything on or above or around my porch and walkway while repeating the words, “Bless this home and all who dwell therein. This home is surrounded, enfolded, protected, and watched over by the Divine. Bless this home and all who enter here.”

Performing this personal ceremony, I feel empowered. With each stroke of the bristles, I claim the protection of the Divinity in which I believe. The exterior of my house is both cleansed and wrapped in a mantle of security; warded and protected; cocooned within a shelter of psychic defense that I create as I move from my front porch to my back patio, sweeping and safeguarding both entryways.

There was a time when such household protection rituals were common, especially when every home was both lit and warmed by a fire. The hearth was the center of the home; the place where family gathered for warmth, and where women worked to cook the meals or to sit nearest the light to sew and weave. To bless the hearth was to bless the home, and was the exclusive province of women. For centuries women, denied the right to be priests or ministers, or to even participate in any meaningful way in many, most, religions–those women were, nonetheless, the hearthkeepers; the ones who genuinely “kept the home fires burning”. Women swept away the ashes and laid the fresh fires upon their hearths and kindled the logs. Women spoke their blessings over the flames, weaving a circle of protection about their homes and loved ones; blessings woven of love and belief, and as sturdy as any cloth upon their looms. They swept their front steps and dooryards, presenting a clear path for all who came and went. They polished the brass of door handles to a shining surface, reflecting the faces of those who visited.

And so, sweeping my own path and entryway and porch roof beams, clearing the ashes from my wood-burning fireplace before laying a fresh fire to be kindled on another cold night, I feel the shades and spirits of those centuries of women who came before me. I am following, not in their footsteps, but in the path of their work worn hands, as I perform the same rituals they once did. Performing these homely rituals, I am translated, shifting from my merely human form to become the daughter of all those who went before me, themselves Daughters of Demeter, goddess of hearth and home; tenderly weaving words of beneficent protection about my dwelling, while envisioning all those I love cocooned within the warmth and undying fire of my love.

This post originally appeared on December 15, 2021. If you enjoyed it, you might also find other essays from that year to your taste. You can locate them in the Archives by scrolling down.

The Crap They Made Me Read!

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

To this day I regret the experience of reading some of those books!

Fifty-odd years after the fact, I’m still bitter over some of the utter garbage they forced me to read in high school. Looking back on the torture of those “classic” books, I wonder how much misogyny, both hidden and overt, I imbibed along with those supposedly-great works, such as Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace. (God know why, but I read a couple more of de Maupassant’s stories later on, probably only because they were included in short story compilations. The man absolutely despised women. His female protagonists were all vain and empty people, devoid of genuine feeling and lacking in character, and all were suitably punished through dreadful events by the end of each story.)
Maupassant and his misogyny aside, among the worst books I suffered through were Moby Dick, The Oxbow Incident, Lord of the Flies, and The Plague. Not to put too fine a face upon the matter, none of this was reading to be recommended for a teenage girl suffering severe clinical depression. I attribute a great deal of my senior year suicidal ideation to having been forced to read The Plague. But I found few redeeming features in any of these novels. It was not just that most of them were stultifying (which they were); they were upsetting, sometimes gross, often disgusting. Despite the fact that I could discern important themes promoted within the stories, they were still not novels I would have chosen to read, and I regret the experience to this day. I’m actually sorry that I can recall a great many passages from those books, because most of what I remember of them is disturbing.patch (4)

The one disquieting book that I recollect with some redeeming grace is Elizabeth Kata’s Be Ready With Bells and Drums (A Patch of Blue), which our 7th grade class was, quite surprisingly and after a great deal of back-and-forth between our teacher, the school principal, and our parents, given to read. Reading it was, however, still distressing; not because the subject, racism, was in any way repellant, but due to the descriptions of physical, verbal and emotional abuse suffered by the main character, Selina. Owing to my personal experience of neglect and abuse, the described situations felt agonizingly familiar. I dared not tell my teacher, my friends—certainly not the other students–that the vivid portrayal of one brouhaha in the book, the screaming quarrels and obscene insults, were all too familiar; were daily occurrences in my own home.
To the disgust of my teacher, Mr. Phillips, I could only repeat inanely that I disliked the book. Disguising my true reasons, I complained that I found the slang speech of the characters irritating. Beyond that, though, I provided only the vaguest and most unsatisfactory reasons for my aversion.
In retrospect, I realize that this one book, of all those I was forced to read, was a genuine classic; a truly important, timely story, one that initiated hard conversations about racism (an unusual and valuable discussion in a 1967 classroom). Sadly, I was just at a very bad point in my adolescence to be reading it.
Rereading the book as an adult, I still found many passages of the book distressing, but was in a better position to handle my reactions.

Still, there is one literature lesson which I remember with pleasure. During my freshman year of high school, our teacher assigned the class to write a long, comprehensive essay on a book of our own choosing, with the caveat that she must approve the book we selected. “None of those trite romances!” she commanded. I smiled. At the time, I was working my way through the entire Pearl S. Buck oeuvre, having begun with Pavilion of Women and continued with The Good Earth. I’d just finished Jane Eyre. I’d twice read Karl Bruckner’s The Day of the Bomb, the heartbreaking account of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. I constantly borrowed from my mother’s huge collection of biographies and historical fiction novels about famous women of history: Nefertiti and Hatshepsut, Empress Josephine, Harriet Tubman, Isabella of Spain, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Katherine Swynford, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Esther, Elizabeth I, Katherine of Aragon, Empress Tzu Hsi, Anne Boleyn, Lady Julian of Norwich, Mary, Queen of Scots… Stories of real women and their formidable effect upon history that were certainly never touched upon either in my history classes or in the “masterworks” (emphasis on master) that I was forced to read.
I no longer remember which of these books my well-read adolescent self selected for my essay; I only recall that I didn’t need to reread it after having it vetted by my teacher. I just wrote my paper and earned my A.
I recall many passages from those biographies and novels, too, and the lessons that I learned from them: primarily, that women have had limited power throughout history, even when they achieved wealth and status, and also that the few female authors whose books were considered classics were still somehow of too little importance to be believed valuable for instructing the young.
I wonder sometimes how my love of reading survived the awful books that I was tortured with in high school. And I’ll never forgive my schools and teachers for the misery I endured in each page.

If this essay appealed to you, you might also enjoy “Hook, Line and Sinker”. You can locate it by scrolling to the Archives, below. It was published on June 19, 2018.

Speaking Truth to Loss

Stop falling back on trite phrases!

When my oldest and most beloved friend died, another friend (far younger than I but astoundingly wise) spoke the most genuine words of condolence that I received. 

“I know how much she meant to you,” my young friend said, “because you talked about her all the time.”

Then she followed up these compassionate words with concrete action. She sent a memorial gift to a charity in my beloved friend’s name, and gifted me a comforting box of tea.

Looking back on her words and gestures now, I realized that only she and just a very few loving friends reached out to provide me authentic remarks or efforts of sympathy.  From most others, even immediate family, I received only customary, trite and uncomfortable reassurances.

But a precious few people made a sincere effort, through words or gestures, to comfort me, and it is their acts that I remember with deep appreciation. One acquaintance forwarded an e-card from my favorite site—which she sent, hilariously, to the wrong person, another of her friends with the same first name (who wondered uneasily if this was perhaps a premonition!)  Confessing this blunder to me, she gave me the first genuine laugh I’d experienced in weeks, and proved the old axiom: It is, truly, the thought that counts.  On another occasion, when I spiraled into meltdown during what was supposed to be a relaxed gathering of friends, one person took tangible action by handing me a tiny shot of a particularly delicious liquor, while the others present hastened to reassure me that it was all right to cry and that I was safe with them. They also reminded me that there was no particular time frame for the resolution of grief.

All too sadly, though, during most of my time of mourning, I received little response except the trite and vacuous phrase, “I’m sorry for your loss.”   And it is that phrase which I’m now suggesting that you, that everyone, stop using.  Stop saying.  Stop repeating.

You may not be able to provide a memorial gift, or flowers for a funeral, or even a box of tea.  You may not be present to hand a weeping person a tissue or a glass of water; you might not be in the room to hold a hand or wrap someone in your arms.  You might even, heaven forfend, send the sympathy card to the wrong person!  But you can speak truth—truth that comforts, truth that heals—to loss.  You can make the effort of saying something genuine and personal.  You can stop hiding behind the conventional.

Speak to the elephant in the room!  Say their name.  “I’m so very sorry you lost (name).”  Say their title: your friend, your spouse, your husband, wife, daughter, son, mother, father, beloved, fiancé, partner, cat, dog, bird, companion, (god forbid) child.

Speak true concern and care: “I’m sorry that you’re grieving.”  “I wish I could take the pain away.” “He wasn’t ‘just a pet’.  He was a member of your family.”

Reassure the bereaved that their loved one is not forgotten: “I have memories, good memories, wonderful, interesting, even funny stories that you may never have heard of your lost one.  When you’re ready to hear them, just ask me. I’ll share those memories.” 

Ask the grieving person what they need to say, and be there, unflinchingly, to listen.  Listen to the painful stories of bedside vigils.  Listen to their anger—anger with the doctors who could not heal their loved one; anger with their loved one for leaving; anger even with God–and do not diminish it with platitudes.  Tell them, and mean it, “Whatever you need to say, I’m here to listen, without judgment.” 

Find the courage to speak an uncomfortable truth without evasion: “I know your relationship wasn’t easy, so I’m not certain what you’re feeling.  But just know that I care.”  “She was sick for a long time, and in so much pain.  If you are feeling relief, that’s normal.  It doesn’t mean you loved her any less.”

And, finally, if you can, take concrete, definable action.  Help.  Bring food and drink, yes—the oldest form of comfort, so that a grieving person not only need not cook, but can feed those who arrive making sympathy visits, or at least might be tempted to eat when eating is impossible.  Sit with young children so a mother or father can try to sleep—or at least lie, sleepless, on their beds. Lend an outfit, or shoes. (When my grandmother died, I, in financial straits, had no decent black shoes to wear to her funeral.  I’ve never forgotten that distress).  Take children shopping for something appropriate to wear.  Clean the house to make it presentable for guests.  Provide a venue or supply food for the wake.   

“I’m sorry for your loss” means no more than that you haven’t either the time or can’t be bothered to make an effort, or that you are too uncomfortable in facing someone’s grief to show genuine concern. But another’s experience of loss is when our own comfort matters least, and when authentic compassion is needed most.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy the essay, “Emails to Dad”, which was published May 4, 2022. You can locate it in the Archives, below.

The Better Answer

I read this modern epistle of 50s-style housewifery in aghast disbelief!

My inconvenient memory sometimes dredges useless debris up from the depths of its deeps, making me ponder ridiculous junk all over again. So the other day, while tidying up my house, I suddenly recalled an article I’d read in a women’s magazine probably three or four decades ago. (Yes, I actually remember this crap. God knows why. The file drawers in my steel trap of a mind hang open and unlocked.)

It was probably picking up my little granddaughter’s toys that triggered the memory. But, in any case, I recalled an article published by a woman, the theme of which was something along the lines of coping when presented with an unexpected diversion from your plans. The writer described the fact that her husband, who genuinely enjoyed spontaneous dinner parties, was in the habit of calling her at her office and announcing, “I just asked the Smiths to dinner tonight. Is that okay?”

The article continued for several paragraphs, describing the writer’s actions to prepare for the sudden invasion of this dinner-expecting couple. She wouldn’t, she explained, rush straight home from work; instead, on the way home, she’d stop at the supermarket to grab a pre-roasted chicken, a bag of apples, packaged salad, and a prefab piecrust (if, she pointed out, she didn’t already have these items on hand in the refrigerator and pantry, in expectation of just such an event). Arriving home, she’d rush into the living room and swiftly grab all their baby’s toys–hence, the likely connection my undisciplined memory made to the long ago article–to corral them in the playpen. One assumes she’d also picked up said baby on her mad dash home; the infant wasn’t further alluded to in her article. She’d make a swift run through the living room to plump cushions, pick up newspapers and remove other detritus; then sling up fresh towels in the bathroom. She’d place the chicken in a warming oven, decant the salad mix into a bowl, and throw together an apple tart with the prefab piecrust–but, she explained, without peeling the apples. (Wow! Way to skimp on effort.)

What I most recall about reading this epistle of 50s-style housewifery is my complete, utter, aghast disbelief.

I was at that time afflicted with neither a marriage, a husband, nor a baby, but I could nevertheless envision SO many better answers to the question of, “I just invited people for dinner tonight. Is that okay?”, the first of which was, “Sure, that’s fine. What are YOU serving them?” Reading further into the article, that remark might have been coupled with, “By the way, it’s your turn to pick up the baby from daycare tonight. Oh, and don’t forget to clean up all your magazines and newspapers scattered around your recliner. By the way, what time is this shindig supposed to happen? It’s been a rough day. I want to get home and take a long, hot bath first.”

Of course, other scathing answers bubbled up in my brain like gas at the surface of a swamp. “What?! I’m getting my hair done tonight. My appointment at the salon is for 6:00 p.m. I don’t suppose I’ll be home until at least 7:30.” Or, “I can’t believe you forgot that your parents are coming for dinner tonight! I can’t stretch the meal I’d planned to feed two more people!” Or perhaps, “My boss just told me I’ll need to work overtime on the big project tonight. So I suppose this depends on whether you think we can get by without my income when I’m fired.”

But, realistically, there were so many other better answers to her husband than either the ones I invented or Mrs. Non-Liberated-Woman’s unbelievable plan of action. In her situation, the first one that would have hit my tongue was, “Why would you even THINK that’s okay?” Then there would have been the straightforward and plain-spoken, “That’s a decision that should be made by both of us. You’ll have to call them back and cancel the invitation.”

Of course, the very best and clearest answer when faced with the question of, “I just invited the Smiths to dinner tonight. Is that okay?” would have been, of course, “NO!”

I’ve wondered, occasionally, over the years, how many spontaneous roast-chicken-and-apple tart dinners the writer produced during the course of her marriage, and how long she and her husband remained married. And my answers to myself are always the same: “Even one would have been too many!” and, “Not very long.”

Enjoyed this? Then you might also like “Twenty-Four Hours Too Late”. You can find it in the Archives, below, dated November 22, 2017.

The Night of the Dragons

It had been a quiet day…

It was 10:00 p.m. on a surprisingly cool mid-July evening, and I was not all right.

The day had been a quiet Sunday, like many another. I’d done housework and run errands, and enjoyed take-out and a video with a friend

My errands had included a trip to the local ATM. Following my usual route, I’d driven up 9th Street in the nearby small town of Beech Grove, passing tiny Don Challis park as I did so. For the umpteenth time, I wondered to myself who Don Challis had been and why the park was named for him, before noting the excellent playground equipment. I should take my little granddaughter there to play, I told myself, as soon as she was well again; she’d been sick with Covid, but was recovering.

But the peace of the waning day had been shattered when my phone began to sound with one text after another: There’s been a mass shooting at Greenwood Mall on County Line Road!

I stared at my phone screen in shocked disbelief. Greenwood, the mall where, as adolescents, I and my friends had spent half our weekends, giggling and racing happily from store to store before refueling ourselves with burgers and cokes at the lunch counter of a dimestore. Greenwood, where my once-teenage daughter had attended driving school before obtaining her license. Greenwood, a mass shooting? It seemed impossible. Specifics of the tragedy were scarce, though, so I resolved not to engage with the news until details were available.

Then my daughter called. After days of recovery, little Morrigan’s fever had risen again. “This isn’t good! Call her pediatrician,” I advised. A few minutes later, my daughter called once more. They were heading to the ER.

I texted some friends and relatives about the situation, telling them that I was headed to the emergency room, and asking them to pray. One, blessedly wise, thought I was too upset to drive there on my own. She hurried to give me a ride to the hospital…the hospital that was on County Line Road. County Line, where Greenwood Mall was also located. We rode in painful silence past a surreal vision of endless strips of bright yellow tape; of police cars, blue and red lights flashing, parked every which way in the otherwise-empty mall lot.

I joined my family in the ER waiting room, and, heedless of her Covid infection, enfolded my three-year-old granddaughter within the circle of my arms. She was burning with fever, yet smiling; demanding to watch cartoons on my Kindle, which, anticipating a long wait at the hospital, I’d grabbed as I left the house. Finally, a nurse came to take the two of them back to the treatment rooms, and I was left alone in the nearly-empty waiting room.

Sitting near the reception desk, I overheard snatches of conversation about the shooting. I don’t need this!, I thought. Moving away, I tried to concentrate on the eBook I’d begun a day earlier. But after reading the same sentence over and over without comprehension, I realized that my usual anodyne, books, wasn’t working. Perhaps if I re-read something familiar… And so I turned to a series of light-hearted, fantasy mystery books which I knew to be rich with compassion and benevolence: Kim Watt’s Beaufort Scales stories. Amusing books of tea-drinking, cake-eating dragons and their human cohorts, rife with pithy, gentle observations on human nature. I settled in with those familiar dragons for what I was certain would be a long wait.

Then I received another text, this time from my daughter as she, too, waited elsewhere in the hospital. There had been a second mass shooting…at Don Challis park in Beech Grove. Don Challis park, which I had just passed earlier that day. The park where I’d admired the playground, vowing to take Morrigan there.

Tears blurred my vision, scalding my cheeks, but I stoically tried to concentrate on my book. One sentence almost shouted out at me from the page: “That was a larger and more difficult thing than people realized, Mortimer thought. Just to be alright.”

I wasn’t all right, I realized. Nothing was all right.

Hours later, my daughter and granddaughter walked out of the treatment rooms, paperwork and prescriptions in hand. Morrigan’s illness was not resurgent Covid, but a severe bladder infection, a treatable ailment caused by dehydration from the fevers of Covid-19.

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At nearly 1:00 in the morning, I sat with the little one in the car as my daughter filled her child’s prescriptions at an all-night pharmacy. Chattering away at me from her car seat, less upset than excited by all that had happened and by being up so late, little Morrigan literally fell asleep mid-sentence, holding my hand. I smiled and gently disengaged my fingers to snap a photo of her exhausted small self.

It was 1:00 in the morning, and tragedy lurked at every corner of my world, but I was all right.

If this essay appealed to you, you might also enjoy “The Miracle on Route 16”. You can locate it by scrolling to the Archives, below. It published on November 4, 2017.

My thanks to Kim Watt for allowing me to quote her delightful dragon, Mortimer.