Accept yourself.talesforlife

Photos by Cynthia Guenther Richardson

It happens to me often and here it was again as we moved through the scenery. Beguilement.

Expansive views of the acreage of Asheville, North Carolina’s Biltmore Estate (built in 1895 and owned by the George Vanderbilt family known for their shipping and railroad empires) are majestic and bucolic. They thrill the eye, the sweeping views evocative of tranquil order, supported by nature and hidden human industry. I absorbed each vista with breathless anticipation of the next bend we would round. It wasn’t so much being impressed by the property as being impacted by the changing scenes. Each bigger picture was mesmerizing in breadth and scope. I could have looked and looked and never been satiated. Such plenitude of detail that at moments I could hardly absorb it all. Even withstand it. That’s just how it is for me. I’m certain it’s the same for others, especially those who have a passion to observe, to know more intimately what they see.

Not that it was overwhelming in a deleterious way. The copious beauty was varied and intense. There is something within me that, though filling up to overflowing expands further for more. I feel hunger for it all, want it imprinted within. And to partake of any wisdom moving beneath the robust and delicate scenes. For what my eyes see, ears hear–they teach me things. Our senses are gifts, conduits to greater understandings, not just of a moment but of complex universal designs. I follow my eye and instincts to discover an abundance of intrigue.

But I need to dismantle it a little. I take camera in hand and as all who love visual arts, focus on separate tableaus with their telltale clues, delights. Eye/mind/soul zero in on minute parts, look into shadows. Seek one cloud’s shape within greater configurations. Each piece is cohesive in its specificity, sometimes even more so than the extended view. They all have value; I am drawn in by a propulsive curiosity. I want to see well the exterior but also find an interior liveliness that is like a secret. It’s a treasure hunt for mind and senses. Any moment can harbor possibility and that is the real magnet that draws me. I can define an object before me , but what does it mean? How did/does it function in space and time? What matters or mattered about it within a garden, in a room, a life?

This is what attracts me in daily living: about everything. Put another way, what exists in this present can well hold my attention, but what has captivating potential–and everything does–is a series of magic doors I seek to open. If a glimpse offers a story, even a tiny one, I have been granted access to a journey that leads to challenges, a certain enchantment and most often, fulfillment. I can’t really lose. All of life is a story within another story within another, like Russian nesting dolls or better yet, a puzzle that is partially solved while added to over time.

I used to pretend being a reporter when I was a kid. I sat at a child-sized roll top desk with cubbyholes, took notes of various household and neighborhood goings on, filed them away in their slots and  folders. Diaries to detail more thoughts and experiences were required. I wrote and produced plays with neighborhood buddies and tried in vain to charge admission. We attempted full make up and ragtag costumes and hung a sheet for a curtain. We had decent turnouts. And then there would be a brief song on the radio which evoked extemporaneous movements–lo, a dance unleashing its tale. There was always something to hear, see, smell, taste, touch–and to read! and a cohort to do things with!– that jogged an expressive impulse. Take the navy, wide brimmed hat with sheer white and pink flowers at the ribbon my mother made with her own hands. It settled onto her silvery hair. It had presence all its own as she wore it; it did things with her. Another story idea.

Let’s take dolls as inspiration. Owning some of the first Barbie dolls was a blast.  I became stage manager and director of their adventures. I’d get the big square floor pillow–brown corduroy–and then cover a matchbox with a handkerchief for a couch or bed, bring in rocks, twigs and grass for a yard, sneak my mother’s fancy scarves to create exotic wardrobes and floor covering. The finishing touches were always changing but each mattered in that moment.  (I know, it’s not PC these days to say I enjoyed playing with Barbie and gang. She did not do dishes and Ken did not mow lawns. It’d now likely be demoted to mere play therapy as well, sadly.) Barbie et al and I got all sorts of events going; those dolls unlocked ideas and enlarged experiences like crazy. They led lives with fine sensibilities but had a talent for spontaneous fun. Or I should say it seemed they did but I was the supposed director.

It took very little to have a good time. From seemingly nothing could come anything at all. A sunny spot by or even under the scarred baby grand piano was a world to be reckoned with, mine to develop and claim. A starry night and a blanket. A cozy camp out within evergreens.

The back yard, with its shade trees and pines and bushes made a great stage but so did various living rooms and bedrooms, a porch or park or back steps. I didn’t even have to make much up, though. Tall tales unfolded all around me as life was textured and colored with people, places, events. I was charmed and mystified by myriad scenes, found them dramatically provocative of ideas and emotions. There still might arise an urge to embroider it–seeing an abandoned plaid, overstuffed chair or a cafe umbrella shading a person at a table whose single booted foot and “talking” hand were seen. Something had already happened, was happening or was about to happen. And I wanted to know, even if I had to fill in the gaps.

 

This capacity for probing with problem solving–the urge to learn–is an attribute we all enjoy. It has been a powerful driving force in my everyday life. And because of this, I am never bored. Entertainment is within reach at any given time. There is endless mystery. I am duly humbled by how little I yet know and understand and experience a thrill from ongoing explorations. Even the momentary, least noteworthy ones. Or perhaps those are the best, at times.

It’s all in the details, that was what I was thinking on my power walk today. Walks are interrupted frequently as I pause to examine something. I spot a teal green gate at the side of a rambling house and above it is a heavily leafed branch; amber light is streaming through treetops. There is a soft splash, cat’s whiny meow, breath of wind. Leaves on trees shimmy, almost singing. How all this transfixes me… there is a sense of prescience. But of what? Of life happening and about to happen. Of  intricate connections, from behemoth tree to blades of grass to wooden gate to all creatures to crown of sky and beyond and to this moment. I am flabbergasted by the wonder of it. It is an intimate place in which we live and learn.

I am not naive. I have not lived a breezy, protected life. Surely no one truly does, for so much of what we do and hope for is a grab bag, like it or not. The very beauty that we need to love can hurt beyond measure when we’re vulnerable or anguished. As a young teen I still recall a moment when I experienced the unbounded extraordinariness of just being alive yet also felt  bereft. I stretched my arms around a favorite oak tree and wept. Later I wrote a poem, a terribly adolescent poem, and there is a line that’s stayed with me over 60 years: and yet beauty bites the bleeding heart. I loved so much and easily and still was rent by life’s bitter parts. As we each are.

But nothing is wasted in life; we experience it and let it go or keep it close, even recycle it sooner or later. We reinvent ourselves any way we can and need to do. It is our story to make happen. There is much to be unveiled as breath enters, nourishes microscopic cells, exits the miraculous lungs; while this fist sized muscle of heart beats its tireless rhythms for me. So I listen and watch, reach out, seek more. Wonder visits me like a loving old friend and we root out bits and clues, celebrate even when I get worn out and crabby. I do not want to be careless with the  bounties offered, nor dismiss the grace of moments I am allowed to inhabit. Big picture or small, the scenes of life are ours to unveil.

My visit to the Biltmore Estate gave me a renewed appreciation of my life situation, the assortment of whims, choices, dreams and labors. I left with a more vivid view of settings and circumstances within which the Vanderbilts conducted parts of their lives. The estate might have fleshed out the family more with traces of their individuality, remnants of yearnings. (George man loved books, that was encouraging, and hopefully the women did, as well. ) A visible legacy other than only wealth, with signs of daily interactions, musings and matters of the heart that roiled, pacified and beguiled–those underpinning and perhaps secreted away from such power and industry. I have more investigating to undertake. But I couldn’t help but think of them traversing the stone steps, gliding across endless rooms, seeking solace or joy in the gardens as they spoke in hushed tones. Can we have Act 1 outlined and set up, please?

Then again, maybe I will move on to fleeting moments of lives being lived, scenarios created this very second. Wait, see how the summer light moves across the grass and street? All it takes is observation plus a dash of imagination, same as it did as a kid.

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Create a dream board -talesforlife

A mosey about the neighborhood with the real me; cannot keep me from daily power walking! (No, not my medium-sized mansion in background)

I was struck today by this thought: I may at times, with a sideways glance, look for a way around the inevitability of aging.

This lit up my thinking recently after trying to find a decent and authentic photo for my Facebook account. They tended to look a bit pasty, and as if some stealthy tilling was done along jaw, neck and eyes and then hadn’t tidied up well afterward. I gave up and used the one that is above. It’s authentic–I adore being outdoors! Plus I like seasonal photos. And it’s casual, my basic style these days. And not posed, really, a simple smile. I have a couple that I call my “semi-glamour shots” and they are kind of stagy/cheesy, as if I am expecting to appear on the jacket of a bestselling book shortly. I even took one of me at the computer. Well, that’s where I am much of each day, working on writing. (Pros must photograph those lovely other authors.)

But this was only the first of the triggers for my current ruminations about having once been younger (for quite a good amount of time) and getting older (I am so pleased I made it). And finally, what comes next (hold on awhile as I cram a lot more into my living). But I will get to the other reasons this matter visited me. (It’s not another essay on health issues.)

I realize this thought–that I may be avoiding the reality of aging–is not shocking in youth-centric societies. At least, US culture daily accosts us with a barrage of messages stating that appearing or even acting over the age of 30 or so (i.e., an adult)–or is it now 21?–is undesirable. Perhaps one day to seem more akin to a crime. This brings to mind the seventies film, “Soylent Green”, that disturbing sci fi story that determines various people quite expendable, primarily the aging. Charlton Heston did a bang-up job as our film hero in that year of 2022 (five years away…), a time when overpopulation, environmental crises, and food shortages are deemed of paramount importance. Sound familiar? I read there may be a new version coming out for our pessimistic pleasure.

We are, one has to agree, exhorted to be young– please fake the appearance. Until one’s dying breath, if possible. Our looks, habits, clothing, interests. People remain socially more visible until we start to age discernibly, so the goal is to fool the human eye. (Though I heard someone remark that by late thirties she felt already less visible, was called “Ma’m” as if verging on matronly so required the kid gloves of customer service reserved for older adults). But I am not needing or seeking public scrutiny so this is a relief in the end. I have shone and tarnished, have often rejuvenated and been laissez faire. It’s important how I feel about my life, not the best shot. Yet this culture insists that, as a woman, I am not expected to allow myself to age gradually, naturally and without rancor. It is admittedly a pressure I half-yield to some days. And then I consider that men have so few demands in this regard. I’m for a more level playing field. We are persons first and last, are we not? My husband isn’t forever young, either, and it doesn’t concern him much, if at all.

If it was only young people who were making these rules I might have more conversations with them about it all. I do recall once vividly thinking that “over thirty” was the end and there were moments I did not expect or desire to pass that line. Little did I know that this was the actual start of vaster and better beginnings. But I might ask today’s kids why age seems such a clear marker of human acceptability as well as desirability–and what do their ages actually mean to them in reality, and also to me? How does this impact our respective perceptions, except to bring into focus that we all are at blurred crossroads of one sort or another? But it’s not just young folks, it’s all of us. And it’s such big business, the attempt to stall one’s aging. Companies scheme and undoubtedly shout hurrah as they make their products a little more affordable to a greater population. I personally shop for bargains in face moisturizer but if Lancome (not even close to the most expensive brands) gets cheaper…well, there you go. If only we spent as much time on our insides as we do our outsides. Hopefully, we do, a vast amount more.

Growing up with parents who were older than almost anyone else’s when I was born was not a big deal.  I rarely gave their age a thought. They were busy, ambitious, thoughtful persons until they died at 83 (Dad) and 93 (Mom). I did feel there was a more “ageless” atmosphere at home than in many of my friends. It might have been also due to being last to get born; my oldest sister was thirteen at the time. The age span was fine; it was what I knew.

My parents entertained and my father taught private string lessons after his day job and Mom did alterations on the side so all ages came and went. I was as at ease with older people as I was with younger, perhaps more so. I early learned how to be conversational and courteous as I served coffee and cookies at bridge parties. But I also was included in discussions around a dinner table with astute grown-ups, many of whom were scientists, musicians and educators. Later, I could identify as well with them as with my funky or firebrand friends. It seemed a good thing. Adult interchanges were interesting, whether or not I agreed with or fully comprehended topics. I could ask probing questions; I could offer opinions and be counted.

That inter-generational style of living was repeated, though, in many friends’ homes, as well. We were not as segregated as we are now. Family dinners with as many as possible were common. The truly old were respected, beloved, looked after. They were not left to their own devices or shunted off willy-nilly. Who could afford fancy nursing homes? Who even sought them? They weren’t another part of the big business of aging yet. People took care of their own.

My parents seemed and appeared fine to me in their fifties when I became a teen and far beyond. Their hair was always grayer, then white by the time I hit 21–but there is an early grey-to-whiter hair gene. One niece had long, lovely and mostly white hair by late thirties or so. Others got a characteristic white streak in their twenties. That gene skipped me, the only one to yet have some auburn brown hair striated with silver. Siblings razz me about it. (And by the way, have others noticed young women are lately stripping their hair of natural pigment, then coloring it white-to-silver?–What is that about? A practice run? We older gals should be flattered to be so imitated.)

The parents we had did not grouse about aging. They did not tell me to beware the gnarly ills that awaited me. They were not complainers, true, but they also were lively spirits. I recall my dad sailing a small craft for the first time again in decades when in his sixties. He played tennis with me in his fifties. He took up photography when I was a teen, engaged and bored us with his indexed slide shows of travels they–and we–loved to take whether across the ocean or around the bend. They made music, designed attire, invented games, volunteered at church and elsewhere, went pop-up-camper-style camping until early seventies. I got breathless trying to keep up even though I ran close to the same pace. Their health was problematic at times. Heart disease is the family affair, but that didn’t slow them for long. And they remained lucid as they aged, luckily. How they enriched peoples’ lives, as their friends did, as well.

So what was undesirable, what was wrong with getting older? I truly didn’t see it a liability. We each had our own place, skills and talents and energy and caring to spread around. It wasn’t near what you’d term idyllic. I am not all that nostalgic; there were several trials and losses. They were people who carried burdens, too, as we all can do.

But now I am beginning to think of aging differently. For one thing, my husband has begun to speak of retirement, not yet but sometime in the not-so-distant future. Five years. Perhaps. I stopped working awhile back but he’s a tad younger than I am. It’s a shock to hear him say it, however. From the start of his then-unplanned career when only  20 and still in college he has had a passion for engineering, later landing in management with expertise in quality assurance. I’m not sure how he does the long hours he does. It can worry me. I left my career as a counselor at 63; now I am looking towards 67. It took us awhile to get here. We are supposedly going to soon just hang out together… until those sunset days and nights wind down? Seems like someone else’s story line at times–and will until it materializes in full. I am big on not borrowing from the future when we can inhabit only this moment.

I mentioned a second reason the light bulb went on about avoiding aging: one of our daughters just landed a nice chaplaincy job in management. It’s at a fine assisted living facility. It struck me that she is close to the age, early forties, when I finally left my position managing a thriving home care department in a senior services agency. Whereas she may be edging toward a pinnacle of her career. It seems funny it ended up like this.

I felt pretty young back then. My 350-plus older clients were often frail, with serious health crises and multiple life stressors. I had a calling for that work in much the same way our daughter does. But she is a chaplain while I was just a somewhat besieged mother and wife needing work, then discovered a knack for human services (but still wrote in ragged snippets of time). I fast took to the work as they were some of “my people”; i.e., familiar to me after years of enjoying many older aunts and uncles, my parents, neighbors and family friends. I found myself eagerly absorbing their colorful life stories and worrying about them after work. I wanted to help make their lives safer, more comfortable and valued so they could remain at home if they desired. It was a privilege and it altered my direction; it felt as if God had drawn me to service. My next work was with high risk, addicted, mentally ill youth and adults and it, too, was a passionate commitment. But I never forgot those older adults who gave as much or more than they required of me. I think of them, still, long after they’ve gone. Muse that I’m so close to the ages they were when I was with them.

Now here I am, smack in that part of the process forward and it is like entering some foreign portal I hadn’t mapped out.

When I got the news of her great job I checked out the place she will be working. It looks swanky to me. It is very different from the places I saw while visiting various   homes to assess my clients’ needs. The text states it is “a life plan community”–it was previously called a “continuing care retirement community”. It serves a few hundred people. I studied the attractive grounds and wondered at the money it cost, marveled at the diverse services, the recreational options. The gym was chock full of cheerful persons with pleasing wrinkles and crowned with gleaming white hair. They looked classy on stationary bikes, vigorous in the bright swimming pool. The lawns are very green, houses and apartments uniformly in good taste–it’s clear why people gravitate to such a place. I can see how it might stay a fear of fragility.

It’s a great place for our daughter to work, I’m sure. Still, the lifestyle it espouses alternately fascinates, perplexes and repels me. Plus I could not afford it, I’m sure. But would I want to live there? Set apart from a greater cross section of people? In such an organized and pristine environment? My innermost being resists it. I would rather have a refuge of unbridled countryside and the grit and creative vibrancy of a city–each close to the other as possible, as it is now. Retirement community settings appear limiting to me–at least now– whereas to others they may appear to abound in happy, healthy options at one’s back and call.

But mostly, it seems exclusive and finally lonelier. I want to be all hands and feet in the greater realm of living until I can truly no longer be so. And then, who knows? I might even live in an RV, a studio apartment downtown or in a small room at the edge of a grown child’s abode. I hope to not be an aggravating burden to myself or others; I’d hate to leave this world with a bad reputation.

Alright, the rest of it may be that I don’t yet want to think about where this aging business will take me. It appears to be a bigger jog in the journey. I do know I don’t want to fake it. Nor make it more or less than what it is, another movement through a short time on a small planet. I don’t need to be anything more than who I am, just a better version, I hope. I barely feel much older than I did a couple decades ago except for a monitored, repaired ticker. Surprisingly, I even feel a great deal  better despite those telltale lines on my face that reveal my life. An elderly woman told me once that is a marker of aging: our deepest personhood not matching up with external changes.

I will get to the end, whatever that is.  Right now I never feel as if there is enough time to explore all that captures my scanning attention. There are people to admire and love and learn from, many of whom I do not even yet know. There are scads of books to read and stories to write (I can barely keep up with either), forest trails to hike, bodies of water to get wet in, visual art to make. Places that might use my hands, some care. And, ah, music to bring into heart and mind, to hum and sing. Today I bought two new CDs and played them at a good volume as I wrote, then danced about a few times. I have a mind to put on a long swingy dress and videotape the swooping about, pretending to be an interpretive modern (or let’s say “contemporary”) dancer again. For my children and grandchildren. So they’re assured I have always managed to have fun–and they remember to do so, too.

Life is a place I’ve made a decent, often very good, home and aging seems simply one more thing to accommodate. I am not one for the prosaic as much as for invention. I may not change much of anything. And I am more apt to plan for today, not tomorrow.  I have had personal experience with life being taken in a flash and then having it returned just in time. Best to take it a step at a time, see what unfolds, what I can do. Soul, heart, mind and health the priorities. Broaden those horizons as I move right along. Being old will feel like me, likely with all white hair.

My sort of “semi-glamour” shot–ok, I know, it doesn’t qualify. There have to be more pretentious ones…(My Gravatar looks fancier!) But subject would benefit from retouch at the least; perhaps teeth capped, a vigorous hair brushing with full-on color, Botox, jawline and neck fix-all according to “Cease Aging Now” 

Cigarettes, Alcohol: Such Ordinary Thieves -talesforlife

Ordinary Thieves

Kresge Court, Detroit Institute of Arts-photo by Bill Rauhauser

As she slid into the chair next to mine, a redolent if acrid scent of smoke merged with the air we shared. The impulse to hold my breath came and went. As my respiration slowed I became somewhat inured to the burnt, stale smell. But I lost the words a person was speaking from the periphery of our circle. I closed my eyes, then opened them as I tried to stay attuned as the recovery meeting progressed.

Later, memories flooded me of cigarettes lit and inhaled rapidly before entering a “no smoke zone.” Especially at places such as where we gathered for meetings. I was angry when most churches and hospitals–common spaces used for various groups– banned smoking. How to keep the nicotine level up in the blood stream when it took an hour and a half for such gatherings? If there was a smoke break halfway through, I’d be fine. If not, well, there was at least coffee, better than nothing but really.

It was 15 years this February since a cigarette has come near my lips. They are well pleased with that and so is the rest of me, not the least of which are my brain and spirit.

There was a time I sought help for substance issues and fellow smokers would welcome me with open arms. I’d walk in and a fog of smoke greeted me first. It was like coming home. Voices rang out amid the blur, many laughing, engaging in debate, sharing personal stories that could make me sweat with sympathetic pain. Close at hand was my attractive flip-top box of cigarettes. The very act of lighting up was enough to bestir feelings of calm and pleasure. Any misgivings, restlessness, sadness, anger or general vulnerability could be momentarily vanquished by a luxuriant draw of smoke-thickened air. I’d close my eyes and let it all go a brief moment.

I recall when we smoker-recovery folks joked with one another that at least we had our cigarettes, that was not going to go–not illegal, not exorbitant, not going to land us in detox. We had given up so much already–our companions of alcohol or pot or narcotics or stimulants or whatever combination transported and eventually wrecked us. Nicotine didn’t do much harm in comparison–if we coughed too much, well, we still could walk and even hike, couldn’t we? So, one thing at a time.

The non-smokers rarely came outdoors during a break or held themselves apart. We headed out in rain, sleet, snow and wind as well as sunny weather, cigarettes between lips, lighter flaring as soon as the door closed behind us. That first drag–a relief, a friendly button pushed with familiar rewards. We were pals, hard-core smokers who’d managed to survive ravages of alcoholism or other addictions. We hunched together in a tight group, our talk intermittent and somehow exclusive. Smoke circled about our heads and we were oblivious of our slavery to one more drug–or we just didn’t care. We weren’t breaking any laws.

In the beginning for me it was nothing to worry about, except that smoking was against my parents’ decorous, church-adhering ways (and mine, at least partly). Though I’d tried a couple of stray cigarette butts found outdoors, I had a closer look at smoking in a psychiatric ward in a medical center at fifteen. My neighbor T. across the corridor, four years older and from the streets of Detroit, had boxes of Kools stashed. We’d detach ourselves from the group when outdoors for recreation of sorts and he’d show me how it was done. I shared a few puffs, the act feeling like an intimate one. Ah, that menthol blast, followed by heat of smoke quaking the lungs. It was a charge.

T. had hooded, fathomless eyes. A way of walking that said, “Come along, but stay back a foot.” We were both in treatment for drug use and other rebellious behaviors but he declined to say just what he had done. He said he was in a street gang, said it as if it was a badge of victory as well as a way of being. This was during a decade when the only gangs I knew about were in books and movies (James Dean came to mind), not in my manicured lawn town. T. scared me but under bravado lay the barest hint of a romantic, hopefully someone more like me. He taught me how to smoke, to jut out my chin, use a narrowed, penetrating gaze to scatter unwanted others. To walk with heels hard on the floor and ground. But the a long lasting change taken home was that newly discovered habit: smoking. On my last day he gave me a whole carton of Kools. He was being transferred to a long incarceration. I wanted to attend an arts boarding school in the same city but my parents refused–their trust was shaken. T. and I said good-bye with a secret look, though by then I knew we had little in common but anger, addiction and quick drags on a cigarette passed back and forth in a hurry.

I’d show my parents and keep smoking. It wasn’t so easy to accomplish as I didn’t want them to know about this new thing I had gotten into. When they were gone (my older siblings were already in college) I threw open my bedroom windows and blew streams of smoke out the screen with forceful exhalations. I worried constantly they would know I smoked and I’d be grounded or worse so took to gum chewing, mouth wash and clinging perfumes. I felt vaguely criminal, now an underage smoker on top of the other offenses.

As it became more urgent a need I smoked in a couple restaurant corners, a haughty don’t bother to ask my age, buddy look on my face, or on walks with a close friend who shared my interests. M. had eyes that were cousins to Sophia Loren’s and cheekbones I’d never personally know. She was, perhaps, a watered down female version of T. but smarter and more trustworthy. We smoked and talked for hours, we plotted to get out of our hometown, we came to each other’s rescue, such as it was–often wrong-headed but well-intentioned.

I never considered stopping smoking. But it was curtailed somewhat since I was a developing vocalist and wanted my voice to have optimum opportunity to improve. My voice teacher was demanding and I did not want to lose any purity of tone I still had. Singing felt like life itself back then, and smoking could ruin things for me along with other substances that remained hard to refuse. But if classical singers did not smoke, folk singers and rockers often did, I realized, so I kept puffing now and then outside my parents’ house. They finally knew; they scolded and worried.

Smoking accompanied me into college and ramped up, then followed me into marriage. Nothing like getting together with our friends, loudly debating politics and art and life with shared smoke making us raspy and heady. Cigarette ads flashed on television and took up a whole page in magazines. It was cool, sassy or urbane, depending on what crowd you ran with. Certainly all my friends and Ned, my husband the artist, smoked–as he worked on “chopping” his Harley Davidson, during classes and projects in sculpture, before even breakfast and a last one before bedtime. I smoked as I wrote, painted undulating forms of jeweled colors on big canvasses, met with feminist friends. It accompanied me into motherhood, lessening as I nursed my children. It is notable that four decades ago health information was scarce and few public campaigns discouraged smoking. But I still feel some guilt about it.

I was no longer singing so often. My vocal chords were changing and seemed on the way to becoming an alto after being a clear, natural soprano. A result, I suspected, of smoking for too many years already. But I had other things to worry about and accomplish. So I puffed away. I still managed an insouciance that kept me ignorant. I was young, after all.

I had found recovery from non-alcoholic drugs by my early twenties. Still, several years later I found myself with a glass of grocery store wine in one hand, a cigarette in the other, gazing out a window overlooking twilit fields and a deep, black-green forest. I spotted mysterious deer, sipped and mused, located the Little and Big Dipper above. A coughing spell and then a gulp. I was having a hard time shaking bronchitis that winter.

How innocuous alcohol seemed, how affordable that sweet, humble wine–and legal. I was twenty-seven years old and had not drunk more than a cocktail or two. Total. I suspect it seemed rather banal as a youth when all those other chemicals were sparking up the sixties generation.

It was a bitter winter of howling winds and days alone–occasional nights as well–with two small children. Ned sometimes took remodeling jobs far away so we could pay rent and buy food. The wood stove heated our pleasant house as long as there was wood enough so I split and cut it into lengths to feed the steady fire. I made bread and the rooms filled with a cheerful aroma. My intense, boisterous son and intense, quiet daughter learned, played and fought together. We took meandering walks in snow along a sluggish or frozen river. The nights felt sharp-edged when alone. I sat at my desk when the children were asleep and typed on my old Remington countless poems, sometimes stories, yet another beginning to a novel. The ache of cold crept up my ankles and clutched all the muscle and bone. Loneliness found the cracks within me. I poured more wine. When he came home, we were not as aligned. The frictions seemed like cataclysmic signals and the endless silences felt like drowning. I poured more wine but put it in a goblet because it looked innocent, even beautiful by the light of candles but it always tasted and felt like a deliverance.

And that’s how it went. Drinking cheap wine and smoking, then better wine and more smoking and finally in a year or two, drinking Seven and Sevens or rum and Cokes with unfiltered Camels or, if trying to slow down on the heavy nicotine, just Newports. I coughed too much, caught respiratory bugs often. Yet alcohol and cigarettes seemed a perfect juxtaposition: a depressant and a stimulant. It was off and on like that during a decade’s worth of mini and major disasters. The damning sustenance I had now fashioned was made of nicotine and alcohol. Food was optional some days; my stomach recoiled. I was loath to see the damage done in photographs, for I was rail thin, a ghost of myself by my mid-thirties. It would take another five years for me to wake up.

This may seem a history of my addiction but that is far denser and more inscrutable. More private. Every history is different but the theme remains the same: an adverse and ultimately life-threatening reaction to what many can many others can enjoy without such effects. No, rather, this is a small warning. To myself after a good meeting with other recovering alcoholics. It triggered memories of smoking cigarettes and sloshing alcohol. And perhaps it also can be a communication with others who pick up a substance that may do them in. It hurts, the ravaging by drugs of any sort.

We in recovery are not entirely immune to random impulses or nostalgia over simpler times. As time passes, the bad times may recede until there is a reminder of the truth. For those who are still out there, the need to believe all is well enough is paramount–that one’s clever ways and means have managed to outwit dire consequences of choices made long ago. But cigarettes and daily drinks can become insidious enemies, may alter one’s life without reasonable notice.

This year I am sober for twenty-five years and abstinent from nicotine for fifteen. As with alcohol, there can a time when I hadto quit smoking; my heart became so impacted that as I inhaled, my heart rate would rise immediately to around one hundred twenty beats per minute. Tachycardia with various other palpitations. Arteries had become so inflamed and blocked that even after quitting, a heart attack hunted me down while hiking in a splendid forest. At just fifty-one, nothing was further from my mind. I didn’t even consider the extreme and painful breathlessness that took me to my knees was caused by a sick heart. I thought it might be my lungs and didn’t go to emergency. It took a night and a morning before I sought help. And within a week I had the first of two stents implanted to open up an artery that was over 90% blocked.

That meeting today brought an evocative smell of smoke and the bravery and hopes of those who came for clarity and fellowship. It was a reminder of life lived in peace with lasting joys after living reckless years. Being under the rule of the totalitarianism of addiction. These were simple actions and wants, then a strong desire for substances enlivening or soothing. And then a critical need. But they stole from me on a grand scale, little by little. Parts of who I was were changed, rendered weaker yet also tougher. I was much less than who I’d expected to become. It may have taken me only fifteen years to find a way out as opposed to whole lifetimes for others, but what was lost was lost and cannot be regained. We can only move forward from where we land–thank goodness there is that.

I think a whole multitude of beguilements in this life are not worthy of such devotion. We have our own magic-making bodies with all those hormones and synapses and nerves. Our own intellects sparked by curiosity and given to free will. Our spirits, that gift from God that whispers, sings and shouts to us if only we will accept that as our guides. We are not meant to ruin ourselves but to take care. Some days we all get lost and could use a much better route to wholeness.

So I take my stand one more time. I am responsible. Cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs are ordinary poisons disguised by pretty packages. They do me no good. This peculiar and mystifying life will keep nourishing me and I, it. My gratitude for helping hands along the way is immeasurable.

(Note: I posted a series of essays about my own heart disease and that ongoing recovery. If you share this diagnosis, you might consider reading one or two. We can benefit from supporting each other.  Women are more often killed by this disease than men. The Heart Chronicles was begun in 2011. Heart disease is the number one killer globally. Learn more from any reputable resource and potentially save your own life. You can find my essays starting here: https://talesforlife.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/taking-my-heart-for-a-walk/)

Time Out for This Bird try to do the really scary things

Well, it’s been a busy, fruitful week, ending on a pleasant note though underlined by soggy skies and cooler temperatures. True, hyacinths, daffodils, magnolias and more are bountiful, happy dabs of color within our ever-green landscape. I do adore the Pacific Northwest. But I have a mind to head out on a warmer, even brighter mosey. High time to again flee comfortable territory and explore other captivating scenery and meet interesting folks, as well as take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy family I don’t get to see often.

It may be hard for me to write less…it’s a need I do heed wherever I am…but I will return to this blog on March 21st. I am hoping to share a refreshed perspective as I let loose new stories. It always helps me to take in different scenes and consider other ideas milling about out there. And, of course, there are photographs–I have a grand time recording experiences via camera, as well. Or a notebook or sketch pad. Or a lunch napkin, for that matter, if that’s handiest.

Thanks for so many positive, helpful responses to the latest nonfiction post on smoking and other unhealthy habits. I am also gratified that you’re enjoying other stories, fiction or otherwise. I feel truly blessed to be gaining a great readership as I bang away at my keyboard each week. My deepest creative joy, my privilege, is to write. Over eight thousand followers now; I cannot even imagine it. I just keep blogging away each week as well as otherwise writing something, anything, daily as though it is essential. But I genuinely look forward to other people’s intriguing offerings. Truth is, I’m thrilled to be part of the diverse thought-provoking, humorous and caring worldwide WordPress community.

Catch you later–you have a safe, adventurous week out there, too, and practice kindness while you’re at it. We all need to give and receive more, just for the good of it, just for this sweet life.

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My photos reflect some of who I am via places I love to be as I explore two of my great passions, outdoors and inside near my desk– where I spend 6-8 hours writing per day, up to four times a week. And I write on the go, too. Story is my true love and it is everywhere.

I am a retired addictions and mental health clinician who has worked in human services over thirty years. In that work were manifold stories of hardship, loss, courage and triumph. Now I can devote to writing as much as myself as possible. Time is precious. Five children have long been raised, my husband works (not for too long, we hope) so the house is quiet. Since I have survived several health crises, I greet each day with anticipation and gratitude.

Language can well illuminate and renew life. It has never been more crucial for each person to find his or her voice and be heard, especially those who’ve lost personal power and with it, enough hope. A central tenet of my living and writing is that God resides within us and about us and when we reawaken to this we are able to give and receive powerful compassion of Divine Love. This, alone, transforms us. Nature also informs me with enrichment of body, mind and soul. I’ve not had an easy life; suffering is something humans all have in common even if we do not see it at first. So, too, we share a kaleidoscope of wonders, the pleasures of learning, the fulfillment of sharing our lives. When I am most actively engaging in life, the more dynamic living on earth becomes.

The arts became integral to my life in infancy. I was raised in a musical, performing family. I’ve enjoyed a personal history with music, dance, theater and visual arts as well as writing. I have published some of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry over many decades. I like to draw and paint; photography later became another great adventure (even published a photo, to my surprise). It was an honor to be nominated for a Pushcart Prize for a novel excerpt published in an issue of the anthology VoiceCatcher. It’s all about the joy of inspiration and the labor of honing skills, then sharing results. A strong thread that runs through all this is that the arts heal as well as entertain.

I’m happy to have you along for the ride as I craft the tales that find me, waiting to be revealed. I hope you find something of interest. Let me know your thoughts as you read and look about!

Pastimet alesforlife

Pastimet alesforlife

You would not believe the shock I felt when I passed by the gallery that winter during my lunch hour. I recognized his name right off. I pushed the door open and took it all in, wondering if it was true.

When we first met Sully was camping next to us, his tent sagging in the middle, his kerosene lamp throwing off a weak light. He was rooting around for something, I couldn’t tell what since he was half-in and half-out of his tent. Maybe that’s why it was about to cave in.

I walked over, licking my fingers clean after enjoying BBQ chicken legs I’d made for me and my two boys. He stuck his head out and looked at me, then the tent collapsed. I stood with hands on hips and watched it fall in on him, nothing more to do but see if he could put it back up right. I found it funny, I admit. He fixed it okay and held out his right hand while his left grasped a camera. The suit coat he had on was as out-of-place as a peacock feathered hat would be for me. There were dirt, bugs and trees out here, not an office complex.

“Sullivan Chambers, Sully for short,” he said with a cheerful smile and nod of his well-shaped head. “I guess you see I’m new at this. Just pulled in a few hours ago. You?”

I wiped my hands on my apron. I hadn’t changed since leaving the city that morning and was a mess. I must have looked strange to him, too. “No, we’re used to it. This is how Tim and Jude and I spend our summers when we can get away. Oh, right, name’s Evie Windham.” I glanced back at the boys who were eyeing this stranger who was chatting me up. “Want to join in a cup of coffee? And a chicken leg?”

Sully did, so we sat on the camp stools while Tim and Jude introduced themselves. After fifteen minutes of chitchat, they were satisfied the man wasn’t a creeper or crook so took off for the river. I waved them off. I had lots of witnesses around. The boys were meeting other teen-aged kids for a big bonfire. I could see the riverbank from where we sat and knew they’d be watching us off and on, too.

Sully and I gabbed easily. A shock. I wasn’t fond of suits and slicked back hair. My ex had a closet full of suits and he was bad business. But this guy was a photographer, said it had become more than a hobby, but not quite a full-time profession. He was here to photograph nature all week-end. He’d left from work and driven straight out, a long drive.

“A happy pastime,” I smiled. “We need those, I guess. I like making crafts.”

“We need our hobbies for relaxation but I have a passion for photography. It’s magic, how you can capture or shape a split second of something and —voila–it’s immortal.”

“Never thought of it that way. I always felt pictures were sort of fake. Camera finding the best thing or making them a lot better, then freezing them in time so that nothing more happens. Kinda weird if you think about it.”

Sully frowned a little, swished coffee around once in his mouth before swallowing it. “I see what you mean. But there’s something nice about that, too, sometimes, right? Makes things more important than we usually think they are.”

We had a deep thinker here, for whatever that was worth. He looked good, but then, I was at the point where any clean and courteous man was a treat. Not that I was seriously looking. I was past that point after surviving a divorce. Not many girls could say that in 1958 but I liked being on my own, in a way.

“Maybe so. Yes, sometimes. Like a memory you want to keep perfect. Special.”

“Right. And it’s art.” He looked around at the campground. “So, what are you three doing out here?”

It was more than a small question. It was mini-investigation, like why was I out here without the boys’ father unless he was fishing and oddly okay with me being unaccompanied in the wilds? Except this was a family campground, tents and trailers and lots of nice Airstreams. Electricity. Running water. Who was this guy?

“Easy answer. We spend most of our time here in summer. It’s a nice vacation from my mother’s place. The boys have a dad; he lives in L.A. He prefers palm trees and glamour and such. I manage.”

Sully laughed big and rumbly. “I see, well, you’re one brave lady, Evie. Two teen-aged boys and setting up house in the forest. This is quite a good tent, big. Me, I work at the water works office in Portland. No wife so I travel on my time off. You from there?”

“Have been, will be when summer is over again. Welcome to the camping life.” I felt fidgety and got up, took a stick to the small fire I’d started before he came over, strained to see the boys. They were getting a little rowdy already. There was a frostiness to the air since the sun started hovering closer to the horizon. I let the damp, piney sweetness fill my nose.

Sully settled his camera on its metal legs,  tripod he said, and fiddled with the lens.

“Mind me snapping a few?”

I shrugged, smoothed my unruly waves and half-turned to set more kindling. I placed bigger pieces of wood around the heart of the fire. It took off and our faces glowed a healthy amber. Sully snapped away before I could stop him. It was embarrassing, me in my rumpled old house dress–the one pair of pants I’d packed were no better. After that, we sat and chatted about camping and the seasons, how his summer had slipped by with a few weddings he was hired to do, a few portraits and nature trips like this one. For me it was all about my mother, how she had a house we shared the last couple years but she was fussy and drank cocktails, one too many, every day. The boys and I were between places until I got a better job than selling housewares at a department store. I knew how to type. He nodded either understanding or approval.

We could hear the kids whooping it up, people splashing in the river.  The fires all around us felt so friendly and Sully said as much. He snapped many more pictures but I was tired and yawned a big one despite wanting to be polite. I needed a long shower and my book. Sully stood and stretched, wiped the dust from his shoes.

He smiled as though we had become friends. “I’d better get back to my tent. Got an early day tomorrow, out to the mountain and then around the lakes.” He picked up his camera equipment. “I’m real glad we got to meet and talk. Maybe you could stop by my office on Fifth and Renton sometime. Coffee is good in town, too.”

In the morning he was gone by the time I got up at six. That was it, I thought. Strangers came and went out there. And I knew little about him. Later I thought about Sully sometimes, but more like trying to figure out a puzzle. I didn’t know what to make of the whole night and wondered if he had just made his life up.

So of course I wasn’t ready for what I saw that day at the gallery. The windows were full of his name and his pictures, the mountains, woods and lakes, people playing and working and camping. Then I stopped.

It was me, that’s right, me, standing before the crackling fire, my back to him so I was a graceful outline, then my face smiling at him in dusk, then my narrow hands warmed by a flickering fire. I saw my shoes cast off, dirty and worn at the heels. But the last one was this: me sitting forward, intense, staring off at the river, still as a creature watching and watched, eyes lit by something unknown. I didn’t realize I had such a lonely, serious look. Yet gentleness was there, too. I’d never guess I could be even a little beautiful, resting in the peaceful dusk and twilight. I left the gallery. I’m not looking for him. What he can see scares me, a good scared, but still. It was so much more real than I imagined.

(Photograph courtesy of Patricia Ann McNair’s blog/photo writing prompts.)