PAST MUSINGS….NOT NECESSARILY PLEASANT

Nothing like stumbling on an old diary years after you have forgotten it.  I have just done exactly that, and reading my musings from 1991 give me chills.  For context:  I had just had my fourth baby and the first Gulf war was on.  Here’s an excerpt:

January 23 1991

“…I want this war to end.  I want Saddam dead so he can’t come back to haunt us when my three sons are old enough to be drafted.  I want to feel once again that I’ve brought my precious new daughter into a world that is a good place, where she can have a happy life.  I want to be rid of this feeling of dread that horrible events lie ahead….”

January 24

“…The horrible possibilities which could occur during this war are back in the forefront of my imagination.  Chemical bombs. Terrorist attacks.  Nukes.  I’m scared.  I’m definitely in a “sell everything and move to a farm in Vermont” mood these days.

January 26

“….I want my kids to believe in their own goodness, intelligence, beauty and capability so they can charge ahead in life, take on challenges and overcome obstacles.  As they grow I see many fine qualities emerging in each and I’m so proud…..Being a mother is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Now for the bad news:  My children make me so happy and I love them all so much, that I spend many moments shoving down a terrible dread that something will happen to them.  They seem so vulnerable, and the world is full of so many dangers!  Joy can become tragedy in a second’s time. My life has been so blessed in recent years:  a fine husband, money enough for a comfortable life, work opportunities I’ve enjoyed, good friends, a close relationship with my sister, 4 healthy, bright children (including a daughter after 3 sons!).  Sometimes I find myself

waiting for my luck to turn…..”

POPE ENCOUNTER

“Do I curtsy?  Bow?  Genuflect?  Kiss his ring?  Do I call him Eminence, Sir, Lordship, Your Grace?”

I was full of questions, panicking as I stood in a small room in a villa in Rome waiting to meet Pope John Paul II.   I was there as part of a group of American and Italian benefactors to a Vatican educational project at the invitation of our Italian friend Achille Cardinal Silvestrini.  This was a June day in 1995, and at that time the Cardinal was thought to be among the possible successors to John Paul.

The air conditioning in the room was weak, such as it tends to be in Italy.  I was trying to think holy Catholic thoughts while perspiring a bucket and lamenting that my dress was damp, my hair was frizzing and my makeup was evaporating in the heat. 

But then he arrived.  Dressed in white from head to toe, he didn’t look overheated.  He looked like God. As he walked slowly down the receiving line where I was standing, he took a moment to hold each person’s outstretched hands, looking directly into their eyes, as if he was saying a quick silent prayer for each one.  Then he came to me.  I don’t remember if I bowed or kissed his ring; but I introduced myself and expected him to shake my hand and move on. He paused holding my hand, and asked me where I was from.  For a moment I couldn’t remember my name or anything else.  Somehow I answered and then he moved on.

Today, only the photograph I have is a reminder of the heat in the room.  Instead I remember so clearly that moment when his eyes met mine.  I had been touched by a saint.

BIFF’S HILL VALLEY

Is it just me, or does Donald Trump’s view of the world in his speeches and in his ads look a lot like Hill Valley in Back to the Future II?  For those of you who don’t remember, this is the dark, vulgar, neon world owned and run by the not-too-bright jerk millionaire villain Biff Tannen, in which formerly nice neighborhoods are now rundown war zones, littered with trash and inhabited by violent gangs, gunfire, and fear. Trump’s descriptions and ads make America look a lot like this scary, depressing place, and his justification for voters is that they need him to restore law and order.  Cynical, manipulative, and untrue in every way.

As it turns out, my mind is not on another planet;there is actually a connection.  Recently,  the screenwriter of the movie, Bob Gale, admitted that he based this rich mogul Biff Tannen on......no joke.......Donald Trump.

RECONNECTING WITH MY LONG-MISSED COUSIN

I have long known I had a cousin Paul who builds pianos in Europe.  I always thought that was so cool, and have used that fact as a bragging point of interest many times.  I knew very little about him other than this.  Our dads, brothers, weren’t close.  Paul grew up in Maryland and Texas, while I was a Navy brat who moved many times to far reaches of the country. We saw each other only rarely while growing up, then not since over 30 years ago at our grandmother Gertrude’s funeral.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Prague, and my husband and I met Paul for dinner at an out of the way Tibetan café that no tourist would ever find:  Maly Buddha.   It was one of the most memorable and lasting moments of my two weeks vacation in Europe.

Beginning with walking into this darkened café, its décor reminiscent of a Star Wars cantina, I saw my cousin from a distance.  The family connection through resemblance was immediate:  my first words:  “I would recognize you anywhere!”  There were hugs, as true and meaningful as if no time had passed since we last met.  From that first moment, I felt a real connection with his father and my own.  My memories of his father are rare, but fond.  He was the “fun uncle.”  I told Paul my clearest memory was of how cool it was that Uncle Jack had a phone in his Thunderbird in the early 1960’s.  Both our dads are gone now.  My last memory of Jack is his hug when he attended my father’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.  I told him it felt like a last hug from Dad.

My dad was the more serious brother.  The more accomplished one.  But there were issues these men, and their third brother, Tom, dealt with, dysfunctionally, all their lives. Their children, my generation, suffered in varying degrees like pond ripples from a dropped stone.

Dinner, which we allowed him to choose and order for us, was delicious; the tale of his interesting life journey was more than enough for a writer to fill a best seller.  Childhood pain, rooted in our mutual ancestry, was referenced more than once.  Though he provided few details, it was palpable. We shared fond memories of our bold, outspoken grandmother, who was known to drink brandy daily and make off-color jokes.  We laughed.   Clearly, he was the cousin who was closest to her in her waning years near Boston.   

As the evening progressed I came to understand why he found contentment in a workshop far from home.  And, we learned, 50 km from Prague he had traveled to meet us.  He proudly showed us pictures of his seven pianos in progress.  Yes, seven!  He shared about his wife; a Russian pianist.  How did they meet?  When she came to see him about a piano, of course!  “She stayed.”

At the end of our evening, he drove us back to our hotel in his utility van over bumpy cobblestone Prague streets.  As we parted, more meaningful hugs brought me almost to tears. A life mystery: there was love in this reconnection. We talked about meeting again on this side of the ocean or that one.  I hope it happens.

MY NAME IS MARY; I AM A BED-MAKER

When I was growing up, my parents were compulsive about household chores.  Among many of the household work they forced upon their four kids, we cleaned bathrooms, scrubbed floors, pulled weeds in the yard, and even learned how to compound and polish up a car.   We hated it.  However, in looking back over 50 years, I have to give them credit for teaching us the art and importance of keeping house.  Some of that training I carried with me into adulthood, and over time I have learned that it feeds into my psychological stability.

One rule we kids had to comply with daily, was to make our beds every morning before breakfast.  Okay, so it became a habit that stuck with me, and in my adult life I am a compulsive bed-maker.  What that means is, if for some reason I don’t get to the bed first thing in the morning, I make the bed just before getting into it that night.  It is a compulsion, required to lower a slight anxiety itch that plagues me when I see an unmade bed.  For me, the rest of the room can be a disaster of books, clothes and clutter, but if the largest thing in the room is tidy, I can deal.

Recently I had a conversation with a person who has a military background, and we discussed one of the first disciplines new members must do, and do right:  make their bunk immediately, every day.  And then came the most profound (for me) bit of wisdom.  More than the discipline of tidiness, the purpose is psychological:  if in the course of a day, nothing else gets done, no challenge is met, no problem solved, one can look at that bunk and feel a sense of having accomplished something.  Something.  I love this idea!  What's more, there is actually a recently published book out there "Make Your Bed" written by a US Navy Admiral (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgzLzbd-zT4)

I am writing about this now, because all you slouches who leave the bed a mess every morning and get into that mess each night, especially if you suffer from any kind of depression or self-loathing, consider making your bed each morning.  Tuck in those sheets! Shake out and fluff those pillows!  Flatten every wrinkle on the blanket, and smooth that bedspread or quilt!  Smile.  Pat yourself on the back, and go take on the day!

PAINKILLERS OR JUST…….KILLERS?

PRINCE has died, and so have too many others, from overdose of painkillers.  It is termed an epidemic, and that is scary.  My experience with these drugs is minimal, but I do remember the time I needed Vicodin most.  It wasn’t after surgery.  It wasn’t after childbirth.  It wasn’t when I suffered a shoulder injury, or tennis elbow, though in each of those instances my doctors handed me prescriptions for the hard stuff , though I assured them Tylenol has always been sufficient for me.  I have a healthy respect, even fear, of those drugs.  Addiction runs in my family; too many of us have DNA that has made us vulnerable.  Apparently, I am not one of them, because all those pills ended up sitting in my medicine cabinet for years, until long after their expiration date, and then in the trash or down the toilet, to somewhere in the environment. 

The one time Vicodin was appropriate for me was due to an episode of excruciating pain on one side of my lower back.  I called my orthopedist, whom I had seen in the past for other relatively minor problems, including back pain, and couldn’t get a quick appointment.  I couldn’t wait; the pain was so bad I took to Lamaze breathing and exercises from long-ago birthing of four 10-pound babies.  It didn’t help much, but gave me something to do while on the way to the ER and the wait there to see someone.  I begged the ER docs to just give me an injection of some kind (thinking of how astonishing the epidural was in childbirth) but they said, no, that wasn’t called for in this case.  They X-rayed me, and found nothing but some wearing down of cushioning between discs. They gave me Vicodin and told me to rest.  It helped.  A lot.  They prescribed a bottle full.  I went home and slept, and the pain subsided.  I didn’t like the sleepiness, so for the next two days I cut the pills in half. I got better quickly.  Once my head cleared I wondered if my problem had been a kidney stone, because I have heard that is worse than the pain of  labor.  I followed up with my orthopedist, who brushed it off as back pain from growing older (I was 53 at the time, not exactly ancient).

This happened nine years ago. I kept the bottle of painkillers for years after, and took it with me every time I traveled, for fear of that debilitating pain’s return.  Luckily,  I have never experienced it again.  If it ever returned, I would once again take those drugs that are so dangerous. 

However.  I would still cut them in half.