write some short essays about stuff that interests me

I think I’m going to enter into another period of not buying things for as long as I can. I plan to begin with the new year. I won’t set a timeline..will just see how long I can manage it. As before, I’ll buy food, cat food, supplies, services, gas..whatever consumable stuff I might need. I’m giving some thought to allowing yarn that is intended to become a gift..although I have so much stash yarn that I really don’t need any more for a long, long time.

But before I begin this non-shopping time, I have decided to have a look at my wish list, buy stuff that is on it that I have been thinking about for a long time and then re-setting the list to zero. See, I keep a list in a notebook about stuff that I see here and there that interests me and that I think I might like to buy and own for myself. Some things stay on the list for years. Now you might say, if something is on the list for years, that must be an indication that you certainly don’t need the thing and probably you don’t even want it. True enough. But I do cross stuff off the list without a murmur all the time. Things that keep making the cut are things that I end up thinking I really do want to own.

So in November, I began to do some shopping. I allowed myself to buy pretty much anything I wanted that was less than $50. Most things were a lot less. I got several kitchen items, some new flannel sheets, some socks, a couple of fancy sweatshirts, quite a few books. Next week I think I’ll get a few more small kitchen items, some more books, a sweater, a couple more cotton turtlenecks. I’m ok with this. I don’t think that living simply means that I have to not buy things at all. I think it just means I have to buy things with a lot of deliberation which is what I’m doing.

What will be left on the new list? Right now a few things. The red shoes, for example. I still haven’t found the right ones yet. One of those really good Japanese garden digging knives to use when I start up gardening again. That’s about it as best I can remember.

I’ll be going to San Francisco in February. I’ll have three days as a tourist. I imagine I’ll buy a thing or two there. Some souvenir yarn, I hope. Maybe I can find one of those garden knives there, but of course, I’ll have to check my luggage.

This morning I was sitting in my big comfortable chair. Kitty came and settled onto my lap and seemed that she wanted to stay awhile. I was listening to Rick Steeves on the radio and knitting because I could concentrate on the words while knitting. I had some coffee. It was raining a bit which made the place cool and comfortable.

Listening to Rick I was yearning once again for travel, but I also got to thinking about if I could do anything at all right now, what would I like to do, where would I like to be.

My answer was that right now I wanted to be sitting in a really comfortable place with some coffee, my knitting and my kitty. Exactly what I was doing. If I were traveling, right then I didn’t want to be out and about in a new place. At best I would want to find a comfortable coffee shop where I could just sit and knit for quite awhile. So maybe I wonder, do I need to be out traveling?

The past couple of weeks my life was given over to Sundance. If I wasn’t working, I was trying to fit in watching films. I had a great time again and will do this again next year for sure. I like this years’ jacket. It’s sized for women this time around, so it fits. I’m going to keep this one and give last years’ away next winter for the needy.

This year I saw more films than ever. I won’t talk about all of them individually, but here are some ones that I particularly liked:

Afghan Star
Push
Taking Chance
Earth Days
Wounded Knee
Endgame

This year the filmakers were in the theater for most of the films I saw. I especially liked that. The only famous person I saw was Kevin Bacon, from Taking Chance. I never went up to Park City. I just don’t do that in the winter. I’m told that attendance was way down this year. I’m not sure why. Let’s hope it was because people had to choose between Sundance and the inauguration and they chose the history making event. I don’t blame them!

Right now I’m quite tired of movies. I haven’t seen anything that’s up for the Academy Awards (not unusual for me). I doubt I will end up seeing anything. That’s what Netfix is for.

During the Shesshin, we were joined one day by this young woman who called herself a traveler. She probably told people her name, but I wasn’t there when she first arrived. I just found her eating breakfast in the front room one day talking with a few of the younger people who were there at the retreat. She had somebody with her who was also eating, but that person never spoke that I heard, nor did The Traveler speak about or to him/her. I honestly have no idea what gender the second person had; it didn’t matter. S/he was quite small and looked thin and hungry. All s/he did was to eat sitting by the fire.

The Traveler said she had a van in which she lived. She said she came to SLC regularly because she knew people here. This time she was going to hook up with somebody who was going to convert the van to run on vegetable oil.

She said she traveled around and fed people all over the country. She had a big pot and a big fry pan, but no source of heat for cooking right now, so I wasn’t clear about how she actually cooked food. Maybe over open fires in camp grounds. She talked about stopping at places like festivals & getting temporary work to get money. She was generous with her money. For example, she talked about being glad she had recently earned several hundred dollars so she could send some money back to her younger sister who needed it. I didn’t get the impression she used substances she shouldn’t or that she engaged in illegal activities. The way she spoke about herself and how she lived, I got the impression she had high ethical standards and was very concerned with helping those less fortunate than she.

She was fascinating because she was actually living that kind of life I and others dream about regularly. I admired her on a certain level for seemingly being able to pull it off. She spoke as if she needed very little and pretty much had what she needed.

But I can’t live like that (unless I was forced somehow into it, but we won’t go there, and that probably won’t happen.) I can reduce my needs. I could live in a boarding house like they used to have for ladies of good character. But I really do want to be settled. I want a permanent home that is a building. I want a comfortable bed and pictures on the walls. I want more stuff than she has. I want the ability to keep myself and my things clean. I want to be warm in bad weather. I want regular food. I want health insurance. I want structured work. I want a safe home for my kitty. I can’t really be a traveler myself. the realities are too hard. But I do admire The Traveler for what she is and what she does. I wish her blessings.

I didn’t quit 43Things although it looks like it. Instead I got sick. I’m better now but I spent time (not much) in a hospital and have been having a variety of tests with more to come to try to figure out the problem. I’ve been spending a lot more time than usual resting and taking care of myself. I’m doing much better and think things will come out all right in the end. I’ll probably be on some medicine for awhile anyway, and elective surgery is something to think about, but things are looking like I don’t have anything really serious like cancer.

I have learned that I have friends who will rally round at a moment’s notice, who are very concerned about my welfare. I have had excellent care from a variety of nurses which does my heart good. I’ve learned I have tendencies like my mom and my aunt to minimize symptoms I feel. I have to find a balance here. Certainly I don’t want to become a complainer who goes to see my NP for every little thing, but I also need to really look at how I actually feel and how my life is being affected by things and to seek help a bit earlier than I have been.

I’ll be ok, and I hope that I’m well enough now to be back to my usual form. I hope I’ll get back here more often!

I went to Maine because the phone for the camp in Vermont was busy. I had just moved to New York City and was going to begin my graduate program in the fall, in a few months. Why didn’t I stay in my old town for an extra two months earning and saving a bit of money before beginning school? I think I just wanted to get out of Dodge and into New York as soon as I could. But once there, I figured out quickly that I needed a job for a few months anyway.

The Times had a bunch of ads for camp nurses, something I had never considered but which would work out well for me. I had visited Massachusetts and Rhode Island and knew that New England in the summer was lovely. Everybody knows Vermont is wonderful, so I called the camp in Vermont first. Busy.

So I called the next number, a camp in Maine. They answered. The next day or so I went over to the Upper East Side to the apartment of the owners for an interview. They hired me and even said I could bring my kitty with me. So in a week or so my co-worker who lived in Brooklyn and had a car had picked me up, and we drove to Maine.

Camp was a cultural revelation for me. It was a private camp for girls. It didn’t discriminate in any way, but the vast majority of the girls were self described “JAP’s”. They were all wealthy and lived mostly in New York and Philadelphia. This camp had been in operation for decades and was a tradition in the camp families. The grandmothers, mothers and aunts of most of the girls had attended. The camp never advertised for campers…. no need. There was a waiting list, and you really did need to get your daughter’s name on the list about the time she was born. Alumni daughters always had preference.

Camp was BELOVED by the campers and families. Every camper had stories told her by her mother or sister or aunt about the great times that had been had there.

It was an 8-week sleep over camp with one day where family could visit. Girls were all divided into one of four teams, just like the houses in Harry Potter. You did everything in your team and the whole summer was one big team competition with a variety of mini-competitions. Many were in the various sports, of course. But there was also a singing competition and arts competitions. With the singing, the whole team competed. In individual competitions, if you won, your points went into your team totals.

Everybody wore camp uniforms. This was part tradition, part so we could be identified with the camp, part so that the girls couldn’t compete with clothes and things like that. Everybody wore these white middy blouses with fairly short shorts. Staff wore black shorts, and campers wore blue ones. And everybody had to wear these long ties that were tied in an unusual knot. Someone tied mine for me the first day and after that I (and everybody else) just slipped the things over our heads. We had to wear white Keds and white socks. But the camp laundered our clothes. Staff could wear other clothes at the end of the day, but mostly we didn’t. If we needed coats or rain gear or things like that, we could wear anything we wanted. If we needed long pants, we were supposed to wear either black or blue ones, but nobody got real fussy about that.

We ate all our meals in the dining room. Campers and tent counselors had assigned seats, but the non-tent counselors and staff like us in the infirmary could sit where we wanted. Every evening about 2000 cake and coffee were served for staff only. The food wasn’t great, there were many complaints, but it wasn’t all that bad. We had a little kitchenette in the infirmary where we could make coffee or tea or whatever for ourselves too, but tent dwellers weren’t supposed to keep food. If we had an inpatient, which we did from time to time, we could call up and have food sent down for the patient(s) and us. Our inpatients were mostly girls with bad colds who were allowed to sleep with us in a building, which could be heated.

There were an amazing variety of things to learn and do and the counselors/ instructors were all excellent. One program was theatre production. I made one of my best friends for life there. Thom, who was in charge of sets, lighting and sound, was one of the most talented people who you would ever want to meet. He was also a hugely talented musician and artist. And he was here, helping little girls to put on plays.

There were two of us nurses, both RN’s. The live-in MD happened to be a retired former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. There was also a local farm girl who was our nurses’ aide. She ended up taking my kitty Simone home with her to her family dairy farm. Simone became a barn cat and reportedly had the time of her life. The aide (I can’t quite remember her name right now, but I have it in an old address book and have a photo of her.) also gave me my second cat, Emma, who was a farm cat from the beginning. The two cats never really did get along the rest of their lives. They kind of engaged in parallel play for the next 15 years. But I loved them both equally and dearly.

We had sick call twice a day and of course were available for emergencies. The doctor ordered Sudafed and Tylenol a lot, which we served up as a two-layer cocktail of red and yellow liquids. No girls with serious health problems were allowed to be a camper, (so nobody had diabetes, for example) but we did have one sweet little girl with asthma who came in for neb treatments sometimes. We had no serious illnesses or injuries all season. We also gave these treatments for leg ulcers to one of the cooks who was a beloved employee of the camp owners. He had diabetes, but he took care of himself except for these ulcer treatments. We used this new thing, some hydrophilic beads which were very expensive and paid for by the owners. They did gradually improve his ulcers somewhat over the season, but didn’t close it off totally.

My partner and I got alternate afternoons off once sick call was done. We were free to leave camp but there wasn’t much of anyplace we could go, and I had no car either. So that’s when I began taking my country walks. I would walk down the road that went in and out of camp out to the country gravel road. Sometimes I turned right and ended up at the corner by the highway where there was a country convenience store, but most of the time I turned left. I walked over to the gravel road that paralled the camp road and walked down that. I’m not sure why that road was there. There were no houses or anything down it. Eventually it just kind of petered out into a meadow that was next to the lake.

But for the first time in my life I found myself fascinated by what I found down that road. Ordinary things like trees, flowers, butterflies, mice, chipmunks, birds. I couldn’t get enough of them. I wanted to be able to know the name of everything. I wrote my friends back in the city and asked for nature field guides, which my friends sent me. I brought my camera and took all kinds of pictures. I still have most of those pictures and find they are close-ups of a lot of wild flowers.

Up until I went to camp, I considered myself a city girl, someone who wouldn’t be happy living far away from a lot of concrete. But walking in the country on those summer afternoons changed me into a devotee of the Goddess. I’ve been an earth woman ever since.

After camp I went back to NYC and went to graduate school. I spent a lot of time with Thom and few other friends that I had made from camp. When it came time to graduate, I looked around for jobs and happily found a new place…in Maine. (And so far I’ve never been to Vermont)

My mother’s father, AN, was born in Slattokra Sweden in 1900. His documents say his last residence in Sweden was the town of Ruda. In June 1923 he boarded a ship in Goteborg and sailed directly to New York City. From there he traveled, probably by train, to our hometown in Illinois. In July 1923 he formally renounced his allegiance to the King of Sweden, but he never did become a US citizen. He was a Swedish citizen when he died. He was single and listed his profession as a chauffer. Our town was a famous destination for Swedish immigrants. Stories go that people arrived with signs pinned to tem that said just “Ourtown, Illinois” and trusted others to get them onto the correct train.

In June 1925 he married, IP, a young Swedish woman who immigrated along with him. (His name was listed in her documents) I don’t know when and where she was born. This is something I just noticed today as I was reading the old documents; they married in June 1925, and my aunt V was born in July 1925. My mom followed in February 1927, but a few months later the mother, IPN, died. We don’t know what was her cause of death. Someday, perhaps, I should look up her certificate in City Hall. My mom was told once she had heard that IPN died of leukemia, but right now, we don’t know.

So Grandpa A was a 27 year old man, recently widowed, who had two very young daughters. He thought he couldn’t raise them himself, so he arranged adoptions for both girls into different families. My aunt went to the L family, and my mom went to the C family. Neither girl was told about the adoption. As far as they knew growing up, the L and the C families were their real families.

But all the adults and some of the kids in the immigrant community knew all about this. Later, after the story came out, my mom was amazed to find out how many people knew about it, but never told her. My mom remembers that there was this real nice man, a neighbor, who was always kind of around her, but who wasn’t a close friend of her family. The nice man sent her gifts on her birthday and Christmas, but never really talked with her or got to know her. She didn’t ever really know who he was until the whole story came out. It was her dad, A, keeping and eye on her from a distance.

My aunt V broke the story. She was in nursing school and was assigned to do some research in the public records. While there she tried to find her own birth certificate, but couldn’t find anything for VL. She went home and told her aunt that this disturbed her. Her aunt said, “Well why don’t you look it up under your real name?” And so the whole story came out.

My aunt knew who my mom was, but didn’t really know her. They had gone to the same high school which wasn’t that big, and of course, in the immigrant communuity everybody knew everybody. My mom was married by now, and my dad was a classmate of my aunt.

So my aunt called up my dad at his work one day and said, “I have something to tell you about your wife.” Of course my dad was freaked out by that, but my aunt told the story which was, of course, pretty benign. My dad arranged a meeting for the sisters at their apartment home soon after that. And they have been a family ever since.

A reunion was arranged with Grandpa A, who had re-married to another Swedish woman JL on Christmas Eve 1928. J was born in Vaxjo, Sweden in 1894 and immigrated in 1909. She had a sister who lived in America. A & J never had children. J died at age 60 of glomerulonephritis. Grandpa A was totally happy to have his daughters back. He was always a loving father and grandpa.

Grandpa A worked in factories all his life. Documents list his profession as “machine operator”, “foundryman” and “electric furnace operator.” In 1958 he and J moved from hometown to Wisconsin city because his job moved there. That’s where J died in 1960. In 1961 Grandpa A married a third time to a local American born lady, M, who was a widow too. They were happy together, and we all remember her with affection.

Grandpa A died of COPD (probably, maybe lung cancer) when I was in college in Minnesota. I took a bus from the Twin Cities to Wisconsin city to attend the funeral. (I think my brother stayed home to stay in school, probably with my dad’s mom.) I have very little from my Grandpa A. I have copies of documents (which I used to write this). My aunt has the originals. I have a few pictures. I have a cedar chest dresser that M gave me after he had died. M said he had bought it just for me. I never found it to be attractive. It has these odd plastic drawer handles, for example. But it’s a good functional cedar chest that I am still using. It’s my inheritance from my grandpa.

During WWI my grandma AB lived at the YWCA. She had girlfriends there and loved living at the Y. I imagine it represented independence for her. Her parents didn’t live that far away; she could have easily lived there, but she preferred the Y.

She found a fellow, the man that would be my grandfather, somehow. She never did tell the story of how they met. But perhaps they never really met. They were both kids of first generation Swedish immigrants only one year apart in age, living in pretty much the same neighborhood. Perhaps they always kind of knew each other. Grandpa’s brothers owned a grocery store. Her mother was a good dressmaker. Maybe their businesses were just all known to everybody in the Swedish community.

Grandpa belonged to the local canoe club. As a club member he had access to the boathouse and boats to use when he wanted. He took his gal canoeing a lot, and she apparently enjoyed it because that she used to talk about.

My great grandma sewed her daughter some middy clothes, white dresses trimmed like sailor uniforms that were popular at the time. I know her hair was a beautiful color auburn because she had that hair her whole life. She never had to dye it because it never got gray.

When the US entered WWI, Grandpa enlisted in the Navy. He trained at Great Lakes, Norfolk, VA, someplace in Texas, and ended up near Toledo Ohio. He was a signalman. Grandpa loved being in the Navy, but he didn’t stay after the war was over. He came home and got a job as a traveling salesman for a cigar company.

His parents had moved to Denver, CO by that time. I don’t know why. Grandpa went to live with them and worked a western territory. He traveled all over Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. All along her courted his girl, A, from back home.

She joined him in Denver in 1923, and they married there. It was a small ceremony with only his parents for witnesses that took place at their house. She wore a short dress in the current style with a long veil held by flowers around her forehead. I think it was mostly handmade, probably by her mother. It’s incredibly lightweight and delicate. According to the photos, Grandpa wore a dark suit. They went on a honeymoon trip all around the west. I don’t know if this was a working vacation for Grandpa or not. I suspect that it might have been.

They did receive several wedding gifts, things like silver pieces for serving food. I’m not sure how useful the gifts actually were, but then it would be several more years before they set up housekeeping all on their own and would therefore need sheets, towels, and teakettles. By that time they owned a hardware store and Grandma said she would just go “shopping” in the store for whatever she might need.

For a while they made their home in Denver at his parents’ place. (I wonder what that was like for a new bride to be living alone with her in-laws while her husband traveled. I can’t say I heard any stories about it. It could have been congenial…or maybe not.)

Then Grandpa got a new territory back in the Midwest. I don’t know if that was by request or not. They made their home base back in their hometown with various family members. Sometimes Grandma would travel with her husband, but she didn’t like it. She was lonely at home without him and even lonelier on the road with him. They stayed in small hotels in small towns and there was nothing for her to do while Grandpa made his calls. She had especially bad memories of the hotel in Bruce, Wisconsin. Only the lobby was heated, and all she had to do was to go down to the lobby in the morning after her husband left and then sit and wait for his return all alone. She hated it.

So they went back home and bought the hardware store in the suburb of the bigger city. They lived above the store. My dad was born there (in a local hospital, on July 3. There was a story in the newspaper that had the headline “Almost a Firecracker.”) But that begins another story.

(I have quite a few objects that document this story: photos of the two dating, wedding photos, honeymoon photos, a box with a hank of A’s red hair, her whole wedding outfit including shoes and underwear, the marriage license and a little book where wedding gifts were recorded, official Navy papers, his seabag, Navy hat and blanket, a notebook he kept about the meanings of the various signal flags, a big pile of letters, postcards, and telegrams they wrote each other while they were dating and first married, and the newspaper article about my dad’s birth.)

I was in the Detroit airport and needed to do something to fill up some time while waiting for my plane, so I went for a long walk from one end of the terminal to the other. The Detroit airport has two long concourses joined in the middle by an area with a big water fountain. I walked from one end to the other just noticing things as I walked but when I got to the fountain, I had to stop and just focus all my attention.

She was standing at the right side of the fountain, her head titled back just looking up at the water as it fell. She was a western woman who was a Tibetan monk. (I call her a monk, but maybe she calls herself a nun. There are differences in these things in the Zen way and the Tibetan way.) She was dressed in the burgundy and saffron traditional robes with sandals like Birke’s, socks, a burgundy cardigan sweater that matched so very well. Her head was shaved. She wore earrings and glasses. Her age? I’m not sure. Younger than me, I think, but perhaps not. She had a burgundy carry-on bag on wheels sitting beside her. She was stunningly beautiful.

She was alone. I saw no others in the airport who were dressed as she was or who looked like monks not in robes. (Of course they might have been there, and I just didn’t see them. Airports are big places.)

I imagine she was like me, someone who was at that place for a short time while on a journey. Detroit was my starting place for that journey, but not my home. Detroit could have been her home terminal, her staring point, or just a lay over from someplace to someplace else. She could have been headed far away, to Tibet, her spiritual home, or someplace close like Chicago to attend a meeting or see her family. I could make up a whole narrative about where she was going and why. But none of that matters. She was on a journey and decided to stop just then and there to look at the water. That’s all.

What matters was just that she was. She was there, still, in the center of the universe. She and the water that so captured her attention just were. Then. There. And I was too. I don’t know if she noticed me watching her. It doesn’t matter. Me on the left side, her on the right, the water rising and falling in between. It was perfect.

I have been inspired by a number of things lately, two of which are the memoirs I’ve read by Scott Simon and MJ Andersen. What I like about both the memoirs are the fact that either writer does not faithfully follow chronology. Both kind of write about things in order, e.g. Simon writes each chapter about something in sports and the basic themes are in chronological order. But within each chapter he takes license with time and weaves a narrative that holds together. Andersen does something similar. Many of her chapters are about both her childhood and her adulthood around some kind of theme or idea.

I’m always having trouble with the idea of writing a memoir because of the whole time issue. I can’t remember so much of what happened in my life, and I certainly can’t really remember it in order except for in big chunks. For example, I associate many things with where I was living at the time, so that I have my college stories, my Navy stories, my New York stories, etc. But that’s about as good as I can get as far as the whole idea of when did it happen.

The other thing that I like about Andersen’s memoir is that many of her stories are very short, some just a paragraph. And they don’t necessarily lead from one to the other. They are pebbles in the same pond but they don’t always make the water flow from one place to another. Sometimes the pond is just still and full of various pebbles.

I’ve been thinking that right now there is no point in worrying about a larger structure, a memoir, a novel, a series of articles or essays. That can come later. Right now what’s important is just to write things down.

So I have decided to write down a whole lot of really short stories, to create all the pebbles in the pond and then worry about the water, the bank, the fish, the plants, the rain and wind.

But I did have some inspiration as to a preliminary organizational structure. I think that many of my little story pebbles will somehow relate to one of these elements: water, fire, earth, and air. I won’t force a story into a category if it doesn’t naturally go there, but I think that many of them will fit quite nicely.