Pruning Christmas cacti

 Perhaps in response to the virus restrictions and more time at home, last summer I tackled my Christmas cactus collection. My mother gave me Christmas cactus clippings over the years: they are easy to grow: a single stem in potting soil will soon root, grow, and eventually bloom. I had one beautiful specimen that cascaded pink blossoms every December in a place of honor on our piano. But when we converted the front room to a library, with floor-to-ceiling shelving, the piano, which was hopelessly out of tune, was removed. I recognized that the cascade had become an awkward, overgrown tenant.

The library is five years old now, so it was high time to take all my cacti in hand. One by one I placed them on an overturned wire-mesh wastebasket on the kitchen island so I could objectively consider their cascading stems (cacti don’t have leaves). To produce a balanced and agreeable effect, I had to prune severely.

The cacti sat on our kitchen porch all summer, shaded from the hot summer sun. With winter approaching, I brought them into my office and David’s room, my adjunct conservatory.

The pruning had its effect: a flower on every last stem.

Slowing time down

 I’ve been studying out in my mind the concept of hypomania. That’s the delicious, intoxicating state below (hypo) mania. In my experience, psychosis is terrifying and not in a good way. Horror stories are fun (for some people, not for me) because they are safe. Whatever horrible thing is happening to the characters, we are safe in our living room or movie theater.

But hypomania isn’t terrifying. Food tastes exquisite; thoughts and ideas flow effortlessly; colors are more vibrant. Everything is breathtaking.

I experienced hypomania this past spring. It never got dangerous. It was seductive.

One of the brilliant ideas I had was that I could slow down time. I found the name of the year, twenty-twenty, enchanting. Until age forty, I had better than twenty-twenty vision: I was far-sighted. (I now have to wear trifocals to see my world sharply.) The possibilities in that name (before the virus) seemed endless and exciting. And suddenly I knew, with certainty, that I could slow down time. Not stop time, but take it very slowly, so that I could enjoy and savor the year and accomplish amazing things.

Describing it now, it reminds me of an experience I had one night in high school. I was at a party my parents didn’t know about, smoking something. As I sat in an unfamiliar kitchen, I looked at the white wall clock with black hands. I looked away and about an hour later glanced back at it. To my amazement, only a minute had passed on the clock face. I did it again and again. Time had slowed for me, how cool was that?

Several years later I realized the truth: whatever the speed of time, I had done nothing but sit. What did it matter if time slowed?

March and April were similar. I thought I had learned the secret to lengthening time, but I had nothing to show for it.

Sadly, November rushes by; time has not slowed. I experience what older people used to tell me: the years are flying faster and faster. The illusion of holding time was just that, an illusion. But it was a pretty thought while it lasted.

Veterans Day 2020

11 November 2020

 Since the mid-nineties, when R’el played flute in the Lexington High School band, Jim and I have attended the town Veterans’ Day celebrations: a parade with marching band, Minutemen, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and veterans waving from the front seats of cars. The program always includes a few high school students reading their winning essays about veteran grandfathers and patriotism. Even after Sam graduated, we kept the tradition, walking to the town center and waving to the LHS band director as he marched smartly down Mass. Ave.

I’m still not used to the covid world. This morning I asked Jim if he was going with me to the parade. I don’t think there’ll be one, he said. Right. Yet again I pictured life the way it’s always been.

The high school students read their winning essays online and in the afternoon a motor vehicle parade drove down Mass. Ave from East Lexington.

I walked to St. Brigid’s parking lot, the endpoint of the parade, about ¼ mile from our house, then continued up Mass. Ave to the Battlegreen. There I sat on the grass awaiting the first car. As its veteran passenger came into view, my eyes inexpectedly filled with tears. I hadn’t been thinking of David, but there he was.

David was a veteran for about a month. He was honorably discharged six weeks before he died. He got a lovely 11x14 Certificate of Retirement. Funny, I’ve never actually read it:

CERTIFICATE OF RETIREMENT

FROM THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA

TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING:

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT

SPECIALIST DAVID H. JOHNSTON

HAVING SERVED FAITHFULLY AND HONORABLY

WAS RETIRED FROM THE

UNITED STATES ARMY

                        ON THE 29TH DAY OF JUNE 2015

GENERAL, UNITED STATE ARMY

CHIEF OF STAFF

David also received a Certificate of Appreciation, signed by Barack Obama, Commander in Chief.

I’m happy for all those veterans who have enjoyed lives full of children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Happy to stand on the corner of the Battlegreen and wave as their motorcade passes by on a seventy-degree day in mid-November.

And grateful to have stood at Mass. Ave all those many years, including the four that saw an earnest boy in glasses playing the clarinet while marching in time to the “Armed Forces Medley.”

Happy Veterans’ Day.

Took a tumble

  I walked to the dentist today, first appointment in ten months. As I playfully kicked the crisp orange and yellow leaves covering the wide sidewalk, my left foot uncovered a depression created by erosion next to the concrete, a few inches wide and deep, just as my right foot stepped towards it. My brain didn’t register the danger fast enough to redirect my foot: my ankle turned and gravity started tugging me down. In that familiar slow motion, every second I thought I'd caught myself in time, only to realize anew that my latest effort was failing. At every point of contact: knees, then hands, gravity wasn't finished with me. The twist flipped me over and I felt my left temple strike a granite stone. I hope I don’t pass out! Coming to rest flat on my back, staring up at the yellow tree canopy, I automatically scanned my body. My Red Cross first aid training kicked in: never move the victim except for immediate danger. But I sensed that there were no broken bones and my pride propelled me back up on my feet. I wanted to lie quietly for thirty seconds, but  I started walking quickly, hoping to forestall any Good Samaritan motorist on Bedford St from stopping or worse yet, calling the EMTs.

As I walked, I reviewed my injuries: slight burning on the heel of my left palm: no blood. Scraped knees: no blood seeping through my tan pants. Do I dare touch my temple? Gingerly I raise my hand and discover dry hair. My hearing aid was dislodged but hadn’t fallen to the ground.

It brought me back to a dramatic fall in Sacramento, California four years ago. After Annie’s and Shawn’s wedding in Utah, I took the night train to Seattle. Leaving Salt Lake City around midnight, I travelled west all night and soaked up the Sierra Nevadas the next day. Arriving at Sacramento around 4 p.m., I had to wait until midnight for the northbound train to Seattle. Learning that Old Sacramento was very near the train station, I cut across a parking lot, as directed. Looking straight ahead towards the old city, I tripped over a concrete parking berm. In about three stages I thought I’d averted disaster only to continue in the course gravity insisted on sending me.

I cut my chin and bled quite a bit. I got some napkins at a bar to sop up the blood and walked around Old Sacramento for a few hours with my hand cupped to my chin.  I discovered that the wound would reopen if I moved my mouth, so I didn’t talk to anyone. A kind shop keeper at a hot dog stand gave me two small bandaids. I still have the scar. You can't negotiate with gravity.

Cotton Candy and Hauling Water

Last week we hosted our annual ‘Summer Retreat’. Two of our children, their spouses, and the three grandchildren came for the whole week. We had never gotten our act together to rent a summer house: when the coronavirus hit, procrastination proved to be an excellent strategy. Instead we invested in making our home a ‘grandchild magnet’. The most popular item was the foosball table. Seven-year-old Andrew became an avid player.

About two months ago, five-year-old Victoria asked for a cotton candy machine. Jim scoffed at the idea, but one of my fondest memories of childhood was the magic of a cloud of sweet fluff. I loved how it melted in my mouth. We experimented with coloring our own sugar, but didn’t like the result. Besides, white granulated sugar is much more inexpensive than the commercially-colored sugar: being the classic under-spender that I am, I went with plain white, pristine as clouds in the sky. Jim continues to improve his technique and can spin them as big and fluffy as my childhood memory.

I lived in Northumberland, a sleepy little hamlet nestled on the Susquehanna, until I was nine years old. A regular summer outing was to Rolling Green, a small amusement park with a large swimming pool, Ferris Wheel, roller coaster, other rides, games, and food. I loved watching the cotton candy machine, with its huge steel drum, as the wispy threads magically appeared and the operator deftly twirled them around the white paper cone.

Andrew and Victoria had enjoyed cotton candy in New York, but it was a new experience for two-year-old Eliza. She watched Jim make one for Andrew and then he asked her if she’d like one. She shook her head firmly. I held out a piece for her to try, but she said, “I don’t like hair.” I laughed and said it didn’t taste like hair: it was candy. She didn’t budge. Watching Andrew and Victoria enjoy their treats, she finally relented.

Before Peter’s family left, we did some yard clean up. Xiomara started emptying buckets of wading pool water onto the garden. Completely inefficient and time consuming, but I felt connected to my garden as we carried water, two gallons at a time, to drench our rhubarb, tomatoes, and raspberries. It’s been a very dry summer and the soil is a dusty brown. When Xiomara was a young girl, she and her sisters carried water home from the river in Honduras. I felt the simplicity of that life as we used the leftover pool water to nourish our plants.

Cake with pink frosting

I’ve always pictured addiction to be like water pressure from a fast-moving river on a dam. I thought that the cravings increased in intensity without a break.

But, my recent mindful experience with food cravings is that they ebb and flow. I’ve known that part for years. When I fast for 24 hours, the hunger pangs don’t grow at a steady and inexorable rate. I feel acute hunger, then it subsides. If I get involved in an interesting activity, either intellectual or physical, the hunger goes away. Not just because I’m not focused on it: when I do think of my fasting again, I’m often not hungry.

This week I realized that visual cues are hugely important. I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of putting your temptations in a cupboard. How ineffective, leaving only a cupboard door between myself and the temptation: I still know the sweets are there. What I didn’t realize is that simply seeing the sweets activates the craving.

Case in point. Our granddaughter, Eliza, visited us for a week while Savam drove across country, from L.A. to D.C. (To the East Coast! Huzzah!). We had a delightful but exhausting time. Two important details:
1. Two-and-a-half year-olds don’t stop except for naps and bedtime, and sometimes not then even.
2. Although capable of independent play, Eliza’s grandparent’s attention radar is always on full alert. Within five minutes (I’m not exaggerating) of my focus being on anything besides her (weeding the garden while she played with water toys, cooking or reading my phone while she played), she was on top of me, demanding my full attention. The day she decided not to nap and screamed to be let out nearly outdid me. Her bedtime became my bedtime.

We successfully executed some activities (reading my carefully collected and curated storybooks was a hit), including baking a Betty Crocker cake with homemade buttercream frosting. She particularly enjoyed watching the pink paste food coloring swirl into the white frosting base. (I’ve loved pink frosting since I was a girl.) Cracking eggs was above her paygrade.

Jim was in Chicago, so we didn’t make much of a dent in the cake. Every time I walked by the cake, I felt an urge to cut a piece and eat it. I resisted, sometimes, but it was hard. I finally put it on top of the microwave and under a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen. The cupboard shielded it from my view. When I went to use the microwave and was confronted with the enticing pink frosting inches from my nose, a wave of craving crashed over me. I overcame the urge, but it was powerful. Keeping the cake out of sight, even though I knew where it was, really helped my avoid it.

How do you fight your cravings?

Eliza visiting

Our son Sam and his wife, Savannah, are moving to D.C. this week. Being our youngest has its perks: a backyard trampoline, big screen TV, and Blue-ray player in the past, free child-tending in the present.
Sam and Eliza flew from L.A. to Boston Saturday night. He returned home Sunday and Eliza began her extended stay.
It took me a day to get my ‘sea legs’. For weeks I had fantasized how she would play happily in the yard while I gardened. But when my attention leaves her, she's there to reclaim it in no more than ten minutes. I went to bed disillusioned.
Tuesday morning I was more at peace. It helped that her nap time yesterday had been long and quiet and that after breakfast Jim offered to play with her for an hour or so while I wrote, I jumped at the chance and was much refreshed to start my shift. While she played with our old Fisher Price airport, house, and barn, I was able to clean out the fireplace ash (four months after the last fire of the season). She wanted to play in the filthy bucket water. I was nearly done wiping down the hearth, so I happily rinsed the red plastic bucket, filled it with fresh water, put on her flip-flops and my sandals, and headed out for the shade of the backyard.
After watching her for a while, contentedly filling and emptying plastic nesting cups, I went to the garage, put on knee pads, and started weeding in the garden bed nearest her. In about five minutes she came over, asked what the knee pads were, what I was doing, and then stated that she wanted milk (which was inside the house). That was the end of that project.
       Knowing that milk could segue into lunch and a two-hour nap, I readily acquiesced. I’m finding the balance between catering to her whims and holding the line. Milk and juice are only allowed in the kitchen and dining room. She turns into an angry little dog and growls at me, but I just growl back. She doesn’t know how good her life is. I hope she isn’t disabused any time soon.