blog.bonnielcasey.com

Eeek!-ing Out a Life

2012-02-17T15:17:43Z

Standing on the top landing, staring aghast at the basement floor below, I wished for the first time in a long time that there were a man around the house. I’d been heading downstairs to the washing machine, my arms laden with dirty clothes, when my eye caught something out of place at the foot of the stairs. The yellow strip of sticky gel that was normally tucked into a dark corner to trap camelback crickets had somehow migrated about three feet north by northeast, and something round and dark was stuck to one end of the strip. For a few seconds I thought maybe a leaf had been blown onto the trap by a stray draft, but then the dark thing twitched and I froze in terror and dread. My pulse raced, my vision blurred, and all my blood headed straight for my feet. For the first time in 30 years, I had a mouse in my house.

Since my ex-husband left seven years ago, certain distasteful aspects of household management have fallen to me, the nastiest of which is dealing with insects laboring under the mistaken notions that indoors is better than outdoors and that I will be tolerant of multipedal companionship. I’ve always had an embarrassingly girlish horror of creepy-crawlies, especially spiders. When we were children, my little sister would grab a flashlight and chase after spiders under my bed while I quivered under the sheets. As an adult, I had no qualms about calling my husband at work to beg him to come home and kill a spider in the kitchen.

As a matter of ethics and spirituality, I honor all forms of life and am more than happy to share the ecosystem with creatures great and small, but I draw the line at my living space. That’s why one of the first things I bought after getting divorced was a BugZooka (http://www.bugzooka.com/home.html), a marvel of engineering for the squeamish. Armed with this ingenious device, I’ve faced down countless wayward lightning bugs, flies, spiders, and even wasps. But not even a BugZooka could solve my mouse problem.

I knew immediately what needed to be done. The mouse was clearly alive and struggling, its tail and at least one hind foot stuck fast to the glue in the cricket trap. Leaving it there to die slowly from dehydration was unconscionable, not to mention impractical given my need for clean underwear. No, I wanted the mouse out of my basement and released, if possible, to the wild—just not by me.

When I regained the use of my legs, I tossed my dirty laundry back into the hamper, ran out the front door and headed straight for my nearest male neighbor, Jonathan, who had worked in Africa for nonprofit organizations. I figured he must have wrestled a boa constrictor or two and maybe even shooed a rhino away from his Land Rover. I fervently hoped he would not be intimidated by a stuck brown mouse. Yet, even as I rang his doorbell I was ashamed of this brazen retreat to cultural stereotypes. Here I was, playing the cartoonish role of the “little woman.” I might as well have been up on a kitchen table, my knees clamped shut, shrieking “Eeek!” And poor Jonathan, bearing the male burden of rescuing a damsel in distress, yet demoted from dragon-slayer to rodent-wrangler. And why did I automatically assume that he would have the stomach for peeling a mouse off a sticky pad when I clearly didn’t?

If you Google “why women are afraid of mice” you’ll get a variety of information, from sober descriptions of musophobia as a psychological disorder to Internet discussions where most female respondents staunchly aver that the stereotype is slanderous and that they adore the cute little critters. Those who admit to an aversion to mice offer a variety of excuses, most of which make little sense under close inspection. Most musophobes cite the fact that wild mice are dirty and can spread disease, forgetting that the same could be said of pets and children. Others claim a distaste for having to dispose of dead mice caught in guillotine-type traps, apparently unaware that there are many humane, live-capture mouse traps available. I can empathize, however, with those who fear the shock of having a mouse dart across their path or (eeuw!) over their feet. I suffer from hyperreflexia, a disordered response to stimuli characterized by exaggerated reflexes. When a doctor taps my kneecap with that little rubber hammer, I go into a paroxysm that nearly knocks me off the examining table. I worry sometimes that I could literally be startled to death by, say, a mouse darting across my feet.

However, I’ve learned enough about myself to recognize that my extreme response to the mouse trapped in my basement stemmed partly from an identification with the little mammal’s dilemma. The suffering of animals has always paradoxically affected me more profoundly than human suffering. Instances from my childhood, when I endured abuse I was helpless to relieve or even understand, have so sensitized me to the suffering of mute creatures that is causes a post-traumatic stress reaction. My inability to rescue the mouse I had inadvertently captured was cowardly, but at least I recognized its source.

Jonathan arrived on my doorstep smiling indulgently and sporting a pair of thick leather gloves. I poured out a torrent of embarrassed apologies and heartfelt gratitude as I led him to the top of the basement stairs. I explained about the sticky cricket trap and begged Jonathan to try to free the mouse and release him into the bushes across the street. I switched on the light over the stairs and mumbled abashedly, “I left the door to the outside open for you. I’m sorry, but I just can’t look.”

Moments later, when I heard the garage door open, I ran to the front door and watched Jonathan stride across the street holding the yellow plastic cricket trap by one end, the mouse still clearly stuck at the other. He knelt with his back to me for several minutes. Jonathan is tall and lean with blue eyes, a trim beard, and a quick smile. He and his Irish wife are the parents of one-year-old twin boys whom they dote on. He has the look and bearing of a Knight of the Round Table, and as I watched him crouched on one knee, gently attempting to rescue a tiny mouse, I wished I could have honored his courage and chivalry by providing him with a proper dragon to engage in battle. Or a snake at the very least.

A few minutes later Jonathan rose and crossed the street holding the trap, now bearing only a few shriveled cricket carcasses, a patch of brown fur, and a ragged edge where the mouse had attempted to chew itself free. “As soon as I got his tail and hind feet unstuck he ran off into the bushes,” Jonathan said beaming, “so I guess he’s okay.” Nearly prostrate with relief and gratitude, I took the trap from my young champion and tried to thank him adequately, but he waved it away. “Oh, it was nothing,” he said. “Let me know anytime I can help out.”

Most of the time, as a satisfied single, I enjoy my solitude and work hard to maintain my independence (http://www.singlewithattitude.com/). I’m proud of my ability to tackle minor home repairs and redecorating projects by myself. But living alone has its occasional challenges, and for a certain type of individual these can lead to unfortunate quirks. For instance, I don’t want to grow paranoid and needy like the old woman who lived next door to me years ago. She would bang on my door at odd hours, her eyes glistening with panic, and beg me to come to her apartment and sniff her tap water, which she insisted smelled “funny.” Or she’d call at 10 o’clock at night, pleading with me to make an emergency run to the pharmacy for vitamin C. I brooded on these sorts of things for hours after Jonathan had left, and tried to re-establish my sense of competence by baking a dozen blueberry muffins and delivering them to him and his family in a wicker basket. So much for avoiding stereotypes.

The next day, I still couldn’t pry the mouse problem from my mind. I fervently hoped another one would not find its way into my basement, but that prospect was dim enough to make me call an exterminator for an inspection. I bought and set out a couple of live-capture traps and repeatedly visualized myself putting on thick gloves, picking up a quivering trap (deep breath in, deep breath out), and releasing the mouse across the street. What on earth was so frightening about that? The mouse would want nothing more than to run away from me as fast as he could. What did I imagine would happen? That before hightailing it into the underbrush the vengeful rodent would turn on me, bite my thumb, and snarl, “Thanks fer nothin’!” No, this was doable, and should the need arise, I had to do it myself, I thought. I had to conquer my fear, be self-reliant, and stop annoying my neighbors. Nothing less would suit my urgent need to be a rational, independent, courageous Wise Woman.

Then the fever broke and I saw that scenario for the delusional bunk it was. The Wonder Woman who is all things unto herself was my own creation and bore little relation to my circumstances or the way things work in the larger world. After all, I know full well that nothing gives me as much joy and satisfaction as helping someone in need. Whether it’s buying a llama from Heifer International (http://www.heifer.org/) or grabbing a box of cereal off a tall supermarket shelf for a mother with a baby on her hip, helping makes me feel real, useful, connected, and simply happy. Why should I deny to others that opportunity for happiness by stubbornly refusing to ask for help when I need it? The truth is, I can’t do everything for myself—I’m not strong enough, brave enough, smart enough, or rich enough.

But if we can’t all do everything, we can all do something. I gave Jonathan a chance to express his kind and generous nature, as well as a good story to tell his friends about the crazy lady next door. I may never conquer musophobia, but I can make boffo blueberry muffins for those who have. Maybe in the great scale of the universe, it all balances out.

Going Like Sixty

2012-01-25T13:17:53Z

A few weeks ago Karen, my therapist, looked at me quizically and said, "Let me get this straight. You have half an eye, you're in constant pain, and your 60th birthday is just a few weeks away. But you can't figure out why you’re feeling a sort of malaise?”

I’d been reviewing the month since our last session, moaning about my lack of ambition and general lethargy. I recalled the years when I juggled a job, a husband, and a high-maintenance child and marveled at how much I used to accomplish in a day. Half an hour after getting home from work I had a hot meal on the table. Then I’d make lunches, oversee homework, iron shirts, balance the checkbook, and do a bit of freelance editing before bedtime. Lately, however, it seems to take so much energy to accomplish so much less. I slouched in the chair in Karen’s office, idly fiddling with one of her purple pens. “I don’t even have anything to write about for my blog this month,” I whined. It was true. I’d told myself over and over that writing takes discipline, but every time I’d start down the hall to my study, a malevolent force would repel me and I’d slink off to read a book or rearrange a drawer. I’d searched every cranny of my brain for inspiration, but my mind was like an anorexic’s refrigerator: the light came on but there was nothing to look at.

“Half an eye” was Karen’s lurid but accurate reference to my ongoing ordeal with a vitreous hemorrhage that occurred last summer and left a large milky blob floating across the field of vision in my left eye. Constant pain was evidenced by the walking stick I’d brought that day to alleviate severe sciatica, and yes, a decade birthday looms just over the horizon. Taken together, these things made a compelling argument for malaise, but I chose instead to berate myself for being stuck in brain fog, a disgrace to the wise sisterhood of crones. “My only ambition these days is to be able to retire in five years,” I sighed, still tormenting the purple pen. “I may just have enough money to live on if I eat nothing but oatmeal for the rest of my life.”

That’s when Karen, who is clearly underpaid, leaned in and asked for clarification—her tactful rendition of “What? Are you nuts?” My 55 minutes were about up, so she closed by giving me an assignment. “Look,” she said pointedly, “you’re dealing with a lot of difficult stuff, not the least of which is turning 60. Yet you insist on beating yourself up for taking things a little slower and for having a hard time coming up with an idea for your blog. So your homework this month is to stop being so hard on yourself and just wallow! Give yourself permission to wallow in self-pity from now until two weeks after your birthday. Then you have to snap out of it and move on. I mean it—wallow for all you're worth until after your birthday. It's perfectly appropriate. And forget about the blog! Then next month we'll talk about how to be 60 years old."

I love that woman.

* * *

As a rule, I ignore my birthdays. I don’t lie to others about my age or to myself about the implications of getting older. I just don’t think my birthdays are a big deal, except when they mark a new decade, and 60 is feeling like a very big deal. Hitting 40 and even 50 didn’t faze me, but 60 is getting in amongst me, as the Brits say. For one thing, 6 is my least favorite numeral. It feels weak and squishy to me. Furthermore, in my mind numerals all have assigned colors, and 6 is orange. I hate orange. I’m looking at ten years of orange sixes, for pete’s sake.

Then there’s the matter of labels. I resist most labels for myself, but must admit that some labels help you get your bearings in the flow of time and the crush of humanity. They reassure you that “You Are Here -->.” But where exactly is 60? Late middle age? Early old age? When I was a kid, “old” started around 35, but aging Baby Boomers keep moving the goalposts in their favor. Now they say 70 is the brink of elderly and 50 is the new 40, none of which helps me figure out how to be 60. According to middleage.org, “middle age is that point in your life when you shift from seeing the future in terms of your potential and begin to see it in terms of your limitations.” Fine. But what if you’re stuck somewhere in between, regretting your limited potential and dreading your potential limitations?

As any true-blue American would do in a crisis, I turned to television for guidance. Especially the commercials, which are eager to define who you are and exactly what you need. But even there, the message aimed at my demographic was confusing. The agenda for an active senior, or whatever the hell I am, would appear to be something like this: Over morning coffee, earnestly discuss affordable life insurance premiums with a suspiciously knowledgeable neighbor, preferably from an ethnic minority. Later on, scoot downtown in my power chair to stock up on Metamucil and Aspercreme, then drop by the country club for a vigorous dance class to demonstrate that my dentures don’t slip (big toothy smile!). End the day watching the sunset from side-by-side bathtubs with a pharmaceutically enhanced male companion, being careful to wear my Life Alert pendant for when I fall and can’t get up.

Confused? Me too.

* * *

I had hoped this business of who I want to be and how to live an authentic life would be all wrapped up before I started qualifying for senior discounts, but it appears to be a lifelong endeavor. Every year I try to shed more of the irrelevant cultural norms and expectations that accrue like barnacles on the free spirit that is everyone’s birthright. In the last seven years, taking advantage of the solitude that being single again affords, I’ve made significant strides toward reconciling my outer and inner selves, taking heart in the fact that for many people I admire, age has fostered the freedom to shake off various ill-fitting roles without regard for public opinion. I look forward to exploring that opportunity for myself in the next decade, and even cherish some small hope of becoming charmingly eccentric.

As a toddler it was my habit to push aside a helping hand and stoutly declare, “Baby by-self!” There’s still a good deal of that spirit alive in me, and I wish it were all I needed to chart the way into my seventh decade. It would be so brave and adventurous, so Katherine Hepburn, to say “Screw the rules and stereotypes about getting old! I’ll do it my way and make it up as I go along.” And I’m sure I will find and express a unique 60-year-old voice, but whether it will be pure Baby by-self is open to question because, like it or not, one’s true self can never be fully embodied in a life bound by the urgent rhythms and artificial necessities imposed by society. My deepest dreams for myself as a Wild Woman in her crone years will necessarily be circumscribed, at least for some time yet, by the need to earn my keep and behave myself in public. Being a grown-up requires compromise after all, but my dread of ending up as conventional as I began is no doubt why I love reading about people who explore the extremes of existence, either breaking barriers of thought and belief or testing themselves at the edges of civilization (most recently, This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, by Gretel Ehrlich, http://www.amazon.com/This-Cold-Heaven-Seasons-Greenland/dp/0679442006).

My son and friends need not fear that I will embarrass them by running amok, or even making headlines, in my golden years, but I do have the beginnings of a plan for remaining vital, interesting, and true to my ideals in my 60s. It bears a striking resemblance to my plan for how to be 50, but I’m confident it will evolve even as I do. Sadly (or not), my plan does not include mushing across polar ice, leading a revolution, or retreating to the life of a Druid priestess. It is extreme only in my determination to continue on the path to enlightenment at my own speed, honoring kindness as the highest good and cutting deep to the hard bone of truth.

I will keep my mind open to new ideas and try not to believe everything I think.
I will give my imagination and creative spirit plenty of room to play.
I will cherish my friends and revel in their company as often as possible.
I will take good care of my body (I’ve already taken steps to deal with “half an eye” and sciatica), then accept inevitable changes with grace and good humor.
I will fulfill my duty as an elder to share what I’ve learned about life as a spiritual being in a human body.
I will hone my intuition and follow my mystical inclinations further into the wonders of existence.
I will listen to the voice of the Divine, the power behind the natural world, the life spirit that directs us and tells us who we are.
I will nurture spiritual growth through my Sacred Circle (http://www.bonnielcasey.com/GrowingInCircles.aspx) and daily meditation.
I will laugh, cry, and dance under the moon to remind myself that I’m still alive.
I will be tactful and circumspect when necessary, but bear in mind Ms. Hepburn’s delicious admonition that “if you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”

I just might amaze myself, but right now I’m going to pull the covers over my head and wallow some more. Don’t blame me—it’s homework.

The Tao of Penguins

2011-12-13T14:00:33Z

Last month a friend in Hawaii sent me a link to a video about emperor penguins (http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=SkY03n0_sD8&vq=medium). Perhaps I should say a video “of” emperor penguins, because it’s not “about” penguins in any sense that National Geographic or Sir David Attenborough would recognize. The film, produced by Defenders of Wildlife, is five minutes of unnarrated, uncaptioned footage of penguins in the snow, the adults loitering in their stately and inscrutable way, now and then giving an affectionate nudge to one of the impossibly cute babies at their feet.

A few days later I passed the link on to some friends with the message: “Here’s something to help you believe in Life just as it is,” a statement whose sunny equanimity must have startled my friends, who are more accustomed to messages from me along the lines of, “Why am I still suffering? Haven’t I learned enough already?” Which perfectly illustrates the point I wish to convey about the penguins. Even though I’d learned way more about penguin habitats and lifestyles watching Dudley Moore’s “Really Wild Animals” years ago with my toddler son, the wordless video had a soothing effect on my spirit, which took some quiet contemplation to fully appreciate.

Everybody loves penguins. They’re so unlikely (flightless birds surviving in the world’s most inhospitable environment), so cute (waddling around like pregnant maitre d’s), and so easy to laugh at. Penguin jokes abound, from Monty Python’s classic penguin sketch (“What’s that penguin doing on the telly?” “Standing.”) to Garrison Keillor’s metaphysical take on penguins (Two penguins are standing on an ice floe. The first penguin says, “You look like you’re wearing a tuxedo.” The second penguin says, “How do you know I’m not?”). But the truth isn’t that simple. Being a penguin isn’t just about sliding down the ice on your belly and vamping for the cameras; a penguin’s life is hard and fraught with danger. Adults are virtually helpless to protect nestlings from ravenous skuas and petrels. Babies who do survive to adulthood are prey to seals and orcas whenever they venture into the water. During breeding season, males and females take turns trekking 60 to 100 miles from nesting grounds to the open ocean to feed. The parent who stays behind to incubate eggs and care for the young can go without food for months at a time.

Knowing something of the harsh realities of emperor penguin life is what made this particular film so poignant, because the penguins don’t seem to be brooding on their precarious existence. I don’t claim any special ability to peer into the penguin mind, but you can’t watch this film and believe that these gorgeous creatures are worrying about the effects of climate change on their habitat, or stressing over preparations for the next arduous march to faraway feeding grounds, or fretting over whether their chicks will survive long enough to sustain the emperor population. Yes, they engage in a daily struggle for survival, but they don’t appear to be vexed by questions of why they are here and what it all means. They just ARE, here and now, and for penguins, that seems to be more than enough.

The evidence suggests that humans are the only living things with self-consciousness, the only animals who can look in a mirror and recognize that the image looking back at them is themselves. More importantly, though all living things die—bugs, trees, tortoises, microbes—we are the only creatures who know we are going to die, and that affects absolutely everything. One of the penguins in the film shuffles slowly and carefully across the ice carrying a fluffy gray chick on his feet, the way I used to stand on my father’s shoes as we “danced” to Benny Goodman records. That penguin may well have been a leopard seal’s lunch the day after his film debut, but if so, I’m certain he didn’t spend his last hours worrying about the possibility of his imminent demise. He just lived his penguin life moment by moment, driven by innate urges and needs, surviving as best he could without freighting his days with needless mental anguish.

We, on the other hand, know we will die sooner or later, and for the vast majority of us, this knowledge causes fear. Not the sudden, adrenaline-fueled panic of stepping off a curb into the path of a speeding car, but a constant undercurrent of dread simmering just below the surface of consciousness, driving our ambitions and dictating our choices. Knowledge of our mortality can have a positive effect, of course, goading us to make the best use of our brief time on Earth and making the good things in life, like love and beauty, all the more precious. But I’ve come to the conclusion that fear of death—of the unknown, alien state of nonbeing—lies at the heart of most human mischief. Devoting one’s life and talents to amassing more money, territory, or stuff than the next guy, collecting hordes of Twitter followers, or starring in a reality TV show are all, at bottom, attempts to ensure a kind of false immortality. Even crimes of the heart can be an attempt to avert one’s gaze from the inevitable. In the Oscar-winning movie “Moonstruck,” when Rose suspects her husband Cosmo is being unfaithful, she asks her daughter’s fiancé why men cheat on their wives. “Maybe it’s because they fear death,” he says. When Cosmo comes home late that evening, Rose confronts him angrily: “I just want you to know that no matter what you do, you’re still gonna die, just like everybody else!” “Thank you, Rose,” says the nonplussed Cosmo.

I’m not suggesting that anyone who isn’t in constant, excruciating pain should actually welcome the prospect of death, only that we might do well to shift our perspective a bit. I speak as someone who suffered for most of her life from an overweening fear of death, for which I blame my father. My grandfather died when I was nine years old, and my father insisted that I accompany him one evening for a viewing at the funeral home. My mistake on that occasion was trying to hide behind a potted fern in a far corner of the room, forgetting in my panic that my father did not countenance displays of fear in his children. Before I could yelp in protest, Dad hoisted me up by my armpits and dangled me over the side of the coffin so I could enjoy a close-up of my embalmed grandpa, on the same theory, I suppose, that shoving someone off a cliff would liberate them from a fear of heights. Not surprisingly, this tactic merely fostered an even more crippling dread of death and dying that I didn’t confront until I was in my late thirties.

For those with similar fears and questions about the Great Unknown, the marketplace of ideas offers no end of possible answers. Atheists urge us to quit whining, grow some spine, and face the cold reality that this life is all there is. There’s nothing awaiting us after death, no punishments or rewards, no departed loved ones, no childhood pets bounding over a rainbow bridge into our tearful embrace. Just nothingness and nonbeing. Most religions, on the other hand, offer the hope that this life is merely a prelude to an eternal existence free of strife and pain. Some of these religions hold as an article of faith the resurrection of the physical body at some future apocalypse. This belief has fostered an entire industry, along with the pernicious practice of entombing dead bodies in fortresses of lead and cement, supposedly making the reanimation of their constituent parts more convenient for the Almighty. This defies both logic and nature, since we’re biologically constituted to become compost.

Now that I’ve offended almost everyone, let me hasten to say that I appreciate the fact that religious beliefs about an afterlife have offered immeasurable comfort to generations of believers. Personally, I’m okay with not knowing what awaits me after I die, but I respect others’ right to believe anything they like, so long as they acknowledge that it is only a belief. Because there’s no getting around the fact that nobody knows what, if anything, happens to us after death except for the dead, and they’re keeping stubbornly mum. Anything we think we know about whether life on Earth is all there is can never be more than a belief or a hope.

When he wasn’t traumatizing me for my own good, my father tried to instill the wisdom that it’s no good complaining about what can’t be changed (“Of course it’s hot! It’s the middle of summer! That’s what ice cubes are for, fer cryin’ out loud!”). My spiritual path is founded on somewhat the same philosophy, although my father might not have seen it that way. I choose to live in harmony with, and derive wisdom from, the observable facts of nature, and nature, as even the most desultory gardener can readily observe, decrees that death is not an enemy to be vanquished. In the natural order of things, death is not even merely the absence of life—it is what makes life possible. Every living thing on the planet, from humans to penguins to radishes, is composed of raw materials derived from other living things that have died and decomposed. Look under any rock and you can watch death being chewed, churned, and excreted into the stuff of new life. There is no food without death, no summer without winter, no room for new humans and animals unless some exit the scene to free up space and resources.

This is, as Lucretius wrote sometime before 55 BCE, the way things are. I recently read the only surviving work of this Roman poet, a 7,000-line poem outlining his philosophy, called “On the Nature of Things.” Lucretius didn’t believe that his fellow Romans needed to look to a pantheon of gods and goddesses to account for lightning, storms, harvests, wine, disease, reproduction, or death. He argues that these are all natural processes that can be understood by careful observation of the natural world. He’s particularly concerned that humans not live in constant fear of death, since it is the natural partner of life. He compares the process of one generation succeeding another to a relay race in which the runners willingly pass on the torch of life, and that our own deaths are the necessary condition for the constant renewal of the world. “The old must give way, pushed aside / By the new, and one thing by another thing is re-supplied.” His purpose, he writes, is to “toss that Dread of Death out on its ear / Since that’s what stirs the lives of mortals into such turmoil / From the very depths, and there is nothing that it does not soil / With the smirch of death, no pleasure, pure and clean it does not spoil.”

In December, as the year subsides into deep winter, the Earth itself seems in the throes of a kind of death. Days shorten, temperatures drop, the ground is strewn with withered leaves. The darkness and cold of winter can burden the human body and spirit, making us yearn for the return of the light. This longing is the origin of all Yule and Christmas celebrations, where candles, hearth fires, and holiday lights signal our joy, at the darkest point of the year, that the winter solstice marks the slow but inexorable return of the life-giving sun. I used to dread winter, but my perspective has begun to shift as I’ve tried to live mindfully with the rhythms of the year. I no longer think of winter as merely the absence of summer, but as a vital part of the cycle of life, a chance for living things to rest and conserve their resources. Instead of mourning the starkly barren trees, I imagine them as I am after a long day’s work—eager to strip off all my clothes. I imagine the winter trees stretching their bare limbs to the sky and sighing, “Aaah, that’s better.”

Perhaps now and then a particularly sensible penguin gives a fleeting thought for the morrow. Who can say? But there’s something uplifting about these creatures’ apparently serene acceptance of their essential penguin-ness. It gives me courage to face the inevitable fact that we’re all navigating the same River of Life, a river that, at its furthest reach, plunges over the edge of a cliff in a vast cataract. Early or late, all living things go over the edge, relinquishing their elements to the resourceful, nurturing Earth to be recycled. Until then, it seems only right that we should take some time to float on our backs and gaze at the stars, or slide down some ice on our bellies.

In the natural order of things, Lucretius wrote, “one thing rises from another—it will never cease. / No one is given life to own; we all hold but a lease.” Wise words from a man who, it’s a good bet, never laid eyes on a penguin.

The Crooked Ladder

2011-11-11T19:31:32Z

Few things trample my spirit as thoroughly as the feeling of helplessness. I’m a fixer by temperament, which can be a burden in a world that offers so much to feel helpless about. News media bombard us with disasters and injustices of staggering proportions. We watch in passive rage as a rapacious few despoil the earth and pick the common pocket. The culture socks us with standards of physical perfection and lemony freshness unattainable by mere mortals. We shrug in bewilderment as our hair thins, our hips spread, our spouses leave us for someone named Tami or Lance, and our children blame us for ruining their lives. This may explain my determination to tackle the problem of the crater forming outside my kitchen. A small-scale problem with a discernible cause and a clear solution doesn’t come around all that often.

When I first discovered it, the hole in a narrow strip of ground along the side of my house was only about ten inches across and five inches deep. I wondered briefly if a dog or raccoon had dug it, but a closer inspection of its smooth contours convinced me it must have been scooped out by water. I only had to look up, then, to find the culprit—a bit of gutter that had come loose from the roof and gotten bent under the pressure of rainwater and fallen leaves. More rain was forecast for the rest of the week, so as a stop-gap I filled the hole with gravel and tamped it down hard, hoping that would stop further erosion.

The next day, as rain poured steadily from a grim October sky, I leaned over my kitchen sink and craned my neck for a view of the bent gutter. Sure enough, a small cataract was spilling over the edge and slicing into the ground below. I grabbed an umbrella and slogged around to the side of the house, but even before I reached the crater, a trail of muddy gravel told me my experiment in environmental engineering had been a bust. That’s when the gnawing sense of helplessness set in, because the only ladder I owned was just five feet tall. Which meant that the task of nailing a single spike through one end of gutter would involve searching Angie’s List for a reasonably affordable handyman who would agree to do such a dinky job, because the guy I pay to clean my gutters can only come when he can borrow a ladder and doesn’t speak English worth squat even though he has a green card and has lived in Maryland for 14 years! I could see this one-nail job stretching out for weeks and costing me more than the price of a new ladder, which is when a light finally went on.

I’d been eyeing a pair of buttery-soft black leather boots that, when I tried them on in the store, looked hot and felt like slippers. I craved those boots with a greedy lust and fretted that giving them up for an extension ladder would be emblematic of a dull, dutiful life. But when I weighed the sensuous pleasure of the boots against the virtues of self-reliance and the possibility of amortizing the cost of the ladder in less than a year by cleaning the gutters myself, my Puritan tendencies eked out a win. I found a 12-foot aluminum ladder online, with locking hinges that let it fold into 3-foot segments like a capital M. This and its weight of only 25 pounds meant that I could carry, maneuver, and store it all by myself. No more feeling helpless about domestic jobs more than five feet above ground. No more waiting to be rescued by handymen in droopy pants who charge 80 bucks just for showing up.

But a victory dance was premature at this point because, as I would soon be reminded, helplessness and self-reliance are slippery concepts. No one is truly self-reliant because no one accomplishes anything entirely by their own efforts. Ever. In the same way, we are usually not as helpless as we feel. There are some circumstances we can do little or nothing about (a painful truth for anyone stalled in freeway traffic), but whether in dire personal straits or tragedies of immense proportions, we are rarely without some recourse. Small steps add up, and though all may seem chaos and vanity, any one of us could be the butterfly whose wings stir a whirlwind on the other side of the world.

I suspect that in most cases, feelings of helplessness are fueled by a kind of tunnel vision where we imagine rescue in a single guise, riding in from a single direction, on a schedule of our own devising. But “help” encompasses a universe of possibilities and timetables, from a friend’s instantly outstretched hand to the slow unfolding of world events. It may reveal itself as inner resources hitherto untapped or supernatural forces only dimly perceived. Help, in other words, may arrive like a child at Halloween—disguised as something else. Not, perhaps what we were looking for, but precisely what we need.

When my new ladder arrived by FedEx a week later I was pleased to find that I could maneuver the cumbersome package down the stairs to my basement without much trouble. Once I wrestled it out of the box and its shroud of plastic wrap, I saw that the only assembly required was to attach a stabilizer bar at each end of the ladder. These horizontal bars had rubber tips at each end that served as the ladder’s “feet”. All I had to do was push the stabilizer bars into slots at each end of the long side bars, insert four bolts and secure them with washers and nuts. My only disappointment was that the job wouldn’t involve power tools.

However, when I tried to insert the first stabilizer bar, I found that one arm of one of the slots was bent, causing a pinch of a mere millimeter or two that was enough to prevent the bar from sliding in. I checked the other end of the ladder and found the same thing—a pinched slot on one side. I tried to force one of the bars into a bent slot by hammering on it, then tried to pry the slot open by inserting one end of a wrench and hammering down on the other end, but it was clear I would never get the job done with the resources at hand. I surveyed the packing materials strewn around the floor and pictured the effort it would take to stuff everything back in the box and haul it to a FedEx office. The packing slip included a stern warning that I would have to pay for return shipping, and that unless I could prove that the manufacturer was responsible for damage, my refund could be as low as 50%. The ladder was useless as it was, so my only choices were to return it and swallow the loss, leaving me and my leaky gutter right where we started, or pay a man to fix either the gutter or the ladder. So much for self-reliance. I tossed my tools into a corner, cursed myself for getting into such a muddle, and hauled my tattered self-sufficiency off to bed.

The next weekend I was strolling through the Shrine to Limitless Competence, better known as the local hardware store, and started chatting with one of the clerks. On a whim, I described my damaged ladder and asked if he thought it was salvageable. He nodded knowingly and said, “You need to talk to Maurice. If he can’t fix it, it’s not fixable. The guy’s amazing,” he went on. “He’s 89 years old and still works here four days a week. On Mondays he volunteers at the Smithsonian designing and welding metal frames to display airplane engines at the National Air and Space Museum. After you ask him about your ladder, ask him about his years in the R.A.F. during World War II.” I knew then that he was describing the brisk little man with a British accent who had helped me numerous times over the years. I’d barely finish describing what I was looking for when he would stop me with a raised index finger, turn on his heels, and march directly to the needed item, making me jog to keep up. I was abashed that I had never asked his name and had no clue about his colorful history.

I found Maurice at the back of the store making a key for another customer. As I waited, I observed him closely for the first time. He was short and muscular, with a full head of white hair and ice-blue eyes. He looked like Santa’s oldest elf, who absolutely positively refused to discuss retirement. He handed the customer his new key and turned to me, shoulders thrown back at attention. “Now, young lady, what can I do for you?”

Maurice assured me that he could make my ladder workable and told me to bring it to his house the following Thursday afternoon. He wouldn’t discuss payment until he’d seen the damage. When I said, “So, I hear you work at the Smithsonian …” he stopped me with a raised index finger, reached into a pocket, and pulled out half a dozen photos of himself in full welder’s gear, posed next to a massive airplane engine supported on one of his custom-built frames. I admired each photo, then leaned on my shopping cart while Maurice spent the next 20 minutes telling me stories about joining the Royal Air Force as a teenager and surviving the war years working on airplanes in the Middle East and North Africa. After the war he and a buddy bought an old Army ambulance and drove it from London to Cape Town. After crossing Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, they loaded the ambulance onto a barge in Egypt and chugged up the Nile for 29 days to reach passable roads further south. He told me about fashioning cups and cutlery out of empty soup cans and trading them with villagers along the river for food for himself and his buddy, and about marrying a South African woman and coming many years later to America. Other store clerks sidestepped us, smiling indulgently as they went about their duties. No one was going to tell the old fellow he needed to get back to work.

I told Maurice about my British heritage and my year at a college in the English Midlands. I also told him what I did for a living, and that if he ever decided to write a memoir, he knew where to find an editor. He beamed at me and said, “You know, Bonnie, I’ve already made a start on that. I think it was very lucky my meeting you today.” He patted my arm and gave me a wink, and I left the store with a smile that wouldn’t quit. I’d found someone to mend my damaged ladder and a new chum besides. I walked to my car with the sage words of Saturday Night Live’s pioneering pundit, Roseanne Roseannadanna, resounding in my ears: “Well, Jane, it just goes to show you.”

On Thursday I arrived at Maurice’s house with the ladder stowed in my trunk. I went through the gate and up the front walk past a jumble of garden gnomes and airplane-shaped weather vanes, wondering if old Maurice would remember who I was and what I wanted. But before I could ring the bell he swung the door open with a cheery, “Hello, Bonnie! Let’s take a look at that ladder of yours.” With the ladder locked in a W on his front walk, Maurice quickly assessed the damage and bent to the task of adjusting the damaged slots to accommodate the stabilizer bars. I made myself useful handing him tools as he called for them.

Neither of us paid attention to the middle-aged man in a faded red sweatshirt and baseball cap who strolled past on the sidewalk, until he turned around, walked back to the house, and slipped through the gate. “Hi,” he said, approaching us tentatively. “Would you be interested in some seafood?” When Maurice, absorbed in bending aluminum to his will, didn’t look up, the man smiled and moved a little closer. “Seafood?” I asked, noting that he wasn’t carrying anything with him. “Yeah,” he said pointing to a small truck parked at the curb. “My buddy sells frozen seafood to restaurants and private customers in this area. He’s made all his deliveries for the day, so we’re just going around the neighborhood trying to sell what’s left in his truck. I help him out sometimes. He has really great stuff, if you’re interested.”

I thought going door to door trying to sell frozen seafood from the back of a truck was a bizarre business plan. But the afternoon was fine and I was feeling good, so why spoil the mood by being aloof and suspicious? The fish man was polite and well-spoken, not bad looking, and if things got hinky I was pretty sure Maurice could still take him down. This whole thing with the ladder was turning into such an unexpected adventure, I decided to just go with it.

“Well,” I laughed, “I’m afraid your pitch is lost on me since I’m a vegetarian, but Maurice may be interested.” Maurice was still oblivious, so I tapped him on the arm and said, “Maurice, you got anything for supper? This guy’s selling fish.” He looked up from his work then and studied the man in the baseball cap, who smiled and gestured toward his friend’s parked truck. “What’ve you got?” asked Maurice. The man rattled off a list of whole fish and prepared entrees that meant nothing to me but clearly piqued Maurice’s interest. When he gazed longingly at the truck, I urged, “Go ahead, get yourself something good for supper. I’m in no hurry.” But he wouldn’t hear of it. He asked the fish man if he would wait a bit, because “this lady and her ladder come first.” The fish man readily agreed, apparently not overly concerned about his friend slouched behind the wheel of the truck. He looked over Maurice’s shoulder and became absorbed in our attempt to fix the bent ladder. When Maurice ducked into the house to get more tools, I cleared up the fish man’s confusion about who owned the house and who owned the ladder and how I had come to meet Maurice. I told him what I knew of my remarkable new friend, how he was still working at a hardware store at 89, about his reputation as a legendary fix-it man, and about his service in the R.A.F. during World War II. “R.A.F.?” the fish man asked. “Royal Air Force,” I explained. “See?” I said, pointing to Maurice’s red Jeep. “There on his license plate: RAF WWII.” When Maurice returned, the three of us chatted like old friends about the weather, gardening, and the challenges of getting older. Fish man was amazed that he and I were the same age and commented that vegetarianism appeared to be working well for me. He even made himself useful by holding a stabilizer bar steady as Maurice succeeded in tapping it into place.

When all the bolts were secured, I folded the ladder up and schlepped it out the gate and down the sidewalk to my car, while Maurice hustled over to the fish truck to inspect the goods. I was stowing the ladder when the fish man startled me by peering around the open trunk lid. I thought he had gone with Maurice to check out the fish. I said cheerily, “I told you it’s no use, I don’t eat seafood.” As I closed the trunk he adjusted his cap nervously and said, “Oh, I know. I’m not trying to sell you fish. I came over to ask you for a date.”

I played for a few seconds of time by mentally reviewing all the things this man did not know about me, starting with my name. There was no way I was going out with him, but during the few minutes of our acquaintance he’d been a perfect gentleman, so I didn’t want to hurt or embarrass him. I smiled and said sincerely, “Oh, that’s so sweet. What a nice thing to say. But I don’t date. I’ve been divorced quite a while and I’ve come to enjoy being on my own.” “Well,” he said, “I’m divorced too but I’ve never gotten used to it. You seem like a nice, lovely lady, so I thought I’d ask you out.” I walked with him back to his friend’s truck to pay Maurice, who was now giving his formidable attention to a box of frozen stuffed flounder. The fish man and I chatted for another minute, and then I said it had been a pleasure to meet him and shook his hand. I waved to him as I drove away—and giggled all the way home.

So far my crooked ladder had brought me a handy new friend and a brief encounter with a stranger who made me feel young and attractive. But it hadn’t run out of gifts just yet. The following day my son, who has Asperger’s syndrome, came over in the afternoon to earn some cash by helping me with yard work. He has always shown unfailing filial devotion to his father, while our relationship has often been rocky and nearly disintegrated after his father and I divorced. Lately, however, we’ve been doing better, and I cherish the time we spend working amiably together in the yard, talking about movies or whatever he’s interested in. I’m careful not to stir up bad feelings or unhappy memories during these times. But my encounter with the fish man had brought to mind how my son had lauded his father’s remarriage four years ago as the inevitable consequence of his father’s manifold perfections, while assuring me that I should not expect a similar outcome. As a prospect for romance I was, as he put it, washed up, a spent force. I might be forgiven, then, for wanting to gloat just a teensy bit about my force not being quite as spent as my son had imagined.

I was pruning an azalea with my back to my son, who was dead-heading the hydrangeas, when I said casually, “You’d never guess what happened to me yesterday. A man asked me for a date fifteen minutes after meeting me, without even knowing my name. He said I seemed like a nice, lovely lady.” My words hung in the air while I went on snipping. Then from over my shoulder I heard my son say, “That’s great, Mom.” I stood up and turned around to see if he was being sarcastic, but he was looking at me and smiling. “What was that?” I mumbled. “I said that’s great,” he repeated. “I’m glad that happened to you. The man was right, you are a nice lady.”

I dropped my pruning shears and threw my arms around my son’s neck, holding him tight, like I used to when he was little. “You didn’t say yes, did you, Mom?” he asked in my ear. “No, Honey,” I laughed, “I could never date a man who doesn’t know what R.A.F. stands for.”

As Roseanne Roseannadanna might have said, “You just never know.” How could I have known that a crooked ladder purchased in a moment of helplessness would bring help from unexpected quarters, a renewed sense of self, and the priceless insight that even in her Crone years a woman bears the eternal imprint of the Maiden and the Mother? These thoughts engulfed me as I stood by the hydrangeas unable to let go of my son, who was no doubt embarrassed beyond words. I couldn’t help that, any more than I could hold back my tears.

September Slide

2011-10-11T17:30:52Z

The phenomenon had become so regular, so predictable over the last twenty years, that I’d given it a name: the September Slide. It would usually begin around the autumnal equinox as a mere rumor of sadness, an inner sigh as afternoons cooled, leaves began to fall, and summer fruits gave way to pumpkins and chrysanthemums in the market stalls. Some delicate psychic radar would detect this slight shift in planetary equilibrium, then signal my mood to strap on a pair of skates and ride the deepening incline all the way to the winter solstice. In my worst years, the weeks from early September to late December felt like an inexorable loss of emotional control, a white-knuckle slide into depression that I seemed powerless to deter or even to understand.

It didn’t make any sense, because I revel in autumn. Here in the Mid-Atlantic there are evanescent moments beginning in late August when, if you stand very still and tilt your chin slightly, you can catch a whiff of autumn just out of reach, hovering in the air of the next moment after this one—a combination of scent and sensation that recalls your favorite sweater. The earthy hues of autumn make me feel warm and cozy. I love the whoosh and crackle of leaves being raked into piles, and the impulse they trigger in me to bake too many loaves of pumpkin bread. When I was a kid I loved the attendant sensations of a new school year—the virgin luster of new pencils, the sheen of a new ring binder, the crumb-free interior of a new lunchbox.

I don’t recall any September trauma leaving a subconscious scar sufficient to tip me into seasonal despair. Yet year after year, even after I started using an artificial sunlight lamp, it would creep in on little rat feet and shove me down a dark inner chute—until last year, that is, when the old familiar slope seemed a little less slippery. As September eased into October 2010, I was still doing pretty well. I kept busy and filled my social calendar as a distraction from constantly checking my mood, on the theory that the monster lurking below the depths would starve from lack of attention. Around Halloween my head was still above sea level, but I was treading water for all I was worth. Every now and then I sensed the monster’s clammy tentacles grasping for my ankles, trying to pull me down below daylight, but somehow I fought it off and made it past the Super Bowl without a major psychic decline.

So this spring, when I started making plans for a week-long summer vacation, I decided to get out ahead of the monster, now that I knew from experience that it could be vanquished. I decided to forgo a July week at the seaside, nail my feet to the perch while friends and colleagues took off for Myrtle Beach and Martha’s Vineyard, and take my “summer” vacation in September. I scoured the Web and found a small-group tour within my budget, offering a week of “Vermont in the Fall.” Our group would take day trips in a limousine coach, returning each night to Stowe’s historic Green Mountain Inn. Such a clever plan! If anticipation alone didn’t circumvent the September Slide, then beautiful new scenery, a quaint hotel, and interesting new companions surely would put the brakes on it. I hadn’t taken a week off work for fifteen months. I was worn out, and my eyes were hungry for new vistas. Stepping outside my comfort zone by joining a tour group for the first time made me feel adventurous and brave. I bought new luggage and new walking shoes. I foresaw taking scores of photos of covered bridges and white steeples set against hills ablaze with color. I would come home stuffed with memories and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, relaxed, refreshed, and reeking with maple syrup. It would be an expensive vacation by my usual standards, but I’d economized by giving the offer of trip insurance a pass. A gamble, perhaps, but what could possibly go wrong?

* * *

I had an appointment with my optometrist on September 1 to have my prescription checked, but as I settled into the chair I warned the doctor that this might not be a good time to have my vision tested. “I’ve been fighting a migraine for the last few days,” I said, “and it’s made focusing my left eye a little iffy. Maybe I should come back when my brain settles down.” She had me read some letters projected on the wall, then said she needed to dilate my eye and examine the retina. She peered at the back of my eye for so long, I began to worry. Finally she sat back and said gravely, “Well, the problem isn’t in your brain, it’s in your eye, and I’m sending you to a retinal specialist immediately.”

When there’s the slightest suggestion of retinal involvement, eye doctors don’t mess around. Within minutes I was in a new chair with a new doctor inches from my face, silently scanning the delicate film at the back of my left eye. The good news was that my retina was fine. The bad news was that the vitreous, the jelly-like substance that fills the eyeball, had detached from the retina in one spot. This, I was tactfully informed, was not uncommon in “people your age.” What was uncommon was for a blood vessel to rupture at the site of the detachment, as had happened in my case. The torn vessel had released a shower of blood cells into the vitreous, where they formed a semi-opaque blob that floated around my field of vision. To get a sense of what this is like, hold your left hand three inches in front of your left eye and, with both eyes open, try walking around, driving, or reading. It’s neither painful nor lethal, but it’s damned annoying, and there’s nothing to do but wait for the blood cells to dissolve or settle to the bottom like crushed pineapple in a Jell-O mold.

“Oh well,” I thought, “it could be worse. I don’t meet up with my tour group until the 18^th—the blood floater could clear up by then. Even if it doesn’t, at least half of Vermont will be in focus, and when I get better my photos will show me what I missed.” Such stoicism! Such optimism! My better angels were purring with pride.

[Warning: The following may not be suitable for the squeamish or skeptical. Reader discretion is advised.] Exactly one week after I was diagnosed with a vitreous hemorrhage in my left eye, I awoke to find my right eye bloodshot, swollen, sore, and weepy. I hied off to my family doctor, who said it was probably bacterial conjunctivitis. She prescribed antibiotic drops and told me to stay home from work for two or three days until it cleared up. Two days later, Saturday the 10^th, when the infection was much worse, the doctor prescribed steroid drops and told me that if my eye wasn’t better by Monday I should see an ophthalmologist. On Monday the 12^th, a vivid description of my worsening condition once again got me ushered into the eye doctor’s office on an emergency basis. By then, the “white” of my eye was a lurid red, glaring through a narrow slit between swollen eyelids. As soon as the doctor examined me, he explained that the drops hadn’t done any good because the infection was viral, not bacterial. Viral conjunctivitis is more contagious and longer-lasting than the bacterial kind, he said, and I had a particularly bad case of it. Furthermore, because it was viral, there was no treatment for it—I just had to wait for the virus to run its course. When I asked him about the odds of being able to fly to Vermont on the 18^th, he patted my shoulder consolingly and said, “I think you’ll be fine. Enjoy your vacation!” I should have shot him where he stood.

The very next morning, September 13, I wondered why my bedroom was pitch dark even after I’d taken off my sleep mask. When I had to pry both eyes open with my fingers, I knew the infection had bloomed overnight in my left eye as well. I stumbled down to my study and Googled “viral conjunctivitis.” As I might have guessed, when one is not standing in front of them pleading pathetically for reassurance about one’s dream vacation, medical experts agree that viral conjunctivitis is contagious for at least 10 to 14 days. I called my boss at work to arrange for indefinite sick leave, then called the tour company and the airline to cancel my vacation, wondering at the irony of it all. Instead of widening my vistas and making new friends, I’d be spending the next week or two in total isolation, quarantined inside my own home. You can’t make this stuff up.

The next 12 days were a lacuna of boredom and pain. I quickly developed systemic symptoms—sore throat, fever, deep muscle aches. I didn’t know if I actually had the flu or if this brand of conjunctivitis came with bonus features. Whatever I had, it was nasty, painful, and ugly. My face was a spooky landscape of swollen lumps, my eyes bloody gashes in ashen flesh. Along with constant pain, the infection produced a fearsome itch that only ice packs could quell. I lost track of time and days, sleeping until afternoon, then rolling out of bed to bathe and forage for food. At first I tried to read a bit, but with hemorrhage and infection vying for blinding rights, that soon became too difficult. Finally, one evening when I couldn’t make out the instructions on a box of Cream of Wheat, I staggered back to bed and gave myself over to the forces of nature.

Coiled in a fetal position, I contemplated the September Slide. Enough had gone wrong in the last week and a half alone to give me vertigo as I teetered at the top of the incline, staring into the Sandpit of Doom down below. Then as if on cue, our balmy September weather turned cold and wet, daring me to take the plunge. It would have been so easy in the sunless gloom to brood over my lost vacation, cancelled too late for a refund, or to assume that God was punishing me for thinking I deserved a bit of pampering. I could have fretted over my rotten luck and dwindling stock of fresh food, or that instead of dissipating, the cloud in my left vitreous was growing denser. I could have moaned that the universe had me in its crosshairs, yet with all these excuses for sliding into a black hole of depression, to my endless relief and wonder, I didn’t. I even caught myself thinking what a luxury it was to have nothing to do but take care of myself and get well—no husband or child this time around, rousting me from my sickbed to see to their needs.

I’ve thought long and hard about why illness, disappointment, and loneliness didn’t overwhelm me last month. It may have had something to do with the fact that while September was knocking the wind out of me, it was inflicting serious damage on a number of people I care for. Every few days, it seemed, I heard from a friend who had lost a job, was battling divorce lawyers, or had been seriously injured. Compared to such genuine suffering, my lost vacation just didn’t rise to the level of tragedy.

But here’s what I’m choosing to believe made the biggest difference—practice. For people like me, with a natural bent toward melancholy, equilibrium takes hard, sustained work. It takes the good sense and humility to seek help from every available source, as often as necessary. It takes the discipline to consciously reframe bad situations, from “Life is shitty and God hates me” to “Hey, shit happens, but not all the time.” It even takes the courage to reframe good situations, from “Don’t get used to this” to “Thank you. Thank you so much.” My self-affirming reframe of September 2011 is that years of hard work and mindfulness helped me realize that slides go up as well as down. It’s hard to climb up a slide, but it can be done (despite the evidence of hilarious YouTube videos of babies and dogs). I believe that over time, the practice of reframing has formed new neural pathways in my brain that are fragile, but will grow stronger with use. And if none of this is true, but is just more reframing, then so be it.

In his poem “Vulture,” Robinson Jeffers describes lying on a bare hillside above the Pacific Ocean, watching a vulture wheeling in circles overhead. As the bird flew lower and lower, narrowing its orbit, the poet understood that he was “under inspection.”

“I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers

Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.

I could see the naked red head between the great wings

Bear downward staring. I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting time here.

These old bones will still work; they are not for you.'”

Last month, at least, I waved off the predator of depression in a deeply satisfying personal victory. I persuaded the beast that it was wasting time bearing down on my exposed psyche—that my spirit still worked and was “not for you.” I just wish I’d also been able to scare off the vicious microorganism that attacked my eyes at such an inopportune time. I really needed that vacation.

Mr. Waters' Neighborhood

2011-08-22T15:00:26Z

August was proving to be a slog. In the best of years, this month is the frayed hem of summer, the heady exuberance of the season having played itself out in June and July. Now, the trees were drooping under their weight of dark, dusty leaves, like a Victorian matron swathed in wool at a summer picnic. In my garden, the liriope were struggling to put out a few spikes of violet-blue florets, but everything else was succumbing to too much heat and too little rain. It was so dispiriting, I was even losing my appetite for watermelon (http://blog.bonnielcasey.com/2010/08/10/melon-quest.aspx). In short, the month was boiling down to sweat, stink bugs, and lost mojo.

For a woman in touch with her wild, instinctual nature, intuition is the voice of her soul. It’s the part of her that has resisted the denaturing effects of cultural mores, societal expectations, religious strictures, and familial demands to keep her in touch with what women have always known best—the natural rhythms, needs, and cycles of living things. An intuitive woman has sensitive antennae that alert her to the reality beneath appearances, where she is going and what must be done, where dangers lurk and where joy is cached. Well-honed intuition can also be clairvoyant, bumping into little bits of the future ahead of schedule and picking up on “coincidences” that really aren’t.

Like all living things, intuition is kept alive by proper feeding, and you feed intuition by listening to it. The wonder is that the more you listen, the more it speaks. A woman who neglects to feed her intuition through creativity, meaningful solitude, play, and self-nurture is in danger of losing touch with her own life. It can feel like driving at night without headlights, embroidering with gloves on, or listening to music under water. The senses are dulled, boredom sets in, and before you know it you’re staring at an episode of “Law and Order” that you’ve seen ten times before and not even bothering to mute the commercials. I tell you, it’s a sad, slow decline, and it’s where I was heading until a visit to Baltimore got me back on track, mojo alive and chugging. Who knew that the prescription for my August ennui was a dose of Charm City?

The week had been going badly. On Monday morning I flung my shower curtain open and confronted a wolf spider who was not happy about having her web ripped apart. I was none too pleased with the encounter myself. The next day my email was hacked by someone selling cut-rate Viagra. At the office, my workload was spotty and uninspiring, so on Thursday I left my cubicle and wandered down to the little convenience store in the basement to assess my craving for chocolate and found to my dismay that even it was depressed. I decided to skip work on Friday for the simple reason that if I didn’t, I was fairly certain my head would explode. I felt dull and wan and hadn’t heard a peep from my inner voice for longer than I cared to remember. I thought again about my friend Diane, who had been on my mind all morning. It was a long time since we’d had one of our searching, nourishing conversations over a shared meal. I wondered if she was okay and figured I’d check in with her soon, so when I got back to my desk and opened my email, my breath caught in my throat. There was a message from Diane, who wrote, “I’m juggling five crises at once and am really stressed out! Can you come to Baltimore this weekend? I miss our talks.” I pumped my fist as imperceptibly as possible and whispered, “Yesss!” I wasn’t dead yet.

* * *

Last April the celebrity guest on NPR’s news quiz show “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” was John Waters, the famously eccentric writer and director of such cult classic films as “Hairspray” and “Pink Flamingos.” Waters is a Baltimore native and one of the city’s most enthusiastic boosters. Like many of Baltimore’s ardent fans, his love for his hometown is matched by an equally ardent conviction that it is the epicenter of Oddball America. “Everyone here thinks they're normal, but they're insane!” Waters declared on NPR. “When I first came downtown from the suburbs, where I was born, I saw people that didn't fit in. I saw outsiders that didn't even fit in with their own minority. And that's always been my people, really.” In 2000 Waters addressed the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce about their efforts to solicit a new slogan for the city. Not surprisingly, he urged them to focus on Baltimore’s long-standing tolerance for the seamy and grotesque. “This is the strangest, coolest, most peculiar city in America,” he told the Chamber before suggesting the slogan, “Come to Baltimore and be SHOCKED!” The Chamber actually printed the slogan on a hot pink and yellow bumper sticker (http://www.flickr.com/photos/considine/2607110151/). The following year the Greater Baltimore Alliance, a nonprofit marketing group that promotes economic development and is not known for flights of whimsy, proposed the slogan, “Baltimore, Suit to Nuts.”

I met Diane at her chic bowling-alley-turned-loft apartment, situated conveniently above a CVS drugstore (her kitchen table is a slab of hardwood reclaimed from an actual bowling lane), and we headed on foot in the direction of Federal Hill (http://www.livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/list/federalhill/). As we walked we dissected the first and second of Diane’s five crises, stopping occasionally to commiserate or to admire the restored 18^th-century townhouses in this quaint neighborhood. Federal Hill is now a park with a panoramic view of the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. The hill was discovered by Captain John Smith (whose BFF was Pocahontas) in 1608 and earned its name in 1788 when thousands of Baltimoreans marched up the hill to celebrate Maryland’s ratification of the Constitution. By the time of the Civil War, however, Baltimore’s enthusiasm for the principle of federalism seems to have waned. Not taking any chances, Union soldiers commandeered Federal Hill and persuaded the city of its loyalty to the Union cause by aiming a cannon at the Inner Harbor until the cessation of hostilities.

We had lunch and discussed Diane’s crises number three and four (number four required a few tissues) at The Metropolitan on South Charles Street (http://www.metrobalto.com/). This neighborhood café peppers its menu with quotes from Socrates, Robert Frost, and Thomas Jefferson and is the only eatery I know of where you can wash down a spicy bean burger and fries with a St-Germain champagne cocktail. St-Germain (http://www.stgermain.fr/) is a French-made liqueur that purports to be distilled from elderflowers that bloom in the Swiss Alps for a few fleeting days each spring. The flowers are hand-picked, so the story goes, by 40 or 50 elderly Swiss gentlemen, who gently pack the flowers in cloth sacks and lovingly transport them down the mountains to market—on bicycles. I was introduced to St-Germain by another friend earlier this summer. In fact, just the previous evening this friend and I had joked over dinner about our suspicion that the fragrant liqueur was actually processed by underpaid workers in some grungy maquiladora in Ciudad Juarez. This coincidence elicited another “Yesss!” in celebration of my resurgent intuition.

* * *

After lunch Diane and I set off toward downtown, taking a route through the historic Otterbein district (http://theotterbein.org/index.html). When Diane divulged the details of crisis number five near Wheel Park, I had to sit down to take it all in (the crisis, not the park, which was serene and leafy). When we were both composed enough to move on, we headed in the direction of our major destination for the day, Baltimore’s famous Bromo-Seltzer Tower (http://www.bromoseltzertower.com/), easily located from any point in the city. Just look for the most bizarre structure on the skyline.

In 1911, “Captain” Isaac E. Emerson, owner of the Emerson Drug Company and inventor of Bromo-Seltzer, built a clock tower at the corner of his factory on Eutaw and Lombard Streets. The Captain wanted to bring a little class to the city, so he ordered that the tower be made to resemble the Palazzo Vecchio clock tower in Florence, Italy, which he had seen and greatly admired. The tower did bear a resemblance to its Italian cousin, but Emerson gave his version a few personal flourishes. In lieu of Roman numerals, the clock signifies the hours with the letters B-R-O-M-O-S-E-L-T-Z-E-R. And until 1936, the tower’s rooftop bore a 51-foot-tall rotating replica of a Bromo-Seltzer bottle topped with a crown. This mammoth ornament was dark blue, like Bromo-Seltzer’s distinctive blue glass bottles, and lined with more than 300 light bulbs that cast an eerie glow against the night sky. A few years ago the tower, which had become virtually abandoned and derelict, was taken over by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (http://www.promotionandarts.com), and the small offices on its 14 floors were converted to artists’ studios. Tours are given once a month, and Diane and I got the last two spots on the last tour of the day (“Yesss!”).

The tour began in the room that houses the four-faced clock on the 15^th floor (which is actually the 14^th floor, but this being Baltimore, there is no 13^th floor). After exiting the tiny antique elevator (“Maximum Capacity Four Adults”), our group accessed the cavernous clock room by a flight of stairs and a steep metal ladder. Joe Wall, tower manager, mechanic, clock repairman, and raconteur, first filled us in on Captain Emerson and his amazing invention. Bromo-Seltzer was formulated and marketed as an effervescent cure for heartburn and indigestion and quickly became a popular hangover remedy. The product was named for one of its original ingredients—sodium bromide, a type of sedative withdrawn from the American market in 1975 due to its toxicity. The original formula also contained acetanilide, a known poison, for headache pain. The Emerson Drug Company’s unerring instinct for endangering public health continued in the 1950s with the invention of FIZZIES (http://www.fizzies.com/default.html), a kind of instant soda pop that was essentially fruit-flavored Bromo-Seltzer pressed into tablets and sweetened with sodium cyclamate, which was soon found to be carcinogenic. (Thankfully, both Bromo-Seltzer and FIZZIES have since been reformulated to meet more stringent safety standards.)

Joe next described the lengthy renovation of the tower’s four clocks. He made all the repairs himself, and kept us in stitches with stories of repairing the clock that faces nearby Camden Yards (http://mlb.mlb.com/bal/ballpark/index.jsp), where the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. He was interrupted almost daily by calls from one of the park’s managers. “Hey, Joe,” the guy would complain, “hows come the clock stopped?” “Hey, Joe, the clock’s two minutes off today.” “Hey, Joe, whenna ya gonna get the damn clock fixed? You got any idea how superstitious ballplayers are?”

I asked Joe about the ladder leading up from the clock room. His shoulders slumped as he sighed, “Oh, that. That goes up to the Tippi Hedren Room.” It seems the roof of the clock tower is inhabited by flocks of pigeons, numbers of whom are routinely plucked to their doom by peregrine falcons. The ravenous falcons devour their pigeon snacks on the spot, leaving only the heads, which, after a heavy rain, clog the roof’s drainage system. About once a month Joe has to climb up to the Tippi Hedren Room (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/), plunge his arm up to the shoulder into the fetid drain, and scoop out hundreds of waterlogged pigeon heads. His vigorous reenactment of this grotesque process was the highlight of the tour.

Diane and I opted to take the stairs down to street level so we could check out some of the artists’ studios along the way. Each floor has three small converted offices that painters, photographers, and crafters can rent to make and display their work. It was late afternoon and many were closing up for the day. On the 12^th floor, Keith Haller, who paints portraits and landscapes in oil, was just locking the door to his studio, but reluctantly opened back up when we expressed an interest in seeing his work (http://www.keithhaller.com/). He slouched in a chair while we looked around, but became animated when I expressed interest in his interpretation of photojournalist Dorothea Lange’s iconic portrait of a Depression-era mother, set against a distinctly Van Gogh sky. Haller got up and started flipping through some canvases stacked against the wall, and I commented, “These must have been done during your Cezanne period.” He leapt back in surprise and grinned at me. “You’re the first person who’s gotten that right!” he exulted. “I spent a whole year copying Van Gogh’s style and nobody even noticed. Then I started painting like Cezanne and everybody said, ‘Oh, I see you’re copying Van Gogh.’ You’re absolutely the first person who’s got it right! Thank you! I’m really glad I let you two in.” (“Yesss!”)

On the 6^th floor a paper sign taped to a door announced “The Intuition Project.” The door opened a crack and Diane suddenly disappeared, as though sucked into the room by an unseen force. A strange woman stuck her head out the door and whispered, “Coming?” Inside the dimly lit room were several folding chairs facing a low stage that held only a faded yellow settee. A young Asian woman with a video camera explained that she was looking for volunteers to speak on camera about a time when intuition played a significant role in an action or decision. She said she was hoping to use the clips to produce a film on intuition and asked if any of the half dozen or so of us in the room would volunteer. Diane immediately raised her hand. She sat on the settee under a harsh overhead light, smiled into the camera and told the story of a dream that had saved her and her son from disaster during a hiking trip in the mountains. Then I took the stage and described how intuition and clairvoyance had helped me as a mother and spiritual seeker. The artist thanked us profusely, asked us each to sign a release giving permission for our footage to (possibly) be used in a (possibly) upcoming film, and ushered us out the door. On the landing, Diane and I giggled, gave each other a “What was that?” look, and continued down the stairs.

On the 2^nd floor, brightly colored fabric caught my eye through an open studio door. The proprietor of Plum Blossom Kimono (http://www.plumblossomkimono.com/) was starting to close up shop but was delighted to let us browse through a rack of vintage kimono jackets called haoris. Each was unique, fully lined, and hand-sewn in pure silk by kimono makers in Japan. I was immediately drawn to a magenta haori that had a pattern like snow falling on pine boughs. I slipped it on and stood in front of the mirror the proprietor eagerly provided, silently chanting, “I do not need a silk kimono jacket. I have no place to wear a silk kimono jacket. L.L.Bean does not sell silk kimono jackets, ergo I do not wear silk kimono jackets.” The proprietor cooed, “It fits you perfectly,” and knocked 15% off the price. Later I asked Diane to imagine the response when people asked me if I got my kimono jacket on a trip to Japan and I replied, “No, I got it in Baltimore—at the Bromo-Seltzer Tower.”

* * *

Back out on Lombard St., we walked a few blocks to Westminster Hall (http://www.westminsterhall.org/Westminster_Hall/Welcome.html), a converted Gothic church on the grounds of the University of Maryland Law School, now used for conferences and musical performances. Out back, Westminster Burying Grounds is the site of the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe, best known for poems and stories of death and the macabre. Poe was born in Boston and migrated from city to city during his lifetime, but Baltimore proudly claims him as their own since he published his most famous poem, the doom-laden “The Raven,” while living there. Poe also died in Baltimore, of mysterious causes, after wandering the streets one night, delirious, ranting, and dressed in another man’s clothes.

That evening as I drove out of town, past Poe’s white marble tombstone and the nearby M&T Bank Stadium where the Baltimore Ravens were practicing, I wondered how many fans knew their football team was named after a gloomy poem written by a mad genius given to drink and obsessed by death, who married his 13-year-old cousin while living in their fair but oddball city. Heading home in a downpour, I pulled onto the ramp for I-95 South and switched on the radio to catch the last few minutes of “A Prairie Home Companion.” Sarah Jarosz was singing a song called “Annabelle Lee” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1b2vcHVG90), an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s last complete poem. “Yesss!” I rejoiced again. I was definitely back.

The Frog at the Wedding

2011-07-16T18:49:19Z

I sat on a small white folding chair on the manicured grounds of a mansion in rural Maryland, feeling as though I’d stumbled onto the set of a photo shoot for Ralph Lauren. I imagined I could hear the hoofbeats of polo ponies in the distance and the reckless shouts of idly rich, chicly disheveled swells mounted up for a swift chukka or two. In reality, I was alone by the side of a lazily gurgling fountain, watching a drowned frog bob in slow orbits around the perimeter of the pool, caught in some unseen but inexorable current. I raised a plastic cup of Riesling in grim salute as he made another pass in my direction. I could so relate.

I was among about 200 people who that afternoon had attended a full-scale Italian wedding in an ornately embellished church in downtown Washington, DC. I’m no expert, having been reared in unadorned Protestantism, but my guess is there was enough gold leaf, mosaic, and statuary per square inch at Holy Rosary Catholic Church to make the Pope feel right at home. The ceremony included a lengthy mass, with plenty of audience participation in the form of standing, kneeling, sitting, singing, candle lighting, kneeling, standing, etc. One can only assume that by the time it was all over, the young couple felt thoroughly wedded. After the service, the bridal party stayed behind for photographs while we guests made our way to the rented mansion for drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

We had been thus engaged for the last two and a half hours, awaiting the arrival of the guests of honor before we could be escorted inside for a sit-down dinner reception. So I’d had plenty of time to confront the unfortunate truth that single women at a wedding are a “problem.” The whole affair celebrates the concept of couplehood, we-ness, and conjugal bliss, making the presence of single or divorced women of a certain age somewhat awkward, a reminder that there is not necessarily a prince for every princess or, worse yet, that the concept of undying love that we are all ostensibly here to celebrate and affirm may not live up to all the hype. Place in this setting a woman for whom social mingling qualifies as an extreme sport and you have the makings of a truly disappointing wedding guest.

Not that anything was actually amiss. The bride was a friend and former colleague, and I was genuinely glad to see her so radiantly happy, basking in her Cinderella moment. I was in a lovely location, and for once I knew I looked good, having taken special pains to spruce myself up for the occasion. And let’s be real—for a woman in any social setting, that’s half the battle. I can imagine a conversation at the foot of the guillotine as Marie Antoinette prepared to mount the stairs. One of her ladies-in-waiting catches her elbow and murmurs, “Bummer about the beheading, Your Majesty,” and the queen replies, “Oui… but my new gown, she is to die for, n’est-ce pas?”

The mansion and grounds were magnificent in the warm twilight. The lush lawns and towering trees provided a perfect setting for a gaggle of children who raced around playing hide-and-seek. The boys stripped off their oversized jackets and rolled up their pant-legs, while little girls in mounds of tulle scampered barefoot across the grass like dandelion fluff in the wind. The adults, only a few of whom I was acquainted with, were clearly enjoying each other, the open bar, and generous helpings of prosciutto and fresh fruit. There was nothing wrong with the company or the setting. I was merely, as I am unaccountably prone to be, outside the circle of conviviality.

I made occasional forays onto the patio where groups of people were continually forming and reforming like microbial life forms. In my last sortie I had attached myself to a group that contained a few people I knew from work. Some man was describing his two pet turtles and the elaborate tank he had built to house them. I smiled and nodded in humanoid fashion, but my mind kept wandering off. I found myself staring at the back of his neck, mentally timing a drop of sweat that slowly descended a thin clump of hair and vanished into his shirt collar. After a few more minutes I drifted back to the chair by the fountain and meditated on a gnarled poplar tree.

Earlier, at one of the tables in the foyer, I had picked up a tiny card with my name printed on it informing me that I would be seated at the reception at Table 14. During the protracted cocktail hour I had made some discreet inquiries and found that no one else I knew was seated at Table 14. I pondered the implications of this as the drowned frog made another orbit of the fountain. He hadn’t been dead long, the only sign of decomposition being one grotesquely bulging eye. His legs drifted away from his body as he bobbed face-down in a perfect semblance of dead man’s float. He looked as though at any moment he would raise his head and sputter, “Did you see that? Did you see how long I can hold my breath?” But he just kept bobbing and circling, his limp corpse so unseemly at this celebration of life. That’s what aroused my sympathy for him, the sense of being out of place, like a spider on a birthday cake or a turd in a punchbowl. It’s precisely what I envisioned was awaiting me at Table 14.

I looked up again at the ancient poplar tree that over the decades had weathered countless storms and housed transient populations of birds, squirrels, raccoons, and parasites, accepting its changes without expectation or complaint. It reminded me that I had traveled too far along the road to wholeness to let myself once again fall into the trap of catastrophizing a situation—anticipating the worst based on hardly any evidence and suffering in advance over things that hadn’t happened yet. So I pulled myself together, and instead of thinking, “I’m going to feel so awkward and out of place at a table full of strangers,” I dusted off a well-worn mantra that has done yeoman service for me over the years: “I wonder what will happen?” The beauty of this simple question is that it’s disaster-neutral. It could as well be asked by a passenger on the Titanic who has just felt an ominous lurch as by a child eyeing a pile of Christmas presents. It quiets the imp whispering in your ear, “Run! Run away fast!” and opens your heart to receive any outcome—even a good one.

My reverie was interrupted by a member of the catering staff announcing that dinner was served and gently herding us all inside. I shuffled in near the back of the line of guests. Having rendered myself open to the unfolding of events, I was nonetheless unprepared for one eventuality—that there wouldn’t be a Table 14. I entered the large, glass-walled reception hall and was confronted with a sea of round tables, each set for eight people and designated by a numbered card in the center. Directly in front of me were three tables filled with men and women I knew from work, along with their spouses and dates. These tables had clearly been reserved for the bride’s former colleagues, of which I was one. But according to the cards, these were Tables 13, 15, and 16. I strolled around the immediate vicinity looking for a card with the number 14 on it and passed a 12, a 17, even a 10, but no 14. Feeling a tad anxious (and conspicuous), I widened my orbit to take in all the tables on this side of the reception hall before crossing over to search on the other side.

On my second circuit I found Table 14 in the farthest corner, in the back of the room, near the door leading to the bar and the bathroom. It was occupied by four women and one man, all about my age, none of whom I knew. I had seen two of the women earlier, sitting together on the far side of the fountain, handbags tucked neatly under their chairs. They both were wearing white cardigans over their party dresses. I stifled the little imp at my ear who was just about to whine, “Oh god,” and, without pausing for thought, pulled out a chair and sat down. “Hello!” I said brightly, smiling at each person in turn. They smiled back and we introduced ourselves around the table. It turned out that all of them were either relatives or former coworkers of the bride’s mother. The two women in cardigans were retired school teachers, one of whom beamed at me and said, “We’re so glad to have someone new sitting at our table. A young couple was seated here for a while, but a few minutes ago they just got up and left.” She turned to her friend and winked. “We were starting to get a complex.” The man at the table gently nudged a furled napkin a little closer to my plate and asked if I would like more water.

After a few minutes of introductory conversation, a friend from work pulled out the chair at my left and slipped in beside me. She said, “We’ve got an empty seat at our table if you want to come over with us.” She jerked her head slightly, indicating the other side of the room where my colleagues were seated together. My tablemates went silent. I glanced around and saw them all looking at me. The two school teachers stared wide-eyed and for a moment seemed to float motionless above the surrounding hubbub.

I turned to the friend who had so generously undertaken my rescue. “No, thanks,” I beamed. “I’m staying here with these folks.” I gestured at the five new faces arrayed around me. “We’re Table 14.” The teachers smiled at each other. The man started taking drink orders. It was going to be a delightful evening.