Memories of a green-eyed girl

No profound words, just sweet memories.
     Cissy and I driving back from a vacation in Maine, stopped dead in turnpike traffic, engines and drivers growling, irritation hanging over the highway like exhaust, horns beeping, people yelling. And Cissy, reaching into her suitcase and pulling out one of those dime-store bottles of bubbles that you blow through a little plastic circle. Bubbles floating down the stalled interstate, children reaching out of their windows, laughter rising, a barometric change starting, Cissy laughing and blowing more bubbles.
     Cissy, just rousing from a surgery to save her life, the fuzzy stuffed cat I’d given her under her arm, smiling, her eyes green as the sea.
     Dawn at a remote campsite on Lake Umbagog, no creatures around us but moose. I zip open my tent and see… nothing. Fog has set in like cataracts. I can’t even see Cissy’s tent feet away. Finally I hear her stir. We grope toward each other, then grope toward the picnic table we know is somewhere nearby so we can make coffee. Then, we stumble toward the lake, steaming mugs in hand, stand at the edge of the water and wait until first the shrouded lake is revealed, then the far shore, then the trees, as if we are watching a Polaroid develop, standing there together in speechless awe.
     Don’t’ get me wrong. She was human like all of us. She could be prickly and maddening and I know we drove each other crazy sometimes.
     But the bigger part of her was loving and giving and generous to a fault, blower of bubbles, giver of gifts, lover of life.
     Tomorrow, her brother Richard arrives to execute her estate, which I am sure he will do ably and lovingly. Plans for any services will be given as soon as they’re determined.
     Today, Rick and I spent most of the day in the garden, pulling up old landscape fabric, yanking out last year’s weeds, roto-tilling the soil into tidy little rows, trying desperately and in vain to impose order on our helplessness.

There must be some mistake…

     “Let me be the first to say ‘Happy Birthday’ as you approach your 65^th birthday,” began a letter addressed to me.
     Wait. I’m turning 65? Oh, yea, I guess I am. In just a few months. It just doesn’t seem possible.
     It was my first solicitation from a broker interested in selling me products to supplement Medicare, and I’m told I can expect dozens more.
     I’m also told wading through the Medicare maze is not for the faint of heart. Two of the smartest women I know – a medical physicist and a retired high-ranking editor from the Boston Globe, both recently 65 – told me independently they were both flummoxed by the assortment and variety of plans proffered by would-be Medicare supplementers out there. I’m sure I’ll be getting many more such birthday greetings.
     As of now, I am employed full-time with full medical benefits but, as we all know, anything can happen at any time.
     So, if anyone has any advice on Medicare supplements, send it this way.
     Just don’t start by wishing me happy birthday, please.

The singing Easter Chihuahuas

     This Easter, as we do every year, Rick and I spent the holiday at the home of our friends, the Millers, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
     And this year, as usual, our talented musician friend Alan Greenleaf was among the other guests.
     But this year, for the first time, he brought along his talented “grandsons,” the Chihuahuas Bruiser (2 years old?) and Squirt, 4 months, who sat on the lap of their “mother,” Alan’s 21-year-old daughter Willa, while Alan sang the lovely ballad “Let Me Off at Greenwood Station.”
     You can see the results for yourself.
     Amazing how easily amused are the locals (and their friends) in Peacham, Vermont.

What? An aerobics class where they play Frank Sinatra?

     Today I went to my first “Silver Sneakers” class which, according to my gym club’s website, is meant to provide a gentle workout for older gym-goers.
     I had my suspicions. I recently went to a “Zumba gold” class – described as a slower-paced class for older dancers – and thought I should have been hospitalized afterwards.
     But it was true. I walked into the exercise room and saw… chairs! And really nice people, 20 of ‘em, all, I believe, older than me, which was delightful in itself.
     The teacher started us off with some gentle side-to-side taps, some marching in place, a little mambo action and grapevines – which activity had some of the participants holding on to their chairs as they moved.
     Then we sat down and did some slow, basic free weight exercises – bicep curls, tricep movements, you get the drift – followed by similar exercises using resistance bands and, finally, more stand-up movements and some stretches.
     I never broke a sweat. Not sure I’ll take this class again because it wasn’t quite enough of a challenge, but I loved the way it incorporated free weights, which few classes seem to do.
    And after not picking up a free weight in months, I can tell you I am now SORE right down to my silver sneakers.

Writing for exactly 12 minutes

Spent all day yesterday at Writers Day, sponsored by the New Hampshire Writers Project – and for those of you who are New England writers and don’t belong, I urge you to consider joining (you don’t have to be from New Hampshire).
     One of the workshops included an exercise I had never done before – writing on a theme for exactly 12 minutes. (I don’t know how or why the facilitator, Joni Cole, chose 12, but it seemed to work well.)
     It’s amazing how eloquent some people can be in so short a time, as many of the pieces that were later read blew me away with their uncensored, unfiltered beauty.
     I didn’t read mine, and it’s not sterling prose, but it did bring back a memory that blurred my vision with tears as I wrote. The theme was to think back on something and write about “This is the time when…”  Here was my memory:
     “This is the time when all the magic between us is so palpable. We sat around a campfire, my mother and I, each with a plastic wine glass in hand, sipping and laughing into the night. She was in her late 70s then. The campground was Vista Linda, outside Jemez Springs, New Mexico, and the campsite had a ramada with tiles the color of New Mexico – that kind of peachy adobe and sky-like aqua – and it covered the picnic table next to the tent we had just erected.
     “The night was still and in the distance, just across the shallow river, the Jemez Mountains rose up, and in them were coyotes and snakes and the ghosts of dead Indians, which did not frighten us, as we were part – though not very much – Indians ourselves. The firelight reflected in her face and we may have worn jackets or sweaters against the night chill, and we just laughed and talked  and I’m not even sure about what and it doesn’t matter – memories from my childhood, maybe, or whether she really loved my father – but it wasn’t so much the talk as the being there together in a place we had both come to love, with its mysteries and its starry night sky and the crack of the fire and the smell of the juniper and the dance of the shadows just beyond the perimeter of our sight and the taste of the wine and the sound of her laugh, with her head tossed back, all happy and full. I think we got a little bit drunk that night. I loved her so much.”

Toffee's first visit to the vet

This will be short and sweet.
     I took Toffee to our vet for the first time today (she had already seen other vets for early vaccinations and spaying while she was still a rescue dog) and I feel like the mom whose daughter has just been named homecoming queen.
     While we were in the waiting area, all three of the women who work behind the counter, one by one, had to come out and play with her and proclaim her unbearably cute. Then they called in the vet tech, who came out, got her share of puppy licks, and agreed on same.
     Then the vet – a kind-eyed and effervescent woman whom I have come to really like – gave her a distemper and lime disease shot (without incident) and said she was not only really cute, she was adorable. (Rick’s genes, I guess…)
     She guessed Toffee to be a hound-lab mix (not the shepherd mix we were told) and thought she would end up at some 60 pounds.
     I’ll take every ounce.

The begging woman

     I had gone into a grocery store in Woburn, Mass. to buy flowers for a friend. Leaving, I walked through the automatic doors just behind another shopper pushing her full grocery cart.
     A woman standing outside near the entrance turned to us both. She was slim, maybe 50, with lank hair and a distraught expression, her mouth set in a small grim line, like a hyphen.
     “Can you spare…” she began, but the other shopper pushed past, as I normally do, shaking her head “no” vigorously.
     I headed for my car but something made me turn back. The woman was crying.
     I went over. “What did you ask?” I said.
     “I asked if you could spare some money for food,” she said, the tears still spilling.
     So I did something I’ve never done before.  I said yes, and reached into my purse. I had $30 that was supposed to last until my next paycheck in two weeks. I gave her $10.
     “I’m sorry it’s not more,” I said.
     She thanked me, saying I had no idea what this meant to her and went into the store.
     I know, I know, what so many of us think. She’s just going to use it for drugs or alcohol. She should get a job and earn her keep like the rest of us.
     But I know what it’s like to lose a job. And if she used it to buy a bottle of wine, well, that might easily be what I would have used it for, too. I truly don’t care what she did with it. I just felt better having done it.
     What I wish now is that I had said, “Get a grocery cart,” then gone with her through the store as she filled it with items she – or maybe she and her family – needed, before paying for it.
     And I should have given her the flowers.