Tag Archives: love

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Black and white

Pandas are black and white, clarity
between the parts, yet both are present together
Pandemic has lessened humans charity
Stress rises, fights and a turn to war weather.
It’s hard to fight a virus way smaller than a bee
And as they change and attack birds and us anew
Frustration rises and we attack the humans that we see
We take sides, black or white, and don’t see that we’re a stew
Perspective changes, white to black and back
The pandas eat their daily bamboo pounds
Unworried which parts are white or black
I hope they are far from the crying bombing rounds
I hope every person has the charity
to give all others love and parity.

We are singing Frostiana, poems by Robert Frost, set to music by Randall Thompson, in chorus. The ending of this makes me cry:
“So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.”

I took the photograph in Oregon this month, on a Pandasonic (ha, ha).

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: clarity.

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Fan

There aren’t two roads diverged before me
But a fan of roads and possibilities
Poetry and writing, music and medicine,
Art and quilting, paints and knitting,
Cats and travel, dance and friends.
I spread the fan with joy
as life opens like a flower.
Not two roads, neither one best
but the daily gift of the sunrise and a song.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: observe.

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Peace and strudel!

After the Tweetle Beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle in a bottle on a noodle eating poodle, peace declared, they eat oodles of flapdoodles and noodles and share it with their poodle, who brings raddled strudel. Paddles down, Tweetle Beetles peace the poodle with flapdoodles and sing “Praise for peace and strudel!”

Wrong Dr. Seuss book: the Tweetle Beetles are in Fox in Socks. But this book is in my Little Free Library today, hooray!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flapdoodle!

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Music to my ears

I grew up with lots of music. My father played guitar and lute and Segovia is engraved in my memory. He and my mother sang in large choruses: the Brahms Requiem, the Mozart Requiem and Bach. We had lots of classical records. I was born in the early 60s when my parents were in college, so they had tons of records. The Band, Bob Dylan, the Loving Spoonful, Joanie Mitchell, Oscar Brand and Jean Richie. I didn’t buy my first record until I was in my early teens and I bought ABBA. My father said, “This is POP!” I said, “I am a 14 year old girl. OF COURSE it’s pop and it’s really good.” He was mildly horrified.

We sang folk songs. My parents were editing them by the time I was three, because I was memorizing the words. They put the naughty folk song records away. They avoided sentimental songs. We learned “dead girl songs”, as my sister called them (Banks of the Ohio, Long Black Veil, Clementine, When I was a Bachelor, there are a lot of educational dead girl songs). We learned lots of comic songs. We also learned work and protest songs and absorbed our parents’ hatred of discrimination.

I set up a recording session for my father and sister and I after my mother died. I have a recording of us singing Long Black Veil and other songs. Here is The Band singing it.

Let’s have a band with women too, and for me that is Sweet Honey in the Rock. Acapella, with a sign language translator, and now they have been singing for ?forty years? They have amazing children’s songs and they are willing to sing about grief and protest. They have sustained me through the loss of my mother, sister and father.

And from one of the children’s albums.

The photograph is of my father at his 70th birthday in 2008. Malcolm K. Ottaway, with Andie Makie and Coke Francis. Andie is playing harmonica, my father on guitar. Malene Robinson took these photographs. The next is me and my sister at that party.

And one more of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bands. Wait, you said keep this light. Oh, well. Fail on that.

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Fun in hell

Even when I go through hell on earth
mother dies, marriage crumbles
sister cancer, father cries
divorce, sister dies
pneumonia, pneumonia, pneumonia
can’t breathe and still have to defend myself
when accused of crazy and reported
Bitch is not a psychiatric disorder
hypoxia is not a psychiatric disorder
my cousin helps my niece to sue me
I never thought my family would have lawsuits
never
yet my sister sets them to explode
after she dies

I don’t quite die
though it is pretty rough
and grief tears at my throat
like a wolf, like a lion
like a hyena,
piranhas
I have two children and I stay
because they do not deserve this mess
I guard and fight and stay present

And there is laughter
even in hell
I time a comment and my daughter
snorts milk out her nose
I tell my children I shouldn’t handle knives
because of a meeting at work
“Five against one?” says my son
“Yes,” I say
“Well, they didn’t have enough people, did they?”
And I laugh and we go out to dinner.

Is this my fault?
Is it something I did?
The marriage was me, yes,
I do two years of counseling
trying to understand
I can’t change it
but maybe I can understand

A sort of a friend
ok
a false friend
a liar
says he never changes.
I say I always try to learn
I want to know
I want to grow
how can he not grow?
how can he refuse to learn?

he doesn’t talk to me any more
he stops speaking to people forever
but
there is no forever
there is now and the Beloved
and the dark and the light are united
after death
will you be a proton
or an electron
or gravity?

There are hells on earth
worse than mine
prayers
I send prayers
for the innocents
everyone was newborn
and innocent
once

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An ideal death

Death is quotidian, isn’t it?

There is a movement to make death more ideal. I agree that we should talk more about death and find out what people want, but ideal is complex. The VA did a survey and found three ideal deaths. Which is your ideal?

  1. The Hallmark Death. In hospice, surrounded by family and friends, making peace with everyone, visitors from all over. My mother died of ovarian cancer. We had a hospital bed and a baby monitor and when she was awake, she would say, “I am ready to be entertained.” It lasted for 6 weeks and my grandmothers bones rose out of her face as her weight dropped. I was so tired by the end that I couldn’t see straight. She did not want us to cry, so my sister and I did not cry. Afterwards I wished that I had cried.
  2. No warning, sudden death. Take me, in my sleep, or suddenly, with little or no warning. The heart is the number one cause of death. My father went this way, in his home. I was the one who found him, though I’d expected it for over a year. He was a bit of a hermit and had horrible emphysema, was on oxygen and steroids, but he stayed at home. That’s what he wanted and I did not fight it. It was not much fun finding him.
  3. Fight every step. There are some people who remain full code, who have end stage cancer and want dialysis, who will not give in. My sister was in this category. She was a truly amazing fighter and refused hospice until the last week. This can be about believing that one can continue to hope for a miracle or it can be about social justice or about a promise to one’s family. Some families have said, if father had been able to access care earlier, he wouldn’t be dying, so he wants everything done. I can understand all of those feelings.

So which would be your ideal? Ideally we would talk to our parents and our children and explore these different ideals. I did that with people in clinic. There are interesting openings. A patient would say, “I don’t want to die of cancer.” I would say, “How do you want to die? What is your ideal?” They would be surprised and I would explain the three different scenarios above. “Put in your order, though we do not have any control.” I would say.

We do not have control. I did prenatal care and deliveries for 19 years and didn’t have control there. I always preferred to intervene as little as possible and only if I had to for mother or baby’s health. Once our surgeon went to take out an appendix and it turned out to be something else, so took three hours. I had called a cesarean section, but had to wait. The baby had a fast heart rate and it rose in those three hours. We finally did the c-section and the baby promptly looked completely fine. I have no idea why the heart rate rose from 140 to 180. We were all hugely relieved. Sometimes the cause was obvious: a short umbilical cord or a cord wrapped four times around the neck, but sometimes the cause is a complete mystery.

I talked to a person yesterday who has a frail 90 year old in their life. They said something about keeping them from dying. I said, “Well, they are going to die eventually.” Then I thought, I wonder if they have had the discussion: what is your ideal? Do everything, which may mean being in a hospital? Hospice? At home? And I sometimes see families fight, because siblings have different ideals and may not even be aware of it.

Blessings.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: quotidian.

I took the photograph of the neighbor’s flowers while I was walking the cats in the dark. I like it.