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Moonstruck

The day began two hours earlier than usual.  I woke in the ebony silence.   I closed my eyes and realized that silence had awakened me; a new and unexpected absence of sound.   The rain had stopped.

I spent an hour or so stumbling through the darkness.  I got my computer ready for the webinar at 8 and the medical appointment at 11.  Coffee dripped through the metal funnel while I cautiously stretched my failing spine.  A fragile aroma of warmed butter  wafted from the skillet.  I coaxed fluffy curds of egg onto a crisp slice of toasted sourdough and sank into my small chair.

A few hours later, I shook the dullness of the lecturer’s voice and the agitation of the tardy doctor from my mind.  Grabbing pocketbook, coat, and a sweet tangerine, I hurried outside.  Behind the wheel of my cluttered car, I skirted the levee roads toward town.  There I settled into another chair, a pseudo-leather one, with an oddly tilted back and peeling armrests.  Crammed between a monstrous fake wood desk and a bank of lateral files, I hammered at computer keys as steadily as possible for five grim hours.  Enmeshed in mangling software to produce the necessary client-specific sheaf of documents, I broke my drafting stride only a handful of times, once to eat that orange, and twice to listen to a client whose panicked tone sent daggers of tension down the numbed nerves of my compressed vertebrae.  I steeled myself to remain pleasant, even reassuring.  Don’t complain, I scolded, silently, sternly.

By five o’clock this afternoon, collapse from exhaustion loomed.  I dragged my weary bones to my car and started east.    My hands turned the wheel nearly without benefit of conscious direction. My brain barely registered the drone of a news commentator’s voice on the radio.  I scarcely noticed the river’s rippling surface as I descended  the Rio Vista Bridge and crossed into Sacramento County, a few miles from home and welcome rest.

As I rounded the western edge of the Delta Loop, a golden glow lifted itself into the sky.  I braked.  I stared across Andrus Island.  My foot hovered over the accelerator for a long minute.  When I started forward again, I kept my eyes fixed on the astonishing sight.  Without noticing, I slowly cruised beyond the entrance to my park.  I let my engine idle as I veered into a parking space outside an old abandoned restaurant. 

A pall of regret loomed.  Not a year ago, my trusty Canon would have sat beside me, always at the ready.  Somehow my sense of adventure surrendered to my conviction that I could not produce a credible image.  I let the batteries die.  I stashed the lot in one of the stairwell cubbies.  Now I could only raise the one lens at hand, a basic Samsung smart phone.  I held it as steady as I could.  I strained to memorialize the breathtaking beauty which presented itself for my astonished, bleary eyes.  I did what I could.  As with every other minute of this daunting day, my best and clumsy effort had to suffice.

It’s the twenty-fifth day of the one-hundred and twenty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Where there’s life

Winter in northern California means periods of mild temperatures bookended by days of torrential rain.  This wild ride continues from late December through early March.  We in the Delta slog through puddles, muck, and sheets of water as we traverse to and from our vehicles, offices, and the grocery store.  My sister asked if we would have umbrella bags in our new shop.  My brow furrowed as I contemplated whether I had ever seen anyone carry an umbrella in California.  I own several, of course; but I’m not sure they still work.  We just dash here and there wearing what passes for coats and scarves.  Natives casually stroll beneath the cold rain and grey skies with jackets flapping.  

I often stand in my tiny yard and gaze upward at a dismal expanse.  Migrating flocks head east in the morning to feed near the rivers.  At dusk they return to our island to settle in the flooded furrows of nearby fallow fields. In the six years that I’ve lived here, I’ve lost some of the bodily resilience of my Midwestern roots.  People whom I mocked during my early ex-pat days raise an eyebrow when they see me wrapped in layers of wool.  My friends in Kansas City post pictures of snow, ice, and weather widgets proclaiming the impending Armageddon.  Four degrees!  Minus ten!  Sleet, ice, closed schools!  And here I dwell, nighttime air in the mid-40s, blue skies for half the week.

But I’m still cold.  There’s a kernel of ice somewhere deep in my spirit that emanates a pervasive chill.  In my reflective moments, I suspect that I have miles to go before I could hope to restore whatever broken pieces of myself I might still salvage.  Once upon a time, I wrote a poem about a broken heart-shaped bottle that held a plant on my window sill.  In actuality and in the clumsy verse, I swept those pieces into a trashcan and continued with the mundane affairs of the day.  Such nonchalance now eludes me.  Still, I can’t say if I’m cold because I’m lonely, or because my body has grown unaccustomed to the sting of winter breezes.  

This morning I emerged from the house with my usual clumsy amble.  I stood on the steps of my porch and studied the little garden that my neighbor Bri has deftly revived.  The rain has seeped into the rich soil into which Bri transplanted my struggling succulents and the few non-succulents that I had not yet killed.  Her gentle ministration saved my neglected garden.  Here and there, little blooms unfurl.  As I descended the stairs, I stopped to admire the sturdiness of these potted gems.  In those few moments, I swear to you, I felt that hard cold nugget deep within me start to thaw.

It’s the seventeenth day of the one-hundred and twenty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Winter in the west

While my friends back home shovel snow and burrow into their blankets, I debate between a raincoat and a wool sweater.  I might still have mittens somewhere in the bottom of the little cedar chest that a carpenter in Arkansas made for my son before his birth.  I rummaged for something else the other day and saw a couple of warm hats; not the pretty boiled wool kind, but stocking caps that I knitted in the land of cold and ice.  I ought to donate them.  I shoved them further down beneath the summer shawls and my baby brother’s afghan.

The days have already started to lengthen.  We had a week of rain.  If the universe smiles on us, we’ll hit that sweet spot between barely enough water to keep us out of a drought and hopeless bogs of mud for months.  I oiled my new Blundstone boots so I’m ready.

I bought those boots to use with the leg braces that turned out, so far, to be a monumental failure.  I asked the orthotist why she recommended the exact type that now sits like deadweight beneath my twenty-inches of hanging clothes.  She gave me a long-winded explanation that amounted to evasion.  With more probing, I finally concluded that she has no regard for my decades of hard work to stay on my feet.  She figured that I needed about a half yard of hard plastic to replace what she obviously considers to be useless calves.  Sorry, friend; but I’ll keep my own muscles, spasticity and all.   I didn’t say that, of course.  I demurred and said that I would talk with her at my next appointment.  

But the boots work for me, even though they are a size bigger than my customary choice.  It seems that my feet enjoy the extra room.  I tie the laces as snug as they will go and can still wiggle my toes.  I’ve only fallen once in the last month, and that wasn’t my fault, really — the curb by the office at which I work must be a few feet high.  My muscle memory kicked into gear and I landed on my bottom.  I struggled back to vertical and took a few timid steps into the street.  Suddenly, an SUV bore down on me, closing the gap from a block away in seconds.  I screamed and the driver screeched to a stop.  She rolled down her window and hollered, I didn’t see you, why aren’t you in the crosswalk, you idiot woman!  I told her to slow down, it’s a small town, and struggled into my car.  

She was right, of course.  I’ve been hit by a car as a pedestrian twice in my life. once without injury (in a crosswalk) and once resulting in a crushed right leg (not in a crosswalk).  I drove home still shaking from the encounter, wondering if the third time might have been a charm.  I laughed as I traveled across the Rio Vista Bridge, reflecting that the third time getting married didn’t do much for me.  Except, of course, for ruining Valentine’s Day; so, maybe not.

As I rounded the hairpin turn near my home, the sun eased itself into the bank of wispy clouds on the far horizon.  A few minutes later, I sat in my cooling car, thinking about my first winter in the west.  A loose line of cranes slipped through the sky.  In the tree above my neighbor’s house, an owl called to its mate, low, mournful, deliberate.  I stepped onto the slick of damp earth and drew a breath.  To the left, a blaze through the trees announced the impending darkness.  I spent a long minute watching the glow settle beneath the levee.  When night had gathered around me, I collected my thoughts and went inside.

It’s the twelfth day of the one-hundred and twenty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Can you see me now?

Hello, my name is Corinne.  I’m an inveterate complainer.

Hi, Corinne.

I’m standing before you, the half-dozen folks who still follow my quest to traverse an uninterrupted span of 365 days complaint-free, to confess that on 03 January 2024, I filed a grievance with my health insurance company regarding care given to me by one of its network providers.  Technically, that constitutes a complaint.  So I’ve already broken my promise.

The last act in the sequence of events happened on 20 December 2023.  I had sixty days within which to file a grievance.  I could have gotten it done before the first of the new year.   My reason for delaying relates to this very blog.  I kept asking myself, If I file a grievance, can I consider my mission once again sabotaged?

A lively debate on this topic ensued in the first months of my journey.  As an active law practitioner at the time (still fully licensed in good standing in the great state of Missouri), I had the professional obligation to advocate for my clients.  I’m also a casual protestor of buildings that pose challenges to those of us with ambulatory impairments.  Continuing both pursuits seemed acceptable, even ethically mandated if not critical for my livelihood in the first instance.  My early readers gave me a pass and I allowed those exceptions to my rules.

Thus far my journey has spanned ten years.  I have yet to meet my goal.  In this decade, I have navigated many personal challenges, though none that I consider catastrophic.  To borrow from Singer, “No little children have died from this.”  No bombs fall on my village.  Yet I’ve been strained.  While my outlook continues to improve, I still grouse at everyday annoyances though more jovially; and I still find myself shaking my proverbial fist at the possibly real divine entity who might or might not exist and who, if real, certainly has a wicked sense of humor.

So — for the last two weeks, I have reflected on whether I should pursue the situation regarding this provider, an eye care clinic in the Bay area who shall mercifully go nameless here.  I’m out some actual money and have nothing to show for it except yet another pair of incorrectly prescribed and poorly made glasses.  I’ve wasted another year trying to find effective and reliable vision care.  I endured misogynistic conduct by one of the clinic’s employees which I felt compelled to tolerate on two occasions as I tried to force the square peg of inadequacy into the round hole of necessity.  The clinic promised a refund for the glasses copay, and then demanded a full release in exchange for it which I declined to give.  We reached a stalemate.  They admitted inability; I refused to accord a full-scale waiver for the mere tender of my co-pay for the glasses, which, given my terrible prescription, amounted to five-hundred dollars even with vision insurance. 

If they had not offered the refund and then demanded the release after the offer as a condition, I might have just taken the refund and gone away.  But more seemed at stake.  I had dedicated seven months to my effort to receive the specialty care for which I had been referred to the place.  I had spent two overnights in the Bay area to be on time for early morning appointments.  I endured the arm-pats of their male employee who kept telling me that I should not ask any questions of him because he had two decades of experience.  I watched another staff member roll their eyes while I carefully articulated factual accounts of my issues.  I had a staggering moment of grim clarity when one of their doctors said, and I quote, “I’m just going to pick a prescription halfway between your [six-year-old glasses] and the second of the two different readings that I got today.”  Forget the first pair of glasses that they made from their first prescription — made incorrectly, by their admission, and not the right prescription by my judgment as I could not see with them.

Exhaustion ruled.  I strained to keep a level head, a civil voice, and a calm demeanor.  For the most part, I succeeded by keeping much of my communication via email so that I could edit before transmission and circumvent the twin bogeymen of voice tone and facial expression.  When my efforts failed on the horns of their last-minute demand for a full waiver and release in exchange for the mere tender of the copay, I found myself thinking, What would Marshall Rosenberg do?  I asked myself if their demand for a release fell into the category of reasonableness, reflecting from the dispassionate voice of an attorney.  I answered the question in the negative. 

They offered a refund for my co-pay portion of the glasses that they originally had pledged to remake.  The co-pay issue solely addressed one facet of the experience.  Had they not demanded a release, I probably would have let the entire sorry episode fall into the annals of history.  But the behavior of their staff, the dismissiveness of the head doctor in my discussions with him, and the bottom line consideration of future, less savvy patients combined to suggest that the entire situation fell into the original exceptions to the structure of this pursuit.  By filing a grievance, I might expose their conduct and protect future, less informed consumers from the same treatment.

Or so I reason.  What say you?  Can you see me now?  Am I in focus?  Or did I just deftly and implausibly justify my own failure to honor my moral undertaking?  As they say on YouTube, comment below.  I’m all ears.

It’s the fifth day of the one-hundred and twenty-first month of My [Endless] Year [Trying to Live] Without Complaining.  Life continues.

 

 

 

Rest In Peace, Ross C. Taggart, US Army, Retired

I first met Ross Taggart outside the house to which I had just brought my then-three-year-old son to spend an evening while I went on a date.  The fellow with whom I would be having dinner stood a few feet away as Katrina introduced me to her husband.  We watched their son and mine scamper across the yard.  Ross glanced over my shoulder and said, by way of greeting, Are you sure you want to do this?

I laughed; but of course, he turned out to be correct and the man in question broke my heart a few months later.  Two marriages, two divorces, and nearly three decades later, I wonder at the prescience of that simple query.  

Over the years, Ross and I had a few clashes.  I can’t recall the substance of most of them now.  The anger that one or the other of us felt has washed away like driftwood buoyed by the waves of the Pacific Ocean making its way to and from the shore.  Ultimately, I came to have a certain possibly begrudging respect for him.  He conquered alcohol addiction and created a small and intricate world for himself centered in a well-fitted old van.  From that vehicle, on a volunteer basis, he monitored the local highways and often got to the scene of a crash before law enforcement.  He would set up a protective perimeter and, I suppose — I never saw first-hand — provide rudimentary comfort until official help arrived.  I’m sure some officers found this annoying, possibly dangerous, but many praised him.  I can only imagine that those whose lives had just been sent into a tailspin found his presence to be soothing.

Ross had strong and definite opinions and expressed them freely.  He loved his wife, children, and grandchildren without reservation.  He showed unwavering loyalty to his friends.  He took great pride in his service to the United States of America.  As with every human being, Ross Campbell Taggart cannot be said to have been perfect.    But he lived his life with intensity.  He embraced challenge in his own unique way.    And whatever might be said of him, you can at least know that Ross never did anything in a spirit of artifice.  You knew where you stood with him.  You appreciated his values.  You admired his tenacity.

One time shortly after one of my divorces, I think the third one but I cannot be sure, I drove over to the Taggart house for Sunday brunch.  Ross had been cultivating grass on the forward perimeter of the lawn closest to their house where I usually parked.  Without realizing that, I pulled my car into my customary spot.  Ross came charging from the front door, scolding me, insisting that I move the vehicle.  I did so, shaken a bit, perhaps more than the situation warranted due to my instant emotional frailty.

A few days later, I got a written apology from Ross.  He explained that he had over-reacted and he asked for my forgiveness.  My respect for him grew.  It takes courage even to silently admit that you erred, and it takes profound grace to articulate the folly of your actions to another.  Well done, sir.

I searched my computer, my old Dropbox, and Google photos for photos taken of Ross over the years.  I know I have some.  My son and I shared Christmas and Easter with the Taggarts for many years.  But I failed to find the trove that must have been shredded in print form when I moved.  So I went to his daughter Caitlin’s social media and found two that I particularly like, and added one from my meagre salvaged digital stash which I find particularly endearing.  I hope his family does not mind its slightly unflattering presentment.

After any of us dies, those left behind search for something to which we can cling to preserve them in our memory.  These photos provide that solace for me.  I had not seen Ross in several years, perhaps five.  I know that his health had declined.  I talked with Katrina from time to time.  His death did not surprise.  But it stunned.  At the dawn of 2024, there is a Ross- Taggart-shaped hole in the universe.  May his spirit, and the hearts of his family, find peace.

It’s the first day of the one-hundred and twenty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

The Reason for the Season

A day might come when I tire of hanging the wreath that my sister Joyce made nearly four decades ago after our mother’s death but today is not that day.  

She constructed the wreaths from dried grape vines. Our father had torn down my mother’s tiny vineyard in their backyard after her death in 1985.  We each grieved my mother in a different way; Dad included.  For Joyce’s part, she embraced a segment of my mother’s abandoned role.  She carefully preserved Mom’s memory, drying the vines and adding decorations evocative of a holiday season at the house on McLaran Avenue in Jennings, Missouri.  I do not know if it gave comfort to Joyce or anyone else, but I found immeasurable solace in knowing the origins of the treasure and the care behind its creation.

Over the years, I’ve replaced ribbons, baubles, and garland to keep the wreath looking festive.  It has adorned each of my front doors from Kansas City to California, with several stops in Arkansas along the way.  I believe — but cannot be certain — that Joyce made a wreath for each sibling.  Whether that’s true I can’t say; and whether only mine endures I also do not know.  I gain some portion of delight in the lack of confirmation.  I know their doors; each of them; I imagine some similar variant greeting me should I make the journey.

I do not celebrate the Christian holiday.  Though raised Roman Catholic, I made the choice to foreswear religion some decades ago.  In particular part to this day, I could not escape the inevitable conclusion that “the birth of Jesus” leaves out my Jewish, Muslim, and atheist friends.  I cannot fathom a divine entity which demands such harsh results.  So as the Christians borrowed the December holiday from the pagan winter solstice, I co-opt December 25th to my own ends.  Hence, the reason for the season:  My annual spell of breathing; a deep long draw of cleansing air into my lungs before launching into New Year’s avowals.   I use this day for sending love, light, and my most sincere wishes to everyone within the ripple of my call.

My chosen herald has inspired much derision and scorn but it  appeals to me in the most basic of ways.  “Happy Holidays”, I tell everyone whom I meet.  Sometimes I substitute “Christmas”.  The other day, I told someone “Happy Christmas” who then launched into a fake British accent to regale me in reply.  We had a merry sort of conversation before we went our separate ways, me with the broadest of smiles on my otherwise weary countenance.  The calendar from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day holds a myriad of holidays if you include every religion, sect, and nationality. I say, Let’s celebrate each one.  But most of all, let us honor the human beings who created those occasions, flawed, tired, and tremulous though they might be.  

I think about my mother more and more as I draw closer to the end of my own existence on this earthly plane.  She would approve, I think, of the evolution that my cherished wreath has taken.  She would not stand on chosen ceremony, but instead greet everyone who rapped upon her front door with an unbridled embrace and a cheer as welcoming as she could fathom.  I find myself cultivating the best of her as I find it within me.  I think of her today, having schmarrn at some heavenly table with my little brother Stephen, my forgiven father, and a host of other relatives who gather to listen to a heavenly choir. 

So this is Christmas, for me:  Remembering all of the half-birthdays that we celebrated on July 25th with German chocolate cake for my little brother whose actual Christmas birthday got co-opted by the abundance; imagining a plate of candy cane cookies balanced on the coffee table as children passed around presents wrapped in dime store paper; breathlessly awaiting the sight of snowflakes so we could go sledding after breakfast.  In a little while, my son and I will make our own schmarrn in the kitchen of the cabin around the circle where he is staying.  We will open a gift or two; and linger over coffee.  Later we will gather our contribution to a dinner that a friend of mine and I decided at the last minute to throw together.  There will be games, and conversation, and moments at the railing of my friend’s balcony watching for swans on the San Joaquin.  I cannot imagine a more perfect day.

It’s the twenty-fifth day of the one-hundred and twentieth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

 

 

Winter wonderland

I left the land of heavy snow and shards of ice falling from gutters six years ago last week.  Here in this new land, this adopted home of mine, winter looks like crisp blue skies alternating with torrential rains and battering winds.  I skirt soggy mounds of dank vegetation on my path to the car each chilly morning.  Branches rasp against the tin roof of my tiny house.   A grey patch of light glimpsed through the transom window signals the perennial dawn.  I wake to see it.  

Yet still I find wonder in my surroundings.  An owl hoots; a dove calls; a coyote raises its voice through cold dark night.  For the thousandth time I yearn for a fireplace, or in the very least, a small iron stove from which shimmering waves of warmth flow.  The electric heating system efficiently heats this small space but lacks romance.  I wrap myself in the blanket that my son sent last year and sit in the small chair that Tim Anderson swapped for my old rocker.  With  my feet propped on my great-grandmother’s stool, I could not be more cozy even without a fire’s cheerful glow.

My house has changed so much in the six years that I have lived here.  An entire bed cubby that once seemed like a fine idea found its way to the dump.  New floors with a soft underlayment stretch across the entire main floor.  I’ve been through the rocker that I brought with me and two others that just did not suit the space.  Now the writing loft has become a cozy bedroom.  At the far end of the house, above the bathroom, a guest sleeping space gathers dust.  I’m thinking of alternative ways to use it.  Every inch of wall holds art or family memorabilia.  I have shelves that bloomed in the years since I moved here, and cupboards, and storage solutions on which I settled after multiple failed tries.

I did not get out the Christmas decorations this year.  In a little while, I might at least hang the wreath that my sister Joyce made so many years ago from dried grapevines salvaged from our mother’s yard.  A few ornaments never get stashed away; they hang from the stair rail or the window frame, reminding me of Christmases past, ready to serve Christmases in years that have not yet dawned.  I see them every day but their nostalgia has not faded.  The green bell that came from my paternal grandmother’s collection; an angel labeled “Sister”; the star with my name and the year “1958” painted on the back.  If I strain, I can hear the ghostly chatter of a Corley Christmas morning and see a smattering of crumbs from the candy-cane cookies that we nibble after Christmas Mass in a torrent of torn wrapping paper.

My only child made the journey by car to see me.  He drove three thousand miles and now sleeps in a cabin around the circle from me.  I feel immeasurable gratitude that he made this effort.  Sometimes when I look at him, tears threaten to spill.  A scene from one of my favorite movies rolls on the cruel screen of my troubled mind.  A stepfather sits across from a wise and knowing child.  He apologies “for every kind of Daddy that I have nor haven’t been since I met you.”  Those words resonate for me.  I botched parenthood in the first three decades, though in my own defense, I didn’t have the best role models.

Yet I dare to hope that he forgives me or at least can reach a place of peace in my regard.  I do not and will not speak for him.  For myself, I cling to Nana’s words like the last lifeline within my strained reach:  Put your best foot forward.  Where life persists, improvement still might follow.  Or as my mother repeatedly instructed:  If you walk every day of your life, you’ll walk every day of your life.  So keep walking.

I abandoned religiosity years ago.  I accept that a huge segment of humanity believes that December 25th marks the anniversary of the birth of a child sent to save the world from itself.  Just as many hold other beliefs.  They all engage in rituals designed to do service to some yearning that humans need to sate.  As for myself, tomorrow can only ever be remembered as my little brother Stephen Patrick’s birthday.  Had his life not ended, he would be sixty-four.  Perhaps his spirit tarries on the river here, resting on its banks as the migrating waterfowl settle in the reeds. 

Winter provides me with a chance to huddle deep inside my thoughts and quiet contemplation.  Like the small seeds beneath those mounds of rotting leaves, I have yet another chance to gather my strength as I prepare for a glorious emergence come the spring.

It’s the twenty-fourth day of the one-hundred and twentieth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

A Winter’s Day

A week passes. I cannot recall my last words, only dimly remembering the easy flow of sentences through my fingers to the page. In the interim, winter has overtaken the Delta.  Fog rolls through the fields, hovering low, clinging to the thick branches of the dormant trees.

I pull off the bridge and descend to Front Street in the mist.  I glance to the east, shocked at the sight of a cold sun folded into the greyness of the morning sky.  Idling by the curb, I raise my phone to capture the haunting vision.  I hear but cannot see a flock of geese rising, their voices calling to one another as they head into a day of foraging in the flooded farmlands.  As the sound fades, I shift into drive and continue on my own path to work.

In another week, I will mark the end of my sixth year in California.  Six years since I started west with the last flotsam of my Midwest life crammed into the back of my car.  I no longer clearly recall what I expected my life to become.  But not this; surely, not quite this.

Like the sun in its damp veil, I find some small comfort in the awkward unexpected contours of these days.  In truth a sort of loneliness has found its way into the dusty corner of my tiny house.  I treat it like an unexpected, lingering house guest.  I let it have the run of the place, with the unspoken understanding that eventually, it will have to leave.  In the meantime, we settle into a kind of reluctant harmony, but only until I find a way to banish this specter from my home.

It’s the thirteenth day of the one-hundred and twentieth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

I Am A Rock

Of unbroken circles

I’m fortunate that my hands work and my fingers only occasionally swell with the press of too much salt.  When that happens, I grasp the rings that I daily wear and tug until they clatter on the desk.  Once in a while, one rolls and slides off the edge.  When that happens, I have to jockey my torso to an angle from which I can lean sideways and snag the circle with one finger.  Most people would stoop or bend at the waist; my body protests at such seemingly innocuous movements.

Yesterday I groped in one of my jewelry boxes, on the hunt for a certain pair of earrings.  They eluded me.  In the process I managed to tip the whole mess onto the floor.  I left it for the evening, when I had to sit on the loft steps and hunt for every shimmering stone and silky chain.  I can’t be sure that I got them all.

I admit to having too much jewelry.  Most of it falls into the costume category, though mostly sterling silver.  I keep the few good pieces locked away:  My mother’s garnet brooch, the tanzanite pendant that my second husband gave me, two wedding sets that I ought to sell but which instead nestle in one box.  My son will have to deal with them when I finally surrender this mortal form and make my way to the next plane of existence.  I hope he realizes that one of them contains a gorgeous Ceylon sapphire.  It would make a nice gift for someone.  

My daily wear includes a ring given to me by my father-in-law after his wife died.  I understand that there had been a matching pair of earrings which went to my then-stepdaughter.  After her father left me, I offered to give the ring back.  She replied to my note with a terse rejection.  But I did not let her slight scorn tarnish my affection for my favorite curmudgeon, who offered me the sort of fatherly love that my own progenitor only hinted at having.  I wear that ring on my left hand.  It also contains some lovely sapphires, my birthstone.

Next to it sits a ring made in Mexico flanked by a band crafted by a retiree in Arizona.  The turquoise and coral one came from a niece who wanted to give me something in thanks for some help I provided.  I didn’t want to take it.  She insisted, and I’m glad, for she was dying then and actually died six months later.  I take it off only when that annoying swelling forces me to do so.  

Over on my right hand I wear a silver spoon ring that I’ve had for over fifty years.  I got it by sending a dozen pull-tabs from Minute Maid orange juice into the company during a give-away.  Lots of people have spoon rings; you can find them in most flea markets.  But I am wiling to bet very few people can brag of having gotten theirs basically free, just by saving those coils of plastic that broke when you tugged at them.  Now and then I think about leaving my son a note to tell him to cherish this ring but in truth, I do not want to burden him with my sentiment.

The last of my daily adornment came from a silversmith of my acquaintance in Kansas City.  I found it in the discard pile of sale items.  I see its flaw but like the unique shape and the smooth feel of it against my skin.  I have other, better rings but none so sleek, none so clearly the work of someone’s trembling fingers.  I bought this ring in 1980, my first year in Kansas City — before my second marriage, before my law degree and subsequent stumbling career, before I moved to Arkansas, before I met my son’s father and fled back to Missouri with my toddler in tow.  This ring signifies the hope of my early adulthood, and wears its tarnish about as well as I do.

I own lots of rings.  A gold and garnet one that my sister gave me to go with our mother’s pin which I got at her death.  A little blue topaz that I bought for ten dollars somewhere.  My second husband’s wedding ring from his first marriage, which I no longer recall why I have.  A moonstone, a fancy dinner ring with an astonishing cluster of sapphires, a garnet that I had made under circumstances that don’t bear discussion.   I have others, too numerous to mention.  In fact, I own a ridiculous, embarrassing number of rings considering that I only have the ten digits. 

I suppose the shape of rings fascinates me.  Perhaps it’s just their beauty.  Perhaps it’s the symbolism that we attach to rings:  Promise rings, wedding rings, class rings, the ring of an important person over which one would bend in times of old.  So many unbroken circles.  I take my rings off; I slide them back onto my hands.  I gaze with fascination at the glitter of stones and the bend of metal.  They seem so perfect, and absolute perfection is something to which, I admit, I aspire in vain.  I cannot attain such beautiful, breathtaking symmetry as the circle; and so I wear these bands and wonder whether anyone else will understand their appeal when silence falls around the box in which they wait to be discovered after I am gone.

It’s the third day of the one-hundred and twentieth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

 

Quiet in the village

The other day someone told me that they wanted to try to forego complaining for a year as I had pledged to do.  I reminded them that I had reached the end of my tenth year and still had not accomplished my goal.

Maybe a month? she asked.  I replied, Try a day.   If you make it for a day, try another day.

We shared a laugh and then she continued away from the place where our lives had intersected.  I stood at the counter in the artist cooperative which I just founded.  I looked around at the smattering of customers, feeling fatigue grip my soul.  I leaned against the sturdy library tabletop that my friend Michelle used to make our cashier stand.  I let my eyes close for a second, leaning into the pain which daily surges through my legs and the other pain, low in my back, which charts the forward march of my spinal stenosis.

This morning, Michelle texted to ask how I felt.  No bombs falling on my village, I responded.  She agreed that we indeed fare better than those in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Russia.  We’ve made it past Thanksgiving and Christmas hovers on the horizon.   Whatever the state of our health, all is quiet in the surrounding winter air.   Soon this year will fade into our memories, leaving only the stark lowlights and breathtaking highlights as bewildering evidence of twelve long and often mediocre moon cycles.

As the migrating birds begin to appear in the fields of Andrus Island, I contemplate my journey westward six years ago come December.  If I am the sum of all the pieces and parts of my experiences, my tapestry falls tattered on the bed but still warms my aching bones.  My clumsy weaver’s hands have done their best to fashion an enduring fabric, though the warp and weft be crooked and ragged.

Last night’s the harvest moon wanes as it climbs over the meadow.  I stare at its brightness.   I close my eyes and rock.  I feel my spirit follow the flow of time downriver.  It reaches the Bay and continues westward, to the ocean, to eternity, to the pale light on the rippling water that will rock me to a gentle slumber.

It’s the twenty-seventh day of the one-hundred and nineteenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Sunset over the Pacific, September 2023.