On Death and Avoidance

I was visiting my mother a year or so before she died, after she had had the triple-bypass that brought me back into the fold.  She asked me if she could wear a dress of mine that I had left at home when she died.


Of course, I was appalled.  Now that I am approaching 61, and I have a daughter of my own who is happily living her own life, I think back on that question, and my reaction.  There I was, a damned psychology graduate student, and I didn't know enough to just listen.  My mother knew she was dying, and instead of being scared, or maybe a realistic way of dealing with being scared, she was trying to plan for it.  And maybe, just maybe, she wanted to let me know she knew it was going to happen.


And I couldn't deal with it.


I am two years younger now than my mother when she died.  I am so lucky to be in so much better health than she was.  I had the good fortune of a better life, with more options, and more education, so I knew a little bit about how to live healthy, and I could make choices that allowed me that better life.  Yet I too am afraid of dying, always have been.  And now that I am at that point, I deal with it by talking about it with the loved ones who will listen:  my husband and my sister.  It helps, because we are really all in this together, and we all leave at some undetermined point.


I wish I could talk to my daughter about the fact that I am going to die.  Not to inspire guilt, or denial, but just to get it out there.  It helps when I talk to Stephan or Jennie about it because, hey, that's the reality.  And I think it would mean a lot -- to both of us, me now and her later -- if we could just talk about death and leaving and loss.


But we are destined, aren't we, to continue to repeat the mistakes of those who came before us.  No one who is young and trying to make sense of their own lives is ready to deal with the fact of parents dying.


And then, years later, we all wish we had done it differently.

Snapshots of Summer on Wadmalaw

When all those veggies get overwhelming and even a bit boring, there's still lots of fun to be had:

Like hanging out

Don't forget to take time to enjoy the flowers (uh, peppers)






Meanwhile, in the front yard the crows are conferring:

"Hey, what the...???"

"Hey, who put the net over the figs?"

Happy summer!

Quite Enough of a Good Thing

For 14 weeks every spring I pick up way too many vegetables for any one person from my local farmer at Ambrose Farm.  It's wonderful.  I have learned to do formerly unthinkable things with greens of all kinds and even with turnips.


I can make soups like nobody's business.  I put them in plastic containers and freeze them, and I have magnificent soups all year round.


It's week 12, and this is what I brought home:

I have a system.  Each week I make a list of all my veggies, adding to it anything left from the prior week, so I don't have any beautiful fresh veggies getting moldy in the fridge.  Too good to waste.

This week my list looked like this:

tomatoes

lettuce

scallions

jalapenos - 2

3 yellow squash

cukes - 1 1/2

green beans

corn

2 zucchini

potatoes

eggplant

carrots

beets

turnips

cilantro

melon

figs

blueberries

To be honest, and I am tickled to admit, the figs and zucchini came from my very own yard.  As well as a couple of tomatoes -- they don't look that good, but I keep trying.  And the cherry tomatoes are fine this year.

Anyway, the next step is to sketch in what I plan on doing with all the goodies.  Creamy beet soup and this amazing cilantro soup I just discovered.  Cream of vegetable soup.  A zucchini and scallion spread.  Cuke-bean soup and green beans with tomatoes and mozzarella.  Finally finished the turnips and carrots with a cream of vegetable soup that calls for blending lots of root vegetables right in with rice.

I have been trying to just enjoy the tomatoes all on their own, popping a cherry tomato in my mouth when I walk by, a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich, and I even broke down and cooked up a BLT.  But I couldn't let the season go by without some kind of tomato pie, and diet or not (not) it was worth it.

I don't ever have enough corn to share with any recipe, so I just have an ear a night for a couple of nights.  The first night when it's most fresh it tastes wonderful without salt or butter, but I have been giving in on nights two and three; how often do you get to eat a totally fresh ear of corn?

I stir fried the bok choy last night, and I am going to cook up a cilantro tomato squash thingy tomorrow.

The figs, after I have eaten all I want, get tossed in a bag and put in the freezer.  As did most of the blueberries, leaving more than enough to toss on my cereal in the morning.

That leaves me with an eggplant.  And then Wednesday I go to the farm and do it all over again.

I truly love it.  But about this time in the season, I have to keep reminding myself that it will be over soon, and soon I will be missing it.

Because after I have made enough for a meal, the rest goes in the freezer.  And so the problem is this:

My Damn Diet

There I was, three short years ago, convinced that I was perfectly fine weighing in at over 230 pounds.  After all, a major part of who I am is that I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to eat out.


Then I began to have what I thought were panic attacks.  Doozies.  If you have never had a panic attack in your life, let me just tell you they are terrifying.  There is a real fear that you are going to be unable to take a breath.


And my knees finally gave up on my, leaving me in intense pain.  The magic shots that shoot fake cartilage into your knee joints are supposed to work for six months; they only worked for three.


My GP, who had been hounding me to pay attention to my blood pressure for years, finally hit her mark.  I was ready.  My son was leaving for college, nobody to cook for (i.e. give me an excuse to feel bad because I was dieting instead of making great meals for the two of us), and I was going to prove to my doctor that I could lose weight and lower my blood pressure so I wouldn't have to live my life dependent on pills.


You know, I do remember groaning with the hunger for a "good" meal, but in those first two years I lost 40 pounds.  I went from 160 mg. Diovan to half that.  Then I began to gain and lose and gain and lose again.  The fear of hitting 200 pounds kept me from totally going off the diet.  And it hadn't been that hard.  After I came back from a vacation, or after the various family members visited, I got right back on the diet and took the weight off again.


By year three, I vowed to lose ten more pounds.  And I did, within six months.


And then, over the next six months, I gained them back.


I hate dieting.  And now it's hard again.


The last time family came to visit, I hit that blasted 200 mark again, which determined me to straighten out -- for awhile.


I promised myself a Blue-Ray player, so I can subscribe to Netflix, if I get down to 187.


I can't do it.


If I even contemplate eating dessert, I gain a pound.  Today I began to do the totally craziest thing a dieter can do:  I began to weigh myself  every hour or so.  I figure it's something to do.


This is why I have to diet:


1.  My blood pressure is nearly normal, with 80 mg. Diovan.


2.  I don't get panic attacks.


3.  The reasons I was ignoring when I hit 230 are stuck in my head.  It's nice to be able to squeeze between tables in a restaurant without everybody having to stand up and move their chairs.  I can buckle my seat belt on an airplane, although I have vowed not to fly again until airport security goes the way of Japanese detention camps.  Clothes fit.  I have stamina for walking and swimming.


So now I'm stuck.  I have to diet.  And I hate it.

Alone

I need lots of space.  Noise drives me crazy.  I've been friends, even close friends, with lots of neighbors over the years, and then regretted the loss of space.


But now I have what I wanted -- lots of space.  I live on an acre and a half in a fairly quiet neighborhood, even the next-door neighbors' frantic yowling dog has been quiet lately, and the non-stop 4-wheel bike brigade has for the most part grown up and left.  My home is my own (my cat, Molly, came to live with me because she is also aloof and calm).


It's ten miles from here to gas, groceries, and my library.  The greatest conveniences here are three plus some miles away:  the dump and my CSA farm.


I could become quite the recluse.


I love not having to drive, and subsequently not filling my tank every week.  I hate shopping, so I'm fine with not having any around.  I spend more than enough on the internet when I have to.


The problem is too much of a good thing.


My family is in Boston, Rhode Island, Illinois and Virginia.  I see them once or twice a year.  And where I am really glad to have my little double-wide be my own, I enjoy having somebody I love here knocking around the house with me.


What would I really like?  I would like to live a half-hour away from everybody I love, or even a few hours, less than 17, and less than 8.  Close enough that we can meet for dinner, or visit without packing bags.  Close enough that they don't all get a year older without me seeing them.


They all seem to be doing fine without me.  I don't know what I would do if one of my loved ones wanted me closer.  It would be tough, because I want them pretty much as much as I want my space.


I envy my husband, living in Virginia with his daughter and her family.  He visits his brother and sister (and my daughter who is a short drive away) during the summer.  He visits me in May and November, which I am trusting will continue once my son is no longer tied to Charleston.  So he is always with family, but different ones, throughout the year.  He, too, likes space, and I believe that he has chosen the opposite way of dealing with that than I have.  I think he has opted to stay with people just long enough to be missed when he leaves, and not so long that he hates being there.


It's an interesting option.  I wish I could do that, but hope I never have to.  I do love my home.  And my space.

Worth

When I reduced my work from full-time to part-time in order not to further damage various parts of my body, I was sure that was the right thing to do.  The alternative was to continue to work full-time until I was so badly injured I would qualify for disability, in which case I may never have healed.


But I recall telling a friend that I felt a bit guilty leaving work at 2:00 and going home to read.  She reminded me that at work my job was to check books in and out.


That's been helpful now that I've retired entirely.  This time, I was unable to continue to work at a place that I loved that had seen dramatic and destructive changes.  Just three short months ago, I had believed that if I just did the one-day-at-a-time thing, I could continue to work past early retirement age, and yet here I am, retired at not quite 61.


Again, I know that it was the right thing to do.  Since I left, I have once again been able to talk freely; the depression and anxiety I had been feeling before retiring are gone.  It helps that the local newspaper has validated my concerns by featuring my letter to the editor, following it up with an award, and then publishing as commentary my letter in response to a Commentary piece by the president of the library board.  I have no need to be proven right.  I know I was, and am, right.  But my purpose in speaking out was to inform the community and perhaps cause library administration to be compelled to rethink their bad decisions, or at least slow down the damage because eyes were now on them.  I am proud that I did what I could.


But now I am really, truly retired.  And I am feeling a bit lost, because my worth is defined as my work.  So I do much the same as I was doing before I retired, gardening, reading, blogging, movie watching.  I sleep until I am ready to get up, mostly between 8 and 9, which is a luxury I did not think I would be enjoying for a number of years.  It appears that my body hurts less than it did when I was working, which had not even really occurred to me until the past week or so.


I love being home so much more.  I can sit on my porch and enjoy the daylilies that I was barely able to keep from being killed by weeds and drought until this year.  I actually have successfully grown tomatoes, which have each year come under fire from any variety of insects and critters.  I am, with the help of some netting, beating the birds to the blueberries.  Each morning I "harvest" my little abundance of blueberries, cherry tomatoes and tiny, egg-sized cukes.  I am waiting eagerly for the brown figs that crows feasted upon last year, laughing all the while because I had been unable to put netting up before they took up their positions.


It is still hard for me to sit and read.  What haunts me is the thought that I should be "doing" something.  This is a concept that I think I will be thinking about quite a bit now.


When I think about how much longer I may be around (and I try not to because running those numbers is terrifying), I try to think about what will have been the best ways to spend my time.


And I look at my cat, Molly.  I think my contribution to civilization will be not so much greater than hers, so I watch her sleep, stretch, play, sleep a bit more, all without self-consciousness.  I think maybe that would be a good thing to do with the rest of my life.

And So It Goes...

As it turned out, I was not meant to stay at the library.  Shortly after I got home from my Belleair Beach vacation, I penned a Letter to the Editor of Charleston's Post & Courier which certainly ended up stirring the pot.  I was not fired, but a week after the letter came out, I decided leaving was the right thing to do.


I came to that realization on my day off, mowing the lawn.  Much as I hate mowing the lawn these days, it seems to have the effect of helping me reach important decisions.  Way back in my past life as a psychologist, I was feeling much the same about the devastation managed care had wreaked on my no longer private practice.  While mowing my Long Island lawn, I reached the decision to drop all managed care companies (I believe I had two) from my practice.  It was certainly a life-changing move, forcing my practice to shrink further, and eventually leading me to start anew here in South Carolina.


But, just as with my decision to leave the library, it was the right one.  I may worry about my financial well-being, but my heart is lighter now.  Not only can I continue to be vocal about the changes that are being inflicted at the library without fear of reprisal, but I no longer have to daily bear witness to the destruction of books.


Retirement will be another whole chapter, and I'm trying to take it as it comes.  After all, when I retired as a psychologist all those years ago, who knew that I would find years of pleasure (if not wealth) working at the library.