The end of the Cissy times as we knew them

Today is the last day that anyone who knew or loved Cissy Taylor will set foot in her Manchester, N.H. condo – the site of countless Derby Day parties, Christmas Eve “orphan” gatherings and other occasions of gaiety and good will. Her brother Richard, executor of her estate, closes on the condo this morning and – after seven months of valiantly executing her wishes – leaves for the long drive back to Ruskin, Fla. Last night, five of us took him out to dinner to thank him and wish him well. Suddenly, it all seems so final. I looked around the table last night at the well-wishers gathered there and thought about how it is so often one person who glues a group together, who brings them face to face when they otherwise might never meet, and Cissy was the one who united all of us present. And I thought about how easy it would be to lose touch with those good people now that she is gone. And how that would be an insult to her memory and a loss for each of us. Several of us exchanged contact information and vowed we would not let that happen. I hope we don’t. So, Godspeed, Richard, and to all of Cissy’s friends, hope to see you soon.

Varieties of prayer

The boy was maybe 4 or 5, and he was kneeling on the doorstep of a house that belonged to a dead man when Rick happened to drive by. His hands were folded in prayer, while his parent sat in a waiting car nearby. He was praying for Robert Young, “the man by the side of the road” who had been killed in a freak accident earlier this fall. Robert Young had endeared himself to many with his daily, friendly waves to all the motorists who drove past his house on busy Route 102. The child, apparently, had been one of them. Now, he was doing the one thing that seems to help in the face of inexplicable loss: offering up the pain and confusion to something higher. Then there was our friend Larry “Big Thunder” Schertzer, who joined a group of us celebrating Thanksgiving in Vermont. Larry is a man without an address – not homeless, exactly, but someone who moves from friend to friend, relative to relative, to work and make his sculptures and play his trumpet and move on. On that dazzlingly sunny, sweet-aired day that was this year’s Thanksgiving, he slipped away from the celebrants for a few moments and went outside, where he strolled a bit then lifted his arms to the sky in some kind of prayerful acknowledgement. Then there’s my version. Earlier today, I sat myself on my meditation zafu (a position I do not assume nearly often enough) and let my thoughts go, while my senile old dog whimpered softly downstairs and a cool breeze wafted through the window and I could send loving thoughts to everyone from my dearest friends to the public official I wrote about who would love to run me out of town. Seems to me it doesn’t much matter what form our prayers take, as long as we offer them.

The 64-year-old virgin: Following his bliss

The 64-year-old virgin: Following his bliss: Met a very cool young man at a Thanksgiving gathering in Vermont. He was sitting across from me at a long, family-style table taking in all ...

Following his bliss

Met a very cool young man at a Thanksgiving gathering in Vermont. He was sitting across from me at a long, family-style table taking in all the conversation around him but not contributing much himself. He had thick, dark hair, a square chin and a handsome face and I tried to engage him with a standard question about what he did for a living. He gave a little half-sigh and said he had been an engineer for years, had been employed by the state of Vermont for most of that time, and had worked mandatory long hours and made a ton of money. Then he had worked as an engineer for a green environmental outfit, again working long hours, before he decided to chuck it all. Now he was doing what he loved -- potting -- and he showed me a picture on his iPhone of a table full of voluptuous bowls, vases, urns and other creations, most done in the soft blues and greens he favored. He had also bought a parcel of land, he said, and his dream was to move out of the rented house he was living in, build up a farm on that property and do his potting there. He certainly wasn't making the money he used to, he said, but he was a happy man. I would guess he wasn't yet 30. I love meeting someone who is not only young, but wise.

The power of neighborhood

The plot is an old one, invoked in countless books and movies: Giant corporation seeks to buy up land in order to exploit it for its (fill in the blank) value, offers outrageous sums of money to (usually impoverished) current landowners, pits neighbor against neighbor and either gets run out of town or prevails. But now, that real-life movie is playing in my state. The big corporation in this case is Hydro-Quebec, the world’s largest producer of hydroelectric energy, and it seeks to run a huge transmission line down the backbone of New Hampshire so it can sell power not to folks in this state but to locales SOUTH of here. This weekend, I spent some time with my friends Daryl and Brad and heard for the first time about how some of the New Hampshirites in the path of the proposed pass have been reacting to the plan. And that would be, not well. Three or so years ago, Daryl and Brad built their dream house in Colebrook, N.H., on a site chosen for its remoteness, hunting opportunities, beauty and privacy. They’d barely had a chance to get fully unpacked when they learned that Hydro-Quebec was planning this project, and that Northern Pass towers would march right across their front yard if it went through. So they did want many leading characters in such dramas do – they decided to fight, and to reach out to their neighbors (many of whom they’d never met) to join them. That’s how they met an elderly woman I’ll call Ella, who lives on just hundreds of dollars a month but would rather spit in her shoe than accept the $800,000-plus Hydro-Quebec was willing to give her for her modest property. And a farmer down the road who was offered more than a million for his property but declined, saying he wouldn’t know what to do with a million dollars but he sure knew what to do with the land he’d grown up on. Daryl and Brad themselves have hosted neighbors and state lawmakers for meetings to talk about ways to fight the plan – and to remind themselves there is strength in solidarity. While Hydro-Quebec tells homeowners who refuse to sell that they might end up staring at towers anyway, without the money some of their neighbors have accepted, the hold-outs tell each other that if enough of them say no, the project cannot proceed. Rick and I went through a smaller-scale version of such a battle years back, when a developer was threatening to put in a 13-unit subdivision next to us, practically using a shoe-horn to maximize the number of buildings he could fit on the acreage. We gathered neighbors together, looked for opportunities to fight, learned that the land had once been sprayed with lead arsenate when it was an orchard and passed that information on to our Planning Board. When the developer learned how much it would cost to clean up the lead arsenate, he high-tailed it and the property is now under easement and can never be developed. The power of neighborhood. May it work for the likes of Daryl, Brad, Ella and whomever else holds respect for the land above money.

A break in the clouds

I haven’t written a blog for two weeks now. I’ve been a little on the blue side – maybe having to do with turning 65 and the approach of winter (in so many ways), a sickly dog, working hard. But last weekend came a break in the clouds. It was the annual get-together of Rick’s childhood and high school friends, who call themselves the Loons – hence, a “reloonion.” Most people there were in their 60s, with a couple in their 50s. One is on crutches after almost having died from an infection, and a hospital’s mistake, last year. Another was recuperating from a hip replacement. Another walks with pain from chronic neuropathy in her feet. But there were two notable exceptions – Nuala, who’s maybe 4, and her sister, Fiona, 13 months, the only kids present. They are the children of one of the Loons – a man also in his 60s – who met a woman at church after the end of his unhappy marriage, fell in love, remarried and sired these gorgeous girls. I spent part of Sunday with Fiona in my arms, entertaining her while her parents finished eating breakfast at the restaurant where we’d all met for a farewell meal. I walked her around, bouncing her in my arms, and watched her big blue eyes while I showed her pictures on the wall, lights on the ceiling, plants hanging from baskets – pretty mundane stuff. But to her they were sources of great wonder. I think wonder is something I need more of in my life, especially as I get older. Maybe we all do. “Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder,” E. B. White wrote, in a quote Rick has taped to our bathroom mirror. Last Sunday, I encountered it. I plan to keep looking for more.

The power of pennilessness

Earlier this week, Rick and I refinanced our mortgage (to a sweet 3 percent) and one of the conditions of the deal was that I close all my credit card accounts except one. This was quite agreeable to me, as I have far too many credit cards and use them far too freely, almost as though charging something made it free. But I had misunderstood which of the credit cards the bank was allowing me to keep and, days before the closing, I had paid off and closed that account myself. Which meant that, as of Monday, I had NO credit cards and – my payday being almost two weeks away – no money, except a little spare change. So, unless I hit up my husband for cash, I had no way to fill my gas tank to get to work, no way to take advantage of that incredible laptop offer I saw on craigslist, no way to purchase airplane tickets for a holiday trip to Michigan, no way to go out to dinner with the girls, no way to do anything except – outrageous thought – live within my means. I decided to try to do exactly that. I am still sitting with the feelings this condition generates. Rebellion. A sickly kind of panic. Some childish anger. Fear (don’t a lot of us worry we are destined to be bag ladies?). And, grudgingly, liberation. The tire of my Honda had a nail in it and this afternoon, I took it to my mechanic to be repaired. The bill was $10. I didn’t have $10. I wrote a post-dated check. And I couldn’t help but think, this is how so many people in the world live, hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck – but also so much better than many people in the world live. At least I have that paycheck coming next week. At least I have someone who would readily help me if I asked. I’m still trying to decide if I will even apply for another credit card later. Perhaps absurdly, the image of a backpacker comes to mind. Though I have only backpacked once, I love the metaphor of it – carrying everything one needs on one’s own back. Maybe, finally, I can learn to do that with money.

Meeting Fatuma

She was standing alone at a temporary bus stop on Hazen Drive in Concord, N.H., waiting for the shuttle that would take her downtown for a rally featuring President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton. She looked very young, very black and very beautiful and she stood shivering in jeans, stylish boots, a shirt and blazer, in weather only in the 40s. I describe myself as an independent voter, but with a rare chance to see two presidents at once, I had come to the same bus stop with a group of friends to attend the rally and we struck up a conversation with the shivering young woman. My friend Miriam offered to lend her a spare down coat, which she gratefully accepted, donned and pulled tight around her body. Her name was Fatuma, she said, in perfect but accented English, and she was originally from Uganda. Only as we stood together in the interminable line to get in to the rally did I learn the rest of her story. She had been in the country for five years, and had been a citizen for one. She was 27. She had come from a small village in Uganda that was so insular some people never left it, but she had gone on to university and had graduated with a degree in communications and journalism. She went to work for a publication where she had done a major story on corruption in Uganda and the aftermath had forced her to leave the country – and everyone she knew, including all of her family. Supporters had provided her with some money and, along with some of her own savings, she took it and headed for America, alone, with only the name of a friend of a friend who might be willing to provide her a place to stay. The friend of the friend did provide a place, but along with it came travails she was reluctant to discuss, and she ended up having to leave. She was now living on her own in an apartment in Lowell, working for Visiting Nurses and hoping to go back to school to become a nurse. She was also working her heart out as a volunteer for people she believed in, like Obama and Democratic Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. She wanted to support people who believed in women’s rights, she said. She stood slightly in front of us at the rally, which turned out to be so large (14,000 people, the largest political rally ever held in New Hampshire) that none of us ever actually saw the two speakers. But we could see her – all five feet or so of her – and how she held her smart phone above the crowd to capture the scene and the important words coming through the speakers and how she jumped with enthusiasm at a phrase that captured her hopes and how she held up her small arms and waved her support across the masses of people between her and the speakers. After the rally, when a shuttle dropped us off at the same parking lot, we all hugged her goodbye, smitten with her youth, her courage and her conviction. I plugged her cell phone and email address into my phone and told her we would have her for dinner. She said she’d love that. But not as much, I think, as we will love having her.

After the storm

Four or five huge trees in our side yard came down during Sandy and one grazed the house but caused no damage. The electricity was out for less than 24 hours and our small generator kept food in the refrigerator from spoiling. We used camp lanterns to see and cooked leftovers on a one-burner butane stove. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the ice storm that knocked out our power for a week one recent year, or the Nor’Easter that took it down for five days. And of course, it was nothing, nothing, like what people in New York and New Jersey had to face. If anything, the storm taught me gratitude. It taught me how much I take for granted every day – like being able to flush a toilet, or flick a switch and have a room fill with light – and even about things I don’t take for granted, like having a newly chain-sawed stack of wood, thanks to Mother Nature’s pruning. And when I heard what had happened to one of Rick’s customers, it taught me something even bigger. The customer is middle-aged, owner of a large car dealership, well-off and, by Rick’s account, a good human being. During the storm, he was riding in the back seat of his SUV, with his two grown sons in the front, when a 20-inch pine came slamming down and crushed the back of the vehicle. He is now in intensive care at a Boston hospital, in an induced coma. I can’t stop thinking about him or his family, or about the thing that most of us take for granted every day – being alive.