I celebrated International Women’s Day by throwing a cup of scalding hot tea in my face and going out for pizza with my neighbors Laurie and Michelle, and Michelle’s six-year-old son Matthew.  The tea thing seems funny now.  As you can imagine, it really aggravated me at the time.  A sudden loud noise had its usual impact on my trauma-altered brain.  My hand flew into the air, showering tea everywhere. Thank God for the world’s thickest lenses.

The pizza experience provided actual contemporaneous laughs.  Maddening though this sounds, we did not take one blessed photograph.  So instead, I’ll upload every possible picture in my media file of the women who have influenced me and on whom I depend for guidance, nurturing, and inspiration.

I owe everything to the women who sustain me; and also to their partners and to their children.  The love of these women for me and my son keeps me however close to sane I can claim to dwell.  I need their endless support of my clumsy stumbling.   I give them little, but cherish them in every fibre of my being.  Women hold up more than half of my sky.  Their presence in my world humbles and honors me.

It’s the eighth day of March, 2019, International Women’s Day; and the end of the first week in the sixty-third month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

P.S.:  If you don’t see a picture of yourself or another woman whom you expect to see in this gallery, it’s probably because I don’t have a photo.  Send it to me, I’ll add it!

Click on each photo to enlarge.

serendipity
N: good luck in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries

In 1994, an employee in the toddler room at the Montessori school which my son attended put my son on a chair in the hallway outside of the director’s office.  He had not yet turned three.  She went into the office to call me.  My secretary told her that I had gone to Chillicothe for a deposition, but that both she and her co-worker, my assistant (slash) best friend Alan, had authority to attend to my son.  The school’s employee denied my secretary’s entreaty for information, even though my emergency contact list included her.

Five hours later, I arrived at the school to find my son asleep on the cold tile near the chair in which he had been left.  He had been unattended for the entire afternoon.  The reason for his ouster (at age two-and-a-half) from the classroom had long since been forgotten, at least by my son.  He rubbed his tired eyes and said, “Hi Mommy.  Is it time for lunch yet?”  A plate of congealed macaroni sat on the floor beside him.

I took my son out of that school.  Thus did we come to Purple Dragon Daycare, a magical place at which my son would learn to read and write before his fifth birthday and try unique and amazing foods, such as borscht and artichoke.  Magda Hellmuth, the school’s owner and a truly grand human being, cared for her thirty-charges in loving,  measured ways.  As one parent remarked years later while we stood outside of classrooms at a local Catholic grade school, “Perhaps we made a strategic error, sending our sons to the best educator whom they’d ever encounter,  before they even got to kindergarten.”

Through Purple Dragon, my son and I also found the Taggarts.  Katrina, Ross, and their children Jennie, Caitlin, and Chris became the family-by-choice which Patrick and I desperately needed.  Mona Chebaro and her son Maher rounded out the set for us.  Every holiday, each birthday, the highs and lows of our household, became bearable, even enjoyable, because of the Taggarts and the Chebaros.  We picked blueberries, went Trick-or-Treating, bought and buried pets, and enrolled in the activities of childhood that a single disabled mother could never have navigated alone.

When I went to the hospital, one of those families cared for Patrick.  We took the boys on vacations, built a beach in the backyard, and created Halloween scenery on our front porch with the same crew at hand — Patrick, Chris, and Maher, weekend after weekend.  You rarely saw one without the other two.

At Purple Dragon, we also met Abbey Vogt, and her parents, Paula Kenyon-Vogt and Sheldon Vogt.  These amazing human beings have my heart, all these years later.  They know why.

A few days ago, I drew a sweater over my shoulders which Caitlin Taggart Perkins gave me for Christmas at the Gathering of the Usual Suspects in December 2016.  I pinned a brooch to its lapel.  I stood in front of my little heart-shaped mirror.  I can’t understand how a woman whom I met as an eight or nine year old girl. could evolve into someone with such keen instincts that she can still nail the perfect Corinne gift.

I don’t miss the cold, or the struggle of taking care of a house alone.  I can live without the pressure of solo practice and the painful reminders of shattered dreams.  I like California.  I’m thrilled to be an hour from the ocean, living in an adorable tiny house, in a wide green meadow, beside a sweet little stream, just steps from the San Joaquin River.

But sometimes — just sometimes, when the Delta wind rattles my window, and I catch sight of my aging reflection, I remember the whispering children on the upper floor of my airplane bungalow.  I hear Katrina’s brisk tread on the steps, and Mona’s lilting accent over the sound of running dish water.  I hear the calm murmur of Paula K-V, and Sheldon’s clever jokes, which he’d intone with a twinkle in his eye and a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear.   I’m not complaining.  But sometimes — just sometimes — I miss my tribe.

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

“Thank You Song”, Livingston Taylor and James Taylor

I made it back to the house just as the wind rose.  At the weekly community dinner, I met four new people and tried three small bites of Sally’s pasta, careful to avoid the cheese.  Other than my coleslaw and some bread with butter, there’s nothing I could eat but I didn’t mind. Sally brought a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck and a finger of red did me fine.

It’s not gone eight before I turn the lock.  The rush and roar of the night shakes my tiny dwelling.  I ask the Google lady to tell me the wind speed.  There’s a sixteen mile per hour wind in Isleton right now, she acknowledges.

From my writing loft, I study the darkness on the other side of the sturdy pane.  My little electric heater hums.  I still wish I had chosen propane.  I don’t quite know why I didn’t, or why I didn’t spend an extra few thousand for a solar system.  The flickering lights signal that a storm draws  near.  I’ll be needing a flashlight before dawn.  I check for batteries and settle into my rocking chair.

The neighbor’s porch light beams across the way.  Her son has come outside with their little dogs.   Rain begins, a gentle patter now, but soon the house will fill with a staccato rhythm as the wind whips through the meadow and the skies open.

Back home, we had a keeping shelf.  Sand bottles and little charms; angels, Lego guys, and Christmas bells, nestled side by side.  I gently packed each one in my last few days there.  Now I live in a house of treasures.  I count my days with golden coins, as the wind blows, and the rain falls, and the river flows silently past the park where angels dwell.

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

My Tiny Life: Mementos

The little Bluetooth speaker filled my tiny house with music as I worked.  Sorting laundry first; then I attacked the clutter which can make 200 square feet seem small and inconvenient.  My movements became more brisk throughout the morning.  The pleasure of accomplishment spurred me forward. But then:  My hand knocked against a jade plant.  Its pot shattered to the floor.  I could have cried.

Years ago, I had a wine bottle shaped like a heart.   I rooted a philodendron in water and kept the bottle on a ledge in my shower.  Around the same time, my sister Joyce fell ill.  I started taking care of her daughter Lisa, with the thought that I could assume guardianship if worse came to worse.

I took Lisa to the zoo one nearly perfect spring morning. I acted as I believed a mother should, competent and calm. I framed my directions in words of cooperation.  I provided treats but in moderation.  I put sunscreen on her cheeks and dabbed her forehead with ice-water when she seemed flustered.  I rented a stroller to push her past the seals.  I felt invincible.  Then  rain began and I dashed to the car, holding my niece’s little hand, urging her forward.

By the time we got home, Lisa had grown cranky.  She whined about needing a drink, her mother, lunch, to use the toilet.  I hoisted her on my hip, struggling on wobbly legs into the bathroom. I skittered to a halt, frozen, horrified.

The rising wind had tumbled the heart-shaped bottle to the tile, scattering shards of amber glass entwined with wilted greenery.    I stood in the afternoon gloom, thinking of the man who had brought me the wine which the broken bottle once held.  I  remained immobilized in the doorway until Lisa began to whimper.   I shook my head, then gently lowered the child onto the dining room carpet and went to get a dustpan.

After a difficult February, March offers an interlude in which my soul yearns to heal.  I’m back from the land of misbegotten days, where the rubble of the broken heart lies forgotten in a heap of trash.

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

With special thanks to a pair of lovely human beings who remembered me today.

Sarah Harmer, “Lodestar”

You haven’t heard from me for several days because I’ve been struggling with a few issues that took my attention.  I couldn’t possibly describe them without complaint.  Suffice it to say that I welcomed March.  February did not smile for me.

I took the long road to Isleton today, past the flowering olive trees and the workers walking the vineyards. I stopped for an egret crossing Jackson Slough by foot, too stunned to grope for my camera.  I stood for five long minutes on a dirt road watching cranes overhead, their last flight above the Delta, perhaps; headed south until fall.

At the post office, I fished a few pieces from the deep box.  With my practice closed and the Park building secure mailboxes, I should soon be able to cancel this service. I stand by my car, tapping the letter from the Missouri Supreme Court on the door frame. Once inside, I eased back the flap, and stared at the unheralded contents.

I’ve held a lot of statuses in my life.  Daughter, student, friend, wife, mother.  But the title which I’ve had since 1983 defines so much of what I am.  To see the small but important change reflected on my Missouri Bar card for 2019 both saddens and satisfies me.

The other day, someone asked me from where I come.  I hesitated.  Finally, I gave as honest an answer as I could short of saying “my mother’s womb”. I told him, I spent the first third of my life in St. Louis and, except for a few years in Arkansas, the second third in Kansas City. I intend to spend the last third in California.

He contemplated my answer for a few minutes, then said, “Cardinals or Royals?”  I answered without hesitation, “Yes.”

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

Rachel Platten, “Fight Song”