The Chinese heritage remains strong in the community where I live. In the mid-eighteen-hundreds, nearby Isleton and Locke both were populated by cohesive groups of Chinese people.  Their influences can still be seen. I spent a few hours today celebrating Asian New Year.  I take this evening’s reflective inspiration from the intriguing notion that I can start fresh.

Rain patters on my metal roof. Occasionally the lights dim as the power wavers. I sit snugly in my tiny house thinking of all that has been and all that might be. Despite some struggles, this evening I have no complaint.

It’s the ninth day of the sixty-second month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.

The snow geese landed in the fields on Andrus Island again this evening.

Tonight I want to share a list of goodnesses which I have experienced this week.  I cannot figure any other way to stay true to this mission right at the moment, so, here goes:

1. This afternoon the office assistant where I work successfully organized, copied, and timely mailed a huge stack of strange forms in a file on which I’m trying to accomplish something that I’ve not done here in California.  It took me quite a while to determine the appropriate process.  It required five different forms, all of which had to be copied multiple times, sorted, and served.  Her effort truly demonstrated her awesomeness.
2. The orchid plant on the reception counter at the office has two delicate lavender blooms with several more buds.  I enjoy watching the unfolding of the flowers each day.
3. I needed a change in medication and I succeeded in getting what I needed after only four days of effort.
4. My blood level for this month hit a near-perfect mark after several months of chaos.
5. The manager of the Park carried some packages to the car for me even though she has no obligation to do so.
6. We had several sunny days, balmy and pleasant.
7. I got an actual letter from a friend — with a hand-written envelope, even!  In the mail!
8. I watched a small group of sandhill cranes flying over the Sacramento River, majestic and regal, rising on the afternoon wind.
9. A blue heron lingered in a nearby spillway long enough for me to get several clear photographs.
10. The new medication has begun to abate the symptoms for which I needed it.
11. I won a game of Yahtzee on Sunday and enjoyed playing with two of my neighbors, along with a five-year-old girl who managed to keep us all in high spirits with the intensity of her concentration on rolling. (“Be quiet, I’m trying to think about sixes,” she told me.  Adorable!)
12. Several clients of the firm for which I work expressed gratitude for my efforts on their behalf.
13. I awakened every morning so far for the last sixty-three years, five months, and two days.

It’s the seventh day of the sixty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life Continues.

My father often claimed to have lived near Tennessee Williams in his childhood.   His assertion doesn’t quite mesh with the facts, since my father was born in 1922, the year that Mr. Williams left St. Louis.  The apartment building   in which the Williams family lived, upon which Mr. Williams based scenes from The Glass Menagerie, sits just over a mile from the block on which sat my father’s boyhood home.  The latter location became the site of the Chancery office of the St. Louis Diocese, a fact which I find enormously ironic for infinite reasons.

I feel kinship with two of Mr. Williams’ anguished heroines, Laura from Menagerie and Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire.  Laura tenderly stumbles through an unfortunate misunderstanding with an intended gentleman caller.  The play’s end sees her standing before a candelabra, leaning to extinguish both flame and any hope of happiness.  From the wings, her wandering brother tells her to “blow out your candles, Laura. . . For nowadays, the world is lit by lightening”.

Blanche struggles with a madness born of unrequited longing for what she perceives as normalcy.  When the psychiatric team comes to usher  her away, she thanks them, remarking that she has always depended upon the kindness of strangers.  I cry every time.

Each day, I stop at the Park kiosk for mail and packages. The manager, Kim, hoists them out the door and onto my back seat.  She does not need to do so; it’s not her job.  But she follows a heart compelled toward goodness.  If I pull into my parking space when my nearest neighbors have gone walking, one of them often calls out to see if I need help.  At community events, I park my car near the clubhouse, and someone instantly  steps outside to carry my bags.

These people have their own lives and obligations.  We’re neighbors, not kin; though some of us have personal interaction enough to call each other “friend”. For the most part, though, I go for days on end without a visitor, and no one here owes me anything.  Yet if I had a problem with my house, I wouldn’t have to step farther than fifty yards to find someone willing to come to my assistance.

I don’t yearn for the cold and snow.  I’ve grown accustomed to the quiet of the Delta, with its night air broken only by the hoot of the great horned owl.  Though I never thought of myself as anything but a city girl, I certainly do not long for the smell of commerce or the blare of traffic.  I do miss my art space, and the potential that my friend Brenda will come briskly knocking at my door on her way home from work.  But the rhythm here falls upon my shoulders like an old familiar sweater.  The kindness of (not quite) strangers rises to sustain me when uncertainty threatens my calm.

It’s the sixth day of the sixty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

I rummaged around in my small fridge last night, trying to find something to eat.  Behind a tub of hummus and a loaf of GF bread, I find a lone orange, one of several given to me a few weeks ago by my neighbor Jessie.  She traded some beets from our Community Garden for citrus from the trees of folks who live in nearby Isleton.

I pulled the orange out, and studied it.  Three weeks?  Would it still be good?  I thought about the fruit trucked from Mexico to Missouri, which comprised the sole offerings in the store where I shopped for a couple of decades.  Surely this orange started fresher than anything I bought in Kansas City, I told myself, and started to remove the peel.

A few minutes later, I realized that you have not eaten an orange until it’s one which came fresh from a tree not ten miles from your house.  I don’t even like oranges — not really.  I once flipped over on a bike for lack of understanding how to use hand brakes.  The only thing I had consumed that day  had been a glass of orange juice.  The impact of my head on the road caused a concussion which started my stomach heaving.  I haven’t liked oranges since then.

Grapefruit, now, that’s a different story.  And tangerines; or tangelos; or those little Cuties which kids like.  Regular oranges, not so much.  Until now.  Until I eased each juicy segment from the center fibers and bit down on them, letting the sweetness fill my mouth and run a little down my chin.  Oh, what a boon you’ve given me, young Jessie!  And how lovely this fine offering, how perfect, how refreshing, at the end of a dreary, weary day.

Now I have only store-bought fruit of which to partake this evening.  Still, it’s California-grown, so one can only hope it might be somewhere near the divineness of last night’s treat.  A woman can dream.

It’s the fifth day of the sixty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Read  here about the author of this quote.

Make no mistake.  I did not get the sports gene.  If you ask me who my favorite team is, I will tell you the 1967 St. Louis Cardinals.  Born and raised in the city on the Mississippi, I got Cardinals tickets for every A on my report card during elementary school.  We cheered for Gibson, Brock, Cepeda, and Javier until our parents told us, “That’s enough now, you’ll make yourselves hoarse.”

Having spent the first thirty years of my life on one river, I spent the next thirty on the west side of the state.  I’ll be #foreverblue, loyal to the Royals;  and sometimes, I still wear red on Fridays for the #Chiefs.  Not that I care about the actual play, but home town pride creates a certain level of excitement that we carry with us everywhere we roam.  I watched the Chief’s play-off game through the Google Lady, asking her every few seconds, what’s the score.  She and I both died a little at the end.

The park in which I live had a Super Bowl party three or four weeks after I moved here, January 2018.  Nervous, alone, and worried about making a good impression, I hovered in the background.  I have no clue who played or won.  But I will remember the afternoon as my introduction to #deltalife, and to the community of Park Delta Bay.

This year, though — oh what a difference!  I know about a third of the full-time residents by name.  I wave to the right and left driving in or out.  I take the place for granted sometimes.  It’s where I live.  It’s home.

Angry at the entry of the Patriots into the game, nonetheless the Super Bowl Committee threw themselves into planning.  As for myself, I got chips, guac, salsa, and carrots.  I brought the oil and popcorn for the machine.  Somebody grilled hot dogs.  Another person brought 7-bean dip.  Wings appeared, and sliced sausages, and a plate of brownies.  Eventually the counter in the community room groaned under the weight of the potluck provisions.

I won the pool. I have no idea how.  I picked five boxes and the person collecting guesses initialed for me.  I spent the afternoon playing Yahtzee with Teresa, the lady who lives five lots to the east of me; Sally from the far side of the park; and a five-year-old girl named Ella who turns out to  have mad dice-rolling skills.  Each adult won a game. Ella played as a team with Teresa.  Sally got the only Yahtzee!  We must have had more fun than the group watching the football game, because we got scolded for being too loud three times.  By sports fans.  Now that’s what I call a party.

It’s the third day of the sixty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

I spent time today trying to determine if Eleanor Roosevelt actually counseled us to “do one thing which scares you every day”.  I learned that the adage has a checkered past, attributed to various people over two-hundred years.  Not everyone accepts its virtue.  I turned instead to something which I so often suggested to my son during his childhood that he took to waggling his finger and pushing me to follow my own advice.  “Get the hardest thing done first, then do what you like to do.”  

I followed both recommendations today.  After pushing myself to engage in a dreaded effort (the details of which do not bear discussion), I rewarded myself with a drive along the river road, camera at my side.  I saw a small clutch of Sandhill cranes flying northward over the Sacramento River.  I swerved to the shoulder too late to photograph their majestic sweep, but in the attempt, caught sight of a delicate rainbow, here depicted unretouched.  Along the way, I enjoyed several other stunning vistas.

I’ve spent the evening lost in thought, principally unbridled and unexpected gratitude for the broken road which brought me to live alongside such astounding beauty.

It’s the second day of the sixty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

With special thanks to: the late Robert Mccain; Kelley Marie Blond; Kathleen Selig; and Christina Sorenson; for encouraging me to have confidence in how I look.

I ought to be driving to Lodi right now.  I intended to be among the first to sign the list for lab work.  Instead, I have read news, eaten breakfast, scrolled through social media, and gazed out of the window at the speckles of rain.

Last night, I dreamed that I got a phone call from someone whom I used to know.  The disembodied voice in the hazy gloom of my sleeping brain told me that I needed to call a person who did me harm, for purposes of extending forgiveness.  The caller insisted that my forgiveness stood between the wrong-doer and happiness.  I woke before my subconscious responded to the entreaty.

I stumbled around the house in an unsettled state.  I thought about the concept of expressing that I hold no malice.  In my dream, I got the sense that actual forgiveness did not matter; that I only had to tender words of absolution.  My thoughts trailed from there to a state of wondering about my feelings.  Have I forgiven? If so, could I say that out loud? We easily scribble “sorry.. . thank you. . . welcome” at the bottom of Hallmark cards.  But what emotions underlie the expressions? Does deft articulation substitute for sincerity?

I scrambled eggs, drank re-warmed coffee, and watched yesterday’s Anderson360.  Now I have to dress and head east.  I haven’t gotten a blood draw since November.  For all I know, these troubled reveries stem from nothing more than a lack of oxygen.  Just in case, I’m taking precautions.  I’m packing bottled water, an extra jacket, and a phone charger.  You never know.  On the other hand, if last night’s dream signals that my own soul yearns for peace, I’m saying this now:  I forgive you.

It’s the first day of the sixty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.