Renewal & A Poem of Loving for Good Friends

Thank you Susie Cameron. Because of your brilliant villanelle from several weeks ago, I've been playing with that very constrained form and feeling safe and warm in its grip - this is the first of two.

RENEWAL

A life entwined in pains that are long past

A hugging terror grips my clouded mind

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Afraid to speak my eyes avoid the mast

Where captain of my ship yells life is kind

A life entwined in pains that are long past

My frightened heart beats hard and much too fast

Always I feel like I’m so far behind

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Why does the part inside feel so miscast?

My role in life will it I ever find?

A life entwined in pains that are long past

I wake up from a dream and am aghast

Your heart’s locked in a drawer a deaf girl signed

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Open the drawer for risk I am now tasked

It’s time, I say, my life is not defined

A life entwined in pains that are long past

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

A POEM OF LOVING FOR GOOD FRIENDS

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

With histories that time’s heart always cheers

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

Through incidents that could have fostered hate

Forgiving hearts were bound by many years

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

Births and deaths all wandered through the gate

Familial bonds were sealed by flowing tears

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

They traveled far and not each found a mate

Loneliness through connections disappears

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

Old secrets lurk beneath and sometimes bate

And pain and anger’s head it sometimes rears

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

When old friends will show up with wine so late

The pain and anger fades along with fears

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

Dinner with Aunt Sissy

By Liz Zuercher

I was feeling sorry for myself as I drove up the coast for a duty visit to my great aunt in assisted living. My sixtieth birthday was looming, my husband had dropped dead of a heart attack a few months earlier and my children and siblings all lived too far away from my home in Troy Hill to provide more than an occasional supportive phone call.

How much fun could this be? I grumbled to myself as I pulled into the Sunset Villas parking lot, dodging an old woman with a walker. I was feeling guilty, too, because I hadn’t been here to see Aunt Sissy since James died. I just couldn’t make myself look death square in the face the way you do in a place full of old people.

But I’d forgotten what a pistol my father’s Aunt Sissy is, even at 94. Margery May Schneider Price, known to everyone as Sissy, greeted me with a big hug in the front lobby, the sweet aroma of her signature Chanel 5 engulfing us. As usual, Sissy was dressed to the nines. She wore white pants, a blue and white striped silk blouse and a jaunty red linen jacket. Her short white hair curled softly around her face. Her lips and fingernails were as red as her jacket. She’s a tiny woman, but she carries herself like a queen, her head held so high you forget how short she is. I think Aunt Sissy has grown taller and more regal in her old age rather than shrink like the rest of us. She’s fond of telling the story of how we’re all descended from a German baron who disowned his daughter for marrying a carpenter. Aunt Sissy likes the nobility part, but she really loves the spunk of the daughter who defied her father for love and ended up moving to America.

“That’s the kind of stock we’re from,” Aunt Sissy often reminds me.

Sissy sure has that spunk. She was always more like an older sister to my father than an aunt, but not the protective kind of sister. She was the one who would get him into trouble or take him on an adventure when she was babysitting. My dad just loved Aunt Sissy, and she doted on him.

Sissy showed her spunk after her only child was stillborn right before her husband shipped off to the South Pacific during World War II. She showed us what she was made of again, when he returned in a flag-draped coffin.

Sissy didn’t waste much time mourning. She was all about getting on with life, which she did with gusto. She never re-married, though she was a good-looking woman who had many suitors and never wanted for male companionship. I think she preferred to steer clear of deep commitments and the risk of losing a loved one again. She found a job in Kuhl’s Department Store selling cosmetics and twice a year she’d take a big trip with her girlfriends, or sometimes even by herself.

“I need to go someplace,” she’d say. “My feet are gettin’ itchy.” And off she’d go to India or Australia or someplace no one had ever heard of.

On Friday nights, before she moved to Sunset Villas, Sissy could be found at the piano bar at Steven’s Steak House singing along with whatever her entertainer friend, Jerry, was playing. Usually some time during the evening Jerry would give up the keyboard to Sissy, and between sips of Canadian Club on the rocks and drags on her cigarette, she’d play Gershwin songs by ear. Sissy knew how to have a good time. She still does – even at Sunset Villas.

I was just in time for dinner and Aunt Sissy led me to a table in the middle of the dining room where her usual tablemates, Joe, Charlie and Sal, rose to greet us and pull our chairs out for us. The three of them must be at least ten years Sissy’s junior, but you’d think she was the young one the way they flirted with her. I marveled at how she gave it right back to them, not missing a beat.

I'd never stayed for dinner on previous visits - James always wanted to get home - so I was surprised at how good it was. We ate filet of sole and sipped wine while the men took turns telling jokes that had Sissy and me holding our sides from so much laughter. After dinner we all retired to the lounge, which is what they call the common area. Sissy sashayed over to the piano, sat down, and with a grand arpeggio started the evening’s entertainment, getting everyone to sing along to upbeat big band era songs. I just had the best time. I don’t think I’ve felt so alive in ages.

As I drove back to Troy Hill, it dawned on me that Sissy has more spark at 94 than I have at 60. Well, I’ve got that feisty German girl’s blood in me, too, I thought. I punched the button for the CD player and Aretha Franklin started belting out “Natural Woman”. I sang along with Aretha all the way home.

Happy As A Clam

I’m just happy as a clam. At least I thought so until recent reports from happiness researchers whose scholarly investigations reveal that none of us are as happy as we think we are. Not only that, the things we THINK make us happy, as revealed in the research, actually DON’T make us happy, or at least happier than we thought we’d be.

Happiness research, an outgrowth of the positive psychology movement, has proliferated in recent years and unfortunately for all of us happy clams, the results are rather somber…somber enough to make a happy clam somewhat morose.

Researchers have studied lottery winners, victims of devastating accidents, and random individuals in their quest to pin down just what makes us happy or happier. And the results almost overwhelmingly show that the things we tend to think will make us happy—a big raise, a new house, falling in love, getting married, having kids—do not exactly, after a minor immediate happiness bump from a piece of good fortune, make us happier overall or in the long run.  

On behalf of my fellow clams, I have done a little probing into my own happiness quotient and have decided that the researchers are correct. I am not anywhere near as happy as I thought I was and that makes me rather glum. And I’m not as happy as I could be for the very reasons that happiness researchers document—I tend to focus on the things I THINK will or should make me happy, rather than the things that actually do make me happy.

For instance, I have wasted a lot of time wishing I liked opera. I always thought I would be much happier if I liked opera because it would furnish me a patina of cultural sophistication that my devotion to ‘60s rock and roll, musical comedy, and country western music doesn’t provide. And I’ve tried. I really have. I’ve watched Wagner’s German gods and goddesses tramp around mountain tops and caves decked out in animal pelts and funny horned helmets while singing at the top of their lungs for the Valkyries to ride in like Wyatt Earp and save the day. I’ve watched an Italian courtesan spend the whole third act dying of consumption while she and her bereaved lover trade arias in between her death rattle gasps. I’ve watched Spanish gypsies and Japanese geishas sing their little hearts out for love. By Act III in most operas, there is so much tragedy, betrayal, unrequited love, devastation, despair, and grief swarming around the stage that I just want to whistle for that old con man Harold Hill from The Music Man to come marching in with “76 Trombones” and LIFT our spirits for heaven’s sake. So, no, opera does not make me happier and I’m going to quit thinking that it will.

I've spent a lot of time wishing I were an intellectual. I always thought being an intellectual would make me happier because I’d be able to understand the cartoons in The New Yorker. But maybe the cartoons in The New Yorker just aren’t that funny. Trying to figure them out has not made me happier; it’s only made me feel dumber. I’m done with those cartoons. I like Maxine, the sour old lady, cartoons. When Maxine, sitting in her rocking chair, says, “As far as I’m concerned the perfect bra is a sweatshirt,” I get it. I laugh. Maxine makes me happier. I no longer wish I were an intellectual.

I've tortured myself wishing I liked kale, chard, beets, Brussels sprouts, quinoa, and brown rice. I think I’d be happier if I liked those things because I’d be healthier. But I’m really not a vegetable person. Actually, I’m not a fruit person either. I’m a chocolate turtle, popcorn, nachos with cheese kind of person. You can hold the pave of salmon on lemon mash with mussel broth, the Thai green paw paw salad, and the crispy veal sweetbreads with truffle butter. Give me an old-fashioned pot roast with Southern-style sticky white rice covered with cream gravy and black-eyed peas simmered with a little bacon grease. When I dream about the food that makes me happiest, I dream about grilled hotdogs covered with chopped onions and slathered with mustard and ketchup or In ‘n Out cheeseburgers with sautéed onions and fries. I get my allotment of vegetables on sausage pizza piled high with green peppers, onions, and mushrooms. I’m done wishing I liked kale and chard. I don’t even know what they look like and I don’t care. That’s about the happiest thought I’ve had in a long time.

I've always wished I could read Moby Dick all the way through. I thought it would make me a happier person because it would make me more literary, more educated, and more interesting. I’d be able to discuss whaling and blubber and the intricacies of making whale oil that Melville describes in exhausting detail. I’ve gotten that far in the book…to the whale oil part. But then I give up. I just can’t sustain my interest in whale oil, but I always promise myself I’ll try again because I’m pretty sure I’ll be ecstatically happy if I can finish that book. However, it occurs to me, now that I’m thinking about happiness and the differences in what I think should make me happy and what really makes me happy, that whale oil and blubber don’t often arise spontaneously in conversation at social events and it’s quite possible I can remain happy as a clam without finishing Moby Dick. I think the chances that I might be put on the spot in a conversation about whaling are fairly small. I’m donating Moby Dick to the Friends of the Library and I couldn’t be happier. I really am happy as a clam.

I've wished I were a philosopher so I could figure out the meaning of life. Or maybe I’d just like to have a philosophy. I always thought I’d be happier if I had a handle on the meaning of life. I’ve read Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre—all those big guns in the philosophy department—well, to be honest, I’ve read the Cliffs Notes version of these fellows, and if there’s a meaning to life, even Cliffs Notes hasn’t figured it out yet. I think I’m adopting the philosophy of Lily Tomlin’s bag lady character, Trudy. Trudy says “We’d all be better off if we quit trying to figure out the meaning of life and just enjoyed the mystery of life.” Right on, Trudy. Trudy says since she gave up trying to figure out the meaning of life and quit trying to stay in touch with reality, her days have been "jam-packed and fun-filled." She hasn't said it herself, but, personally, I think she's happy as a clam.

Lately, I've been wishing I could multitask. I keep thinking I’d be happier if I could multitask because I’d get so much more accomplished if I could talk on the phone while folding the laundry while the pot roast for dinner simmers on the stove while composing an ending for this blog post that is overdue while waiting for the first-coat of paint to dry in the bathroom so I can contemplate finishing the second coat by dinner while making my grocery list for the next week in my head while thinking about gifts to buy for my grandson’s birthday while…. But my brain pathways have a major bottleneck right there at the frontal lobes where thought translates into action and only one thought and one action at a time are allowed through the stoplight with any success. When multiple thoughts try to translate into multiple actions all at the same time, the pot roast for dinner ends up sitting on the dryer where the folded laundry should be and the laundry is cooking in the pot where the pot roast should be. Multitasking does not make me happier. It ruins both dinner and the laundry. Multitasking too often results in missing the Ellen show at 4 p.m. and watching Ellen definitely makes me happy as a clam.

So, speaking of clams—“we few, we happy few, we band of brothers” to quote Shakespeare (who, it is pretty much accepted, reached his full human potential and therefore most likely was a happy clam)—my message to all my fellow happy clams is: Quit thinking you’d be happier if you were an oyster and could produce a luminous pearl. Clams don't produce pearls; they produce what is called "calcareous concretions" which have absolutely no value whatsoever. Treasure hunters are not going to seek you out for your calcareous concretions because nobody, absolutely nobody, wants a pair of "calcareous concretion" teardrop earrings dangling from their lobes. Oysters, on the other hand, need be ever on the alert. You, you happy clam, can just burrow into the sand, wait for the high tide, and enjoy your clamness.

Dementia

The title is fair warning! If you need to be in your happy place right now, don't read this!

"Why am I here?" asks my buddy, bewildered,

Eyes searching the wardroom for clues.

There are six beds for six lost men

Who don't know where they are or how they got here.

He still knows who I am -- for now.

"My brain's not working right," he says.

I bring Chinese food, and magazines filled with

Lovely photos of pretty places he'll never visit again.

I bring art supplies, hoping the two-lane roads

Connecting eye, hand and brain

Are still unblocked by the protein-boulder avalanche

Crashing through his head, severing his synapses,

Cutting off the supply lines of all that's familiar --

Ford trucks, fast bikes, fast food, freeways, freedom, friends,

All his disappearing past. He has no future.

I bring him an mp3 player filled with echoes,

Music time-traveling,

A lost civilization calling out across the void --

Beach parties, house parties, little deuce coupe,

Surfing and biking and sailing a sloop,

And I worry. Will the music make him smile or cry?

Those days, his days, have long gone by.

His new best friend, Death, hasn't shown up yet

With the only gift that can help -- a one-way ticket

Out of the misery and into the mystery.

I share some time and bring some things

But can't do any good.

My friend's asked me to kill him.

If I could, I would.

Susan Cameron, copyright 2012