Art is Life is Art: Susan Reep Photo Art

This is an excerpt from Moments, the second in the series.  The other day I blogged about A Moment of Transcendence at Fort Bowie, Arizona. Today I’m blogging about Revelation.  My series of moments are not in chronological order.  This one is from college, 1964.  That 1964 is 46 years ago seems impossible, but I’ve never forgotten the feeling I had from this experience.

This introduction applies to all the Moments:  How many special moments do we get in a lifetime?  I mean the truly magic moments that stop us in our tracks to marvel, that imbue a sense of awe that we remember forever after.  On this Friday the 13^th, 2009, a beautiful Spring day, it seems like a good idea to recall those moments if for no other reason than to remember.

This is a journey for the meaning of life. I think we all grapple with this at one time or another, and for some of us it seems harder to come to peace with this quest. For me personally, it was a journey that started perhaps in junior high school, intensified in my senior year of high school, and just about broke me down in college. I wasn’t raised in a religious home and I was intensely curious about God – first and foremost, was there a God. This contributed to the complexity of my quest. It went like this:

A freshman at University of California, Santa Barbara, I was majoring in philosophy. As students do, I was searching for the meaning of life, the big picture. I was desperately unhappy, which compounded, or was perhaps caused by, the search for meaning. My work habits were spotty – I studied best at night and stayed up very late. I didn’t fit in with the other kids in my residence hall – I was quirkier, liked solitude, and was drawn to more complicated people – and I wasn’t finding any. Now I realize what an arrogant thought that was, but I was a Democrat in a suite of four intense, conservative Goldwater Girls and so very out of place. My best friend was the vending machine with Hostess Fruit Pies and Paydays.

In a period of solitude, intense reading, many sleepless nights, and constant thinking that had my head spinning, I had a flash. A moment that one could perhaps call mystical. My thoughts were colored by sleep deprivation and had forced me into a meditative state. And there it was – a glimpse of the meaning of life, a picture of the whole, and I was in what I would now call a state of grace. Whatever the universe was composed of, I was one with it. I was both apart from it and part of it. It was in me and around me.

I couldn’t hold on to the state of grace and the clarification, but I did remember the revelation – life was about nothing except living. Here we were, it didn’t matter why, so the thing to do was live as if it mattered, live a good life, and have fun. Yes, fun. Learn, do no harm, and have fun. It didn’t matter if there was a God or not because that would not affect the manner in which we should live. This was both a simplistic solution to the quest but also a very profound one.

I wish I could say that I lived a less troubled life from then on but I didn’t. What I didn’t know until decades later was that I was actually clinically depressed for most of my 20s and 30s, but that is another story. I’ll just say that it’s hard to fight a battle when you don’t know who the enemy is. Eventually, I thought hard enough and lived long enough to return to that night of revelation – that was indeed all I needed to know to live a productive, satisfied life. It’s a relief to stop wondering about the meaning of life, about the existence of God, and all those intangibles that we won’t know until much later if at all. It just doesn’t matter. We’re here.

How many special moments do we get in a lifetime?  I mean the truly magic moments that stop us in our tracks to marvel, that imbue a sense of awe that we remember forever after.  On Friday the 13^th, a year ago March, it seemed like a good idea to recall those moments if for no other reason than to remember.

Fort Bowie

Our daughter Jennifer and her husband Matt spent a summer in Tucson, Arizona  back in 1993 while Matt interned with the Indian Health Service.  We like to go wherever our kids are to see new places and be able to better share their experiences.  So off my husband and I went to southeastern Arizona in late June.  The heat was blistering, but where we were was so interesting that it didn’t matter, and anyway, Mark and I love the desert, which comes with heat, conveniently or not.

We took a camping trip in Cochise County – territory we could have covered in a day, but there was so much to see we took almost a week.  We absorbed as much history as we could as we explored an area saturated with Indian lore.  Geronimo, Cochise, and the history of the Apaches gave this little corner of Arizona a spiritual feel.  We spent a couple of nights at Chiricahua National Monument, where we took a morning trip to Fort Bowie.

The trail to the fort was incredible – there were tracks from stage coaches

Foundations of the Butterfield Stage Stop from the 1860s

and wagon trains that told the story of fortitude, duress, and the quest for a new future;

Wagon from the 1860s on the trail to Ft. Bowie. This was the site of the Bascom Affair - a massacre.

Pony Express stops and a small cemetery that housed the remains of Geronimo’s young son spoke to the nature of one person’s quest creating another’s tragedy.

Geronimo's son Little Robe was shot in the forehead by soldiers at Ft. Bowie. They also killed Geronimo's wife.

Then there was the fort itself.  Fort Bowie was a Civil War fort and there were remnants of many of the walls and buildings.

Sutler's quarters at Ft. Bowie, a Civil War fort

I imagined myself in the time period, felt the tension between soldiers and Indians, the sweat and discomfort of uniforms and closed, small quarters in the heat.

View of Ft. Bowie from the ridge trail

I picked up a nail and a piece of adobe and began the trek back on a high ridge so desolate, so alone, so quiet, that as I stood and surveyed the territory with a small breeze at my back, it was as if “the whole” blew through me.  I felt connected to the earth and to history, to the spirits of the Apaches and the entirety of the world.

Words don’t convey the expansiveness of this feeling, this moment, as well as its intimacy.  For just that brief instant and for the second time in my life, I felt that no questions needed answers, that soul was connected to soul.  It was illuminating, it was magic, and then it was lost as we continued the trek to our car.

Trail leading up the ridge. On the back of the photo, I wrote "Indians walked here."

We almost lost ourselves on that trek as we had failed to bring enough water, not understanding how the 115-degree heat could suck all the moisture out of our bodies.  We drank the water we brought, we poured it over our heads and down our shirts and barely made it to the car where we bowed to the vending machine gods.  Yet that one transcendent moment lives within me still.

Above is a map with Portsmouth Island, a barrier reef island off Ocracoke Island in North Carolina.  Along with Cape Hatteras and other islands, these form the Outer Banks.  What you are about to read is a true story and believe it or not, it’s understated.

A Biblical Journey

“When we were in the Outer Banks we went to Portsmouth Island – they had the most amazing shells I’ve ever seen.  And it’s really historical.”  My sister exhibited her usual extreme enthusiasm for anything related to the past.

“How do you get there?”

“Well, you have to find someone to take you and pick you up later on because no one lives there and it’s deserted, but”

“Wait.  What do you mean I have to find someone to take me?  Like who and where and”

“There’s just people with boats all over Ocracoke.  You’ll find someone.”

“Well, I might try, if I have –“

“No, you have to go. That’s all there is to it. The most amazing shells I’ve ever seen were all over that beach!”

So I’d go.  It did sound like an adventure and I was planning a trip to North Carolina, a major adventure in itself.  We used to live there and I hadn’t been back in forever.  Traveling just wasn’t in our budget, what with three teenage girls and a dearth of extra funds.  But when The Boys said they were moving to North Carolina, I blurted out, “I’ll come visit you!”

The Boys were actually men – Michael and Bryan – and they were actors.  Supposedly North Carolina was a hotbed of the film industry at the time, being cheaper to film in than California, and they could get their SAG cards more easily there.  The Boys were a little quirky, as most interesting people are, and I was having a hard time envisioning them crossing the country in their small white pickup truck.  But they did, so I would come.

To me, “I’ll come visit you” was a promise even though I didn’t say the words I promise.  I planned, flew, rented a car, and was on my way to visit the Boys, with stops planned along the route.  One was Portsmouth.

The day of the big Portsmouth Island adventure arrived. I set out from Ocracoke, one of the islands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, former hangout of Blackbeard the Pirate.

I started asking around.

“I’d like to visit Portsmouth Island – do you have any ideas of how to get there?”

“Why would you want to go there?  It’s deserted, there’s nothing there, and”

“But my sister said there are great shells on the beach.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think…”

“I need to go.”  I hadn’t learned the lesson yet that maybe the locals would know more than I do.

“Ok then, ask Rudy.  He can take you out there and pick you up.  You’ll find him down at the docks.”

So I found Rudy but I got a little nervous – who was this Rudy anyhow?  What if he didn’t come back for me?  What would I do? How’d I contact anyone?  This was way before cell phones.  I had no idea what to tell him about where to drop me off, so he suggested dropping me at one end of the island and picking me up three hours later at the pier.

The die was cast and I was going to Portsmouth Island.  Bug spray in hand to counteract those North Carolina mosquitoes, I climbed in the little boat with the little motor and felt like I was in a bathtub toy.  But it got me there.

Brimming with excitement, I began walking along the shore ready to scoop up those fabulous sea shells.  But there weren’t any.  There wasn’t even anything to consider – was it a shell or wasn’t it?  There were no broken shells to pick up and discard.  I found a dead horseshoe crab and took a picture of it in case it turned out to be the main attraction, but truly, there was nary a shell in sight.  I wish I could show you the picture, but it was a bad one and I threw it away. Did Rudy take me to the wrong place?

Resigned, I headed inland towards the deserted town so I could make it to the pier on time.  I slogged through marshy land, squishy mud, and scratchy brush.  It was hot and humid.  I mean HOT and humid.  I wasn’t having fun yet.  My clothes were soaked with sweat, my shoes covered with squishy stuff, and there were bugs all around me.  I sprayed on some more bug juice just in case.

The closer I got to the town, the denser the swarms of mosquitoes and gnats got.  I kept spraying as I walked faster and faster.  I looked at my legs and they were black! There were bugs stuck to my legs, stuck to the bug spray.  It killed them all right, but ensnared them and now my legs looked like something out of a science fiction movie.  My arms were turning black, too. I futilely sprayed, brushed bugs off, and had to spray again. It was no use.  Starting to panic, I was practically running and saw the town ahead.

Now I was running – and I saw an actual house with an open door!  People were there!  Hallelujah, I was saved.  No time to knock – I burst through the screen door yelling, “Is anybody home?”

“We are.” A youngish sort of couple appeared.

“Forgive me for bursting in but I’ve been walking through the slough and I’m covered with bugs and hot and, I mean, I’m a former Peace Corps volunteer and I can deal with a lot but this is the worst…”

“What in the world are you doing here?  No one comes to Portsmouth in the summer.”

“You’re here.”

“We work for the State Park Service and we’re the caretakers.  But neither of us would think to venture outside without full mosquito netting, I mean head to toe, and covered with 100% DEET.”

Great.

“Here, why don’t you wash your legs off and we’ll give you some DEET to put on, but how are you getting to the main island?”

I explained, I washed my legs, I put on DEET, and waited for the helpful park caretakers to invite me to sit on their sofa until it was time to go to the pier, but they turned me out.  And I had to wander the deserted town until the appointed meetup.  It was an inferno.  Not a whisper of a breeze.  I tried gamely to see the historic buildings but it was so stifling inside that I thought the heck with it, I’ll go sit on the pier and wait.  I was silently cursing the caretakers for not letting me wait on their living room sofa.  It’s possible I wasn’t silent.

Oh well, I’d been through plague and pestilence, what more could happen?  I’ll tell you what more could happen.  A huge thunderstorm could happen, and did.  I was already feeling very biblical, what with the plague and pestilence bit, but now I was out in the open in howling wind, torrents of rain, and thunder crashing all around me. I supposed I was being tested with the flood, and soon Moses, or Rudy, would part Pamlico Sound and rescue me.

I huddled on the pier, soaking wet and steaming at the same time from the humidity.  There was enough steam to get out any wrinkles I might have had.  Too bad I wasn’t older!  At the moment, I saw nothing redeeming whatsoever about the big adventure.

It could have been worse.  I found out afterwards that I was lucky – I’d been there at low tide.  In fact, I had been walking through a tidal marsh!  Had it been high tide, I would have been wading through three feet of water to reach the town.  And who knows?  There may have been creatures under the water come in with the tide to torment me.  With my luck, there would have been a jellyfish invasion.

Now, over twenty years later, I still can’t say I find anything redeeming about the adventure of having the adventure – or the story I can tell.  I don’t know what my sister was thinking.  I swear, I’ll bet she had the wrong island and the wrong state or something because nothing about that godforsaken place had value.  It was historic, sure, but do we have to preserve every old town and place just because they existed once?  I say, no.

Adendum: Now, with the internet, I see that Portsmouth can be a nice place to visit but NOT in the summer.  Here’s a description from North Carolina Outdoors. Note that to escape the mosquitoes they ate lunch sitting in the surf!  Also, these people were transported by someone named Rudy, and I’ll bet its the same guy.

“So my wife and I were totally unprepared for the blitzkrieg that erupted almost the moment we left Rudy Austin’s charter boat (from Ocracoke) and started for Portsmouth Village. Sure, we had several bug sprays containing DEET in various concentrations, but even the strongest would only keep them from biting. Hundreds, (I promise I’m not exaggerating) swarmed us even after we were lathered in DEET. Like the dust cloud that trailed Pig Pen of Peanuts fame, they followed us everywhere we went, trying to fly into our eyes, noses, ears and mouths, and biting any shred of skin that wasn’t heavily lathered with repellent.

Despite the torment, we did a perfunctory tour of the village and then made our way across the tidal flat to the beach. Finally, thanks to an ocean breeze, we were able to enjoy our lunch relatively unmolested while sitting in the surf.

What did I learn? Next time I go to Portsmouth, I will wear mosquito netting. The people I saw who had netting covering their head, neck and torso, and wearing long pants, were strolling around like it was a day in the park. (Well, actually it was a day in the park.) And nothing I have endured in the outdoors has given me a greater appreciation for the hardships our ancestors endured than our encounter with the mosquitoes of Portsmouth Island. Imagine living here in the 1700’s without screens on your windows!!

On the positive side, I have talked with people who have visited the island in March and April who had no problems with the the insects. But I would be prepared for insects in every season.”

Question for December 4 is What book- fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it?  I need to talk about two: Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees and Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War.

If the measure of whether a book touched you or not is how many of the quotes you remember, the work of fiction that has stayed with me is The Maytrees by Annie Dillard.  When I was a seventh-grade language arts teacher, I’d tell my students that what we take from a book depends upon our life experiences.  A book read ten years ago can be a whole new book on the next reading depending upon the happenings in our lives, the knowledge we’ve acquired.  So I have to say that aging must have been heavy on my mind last year.  I think I have that worked out mostly,  but it doesn’t mean that books and articles that touch upon aging won’t resonate more than others.

The Maytrees was one of the first books of the year for me, and at first, I didn’t even like it.  I’d never read Dillard – not even Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek. Dillard’s prose is spare, but as I became accustomed to it, the book began to speak to me.  It builds slowly with characters that seem like a motley bunch and made me question, could there possibly be this many quirky people in one small community?  As I searched my own experience I realized the answer was yes, there could.  Many of us could string together events in the lives of neighbors and friends and decide it has to be fiction because these lives couldn’t be so complicated, messy or strange – but they are.  And The Maytrees, set in Cape Cod I think, or at least a very small similar sea-town that would attract artists and summer vacationers, and perhaps the more eccentric who live year-round, gives us an ultimately believable cast of characters.  Characters who, when you strip the quirks away, are just people after all.

I’m just going to put in a few of the quotes that struck me – probably because of where I am in life.

“Their summer friends in particular harvested facts row on row from newspapers like mice on corncobs.”  This sentence made me remember how good I am at Trivial Pursuit with all these miscellaneous facts taking up storage space in my brain.  How do we get through life without accumulating knowledge we won’t need, or more important, how will we know what knowledge we will need when we are assaulted on all fronts every single day with more information than any one person can process? It’s so easy to get caught up without stopping to think – is this how I want to spend my day? Do I really want to read this article? Watch this newscast? Or should I just take a walk and let everything settle?

And this one: “How constantly, Lou thought, old people claim to have been once young.  It is as if they don’t believe it. ..that old people were old never jarred her, but it shook the daylights out of them.”   Watching my parents and intimately aware of my own thought processes and the position aging has in our society, this sentence made me realize (oh, I already knew it but this brought it into focus) how much time I spend in mild distress at getting older.  I think old age does shake the daylights out of the elderly because every day is a challenge and getting dressed can be an act of courage.  I think we still feel the same inside but our outsides won’t cooperate so in a way we don’t believe we were ever young. And that nicely transitions to the next quote.

“The tragedy of age, Jane said, is not that one is old but that one is young.”  This is profound.  At 63, I still feel like that 18-year-old setting forth on my own, my thoughts are youthful (not the same as immature I hope), I AM young.  But my body betrays me and the disconnect leads to Dillard’s “tragedy of age.”

One last quote from this book.  I’ve thought about this constantly throughout the year.  How many times a day do we say, “I don’t have enough time.”  “I can’t do that, there isn’t enough time.” “I wish I had more time!” This quote about the main character Lou: “Everyone envied her the time she had, not noticing that they had equal time.”

Powerful, huh?  In its simplicity.  Why has this stuck with me? Because we all DO have the same amount of time: 24 hours in a day.  It’s how we use it that matters.  We make choices.  Life is about choices.  If we need more time, we should evaluate how we spend our time.  Simplify.  Discard the time-wasters.  Of course doing that takes the time to think about it, and thinking time is the hardest of all to get.  I frequently told my students that time for thought was not appreciated in our society.  Say you’re at work, sitting at your desk staring into space, and your boss walks by.  S/he asks what you’re doing, and you say “thinking.” How does that go over? Not well.  We’re industrious Americans and should be churning out whatever it is we churn out.

The Maytrees isn’t a great book but it comes close.  At least for me, at this particular time in my life, it came close.  I sure remember it.

BUT WAIT – there’s more.  I have to include a non-fiction book too.  I know that everyone reading this blog is a thinking person or you wouldn’t be here. You owe it to yourself and to our soldiers to read this eminently readable work of non-fiction by reporter Dexter Filkins.  He was stationed in Iraq – I don’t remember for how long, but over a year I believe – and the way he narrates his experiences takes you somewhere you really, truly don’t want to go.  But you have to go there because thousands of our troops go there in this forever war, and this makes crystal clear why they are not coming home as whole people.  Sometimes literally if they make it home at all.

Read this book and you will “get it.” You’ll have to take this on faith because I can’t communicate like he does about the real hell war is, especially an undefinable war started on false pretenses.  And the complete impossibility of comprehending life and war in an Arab country. I lived in an Arab country for two years so have a foot up, but anyone who doesn’t have first-hand knowledge can come as close as possible with this book.

If you are intrigued, read Desert Queen, a book about Gertrude Bell, and you’ll get the whole thing.

Tiny adendum – I really enjoyed a book called Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, and The Wild Things by genius Dave Eggers is pretty profound on many levels.  And a great kids book that may  not really be for kids is Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.  All three easy reading but requiring much thought.  You’re lucky the battery on my kindle is dead, or I’d go on forever!

Death.  Dying.  If we’re lucky, it happens later rather than sooner.  As a 63-year-old, I watch my parents age and put myself in their shoes.  My children will become me, watching me age and putting themselves in my shoes.  It’s been of sufficient interest? consternation? to me that I wrote an essay about it, Stuck in the Middle.  Today’s question asks, “What article did I read that blew me away?”

Last year, one article captured me.  In fact it just about screamed my name.  Waiting for death, alone and unafraid, by Thomas Curwen, L.A. Times, 2/28/09.  We are all “waiting” for death, but some of us are closer than others.  Perhaps because I’m watching my parents, at 86 and 91, either suffering from Alzheimers or waiting for death, this article resonated.

Edwin Schneidman

It’s about Edwin Shneidman who, at age 90, is at home attended by caretakers around the clock.  Shneidman has spent his entire career with death as co-founder and co-director of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, chief of the National Institutes of Mental Health’s center for Studies of Suicide Prevention, and professor of thanatology at UCLA. He himself almost died two years ago from high blood pressure. Curwen: He expected everything to go dark, and when they pulled into the bay of the UCLA Medical Center, he started to cry, knowing that the doctors would save him. I understand.

Here are the passages I underlined, so they resonated at the time and still do.  These are the author’s words: Today will be the same as yesterday, the same as tomorrow, every day a waiting and a hoping for a good death, a death without suffering.  This is my father’s life at 91.  He’s tired.  He might have gone by now but for worry about my mother.  This is what life is like.  We want him to go now, both of them, before they succomb to full-time care and the indignities that come with helplessness.

Shneidman says people ask him often what the end is like and he answers: You’re driving down a road in the desert, and the engine suddenly stops, no Pep Boys, no Auto Club to help.  Whether the road continues is of no consequence.  It has ended for you.

He also says, and this statement grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go: No one has to die, he is fond of saying; it will be done for you.  It’s living, however, that takes effort – to weather the sleeplessness and worry, the relinquishing of pride, the dependency upon strangers, the plea for respect and the struggle to remember.

My sisters and I watch my parents, my dad especially because my mom pretty much isn’t processing, struggling with this, and we struggle right along with them. We care about their dignity, respect, and dependency; the struggle to remember feels like a physical struggle and we’re in the ring.  We wrestle with it. We care about our own dignity when we are their ages, and we feel trepidation whenever Mom doesn’t remember.  Which is always.

But Shneidman redeems that struggle when he explains his philosophy of life. Because he believes life isn’t contingent upon a god or upon prayers. There is no heaven, there is no hell. Happiness lies in the here and now and the satisfaction of living a good life without religion or myths to guide you.  He takes nothing away from others’ beliefs.  He just prefers Moby Dick to the Bible.

He just explained my philosophy, especially in the sentence starting with “happiness.” If we’ve fulfilled that, we can only trust those we love to respect us in all the indignities that occur with old age.

And then this poignant, powerful passage.  Poignant especially because when my mother-in-law died several years ago and we were cleaning out her things, I looked at her pile of chipped, broken collectibles – that had so much meaning in her life – and thought, wow, does that sum up a life? It was a sobering thought.  So to the passage: In death, things become mere things – the statue of Venus in the backyard, the gyotaku print in the kitchen, the Melville-inspired shadow boxes – no longer animated by memory, the story of their provenance.  It is as if their atoms loosen and dissipate.

You can find the whole article here.

You can find Shneidman’s obituary here.

Gwen Bell has a Best of Blog Challenge on her own blog, (there’s a button on the sidebar linking to it) and although it’s one more thing to do in Dec., it sounds like a fun way to keep the juices flowing.  It’s a way to reflect on the year too, because even a “best” that seems insignificant (like December 28’s question, “Stationery.  When you touch the paper your heart melts.  The ink flows from the pen.  What was your stationery find of the year?”)  can potentially open up a floodgate of memories.  Memories lead to reflection, which leads to how things can change.  I know I operate on what I call CSI – Continuous Self Improvement – and even if I don’t attain great heights or become spectacular, I can take small steps in making life more fulfilling.  And I believe that the more fulfilled we are, the more we can positively influence other’s lives.

So, after deciding to participate in the challenge and printing out the list of questions, I thought, What the heck, I just finished Art Every Day Month, I’m pooped, it’s the holidays, and I wrinkled up the paper and threw it away. Now, of course, it’s been retrieved from the waste bin and I’m about to embark on December 2.  Already, the implications lead far beyond the question.

Restaurant moment: Share the best restaurant experience you had this year.  Who was there?  What made it amazing? What taste stands out in your mind?

I have two.  The first occurred in Spring.  I was up at our cabin in Alta Sierra by myself working on photo collages.  I had a show coming up and found it easiest to work where I could focus just on art – or not, as I chose.  The show is now finished, but you can see the collages that were in it here.  I went to upload photos to my computer and – oops! – I’d forgotten the camera connection.  I called my husband and he agreed to meet me halfway, in Glennville, for dinner and to bring my cord.

I can’t say our conversation was profound, but we were knocked out by the food.  This is a small foothill community and I doubt if the population reaches 300.  But there’s a restaurant called Hassano’s.  The only restaurant. So there we went.

I had chicken picatta expecting some reheated version.  What I got was a totally fresh, perfect, tantalizing dish.  And the vegetables!  I could rhapsodize about them but I’d rather go back and get more.  I asked the waitress to tell Hassano how fabulous the food was and she said he has hired someone he sent to chef school.  Well, this is a well-kept secret, because Bakersfield folks could take a beautiful drive up there and have fabulous, inexpensive food.

Bastille Day:  Alors enfants de la patrie, la jour de gloire est arrive.  The day of glory sure did arrive in Bakersfield.  We have an exquisite restaurant called Valentiens.  Their Bastille Day celebration sounded like fun, but the major impetus for going was that I’m making a determined effort to become part of the community again.  That isn’t quite as dramatic as it sounds, but I retired from teaching a couple of years ago.  When I taught, my world shrank and I had tunnel vision.  School and seventh-graders were all I had time for.  My post-retirement “career” is heading in the art and photography direction so that means getting out there again, meeting people, entering a different circle than the teaching world.

Also, at 63, I find I could easily become a hermit.  I’m tired after getting through a day, especially when we were giving a great deal of assistance to one of our daughters.  And with nine grandkids, six in town, the tendency at dinner is to not even make it and just collapse.  So I told my husband we weren’t going to melt into the woodwork, but get back out and have fun.

This was amazing because of:

Music, the fantastic accordianist.  We could have been on the bank of the Seine.

Then there was the wine.

Corkage was free if we brought a bottle of French wine, which we did.  We saw Steve Mayer, a reporter for the Bakersfield Californian, and asked him to join us.  We gave him a glass of our wine and he immediately  told us what it was and all about the region – this man knows his wines!

Then there were the artists working throughout – we could have been on the Left Bank.

Vikki Cruz and Yvonne Cavanaugh own Surface Gallery in town.

The evening was more amazing because everyone was in costume.  The artists, above, and the co-owner Jennifer Sanderson, below.

Did I mention food?  I can’t even remember what we ate, but I know it was delicious.  Maybe I had the succulent duck breast with crispy skin.  I love their duck.  We finished with waiter races!

Wow!  This was a LONG post about a dining experience.  But it was so much more.  None of these people – Yvonne, Vicky, Jennifer, Steve, and other friends we saw there – Leighann and David, Jennifer and Larry, knew this was helping bring me back from the brink of social extinction.  Ok, dramatic.  But really, it was good to approach a new era with so much fun!  Next year, we’re there for sure.  We’ve been there quite a bit since, actually.

Tomorrow’s blog may be just as long – an article that blew me away.  I knew immediately what it was, so I’ll be talking about aging and death.  That’s an upper to end with, isn’t it?

The Bakersfield Six Plus One, or a Grandmother’s Dream

The one is me – Gramser, and the six are the grandkids who live in Bakersfield.  And right now the seven of us are in Alta Sierra at my cabin.  Amazingly, all six of the grandkids get along fabulously – they keep themselves entertained and do things together and have fun.  The ages range from eight to fifteen, and all six have been doing activities together for two days now.  The biggest blessing for me is that they all want to be with me!  And each other.

We have no television at the cabin, cell phones are spotty, but we do have a television screen so we can watch DVDs and play wii.  And I have an iHome for the kid’s iPods.  I once had an iTouch, which I lost, but my music wouldn’t have suited anyway. Amazingly, no one has turned on the wii yet.  And I can’t even do my wii fit because all the furniture from the dining room area is in the living room.  The dining room has become a dance floor.

For hours – and I mean about five hours now, I’ve been hearing “to the right to the right, to the left to the left” as they choreograph some big number.  I’m not supposed to be watching rehearsals, but I sure am hearing rehearsals.  And the kids don’t want me to know that the song is called The Cupid Shuffle, but it’s a little hard to miss it. The floor is thumping and the walls are shaking.

I did snag a sneek peek.

So it’s Tuesday at 3:19 pm.  I’m typing this with blood red fingers, but I haven’t become a vampire.  We’ll get to that later. Here’s the visit so far:

Monday: Ride up, 1½ hours from Bako using my daughter’s car so I can fit all six kids.  Stop along the way for pictures pretending that Ali is driving and the kids are all over the car.  Great fun. Daughter later emails to say don’t let kids climb on car again.  I probably will because I’ll forget, and it is her oldest that gets the idea anyhow.

Realize I shouldn’t be wearing my Adam Lambert tee shirt and my two sizes too big pants because I look short and square and squat.  Then I remember I am short and square and squat.

Unpack, go to Vons in Lake Isabella: the kids are divided into pairs, each pair responsible for one dinner.  It isn’t easy to shop in three groups, keeping the groceries secret from the others!  But we manage. The two boys, ages 8 and 12, wonder if watermelon goes with pizza.  But they do have a great idea – do-it-yourself pizzas!  A pizza bar bistro. As far as I am concerned, since the kids are doing dinners, anything goes with anything.

Cabin – afternoon movie.  The four smaller ones watching the Incredibles with the two older ones upstairs watching Trading Places – rated R!  Parental permission is obtained.  Then we play Catchphrase.  And dinner prep starts.

The two middle girls make Monday dinner – orange chicken, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, brownies with ice cream.  Yum.  Really good.

Then more catch phrase, and the dancing begins.  Tons of fun.

To calm down the kids play Haha.

If you laugh, you are out.  They are all, almost instantly, out.

Bedtime comes but sleep eludes me until about 2 am.

Tuesday: The kids are up early and five of them go out for a run.  One reports that running up hills at 6,000 feet elevation is hard.  I struggle downstairs, have two Starbucks doubleshots (from cans), a diet pepsi and some iced tea to no avail – still very very tired.

And besides a break so we can tie dye some shirts, the kids are dancing all day!  Finally, I want my rooms back, I don’t want to listen to Cupid singing “To the right to the right, to the left to the left,” any more today.  So the rooms are put back together and the Bakersfield Six zoom upstairs to play card games.

Looks like moving day.

Ok, the blood red fingers.  I still have my black Glambert nail polish – it survives, but my hands don’t survive the tie dye kit.  Really, I am expected to open the very small dye packets and pour the dye into the small bottles while wearing one-size-fits-giants gloves? I don’t think so.  And in a frenzy of activity, after I explain the steps and ask that we please proceed in an orderly fashion so nothing gets spilled, trash bags are spread on the balcony, covered with paper towels, and the damp shirts are arrayed on top; designs are planned and rubber bands placed in strategic positions.  I am still mixing dye.  Somehow it all gets done, and besides my hands, the only other casualty is my shirt – it’s definitely an around-the-cabin shirt now.  The yellow spots on the orange stripes can’t be considered intentional by any definition of bohemian or hippie or hip clothing.  And despite repeated applications of lotion, I may shed a layer of skin.

A few more rounds of Catch Phrase and it’s time for the boys to start dinner.  They use Boboli crusts, sauté yellow peppers and onions for toppings, slice tomatos and olives for more toppings, get out the sauce, pepperoni and cheese, and voila!  A pizza bar is born.   For dessert – milk shakes with four kinds of ice cream to choose from.  The piece de resistance is a roll of Mentos for everyone – that they buy with their own money.

Then Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which still entertains me mightily and my own children once had memorized.

The kids are tired - or are hating Bill and Ted.

My two youngest girls, when teenagers, actually dressed up in trench coats, took a video camera and microphone, and went to the Circle K, stopping patrons outside and asking them things like, “When did the Mongols invade China?”

So my nerves are frayed but I’m still holding it together, and suggest rather firmly that perhaps an early bedtime, or at least quiet time, is in order.  No disagreement there, and this second day in the mountains with the Bakersfield Six is full of adventure and fun.

What I want out of this more than anything is, of course, that the kids have fun, but that they build good memories of times with Gramser and each other, and that we keep childhood as idyllic as possible for as long as possible.  It’s a dream for me, to have these wonderful children and grandchildren.

This morning the entire health section of the Los Angeles Times was devoted to aging.  It brought back memories of an essay I wrote in 2007, so I thought I’d post it.  I wrote it on the day I realized I was getting old and couldn’t fool myself anymore.  I know 62 (or am I 63?) isn’t old, but it’s not young either.  No matter how much I tell myself that I can expect wrinkles, I probably shouldn’t dye my hair, and that gravity eventually wins, I still fall prey to our constant desire to look young.

Here I am as a kid. Now, I don't expect to look like this the rest of my life.

One article in particular was interesting because it was about anti-aging products and the fact that despite not being proven to work at all, women will not give them up, even in the recession.  I had to laugh, because I am cutting back wherever I can, and I was debating not buying the Lancome products I use, but finally realized that I was going to buy them.  Somehow, psychologically, I need to feel I have that little edge (even if I know I don’t).

High school senior - I don't expect to continue to look like this either, but...

2006 - not bad, but here's where you can't take a close look.

So I thought of my essay.  It’s humorous – but true!  I look pretty good for 62 – at least that’s what I’m told all the time.  My response, however, is, “What is 62 supposed to look like?”  And really, I do look good – just don’t look too close!  Because closer examination reveals that you can only hide so much.

2007 - my 60th birthday, with my oldest daughter and my mother. Now I have to try to avoid full body shots. Stick to head shots only.

2008 - Discovery! Hold the camera higher than your head and you look better! From now on, anyone who takes my picture has to climb up a ladder.

2009 - at a race. Ok, so it's not a great angle. Who really cares, anyhow.

Because, really, this is reality. I do have mascara on, but this is when you really have to take just a cursory look. And I'm pretty sure I'm 62, not 63.

Thank God for lipstick, flatirons, and hair dye. But they can only do so much. I must accept the lines and the bags. And get a haircut.

Here’s the real clincher.  I already posted this essay!  But I didn’t really blog about it.  So the very last line in the essay just proved itself.

I just posted another essay on the Essays about Life page.  Last summer I decided to paint some chairs up at our cabin.  My father is a nationally-known watercolorist and artist, but I did not get one single shred of his ability to deal with paint.  It’s crazy, but when I’m painting a wall or something, no matter how careful I am, paint ends up everywhere! Sometimes even where I intend it to be.  Once I was painting a set at the theater, and somehow paint got inside my purse  which was not exactly nearby.

So trust me – every word of this essay is true.  How, you might wonder, could I end up with the leg of the stool I was sitting on in the paint can?  I really can’t tell you, but it happened. When I bent down, why did my hair end up in the paint can?  I have no idea, but it did.  So I wrote about it.

It was fun.  The painting AND the writing.

A friend "donated" her old dining room table for the cabin. I decided to decorate it and put the names of our grandchildren on it.

Painting the table inspired me, so if you read the essay Painting the Chairs, aka Tom Sawyer and Me, Sort Of, this is the chair I am writing about.