The best day of the year

I count it a measure of my inexperience as a gardener that I still love planting day the best. Hours go into my garden plans as I scope out which plants like which others, how to lay out paths, what did well last year and what I would like to try this time. The fickle Vermont climate here in Zone 4 adds unpredictability, an insouciant invitation to try peppers and okra on the chance that this may be their year.

The Deep South, where I grew up, is so different in its seasonal sighs. There, flowering trees bloom every year in colors that are startling only in contrast to the gray, rainy winter. But here in Vermont, trees are blooming this year that last year did not. Old news to the locals that sometimes the blossoms freeze before spring, but this chilly truth requires an adjustment on my part. The higher peaks and lower lows of Vermont seasons also demand the observer’s keen attention, particularly if the observer wants to garden.

In the South, the long growing season allows for a more gradual slide from winter into spring, spring into summer, although most people still put in the largest part of their gardens all at once. The tradition is that you plant your peas on St. Patrick’s day, not that they are likely to do much before the heat of the summer comes. You plant most of your garden on Good Friday. In Vermont, our last reliable frost free date is Memorial Day, and there has been frost documented well into June. With this weekend’s perfect weather for planting, there must have been millions (billions?) of seeds nestled into plots and fields, covered over by a warm blanket of earth and gently nourished by last night’s soaking rain. Perfection!

We must be grateful for planting days like the last three. Now the race is on! Soon it will be the Fourth of July, sometimes barely warm in Southern terms, then August’s second cut of hay. And after the second cut, we feel the chill at our backs as we hurry to prepare for another winter. A critical skill for Vermont gardening is to read the back of the seed packet: days to harvest mean the difference between getting a crop and not.

I do love the planning stages. I love dreaming over my graph paper and my books, imagining the soft sweep of fennel behind a bed of tall marigolds. I love walking around my yard and pondering seriously the consequences of where I plant rhubarb, horseradish, and lovage. I will never plant Jerusalem artichokes again, and I am astonished that anyone would plant morning glories.

Sometimes I struggle because I so badly want to put seeds into the ground. At one level I am falling back into the seasonal patterns of my youth—surely it must be time! But I know that it is best to proceed systematically, laying in the paths, planning crop rotation and labeling as I go. Still I yearn to dream over the little seeds, to put them to bed as I conjure visions of tall, perfect specimens untangled by weeds.

Then one day it is time. This is it. There is soft sunshine in the morning and almost no breeze, but thundershowers are forecast for the afternoon. The garden is tilled, and the paths are laid out, if not quite properly clothed in newspaper and straw. A week of daily gentle showers has left the ground dry enough to work but moist enough to show a darker shadow of where the rake has been. It’s time to plant!

About two thirds of my garden is in. I am trying corn this year. There is a whole row of beans of different types, alternating colors so I can easily tell which is which for the freezer. I had no squash last year or the year before, so this time the whole bottom row, which tends to be wet, is a trial of three years worth of accumulated squash seed. There are beets and carrots and radishes. The vegetable garden gets the messy annual herbs, like coriander and borage and summer savory. And for serendipity, there are two kinds of melons. Maybe this will be their year.

I made some mistakes. According to my notes, sunflowers do not like pole beans and vice versa, but there is a long row of sunflowers behind the corn and the pole beans. We’ll see. Onion sets still need to go in, and maybe some seed potatoes for a new experiment. A big crop of garlic. And a variety of greens, which last longer for us than for Southern gardeners.

And the herb garden still waits. Seven of the eight wedge-shaped beds in the circle have been dug and prepped, and the planting plan which looked good on paper is evolving nicely. Having banished the weedy herbs to the vegetable plot, I am considering a veritable avenue of lettuces for this new garden just outside the back door.

There comes a day when the planning and the preparation aren’t done, but it is time to plant. So we respond to the day, we fling ourselves into the task. At the end of the day, we see that we have accomplished not only a good day’s work but also a turn of the season. And we turn our faces toward the joy of whatever comes next.

Vermont perfection

It was supposed to rain all this long Memorial Day weekend. But not so far.

Yesterday was one of those days that made me fall in love with Vermont. Bright sunshine, cool breezes, and black flies that respected my lavish application of Deet. I had to be outside, and I had loads of outside things to do.

The new herb garden—a circular design that makes the former above-ground pool almost worthwhile—is coming together. I’m taking this opportunity to visit local nurseries that have teased my interest for years, and I have some sparkly new dianthus, a look-at-me-wow vanilla allium, and a sample of each nursery’s idea of the ideal lavender to try in the new space.

The dogs are always happy when I spend time with them outdoors. Even Jake comes around, the old Lab the next house down who is alternately their buddy and their arch-nemesis. Max, somewhat recovered from last week’s ills, has happily buried, dug up, and reburied a piece of steak that I judged a bit too old for me to eat. We are still in the “all-the-cookies-you-want” mode, and after reading the current Ever So Humble http://everyday.blogs.com/humble/ I got both Max and Toby yet another cookie. Good dogs! How easy it is to lose patience with them, and how quickly they forgive!

The lawn mower is working again, and I have a nice, tidy border mowed all around the vegetable garden, preparation for the July explosion of green matter. The vegetable garden paths are in process, and in deference to the work required to get the new herb garden started, I am not even pretending to dig those raised beds this year. Let’s try the newspaper and straw right on trampled garden soil. Let’s just see. Gardening is a creative act, one experiment after another. The designs that seem so compelling indoors give way to new ideas that burble up while digging proceeds. What if and what if and what if. Some ideas work, and some don’t, and that is just fine.

A nap at midday (must preserve the magnolia blossom look) and another couple of hours in the garden, then it is time to put away tools. Lawn mower. Shovel. Fork. Wheel barrow. Garden plans. Was that a raindrop?

Raindrops gathered into downpour, soothing sounds of rain on the roof, the sun is back out, and there it is. The rainbow. In what I have come to know as the field where rainbows come. Somewhere buried in my brain, there is a line from Goethe that I cannot quite retrieve, but the idea is this. Should we ever experience a moment in which we say, “Stop, moment, thou art so fair…” we will have met heaven on earth, and we will cease to strive toward heaven. It wasn’t quite that moment, but for what it was, it was perfection.

Just till Tuesday

By the time people are my age, we have generally figured out how to live in our skins. Whatever our own peculiar mix of talents and attributes, we have adapted. For myself, I know that I have a high need to be entertained and that I do my best work in the morning. I know that I derive new energy from the free flow of ideas. Creativity is my thing. And I know that I am introverted, that spending time with other people drains me, and I need to be filled up again.

Feeling calm, whole and happy for me means working around these personal truths. But sometimes the outside world’s demands don’t line up with my needs just perfectly. I find myself thinking, “If I can only make it to Tuesday…” Just wishing my life away. I have passed entire years like that—not a healthy life plan.

But really, if I can just make it to Tuesday….Tuesday I will mail the grant and be able to tackle the funding issue. I am already more relaxed than a few days ago. With days left and only budgets to finish, the grant will get done. It is on the downhill side, and as long as I carefully dedicate a few morning (productive!) hours, the work product will be adequate to suit even my harshest critic, myself.

I can handle a week like this now and then, but I resent facing time and space constraints. Acceptance trumps that resentment. There is never enough time.

Meanwhile, my garden has been tilled, and if my rows don’t get built and seeds don’t get in the ground on this traditional planting weekend, well, maybe later. Or maybe some of them not at all. I am lucky that my survival does not depend on my backyard crop. The new herb garden is laid out, and I have seeds to scratch in. In between trying to make those financial projections balance, I intend to go hunting for a few plants that make me happy: scented geraniums, perhaps, or creeping thyme. The gardens are supposed to be restorative for me, not one more set of “oughtas.”

Why have I allowed a work project (or two) to take over my mind and spirit this week? Why would I ever do that? Well, because this one project is really important. I have come to accept that I cannot do everything, but when I see something I believe in, once in a very long while…maybe once or twice a year…I can give up even my own peace of mind in pursuit of that ideal….but only once or twice a year, and only for a week. To tackle more would be an arrogant overestimate of my strength, as I have learned the hard way. It is a slippery slope, the thin end of the wedge that separates us from health, wholeness, love and goodness.

Breathe in breathe out

Vermont is not supposed to allow for weeks as stressful as this one. On the other hand, this is what my life in New York was like all the time, all the time. So can I take it a couple of weeks a year? Don’t ask.

We won’t catalog all the stressors, not the failing but beloved dog, not the identity theft experience, not the wild swings in expectations of my major funding agency. There are more, but really, I don’t want to catalog them. Stressed. Overstressed. Stressed in the extreme. How did I ever tolerate this level of total system toxicity?

Yesterday I spent the day at a major business networking event. With piles of work in my office, I had a hard time justifying it, and I did opt out of breakfast in the interest of a little strategic organization of one of my major projects. I felt much relieved for those few minutes in the office, and new assistant kept things moving while I headed for the big city of Burlington.

Checked in with board members who were having their first exposure to Expo, and networked, networked, networked. It’s funny to look back two years, when I was just getting ready to interview for this job that I now love; I went to Expo to scope out who all these people were and whether I could work with them. Oh yes.

Went to lunch and was lucky in my choice of seat with good company on either side and some of my favorite people at the table. Excellent speaker. The kind of presentation in which you say, “Yes! That’s what I have been trying to say. That’s what I mean. How did you know?”

Came home refreshed, reinvigorated and happy all over again.

Loving old dogs

Thanks for all your kind thoughts about my dog. Max is elderly and not eating well. He is down to 78 pounds from 93, but this is easier on his joints. He seems to have fleas and a bit of mange, which are creating hot spots. In the last year he has developed a heart murmur. But a little care and attention over the weekend seemd to help a lot. Both Max and Toby hate baths, but cold water on those itchy spots seemed like a fair trade for the horror of wet feet.

I have switched vets, or maybe just added one, but I am happier with the care Max is getting. The other one does a lot of large animals in their practice, and I felt they were not really paying attention but maybe that is a function of this busy spring season. The new one put Max back on antibiotics and explained that the murmur is likely to lead eventually to congestive heart failure and that it is not treatable with medication. It is the kind of thing that requires surgery, but they don't do that, nor do they really recommend it for older dogs. Nor would I consider it. Heart surgery for an 11-year-old dog is not the same decision as hip surgery for a bouncing 5-year-old.

Max is an old dog, but I could have him with me for some time yet. I haven't asked for a prediction of how long, and I don't really want to know if an end point is near. I just want to feed him cookies and scratch his chest and take him for walks. I want to listen to him lecture me about how there are never enough cookies for such a good dog. I want to sleep with him in the room as long as possible so that I can hear snuffly German Shepherd breathing. These days, my best measures of how he is doing are his general mood and whether he can make it upstairs at night. More and more often, he prefers to sleep next to the stove in the living room on the bed I made for him as joints got creaky and old bones needed cushioning from hard floors. And one day, I want to come downstairs to find that he has gone to sleep there for the last time. I want Max to have a good life, but I want him to have a good and peaceful death, too.

I love my dogs. There is a special joy in living with and loving old dogs. I have a friend who adopted one of the puppies we fostered over Christmas. A couple of times a week she has new stories of the horrors that Sweet Pea has wrought in her house: peacock feathers, yarn, candles, all lost! No item is safe now that Sweet Pea can reach the tops of the counters. But every story of treasures lost is overbalanced by the puppy's charm, the sheer life that she has brought into the household. Even their old dog steps a little more smartly in the company of this bright young thing.

Old dogs, when we pay attention, still have that same sprightly appeal in layers deepened over our years with them. Max is still drawn to men, he still can lift them off the ground if I don't pay attention, and he still lectures me in that deep baritone. What a talky dog! There is a depth, a richness, a pentimento of the puppies we once knew still there, but old dogs don't yank us around on walks, they don't destroy household items, and they can generally tolerate more schedule unpredictability. But this time of their lives--and ours--when the occasional bathroom incident occurs, we can just look at each other and shrug.

When the puppies were with us over Christmas, it was notable that they never overshadowed the big dogs. The puppies were fun, but they had small personalities and no depth of character. The big dogs oversaw the whole distressing array gravely, and they let me know that I was testing the limits of their patience, but that they would tolerate it, for me. Sometime in the next few months I may be ready for a puppy, but not yet. This is not the time for tiny, new, rambunctious personalities. This is a time for being with Max and Toby. This is a time for caring for and appreciating especially Max, who has good days and bad days. It is a different stage of life, and once we are more accustomed to it--all of us--then we will be able to welcome a puppy with open hearts. Breathe in now, so that we can breathe out. Thanks for listening.

New paths

On Friday I woke to doggy health problems. My well loved 11-year-old German Shepherd had a hot spot. Small things like this are big for Max, who has a replacement hip. Having come to me as a foundling, it was always a pretty sure thing that he would have the hip problems that are so common to the breed, and when he was five--far to young for me to accept the loss of this wonderful dog--his painful hips led me to get him a major operation, a hip transplant. The whole question of how one comes to the decision to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a hip transplant for a companion animal leads to some interesting discussions, but that's not today's topic.

For Max, post operation, any open wound requires him to go on antibiotics. An open wound puts him at risk of infection, which could rapidly go into the implant area. We are all obsessed with healthcare issues in Vermont these days, and as this well loved companion ages, I watch him tenderly. Whatever time he has left, I want it to be peaceful and happy and without pain. Some days I am overcome with my fear of losing him, although I know it is a day that must come. Some days, I just wail, please not quite yet. So I made an appointment with the vet, and by the end of the call, I was in tears.

My reason for moving to Vermont and the lesson I have continued to learn since moving here is that when emotion overwhelms me, it is time for some self care. The only thing on my calendar for the day was a dentist appointment, so I made a quick trip to the office and put up a sign: "Closed today due to medical emergencies." Many medical emergencies. My assistant's baby daughter in the hospital. A family member facing long term critical health issues. A dog in need of antibiotics. But mostly an emergency need to take a little care of myself lest I bite the next person who walked into the office.

I spent most of yesterday and today on the garden, laying out paths. The herb garden is new this year, and I am trying out paths of chamomile which grows wild here. I lay out my paths with string, then I turn the soil in the beds. As I go, I take the baby chamomile weeds from the plots and transplant them as much desired chamomile turf in the paths. The exercise of creating a path by cutting away the undesirable thatch of weeds between the paths is a meditation in itself.

The vegetable garden is in its second year. Last year I hired the plowing done, then laid out my paths with string, then dug a few inches down in the paths and put the soil on the beds to raise them up. Then I put down a layer of something covered by a layer of straw, and I had beautiful paths. The preferred underlayer was old dogfood bags, saved just for this purpose on long remembered advice from one of my gardening uncles. They turned out to be way slippery, and I didn't have nearly enough, so I tried black plastic on another row and then newspaper on another. Lack of planning turned experiment, and through the season, I found little difference in function on the paths.

The careful reader will note that this process is exactly the opposite of what I am doing in the herb garden. Vegetable garden--dig the path, herb garden, dig the bed. Throughout last year's growing season I nourished the hope that I would not have to rebuild the paths again, thinking of what it would take to pull out the remains of the dogfood bags and the black plastic, not to mention all my hard labor to move all that dirt. My favorite Vermont tractor guy showed up on Friday, he opined that he thought he could preserve the paths, and no, he wasn't worried about stuff in the garden. After the first pass, he stopped and used a knife to cut out of his plow blades the remains of dogfood bags, black plastic, and even a little pea netting unwittingly left.

Here's a lesson! Don't worry about the stuff under the ground. Just plow through it, then cut away the excess. Here's another. There is no way to preserve those paths. I have laid them out again, and I suspect that I will be a little less vigorous about moving dirt this year, maybe shoveling just enough to suggest terraces on the gentle slope. And I will use all newspaper. Five paths, five bales of straw, and it will be good to go again. It is hard to have to rebuild paths, but it is easier the second time.

In spiritual practice, too, it is building the path the first time that is the hardest work. We keep relearning the same old stuff, or at least sometimes it seems so. But it is easier each time we tackle an old battle. And sometimes we learn a new technique, like digging the beds instead of the paths. I have been reading a wonderful little book called Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions, by Thich Nhat Hanh. Each right-hand page has a short thought which floats in visual space; each left-hand page is blank.

Here's one: Recognize and embrace your anger when it manifests itself. Care for it with tenderness rather than suppressing it.

Here's another: Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the energy of hate, of anger, of fear. We forget that in us there are other kinds of energy that can manifest also. If we know how to practice, we can bring back the energy of insight, of love, and of hope in order to embrace the energy of fear, of despair, and of anger.

And one more: Faith is the outcome of your life. As faith continues to grow, you continue to get the energy, because faith is also an energy like love. If we look deeply into the nature of our love, we will also see our faith. When we have faith in us, we are no longer afraid of anything.

Thich Nhat Hanh also wrote another wonderful book that Robert of Beginner's Mind gave me when I, a Christian, asked him in all sincerity about what attracted him to Buddhism. When he first gave it to me, I got bogged down in the introduction, but the book itself, Living Buddha, Living Christ is a rich treasure I have just begun to tap.

I have missed writing. It is one of my daily practices (the other is walking), and this blog community offers me real connections. I've had a crazy winter, and I'm feeling a little overstimulated, a little bruised. Time to build some new paths.

Thanks for noticing

The brass ring that represents the end of my technical worries seems just beyond my fingertips. One more (please, just this one more?) connection problem with new laptop and home network, and I believe that I will be back operating on all fronts.

I have really missed blogging. I have missed writing. But spring has come to Vermont whether I document its coming or not, and its unexpected glory has swept me away all over again.

Thanks to everyone who noticed my absence. Back soon, I trust. Meanwhile, here's another good horoscope for anyone, any day.

Something seems to be holding you back. Something seems to be preventing you from reaching your full potential. Whatever it is, you must get over it quickly because very soon the kind of opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime will be heading your way. Let go of your fears. Anything is possible if you want it enough.

Blogless

Is it something about the time of year? Are we all outrageously busy making the mental/physical/psychological shift of season? Where have all the bloggers gone? Maybe it is just the unrepresentative, unscientifically sampled group of blogs that I read, but we all seem to have fallen off the blog-wagon. I include myself.

In my case, it is partly the disruption of changing seasons, but mostly ongoing computer issues. I continue to be optimistic that I am near the end of my techno-trials, but who knows? I am renowned for unrealistic optimism, which I consciously choose in contrast to blind cynicism, hurtful not only to originator but to surrounding, innocent parties.

I wrote several blogs in my head yesterday. One on the joy of (almost) completing the bathroom wallpaper, along with memories of wallpaper projects and holiday projects of the past. When you are a single person who enjoys home improvement, the large blocks of time tend to be holidays, so when asked what you did for Easter, you are likely to respond “Wallpapered the bathroom! It is awesome!” Long Thanksgiving weekends will likely bring an outing to friends for dinner but may also include several hours taping diagonal squares on the kitchen floor for an experiment in special effects with wood stain. It turned out beautifully, thank you, but I failed to cover it with a good finish coat to protect it, enamored with shellac as I was in those days. But we live and learn, and we entertain ourselves making ourselves at home.

Another blog only in my brain was about the hike the boys and I took up Smugglers’ Notch. We drove as far as possible on the Smuggs side to where the road is closed, then hiked up the road to the notch. Not a tough climb by any means, the walk was made easier by being on highway most of the way. We met one woman and her two-year-old Golden Retriever as we were going up and they were coming down; we met a lone photographer as we descended. Otherwise, it was a glorious but solitary outing.

Max and Toby were in heaven with so much room to gallop and romp, and I loved the crisp air, the sunshine, the trickle of melting snow, the views—my heavens! the views!—everything except the slidy parts. The last third of the trip was on snowpack, still over two feet thick in some sections, and while my knees and my untutored Southern lack of balance on snow and ice can tolerate going uphill, the downhill return was something else altogether. I looked for crunchy spots, zigzagged back and forth avoiding melty areas and even water flowing across blacktop where black ice can lie hidden. Tiny, tiny steps. All the while thinking about whether it really was very smart to go hiking only with two elderly dogs. If I took a header off the side of the mountain, Toby would never leave me, but would Max know to go looking for help? Would anyone understand his doggy variant of “Timmy’s in the well?” But the slippy, fearful episode lasted only a few minutes out of what was otherwise a glorious morning, and we made it home safely. We would go again of course, but I might be more careful about climbing ice unaccompanied. It looks so different coming back down!

So it was back to the bathroom wallpaper and the realization that one is almost as much at risk on a ladder at home in the bathroom--particularly slipping around on wallpaper paste--as slipping around on ice. At least outdoors on a sunny Sunday morning, there is the possibility that other people will happen by, a possibility that is considerably smaller in my bathroom.

The world is a scary place if we allow it to be. It is also a glorious place to explore. Again, if we allow it to be.

Adventure

Another horoscope for any day and for anyone:

You cannot be too adventurous today. Do things you would not normally do and be open to people you would not usually think of conversing with. Most of all, keep away from boring people and boring places. You have lived too long in the comfort zone - now it is time to stretch yourself physically, mentally and emotionally. This is also a great time to travel.

Signs of spring

Snow’s almost gone. Daffodils pushing through the soil.

Lots of new rocks in the house—Toby is so glad to see them that he can’t be parted from his favorites. Moles or voles plowing the field, fun for dogs to chase, what would they do if they caught one?

Masters golf tournament in the news, which means down South there’s strong sunshine and flowers, neither for us quite yet. Peepers are heard in southern New Hampshire, surely any day for us.

Parsnips ready for the digging, maybe even a forgotten onion or two. Startling green chives! Catnip and evening primrose already coming in strong. Time to lay out the new herb garden.

Spent the morning taking off nasty old black plastic shutters, all except the upstairs sets, for which I will need help. I was afraid the house would look too bland without them, but I quite like its plain Greek Revival lines.

Spent the afternoon working on wallpapering the bathroom. Another nasty, tiny-flowered, shiny vinyl replaced with a gorgeous leafy lattice pattern, courtesy of e-Bay. Inch by inch, this house will be mine.

Fundamental matters

From yesterday’s New York Times op-ed piece commemorating Albert Einstein’s miraculous 1905: “Quantum mechanics does not merely challenge the previous laws of physics. Quantum mechanics challenges this centuries-old framework of physics itself. According to quantum mechanics, physics cannot make definite predictions. Instead, even if you give me the most precise description possible of how things are now, we learn from quantum mechanics that the most physics can do is predict the probability that things will turn out one way, or another, or another way still.”

I believe there is a physics of human behavior as well. Whenever we think we know what makes someone tick, we are bound to be mistaken.

Think of conflict between people. If you and I disagree on some matter, it would be nice if we could simply agree that we each have our own view of the situation and move on. The more emotionally charged the matter, however, the less likely we will be able to do that, as least not without a lot of practice in analyzing the matter and resolving to separate our purposeful actions from our emotions.

If I cannot make that separation, then I will start to blame you for disagreeing with me. I may get very angry with you that you dare to have a contrary opinion. Soon I will decide that it is all your fault. And you may be doing nothing more than holding steadfast to your right to be yourself and to see the world in your own way. If I listen to your words and your tone and I observe your actions, then I may have a better chance of predicting your reactions, which may be driven by some past interchange.

I am not suggesting that we enter into psychoanalyzing each other, which I view as just another manipulative technique, but certainly it is more pleasant to deal with people who have better developed social and emotional skills. I’m thinking of a particular group in which I participate that operates for all the world like a dysfunctional family. Sometimes it seems that the mildest question or contrary opinion sets off incoherent, babbling, spitting rage. The effort of dealing with long past, unresolved conflicts—which had nothing to do with me—may soon cause me to opt out of that particular organization.

All the hidden vectors on human behavior make people unpredictable, but what quantum physics tells us is that the idea of predictability is illusion. It’s as if two pool balls collide in the middle of the table and rise straight up into the air. Traditional physics says this cannot happen. Quantum physics says it doesn’t happen often.

It is still worth studying traditional physics, and it is worth working hard to try to understand our friends, our colleagues, our lovers and our families. Every observation is grist to that mill. I spent decades unable to feel or display anger at even the most intrusive behavior, then more years—some would say—being angry at everything. Now I am learning to avert other people’s anger without responding in kind. I am learning to say, “I understand that you are unhappy with me, but your anger will not make me behave in any way I do not choose for myself.” It is behavior worth practicing.

It is also worth remembering that the world and its inhabitants are inherently unpredictable. That observation strips away our false sense of safety, but it gives us the possibility of blinding joy.

Redux

I had the same conversation twice today. Speaking with two different friends, I heard the same lament. One planning to become a therapist, one who would rather die than encounter a therapist, they both are warm, wonderful, emotionally alive women, if somewhat conflicted. These women have known sorrow, both of them, in kind and depth that no caring human would wish on another.

One, let’s call her A, or Anne, lost a child in a particularly heartbreaking way—suicide, or was it accidental suffocation? One hardly knows which interpretation would be more difficult for a mother to accept. And brutal, unseeing life lurches on.

The other, let’s call her B, or Bella, grew up with a schizophrenic sibling who took all her parents’ attention, threatened her with repetitive bodily harm, and executed his cruel intent. Is it because she is finally secure in the love of her husband that she is now reliving those bad old days? I think maybe so.

Two amazing women. And each of them said to me today, “You know, I don’t really want to explore it all. The pain was real, but it is in my past. Most of all I want to move on. Aren’t there some techniques in the toolbox I can have? Why must I wallow in past sorrows? Honestly, I have done that to death and beyond. When can I see some relief? Some hope?”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the mental health field offered such support?

It does. I know it does, because I have thrice walked through my own private demons in the company of some caring professional. At last I have learned to respect and protect my own history. It is not for public consumption, nor is there any longer any cathartic release to be had. It is private. It is sad. So now, I tell what I want and I withhold what I want, and that is how it is.

The therapeutic process has many benefits, but my friends are right: it is tools we need, not catharsis. I still struggle to identify manipulation before it hurts me, and I know I am making progress because now the manipulators succeed less than half the time. It is still tough, but I am learning. More tools, we want more tools.

Losing my mind

A friend has pointed out that he is…well, difficult…whenever his collection of technological devices fails to operate in perfect synchronicity. Those are the times, he says, when his wife finds him contrary, and his co-workers keep their distance. I wonder.

My entire staff, consisting of two older ladies sharing a half-time job, recently resigned in protest over my failure to appreciate them. My suspicions of their hidden intent must remain unspoken and unblogged. In truth, I did appreciate them, but my approach to professional relationships may be somewhat chillier than many other people choose, and more than many people presume of me, given my warm and enthusiastic social mask. Let’s just say that I have been burned on the office "friendship" front in the past, and I choose to keep my friendships quite separate from my working relationships. I love my friends, and I appreciate my colleagues, and I know the difference, thank you very much.

But maybe my long term distress over Dell’s abysmal customer service, persisting in multiple iterations since late December—are we into our fourth month of repetitive disaster? did I mention that the power supply failed over the weekend?—maybe that distressing sequence of experiences has taken a toll on how I interact with humans. Maybe I have also been…difficult, contrary. Perhaps my casual reference to offline storage of my thoughts, experiences, memories, even my emotions have their being in the bits and bytes of hard drive and web server. Maybe more of me than I suspect exists offline. Outside my pitiful brain. In laptop and desktop, in e-mail attachments and shared files. My self might exist in mechanical objects that have become distressingly vulnerable to the ravages of power spikes, dust, and mechanical failure.

What a hoot! I have often celebrated the miracle of offline storage and the way it demonstrably expands my mind. But my personality? Can I really park bits of my very self offline? And if I am deprived of that opportunity, do I lash out at people who stand between my self (the real and central me) and my ability to access those bits that are stored offline? I would like to think that I retain some distinction between the parts of me that are really me and the parts that are outside, but I just don’t know.

Now if I can just shed the image of being someone who tortures little old ladies for the fun of it, which surely was never my intention. But actions are the mere shadow of our intentions, which pave the road to hell. Actions are what make the difference in our lives, driving regret and renewed resolve to make it all better next time. Actions are the residue of the moment, leaving in their wake all manner of consequence, which shape the moments of tomorrow, the field on which we play out whatever it is that comes to us next.

Business school was most liberating for me, a child of excessive responsibility, and one of the most critical things I learned was to accept the lessons of each day, but then to move on with the rallying cry, “Next!” Time to stop beating my breast. I did in fact appreciate my staff: I honored their efforts even as I pushed them to improved performance that did not excuse them as old ladies. To have done less would have been to diminish them. And yet, I confess my fault that I was unable to lead them to yet another triumph in their lives of many such. And having recognized my failure, I turn my face to the spring sun and cry anew, “Next!”

Happy Easter!

I love Easter. What could be a stronger expression of the triumph of hope over despair, light over darkness, life over death? It is trust in this triumph that is the heart of my value system.

Rooted first in metaphor, my world view swerved over into outright belief in the tenets of Christianity some years back, not that you would know it from my recent church attendance record. That transition had some interesting steps, but it started by deep and thoughtful consideration of what I knew of my own experience to be true, then expanded to a few key concepts taught by others. Without any attempt to be definitive or complete on this beautiful Easter morning, I offer up a few of them.

Opposite things can be true—hold them in your mind without trying to resolve the contradiction. Dealing with the death of a loved one or the loss of a friendship calls us to grief and rage. At the same time, we know that death comes to each of us and that loss is our lot on earth—that truth requires acceptance. One loss after another, sometimes it seems that way, until that final loss of our own lives resolves into who knows what. Personally, I don’t need to know what comes next—I have quite enough to manage to process what is going on in this lifetime. Perhaps if the Buddhists are right and we have multiple approaches to truth, perhaps in my next lifetime I will get to chew on that issue.

Despair is a sin. As a person who has battled depression from time to time, this was a hard one for me. My nature is sunny and upbeat, but my biochemistry sometimes goes in the opposite direction. How can that be?

If you hang around churches very much, soon you will notice that people may stay away for years but come back for holidays like Christmas and Easter, but even more they come back for major life transitions—joyous ones like weddings and baptisms, sad ones like funerals—and for comfort in times of trouble. Churches persist because they bring comfort and because they deliver the message that we mere mortals must look beyond today’s sadness in our own lives to a bigger picture. If we insist on focusing only on our own pain, only today, admittedly real and deserving our care, but if that is all we see, we are guilty of despair. So I had to learn to see beyond my immediate moods and let my heart lift up my biochemically challenged brain. This ongoing practice takes a lot of private time, and my family and friends often don’t understand where my moods are at any given time, but life is better now.

Despair is an interesting word—it means literally the lack of hope. In French, “esperer” means “to hope.” Some years ago, working in Brazil, I was startled to see the copy machine display the following message: “Espere!” It turns out that in Portuguese, this simply means “Wait” but it gave me a giggle to get an inspirational poke from the copy machine.

Start from where you are. We all have our individual challenges and demons; likewise we all have unique gifts. What if we were to put aside the demons for a little while? Not pretend they don’t exist, just set them aside. What if we were to spend even one day celebrating the glory of our own lives and of those we love? What if we were to aggressively follow the advice of the copy machine as I first heard it: Hope! Take a day to celebrate hope. No, I didn’t say hop, but that might work, too. Have a happy, hopeful, hoppy Easter!

On anger and letting go

One explanation of depression is having one’s limbic system flooded. Anger or other strong emotion can cause a backlash into dullness or absence of feeling, as happened to me after yet another Dell meltdown yesterday afternoon.

So I get a memory error when the system powers down—is that any reason to propose yanking out the hard drive? That would be putting in the fourth hard drive in the second system in eighteen months, all in the futile attempt to get one operational system. We will draw a curtain over the events of the past three months, during which I spent many, many hours to rebuild my system. I was not at all pleased with the idea that I was going to have to start over from the beginning, and got even more agitated when the technical support guy suggested that perhaps he would just send out a system swap. When he couldn’t come up with a better solution, this first tech support guy proposed transferring us to another area, then promptly hung up on us.

Over my tearful protests, the next phone support technician took the onsite technician through one component at a time and discovered that the underlying problem was a wireless card, not even a Dell-installed component, a very easy problem to solve, and one that—thank heaven!—need not require further Dell involvement. I’m sure that Dell is as happy not to deal with me as I am not to deal with them.

But today, I still have the anger hangover. I feel grim and heavy and gray and touchy. And despite taking the precaution of eating carbs for lunch, I took out a couple of bystanders in collateral damage. Everything looks more dire when depression rules, even when you try to compensate for your gray-tinted specs. In truth, I should have called in sick, but it’s hard to get sympathy for an overstimulated limbic system.

I’m thinking now that maybe it is time to say goodbye to Dell, even with two years left on the warranty. The sheer stupidity of proposing a system replacement to solve a problem with a wireless card amazes, shocks and offends. But in the overall scheme of life and death, love and humanity, I can’t afford to waste a particle of energy on Dell. When the next problem with this system occurs—and I feel certain that it is when and not if—I think I will call my local support guys. If there is something that needs to be dealt with under the warranty, then I will pay someone else to call Dell. Or not. Honestly, life is too short for this. There has to be a better way.

Meanwhile, I find myself craving the support of my friends who are put together the same way I am, friends who are known for being difficult, prickly, obnoxious and angry. Today I was all those and worse, and now I want to rest in the company of someone who will say, “There, there. It will be better tomorrow.” I want to hear from someone who says, “I don’t care what other people say about you, I know you’re doing your best.” I want to be with people who aren’t always nice, because they are always trying to push a good cause one more step ahead, even on days when they don’t get the strategy just right. I want someone to make me a cup of tea and ask if I’m okay, then when I say “Well, sort of,” tell me funny stories to make me laugh or read me to sleep. All so that we can all get up and do it again tomorrow without the anger hangover, without the same nonsense, with our reserves rebuilt by the loving care of those who know us best.

Entropy?

I wrote this one morning a few weeks ago:

There is a level at which I find the concept of entropy comforting. Daily life is full of small defeats: peeling paint, computers that need repair, wrinkles and graying hair. Outside of the tale of Dorian Gray, however, the direction of change flows predictably in one direction. We know that if the paint peeled last summer, more of it will peel next summer, and it is important to think about what to do next. Never once has it happened to me that peeling paint repaired itself.

As sometimes happens, I got to the end of the paragraph and the flow of words stopped, usually a sure sign that there is something wrong with what I have written. I couldn’t immediately see where it had gone wrong, so I filed away this apparently inoffensive fragment for later, and a few days ago, it came into focus.

Dead wrong. The observation is simply wrong. It is rooted in the elegant pronouncements of physics, or rather the more superficial and dreary aspects of the mechanical world. This world is predictable, with bodies in motion tending to remain in motion…and all that. But plain old physics does not account for spring.

It’s early yet, so the snow is just going, the mud is still passable, and we don’t yet see green bursting forth all around, but already something in the air has changed. There is new energy all around, and it is neither dreary nor predictable, even though it happened to us just a year ago. Spring! What theoretical construct can account for it?

I used to know physicists, and the ones I esteemed were focused on the sub-microscopic world of particles. It still tickles me to remember that in that world, a particle might be one place, then somewhere else altogether—the “quantum leap” that is not tiny as in common parlance, but very, very large. If the laws of mechanics are dreary (if comforting in their predictable nature), the world of quantum mechanics is sheer possibility. Maybe that’s a better theoretical model for life as we know it, but still, how to explain spring?

As is probably clear by now, my science education was sketchy, and I am not really looking to re-immerse myself in biological mysteries like the Krebs cycle, which always made my eyes glaze. Even if I understood the science behind the rush of new life about to happen all around us, I don’t think it could possibly expand my delight that after a long winter of breathing in, now it is time to breathe out, to sing, to dance, to run up and down the hill back of my house in sheer exuberance and exultation that it is spring!

Options

My compost methods (see previous post) are not, I think, so very unusual, and I don’t really beat myself up over the waste, which is not waste at all other than the money spent to purchase vegetables I don’t actually get inside myself.

You may notice that I make a concerted effort not to beat myself up over anything; rather, if I see that I am doing something that seems inappropriate or wrong, I just stop that behavior and replace it with more positive actions. Negative reinforcement doesn’t work on my staff, my dogs, or anyone else I have ever met—why would I want to try it on myself? Apologies are sometimes in order, but the exercise of public self-flagellation does not accomplish much, in my opinion.

Rather, I work hard to treat myself well, including organizing my life so that I can be strong and healthy, and that means having the option of good food at home. My diet is working very well these days, rich in high quality protein, whole grains and vegetables. Organizing food is different in rural Vermont from New York City, where greengrocers were on every other corner and one could purchase beautiful produce on the way home, no matter the hour at which one came home. In Vermont, I am home early and once home, I don’t want to leave my cozy nest. That means if I have good food—including vegetables—at home, I will eat them. If not, well, …not.

So I buy four or five vegetables a week, in addition to the basic onions, celery, carrots, garlic, coriander, and ginger. I figure I spend maybe ten dollars a week on vegetables, many of which end up in the compost. But some of them end up in me, and that is the goal of the exercise. I am paying ten dollars a week not for compost, but rather for the option on vegetables, the capacity to do something for my health every day that I would not have if I didn’t buy vegetables. And no, frozen won’t work—the holistic experience of peeling, slicing and cooking is part of the health benefit I am seeking.

Option preservation. This is something I first learned at business school, the concept that when choosing among alternatives, there is value in the one that keeps your options open, particularly when you have the ultimate alternative of compost. It’s a powerful guiding principle, particularly when dealing with people. Far too quick to draw lines between good and bad, we humans cope better when we create strategies that keep our options open. Do I dump the boyfriend? Write off the sibling or the friend who has been uncommunicative? Refuse to deal with the person who makes life difficult? Why? Aren’t we usually better off if we create an environment in which the annoying person has room to do the right thing, the creative thing, the loving thing? The observable fact that they don't often take it should not influence our willingness to create the right environment.

There are, of course, occasions when it is right and proper and even loving to make a clean break, but they are few in number. We tend to know them when we see them. For me, I find that when I think maybe I ought to make a clean break, I really need to redouble my efforts at bridge-building, even if bridge-building involves redefining the relationship in some fundamental way. Seeing the other person whole, speaking to the other person as an independent entity capable of making his or her own decision, and avoiding the trap of manipulating that person into doing what I want—all that practice often does redefine the relationship and makes room for shifting into new roles without the mutual flagellation that so often characterizes the ways we humans treat each other. I may not be able to see what the new options look like, but that should not prevent my pursuing new options in all faith that a better way will open up before me.

When I know--not think, but know--that it is time to make a break, then it is kindest to go ahead and do it, without second-guessing myself or pulling punches. But that’s only when I know, and that has happened only half a dozen times in my life, as compared to hundreds and hundreds of occasions of renewed bridge-building. More specifically, making a sharp break has only been necessary when the other person in the relationship has been unwilling to consider more than one option for dealing with me. If the game is defined from the other side as do-what-I-want-or-else, I will choose—with regret—to go for “or else.” This was the case when I left my husband twenty years ago, and also on the few occasions when I have needed to fire someone, and maybe a handful of other occasions. It appears that I don't take this step easily, and it may in fact be the challenge of this lifetime that I learn when it is time to let go.

There is a truism in dog training that in a group of dogs, the dog who barks is not necessarily the problem. If you look closely, you will find that there is another dog engaging in psychological warfare, egging on the hapless barker. The challenge for the trainer is to train the barking dog that he has the option to bark or not to bark, to enable him to ignore manipulative machinations and become a happy dog. Likewise, the goading dog needs to learn new ways to entertain himself and suppport his own self-esteem. It’s all about creating and preserving options, so that we can choose the right ones: there is always another way!

I Think I’ll Call Him Harvey

Most people buy their compost at the garden store or by the pickup-truck-load. I buy mine at the grocery store. I buy cauliflower and eggplant, kale and cabbage, apples and oranges and lemons. Then I put them in the refrigerator and wait. Sometimes I cook them, put them back in the refrigerator and wait. After the appropriate time has passed, I pull them out of the refrigerator and add them to my compost bucket, which during these winter months sits right in the kitchen. A full bucket prompts a trip up to the compost pile the far side of the garden, and these days I make that trip on snowshoes.

The dogs and I headed up to the compost pile yesterday—it is one of their favorite outings, but then what isn’t? that’s why you gotta love dogs—and found a flurry of tiny tracks around the coffee grounds emerging from the snow. Aha!

In these days of early spring, we have had a visitor, an unusual white skunk, or so it appears to be. Some authoritative sources opine that it is a skunk with such wide white stripes that it only appears to be white. Sometimes he likes the garage, sometimes the barn across the road, but the dogs are mightily offended that he thinks he can hang around here, and they are intent on teaching that intruding critter a lesson, so I am keeping them a little closer to home.

Having done a little research into what one does about visiting skunks, I have chosen to take refuge in fiction and hope. I don’t actually know that this is a boy skunk, but I choose to believe so. I would prefer to believe that it is a boy skunk on his early spring trip through the neighborhood looking for girls rather than a girl skunk about to settle in to have babies in the garage. I have no basis for this belief, but cling to it nevertheless.

People have a lot of theories, ranging from shooting the skunk in the head to trapping it then putting a blanket over the cage, but all of the theories fall apart around the general topic of skunk spray. None of these approaches seems really practical, and I don’t really (yet) have anything against old Harvey, named for his appearance as a harbinger of spring.

More old friends

So, did you miss me? I missed blogging, but my laptop was in need of a little loving care. Sadly, I’m not sure it has recovered from its display (heh, heh..) of temperament, manifested by flickering screen and a weird bluish overlay of random pixels. But at least I know where to take it now, and I have discovered that I actually can survive a weekend offline.

In one way, my survival technique displayed just another maladjustment in my wiring—I went in to work last Saturday and again on Sunday, something I have not done for a few years. The lingering effect of my hard drive crash in December is just now subsiding, and I am beginning to dig out of the giant hole into which I fell. I am making progress.

It is also a sign of progress that I don’t like working on weekends. I view this realization as an indicator of health. There were years and years during which I simply did not allow myself to question whether I liked to work weekends—it was a given. Had to be done. And I paid a price in deteriorating health, which is now slowly being restored by exposure to the glorious Vermont countryside, attention to the rhythm of seasons, and the company of beloved old dogs. Even work—in an appropriate measure—is part of the cure.

Having worked so much on the weekend, and having spent far too much time with the legislature in recent weeks (not that they aren’t lovely people and committed and all), I felt justified in hunting down an old friend for lunch on Wednesday. Hooray! Not only could he make it, he introduced me to Royal Orchid in Montpelier, a blessedly warm, wonderful, little place with delicious and inexpensive Thai food. I can imagine working my way down the menu with repeat visits, and I am likely to do just that when they open up a new location half a block from my office. I am very, very happy with this news.

I am even happier to have rediscovered a friend from over twenty years ago. As a young bride of twenty-three, I had left Georgia (the state, not Georgia, Vermont…as I have learned to say) to follow my husband to Boston. Barely I can remember how intimidated I was by this cold and busy northeastern city. I made my husband go with me on the “T” the first time, and when the train came in, I was sure I would be sucked in front of the train, dying in a sad, unrecognized and unintended imitation of Anna Karenina. I still sometimes feel very Anna Karenina in subways, but I am no longer intimidated by the biggest cities, not after twenty years in New York.

In Boston, with the best part of a masters in comparative literature completed, I was almost unemployable, but found work as a archivist. It is an obscure profession, so I will explain that this work is something like being a librarian, but with lots and lots of loose paper, with most items being unique. My boss was the first full-time archivist hired by the illustrious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her charge was to develop programs to document the development of contemporary science and technology, with particular attention to MIT’s role.

Oh, what a great time we had! There were only a few of us, and as the baby of the group, I spent most of my time in the basement unwrapping brown paper packages—the relicts of a previous part-time archivist who had collected rooms (rooms!) of material that was uncataloged and unidentified. It was like Christmas every day.

We had a tiny collection of letters from three generations of geologists, including one who wrote back from Sherman’s march through Georgia (the state) about interesting rock formations along the way. We had the obligatory papers of the founder, William Barton Rogers about whom I no longer remember anything other than bits of doggerel. One day I found an Isaac Newton holograph. We had papers of cancer researcher David Baltimore and physicist Victor Weiskopf and strobe photographer Harold Edgerton and of an all-women’s architecture firm from the turn of the last century. And to put it all in some kind of historical perspective, we had the imposing historian, Gregory Sanford.

Yes, that Gregory Sanford. The one who is now the Vermont State Archivist. He was already imposing, as anyone who has met Gregory can imagine. He is very tall, even when he tries to compensate with self-effacing demeanor. And when he braided his mustache into that enormous coal black beard, then to me as a young woman of twenty-three, fresh from Georgia…it was terrifying. Or would have been if Gregory had not been so obviously and completely a sweetheart.

Gregory was working on grant funding to do an oral history project with some of the outstanding scientists and thinkers at MIT. His own passion was for his work with George Aiken, and nobody was surprised when the grant ran out and he returned to Vermont. “Have to,” he said, never using too many words. “God’s country, doncha know.” Years later when I thought of moving to Vermont, Gregory’s comment—one of those gruff, off-hand comments that mask deep feeling—went into the mix.

We heard later that he had become State Archivist and everyone agreed what a wonderful thing, that Gregory who loves Vermont so dearly should be the person officially charged with preserving state activities and functions in paper and in bits and bytes. It’s the perfect job for Gregory, and he is the perfect man for the job. I’ll tell you that my stock went up mightily when I mentioned to friends that I was having lunch with the State Archivist (capital letters required). One friend’s eyes got big, as she gasped, “He’s wicked interesting!” and another requested a real Vermont story, just for her.

But for me, the joy of Wednesday’s lunch was neither Thai food nor consorting with a Vermont icon. It was the deep pleasure of seeing an old friend again, a friend who is very much the same as he was over twenty years ago. Gregory is still tall (6’6” although he always seems taller to a short person like me), but the beard is white now, and not quite so intimidating. The habit of running his hands through his beard while he talks is the same, and the eyes are the same. The energy of a man who loves his life and his work are exactly the same.

In many ways we don’t know each other at all. Gregory is now a family man, with long established relationship and teenage daughters, about whom he is clearly besotted. I no longer have the husband I had twenty years ago. Gregory has spent most of his years in Vermont and in love with Vermont. I have lived and worked a lot of places, and my twenty years in love with New York City are clearly a complete mystery to Gregory. But I still see the shy, oversize man who noticed when he intimidated the 23-year old me, and was kind. Maybe we each conquered our shyness—to the extent we have—in radically different ways, Gregory by embracing the home that he loved, and me by embracing change. Whatever the rational backdrop, I still see a friend. And what a gift that is!

Exuberants Anonymous

Ever since I finished Kay Redmond Jamison’s new book, Exuberance: The Passion for Life, I have been googling around in the expectation that at any minute affinity groups will spring up on the net. Can’t you just imagine the array?

XA: Exuberants Anonymous, in which participants learn to accept that we are exuberant personalities, that we aren’t always as organized as others might wish, and that we have a tendency to bounce in other people’s parts of the Forest. We might go through the exercise of visiting people on whom we have bounced and asking their forgiveness.

X-Anon, for people who love (most of the time) exuberants, but would like to teach them some basic manners without crushing their spirits or would like to figure out how to get a little help loading the dishwasher, preferably the same way every day.

X-a-Teen, for early-identified exuberants, to address the special needs of teenagers who are more teenager than most, perhaps preventing those early painful losses of friendship that can recur through life.

ACX: Adult Children of Exuberants, who can get together to vent about how distressing that Mom is still irrepressible, that Dad won’t stay home, and that when either of them comes to visit, locking the study door for a couple of hours a day is the only option that really works.

I don’t mean it to sound silly, least of all because I do greatly appreciate the work accomplished by various twelve-step groups. But it is kinda silly from a few points of view.

First, exuberance is a character trait as well as a set of behaviors. It is largely innate, although some thoughtful exuberants think there is an element of nurture as well. Although we may be clumsy and unwittingly intrude on others parts of the Forest, our character is not an illness like alcoholism or a pathological behavior. The negative effects of abuse of alcohol or many different drugs are well recognized and dwarf the impacts of the most outrageously bad over-exuberant behavior.

Second…anonymous? Yeah, right.

Third, there are many, many affinity groups on the net for us exuberants. We can read about gardening and about the slow food movement. We can get directions on how to reupholster a chair…then proceed to do it over the next fourteen hours. Those of us who are isolated geographically can find the most cosmopolitan and interesting friends, while luxuriating in the beauty of the Vermont countryside.

Finally, and most important, while we may need to learn to be more polite or more organized or even how to stand up for ourselves—we don’t need comfort for being made as we are. We are what we are…and it is glorious. I certainly don’t think I have been deprived of the melancholy end of the mood spectrum, leaving me with plenty of common experience with other humans. Occasionally, I have wished that life were more….even. Still, resilience of mood has carried me out of many a low period and eased many a touchy social situation. I, for one, would not want to be any different.