Hard Shell

I just deleted a couple of comments by a relative from my Facebook page. I disagreed with what they said. That's all. I didn't feel personally attacked or threatened. I don't expect to "unfriend" my relative. There are lots of things about them I like but we disagree almost entirely on social and political topics. We see the world differently.

I'm sure the opinions I express exasperate my relative. Usually I note them in threads already agreeable to me or on my own page. I never post them on someone else's page. I figure it's my page, my rules. I think it's fine if others feel the same about their own pages. Their rules there is fair. You get to be the "admin" of your own life, at least on social media.

I could argue with my relative and we could throw facts, factoids, opinions and feelings around. That just seems to bring bad energy into my space, though, like stepping in something and tracking it through the house, all the while wondering what the terrible smell is. I don't need that. Neither does my relative.

Likely even the most articulate and thoughtful reasoning for my opinions would not change my relative's mind either. We are both adults with our separate lives and separate experiences leading us to view the world at near opposition. I'm sad that we have these completely opposite views of the world but it's not my place to change someone else.

This isn't the only relative to have views opposing mine. My family's penchant for being dead certain they are right is matched by the requisite hard head. We are a family of opinions. My blood relatives' early family motto was some Latin phrase translating roughly to "my way or the highway," a source of amusement to me in its accuracy. In some cases, it interferes with our relationships, especially when one will say they withdraw all contact until the other gives in to their point of view. I don't think anyone has given in yet. That kind of statement tends to make people hold their own position all the more anyway. People in my family stand on principle a lot, an isolation self-imposed that may or may not be noble. But it always feels noble to the one standing.

Standing one's ground is fine, can be courageous, character-defining. But my sense of things is that you can only really stand your ground on the real estate you own. I have my one vote, my page, my body, my home and even that I share. But within my very personal real estate, I may stand. So no need to fight with my relative. That's what the delete key is for.

The 9 of Pentacles in Tarot defines your personal physical manifestation, your personal real estate, personal boundaries, your own reality. While the Rider Waite Smith Tarot shows a woman in her garden with garden walls, walls that keep in as well as keep out, a favorite detail in that card is the snail. We carry our environment with us on our backs. It may provide respite from the outside world, allowing us to retreat as the Hermit to review, cherish, or sink into oblivion. It provides the hard shell of structure in our lives and may endure long past our soft physical presence. It may protect us too. Nevertheless it is also a burden we choose to carry with us because letting go of it may leave us too exposed.

My shell, my rules, my pace, my consequences--that's what seems like the world of living in a physical manifestation. And if we are snails in someone else's garden, we alone know the Infinity of the interior of that shell, like Dr Who's tardis or Harry Potter's tent, so much bigger on the inside.

Best wishes.

Safe at Home

I grew up in a family where a little drink now and again was acceptable. I remember bravely trying the beer at the bottom of my mother’s glass when I was 4 or so only to affirm and occasionally re-affirm my dislike of the brew. I don’t mind that others do like it, of course. It’s just not for me. I mean, why not just eat raw bread dough and be done with it?

As much as I hated and still hate beer, I like wine a bit more. I once captured a case of Sutter Home Reserve Red Zinfandel which I cherished lovingly until it was gone and even kept the wooden box around as a reminder for a while. That was some good stuff, raspberries and pepper, mmm-mmmm!

At the time I was pleased with my purchase, recommended by a friend who worked at Sutter Home in the Napa Valley. Later I learned that it was a coveted year and I had wasted it on evenings of grilled steaks in the backyard with the Hubs. I with my untrained palate and all felt a vague sense of unworthiness since other people who knew what they were drinking were devastated to learn that the case was long gone. I shrug.

I remembered buying really excellent Cabernets in the 90’s and watching them go out of my price range. Seriously, I’m not going to pay that much for wine. This is why I will always be small time when it comes to wine tasting. But I do so enjoy the local fruits and the ability to take advantage of living so close to fabled wine valleys. They call where we live the “Carneros” district. I think that means the cow pasture. If it doesn’t, it should.

Mom and Dad would order a glass of Rhine wine for me at dinner sometimes starting when I was 11 or so. The waitresses would roll their eyes, but it wasn’t exactly banned if your parents ordered it for you. I never had more than one glass, often unable to finish that one. I remember the wine, called Wedding Veil, and thinking some ominous thoughts associated with that.

My parents, when speaking to each other in normal tones, liked to remember their days in Washington, D.C. when Daddy was stationed at the Pentagon. They indulged in gourmet dining, the ballet, and the opera while they were there, before my brother and I were born. I calculated that this coincided roughly with their romantic dating phase which ended pretty abruptly never to resurface except in fond memory of dancing and cherry blossoms. They wanted us to appreciate good food, good wine, good entertainment, good literature, good music and of course good manners.

That may seem a little shocking in our health-conscious times now, I know. It wasn’t that unusual to give a kid a sip now and again in the 1950’s and 1960’s though.

It wasn’t that they were unaware or unconcerned about the negative effects of alcohol, rich food and such. It’s just that they never drank enough to even be tipsy, except the one time my Dad agreed to have dinner with my prospective in-laws during the Hubs-1 era.

That day he had tee martoonies and I was shocked, a little amused, but mostly shocked. He laughed, he giggled, he talked and then he went home to my mother who had refused to attend, something that should have shocked me but by then was actually expected. I don’t know what the conversation was that day. I’m just glad I missed it. Did you meet my mom, the Queen of Swords? Yeah, that was one more “everybody duck” moment in our happy home.

Mom liked her beer, sometimes wine and sometimes some kind of variation on a whiskey sour made with store brand grapefruit soda. She would have a drink in the evening. It wasn’t lots of drinks. It was a drink. It seemed normal. Now I realize she should never have had it with untreated major depression. Alcohol is the opposite of what she needed.

Alcoholism never occurred to her. I think she was pretty sure it ran in other people’s families. But you never knew. She had a momentary terror when she discovered my brother as a baby making nightly forays to the refrigerator to chug wine. She dashed immediately to the pediatrician with the little sot, apparently with visions of infantile dry-out clinics and baby delirium tremens. The doctor, they told me, laughed out loud and explained that my brother the great explorer was teething and the wine made his gums feel better. Welch’s Grape Juice was the approved substitute and after that, even with all his teeth, my brother was seldom without grape juice.

One thing I did appreciate about my parents’ more relaxed attitude about drinking was one of the more reasonable house rules starting when I was in junior high. By the time I had the idea to ride in cars with boys but of course was not allowed to, there were enough of my schoolmates’ older siblings who had been in terrible drunk driving accidents.

In Portales, New Mexico in the 60’s and 70’s driving was one of the few forms of entertainment. We lived in a “dry” county but that didn’t stop kids from driving the 20 miles up to Clovis to attempt to purchase beer and wine with faked ID’s or an older degenerate friend. By the time most kids wanted to experiment with alcohol, I knew that Coors Lite was the junior high beer and that I didn’t want to be anywhere near kids who had been drinking and driving.

“Now, if you want a drink,” Mom pointed to the built-in bar in the family room of the house we leased across from the hospital, “there’s the bar. Make a drink. Stay at home where you’re safe.”

One evening I took her up on her offer. Mixology was not something I read about when I read nearly every book in the library that one summer. It just wasn’t interesting. So, when I determined to create my masterpiece, I started from scratch. I settled on rum, which my parents did not care for particularly so it must have been a gift, mixed with 7-Up for its fun fizzy effects and grape Kool-Aid, all on the rocks.

I note this recipe to you in the earnest attempt to help you learn from the mistakes of others. It was quite dreadful, really. But it was mine. I gulped down my creation and retired to a luxurious bubble bath worthy of Cleopatra where I sang “Winchester Cathedral” at the top of my lungs in a falsetto that turned my throat into road-rash. I didn’t drown. I was safe, at home, just like the 9 of Pentacles, surrounded by only local hazards.

Sometime during the evening I donned a bathrobe, found a clean cotton mop-head to use as a wig and performed “Winchester Cathedral” for my parents who laughed until they cried and guided me wisely to bed to sleep off my over-indulgence.

That actually did the trick. I really didn’t want a drink again until after I was 21 although I took a swig of Annie Green Springs now and again. There was no romance in drinking for me.

I do still like to sing in the bathtub though. And that still makes people laugh, especially the people next door.

Best wishes.

The Lady in Her Garden

My friend Ruth sent me a snapshot of my old house in Illinois today. It was like seeing an old friend, catching up. I mean the house. I miss Ruth and her partner Tana, too. Ah, but the house! There are children’s toys scattered outside and the neighbors must have cut down the enormous maple tree that encroached on my backyard property line, shading the entire back yard. It brought back memories of things that almost worked out.

I had landed a job as a programmer with a major insurance company making more money that I had ever thought possible. It wasn’t a king’s ransom. It probably qualifies today for assistance. But then it was wonderful. And I was so tired of living in apartments where the noises were other people’s noises and the parking was uncertain. I wanted a place of my own. Finding one was a bit of a challenge, but I did. It had been a very rainy year with some of the worst flooding in years and I had found out the benefit of looking for houses in the worst weather possible. I could tell which basements were dry. When mold is not your friend, this becomes important. The guy I was dating at the time was a landlord with a creative eye for, well, eyesores that could be turned into something livable with a little effort. This old house was going to be my old house.

The house had been built in 1896 or 1897, a gap in recordkeeping making it uncertain. It was built by a single man who later married. By the time I came on the scene, all the cute Queen Anne gingerbread was replaced by “sensible” aluminum siding, all the leaded glass windows had been replaced by “sensible” plain glass and all the lovely hardwood floors had been covered in various hideous carpets and linoleum. And it was worse than that. The house had been divided into two apartments, an upper and a lower. In order to fit a bathroom where no bathroom had ever been intended, some handyman had sawed through a supporting beam to make way for the toilet plumbing. This resulted in the awful suspicion that each time you sat upon the throne, you were headed through the second floor all the way to that dry basement. But it had high ceilings, separate furnaces for a sort of “zone heating” option, lots of space, and a mature although neglected yard. It was very easy to convert back to a single family home by the removal of one door. It was a Victorian monstrosity in my price range. It was, in short, perfect!

Buying an old house is a lot like a second marriage. You realize your sweetie has been around the block, but you don’t always know which blocks until you really get to know them. You’re prepared to ignore or work around the past as long the present and future are headed in the right direction. But there are surprises.

For one thing, I found out rather quickly what will and will not grow under maples, mulberries and chestnuts. Violets, yes. My whole front yard was full of violets. Some poor fool came by one day and offered to take out all those violets and replace them with grass; he left quickly with the verbal equivalent of cat scratches. Spring bulbs, yes! I filled the back yard up with spring bulbs, taking advantage of the early spring sunshine when trees are bare. I had jonquils, scilla, tulips in every color, hyacinth, snow drops and grape hyacinth completely covering the back yard. What a show! By the time the mulberries and maples leafed out, the show was over and what meager grass grew in near-total darkness shared its space with several varieties of hosta for a jungle-y feel. The Breck’s catalogue was my candy store. I found out you work around maple trees, especially ones that are too big around to hug and have foliage so dense you needed a flashlight on a summer day. So that meant, tomatoes, no. But wait! There was one little patch in the back yard, my sunbeam, capable of sustaining tomato life. But it moved. I planted my tomatoes in pots and put them in a little red wagon. When the sunbeam moved, I moved the wagon. Perfect!

And I found myself in the curious and possibly never to be repeated position of actually having too much space. There were rooms I didn’t go into for a week at a time because, well, because I didn’t. Even when my father shipped me a vanload of antique shop leftovers, I still had the downstairs turret room with nothing in it but the stereo, a drop-leaf table and a couple of chairs. It was in this room I had my most startling paranormal experience. But it wasn’t the first one in that house.

I was in the downstairs kitchen (remember, two apartments, two kitchens) which I considered THE kitchen one early evening. I was happily sautéing some liver and onions, a private indulgence I can share with few others, and playing with my then-new puppy Rusty. Rusty was a bouncy Cardigan Welsh corgi and he loved playing with a tennis ball. All was quiet besides sauté and happy dog noises when I turned around to find a puddle of liquid in the middle of the kitchen floor. “Naughty Rusty!” I thought, putting him in his crate to keep from making a small problem worse.

I wiped up the puddle and could not help noticing that it actually wasn’t a “Rusty puddle.” It was just water. I looked everywhere for a leak, including going upstairs to the balancing act bathroom, turned things on and off, checked the ceiling for dampness, with no result. There was no dried trail from under the sink, no drip, no splash. It had just been a puddle. Shrugging it off and with Rusty safely snoozing in his crate, I resumed my work at the counter to fix dinner. Only a few minutes had passed when I turned around and, you guessed it, there was the puddle again. I checked everything again, my L&O growing cool and unappetizing by the minute. Finally, after wiping up the puddle again with no apparent origin, I said loudly in a verbal To Whom It May Concern, “OK, you guys, stop scaring people!” It never happened again.

Later that year, my father, with all good intentions of clearing out his own house, made me take home my golf clubs and bag. I say “made” because in truth I don’t golf. Good walk spoiled, the whole shebang. After the 6 hour drive home from Dad’s house, I dragged the bag and clubs into the house and leaned them against the wall next to the front door, dashed upstairs to see what havoc the cats had wreaked in my absence and settled in front of the TV. All of a sudden, I heard a crash, like glass breaking, like someone driving into the house, something bad. I dashed downstairs to find my bag and clubs lying on the floor against the far wall of the living room, some 20 feet away from where I had left them, doors still locked, windows still closed, but strewn at the end of the living room.

To Whom It May Concern, “OK, I’m putting the golf clubs away now!” And I put them in the closet. No further flinging of objects occurred after that. Crud, I thought. Just my luck to get some neat-freak ghost.

My last experience, as I mentioned, was the most startling and was in the downstairs turret room. It was winter, one of the bright white days after a snowfall. The afternoon sun streamed into the tall turret windows and warmed the room. I was standing in the closet doorway realizing that some well-intentioned person had first filled the archway in the wall at the back of the closet once connecting the turret room to the dining room with a simple painted bookcase. I was happy with the bookcase since I always have too many books. But later someone had built a very flimsy wall out of chipwood paneling, installed two sets of sliding doors and a rod across the length of it to make a closet. I hated that closet and that awful paneling. I stood there in mental renovation and determined that the result of taking out that paneling had a cascade effect that would result in…tearing out the ceiling in the living room. Ack!

It was at this moment of deep contemplation standing in the bright afternoon sunlight staring into the problem closet that I realized that there was, in fact, someone standing next to me. He too stared into the closet with consternation. He was about 5’6”, very slim build, with very thin light brown hair, a round head, steel-rimmed glasses, a long-sleeved white cotton shirt with sleeve garters to hold them up accountant-style, rust-brown coarse-woven wool pants and I never got to his shoes because I was so flabbergasted. He never looked at me. He just rubbed his chin and looked irritated at the closet. And then, he was not there. No Star Trek sparkles, no wispy dematerialization, no Cheshire cat smile. Just gone. And me with no camera. Alone, except for misbehaving animals, all of whom were a-snooze elsewhere in the house. The “holy grail” of paranormal experiences and I can’t prove a thing!

I lived there almost four years before moving to California to a new life and new adventures. It took a long time to sell the Money Pit and finally went for the price of a pretty good, not very good car. Yet I missed my house. It was a house of compromises, of dreams almost fulfilled, of space shared with the unseen. It was my “fixer-upper” life. While I lived there, I was pretty sure I was well on my way to becoming the Cat Lady in the neighborhood. My friends at work could not understand why a single woman would want to live in such a big, old, crazy house in the first place.

“Because I can stretch out my arms and not touch anything,” I told them. “Because I can make ‘rug angels’ in the awful shag carpet downstairs and no one will care but me.” But mostly, like the 9 of Pentacles, the Lady in Her Garden, having built my funny little world around me, it was mine.

Thanks, Ruth!

Best wishes.