Category Archives: A question

How are you?

A question, Confession, George, , , ,

cat how are youWhen the nurse is taking me back to the cubicle where I will be imprisoned until the doctor drops by, he or she always asks. “How are you today?”  That question always stumps me.  My first thought is to scream, “I’m at the doctor’s office.  How do you think I feel?”  However, I do possess a thin veneer of courtesy and say, “Fine, thank you.  How are you?”

Then I sit in the little room and ponder that question.    Finally I decide the nurse is not really  asking for a health report. “How are you?” is a  polite social convention which really doesn’t demand an honest answer, only recognition that the rules have been applied and accepted.   Yes, I may be throwing up on the nurse’s feet, but I answer, “Fine.”  I may be doubled over in pain or spouting blood from every orifice, but that’s not what the nurse is asking.   The nurse is simply recognizing that I’m there and my answer merely says, “Thank you.”

But the question came up again six months ago  and again I had to work out what others were saying,  Only minutes after George died, one of our ministers asked, “How are you doing?”  My mouth dropped open.  I wanted to shout, “How do you think I feel?  They joy of my life is gone.”  I didn’t of course but had no good answer.  People asked that over and over in the months after George’s death and, every time, I thought, “You have to know how I feel.”  But I didn’t say that.  “As well as can be expected,” I’d say and that was the truth.  But why did they ask?  comforting friendsDidn’t they know?

Again I realized that, yes they all knew I hurt.  That question meant, “I care about you but I don’t know what to say.”  It meant, “He was my friend and I hurt.  How are you doing?”  It meant so many things my friends and George’s didn’t know how to ask, what words to use.  And thanks to all those friends and ministers and family members, I’m doing fine, sort of.  Thank you for asking.

 

 

 

 

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What’s in your drawers?

A question, Confession, Musings, ,

 I can never find batteries.  I buy them, I bring them home and I never see them again.  I have a number of batteriestheories on that.  First, the Energizer  bunny sweeps through the apartment at night and gathers them up, for what reason I don’t know.    Second, I’ve used them all and just don’t realize it.  But my main theory is this:  I put them away in many different places, each time thinking, “I’ll remember where they are when I need them,” but I never do.   I also believe  one day I’ll open a drawer and find thousands of them huddled together..

What do you keep buying  because you can’t find where you put them the last time you made that purchase?  I’d love to know.  It always makes me feel better when you confess and I know I’m not alone.

Do your research!

A question, Writing, , , , ,

schizoHave you watched the program Perception?  It’s about a schizophrenic who teaches in college and solves crimes on the side.  I really like it.  The actors are good and the production very well done.   However, a few weeks ago, the hero–Dr. Daniel Pierce played by Eric McCormack–decided to go undercover in a mental hospital to solve a murder.   Here’s the problem:  I worked in a state hospital and the errors  made me nuts.     Pierce pretended to be going through an episode, was picked up by cops who took him to a mental hospital.  Shortly after he entered, he was given his meds.     Mental hospitals are the same as medical hospitals:  no one gets treated before a doctor sees the patient and prescribes medications and care.   Then, he’s placed in group therapy with patients who are  catatonic and others who are violent.  Again, no orders for this from a doctor and someone as high function as Pierce would never be in a mixed group and how in the world would a catatonic patient be helped in group therapy? 

med doctor babyWhen I was a child, Friday night was family movie  night.   My brother Mike and I had to be careful about what movie we allowed our father to see.  Dad was a medical doctor.  We learned young not to allow him near a movie about a doctor or a hospital because he would–loudly–point out every error made on the screen.   However, some movies sneak medical stuff in unexpectedly.  In many Westerns, a woman goes into labor.  As soon as that happens, one of the actors shouts, “Boil some water.”  My father would break out into laughter and shout, “What are they going to do?  Boil the baby?”

Mortifying in so many ways.  As a writer, I’m embarrassed because the person who wrote the screen play didn’t do basic research who after  watching many Westerns, believed that boiling water when a woman went into labor was a scientific fact.

As a teacher, I hated it when the teacher heroine would slip out to met her fiance for an hour-long lunch or when class size was seven students or that they work only four hours a day.

What bugs you when a writer makers a mistake?  I once threw a book at the wall because the story couldn’t overcome the errors for me.  Have you ever done that?

 

What do you think?

A question, Musings,

This is a story I read someplace years ago.   Because I remember it twenty or thirty years later, it obviously made a great impression on me.

“I was in a grocery store” a woman wrote.  “Pushing the cart around when a lady approached me and said, ‘Cheer up!  You look so sad.  Nothing can be that bad.’   I watched her bustle away as tears rolled down my cheeks.   My son had died four days earlier.  This was the first time I’d gone shopping and not bought  his favorite foods.”

Another story.  The writer had been diagnosed with a serious but not immediately fatal disease.  The first time she attended a support group for people with this diagnosis, she listened for a few minutes, then stood and said, “You’re all so depressed and depressing.  I’m not going to allow this to ruin my life.   You have to learn to  get over this.”  I didn’t read any more of the book.

What do you think about these stories?  I’m going to give you a few minutes to think.  Then, as usual, I’m going to give my opinion.

GO!

Okay, here are my thoughts.   There are people who believe we should be smiling all the time.  These people may have a mental condition or they may just be thoughtless and insensitive.   Normal people grieve.  Normal people don’t smile all the time.  Normal people are often in a blanced mood, neither up or down.  Normal people don’t tell others how they should feel without knowing their histories–or, even if they do know their backgrounds.  It’s not a bit hlepful.

With the second story, I truly believe the writer thought she’d sent a good and optimistic message to that group.  She hadn’t.   Any time we’re diagnosed with an illness, it’s unsettling.  Joining a support group is a healthy  step.  I have the same disease this writer had and learned a great deal in the support group I attended.   I wonder if the seriousness of this problem ever hit this woman or if she’s lived in constant denial.

My ultimate thought is that we love and support others.  We don’t judge others because we do not know what others are experiencing.  One of my favorite quotes is about:  Be kind because everyone you meet is facing a hard battle.

You put cheese in the brownies?

A question, Church, Musings, , ,

George and I spent many years sponsoring church youth groups.  At the church in Big Spring, TX, the kids–from fourth to seventh grade–loved my brownies, homemade and fudgy.  One Sunday, I didn’t have time to whip up a batch from scratch so I pulled out a mix.  To make it special, I cut up cream cheese into little chunks and stirred them in.  After I pulled them out of the oven, I took a deep breath.  They looked and smelled wonderful.  No one could figure out they were from a mix.

When I set the plate before the group, each took a brownie and studied it.  In unison they said, “What are those white things?”  I said, “Cream cheese.”  Again, as one, they looked at me in horror and asked, “You put cheese in brownies?”

They didn’t find this addition in the least bit special.  When I cleaned up the plates, each had a pile of tiny chunks of cream cheese.

Do you have a favorite story about young people and/or favorite recipes?  I’d love to hear them.

What do you do in the shower?

A question, Confession, humor, , , , ,

I grew up taking baths.  My mother said that was what “we” did.  I don’t know what that means except it conveyed the idea that soaking in gallons of water was the only way to become truly clean and that those who showered were covered with scum and unclean.   Oh, I took showers at camp.  In my college dorm, I took showers because I don’t remember there being tubs.  I went to college shortly after the movie Psycho was released so taking a shower was an act of courage.  In the sorority house, we had two tubs, located in the same small room–a literal “bath room”.  Cozy and a little creepy so most of us took showers.

I didn’t really become a shower fan until I had to get up at five-fifteen to get to work on time.   I’d always taken a bath at night and washed my hair in the sink in the morning, a great waste of time when one has to leave the house at six-thirty. 

It wasn’t until many years late after watching an episode of Friends that I discovered I really didn’t know exactly how one took a shower.  I mean, there are no classes in it, no pamplets or information booklets.  Yesterday, I googled how to take a shower and found pages of information with instructional sketches and pictures and explanations of how one takes a shower.  Amazing. 

I asked the question in the title of this blog NOT to elicite stories of unbounded lust.  No, I asked that because as I read those blog pages, I discovered that it’s a good idea to brush your teeth in the shower.  This cuts down on having toothpaste down the front of your nightie.    My question:  Do you brush your teeth in the shower?  If so, how did you know learn about this?  I’m feeling a little ignorant on this point.

I’ve just started reading the Jack Reacher books.  In the first book, this man travels for a day, walks fourteen miles, is arrested and spends the weekend in jail.  Four days without a shower or change of clothing and women still fall all over him.  He did, however, take showers in the third book and describes his three shower techniques in detail.   The shortest takes eleven minutes, a basic shower plus hair wash.   I can’t image spending eleven minutes in the shower.  What does one do?  Wait, I don’t want to know.  The second type of shower adds a shave and takes twenty minutes.  The third is an eleven-minute shower.  Then, he gets out of the shower with moisterized skin and shaves, then finishes the shower and washes his hair again.  A total of over thirty minutes.  With Reacher, it’s all or nothing.  For me, a waste of the morning.

Anything you’d like to share?

 

What day is it?

A question, Confession,

One of the problems with being retired is never knowing exactly what day this is.  My sister-in-law–who is retired but seems to do better with this than I–brought this to mind this morning when she asked, “Where’s your Friday blog?”

I hadn’t realized I’d missed Friday.  Completely.

So a quick apology.  I promise a blog for Tuesday.

If I remember what day that it.

Goofiness: a stage of mourning

A question, Confession, George, Musings, , , , ,

In the 1970’s, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief was vastly popular and much preached.   We had the idea that one worked through these stages–denial, anger, bargaining, and  depression–in that order until finally arriving at acceptance, the final stage.   However, Dr. Kubler-Ross hadn’t meant that these five stages made up the entire task of grief, that one could wrap up  mourning in a neat little package and would recover if one followed her teaching exactly.   No, she stated that these were five of the stages of grieving but not all of them.  She also stated some people didn’t go through all of these and, if they do,  probably not in a set order.  

After George’s death, I was drowning in denial but don’t remember bargaining.   If I did experience anger, it was transient and certainly not against George for leaving me.   And I also experienced stages she didn’t include, the first of those being goofiness.  

My favorite color is yellow, the color of sunshine and flowers and, for me, healing and joy.    When my friend Ellen sends me a gift or flowers, she always chooses yellow.  I adored my yellow car.  I felt positive  driving it and could always find it in a parking lot which cut down on stress.   Although it’s not a good color on me, yellow tops and shirts fill the closet because they cheer me up.  Yes, I love yellow.  Always have.

George’s choices of colors were, well, boring to me.  He liked dark green, gray-blue, beige and other earth tones.  When I wanted to buy a light-colored sofa, he reminded me what three cocker spaniels would do to that.  He was right.  Nonetheless, after he died, I needed yellow.  Yes, needed yellow!  Yearned for it, craved the warmth of my favorite color.  I bought two yellow throws on-line, picked up two floral pillows to replace the matching dark green pillows of the love seat, pulled out the yellow towels to replace the blue.   Then I bought bright art.   I replaced a small picture in the guest bathroom with a map of the United States in yellow and orange and bright primary colors.  I bought a 3 x 3 hanging with a yellow background.  

Then, after a  week,  I didn’t need it anymore.  I feel slightly embarrassed about that map now.  It would look great in the room of a five-year-old.  I don’t know what the saying  on that wall hanging is because I never put it.  It now lives in a closet. 

But I needed to do this.  For a few days, I needed to be weird and goofy and crazy.   The yellow throws got me through those days of intense pain, lifted my spirits in the way dark green didn’t. 

For me, goofiness was definitely a stage in healing.  I haven’t arrived at complete acceptance but am moving in that direction.  I’ve gone through gone-ness, curiosity, and shame as well and plan to share them with you.  The point of this blog is that we all grieve in different ways.

Would you share how you’ve handled grief?  Have you felt goofy at any time during the process?

Happy Fourth of July–in two days

A question, Holidays, , , , ,

This greeting is early, I know, but since I  blog on Tuesday and Friday, I thought a mention was due BEFORE the actual Fourth.

What is your favorite part of the Fourth?  I’m sure you have many.  Mine are sort of a mix of all the past Fourths:  lots of fireworks when I was very young.  My favorites as a child were snakes.  You young people may not have ever heard of them.  They weren’t exciting.   Before being lit, a snake looked like a piece of black licorice the size of an aspirin.  When I lit the top, the snake would grow in a long, black tube of ash, coiling like a snake.  When they reached a length of about six inches, it stopped.  A light breeze would break the ashes up and blow them away.

However, snakes–boring as they were–were very safe.   When I was six, I took a sparkler and lit it.  Unfortunately, I was holding the wrong end.  I’d pick up the soft, thick end of the sparkler, believing–and, yes, I do remember this–that was the comfortable handle.  When I put a match on the other end, the heat moved down the wire section and the part I held–the “sparkler” part–burst into, well, sparkles.  I got terrible burns on my palm.   A great deal of what I remember about celebrating the Fourth has to do with pain.

Every year back then, in late June, there were explosions in stores that carried fireworks as well as the factories and transportation centers.   That’s why you see fireworks sold at stands yards away from and building and why sparklers are now so hard to light.   When I was a kid, fireworks killed people.   I feel it is my duty, as an old person, to mention history.

However, I do have good memories of the Fourth which include family and watermelon and long drives to Wichita, Kansas, and back to Kansas City in the same day.  Historical note:  this was before car air conditioning.  

What’s your favorite memory of Independence Day?

What did you want to be in seventh grade?

A question, Writing, , , , , ,

When I was in seventh grade at Border Star Elementary School in Kansas City, MO, my teacher had a class project:  we all wrote our autobiographies.   If you’re wondering, “What does a twelve-year-old have to write in an autobiography?” the answer is, not much.  

Nonetheless, we were all excited about this.  We typed one page, single spaced, which were all copied on something purple and, by now, nearly too pale to read.  We put the thirty-six pages together and bound them.  In the end,  we each had a hand-bound book with the story of everyone’s families and pets and vacations.   Believe it or not, many, many years later, I still have this.

The very last section of each autobiography was about our plans for the future.   What did I want to be in seventh grade?  I wrote, “I want to be a ballerina, author, and illustrate my own books, and, in my spare time I will write plays and act in them.”

How close did I come?  I realized very soon that I’d never be a ballerina:  I liked to eat and didn’t like pain,  Besides, I’m not the most graceful of people.  And, as much as I liked to draw, I always had trouble with noses in a frontal view.  This lack of skill left my people with oddly flat faces which left out illustrator.   I also learned that I’m not an actor.   I’m too inhibited to become another person and show their emotion.

However, I did become an author with ten published books and I also wrote an award-winning one-act play in college.   Two out of five–that’s pretty close.  

What did you plan to be in the seventh grade?  How close are you?