Recovery

Perhaps I need to simplify my new life. Recovery is on a whole other plane. Or maybe that should read planet. After eight months of hard battle to kick cancer, I'm still revving, though weary. In fight Mideast for so long, relaxing into wellness is a bit of a trick. Takes practice and a lot of belief to bring relief. A few decisions help. I no longer watch the news. I sit idle with deliberation, for this does not come easily to me. I husband my energy, a discipline strange to my natural rhythms. I nap. Ugh! I have been lured back to writing. I savor moments and experience them now, and don't save them up for later when they are cold and dim. I daydream between sessions on the stairs for exercise. I watch the snow fall, like today, when we have accumulated three inches. I watch the birds. They are about their winter business. They are teaching me to pace myself. I am becoming a believer in my recovery. I have begun to trust that I am well. To give myself permission as victory after so much hard work, dogged and faithful in this battle. I have been, indeed, have become, a Ninja. My investment in my future was not for chasing rainbows, but for grasping that healing and cure were a definite possibility, to push any chance for recurrence far into the future, should there be any at all. I have no time, patience or energy to suffer fools. When did I ever? But now, I husband all that belongs to me, like that valuable commodity, and I am learning to not forfeit my power to anyone. There is no acceptable reason to spend irreplaceable time entertaining fools. I have divorced more than one friend over politics and do not regret it. But I understand that arena is empty and false, and playing there is nearly pornographic in it's filth and slime and degradation. I cannot offer up a single good reason to save Soddom. And these are people we elect to represent us. What does that say about us? I permit myself really good desserts. Without guilt. No remorse. A touch more jiggle. More fruit. Green veggies. Wine. So much chicken and fish I cluck and have gills, even if my hair growth is minuscule, and my nails have fallen off. I am still a Ninja Warrior, honing my weapons, knowing all of life is a battle, with small oases of respite. I will be careful who is allowed on my island.

How awful is this server?

I just wrote a whole new post about dealing with recovery from eight months of treatment for cancer to become a survivor. The publish button refused to work and so I previewed my rather lovely essay and could not get out of it to publish it. No wonder so many of bloggers use something else. Like wordpress. This gig needs to be over.

Getting closer

I feel like an alien in a bad movie. Think I need fortification. Either a good breakfast or a good drink. Little early, but I'm considering it. Such is the bad influence of Google. I have been away from my blog for six months and have defrayed out this page, but cannot seem to figure out how to publish. I wonder why google chooses to be user unfriendly? I have no intention to lose a whole day trying to restart this exercise in frustration. I got plenty of that for the rest of my life, having completed surgery, chemo, and two kinds of radiation. Add the indignity of hair loss, fingernail loss, and neuropathy, to say nothing about the scary occurrence of friend's and family finding they too are victims of cancer, in their own battles for survival. I don't need to add google stress to my litany.

Still trying to publish

Nothing is working and I think I can't figure this out.

The Picture Box

On her way to her new home in Florida, my sister delivered a shoe box full of photographs, most of them recording my childhood beyond orphanage. Hours and hours of looking at them, I managed to sort and organize them into a sequence that made chronological sense. Along with black and whites of my brother and me, of kids on our street, of neighbors and friends, were numerous photos of my motherland her friends at Triumph Explosives where she made ammo for the Navy in WW 2. While she had put us in an orphanage, this new widow took on the challenge of the nation while earning a living for herself and her family. In every one of the many photos of her, she is smiling or laughing into the camera. She is clearly happy in her work. A woman with many stresses, still, she is not only making the best of her lot, she's happy doing it. My father died at the age of 32, leaving her with two kids and one coming. The war was on it's way and she had no income beyond a small life insurance policy. Serendipity? She and millions of other American women put down their lives to take up the pressing need of the nation. With whole towns emptied of able bodied men, women took up the war work. They proved their mettle, working long shifts and producing all the nation needed for the effort. For so many of them, this was heady freedom. Across the nation, young women sent their earnings home. My mother supported her siblings, paying their utility bills, their rents, their grocery bills. Not everybody was Rosie the Riveter. Making explosives was dangerous work. More than once my mother was blown across a building. some people died working with unstable gun powder. Daily life was a risk upon which she apparently thrived. I look at the smiling woman in the frame and experience a revelation. Caught up in her story of difficult challenges, she is smiling through, doing her best, making it work.I see where my own strengths have been shaped. I recognize her and myself in her. She has a spine of steel. While life is a challenge, it's also a blast. Mama never muddled through. She took life by the horns, leapt aboard and rode the experience to the ground. The downside, for her, was equivalent to the upside. Her very strengths made her tough and often hard. She forfeited any soft side she might have had. Soft was unaffordable. She kept the posture even when it was no longer needed. Each of us make our choices. Mama made hers. It is important now to understand the woman in the picture so to know her. Because all her choices helped shape me.

Incredibly bad format

The format sucks,for starters. There are very good reasons I don't use my blog often. Usually, when there is this much tinkering, folks are indicating they don't have enough to do. Continual redesign, or tinkering, to justify chronic change, discourages users to the enth degree. Having wasted an hour finding myself and figuring out how to access my account, I really have little interest in what I thought I had go say. Better things to do than aggravate myself here. Life is waaaaayyyy too short to be jerked around by google. When getting there takes longer than getting it said, I'm probably in the wrong place.

Another of the Five

John Spinneweber had no peers, was unique, a man of many talents in one category. John was a carpenter of rare abilities, builder, cabinet maker, master of all woods with a passion for cherry. I was new to my town, asked around, and was given his phone number, as I wanted a closet, planning to convert one of several extra bedrooms into a complete dressing area. He arrived one afternoon to look at the space and to discuss how to do it. Then he left. Just like that, leaving me with only his interest and energy. John was tall and lanky of some guessable age just a bit north of my own. He was balding, with a Clint Eastwood smile and similar mannerisms. About two weeks later he returned and asked to see the rest of the house. We had purchased this intact wonder with no idea of the Edwardian House and how to preserve it. Our expertise was the endless exposure of forty years of the eastern seaboard colonial house. This purchase was missing nothing. Complete with every single original chandelier, wall sconce, and magnificent wainscoting, curved walls, fireplaces, mind bending stabbed glass ala Tiffany,crystal etched door glass, windows with transoms, Brass everywhere, and English oak quarter sawn panels everywhere, we were living in an architectural wonder in nowhere land, a town open only to the native born, and their numbers were dwindling.This would be my home for ten years with little to amuse me but this brick pile. John was an answer to a call. But while he circled slot he wouldn't land. After the sixth visit, I asked if he actually wanted this job. He grinned and said he did, that he came so often to determine if we could work together. John knew what I did not: this was going to be a long term project, three years of hourly rate, time and materials, the most expensive way to contract for anything. we were babes in this woods. To his credit, John did not lick his chops.He built the required room and near the completion he announced he had figured out how to install an air conditioning system to cool our six thousand square feet. Given that we were well into the heat of the summer, our interest was certainly piqued. He went away, leaving us to think about it, and in short order we booked him for air. Gutting the master bath and the kitchen came next, all the while living in the mess, plaster in my teeth, coating my hair, and covering everything we owned. We were so deep in we were never going to get out. Money pit hardly defined it. Someone else resided the place, and John often sat within the sooty walls all day doing who knows what, but at lunch and breaks we became fast friends. He was as lonely as i was, but he was attracted only to my mind, so we talked for hours...on my clock...about politics and religion and his Life. John was a staunch Catholic,had lost his son, the light of his life, to a congenital heart condition when a very young man, and a daughter who was a Carmelite nun,complete with wimple, veil and robes. She came to the house to see her father's work, and to meet me. I knew enough to feel honored. I asked John what she wore when she was on vacation from her convent and at home with him. He looked puzzled, then said, "well,that!" what? Since she had given herself to God, he said, she was never again seen without her robes. What do you call her, John? "sister"' he said. No, what's her name? "sister" he repeated. John, when she was a baby what did you name her? "oh! Cathy"! John was generous, kind, intelligent and great company for me, and as interested in my house as I was. It was truly magnificent, and his skills guaranteed we would improve it with great care. He felt privileged to be permitted to do the work. In the three years it took, I was closer to him than most others in my life We had this incredible work in common. In our time together his wife died,ending a marriage more of duty than love. But he was frantic to find a new wife, never intending to leave his substantial money to the Catholic church. He chose the young crossing guard a block from my house because she had two sons. It was a loud shout about his losses. He wanted her sons to have His legacy and his money. John had never seen the ocean, never flew in an airplane, and the delight of his life was to dine at a major hotel in downtown Pittsburgh as the guest of one of the wealthy families in town, who then got the hotel manager to show him the basement, for John wanted to see the inner workings of the place. I miss him more than I care to admit. Generous and accommodating, he valued me in all my aspects, never once compromising me, careful to never cross the line, always preserving my honor. John was the perfect gentleman, completely under control of his religious beliefs, always aware of his personal responsibility to me and to himself. I mourned his losses with him, cheered his choice of bride and witnessed his new happiness, glad for him. We expanded each other. Taught each other, respected each other. Some time after we sold the house and moved away, John fell from a ladder and struck his head. He never regained consciousness. He would have been mortified. Embarrassed beyond belief to have made such a mistake as to misstep. I chuckle and shake my head, knowing. John was easy to love. He smiles that Eastwood smile in my head and I know that wherever he is, the place is brighter for his presence. He was a gift to me, and I learned to see parts of the world differently because of my time with him. He ranks high on my list of five, contributing to my growth and teaching me why wisdom and old fashioned propriety matters. I am a far better person for his friendship and his grace.