Just Flowers

 I don’t want to count the many times that someone has said to me, “You have to stop and smell the roses.” Yeah, right. Why do I hate these people? Maybe because they throw platitudes at me just when I have a to-do-list a mile long, am running around like a chicken with my head cut off, and need forty-eight hours in a day to get it all done. (So much for platitudes!) But—a couple of days ago, while doing some computer work, urgent, of course, I came across these pictures that I’d taken here and there, and they stopped me dead in my busy tracks. I took the time to look at them, and for just a little while, I forgot my rushing to get things done. For just a little while anyway, I did nothing but—well—smile.

 Enjoy!

 

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Colonoscopy? A Breeze

                                                                                                                                                           Did I dread it? You betcha. On top of it, they’d given me a schedule for the middle of December, speak right before Christmas. Definitely the wrong time to undergo a colonoscopy. But I, medical wimp that I am, told myself that I could do this, should do this, just to get it done and over with. Not that cancelling didn’t cross my mind. But I kept vacillating between Yay and Nay, and then it was too late, because cancelling within 5 business days, I’d be charged a hundred bucks.

“What if I break a leg?” I asked the nurse who had given me my instructions for the procedure.

“Well, now, that would be an emergency, wouldn’t it? We just don’t want people who are scared to cancel at the last minute.”

I was one of those people. Being a medical wimp, Dr. Oz is a stranger to me. I never watch the show. As I never watch Grey’s Anatomy, or Medical Mysteries, or any such fare. Any commercial that hails great medicines, only to end with a long list of side-effects, such as, check with your physician, because the side-effects may be fatal, gives me chills and  means a sure change of the channel via  my remote. As for any kind of medical discussion that news channels seem to feel obligated to run, ditto. I immediately get symptoms and stay away from such enlightenments.

But, the colonoscopy loomed, and it wasn’t made much better by a friend of mine who said:

“This stuff tastes terrible.”

“Am I going to survive it?”

“Oh, sure. Just chuck it.”

And another friend said, “Oh, my God, I’m glad I started earlier than they said, because I wouldn’t have made it.”

By the time a third friend said, “Colonoscopy? That’s nothing nowadays,” my anxiety had reached Xanax levels, and her positive outlook didn’t soothe me one iota.

I wasn’t scared of the procedure itself. I knew I would be out cold for just a bit, and the last time I had it, which was five years before, I thought the whole thing lasted two minutes, it was over so fast. Rather, I was scared of “drinking that stuff” and what it would do to me. Five years before, that prep procedure had been different, and no drinking of “terrible stuff” had been involved.

So here’s the thing: Don’t listen to your friends. Caring and helpful as they are, they will manage to scare the hell out of you.

The doctor’s office phoned the prescription for “that terrible stuff” into the pharmacy, and I picked it up on the way home. They handed me a white gallon jug labeled Golytely, which had some powder in the bottom. Yuk! Reading the instructions the nurse had given me didn’t make me feel any better: Fill with water to the fill line on the morning of the day before the procedure, and shake well. Drink 8 oz of the solution every 15 minutes (1/2 gallon) starting at 6 at night, and the rest of it, every 15 min beginning at 4 a.m. Oh, for heaven’s sake, I thought, I will never, ever be able to do this. But, in wise foresight, I had bought some straws, because I figured, drinking things through a straw, the stuff doesn’t fill out your mouth and lingers there, making you sick.

I was given a set of instructions as to what I should eat three days before—white rice, white pasta, cooked veggies, cooked fruits, potatoes, bananas, even chocolate (I called the clinic to make sure I could—yessssss), chicken, white bread—in other words, all things that were easily digested or, as they said, “low residue.” (Love that. I had heard an astronaut say this once when he was asked what his breakfast was before he blasted off into space: “Poached eggs, toast, potatoes, in other words, low residue stuff.”) And, in the age of where everything “white” is pooh-poohed, no pun intended, and whole grain stuff is hailed, eating only “white” stuff was a treat. Yes, I ate pound cake. And a cookie here and there.

On the prep day, that is, the day before the actual procedure, I would be permitted only clear juices, orange juice without pulp, Pepsi, ginger ale, low-sodium, fat-free chicken broth,  water, coffee and tea, yes, sugared if I wanted, and jello and popsicles.

So, the day before the prep day, I made a big bowl of lemon jello (4 pks), bought some chicken broth, 2 quarts, forgot the popsicles, which was probably just as well, because I could have eaten only the lemon ones (nothing with blue, purple, red, or orange in it), and anxiously awaited the next day. Oh, and I did buy a package of pads, such as one might use for incontinence, just in case I wouldn’t make it to the bathroom in time.

When I got up the next morning, I retrieved the ominous gallon jug of Golytely, which I had well hidden from sight so accidental glances of it wouldn’t startle me, filled it with water to the fill line, shook it violently a couple of times, and put it into the fridge, as instructed. There it loomed, but I forced myself to stare at it bravely every time I opened to door to it. For breakfast, I had two pieces of toast. Could have had an egg, poached, but couldn’t handle that. No solid food after that. Every time I got hungry thereafter, I had a bowl of lemon jello or a cup of chicken broth. All worked very well to keep my cravings in check—besides, I figured, why not lose a couple of pounds, whether I needed to do so or not.

I tried not to check the clock, because 6 o’clock, when the first glass of “that stuff” was due, crept ever closer. And then—there it was. Somberly, I took the cap off the jug, poured the first glass, put a straw into it, gave myself a mental push, and drank that glass dry in about 5 seconds.

Surprise, surprise! I may as well have had a plain glass of water, because this “stuff” tasted but ever so faintly salty, and that was that. Ah, what a relief! I set my timer for 15 minutes, and then I had the next glass, which went down just as easily, and so it went, until I had the required 8 glasses. No problem. Watched the news and a crime show in between, and waited for the “explosion,” and my not being able to make it to the bathroom on time. Nothing happened.

Not until about half an hour after I had the last glass, and then the results, though they came rather frequently, were so “gentle,” I thought I may have done something wrong. I didn’t. This went on for about two hours, and then it was over, and I got a bit of work done and went to bed. I dreaded the four o’clock rise, not being able to eat anything or drink anything, except, once again, “that stuff.”

Tired and cross, I peeled myself out of bed at four the next morning, headed for the jug, poured a glass, put the straw in, drank the stuff, as before in 5 seconds, turned on the timer, turned on the TV, wrapped myself in a blanket, and tried to get 10 min snoozes in between the timer bings. Didn’t work very well, because this time, the stuff worked much faster, and so I visited the bathroom more than I had anticipated, even after I was done drinking the solution (which was at exactly 6:12 a.m., Yeah!!), but hey, the cleaner I was, the better the doc could see if anything was going on in my innards. Though I felt sleepy, hungry, and cross, having to go to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, I told myself, yawning, to get a grip here. To help me out, the TV flashed a Wounded Warrior picture across the screen, which helped me to develop a backbone in two seconds flat.

Done with the solution, I jumped into the shower, and by the time we left for the clinic, I felt a bit drowsy and sleepy—after all, I hadn’t had anything to eat in ages, but I was quite proud of myself. [A good thing is that they require you to have someone drive you there (you’re hungry, a bit drowsy), stay with you there (so someone other then yourself hears the instructions), and to drive you home (you feel a wobbly for a bit). No driving for the rest of the day.]

We got to the clinic, and the nurses, being their usual lovely, helpful, funny, and positive, prepped me with what they had to prep for —temperature, blood pressure, IV, etc., and then they wheeled me into the procedure room, knocked me out a little, not much, and the next thing I knew, I was wide awake again, had a glass of ginger ale in my hand, which I gulped down, through a straw, and it was delicious. Was I proud of myself, or what? You betcha. The doc came in and said: “We didn’t find a thing. You’re clean as a whistle.”

So we went to the Waffle House to celebrate. I had coffee, two eggs over-easy, hash browns, sausage, and, for once, truly great grits. Yummy!!!

(And do check out my other blog, Diary of a Naive)

If You Want to Write

I can’t count the times someone has said to me, “I wish I could do what you do,” meaning writing.

I’ll ask, “Did you try?”

“Oh, I did, but I’m not good at it.” (Which is, of course, not the point.) Or, “But nothing ever came of it.” (What, exactly, does this mean?)

I say, if you want to write, write. What does it matter how good it is, or whether anything will come of it? If it wants out, let it. Don’t stop it. Go for a walk. Carry a notebook with you, or just a folded piece of paper, and a pen. Stop in some park. Sit at a picnic table. Write down whatever it is that wants out.

That’s how you start.

And if you are afraid that someone will read what you wrote, hide it. That’s what Kate Hamilton, the main character in my novel, Diary of a Naïve, did. Some deep-rooted fear from way back made her think that her husband, or her children, or whoever, would laugh at her, or think her crazy, if they knew that she wrote things down, or even aspired to being a writer. As for the deep-rooted fear: Feeling memories are very powerful. Let me say it again. Feeling memories are very powerful. And feeling memories have a lot to do with what you think you shouldn’t be doing or are not good enough to do or will never be good enough to do, and what, instead, you should be doing. But until you search for the reasons of your feeling memories, and don’t stop until you find them and shoot them dead, they will create havoc with everything you really, really want to do. Should is a powerful word. Ban it from your life and replace it with want. Hard to do at first, but after awhile, you’ll get the hang of it.

So. Go for it.

Getting things out on a piece of paper does just that—it gets it out onto a piece of paper, where you can look at it and examine it and think about it and smile over something stunning you wrote (inadvertently, you think, but what does it matter), or just hug it to your heart with tears in your eyes, because you love them so much—these feeble, seemingly dumb, no good words (you thought) that you dared write anyway. You don’t even have to write a story. Just write about you. What you feel, what you love, what you see, what you hate, what makes you cry, what makes you jump for joy. You probably never thought about it.

So, go for it. Because one day, you will be eighty, and you will wake up one morning, and you will think, ‘I wish I . . . .’ Don’t let that happen. Now means now. Hours turn into days, and days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, and months turn into years, and the next thing you know, you are, in fact, eighty, and you will never, ever get these lost moments back. Never.

The best definition, I think, of what wanting to write means was penned by Annie Dillard in Holy The Firm. She said, “If you want to be a writer, you have to take a broad ax to your life.” True. Point is–there’s the job, and the husband, and the wife, and the children, and the parents, and the rest of the family, and who knows what other obligations lurk forever in some hidden corner and suddenly jump out and pounce on you.

If you want to write, find the time. There is a wonderful passage in the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring. Vermeer has asked Griet to help him mix paints. She tells him that she is too busy and too much is expected of her already. He says a very simple thing, “Find the time.” She does.

If you want something bad enough, you find the time. You get rid of the subscriptions to mags you never read anyway. You stop hanging out with folks to whom you have no emotional connection whatsoever. When the family asks you to do things they can well do themselves, you learn to say a simple little word: No.

It took me years to learn it, but I did.

When I was two years old, I knew exactly what I wanted. And no one was going to tell me otherwise. And if I didn’t get it, I threw a temper tantrum. I didn’t always get my way, but most of the time, I did. Learn to be two again.

Which brings me to, “But nothing ever came of it.” Whatever that means. I suppose it means, ‘Unless I become a celebrated writer with twenty best sellers under my belt, making ten million a year, I don’t want it.’ Sometimes, you write just to get to know yourself. And that’s worth more than ten million.

Up to you.

But if you want to be a writer, think of it this way: Isak Dinesen, the very Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame, was quite ill when she said this to a friend, because she was determined to write her stories one way or another, “. . . if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, . . .  suddenly the work will find itself.”

Surprise, surprise. It might take you weeks, or months, or years. But one day, it is done. Whatever it is you have always wanted to do—write, or paint, or sculpt, or weave—do it, and once you’ve done it, you just never know. No one might ever be interested. But you will be a better person for having done it. And then again, someone might come along and say, I want this. Or, I want to publish this. Or, I want to buy this. Or: I want one just like it, will you make me one—I will pay you.

You just never know.

So. Go for it.

I will be rooting for you all the while.

 Ursula

 P.S. And just in case all should fail, take it with a good dose of humor. You are not alone. See cartoon below, and keep writing.

 

Hildegard von Bingen at Disibodenberg

 

Sometimes, things touch you and move you more than you expect, and I didn’t expect being deeply moved. I stood on top of a mountain, at the entrance to a vast field of ruin, that is, a park that seemed, at first sight, to have gone wild. An immense complex of low crumbling walls were in danger of being devoured by low shrubs and vegetation, while the whole of it lay in a kind of darkness cast by high, old trees, their crowns so thick, only a rare ray of sunlight managed to steal through.

A profound silence lay over the place as I walked among the ruins that were once a cloister, a church, a monastery, a chapel, a basilica, a hermitage, hostels, a hospital.

 

Looking at the massive stones that once had made up the fabric of a vibrant, religious community, I became aware of the awesome, irreversible passage of time. I saw it. I felt it. I understood it for the first time in my life, because whatever and whoever was here before, was gone, and so was the work of their hands, the lives they had lived, the devotions they had shared with their companions, the pilgrims they had nourished, the sick they had cared for.

 

 About 2000 years ago, the Celts and the Romans had used this mountain for either religious or strategic purposes. Sometime in 600, the Irish monk Disibod and his companions built a hermitage there to do missionary work within the surrounding, largely pagan, populations. Upon his death, a cloister and a church were built there to honor him and his remains, and to serve the Christian communities that had now sprung up at the foot of the mountain. The Normans sacked the holy place in late 800, and it did not see a revival until the late 900’s with the building of new monastery structures and a church, initiated by the Archbishop of Mainz. To make sure that the vibrant religious community of monks, clergy, and aristocrats seeking spiritual seclusion and guidance would thrive, it was supported by land grants, profitable farms, and other diverse incomes. In 1108, Abott Burchard began with the building of a grand, cross-shaped basilica, which must have been an immense and soaring structure indeed, if the expansive foundation, which is still visible today, and the massive stones that are strewn there, are any indication. Alone the altar, which remains, inspires awe.

Hildegard came to Disibodenberg in 1112 when she was fourteen. Her wealthy parents had entrusted her education and spiritual well-being into the hands of Jutta von Sponheim, a devout aristocrat, who was in charge of a small convent that had been built as part of the monastic complex expressly for her by her family. There she instructed Hildegard and other  female charges in living a devout and spiritual life, away from the temptations of the world, and dedicated to God. Enough has been written about Hildegard von Bingen, the mystic, visionary, composer, writer, and holistic healer that I need not repeat it here (I have attached some links below), but as I walked among the ruins, I imagined her there as she walked these grounds in search of her healing herbs, tending to the pilgrims who found solace there, and nurturing the sick and wounded. No doubt, she received her inspiration for her writings, her music, and her plays there. And since she lived at Disibodenberg for thirty-six years, she was witness to the building and the completion of the Basilica, which must have soared to the heavens, and whose immense cross-shaped foundation I traced in my wanderings.

I knew little about Hildegard von Bingen or of the nuns or monks who lived and worked there before I came to this mountain. But as I walked the grounds, I felt their presence still. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was something more—a kind of spirit that they left behind in all that was now in ruin. Maybe the sense of something more lasting than what we see in a crumbling history of stone.

 

 

 

http://www.hildegard.org/wirk/edisibod.html

 http://www.disibodenberg.de/    (This is in German, but for those who don’t speak the language, it will still give an insight about the place and its surroundings.)

 

 

 

Normandy: Omaha Beach Today

  I thought I would write up a little blog to describe what Omaha Beach is like today. But I decided against it—except to say that the tremendous peace that is Omaha Beach today gave me chills. Walking on that beach is like walking on hallowed ground. One hardly dares walk there for fear of disturbing the spirit of all who have fought there and died there. Nothing is left of this horrendous struggle, except two bent metal rods that stick awkwardly out of the sand. Someone told me that, some years after the war, the French set out to clean this beach and to salvage what they could. They stored and saved, for posterity, which is us, all they could save.  These mementos –battered tanks, rusted landing crafts, bulky, black radio equipment, mangled artillery, pieces of Mulberry Harbor—all are stored all around Omaha Beach, wherever there is a bit of open space or a nook or a cranny to hold them.  And if you go, you will find them at every step, but before you go, dwell for a while on the beach—the peace you find there today is the one the soldiers and airmen died for.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Job too Large or too Small

Just in case you ever complained about working too hard, here’s a little perspective for you. I found this determined little ant on the front porch this morning, slaving away at dragging some woolly worm carcass to someplace.

Given that she was walking backwards as she dragged her treasure, she made excellent progress. In Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky says that the ant knows the formula of its abode and work, but man does not. Right he was. This tiny ant knew exactly where she was going and why.

Go straight a couple of miles, then

 

take a right,

 

 

shucks, wrong turn . . . .

Maya Angelou

 When I was a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Maya Angelou came to town one wintry February evening to read at Macky Auditorium. Of course, all of us grad students, and everyone else for that matter, were in awe of her and wouldn’t have missed the event for anything in the world—even if Macky was crowded to bursting, even if everyone was packed in there like sardines, folks spilling out the doors, craning their necks to get a glimpse of her. As for us grads, we weren’t satisfied with merely a glimpse of her. We were determined to get a really close look at her after the reading.

Unfortunately, the Bigwigs at the University wanted her all to themselves, and they were about to usher her to the Koenig Alumni Center, where a reception and dinner waited for her. But we were smarter. We raced to Koenig and congregated in the lobby before they got there. The room was soon crammed with grads.

When Maya Angelou walked in, surrounded by her protective entourage, one of the Bigwigs bid us to make room, because he was about to lead her through the throng of us to a back room, where a long table had been festively set with crystal and fine china, as we could see through the lace-curtained glass in the door.

“This way, Miss Angelou,” he said, taking her arm to help her through the crowd of us (vermins, I guess) to the reception room. She came to a dead stop, looked straight at me for some time, smiled, and said to one of the entourage:

“Bring me a table.”

“Oh, no, Miss Angelou, the reception is in the back room.”

“That might be,” she said, “but all these folks here have been waiting for me to autograph their books or their papers, and that is what I will do.”

Did we adore her that moment, even more than we had before?

Understatement.

The Bigwigs were at a loss. Their exquisite plans had just gone up in smoke, and dinner was getting cold. But there was nothing they could do. She was determined to make us graduate students happy. Someone pushed in a table and brought a chair, and she sat right down there in the drafty lobby, and she began signing.

What a wonderful human being! She absolutely made our day!

I was dirt poor at the time, raising a son on a shoestring, working two jobs aside from that of student and mom, heading for a doctorate in Comparative Literature. A friend of mine handed me a calendar of events flyer, because I had nothing for Maya Angelou to autograph, and I certainly couldn’t afford to buy her book. She took the flyer, and I said that it was wonderful to meet her. She looked at me for a while, shook my hand, and said:

“You have a wonderful face.”

I couldn’t believe it, didn’t know what to say and stammered something about having seen her interview with Bill Moyers that had mentioned her grandmother.

“She must have been a wonderful human being,” I said.

“She was,” Maya Angelou said, smiling, and handed the signed flyer back to me, (phenomenally beautiful handwriting!), shook my hand once again, and said:

“I wish you joy.”

I didn’t walk out of that lobby, I floated on air. Every time I thought of this experience afterwards, I felt like jumping up and kicking my heels.

In all these years since, I’ve thought of her kindness too many times to count. I still get goose bumps every time I think of it. I had felt so frazzled and stressed and tired all that day in February. Being a student, a mother, and working two jobs just to make ends meet will do this to you. But that night, I felt like a million bucks. I thought: Maya Angelou sees something in me that I don’t see, and I best start looking for it.

But I didn’t. Yet. I worked on that PhD and got it, and then I taught for a good many years. Finally, however, thanks in no small measure to Maya Angelou and her having been so kind to me, I began looking within myself to find what she saw in me. And I found writing, which I had buried long ago and dismissed every time the passion and the desire for it came up, because there was no time, and I had to make a living.

A couple of my short stories and essays were published in time, and then I turned to writing novels and published them: The Good American in 2001, and Diary of a Naïve in November of 2010. In between, I published a collection of humorous cadet stories, Memories of VMI, and, also in November of last year, a digital version of my children’s book, Bo on the Fencepost, for Kindle and Nook. Not that the books are bestsellers by any stretch of the imagination, but I wrote them, and I love them. And, amazingly, so do the people who have read them.

If ever Maya Angelou were to read this, I would like her to know that the Joy she wished me that evening came with the writing.

 

To read the chapters of Diary of a Naive, click here . . . .