No Regrets?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like she's aged ten years in the past year. The side effects of a pandemic life are many and varied, but for me, one of the harshest is the onset of what I call "pandemic dreams." My nighttime theatre has taken on a new kind of loneliness, despair, confusion, and most notably, regret.

I'm not going to bother you with the details of last night's dream production, simply because nobody really wants to hear about someone else's dreams. But I will tell you that it featured long-dead loved ones, fear, disloyalty, homelessness . . . and ultimately, regret. I mean, the regret was visceral and lingering, enough so that I thought I should confront it in a blog post.

For decades, I have believed that the main goal in this earthly life is to arrive at the end of it with as few regrets as possible. And for the regrets that refuse to disappear from memory, to have learned something valuable from them. Sometimes that's easy, like my regretting that as a child, I used to pick my nose at night and wipe the boogers on the wall. What did I learn when my mother discovered this? Perhaps the wisdom of keeping a box of tissues next to the bed? And I surely regret (at around age 10) smearing hot tar from the newly paved street onto my best friend's bathing suit, a terrible deed for which I have no explanation. A lecture from her mother chastened me, but the fact that I still remember this lapse of judgment from about 60 years ago tells you something about the power of regret. When I was a teenager, I shoplifted a package of hair ribbon bows from a local store. Despite my attempts at assuaging my guilt in the confessional closet and obediently reciting my Hail Marys at the altar, I have carried that regret with me forever. But I learned something: don't friggin' shoplift!

Some regrets don't involve others at all, but that doesn't lessen them. I never learned to swim. And that may be my biggest regret. I've collected quite a laundry list of reasons why I never learned, culminating in a fear of deep water, but I also know that had I confronted this liability head-on many years ago, I would not have the regret now. Instead, I've lived with it, missing out on pleasures and adventures too numerous to list. But I can assure you, my three kids learned how to swim early on, with one of them spending her summers lifeguarding for several years. Yes, I've snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef and in the Galapagos Islands, but it was scary as hell for me. The only reason I was able to survive was that people who love me encouraged me, gave me lessons, and swam by my side. But the regret lingers. Maybe I'll be a sailor in my next life.

I've hurt people. I've hurt people I loved. Can any of you say you have never done the same? This life is messy, isn't it? Certainly, I regret having hurt anyone, but perhaps that is counteracted by having helped some others along the way? Forgiveness and redemption, two graces that are hard to achieve, but assist in healing our fragile countenance.

In the song "Title and Registration" by Death Cab for Cutie, lyricist Ben Gibbard sings, "And here I sit where disappointment and regret collide . . . " With apologies to Ben, I'm going to end this post with this:

And here I sit where acceptance and regret collide.

The Truth As You See It

I've been in my South Florida home for a month now, and today, I finally got to the beach. What took me so long? Weather, of course. But today was hot (89 degrees!) and sunny and a perfect beach day. I wore a mask and walked quite far until I found a relatively isolated piece of beach. Spent a couple hours reading and staring at the ocean. It was all perfect . . . except for the plane that flew by with a banner that read "Best President Ever . . . Donald Trump." Okay, so some dude with a plane and a lot of money got to advertise his political preference for all to see. I convinced myself to not let it get to me. And then he was gone. Sort of like the president he was celebrating.

I am not a swimmer, but I am a beacher. (Auto-correct wanted to change that to "teacher," which was also true, but not anymore.) I was quite content with my 100% whole wheat Sun Chips and my water and my book. Okay, I'll be honest here . . . I also had a cold can of Goose Island "So-Lo," a 98-calorie IPA, which I bought by accident . . . last year. I guess canned beer cannot hold up over a year of refrigeration. When I opened the can, I got quite a shower of beer head, enough so that I had to travel down the hot sand to the water and clean myself up. And a low-calorie IPA? Bad idea! What was I thinking?

But the book I'm reading is quite compelling. My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. My friend Shelly recommended it to me. Years ago, I read The Chosen by the same author, so I figured, okay. Now, I'm not that far into it yet, but I am definitely into it. Topic? Joseph Stalin's persecution of Jews in Russia. But it's never that simple, is it? Asher Lev, the young narrator, has artistic talent, which is not honored by his father. As a character in the story tells Asher, "As an artist, you are responsible to no one and to nothing, except to yourself and to the truth as you see it."

So I've been contemplating that wisdom. I have always known that my sanity relies on my inspiration, my accessibility to materials, my desire to BE CREATIVE. I need a project. That can be a blog, a poem, refinishing furniture, painting a room, even doing a jigsaw puzzle. For Shelly, it's painting. Rocks, canvas, it doesn't matter . . . she's painting, she's creating, she's responsible to the truth as she sees it. It grounds her.

And so that begs the question: what if you don't have the means to express yourself creatively? I've often thought about young people who don't have access to a piano, a guitar, an array of paints? What if they possess an amazing talent, but never have the means to discover it? It's a heartbreaking thought.

So crochet your afghans, paint your landscapes, write your poems, build your picnic tables, play your guitars, bake your casseroles, sing your songs, decorate your homes, plant your gardens, compose your memoirs . . . do whatever it is that you can do, and know your truth. Namaste.

A Shot in the Arm

Being born in 1950 offered the benefit of always knowing how old I was in any given year. No math involved, as there is for those born in a year that ends in a 3 or a 7. Go ahead, throw any year at me, and I can tell you how old I was. Did you say 1987? I was 37 years old. How about 1991? I was 41 years old. I will admit, it got a bit harder when we entered a new century. I mean, there was some math involved, like adding 50 to whatever year it is. It is now 2021. I am fast approaching the age of 71, and grateful to be alive.

And I want to stay alive. More on that later.

One of my earliest memories of growing up in a small town in the 1950s is that of a woman named Fran who lived up the street from me. She was a wife and a mother to three children: Gary, Carl, and Nancy, who was just a year younger than I. Fran had polio, and although my tiny brain was not able to understand what that meant, I knew it was something to be afraid of. When Fran died, her children moved in with their grandmother who lived across the street. Mrs. Stanton raised them as well as any parent could. I cannot ever recall Nancy talking about her mother; perhaps she was too young to even remember her.

In 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk was responsible for creating a vaccine against polio. His name was celebrated everywhere. Somewhere around 1961, Dr. Albert Sabin came up with a better idea. Instead of receiving four injections of Salk's killed-virus vaccine, children could get a live-virus vaccine, usually given by droplets on a sugar cube. I swear to you, I can still picture my 11-year-old self standing in a line of children at our local high school, eagerly holding out my tongue for my sugar cube. (I loved sugar! Don't even ask me how much I snuck onto my morning Rice Krispies!) And just like that, we were all safe from polio.

But before the polio vaccine, there was the smallpox vaccine, which was given by injection into the arm. I don't know how old I was or what year it was when I was vaccinated, so I'm guessing I was just a baby. What I do remember is the scar that the vaccination left. As kids, we would compare the round scars on our left arms to see whose was bigger. (That scar made it easier to determine left from right for those of us who were - and still are - directionally challenged.) Guess what? I just checked, and that scar is still visible on my almost-71-year-old left arm! Smallpox was eventually eradicated, and the smallpox vaccine was stopped in 1972. (I was 22 years old. See how easy that is?)

Fast forward to today. I am currently hiding out in my winter abode. Florida is home to a gazillion senior citizens, and we are all at the top of the list to get vaccinated for COVID-19. It's a shit-show. For several weeks now, my guy and I have tried multiple ways to get in a line for the vaccine with no success. Until yesterday, when my resolve to stare at a computer screen paid off. I got in! (My guy did not.) I was able to schedule appointments for both of us, one at a time. So what if our appointments are not on the same day? We got in!

And this morning, I got my first shot of the Moderna vaccine. As of this writing, about five hours after the shot, I have no pain, no swelling, no rash, no nothing . . . except the comfort and satisfaction of knowing that I am on my way to a normal life again. I can put my fear aside a bit and dream about future happy hours and live music and road trips and flights to wonderful places. I can visit my children more, especially my newly-married California son, whom I have not seen in a year. I can hold my brand new granddaughter and sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to her. I can make the most of whatever time I have left on this planet and never take my breath, my heart, my mobility for granted.

I have a better shot at staying alive. A shot. Amen.

New Morning

I didn't realize the weight until it was lifted. But this morning I could breathe, I could run, I could sing, and although no one was watching, I danced.

The park I love, the place where you can find me some mornings before sunrise, was asleep under a blanket of fog when I arrived. Shivering in the early chill, I diverted my attention to the music playing in my ears. "Harmony Hall" by Vampire Weekend:

    "Anybody with a worried mind can never forgive the sight

    Of wicked snakes inside a place you thought was dignified

    I don't want to live like this, but I don't want to die."

 The insurrection at the Capitol was one of the ugliest sights I've ever seen in the seven decades I've been alive. It is not one that can be easily erased, and it probably shouldn't be, despite the weight of it. But I don't want to continue here with graphic descriptions of something you've all seen. You already know how frightening, how ugly, how effing unbelievable it was. It will take a long time to move it back from the front row of memory.

I turned my focus to the birds that inhabit my park, trusting that I could remember all their names. Boat-tailed grackle, Florida parakeet, pileated woodpecker, anhinga, ibis, and all the varieties of egrets and herons. They were all there, welcoming me back.

I turned a corner from a shaded grove to an open field. The fog was lifting, the sun was rising, and all perspective shifted in that moment. It was, indeed, a new morning. The sun rose on the day that I have been waiting for . . . January 20, 2021. Have you been waiting, too?

And so I danced. No one was watching. But despite that, I knew that I was not the only one. America exhaled, and our collective breath promised a return to dignity and truth and compassion.

It's good to be back.