Deanna Glorious

One of my co-workers and my man Mickey are loosely connected through a serious of sad events that occurred to a mutual friend of them both. This friend lost his wife; the next day, his daughter died.

Mickey IM’ed me at work today to ask if I knew anything about the funeral for the daughter. Since she had been estranged from her father for many years and none of his friends knew her, no one was clear about the arrangements. I asked my co-worker who told me how Mickey could find out about the arrangements.

I IM’ed this message back to Mickey: “Shawnee News-Star obits, Deanna Something.”

I stared at that message a long time after I sent it. The local newspaper online obituaries. Someone whose name was unknown to her father’s friends. My heart broke a little and I cried.

To make matters worse, the newspaper posted the wrong funeral date. It listed the services as tomorrow, but they were actually today. So even the friends of this friendless woman’s father weren’t there to gather around her sad remains as they were consigned to the earth.

Deanna, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry your sad life led you off of everyone’s radar. I’m sorry you died alone and troubled and friendless. Most of all, I’m sorry I didn’t know your name.

In my heart, I’ve renamed you. You’re no longer Deanna Something. Go with God, Deanna Glorious, and melt into the sun. Be bright. Shine.

Do you feel lucky, Death? Well, do ya?

A lady who is a friend of both my dearest co-worker and my sweetheart is dying tonight. She’s been under hospice care for some time and her family has gathered this weekend because the time has drawn near. I think it’s wonderful that she’s surrounded by love, surrounded by those she cares for and who care for her as she spends her last minutes on this plain. I know this is the kind of death most people (when they dare to think about their own deaths at all) aspire to. I’m not one of those people.

I’m not a bit afraid of death, but I have a genuine horror of lying sick in a hospital bed somewhere waiting for it to overtake me. I don’t want to go out like that. I can’t think of anything worse than letting death take me on its terms, at the time and place of its choosing.

If I have the misfortune of knowing that death is stalking me more closely than is requisite for my moral comfort, I want the presence of mind to meet that mother fucker on my terms. I want the strength to strap on my spiritual weapons and to meet death at high noon on a dusty street somewhere while tumbleweeds blow across the landscape.

“I heard you were looking for me,” I’d say.

“Looks like I found you,” Death would reply.

I squint.

Death squints.

I ease my hand down toward my sidearm, fingers flexing. “Are you sure you want to do this, Hoss?”

Death sighs. “Got no choice, Slim.”

I nod. “Okay, then. But I have only one question for you, Death. Do you feel lucky today, punk? Well, do ya?”

When death takes me, as he naturally will some day, I want him to come out of the fray with his robe torn, his scythe bent, and his faith in his own inexorability shaken. I want him to go home battered and bruised. I want him to sit in his recliner in front of the TV and pop a beer and say to Mrs. Death, “That was a rough one, honey.”

Yeah, I’m ready. I’ve been ready for years. But I warn you now, Death, it’s going to be a cage match. Better eat your Wheaties, my friend.

Black Box

There was screaming in the coach cabin, a soprano to the scream of the engines’ contralto. Miranda realized the folks in the rear cabin had a better view.

She clung to the armrests and breathed in the general panic. Before the cabin went dark, she’d seen the faces of the flight attendants as they strapped themselves into jump seats. One young female attendant was weeping. The other attendant, a slightly older man, strapped himself in with deceptive calm, as if he was participating in a drill of some sort. His nonchalance didn’t fool Miranda. She’d seen the look on his face. Acceptance. Inevitability. That’s when it hit home: They weren’t going to land in Oslo.

The frigid Norwegian Sea was below them and that was as far as this plane was going. Return your seats to an upright position and check the overhead bins for personal belongings before deplaning.

Miranda turned in her seat and pressed her face to the small window. The starboard wing was aflame, brilliant in the dusky sky.

She felt a slight touch on her hand and glanced at the passenger beside her. Carefully coiffed and impeccably dressed, the older woman raised her eyebrows.

Miranda shook her head.

The woman nodded. Taking her hand from Miranda’s, she reached into her jacket and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. Mind if I – ?

Might as well, Miranda’s eyes responded.

Oxygen masks with their ridiculous yellow cups fell and dangled. The female flight attendant already had a portable oxygen unit in place to cover her sobs. Her male counterpart did not. He stared inexorably ahead, one of his hands on each of his knees.

No smoking, no smoking, the tiny LED alerts blinked above their seats. Miranda exchanged an amused glance with the woman beside her who sat with the unlit cigarette between her lips, shuddering. The cigarette. The woman. The plane. Shuddering.

Miranda looked out the window one last time and thought about her family, her job, her dog, her car payment, her potted plants…

Thank God I’m not in coach. There are children back there. There are babies. If I was back there I’d –

Living on Borrowed Time

And aren’t we all? From the time we’re born, we’re hurtling toward death on a non-stop flight, sometimes without inflight meal service or drinks. There is no way to divert this flight to another destination. This fragile thing we call life is going to end somewhere, someday.

Maybe I’m weird, but I’m totally okay with that. I don’t have any strong religious faith that I’m going to end up at the Pearly Gates with a harp in my hands. I only have the faith that I’ve lived my life as fully as I could and will continue to do so until my heart stops beating. The only advantage (if one can call it that) that I have is having looked death in the face and having had the time to do an internal tally of what my life was before that moment.

On April 4, 2006, I ended up in the local ER with cardiomyopathy. The left ventricle of my heart was ballooned out and my lungs were filling with fluid faster than I could cough it out. After the “sound and fury”, the rush of EMTs to get to me the hospital, and the concert of doctors and nurses, and the tests and nitro and more tests and consultations, I was left alone in my little curtained-off cubicle. But I wasn’t dead yet. I could still hear what was transpiring in the hall beyond, and I could see feet below the curtain.

I saw feet clad in what looked like shower caps. I saw those feet approach and stop outside my cubicle. Then I recognized my son’s unmistakable size 16 Nikes facing those shower-capped feet, and a pair of small battered flip flops that could only belong to my daughter-in-law. (Who else wears flip flops in April in Washington state?!?) And I heard the owner of the shower-capped feet say that my condition was tenuous at best.

Is it strange to say that, looking back, it was the best moment of my life? Not the happiest, of course, but the BEST. Because it defined who I was from that moment until now, and if I’m lucky until the end of my life?

Laying there in my ER cubicle, I had to do a quick review. I asked myself, had I made mistakes? Oh yes, indeed. Had I done wrong? Oh, you betcha. And that being the case, what kind of legacy was I about to leave behind? Easy answer!

I was going to leave behind love. No one I had ever loved would doubt my love for them. No one who knew me would doubt that I always did what I thought was best for them, even if it didn’t turn out exactly as I’d planned. I knew at that moment that I could go without any regret other than perhaps a few bucket list items that might entertain me but which would ultimately do nothing to enrich or diminish what defined “Debi” in the minds of those who loved me.

I survived, obviously, and I survived with an amazing gift. Because I know how deeply the love in my life has touched both myself and those around me. I’ve been richly blessed with extra time to build on that legacy, but I can totally look forward to death without a qualm.

Funny thing about love. You take it with you when you’re staring death in the face. I learned that in 2006 and I’ve lived it every day since. I’m the luckiest person I know.

In Defense of Grandmothers

I read a blog today on cafemom.com that absolutely blew me away. I wish I could find the link because I’d like to give credit to the blogger and also to show my blog followers that, as incredible as it sounds, I’m not making this up. The blog was regarding today’s grandmothers.

The blogger wrote how she often hears from her friends that their mothers (today’s modern grandmothers) aren’t at all fit for the job. They’re too busy getting plastic surgery or gadding about town or engaged in other pursuits of a purely selfish nature to be bothered with babysitting their grandchildren. The ladies who posted comments seemed divided into two camps: Those who said grandmothers are under no obligation to be built-in babysitters and those who felt modern grandmothers fall egregiously short of ideal. To the later category I’d like to point out just a few things.

1) Women in my age group (50s and 60s) have raised our children. Now it’s your turn to raise yours.

2) These gadabout grannies you’re so unhappy with are the same generation of women who opened up unheard of avenues for ourselves and for you, our daughters. There has never been a time in American history when women had more independence, controlled more personal wealth, or enjoyed greater professional esteem. We were not happy with career choices of teacher, nurse, secretary, or stay-at-home-mom. We’re CEOs, we’re astronauts, we’re doctors, professors, truck drivers, policewomen, soldiers, working moms and stay-at-home-moms. We’re not just secretaries – we’re Secretaries of State. And thanks to our battle for equal rights, you’re free to choose to be any one of those things also. We fought for what we have against odds that you will hopefully never have to face, usually juggling the role of wife and mother at the same time. And now that these women have reached an age when they can finally exhale, you want them to suddenly turn domestic? Do you really expect this generation of smart, strong, educated, determined women to suddenly be happy in the role of nanny for your convenience? Surely you’re joking.

3) We’ve worked hard all of our lives to raise our families while most of us maintained careers outside of the home. We’re tired, okay? Now we’ve reached an age when the amazing loads we’ve carried for decades have finally started to lighten. We’ve seen our children become happy, wonderful adults with families of their own. We’d like to go to the day spa once in a while without being judged as uncaring or distant from our grandchildren.

4) There are now more grandparents with legal custody of their grandchildren than at any other time in American history. If we’re generalizing, your argument that we’re uninvolved can be rendered invalid on that fact alone.

I’m not a grandmother, but most of my friends are. I know how much they adore their grandchildren. Yes, there are bad grandparents – and bad parents and bad aunts, uncles, cousins, ad infinitum. There will always be weaker, more confused, or perhaps just plain unfit people involved in the lives of children. But if your definition of “bad” consists of not allowing ourselves to be your unpaid domestic workers, well…

We’re strong and empowered, making more money, living longer and looking better than ever before. We fought to get here and we fought to get you here, too, because we never want to see you subjugated, castigated, and cast down because of your gender. It’s all out there for you, honey, for your generation, because we wanted a better world for ourselves and for you.

No need to thank us.

The Island of Lost Things: Oregon

Turn right in 200 feet.

Cody took his foot from the Navigator’s accelerator and peered at the darkness beyond the rainy windshield. There were no road signs and nothing indicated an impending crossroad.

Turn right in 100 feet.

He turned the wipers on high and stared at the trees to his right. Still no indication of a road ahead.

Turn right in 50 feet.

“I don’t see shit, Brittany.” Cody had named her Brittany. He harbored fantasies about Brittany and her smooth, unshakably confident voice riding his cock as they maneuvered unknown byways together.

Turn right in 25 feet. Pause. Recalculating.

“Fuck!”

There was nothing, only an unbroken expanse of pines on either side of Cody’s vehicle. He glanced in the rearview out of habit, not because he expected to see headlights behind him on this dark stretch of Oregon road, not in some perverse hope that another driver would come along to guide him.

Make a legal U-Turn at the next opportunity.

“Oh, Brittany, you bitch. You know Chelsea, don’t you?” Cody suspected they were best friends, this sexy, disembodied GPS voice and his ex-wife. He struck the steering wheel the palms of both hands. “Oh, fuck my life.” He was suddenly reminded of Stephen King’s short story, “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”.

Recalculating.

“Recalculate all you want, you twat.”

Something flashed reflective green and Cody automatically tapped the brake pedal. “Is that a road?” he asked the night.

Turn right in 50 feet.

“Yes!”

Cody swung the big SUV off the paved highway and onto a graveled road lined with spindly lodgepole pines. He gave the accelerator an encouraging boost. He felt the rear tires slide a bit in warning, but gave them a tad bit of gas in defiance.

“Oh yeah, baby,” Cody hissed, turning into his slight spin and righting the vehicle on its eastward path. “We’re doing it now.”

Pines closed in on both sides, but he felt a surge of relief. “We’re on our way, you slut.”

You have arrived at your destination.

Cody put an unconscious foot on the brake pedal, staring at the weak trees around him. “What the fuck.”

The Navigator crept slowly forward to a point where the road ended and the forest of skinny tree trunks blocked path ahead.

“This is not happening.”

He hit the dome light and, stretching his travel-weary muscles, reached for the Rand-McNally Road Atlas under the passenger seat. Cody sighed, “I fucking hate you, Brittany.”

Don’t be hatin’, Cody. You have arrived at your destination.

Cody forgot about the atlas and sat up straight. He stared at the GPS. “What?”

I said, don’t be hatin’, Cody. You have arrived at your destination.

Cody rubbed his face with both hands. I’ve been awake too long. Too many miles and too many hours. Maybe I should take a nap here, then figure it out in a few hours.

You have arrived at your destination.

Cody stared.

Asshole.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m over tired.”

He reached for the handle and swung the heavy Navigator door open into the dank Oregon forest.

The Great Post-Christmas Griddle Debacle of 2011

In advance of this blog, I’d like to point out that writing it is my punishment. It’s the recompense my other half, Mickey, demands in light of some rather heinous behavior on my part. All over a griddle. A stupid $12 griddle.

It began innocuously enough. I came home from work, kicked out of my shoes, caught up a little on Facebook, then headed to the kitchen to make dinner. Grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. Mmmmmmm. I took the griddle out of the lower cupboard and placed it on the stove top. Then I turned and got four slices of bread, and placed them on the cutting board. Then I went to the refrigerator to fetch the cheese, the butter (I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, actually), and a slice of ham for Mickey’s sandwich. He still refuses to give up meat. He and the dogs will apparently cling to the death to their decomposing pieces of flesh hacked from the corpses of tortured livestock animals. Not that I harp about it. Much.

Anyway, I emptied two cans of soup into a larger bowl and placed it in the microwave before preparing the sandwiches. Then I opened the lower cupboard to get the griddle. It wasn’t there.

“Honey,” I said, “I can’t find the griddle.”

“It’s in the cupboard,” Honey responded.

I dug deeper. “Sweetheart, I can’t find it.” That’s what I thought I said, but if we had a security camera with sound in the kitchen it might have come out more along the lines of, “The fucking thing isn’t down here.”

“I know I put it down there,” Mickey said.

I don’t know about the rest of you tall folks – anyone over, say, 5’2″ – but I despise lower cupboards. They’re useless and awkward. The only reason for their existence is to hold up the sink and the countertop. They shouldn’t even have doors on them, that’s how useless lower cupboards are. But I digress. I started pulling pans out of the cupboard. Two cookie sheets, a large skillet, a muffin tin that I didn’t even know we owned, a couple of glass lids, a second surprise muffin tin. Still no griddle.

“It’s not down here,” I snapped.

“It has to be.”

By that time I was on my knees on the dog-hairy, cold kitchen linoleum. “Don’t fucking tell me that, I’m not blind. It’s not fucking here.” I’m sure my tone sounded accusatory. How could it escape sounding so? In my mind, I was accusatory. In my mind I was castigating Mickey for his careless misplacement of our one and only griddle. He works from home, he’s here all day, and he can’t keep track of a fucking griddle? These are the things that were going through my mind.

Mickey came into the kitchen at that point. “Oh, you’re right,” he said. “It’s not down there.”

“Ah ha!” I exclaimed. I jumped to my feet, basking in the self-righteous glow of my angry triumph.

“It’s not down there,” he continued, “because you already put it on the stove.”

Oh. Oops.

Mickey Mills, writer extraordinaire, software god, technical genius, and all-around long-suffering partner of mine with, thankfully, the best sense of humor ever, I am so sorry. I’m so sorry that even the dogs are sorry vicariously, although they have no clue why.

Mea culpa, darling.

Christmas lights with Speed Racer and his gassy dog

There’s a pond and garden shop a couple of miles north of town that really does the whole Christmas lights thing up right. I’ve been looking forward to driving out there with Mickey and enjoying the display because I reasonably figured that viewing a quarter acre of lighted Christmas displays on a dead end street would necessitate Mickey slowing down to at least 40/45 miles per hour. (My neck is still slightly whiplashy from our Grand Christmas Lights Cruise of 2009.) Let’s take the dogs with us, I said. It’ll be fun, I said. What could go wrong, I said.

By the time Mickey whipped the minivan around a corner on two wheels past the pond shop and onto the dead-end street, I already knew that Slevin was unhappy. He was stuck in the middle of the van with Shooter and had apparently given up all hope of seeing Christmas lights. Slevin likes Christmas lights. He especially likes the dark gray ones. But the poor guy was missing everything. He was laying on the floor of the van, emitting the occasional despairing sigh. Well, we can’t have that, can we? So I asked Mickey to pull over and stop.

Mickey is nothing if not agreeable.

Once I picked up the items from the back of the van that had been thrown forward onto the dashboard by Mickey’s spirited deceleration (my purse, the smaller of the two dogs, a large bottle of liquid detergent, a floor jack, the spare tire and an old Taco Bell cup), I exchanged seats with Slevin. I strapped myself into the middle seat next to Shooter and Slevin took the front passenger seat. What could possibly go wrong?

Mickey drove down one of the nicest streets in town, Broadway, determined to find Christmas lights for our ooohhhhing and aaaahhhhing pleasure. The faint glowing blur of red, white and green that streaked past the tinted windows of the middle seat assured me that he was giving us the grand tour, but by that time I was unable to fully enjoy the ride. I was feeling slightly carsick. I can only assume that Shooter was also because he began to give olfactory evidence of severe gastrointestinal distress.

In the front seat, Mickey’s eyes began to water. “Did that dog crap in the van?”

Needless to say, we had to cut the Grand Christmas Lights Cruise of 2011 short. I breathed a sigh of relief with what little oxygen left in my lungs that hadn’t been burnt away by Shooter’s methane as we pulled into the driveway. We were home. What could go wrong?

Mickey leaped nimbly out of the driver’s side. Slevin leaped even more gracefully out after him. That left Shooter and I. There’s no way I can explain how a 60 pound dog prevented me from getting out of my own damned vehicle. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that he did prevent me. Mickey reached in to try and pull Shooter away so that I could unfasten my seat belt. Shooter slipped out of his collar. Mickey slipped him back into it. Shooter slipped out of it again. Mickey slipped him back into it. Shooter head-butted me in the nose and anointed me with one last mind-bending fart as tears streamed down my face.

God as my witness, there will be no Grand Christmas Lights Cruise of 2012.

Yule 2011

Tomorrow night, Dec. 22, marks the shortest day/longest night of the year. It’s the time when Pagans and Wiccans everywhere celebrate the rebirth of the Oak King and his symbolic defeat of the Holly God because after tomorrow night the days will continue to grow longer until mid-Summer when the Holly King returns to defeat the Oak King once again.

Back and forth, these Kings take turns ruling the Earth, one cloaked in darkness and the other in light, one incomplete without the other. Symbolic “enemies”, they are really brothers, or rather two halves of the Earth God himself.

For those who plan to celebrate the Winter Solstice with a ritual of their own, here’s a quick primer on what supplies you might need:

Incense: Pine, cedar, cinnamon and bayberry are favored for honoring the return of the Oak King and for sending the Holly King on his way with thanks and praise. Personally, I burn Nag Champa year round for all of my rituals, but I’ll burn cinnamon also as a sort of under-scent.

Herbs: Oak, evergreen, frankincense, holly, laurel, mistletoe, pine and sage. Luckily, most of us keep sage on hand year round.

Stones/Crystals: Ruby, garnet, bloodstone, emerald and diamond. I don’t personally have any emeralds, diamonds or rubies just laying around for ritual use, lol. But lucky me! Bloodstone is MY stone. I have a large (fist-sized) piece of it that I keep on my altar and I wear a bloodstone ring 24/7.

Spells: Auspicious spells for Sabbat include spells for peace, harmony, love and happiness. Good will toward men. (Sounds familiar?) It’s always a wonderful time of year to ask for enjoyment and prosperity during the reign of the Oak King.

 

It’s coming…wait for it

In a few short days, Winter arrives!  This is my season.  This is my time.

As a child of Southern California, I never knew anything about winter until one year when the boy I loved at that time drove us up Mt. Palomar and into the heart of winter.  Cars were stalled and stuck all along the highway, and the chains my boyfriend had in the back of his Ford Pinto Wagon were too large for the vehicle’s small wheels.  Still, we stopped and helped push several stranded travelers out of the drifts, then descended the mountain to have hot chocolate at a tiny local cafe.  I’ll never forget that evening.  People stared at me.  People always stare at me because, frankly, six foot women aren’t all that common even in Southern California.  But I knew they were staring at me that night for a reason that had nothing to do with my height.  They felt – as I did – my oneness with the season.  Surround me with snow and ice, and I’m in my element.  My inner fire glows.

There’s a blizzard warning on part of the Southern Plains tonight and, oh, how I wish it was headed my way.

Come Winter!  Come snow and ice and chilling winds!  I embrace thee, as you embrace me.

This is MY time.