I'm a failure at meditation. By the time I stop my muscles are frozen from the tension of trying to relax and my brain is on overload from from trying not to think. I've tried many times over the years and each time it is worse. All I want is for it to be over.
Likewise as my eyes roam the perimeter, I pick up the different colors depending on the season, the dappling of the sun on the grass, the fountain and bench, a squirrel running up a tree, there's a sense of peace.
I never met her face to face. I lived in Switzerland. She lived in Texas.
When she was the editor of a literary magazine, she published my short story, The Pianist.
We started emailing each other until it became daily or even multi-times a day. Two subjects were off limits: religion and politics, because we had opposing viewpoints. That didn't matter.
The other topics were just about anything. There if there wasn't total agreement, there was total understanding. We shared worries and happiness about our families and dogs and do many other topics.
She worried about her daughter's illness, I worried about my stepmother's increasing dementia. She started telephoning my stepmom regularly (I did it weekly, but she did it more often) to lessen my mom's loneliness.
Despite our different lives and locations, there was a bond.
What happened?
I wish I knew.
Little by little we emailed less and less and less...until months went by.
When her daughter died, I wrote. She never responded, but I figured she was bent over with grief.
I kept thinking I should write or call, but I didn't. She slipped from my regular thoughts.
Today on Facebook, I saw it was her birthday and a message posted by her daughter-in-law, whose romance with her son, was a regular part of our conversations as it unfolded, saying how hard it had been to bury her mother-in-law in 2020. My chance to reestablish our friendship is gone forever.
I'm at an age when friends in my age range die. I don't like it.
I'm at an age, where over my lifetime, people have drifted in and out. Some drift back in. Drifting in is so much better than losing the chance to drift in forever. A reminder to pick up the phone, write the email or the social media message today. Tomorrow will be filed under impossible.
It was the mid 1990s. I was a member of the International Women's Writers Guild. Living in a francophone world almost devoid of writer friendships, I appreciated their newsletter. In the States groups of members would develop circles where they would meet to support and share their writing.
Geography made that impossible for the few international members. I do not remember who came up with the idea, but we decided to form an on-line group. How different it was then from today's Zoom. At the time my huge computer had green type against a black screen.
Soon we had members from the UK, Israel, Germany, Australia and even the U.S.
We decided to do an anthology of short stories together. In a flood of emails, we decided they should all be interconnected. Camden Market was to be the location that would bind the stories together.
Each of us came up with a character and from the characters in other stories, we interwove one or more into ours.
Manuscripts went back and forth. Eventually it was published and appeared on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Found-Camden-Ann-Hacker-ebook/dp/B00IMHJH8Y
The project done, I wondered if the group would fall apart. It didn't.
Some of us got a chance to meet. Vicky and Tammy came to the Geneva Writers Group Conference. We heard of other meet-ups. I almost met Janice in D.C. and Ute in Germany. The logistics were close but not close enough.
Over the years, our technology has improved. Gone are the green letters on the black screen. Facebook has been added to our communication methods, but emails still work well.
We lost two members. Camden is dedicated to Barbara. I'm Facebook friends with Janice's daughter and realize how much she would love her two grandsons, whose pictures appear regularly on my feed.
We deal less with writing, although we share what we're doing, good and bad, from a new job to a move. At one point I discovered one of the group lived two doors down from where I lived on Olgastrasse in Stuttgart, only not at the same time.
We've shared our illnesses including the biggies such as a heart attack and cancer.
Always is the feeling of emotional support when needed if only in the form of understanding in caring messages. There's celebration of any of life's victories.
We lost track of Vicky but miracle or miracles happened (a working email) and this week we were once again catching up on our lives.
It's been a while since I've heard how the computer (email, internet) can isolate us. I don't deny that in some cases it can. However, in this case it brought together women from many places and created a bond that might never have existed face to face.
I am the world's worst person to buy gifts for since I don't need anything and want less. I really appreciate two friends, one who wrote a poem, the other who wrote the following limerick.
There is a gal from M.A.
Who is good friend, I must say.
She's a great writer too
with a fabulous point of view
And with words she loves to play
She's published many books in her time
from fiction to stories to crime
All kinds to appeal
with plots to reveal
Each one of them quite sublime.
And so my dear D.L.
Hope your birthday is swell
four score years you may be
but your creativity will continue to excel.
I do not hide about how much I hate my mobile phone. Yes, there are things like the GPS and the camera that are useful. As for the reliance on tickets, too often there will be a failure, so I will want a paper copy with me. I've had problems with my Covid code as well.
I refuse to give the number out to many and for the few people who do have it, know to only call me for EXTREME EMERGENCY as deaths and accidents. Or maybe when we are due to meet and there is additional information needed such as "The restaurant we're meeting at is closed, but Flamingos is open. Meet you there. It'll take me ten minutes."
I do not want aps on my phone.
I don't want Facebook, email or other things on my phone. These are for home where I can use them without distractions of the outside world and I love them then, I certainly don't want to look at them when I'm out of the house.
Why?
Because if I am out of the house, and I'm on the phone, it means I'm missing out on what is around me. I don't see the flowers, scenery, activities, buildings, depending on where I am. the people, the places I might want to stop later.
One example, I saw a man reading on the bus. When he got off the bus, he put on dark glasses, got out his white cane, and preceded to walk down the street as a blind man. If I were looking at my phone, I'd have missed that. And there are hundreds of life's insights that enrich my life.
In other words my use of the phone could have stolen parts of my life.
I see people who are on the phone in restaurants ignoring the people they are with. Why bother to be with them if they can't give their dinner companions attention? To be fair sometimes something comes up in discussion and the phone can provide additional information about whatever but that takes minutes. It does not take an entire meal.
And there is a safety feature of being able to call someone in an emergency...but how often does that happen? So far in 80 years, I have only needed to do this once.
And what about tourists who instead of looking at the sights, are looking at their telephones. Why spend money to travel to see something that they don't see when it is in front of their eyes?
I do admit I'm more and more of a COW, Cranky Old Woman, albeit smiling, but my life is too precious to waste when the world is around me to spend it staring at a tiny screen.
Canadians are different from Americans if you go by stereotypes. However, stereotypes always hold a grain of truth.
The difference goes beyond long winters, health care, population sizes and other social measurements of a nation.
One explanation I've heard over the years is that during the American Revolution, those more peaceful, English supporters, migrated north rather than join the revolution. Although I've seen no documentation, conjecture has been made they were a higher class or at least more educated.
Years ago, a Canadian friend pointed out something to me. "Look at your Declaration of Independence. It talks about 'Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"
Not in itself a bad thing. Life is good. Liberty, well that depends on liberty from what and at what price. Pursuit of happiness...well that can be pretty selfish, especially if pursued at the cost of others.
"Now," he said, "In our constitution we talk of 'peace, order, and good government."'
Hmmm. Peace is certainly an admirable goal and order is part of peace. Good government has to be the base for any successful society.
Good government is ephemeral every where. Both the U.S. and Canada have had governments that left much to be desired to those that really worked well for the citizens.
It isn't as a new Canadian citizen that I prefer the idea of peace, order, and good government over life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but if you have the first, the later is easier to obtain.
Spatulate
I asked my husband. I was relieved he didn't know it either.
When I typed the word spatulate, the fact that spell check underlined the word as wrong, made me feel even better.
According to Merriman-Webster it means shaped like a spatula a spatulate leaf or spatulate spines of a caterpillar. There are spatulate tools.
I do know what spatula means so I didn't have to look that up. So much for the rule when defining a word, don't use a form of the same word in the definition.
Words have always fascinate me. I used to be jealous that my mother always knew all the words in the Reader's Digest vocabulary quiz. Decades later, when I come across a copy of the magazine, so do I.
In our family we would play with words and thus I learned to love the exact meaning and the nuances. Thus, it didn't bother me at all when gay took on a meaning so different from describing a happy mood to a sexual preference. Evolution of meaning is how languages evolve. If they didn't we would probably still be speaking Olde English or the Middle English or say Chaucer's English in the Canterbury Tales.
As a writer, when I'm editing my manuscript, I often substitute one word for another that conjures up a stronger meaning. For example, in writing this blog conjure up replaced creates.
Words have history. Spaulate was found to be first used around 1760.
I still have my favorite words that I use when I can throw them into a piece of writing or a conversation. They are plethora, gobsmacked and peckish.
I love color words. Purple has many and to name just a few violet, aubergine, lilac, mauve, periwinkle, plum, orchid, etc. It might be fun to get a sample of each, then have people assign what they think the color is for each sample. I can imagine fist fights starting over it and someone would end up with purple, plum, violet bruises.
And I love as a writer or a reader, I can find a word like spatulate and have fun digging out the meaning.
I have always thought of 80+ as old. I mean old. Gray hair, baggy stockings, black shoes that tie and have thick heels about one or two inches high, doilies on the back of their chairs and shawls around their shoulders. As the Jacques Brel lyric says, "Their homes smell of time."
I should know better. My parents were in a retirement community and the "old" people were off to golf, the sale at K-Mart, and if not lunch at least the early bird special in late afternoon. Their homes were modern and cheerful. There was a certain amount of visiting Herb, Vi, June, Sven or whoever was in the hospital for this or that. Tuesday morning coffees in the community clubhouse had posters for funeral homes.
One of the sad things, I've found, no matter how optimistic I am, the list of friends that are no more: Bill J, Bill V, Marvin, Rosie, Gary, Glenn, Barbara, Mary B, Mardy, etc., etc., etc. No one will come off that list. It will grow. I get a message and sit in shock when I hear a new name. My husband comes in and puts his arms around me as I cry. I don't want to get good at losing people I care about, but it will happen again and again.
I remember my high school classmates still alive and realize they are the same age I am, with the same limitations. Despite reunions every decade or so, I think of them as we were as we walked (not ran) in the high school hall. The building has been replaced.
The French refer to this stage of life as the Troisème Age -- third age. I think I've managed it well. At one time I wondered if I would be one of those people who retired with plans but only lived a few days, weeks or months after retirement. Seventeen years of freedom to start and close a business, write, travel and fall in love has been a huge gift.
I definitely did not want to be in a retirement community. I wanted to be with people of many ages. I want to hear children playing on the street. I also have been lucky, because I also want to be surrounded by people of different nationalities and different languages.
This I've done with our primary residence in a Geneva Switzerland suburban village and a second village in the South of France. They are not retirement communities, but places that have existed for hundreds of years. Even our French home is over 400 years old. I only wish the beams could talk to me and tell me of other people or maybe animals who were there over the centuries.
I find myself looking back on my life and thinking, I reached my three most important goals but not necessarily in that order:
I didn't necessarily get them the way I wanted or when I wanted, but bit by bit I accomplished them. For example, although I've managed to live in Europe and take Swiss citizenship, my plans of being fluent in many languages when I lived in Europe never happened. I've settled for functional in French and shopping German.
I find myself more and more thinking of the past, taking out the good memories examining them and then shoving them back. I'm so grateful for the life I've lived.
This doesn't mean it was perfect. A bad marriage, some health issues, financial worries from time to time were a contrast to the good times that made the good even better.
It took me until 71 to find my soul mate, and that wasn't even a goal. He has made what was a really wonderful life even more so.
As a kid, I dreamed of investigating other places and I've visited most of those I wanted and some I never thought. As a kid, I never thought of visiting Damascus, but pre-civil war, I went several times and developed a family of choice. Someday, hopefully I'll be able to sit in one of their living rooms nibbling on seeds and drinking maté. I've eaten a bit of an iceberg and visited a penis museum in Iceland (not in my plans prior to the trip, but it was there, I was there and why not?)
One of my girlfriend's father said that he didn't
believe a little girl from Reading did some of the things I did. Some
times, I don't believe it either.
I've met people of all different nationalities and positions. I still don't believe in my role as a journalist, I've talked to world leaders. It still amazes me that I appeared before Congress. I've fought for things I've believed, mainly women's and peace issues, yet despite a large number of demonstrations, I've never been arrested. YET.
My soul mate and I are making plans for more travel, Garmish, Pompeii, Scotland (again), Nova Scotia and who knows where else.
Good health is never guaranteed, but as one ages, the chance of illness can increase. Okay, so I'm an Amazon woman with one breast, the other removed. That was okay. It wanted to kill me and it failed. And a bit of arthritis in various joints hurts. Since I've never been sporty any limitations are only minor annoying.
Vanity plays a part. I went from being me to looking like my mother, than my grandmother. I'm happy with my gray hair. I'm grateful, I haven't put on major pounds. I don't like my veined hands or the wrinkles in my skin.
I have more books I want to write. More conversations I want to have, more sunrises and sunsets, more good food to eat, more music to listen to, more books to read, more of everything that makes life a joy. I hope for good health, but I know whatever happens I will make the best of it. I have many good memories of chemo both with the wonderful nursing staff and how it cemented my relationship with my husband. I hope he never has to care for me like that again, but if he does, I will do everything in my power to be a good patient.
And if it is him? We never took the vow in sickness and health, but it is there.
No matter what age we are, we never know what the future holds, not just long term but the next hour, day, week...
At 80, statistically, the future will not be the same length as it was at 20, 40, 60. I'm reminded every day to make the moment count.
One thing that I will never NOT miss in summer, is corn on the cob--New England corn.
In summer I would call home as I was about to leave work and make sure my daughter had hot water on the store. I'd stop at Aunt Sadie's and buy cobs that had been on the stalk a few short hours or less before. As soon as I was in the door the corn would be shucked, cooked and we'd be munching away. The foie gras or caviar of a summer evening would not match the luxury.
For years my French German and Swiss neighbors thought of corn as cow food. If it were to be eaten at all, it should come in a can, with a scantily clad man dressed all in green. Eventually, corn appeared on the cob at the grocery. Neither was really worth eating.
On our last trip to New England as we were driving through the countryside, Rick took a sudden right. He literally bought us the last corn of the season. Once when he flew back from the states, a couple of ears fell into his suitcase. We ate them immediately.
Every Friday, a local farmer sets up a stand to sell veggies. He also has a once a week delivery service with a surprise assortment of fruits and vegetables, and although the discovery of this and that was fun, we found we were less apt of waste anything if we went and picked up the veggies ourselves.
So today as I was buying my baby potatoes, tomatoes and coriander, I saw the ears. in their glorious yellow kernels and green casings. We abandoned plans for lunch out and within a very short time were munching away.
It was a close to New England corn as I've found. Life is so so so good.
Me: I want a lobster roll.
Husband: Where?
Me: Confederation Centre.
Husband: Quiet for a short time. Where?
Me: Geneva. (We were in France talking about where to eat. Going back to Geneva tomorrow.)
Husband: Oh, I didn't know what country you wanted it in.
What happens when you live in two countries.
My father died almost 40 years ago, a day after his 69th birthday. That had been a great day for him. An avid golfer, he had shot his best game ever. That night his birthday cake had plastic figures of golfers decorating it.
My husband is a passionate golfer. In high school almost every spare moment was spent on the golf course. He chose his university more for golfing opportunities than academic reasons. Funding and family prohibited him from following the sport as a career.
My husband and I have been watching the 150 anniversary British Open being played at St. Andrews in Scotland. The course is considered the "Home of Golf." My husband had played it a few years back, fulfilling a life-long dream.
He was intrigued by which club the golfers chose for difficult shots and other technical parts of the game. I loved watching the trajectory lines, Rory Mcilroy's multi-color sole of his sneakers, the beach where Chariots of Fire was filmed, the way the ball seemed to have a mind of its own as it bumped and twisted over the hilly course.
We both marveled at our memories of when he played the course. We spotted our hotel. He could recount which hole had been difficult and why.
Fortunately, having been raised in a golfing family, I speak golf. I can say birdie, bogey, eagle with the best of them.
As the two Camerons, Rory and Viktor jockeyed for first place, I had an overwhelming wave of missing my Dad. Grief can fade, but the desire to share with a departed loved one, bounces into our consciousness from time. I wish I could have told my Dad how I've had 17 books published. I'm just as glad I didn't tell him how I renounced my U.S. citizenship. He would be puzzled why I took the nationality of his birth country, but he would have listened and tried to understand.
I know with every cell in my body, my Dad would have loved my husband. I only discovered he didn't like my first husband only after my ex had remarried and there was no chance of a reunion. My Dad didn't like husband No. 1's inconsideration nor his putting me down verbally. Because my new husband would be a gold medal winner in any consideration tournament and speaks only kindness to me, that alone would justify my Dad's approval.
But their shared love of golf would be a bond that had nothing to do with me. I imagined them ohhhing and ahhhing over a putt gone right or a putt gone wrong, a ball landing in a bunker or bush. I could see my husband showing my Dad his hickory clubs, and I'm sure it wouldn't take much to convince my Dad to play a tournament or two.
In my fantasy, my Stepmom would still be alive and we would accompany them to wherever they were playing. We would site see, stopping at some café for tea and a cake, tarte or cookie. If we were in Scotland, it would be a scone. After we joined up with our men, we would listen to them talk about this shot or that.
Of course, that is not to be. I was quickly transported back to the couch where we sat, Sherlock, our dog, almost asleep between us. For the moment that wasn't, I had the moment that was, something to be treasured in real time.
I live in Geneva Switzerland. In minutes I can be in France. No problem. Where I lived before, not to sound like Sarah Palin) but I could see France from my balcony. I often caught a bus and four stops later I was at the Saturday marché.
Now where I live it is maybe 20 minutes to the next canton by car, a little longer by boat. We might cross over to see friends, visit a museum, check out a historical site.
When I'm at my second home in Southern France, it takes a little longer to go to Spain, maybe a half hour. I've done that for lunch and to buy cheaper eye glasses.
I have more freedom to cross borders than many Americans will have if they want to leave their state. Authorities might stop them if they are pregnant, even if they are going to another state to visit a family member?
Will women eventually need a doctor's certificate toe leave the state?
Lawyer James Bopp of Indiana argued and won Citizens United before the Supreme Court.
Lawyer James Bopp was the attorney for me, five Republicans and Rand Paul fighting against FATCA for expat Americans. The case was rejected by the Supreme Court. It was about the only thing I agreed with him on.
Lawyer James Bopp is against same sex marriage, supported baseless election fraud and almost everything else I find abhorrent.
All the above could be considered a difference of political opinion.
However...
Lawyer James Bopp 'In 2022, responding to reports that a 10-year-old rape victim needed and received an abortion, Bopp said that model legislation he developed for the National Right to Life Committee would have banned that abortion; he also said that they believed she should have had the baby, and "we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child'" Wikipedia.
What a disgusting example of humanity.
Sherlock takes guard duty at our front door, which looks out on the street, very seriously.
Cats sit outside give hm the feline finger, or so he thinks. Dogs, both his buddies and enemies, might breach the safety of the door.
As for people? That depends. In general they may be okay. Or not, requiring commentary.
Than there's the Glutton. He warns off the operator with a ferociousness that has worked so far. The man has never come in the house. The other day as I was leaving, Rick and Sherlock had already left.
The Glutton approached.
"Where's the pup? I miss him," said the operator.
Sherlock has his own sense of time and what should be done. There are times when sitting in our lap, playing with his toys, eating, etc. are far more important than protecting the homestead.
Lately, he has developed a new growl which morphs into a bark. It resembles a cat purr. If the danger doesn't pay attention, Sherlock will add scratching at the glass
The growl only started this week. We wonder what else he will add before we move back to Geneva. There the door looks out on a patio and above the patio is a large garden surrounded by trees and a fence before there are any humans.
The garden may have squirrels, birds and once we saw a mouse hot-footing it across the patio. Since, Sherlock usually does not bark at any of them, I wonder if he will try his new purr-growl on them this time.
Stay tuned.
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