A Marxist morning

It is a Marxist morning.
No, I am not about to storm a mansion or give away my own beloved acreage.
I am merely trying to live up to an ideal stated by good old Karl. It holds such common sense that many USA citizens believe it to be part of their constitution.

"To each according to her needs, from each according to her ability."

Since my old age is funded entirely by the public purse, I feel obliged to make such contributions as I can. I lack the martyr gene, so this happens within the boundaries of a pleasant relaxed life.  
Any community has people who need more care than 'the system' can provide. Quite frankly, my own appetite for direct care giving is limited to two afternoons a week. I like being home.
But without stress I can offer some heroic care givers free reflexology and/or Reiki sessions. One of each coming up this morning. It just might be sunny this afternoon, and we will be free to play in the gardens.
Tomorrow, some volunteering in the afternoon and a paying client in the evening.

It is a good balanced life. 

Lost children's eve, a pre-mother's day proposal

This proposal was first made on Multiply 4 years ago. At the

time I was in the Netherlands for the funeral of my mother.

Over there the evening of May 4th, the night before they celebrate the end of WWII on May 5th, is for Remembrance.

This inspired the idea for Lost Children's Eve. A moment, the night before the celebration, to recognize the pain of the many women for whom Mother's Day is salt rubbed into a wound. 

A moment, the night before Mothers' Day, to honor the many women who have lost children, for whatever reason.

A moment to honour children lost to death, like Heather's Jonathan, Tint's Ceinwen, Shannon's Abigail, Chandra's Nooveya and my own first-born who only lived a day and never even had a name.

The children who are missing, which must be the worst of all.

The children with whom contact was lost through a bad divorce.

A moment to honour the birth mothers who gave up their children, and the women who couldn't bear children, and yes, even the women who had abortions. Reflections on the 
A word here.

No ceremony can replace a child that was lost, or never was. But seeing one's pain honoured and recognized is a good thing.

So here is a candle for my wonderful sister-in-law and brother. They would have been such good parents but could not have children.

Here is a candle for Sarah, which is what I named my first-born in my heart. Somehow the name felt right, even though  I cannot imagine picking it. 

Here is a candle for the never-to-be siblings of some only children whose parents would have liked to have more, but no one else came.

And finally, a candle for the might-have-been children of my friends who had an abortion, even if it was the right decision to make at the time.

Peace to all.

A Platform in time. Thoughts on aging.

You know you are getting old when a queen announces her abdication and you remember the coronation of her mother. 

This refers to Dutch royalty. Juliana, mother of the present queen Beatrix took over from her mother Wilhelmina in September 1948. I was 5 years old and remember it vividly.

There was a carnival on an empty field in our neighbourhood, and massive decorations in downtown Amsterdam. The decorations mainly took the form of lights strung along buildings, the way we now see all the time in midwinter. In those drab years immediately post-war it was miraculous. We took the tram downtown to go see the 'verlichting'. The term used translates literally as 'enlightenment', indeed the same term used to describe the 18th century intellectual movement.

We had moved to Amsterdam from Nijkerk, in the country, in the spring of 1947. Our old friends and neighbours from Nijkerk came to stay with us for a few days with their  kids. Gertie was the oldest, my age. He and I were good buddies and planned to get married when we got older. I remember having the mad giggles playing on the guest bed on the floor in my parents' bedroom. After a few years we lost touch with the old Nijkerk neighbours, but I was quite thrilled when I later got a baby brother with that name.

Anyway, about aging in general. I have never understood the desire to lie about age, or the age-denying platitudes that people spout. "You're only as old as you feel." "Age is just a number." And so on.

Age is part of what defines us, much as our place of birth or family of origin does. Born in the Netherlands in 1943, I am young enough to have no conscious memory of the war, but old enough to be marked by the fresh collective memory of occupation and by the time of scarcity that followed. This has nothing to do with health, ability or lack thereof. Age is our platform in time.

When my children were small I would wish I could freeze them for a while at a particularly sweet stage. But then the next stage would bring its own joys. I feel much the same about my own aging. So far, I am enjoying the process, including the need to acknowledge I might need help with certain arduous tasks. At any stage in life, happiness is a choice.

What have I learned from last summer?

I feel fine, am resuming all normal activities, and the events of last summer are starting to fade into story. 

Yesterday a friend asked  permission to ask, in his terms, a loaded question. "What did I feel I had learned?" He was referring to the stuff of self-help lit where people warble on about cancer as a gift that changed their life and forced them to appreciate each day as a precious gift, yadayada.

Guess what: I have done that most of my life. Credit goes to a combination of temperament and upbringing. My parents instilled gratitude and appreciation* for small daily blessings into us kids, along with an awareness of how many people in the world have less.

I had already asked the question myself: "What am I supposed to learn from the whole cancer plus accident episode?"

Quite frankly I am not sure. Not gratitude, that was already present. As for facing death: I love life, but am not terribly afraid of its ending. I am not yet old, but no longer  young or even middle-aged either. The thought of living decades in misery and/or as a burden to others scares me more than leaving this dimension after three score and ten. I feel at peace spiritually. Other worlds, if they exist, will be faced in due time. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Perhaps the greatest lesson learned is accepting help instead of being the helper. It also brought home the importance of investing in social capital. Friendships and neighbourhood networks need to be cultivated as much as gardens.

Meanwhile we shall muddle on, doing such good and grasping such pleasure as comes across our path. I have become increasingly skeptical of the "you create your own reality" philosophy for many reasons, but that is a whole other blog, more fit for the Rants and Reflections section.

Prior to the accident/cancer I had already distilled my Big Question answers to these borrowed phrases:
  
Be here now. Cultivate the garden. Just be kind.

I see no reason to change that.


*astro note: both parents had Moon conjunct Jupiter.

Mary Oliver one, Augustine zero

Posted to Multiply September 16 2011

It may be the long weeks of sunshine, late but welcome. 

It may be the transit of Jupiter in Taurus, my rising sign.

It may be the peace of being old enough to get government money without guilt or hassles, and having some finances sorted out so I have access to emergency cash and won't leave debt behind in case I suddenly kick the bucket.

It may be the fact that both my children are happy and doing well right now.

It may be that  Nutriflex by NAKA  is fixing my wonky hip so I can dig again.

But whatever the reason, I have been feeling a bit euphoric lately. Just happy with my life, warts and all. That doesn't mean I have no wishes, or have stopped learning. It just means I feel very content and grateful. Any thing more is total bonus.

So this quote by Augustine of Hippo posted by a Facebook acquaintance, stuck in my craw.

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must 

always be displeased by what you are. For where you are 

pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep 

adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

Contrast this to poet Mary Oliver:

You do not have to be good.


You do not have to walk on your knees


for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.


You only have to let the soft animal of your body


love what it loves.

Now that's more like it.

The Edgar Principle, and some garden doings

Originally posted to Multiply May 7 2011

The good news is: we have a new washing machine. The old one died. In spite of all the warnings from sources both esoteric and mundane about imminent Collapse we're betting on civilization continuing. I have done laundromats and hand washing for years in the past, and sure appreciate at-home mod-cons while they last.


This is what we call the Alan Edgar Principle. Alan was a fellow counter-culture member who lived here in the seventies, during our tipi time. We worked together for a while in the same restaurant. Nice Californian guy with a great sense of humour and a beautiful Latina wife who had a hard time in the long grey Kootenay winters.
Once on the way to work we had a conversation about the impending doom mentality that was quite common in those days, and he said something that stuck with me: "If these are the last of the good old days, shouldn't we be....ENJOYING them more?" What a concept! Brilliant! I have dubbed it the Edgar Principle and invoke it frequently, especially in these days when we have a fresh wave of folks moving to the land to get ready for Collapse. 


Shortly afterwards  Alan and family went back to CA, where they built a successful business in solar energy and had a great life. Some common friends are still in touch. That is the trouble with geological and psychic time: In those terms California may well be swallowed up by the Pacific any day now, but a human life can fit entirely in the space between seconds.


Back to the here and now. The bad news is: in order to deliver the washing machine and get it up the steps to the deck the truck would have to drive over my flowering daffodils and primroses. So I spent all yesterday morning digging them up.  I stuck the dafs in another bed, but had a wheelbarrow full of primroses in full bloom. That sheltered flowerbed has been creeping outwards, time to re-do it so we don't have to deal with this again when the ancient stove bites the dust. So today I wasted all day on flower stuff that was not on the priority list.


The good news: it is perfect transplanting weather.


The bad news: that means it is cold and rainy.  Yesterday was decent. Cool,  but mainly dry with the odd bit of watery sun.  We have had a total of  6 or 7 days so far that could qualify as spring, and nowhere near real warmth. I keep reminding myself that the woods are rejoicing. They are overdue for one of those cool wet non-summers we get now and then in B.C. At this time of year garden work gets done rain or shine.


At least I made focaccia loaves and tomato sauce before I went outside so we could have pizza tonight, with baby kale and green onion salad from the garden. I am tired of eating overly fast improvised meals because by the time I stop outside I have no energy left to cook.


More good news: The 4 middle-aged hens laid 4 eggs yesterday! I have not had egg layers for ages. Some time in the nineties we had a series of predator disasters, and I finally gave up. After a hiatus I did just meat birds for 5 years. This was during the time that deer were devastating the veg garden in spite of fences, so filling the freezer with chicken was a compensation. After a few years off from that I am totally in a fowl mood again.
More good news: the asparagus I planted along the fence last fall is showing signs of life. The shoots are tiny but all they have to do this year is survive. I used to have a big asparagus bed, but ripped them out years ago because they were not yielding all that much considering how much space they were taking up.


And so it goes.......on and on....