2020 Vision

June 28, 2020. We are two days away from the half year mark of this train wreck of a year. 2019 wasn't really a picnic. We put down our much loved bulldog, Beulah, July 4, 2019 and at the very end of the year, we had to also let our kitty, Bella, cross the rainbow bridge ahead of us. But, we felt like 2020 had to be better.  

First, I had a tea party with some dear girlfriends in January. In February, we adopted our new bulldog, Charlotte. We also flew down to California to visit our godchildren and their parents and while we were there fulfilled a lifelong desire of my husband to see the La Brea tar pits. We had a lovely time but the first echos of PANDEMIC were starting to penetrate our consciousness as we got ready to come home.

COVID-19 entered our lives and changed our world almost overnight. Watching the news became so anxiety inducing for my husband, we had to just stop. I would continue to surreptitiously check the news online to try and keep abreast of the number of people that were getting sick and dying in our state and across the globe. Eventually, I had to stop doing that because it was starting to make me anxious too.

Just about the time things were calming down on the disease front, the death of man no one had every heard of, George Floyd, shook the country and the world. To be precise, it was the manner of his death and the color of skin that started a fresh dialog about what it means to be black in America. I could not watch the video of him slowly dying -- suffocating -- while a police officer knelt on his neck. Frankly, everything that lead up to that point ceased to matter once he died at the hands of police officers. What followed were first protests, then riots, the looting and then "occupation" by those protesting of several city blocks up in my old neighborhood in Seattle. 

All of this you have heard about ad nauseam in the local and national media and social media. Friends became enemies as people debated and aired their views about the way the pandemic has been handled, the relationship of the police with the black community and the government's responses to both. It has been exhausting. It has been disheartening. It has been discouraging.

And yet, there have been good things and many things for which we are grateful.  Sometimes, making a list is the best way to count your blessings:

1. Charlotte -- John and I have both said numerous times how glad we are we broke down and adopted her when we did. We had no intentions of getting another dog but on the day the rescue posted her picture, I was tagging my husband in the post the same time he was sharing it to my Facebook page. She has provided us with plenty of laughter even on the darkest days.

2. Work -- Both of us are "essential" and have worked our jobs the entire time of "Stay Home, Stay Safe" and so while many have worried how they were going to pay their rent, buy food for their family and survive, we did not.

3. Family & Friends -- COVID-19 has not been terribly personal for us. A friend from grade school lost her father. They live in New York which has been very hard hit. A friend from book group contracted a mild case of it and has recovered. Other than that, those nearest and dearest to us have remained relatively untouched. More than 100,000 families have not been so fortunate.

4. We Two Alone -- While some have struggled with loneliness during this time and others have struggled with too much togetherness, we have enjoyed more time together with the person we each love most in this world. Previously, we would spend 12 hours a day away from each other and 9 hours a night asleep with each other and by the time we did household chores, we had about 2 hours in a day where we could talk to each other and just be together if we were lucky. The pandemic has cancelled everything but our time together. We have appreciated that more than we like to tell people.

Four seems like a nice round number to stop with so I will leave it there but there are more things to be grateful for in our lives than there are to worry us. We are well aware that is not the case for so many but in case you think we sleep on a bed of roses, let me assure you there have been thorns as well. What are they? Well, that's a post for another time -- maybe.

Lost in a Good Book

I looked up from my book a little disoriented for a moment as the bus pulled out of the tunnel and the sun hit the side of my face.  I had been deeply engrossed – so much so that I felt a little lost as I was pulled back to reality.  A moment before, I had been in England circa 1920, curled up in a chair in the Greene Library at Justice Hall reading a book by a fire with Mary Russell in the chair across from me.  The November rain had been pelting the window and the faint smell of rosemary was in the air.  Suddenly, I was on a bus in Seattle one stop away from where I needed to get off on a sunny April afternoon in 2016.

As I stepped off the bus, I smiled at myself, I had become so lost while reading that I was completely immersed in the setting and plot.  It doesn’t happen to me very often anymore.  One of greatest gifts a book can give is to draw you in so deeply that the present fades and you step into another world.

 

When I was growing up books did that for me a lot.  I wandered through Avonlea with Anne, through the fields of New Moon Farm with Emily, along the paths of 1800’s New England with Lousia May Alcott’s characters and I stood shoulder to shoulder with Jane Eyre at Lowood School and Thornfield Hall.  I rode the wagon across the Great Plains with Mary and Laura and trailed Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson through London and the English countryside.  The Hound of the Baskervilles still makes me shiver when I think about the first time I read it. 

 

I have always like Holmes – first in book form and later in movies and T.V. series.  I love Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey, Jr. and, most of all, Benedict Cumberbatch as the great detective.  For a time, I attended The Sound of the Baskervilles club that read a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story each month and then met to discuss it.  I also have enjoyed books by other writers that borrow Sherlock Holmes as a character – especially the children’s series about a mouse detective that lives at 221B Baker Street and studies Sherlock’s methods to solve crimes in the mouse world.  (See Basil of Baker Street)
 

Then I went off to college and traded reading for pleasure for reading to learn to such an extent that I lost my taste for reading almost altogether for quite a while.  I still read for the fun of it but less and less.  I had a busy and demanding job and I was often too tired to concentrate on a book.  Occasionally, I still read something that completely immersed me.  Memoirs of a Geisha and the Harry Potter series come to mind at the moment but it became a rarer occurrence with each book I read.  Eventually, I joined a book group to keep me reading and to stretch myself to read things I might not otherwise consider.
 

Then my dad and my friend, Dawna, both highly recommended the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie King.  It took me a couple of years before I finally picked up the audio book of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice at the library.  It is the first book in the series.  I have now buzzsawed my way through six of the books and I am reading a seventh Justice Hall. It was this book, for the first time in longer than I can remember, where I once again left reality and stepped so completely into the story that I was lost in a good book.

When Life Gets in the Way



I was reorganizing the favorites on my Internet Explorer today and realized that I had a blog.  A blog that I have neglected for the last three years.  I haven't neglected it on purpose.  Life got in the way.  Three months from today, my husband and I will celebrate our wedding anniversary.  Looking back, so much has happened in those eight years.  John has changed jobs three times, had shoulder surgery, taken a course in appliance repair, turned 40 and put up with me.  I have been at my job for fourteen years and I have not committed a major crime anytime in the last 8 years which is a win as far as I'm concerned.  Together we have purchased our first home, bought a travel trailer and a truck to pull it with, acquired a cat, a dachshund and an Olde English bulldog, changed churches and had many adventures together.  We've had good times, we've had tough times and we've had fun times and boring times.  What can I say, we've been busy.

 

So why the picture?  I don't know about the rest of you out there but sometimes, you have those days -- those days where you drag yourself out of bed and through the week, those Sunday nights when you seriously discuss running away and joining the circus, those weekends full of chores and household repairs and yard work.  My dear husband struggles with this even more than I do but we both have "those" days.  You know what we say to each other?  "Okay, it's time to be grown up." or in other words "Time to adult."

 

When you're a child, you can't WAIT to grow up.  You whine about your chores, you complain about your mom's cooking and you and your friends have the "when I'm a grown up I'm going to . . . " conversations.  Usually this phrase ends with things like "eat Cap'n Crunch for breakfast everyday" or "stay up all night and play video games" or similarly childish desires.  People are always telling you that you have it SO good as a kid and you should enjoy it.  You don't believe them -- ever.  Then you grow up and find that it isn't quite so carefree and fun as you thought it would be.

 

Perhaps you're wondering why I said I haven't committed a major crime in the last 8 years.  Truth is, I've never committed a major or minor crime but after you fall in love and marry someone that you would do anything to protect, the possibility of it can come home to you.  I do work at a job where I am confronted with other people's crimes daily.  It makes you realize that every day we all have the potential to do harm, steal, lie, cheat, have a road rage accident (ugh to city traffic) and kill someone -- even accidentally.  Every day that I don't do that, I consider it a win.  I successfully adulted today.

 

 

 

In Loco Parentis

I know the first time I heard the Latin phrase in loco parentis was sometime in my early days of working for a small law firm in Port Angeles.  The law is one of the few arenas where Latin is still tossed around willy nilly.  Amicus curiae (friend of the court), de novo (anew), duces tecum (bring with you), ex post facto (after the fact), habeas corpus (have the body) and lis pendens (suit pending) are still in common daily usage where I work.  In the beginning, I was constantly asking the meaning of Latin terms.  Now, if I don’t know them already, I can often puzzle out their meaning from the Latin I do know. 

  

In loco parentis means in place of the parents and is often used in describing the role of school in a child’s life.  This week, however, it was the phrase that popped into my head when we were asked to stand as godparents to two children who are very dear to us.  My husband and I have not been blessed with children and we have left that in the hands of the Almighty.  I have found that I cannot write about the subject easily and so have left it on the shelf to simmer until now.
 

As I looked down at the two sweet faces that had no idea what we were discussing with their parents, I was first and foremost filled with the thought that I hoped the guardianship would never be necessary.  Believe me, John and I will be praying with all our might for the health and well-being of their parents to ripe old age.  The second thought that moved my husband and me both nearly to tears was the humbling amount of trust and love that was being bestowed on us.
 

I turned 37 two months after we married.  We allowed ourselves some time to settle into marriage and talked at length about children both before and after we married.  We decided that we would try to have children but that we would take no extraordinary measures to do so.  After a time, it was clear that it wasn’t what God had for us and we quietly put that dream away.  That being said, I don’t know if you will find two people that value and honor what it means to be a parent more than we do.

 

I think especially after we knew that we would not have children of our own, I began to look around at those in my circle of family and friends that are parents.  I will say that I cannot think of a single one of them that doesn’t realize what a tremendous amount of work it takes to be a good father or mother.  I would also say, that without exception, I think they are doing fantastic jobs raising the ones to whom they have been entrusted.  I know there must often be days when infanticide seems a real possibility after a difficult time with a child but I also know that they see how greatly the blessings outweigh the problems.  I think they also realize what a brief span of time they will have with their children before they are grown up and flying the nest.

  

In my line of work at the Court, I regularly review cases that involve the physical or sexual molestation of a child.  As much as humanly possible, since it is not my job to do so, I avoid the facts of the cases because I found early on that the disturbed me to such an extent that I could think of little else.  If anything will turn you into a vigilante, it is child abuse cases.

 

Recently as I was setting aside several briefs that had been returned from the printer, I realized that attached to the copy of one was series of color photographs.  The first one caught my eye because it was a picture of a cell phone text message.  As I turned to the next one, there was a photograph of a little girl of about two years old.  She had big brown eyes and soft curly hair the color of honey.  As I continued to flip through the photographs, I went on to find a series of photos taken at the hospital of her little body which had been horribly abused.  There are some things that cannot be unseen.

 

I will not bore you with overmuch with what had to be done next.  The photos were an exhibit in the case that had been provided as a courtesy by the prosecutor’s office and should not have been attached to the brief nor added to the printed copies.  Another co-worker and I quickly rectified the situation for the case manager that had made the mistake since she was out of the office.  Both of us spent the rest of the day feeling quite ill over the photos.  The little girl survived her abuse and her abuser, if there is any justice in the universe, will never be outside a jail ever again.  He does not have a very good basis for an appeal from which I take a good deal of comfort.  I also take comfort that child abusers do not fare very well in our prisons.  My last source of relief is my belief that someday in the future, that man will stand before God and answer to Him for what happened.

 

Why am I telling you this?  Confession is good for the soul.  Also, I want the parents of all the children John and I stand as guardians for to know that both of us would give our very lives to keep their little ones safe should that ever be necessary.  If you have children of your own or children that are dear to you, give them an extra cuddle after you read this.  Not all children are as fortunate as yours.

Memories

“Memories light the corners of my mind,

misty water-colored memories of the way we were.” 

Alan & Marilyn Bergman

“Already old Fred’s face was creasing up in the soft expression

of someone who has been mugged in Memory Lane.”

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Memories are funny things. Sometimes they well up at the most inconvenient time and you find yourself in tears or angry and sometimes they bubble up and you find yourself laughing or blushing. All sorts of things can trigger a memory. One of the strongest triggers for memory is odors. For instance, the combination of stale cigarette smoke and diesel fumes takes me straight back to being 12 years old and waiting for the bus to school in England. Don’t ask me why but it does. I know that 40 years from now if I get a whiff of Estee Lauder’s White Linen perfume, it will always remind me of my mother getting dressed for church.

Part of what steered me towards this subject was a particular memory that came up recently and has stayed with me for days now. It is of my elderly grandmother demonstrating the Macarena. Every single time I think of it, I hoot with laughter almost without meaning to do so. It would help if you knew my father’s mother. I have talked about her on this site several times. She was born in England in 1920. She survived World War II there and married my Canadian grandfather and eventually ended up here in Washington State.

She embraced American citizenship wholeheartedly as did my grandfather. They settled down, worked hard and eventually retired to a lovely old apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. In July of 1992, my family moved back down to the Seattle area from the Olympic Peninsula. I got a job in downtown and went to live with my grandparents so I was close to work. They were very good to me that long hot summer and the only time I felt a bit put upon was during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. My grandparents watched every minute of both of them. It was agony. I spent every night of the conventions out on the stoop of the building.

Four years later in 1996, I was still living in the apartment on Capitol Hill and my sister had joined me there while she was going to the University of Washington. My grandparents were living close to my parents south of the city in order to get the extra care they now needed. As I blissfully watched everything but the conventions that summer, my grandparents were once again glued to the television.

As I am sure you are all aware, goofy things happen at the conventions. It is a red letter year when some bizarre event from one convention or the other hasn’t made the national headlines and 1996 was no exception. “Macarena” had spent 14 weeks on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1996. The song was everywhere along with the corresponding dance and at the Democratic National Convention, “was frequently played between activities, and large groups of delegates and other attendants would be seen doing the Macarena dance.” [Wikipedia]

Enter my grandmother. In the summer of 1996, she was 75 years old. She also had suffered from a slow progressing form of Parkinson’s disease for several years. As a result, she shuffled when she walked and she had a pronounced tremor. She had sat watching the convention for a week. She heard the song over and over and saw the delegates doing the dance so that when my sister and I arrived home to spend the weekend with our parents, she was ready for us.

We went over to see her as we always did when we came home for the weekend. She practically met us at the door and she was FULL of gossip about the Democratic National Convention. But mostly, she was determined to show us the dance they kept doing. So she stood up and proceeded, “Now they keep doing this dance and they put one arm out like this.” A right arm was shakily thrust out at shoulder height. “And then they put their other arm out like this.” A left arm did the same. “And then they put first one arm and then the other arm behind their head like this.” She almost overbalanced with both arms bent and her hands grasping the back of her neck. “Then they put one hand on their hip like this.” A right arm trembles all the way down until a right hand is resting on her right hip. “And then the other one.” A left hand joins the other but on her left hip. “AND THEN they waggle their hips about.” My 75 year old grandmother managed a hip waggle that would have been the envy of any of the girls in the Macarena video. At this point, all of us are laughing and laughing hard. It was just as well none of us had a full bladder because odds on that one of us would’ve had an accident.

Nearly twenty years later, I can still see in my mind’s eye my gran doing the Macarena and it makes me smile every time. Thanks for the memory!

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Motivation

I was listening to NPR on my way home from work recently and they were doing a piece about the Berlin Patient.  He was diagnosed with HIV in 1995 and in 2007 he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant from someone who was immune to HIV.  It turns out about 1% of white people are immune to HIV.  Since his transplant, the Berlin Patient has tested negative for HIV ever since.  They test him regularly and the interview with him was about how they are hopeful that they may have finally found a road that will lead to a cure for this dreadful disease.

What I found intriguing and made me go down a long and winding side road of thought was this: when they asked the man why he continued to participate in testing which was intrusive and time consuming, I anticipated that he would answer something to like "so I can help others who have HIV and hopefully find a cure for the many people around the world stricken with this awful disease" or something along those lines.  Something noble and worthy, that's what I expected his answer to be.  Instead, in a moment of naked and frankly disturbing honesty, he said "I am motivated by guilt."  I actually gasped when he said that.  Instead of a great thankfulness to be alive, he felt guilty.  He carried a huge burden of self-loathing that he had lived while others had died and that was why he continued to participate in testing.  He wasn't motivated by anything good or noble, he was motivated by guilt.

I was flabbergasted and vaguely disappointed by his answer largely because I could not even begin to understand it.  I have heard of survivor's guilt and while I kind of "get it" at the same time I don't.  Obviously I have not walked a mile in this man's shoes and have no idea what brought him to a point where he was motivated by feeling guilty for being alive so I decided to do some hard self examination and look at what truly motivates me.

I finally came to the conclusion that the thing that gets me out of bed everyday was love.  The reason I get up, stagger around while feeding a dog, a cat, packing a husband's lunch, getting cleaned up and off to work was because of the love I have for my husband, my family, my home and my faith.  I was a little concerned when I started down this road that I would find out that I was motivated by something really foolish like money or "stuff" or discontent or even fear.  One never knows when one delves into the depths of one's soul what one will find lurking in a dark cupboard under the stairs.  The more and more I thought about it, the more I realized that the thing that mattered to me was a happy life and that happy life is because it is filled with those I love.

I thought further about what if I didn't have some of the people and things I do have in my life, would I still be so motivated by love and I don't know the answer to that question.  I hope so and I think so.  I thought about if I were to have health trouble and had to rely and be a burden on other people, would love still motivate me.  Again, I like to believe that it would.  I gave further thought about the people I have lost and realized that the memory of the love I had for them and they for me continues to be a driving force in my life.  I thought about why I obey the rules and laws of the land and while fear of punishment is certainly part of why I do, the thought of disappointing or hurting the people I love is the truer reason why I do.  Lastly, I thought about what a large part faith plays in my life and that when one is forgiven much, one loves much.

When I finally came up for air after so much deep cogitation, I felt better about things.  The mundaneness of day to day life can weigh us all down at times and to know what keeps me getting up everyday helps me continue on even when my spirits flag and the flesh is weak.

I am also motivated by a good laugh but that's another story.