Such a little tree….

So this little tree, a bradford pear my neighbor wanted gone because the roots ran over her yard and under my driveway. Well, it is now gone. As are its stump and roots. What is left are uneven, broken root-riddled mounds of sandy soil and somewhere in those depths a mangled and shredded cable.

I called Time Warner Friday when I realized what had happened. Stump-grinder guy did his work while I was away from home, probably doing my volunteering at the library. Anyway, my computer was working fine before I left. Everything showed a strong signal when I got home a couple of hours later but no response.

The cable company said they would send a technician Sunday morning between 7 and 8. He’d call first. Nobody called. I did and learned they had tried to call but did not have the right number. We got this straightened out with a few verbal pyrotechnics on my part and rescheduled. A tech came today and could not even begin to find the shredded cable so he put in a temporary line until the damage could be repaired. Which of course involves more damage: they will have to trench my yard, bore under my driveway and reattach a new line.

All because of a little tree.

Rain

There is something about some rainy days that gives the impression it has been raining forever. The solid grayness, the steady rainfall, the stillness at the bird feeders, even the flowers look immobile.

Rain heals. It nourishes, it soaks, saturates, fills a dry earth with softness. It encourages sleep, quiet, thoughts, introspection, and comfort foods like a hot steaming bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.

It’s like a day of rest. To find a book, work some puzzles, write, listen to a symphony, call a good friend.

Or bake a pie, muffins, a yeasty warm loaf of bread.

Too many of these days creates boredom. Cabin fever, impatience, a need for sun and fresh air.

I avoid the malls on rainy days. A lot of people go there who just want to get out of their house. Whether they buy anything or not doesn’t matter.

I’m going to go make a sandwich now.

Income taxes, influenza and pine trees

Really, none of these things has anything to do with another, nor are they related in any way. It just happens they each culminated for me at about the same time.

So not having had a flu bug in I have no idea how long, can’t remember, I really thought I was dying. I’d had a flu shot. Why would I have the flu? Because this year they forgot one, or a couple of strains. Whatever, if they did miss one or some I got it or them. I really don’t remember the past 10 days clearly. I do remember my lovely rescue Lily scratching at the bed clothes and whining, and my whichever arm was closest weakly waving her off. I vaguely recall taking my temperature positive I would suffocate before the thing beeped because my nose no longer drew air into my lungs. My son calling, when hearing how muffled I sounded yelling he thought I didn’t get sick as though this was all my fault, and my brother –a doctor– also calling to tell me he’d not played a particularly good afternoon at golf, did I know how terrible I sounded?

Such helpers, my family.

Just as the fog lifted my accountant called with the wonderful news that my taxes were ready (a record), and exactly how much I owed and why. Still being in a more or less ethereal state not really in this universe but the alternate one I’d been inhabiting this did not cause my blood pressure to change one iota. Thankfully.

So the pine trees. Well, I was speaking with some very nice neighbors about our yards, the landscapers and impending spring and they mentioned a wonderful tree man who takes trees out before you know it before your very eyes and did I know he was in the neighborhood? Today? No I didn’t, so he went to find him and ask him to come over and look at a bradford pear I wanted taken out. He did and this morphed into a conversation about the evils of pine trees. I’d always loved these trees. The way they whisper with the wind brushing through them, swaying in a gentle wind (I guess this is actually not a good thing), and my adored grandmother loved them. So now I will not only remove one, medium-small brittle, disease-prone and insect-ridden bradford pear but 8 (read: all) pine trees. I’m not sure I can bear that kind of sun shock. Suddenly my partially-shaded yard will be in the glaring summer sun.

I may need to think on this one a while.

Daffodils

Hardiness comes in all forms. Fading whitewash on the northside of a house. window glazing dulled by grit and rain lashing against it. Or a stone at the water’s edge. Years of tides, waves, storms crashing against it and its rough smoothness, a few sharpened barnacles. A redwood forest, astronomical growth standing firm against unimaginable winds, snows, ice storms.

And then, through ice-crusted snow, a slender, bright green spear, unnoticed, then longer. A bud, evolving yellow. One morning you go out to retrieve the newspaper and a nodding yellow trumpet greets you as if to say no matter what life will bloom.

Word walking

I love words. Not just because they make communication easier but because there are so many, and so many derivations, so many different uses. When you think of the vast number of words there are it is a shame we do not use more of them, like those of us who I am told, only use 12% of our brains. What do you suppose the remaining 88% is doing?

Take the word gress. I had no idea it was a word but it means to walk, to move forward. Makes sense when you think of how many words are made from this one. Like aggression, digression, progression, regression, retrogression, and one I just learned, introgression. Which has nothing at all to do with walking or moving forward, that I can tell. It refers to the introduction of new DNA or genetic alteration to a cell. Not cloning exactly, maybe creating a hybrid plant or something. I never read the book Chimera but maybe that, also.

Or take the word press. Everyone knows this means to move or push on, more emphatic I think than to walk forward, this word indicates more of a sense of urgency. So again there’s impress, depress, repress, oppress, suppress, express. Probably more but that is all I can think of with my 12%. So this root basically means the same for each of these words but that little prefix makes all the difference. Subtly in some cases, a variance between depress and suppress, or even repress and oppress. But then impress and express save the day, moving back into the light.

I guess all of us move up or down, forward or backward or sideways and we all use words to describe what we are doing. If we can keep the light a little brighter in each of our little corners what a great light we can have shining.

Vaccine drama

Be forewarned: I highly favor giving vaccinations to children.

So when I was 3 or 4 (I actually remember this because it was a house my family shared and it only had one bathroom) I had German measles. I remember lying on the living room sofa under a blanket while my mother spoke in a hushed voice with the doctor, then being whisked up in her arms. Next thing I recall is waking to the soft-spoken prayers of our Presbyterian church minister, Dr. James Fogartie.

I suppose I must have survived the ordeal well, even though following the high fever accompanying the measles I had a bout with encephalitis, something many young ones do not survive, or survive badly with some brain damage (pause for the “ok, that explains a lot” comments).

Anyway, I must not have had the mumps vaccine either (if it even was available??) because I also had those, on one “side”. So I am a tremendous advocate for vaccinating children.

It is how pertussis (which I also had), polio, a very crippling disease, diphtheria and now measles/rubella and mumps have been largely eradicated. And there is now I understand a chickenpox vaccine.

Apparently many parents believe these vaccines, or combinations thereof, will harm, even kill a child. Well, they did not seem to harm us and it is because we were vaccinated that these diseases are largely avoided. Except now people are refusing to vaccinate their children so they will come back, trust me. You can subvert or subdue a germ or virus but it (or its mutations) is almost unkillable. There are isolated instances where a child (perhaps coincidentally) did die after receiving one or some vaccinations. I am not a doctor. I do not know whether there were other factors or complications. I do know I did have my son vaccinated with everything they had, even the hepatitis ones when he went on a mission trip to Mexico. Good thing I did, too because he dropped the sharp point of a heavy shovel on his big toe and injured it rather badly. But he did survive, with new toenail.

Even now aging folks such as myself have the options of pneumonia and shingles vaccines. So at the recommendation of my doctor I have had them. And survived.

I am all for doing anything I can to keep any form of germ, virus or microbe out of the stream of life if at all possible. Maybe some think it unnecessary to live beyond the age of 35, but at my age I am so grateful for the years beyond that age I have been gifted.

Not afraid of the alternative but do not want to rush or encourage it either.

Reunions and family gatherings

I grew up in a painfully honest family. We couched nothing in kid gloves, we told it like it was so consequently we all had pretty warped senses of humor. We had to have a strong sense of the ridiculous because that’s what our lives, laid completely bare, were. Nowhere to hide.

Fast-forward to my 21st year. I still only had one brother, a Mother and a Father. Two cousins that I had seen twice in my life since we lived in North Carolina and they were in New Jersey. And one visit was in New Jersey after my dad was transferred to New York and we lived just outside Princeton.

I married someone who had an enormous family. His immediate family consisted of both parents, one brother, but his mother’s family had throngs of siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins– first, second and third, and then they started on the removeds. I thought this must be just wonderful. A never-ending sea of potential friends, cohorts, partners-in-crime.

Boy was I ever wrong.

I doubt all large families are like this. Most likely warmly recall the frog stuck in Auntie May’s purse when she wasn’t looking and then went to find a pen… or Uncle Bob’s attempt at a one-and-a-half gainer and the resulting broken ankle. The stories told as dusk faded to black, or as darkness turned to the groggy eyes of dawn on a stroll to the lakeside for a little pre-breakfast fishing.

No, this family was like none I had ever seen. I only made two of these “meetings” and both terrified me. I am still unsure of the purpose of them every two years, but from what I understand (I bowed out of this family only 5 years into it) they still happen. And now the relatives are so distant I wonder they even recognize anyone at all. My son still attends them, occasionally, but comes away in such a foul mood I can’t imagine what can be the point of going.

Most families relish the joys of recollection or sharing of personal successes, commiseration of unexpected setbacks. Not these. They fed on one-upmanship and critiquing, unsolicited, and to embarrassing degrees. I often wondered whether any of them would want to even see the others, ever. But sure enough, next time I attended there they all were.

I guess people show love in different and peculiar ways. Which may be why I remain a shy and reticent observer, happy to stay out of any limelight, but also happy to share anyone’s joys, recollections, or empathize with setbacks and restarts.

Snipe hunting anyone? Not me, thanks.

~Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some sort of battle.

Computers and health care

Used to be when you bought a pc (not so familiar with MACs) you could tell them what you wanted on it: RAM, software, firewalls, security programs, whatever. Basically build it yourself. Now it seems you take what you get when you buy it, anything else is almost prohibitively expensive. Oh, you can still build on what you initially buy, but additional memory boards, RAM– have to be added.

Not so with health coverage. Nowadays with this so-called obamacare whether you are male or female, or even not a woman of child-bearing age you have obstetric and gynecologic coverage. One size fits all, except we are not all one-sized. We are not all men, or women. Each of us ought to be able to customize our coverage according to our age, specific health needs, families, etc. But we can’t.

When that oversized gavel resoundingly slammed down on the historic massive podium in the venerable senate room the die was cast. I sat down with my Blue Cross rep and asked what I needed to do to not ever have to come under this non-coverage. He told me up until February 2010 I could do whatever I wanted to change or customize my plan. After that if I made any change to it I would no longer qualify under a grandfathered plan. I would no longer have access to the medical group to whom I have gone since I was 13 years old, as well as my immediate family, no longer qualify for the same coverage which accommodates my meager medical needs (I am in excellent health for a person my age) or hospitalization, should I ever need it. So I have not changed anything. I do not fall under the new health programs. My premiums have gone up more than usual but nothing like anyone who does fall under the new coverages. I am grateful. I don’t need it much but it’s good to have if I ever do.

I did have a conversation with a relatively young doctor not long ago about this monstrous encumbrance. He did not seem overly concerned. He seems to think whenever the next administration is rolled in things will change again indicating that every administration tweaks its own healthcare plans. That this, too, shall pass.

I hope he’s right.

Birthdays and Car Wrecks

My son is 35 today. He is also in San Antonio at an electronic gaming conference where his company is launching the game he sweat blood over the past year and a half creating. So I told him to just know this is happening on his birthday because it’s his party. He laughed. But I am very proud of him. For a creative person he has none of the arrogant swagger people who can actually do something with their creativity are. He gets his teeth into a project and won’t turn loose until it’s finished. Though it is usually finished long before the company says it is with their final tweaks and adjustments. But he is patient. Something I know was the result of long hours of prayer and not a genetic trait inheritance.

So the car wreck. I had backed out of my driveway, put the car in drive and was transferring my foot from the brake to the gas pedal when >* BAM *< my across the street neighbor slammed her suv into my micro-Honda Civic. Lily gingerly rose from that side of the backseat and daintily moved to the other side. We were just on the way to the park for a nice afternoon walk.

I got out of the car and walked over to my neighbor’s car window. She asked me what do we do? I suggested we go through the insurance information, did she want to call police, I did not think it necessary. She took complete responsibility,  said to just let her know what it cost and we parted ways. It was both our fault, really, so I will split the cost in the end. Or pay for it myself. Whatever. It looks like one of those dents where some clever mechanic can take a big suction cup and pull the dent out. The quotes I have gotten so far start at $300. I am still looking for the suction-cup-mechanic guy.

It was a busy week. My house is under contract, the rest of the furniture has been delivered and my realtor came to visit to wish me well in my new home. In between I managed a Bible study, book luncheon and training at an animal sanctuary.

The highlights were two walks on two different beaches, same ocean. My very old and dear friend.

Maybe the coming week will be calmer.

Whelk

What?? But if I had written “conch” you’d know what I was referring to more than a whelk. These are both sea snails, gastropods, born with tiny shells that grow with the animal.

I found one this morning.

A whelk, not a conch. Whelk can be found on the entire eastern seaboard. Conch only in tropical water. Conch are those shells you see more in decorative places. That lovely shiny pink inner shell. Whelk are usually white or tan and smaller. They can have pointed or knobby crowns. They can be thin or wide. The animal, like the conch, can also be eaten.

The first time I ate a snail was on a trip to New York with my dad. He commuted every week there from our home in NC so we didn’t see him much. To compensate for this he’d take me for a few days over Christmas break and we’d eat roasted chestnuts, watch the skaters at Rockefeller Center, see the Nutcracker ballet. Once we ate snails. He did not even call them escargot and I did not want to eat them, same as I did not want to eat a raw oyster, not at first. But true to responding to my dad, always up for a challenge I did eat it and was pleasantly surprised since it was overwhelmed with lots of butter and a light undertone of garlic. Not so much the oyster. It was slimy, cold, and only tinged with a squeeze of lemon and drop or two of tabasco.

So when something finds its way into the animal’s shell and eats the snail the shell is left. Empty, it eventually is carried by the tide and washes up on shore where some lucky beach-comber like me comes across it. These sea shells are graceful. They look like alabaster and the ocean wears them smooth. I always have a choice whether to pick it up or leave it where I found it. Today I chose to keep it. My son’s birthday is a week from now.

I hope he enjoys it.