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Easter

The word “Easter” and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.  From Garrison Keillor.

I don’t know about you but having to sit with myself without the distractions of the outside world has forced me to look at where and what I want at this stage of my life. Am I too old for dreams? What is the point of me?  Whenever it gets uncomfortable my instinct is to run. Move along go somewhere new and start over but I always take my baggage with me so I am still just repeating instead of creating. Just like Spring I am wanting to bloom.

We now have 28 confirmed cases in out county, testing is limited. 4/12/20

 

 

Sunday 04/05/20

I’m a janitor. Boy is it hard to say that out loud. I have been a janitor for over five years. I know I’m a janitor because when I got the job cleaning the yoga studio and office space that is what was written in the contract. It took me awhile to accept that being a janitor was what I did not who I was. 

I am still cleaning the yoga studio and office space and even though only two people are working there I have noticed that I get physically ill every Sat night before I have to go clean the next day. I also clean the radio station where I volunteer, I’m sure that place is full of cooties. Most of the volunteers are men and most of them just don’t enjoy a good disinfectant wipe they way a woman would. Statistics are now saying the virus kills more men then woman and that scientist think it has something to do with female hormones or some such nonsense. I don’t think so. Men do not pay attention. Men do not wash their hands like woman do. Men think they can “tough it out.’ Not this time boys.

There are 20 confirmed cases in our town but testing has been limited so we are told maybe more like 200.

Isolation

There is nothing like a pandemic to motivate one to write. I know I do my best work when I’m down.

Just for the record this writing is free form. Do you know what that means? It means no rewrites, revisions, just my feelings at the moment. I learned about free form from radio back in the 60’s and still love the freedom of just doing it.

We here in Washington State are in “Shelter at Home” right now.  It started on March 13 and will continue till at least May 4th at midnight  when we can all go out and  celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  No, not really but it’s a nice imagine.

I am so grateful I am doing radio. It has saved me from feeling old and useless in a time when it is really easy to feel like that. I never really felt old until this happened. Yes I did turn 70 this year and that was hard to accept but I was still moving around and feeling good and then the virus hit our state and everything changed and I was scared like everyone else. Two days after our town shut down I was confronted by a young business owner who still reeling from the fact he had to close his business and lay off his employees  saw me outside and screamed at me. He told me it was my fault he had to close, it was because of old people like me.  He just kept screaming at me and told me to go home and stay there because that is where I belonged. I was shocked. I didn’t scream back at him because I could hear the fear and confusion in his voice. But it did start me thinking about was I worth the sacrifice he was making?

Anger

I have anger issues. I always have. I still haven’t figured out why I can get ticked off so easily, why my buttons are so easy to push.

I used to like to blame it on being Irish but I know that isn’t it, I don’t think.   Can anger be built into your DNA? Am I holding on to the anger of my ancestors?

Sometimes I think I’m angry because I’m a woman. We have valid reasons to be angry, don’t you think?  I look at the few pictures I have of my mother when she was pregnant with me, she doesn’t look happy and her clothes suggest she is in mourning. Did I grab her anger and now I can’t let go.

Sometimes my anger just swells up and unleashed destroys friendships, lovers, family.  What a waste of energy.

 

Stereotyping

The big black truck with monster tires and a muffler that likes to be loud roars down our quiet small town streets. The owner of the truck likes to go fast so the two six foot American flags he has flying from the back end flap widely. Revving his engine so the muffler roars up and down the hill he flies his American flags.

I imagine that after a few beers at Smitty’s he goes home where he screams at his wife, ignores his kids, kicks the dog and hangs in his garage where he listens to Ted Nugent on the radio. Doing his part to make America great.

Time

I am keeping a record of when time stops or maybe I should say when it slows down. Really slows down.

  1.  When waiting for the frozen bread to turn into toast in the toaster.
  2. When brushing my teeth with the Sonicare toothbrush. (Two minutes that can last half of lifetime)
  3. Waiting for love.

Thank you Tommy

I went to the grocery store today and there was a homeless man standing outside with a cardboard sign asking for money and that he was a veteran. He had a backpack and a garbage bag of his belongings. He looked rough, dirty and weathered. It has been unusually cold this past few months and I can’t imagine what it must be like to live rough. It felt like everyone walked by head down, ignoring him. I have done the same thing, I don’t like to see the pain, the reality of life today.

My brother Tommy taught me to see differently, Tommy was bi polar and had a rough life mostly without family support. The last few years of his life he lived on the streets because he could no longer afford the rat infested room he had in the city. He would get beat up, have his stuff stolen but the guy had turned to Buddhism  and took it all with a laugh. I worried about him all the time. I worried about him getting hurt, I worried about him going crazy and maybe hurting somebody else. So there is part of me that was mad at him, blaming him for my worry. But I realize he has also left me with something precious, the awareness of how hard it is living out on the street. How our society doesn’t know how to handle people that are damaged and can’t contribute the ways we are expected too. Popping a pill doesn’t make everything better.

So Tommy taught me to have compassion for the man who blessed me when I gave him a few dollars. He taught me not to judge what I don’t understand. I didn’t walk away feeling better because I donated but I did feel grateful for knowing Tommy would approve.