The long week tumbles to a close, pooling around the last workday, struggling for air as I do the same.  I’d like to say I  haven’t done any complaining this week but I’d be lying.  I’ve grumbled under my breath and stood on my porch questioning God, the universe and my angels about the events with which I struggle.  A few of my moments of self-double and self-disgust have leaked into e-mails to people who care about me, causing them distress.  The kindest commentary I can make about the week involves its nearing conclusion; the gentlest judgment I can make of myself focuses on the degree to which i managed to bridle my anger and refrain from using swear words or kicking the dog.  Welcome to the weekend.  I’m looking for some ugly drapes to make into a ball gown and vowing that I will survive.

As a young girl, I did not watch a lot of television.  I remember episodes of “Twilight Zone” and  a few other shows, which we watched as a family.  My brothers liked The Three Stooges, and I recall “Leave it To Beaver” and much earlier, “Father Knows Best”.  But on my own, I devoured what I would call “girl shows”.  Hayley Mills, Patty Duke and Sandra Dee figured in these silly gems.

One of them — Sandy Dee, I think — cast her fluttering eyelashes at the hero and said, “Sir, are you laughing at me in sheer delight, or otherwise?”  Of course, the answer pleased her:  “Sheer delight.”  And that exchange has stayed with me through the years, not because the movie particularly impacted me but because I’ve never really understood the difference between the two types of humor.

As a consequence, I’ve been branded as humor-impaired, thin-skinned, and worse.  In addition, the light-hearted ribbing of others has prompted a whole life-time of complaining in a category all its own from my mouth to their ears.  That’s one category of complaining all by itself:  Grumbling about the good-natured sallies endemic to life on earth.

I do contend that some categories of life’s condition should be off-limits.  I would not pick family violence, rape, drug addiction and alcoholism, and the immutable differences between people as the subjects of humor.  They just aren’t funny to me, though I suppose if someone wants to make fun of themselves for being in one of these circumstances or having one of these characteristics, they have the right.  I  crowned myself the mascot of the Consulate Cripples, the softball team of the bar near my place of employment during graduate school.  But when I think back, I wonder if the team itself should have picked that name; they certainly would not in 2014, even if nobody said anything in 1978.

But I’m not talking about these broad areas of humor.  I’m talking about everyday teasing, the give and take of life.  I’ve spent 58 years with ruffled feathers, and I am looking back, wondering:  Was it all in sheer delight, or, as I then contended, otherwise?  From my perspective, eight months into my year without complaining, 2/3 of a year through some intense self-reflection,  I’m fairly certain it most often arose from sheer delight, I feel kind of bad about missing out on the fun all those years, and even worse about the lashings that I levied on innocent folks.  I wish I could make amends; I wish I could find every one of those unsuspecting victims of my bad temper, wrap my arms around them and tell them how sorry I am.  I can’t, I know; but maybe somehow the universe will send a little kiss from me to them, to let them know I’m sorry.

I can’t relive the days that have gone.  I can’t really make amends.  But I can live differently.  I can assume the good intentions of those around me.  I’m going to try.  Someone advised me once to do that, someone whom I dearly love.  I viewed his advice as suspect, and didn’t follow it. It was good advice, though. I’ve taken it to heart at long last.  And I’m super stoked about the next six decades.  They ought to be a lot of laughs.

Remember that book, “Everything I need to know, I learned in Kindergarten”?  Well, everything I need to know I learned from Antoine de Saint Exupery’s book “The Little Prince”.  Today I would like to share two chapters with you, verbatim.  

Here is Chapter 23:

23

“Good morning,” said the little prince.

“Good morning,” said the merchant.

This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink.

“Why are you selling those?” asked the little prince.

“Because they save a tremendous amount of time,” said the merchant. “Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week.”

“And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?”

“Anything you like . . .”

“As for me,” said the little prince to himself, “if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”

And here is chapter 21, in its entirety:

21

It was then that the fox appeared.

“Good morning,” said the fox.

“Good morning,” the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”

“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”

“I am a fox,” the fox said.

“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”

“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”

“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

“What does that mean–‘tame’?”

“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”

“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–‘tame’?”

“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–‘tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”

“‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”

“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”

“Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

“On another planet?”

“Yes.”

“Are there hunters on that planet?”

“No.”

“Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”

“No.”

“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

“Please–tame me!” he said.

“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”

“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”

The next day the little prince came back.

“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”

“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.

“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:

“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

And now, my little ones, my dear ones, you know every good thing that I know.  Always remember these lessons; they will serve you well.  And remember this, too:  Mama Corinna loves you all, very much.

Sweet morning air on my porch feels good against my sleepy face.  I stand at the steps, watching the stillness of the neighborhood as the sun rises behind me.  I breathe, deeply, in, out, thinking about the events of the day that stretches before me.  I contemplate the noteworthy suicide of a beloved comedian yesterday, and the lingering sorrow which his family will wear like an old sweater years from now.  I shake off the tattered remnants of the mourning garb from my brother’s suicide, still with me, though threadbare now and more often falling away to reveal the gossamer threads of my more delightful memories of him.

Our boycat wanders to the porch and gives me a look suggesting that I have been derelict in my obligations to him, eyeing the empty food dish.  I lean down, pet his head, and snag the paper from beneath a rocking chair where the carrier has thrown it.  I draw in another long pull of fresh, clean air.  Then I go inside, and the day accelerates, with all of its possibilities, and all of its hope.

Yesterday my friend Ellen Carnie and her gentleman caller Jerry Stewart went out of their way so that I could enjoy an extra hour of Alan White, John Bara and Doc Fuller performing at the Double Nickel, Olathe’s best kept secret.  I mean this quite literally.  Since I cannot safely drive after dusk, Ellen volunteered to drive my car home  with Jerry following.  This took them into the city, whereas Ellen’s farm is north of Smithville, so they would normally have taken the highway loop north from Olathe, never coming anywhere near my Brookside neighborhood.

On account of Ellen and Jerry, I got to hear three sets instead of two, and I received a couple of hugs from Alan’s son Bo which I would not have been there to receive, in the break between the second and third sets when I would otherwise have left.  An hour more of the fabulous music, an hour more of Doc’s fine guitar work, an hour more of both serious talk and easy banter, and an hour in which Ellen and I took a “selfie” to send Penny who had been unable to attend due to being on a photo shoot.

Ellen and Jerry’s kindness reminded me that there are angels everywhere waiting to grace me.

During high school, I had two writing gigs.  I served as a high school / youth correspondent to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and I wrote and submitted essays to the Christian Board of Publications.  I had pieces appear in the newspaper and in a couple of youth magazines published by CBP.

One of my essays addressed “The Virtues of Pain”.  I argued that we needed pain in order to appreciate pleasure.  I had a fair amount of experience with what we now call “chronic pain” from toddler-hood.  By high school I had a standing prescription for Darvocet for the pain in my legs which at the time confounded the neurologists at Barnes Hospital.  The diagnosis they gave me was “hereditary spastic paraplegia”.

I knew my legs hurt and tried to make sense of it.  My instinct at the time drove me to see it as a contrast enabling me to appreciate some state of painlessness that I had never known but intellectually knew must exist. That pain took on a life of its own over the last forty-five years.  Eventually, the Darvocet prescriptions of my youth yielded to Percocet and Vicodin, which I alternated to minimize the effect of each on my bloodthinner’s efficacy.  By late fall of 2013, I had been regularly taking four pain pills daily  for quite some time, though I never exceeded the prescribed daily dose.

With a doctor’s care, I weaned myself from that pain mediction and now rely solely on my anti-spasmodic to take the edge off the pain which results from my spasticity.  The other sources of pain rage against me:  the aching joints, the ragged myelin, the chronic headache, the sensitive inner ears.  Sometimes I sit with my eyes closed and just tune into each pain site, meditating, willing myself to let go of my emotional reaction to the pain.

This morning I turned on the radio in time to hear the end of an interview on “mindfulness”.  I listened to the guest describe the concept of calming down and focussing on only the present moment.  I didn’t hear the whole story but I’ve done a little poking around on the NPR website and I believe that the speaker whom I heard was Jon Kabat-Zin.  I liked the concepts that I heard and will read more, perhaps listen to the podcast if I can find it for free.

A bit later, I opened the local paper to see a lead article about chronic pain.  I’ve skimmed it; I find it difficult to read word for word, I think because it cuts too close to the bone.  But one quote resonates with chilling familiarity: lawyer Mike Hockley, from the firm Spencer Fane, describes his self-dismissive replies when colleagues ask how he is: “Oh, just a little pain.”  I’ve used that line, though rarely with grace, as I am willing to bet Mr. Hockley employs.

And so I find myself ruminating on the virtues of pain and my response to it.  My neurologist approves of my decision not to use narcotics and charted, “Managing well with Metaxalone”.  I smiled spontaneously when I saw that.  He and I probably define “managing well” with radically different parameters.  But I’ve come full circle, in an unexpected way. I see the virtues of my pain as a  vehicle but not for appreciating a state of painlessness or pleasure.  Rather, I see my pain in all of its variants and nuances as an avenue for empathizing with the hardship of others.

I don’t mean to suggest that I will place myself like a peg on the continuum of pain.  Instead, when I hurt, in the dark of night when my defenses crumble, I can construct a kind of emotional body from which I can explore and understand the parameters of hardship, so that I might feel and understand hardship when I see it on the faces of those with whom I deal on a daily basis.  With such an understanding, I can employ different ways of responding to people, gentler perhaps, less harsh at least.  That’s been the goal of studying nonviolent communication, and this new realization of a ready-made tool for appreciating the burdens of others fits nicely into this fresh tapestry which I strive to weave for myself.

As for mindfulness and meditation, that’s part of what I’ve been doing these last seven months, part of my path to peace.  I’m molding myself into a more empathetic person as well as a person who experiences, but is not overwhelmed by, pain.  So my fifteen-year-old self had a good point, in advocating for the virtues of pain.  It’s taken this version of me a while to understand that point but I feel I’m on the right path now and I’ll keep on walking that path.   Every day of my life.  Every blessed day.

Searching for a lost key the other day, I reached to the higher of the two surfaces which we call The Keeping Shelf.  I discovered a little china container that once belonged to my mother which I had not seen in a while.  I lifted it down and set it on the dining room table, admiring its delicate decorations.  I lifted it again, and realized that something rested inside of it.  I removed the lid, holding the egg gently in the palm of my hand.

Inside I found a packet of embroidered labels.  I sank into a chair and recalled the hopefulness with which I had ordered these tags.  I meant to give hand-knitted or crocheted Christmas gifts to everyone in my family and all of our friends, the Christmas that my first husband and I lived in Newton County, Arkansas.  I have been remembering those days in the cold mountains, Chester on tour, me stuck in a town of 600 with frozen pipes and no work.

I touched the butterly on the fragile lid, noticing a layer of dust and a slight scent, like talcum powder, which my mother must have kept in this little box long ago.  I recalled my father handing this container to me, wrapped in one of my mother’s handkerchiefs, just before I got into my car to drive back to Kansas City after her funeral.  This little butterfly has been with me for 29 years, since a few days after my mother’s death on 21 August 1985.  It has no chips, no nicks, just a fine layer of dusty powder, with the lingering scent  so reminescent of my mother’s bedroom.

I put the lid carefully back and returned it to the Keeping Shelf,  leaving the tiny labels inside of it.  I might use them some day.

Once again I see life’s ironies.  I worked my fingers to the bone this week, and ended the week with a few hours to spend with my bff Penny.  We met up at Westport coffee house and we shared a good cup of coffee and a nice natter.  I nipped into the ladies’ room and BAM, a slam of the door and now my wrist is in a brace and my fingers just sort of nip at the keys, trying to type without moving my braced wrist.

Ah, she says:  No, I’m not complaining!  I’m thinking of the irony.  A writer limited in the speed of her typing by a chance encounter with a door that weighs more than I do!  A woman who foreswore the use of prescription narcotics now wondering if any linger in the bottom of her old handbags!  Funny, no?

The gals at WCH got me two bags of ice which curbed the swelling.  Penny carried my computer bag (slash) handbag to the car, and my suite-mate Matthew carried the flowers for Joanna’s resting place to the car.  Now I’m home, thinking that I might find a legal pad and a pen with which to write the morning musings, but then, I’ve no scanner so I’d have to keep them to myself!  No, I’ll rest the wrist and gently hammer the blog entry out in the morning.  Recent photos of my first husband, his lovely wife Ruth, and his three (three! Three, Chester!) — daughters reuniting in Colorado have served to draw me back to the long ago days, when Tshandra, my wild lovely stepdaughter and Sarah, my dreamy niece, spent a summer with us in the wilds of Arkansas.

I’m musing already, and the irony of it all?  As I drift backwards in time, I am no longer thinking of the pain in my wrist, or the fatigue in my legs, or the virus in my cerebellum.  I’m thinking, instead, of the places where I’ve gone and the people who journeyed with me.

I’m taking the long road home.

I like lemons.  I don’t understand why they got that bad rap.  What about, when life gives you rotten eggs?  Now, I can’t think of a single good thing about rotten eggs.  Rats eat those things, for goodness sake, I saw it in Charlotte’s Web.

Lemons, on the other hand, make the judges on Chopped salivate.  “Oh, this dish lacks acidity, if only you had put a little lemon in it.”  And making lemonade?  Well, I realize that is the grand solution to “life giving you lemons”, but seriously, if lemons were lousy would kids everywhere nag their mothers for some fresh-squeezed or even Country Time lemonade?

Once I made a dish that called for lemon zest.  I told the people dining at my table, my then-husband and my seven-year-old son, that the recipe instructed me to add a flourish of lemon zest as the last ingredient, but I had not had any lemons.  They looked at me fish-eyed as though to say, “Why are you telling us this?” and wolfed the whole thing down, seconds and all, practically licking their plates.  I felt pretty smug until my kid said, “Gosh, Mom, this would have been just perfect if you’d added a little lemon zest right at the end.”

They cracked up.  Clearly a conspiracy!  But they were so right!

I suppose lemons being sour gave rise to this status as undesirable.  We make lemonade by starting with simple syrup, which contains a boatload of sugar.  But the brightness of lemons cannot be overlooked.  They adorn any bowl in which they might be nestled, and who doesn’t like a lemon freshener on one’s tired skin?

I say, forget lemonade, the sugar will rot your teeth.  If life gives you lemons, be thankful.  The prize for winning Chopped is $10,000.00, and nobody wins without adding lemon.

I struggle with some of the dumbest things — like packaging.

A bottle of water confounds me.  Those foil lids on yogurt? Impossible!  I can open small jars with an old jar-opener that my son found at a garage sale years ago, but I can’t get cubes out of an ice cube tray and blister packs stump me.  It’s hopeless.

Zippers in the backs of dresses also aggravate me.  If someone’s around to pull them up or down, I’m okay, but left to my own resources, I reach the point of boiling.  I once tore the entire back out of a dress that my mother made me.  I never told her; I threw the dang thing away and never mentioned  it.

I understand this difficulty that I have, both physically and emotionally.  My hands can’t grasp many vessels; I’m not very strong and I’m plagued with this cursed spasticity. As for my reaction, when I am confronted with my own helplessness I sink into an abyss of self-judgment.  Six decades of insecurity seem to rise and every damn thing I’ve ever thought about myself engulfs me:  Not enough this, too much that, ugly, stupid, useless.  Unlovable.

I don’t often write about my raw emotions for public display.  I tend to sugar-coat them with the lessons that I learn in the after-math of their tidal waves.  But the gremlins and goblins that grip us lose power when exposed to light.

Yesterday, I met with a client and her family.  My client’s mother and stepfather had hired me a decade ago and brought this new case to me, still pleased with the work that I had done for them.  They attended this meeting with their daughter, the daughter’s boyfriend, and the fifteen-month old whose custody my new client seeks.

Before the serious business began, I handed small bottles of water around the table.  I sat and lifted mine, but realized that I wouldn’t be able to open it.  I passed it to the baby’s Grandma, who sat to my right.  She laughed and handed it to her husband, saying, “I’ve never been able to open these things,” with a careless laugh and a genuine ease.  And just that simply, I saw the monkey on my back shudder and slide to the floor.  It’s okay not to be able to open bottles, I told myself.  See?  It’s not the end of the world.  Nor does it mean there’s something fundamentally defective about me. I experienced a moment of palpable peace.

The monkey hovers.  I’m sure he’ll clamber back aboard my slim shoulders and wrap his hands around my face.  He’ll whisper in my ear, You’re not good enough!  Look how incompetent you are! and there will be times when I listen to him and hang my head; lonely hours, days when there’s no one nearby to wrench open a stubborn lid or reach the top shelf.  But I would not have said before yesterday that I truly believed that my inabilities did not diminish my worth.  For that moment, I had a keen understanding of the relative importance of the bane of my existence; and the fact that I coud see through the fog gives me hope that blue skies await me.