Grasping at Grace (and Growth)

Forty-Two Years Ago ...

... I was recovering from 54 hours of labor, and my son was recovering from his first tough job - the aforementioned 54 hours of labor. 

We both labored hard over the next few decades to be mother and son. It got tough at certain points, with a lot of yelling and tears. 

But we also laughed hard together, and listened to music together, and loved anime together, and appreciated surreal humor together. 

I watched him make music as a natural talent, write for and perform in radio plays, bring people to tears of laughter in those plays, and also in traditional theater. I watched as he worked through his own troubles and come out on the other side. I watched him learn how to ask for help, and how to take criticism and own his mistakes, and fall down and get back up. 

I rejoiced when he married Emily, my lovely daughter-in-law, I missed him when they headed out to Seattle eight-plus years ago, and rejoiced again when they came home to the Midwest, to Chicago. 

Today, Andy has two sons of his own, and he is as good a father as his dad was and is. I am so very proud of him. 

Happy Birthday, Andrew Louis MacNeill Berlien. You make the world so much brighter. 

Syllable by Syllable

This was the second day I got up early enough to spend 30 minutes writing and another 10 minutes listening to people talk about writing. I'm really pleased that I did it. As of now I have almost 800 words done on that critical scene that's causing me so much difficulty, and even if I end up ditching some of those words, I'm still writing. 

The only problem is my glacially slow pace. There are folks out there who could push out that 800-word total in 30 minutes. I'm not one of them. I'm still wondering how many days it's going to take to bring this scene into reality. Every word is like pulling hen's teeth.

Well, that's not the only problem. I'm almost ready to pitch all 800 words and try again. I rarely feel that way, and it's not something that I do. One of the reasons I work so slowly is that I edit, re-edit, and re-re-edit as I go. First drafts? Second drafts? Nope, that's not how I write, and at my age, I don't think I'm about to change. So when things actually make it from my brain onto the page and undergo my as-I-go editing, I'm loath to throw out anything. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to try to get up early and take a look at what I've written so far and seriously decide whether to keep it or pitch it and try again. 

At least it'll take my mind off my colonoscopy prep. Heh. 

Unclench My Jaw

Bob often looks at me when I'm irritable about something, or worried about it, or both, and very gently says "Relax your jaw." It's good advice. I mean, I don't really clench my jaw, at least not noticeably. Mentally, however, my jaw is often so tightly clenched that I'm amazed my head doesn't break apart in little shards and pieces. So I try to keep his advice in mind. 

Huh. I just realized that my physical jaw is actually quite tightly clenched. Bad Kathy - unclench your damn jaw!

Seriously, I am dour, pessimistic, and prone to rage. While the latter has diminished noticeably thanks to a very effective prescription, I don't expect that I'll ever be blessed with Buddha-like calm. 

Still, if I can remember to unclench my jaw on a daily basis, I might be able to save my molars and my mental health. Heh. 

Several Things Make Some Sort of List

I am tired of not getting to sleep unless I have painkillers and/or small amounts of edibles in me. That's to handle my bloody right hip. It becomes even more tiring when my bad back (right side) decides to act up at the same time. I'm about to break out the heating pad or an ice pack; can't quite figure out which to try first.

Bob and I can still entertain! We had Shiny, the child of our heart, over for supper and post-meal conversation. Squash pie and whipped cream for dessert. One steak we were able to split into three servings, Bob's mashed potatoes, which we used to feed a teenage Shiny when they were still the little one our son was dating in high school, a child desperately in need of at least relatively stable adult parental figures. She (at the time, she was she) was taking care of a wonderful father whose parenting skills were rough, and needed people to take care of her. That care included feeding her because she didn't have much to feed herself, and she loved Bob's mashed potatoes. One name change and a new life's journey later, Shiny still loves those potatoes. There were a lot of hugs and catching up to do. 

Regarding the aforementioned squash pie; I'm inordinately pleased with myself. I baked two acorn squash, then pureed the cooked squash and used it to make the pie. All in one day, mind you. And yes, I'm patting myself on the back, or at least on the top of my very own pointy head for doing all that in one day. 

Even though nearly all the sunflowers in our neighbor's parkway garden have gone to seed, there are still a few blooms making my day a tiny bit brighter. And the win continues to blow them all around. I love the wind, at least at this level of strength. 

I had to call one of my banks today, to find out why the debit card they were supposed to have issued me about three weeks ago hadn't arrived. The guy checked; yes, the people I spoke to back then had stopped the card that had been hacked and no, they never issued a new card. He issued one and sent it out on an expedited basis. He even waived the usual cost of expediting, and made an official complaint on my behalf about the lack of service I got initially. Huzzah!

And there you have it, my Tuesday and my Wednesday. 

It's Going on Fall ...

... and yet I'm thinking of making some gazpacho soup. I can't decide whether to make one that uses a beef broth base, or a completely vegetarian one with a vegetable and tomato broth base. I won't be able to undertake either tomorrow, because Bob and I are going to be up in Glenview, taking care of the kids while Andy and Emily are at an afternoon poetry slam (and why not?) but perhaps later in the week. 

One thing I did cook up today was some applesauce. I've had a couple of different varieties of apples slowly turning into wizened wonders and didn't even smell like apples anymore. They did smell like plant life, which probably sounds gross, but wasn't. I added white and brown sugar, a fair amount of cinnamon, some nutmeg and a little mace to the pot, then had to add a fair amount of lemon juice, since I overdid the sugar. The end result is acceptable to me, and I'll enjoy having some for breakfast or lunch tomorrow.

I've been gradually creating another music playlist; it's now a little over five hours in length, which my Kpop friends tell me is small potatoes. They have Spotify lists that are 12, 16, or even more hours in length. My playlists are solely from songs I've got on my hard drive, so I'm pleased with what I'm putting together.  I do have some older playlists that have reached eight hours in length, but I find that I'm always more interested in lists into which I've placed my most recent musical acquisitions than the old lists. I should probably get rid of some of my older lists.

I woke up this morning with the kind of headache that I just know came from changing air pressure, since we're having a lot of hot and cold fronts move into our area. The overnight weather insists that we'll be having thunderstorms from now until 9 a.m. tomorrow Promises, promises ....

Seventy One

That's my age now. I've been making the joke all day; "I don't feel a day older than 70, even though I am, in fact, one day older than 70."

I told Bob that my hope is that I can live at least another 12 years; that would make Harlan 17 when I kick off - old enough to remember me relatively clearly as he grows up. Julian would be 14, which is almost too young (I remember being 14 when my grandfather died, but there's a distance to the memory.) I hope I could actually make it 14 more years; Julian might remember me better at the age of 15.

Yes, I've reached the time of my life when mortality is rolling toward me pretty nonstop. 

I amuse myself. 

And I've had a good day. 

Andy came down with a pretty chill Julian and took me (and Bob) out to our favorite diner, Alexander. Julian charmed the waitresses, there weren't many other folks in the place, which kept Julian from being overstimulated, and the food was the best kind of diner food - tasty and undoubtedly terrible for our health. 

During lunch, my brother emailed me to tell me Happy Birthday and to send me a gift. The gift was definitely more than I expected, and it will come in handy now that we have to take the car in to get the brakes fixed tomorrow morning. Bob will be taking the car in: he's got the strength to force the dying brakes to work for the four blocks between our place and the garage. I simply don't have the strength. I'll still be crossing my fingers when he drives over there, because lacking brakes in city traffic is not something to laugh at. At all. 

Since Andy dropped the two of us back home, I've drifted more or less happily between the office and the kitchen, doing some cleaning in the latter and trying to catch up with reading in the former. 

Looking Back and Moving Forward

It's been a quarter century. And it happened only yesterday. 

The clear blue sky and the steel grey buildings, abruptly adorned with blossoming red-black fire and death. 

The knowledge, bone deep, that something horribly momentous had happened, that it would change the world for the worse. 

And even as smoke rose above shattered buildings and bodies, above the dust that was once an accountant, a chef, a mother, a son, all beloved, we came together to grieve. 

We came together.

We put an American flag in our window and kept it there for some time. In doing so, we joined with people whose worldview was nothing like ours. 

But we broke apart. 

And the broken pieces of our country are still un-annealed, still shards of humanity drawing blood against each other. 

We're back to hating each other, hating each other's polices, hating each other's leaders, and forgetting how we came together on Sept. 11, and Sept. 12, Sept. 13 and for a few precious days and weeks after the fall of the towers, how we put our arms around each other.

But it's not too late. 

I try to remember every year, that I must not hate. I must remember to look for the fairy of hope in the Pandora's box that was thrown open on that day. 

I must remember the humanity of those I can't agree with. I must hold out my arms, in my heart as well as in the daily world, to people who may hate me, to those who don't understand me, and to people who don't live here in the United States. 

To people who live in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Britain, France, Canada, China, South Korea and everywhere around this globe. Those mortally wounded towers, that injured Pentagon, the horrendously ploughed field in Pennsylvania when victims rose up and brought a plane down - they affected the entire world and we can't forget that. 

We can't heal ourselves unless we reach out to the world and say "We'll move forward, together with you. We will grieve with you,and share the grief you have felt in the quarter century since that day. We will move forward, knowing that we must, and we can, with everyone's help. 

Let Sept. 11 be more than the necessary reading of names (and those remembrances are holy, even to an agnostic like me). Let it be a starting point, finally, after all these years, of a journey to something better. 

Labor Day

On Labor Day, I used to write heartfelt posts about the importance of the day, and the need to stand up for workers' rights. 

I'm older now, and more tired, more cynical about what Labor Day means here in one of the only nations that doesn't celebrate May Day. I'm sure you can understand my weariness in this time of Trump 2.0, when no one is treated with respect unless they are multi-millionaires at the very least.

Corruption, greed, and the cowardice that allows the first two to flourish rule the U.S. right now, and I know that the grifters taking advantage of that loss of democracy are the same ones who routinely abuse people in their power if that abuse dumps more money into their own bank accounts.

They are the people who wreck employees' lives without a second thought in order to squeeze more money out of workers' wallets, so that they can put it in their own pockets.

They are the people who see that their economic decisions - to close a factory here, to fight unionization efforts there, to make certain that dangerous conditions at workplaces big or small continue without accountability over here, because cutting corners means more profits in the ledger - are never questioned, never reversed by people who know those decisions are rotten, but want to keep on the billionaires' good side.

They are the people who have so much money that they really don't need any more, but who can't function unless they're making just one more dollar, just one more million dollar pay-off to themselves.

I Was (Generally) Right

One last gripe about the cicadas - which, delightfully, I cannot hear this afternoon - and I will be done. '

Simply and shortly, I wasn't the only person to ask about both the number of cicadas and their volume. 

I am now satisfied. 

Moving Pictures

I'm going to try to post video. It shows the entire audience singing "Arirang" a segment of which is part of "Body to Body," the opening song on their new album Arirang. "Arirang" is a folk song that is deeply rooted in Korean culture - so much so that the country's Japanese colonizers and oppressors forbade its singing. Putting it in their song was a way of telling the world that they are part of Korea, and proud to take its culture to the larger world.

Decibels and Delight

It was the loudest concert I've ever attended. I've attended three Springsteen concerts, and none of them even approached the sound I heard Friday night. 

It was also amazing, despite my occasional urge to clap hands over ears. I never did that, by the way, because I wanted to hear everything going on down on the immense four-armed BTS stage at Chicago's Soldier Field. 

Amazing is such an overworked word, though. Breathtaking or astonishing are probably better. I'd add extraordinary, but from what I can glean from the ARMY members with whom I spent much of yesterday, it's not right, because every concert BTS puts on reaches the kinds of auditory and spiritual levels that I experienced. 

And yes, I'm coupling auditory and spiritual, because - quite a bit to my own surprise - the sound attained a spiritual connection for me. That was obviously what happened with dedicated ARMY members. It wasn't something I expected to have happen within me. 

It was what the group of men performing generated in their audience, their fans, their ARMY, that amazed me. When an estimated 70,000 people of all ages, all genders and all skin colors, could scream so loud my ears hurt as the night went on then turn around and sing together with the group they watched, it hit me hard. I didn't realize that until nearly the end of the concert, when they sang "Mikrokosmos."

That's a song from one of their 2019 EPs. It's a beautiful piece of music, and the lyrics speak about stars in the sky and people as stars; about people being there for each other and making each star shine even more brightly. 

I found myself tearing up as I heard the entire stadium sing along, whether they knew the Korean words or not. That truly caught me by surprise and threw me off balance. Why did this hit me when I'd spent the rest of the evening simply appreciating the music and dance on an intellectual level?

Possibly because the entire night's performances had been creeping up on me all unnoticed, drawing me closer to some kind of emotional understanding that I'd been certain I wouldn't reach. What a surprise for someone who told her husband earlier this year that I was going as an expensive form of BTS research; for someone who quite deliberately insisted that I was not ARMY, nor would I ever be ARMY. I was so sure of all of that.  

Dolly and Tim

Dolly Parton and Tim Curry have both died at the age of 80, and on the same day. In many ways they couldn't have been more different, but there were ways in which they were very similar. 

Both were sui generis; no one out there was like Dolly Rebecca Parton, with her song-writing ability, her voice like liquid glass, her acting chops, her fearlessness - she gave not a fig about what people thought of her fashion sense, or her towering blonde wigs - her warmth and her willingness to use her good fortune to help others. 

Nor was anyone out there like Tim Curry, with his own unforgettable voice, his beautifully rubbery face, his ability to play erotic weirdos, terrifying horrors, and comedic villains, among other characters. Nor did he let the stroke that paralyzed him change the way he looked at the world. 

I'm so sorry both of them are gone.