The Responsibility for Other People's Happiness

We have recently bought Gail Collin's book on the history of women during the last fifty years. Andy is engrossed in it and I am itching to get my hands on it because this was my time in history!

I was in the 'sandwich generation', squeezed between what was and what is now for women. I was fortunate to be able to look forward and determined to get all that I could. I never wanted to be like our mothers, though I have taken in my mental baggage many wonderful things from them.

Coming of age in the early sixties, and pretty idiosyncratic even then, I knew that my own personal bottom line was that I needed to have good work that would financially support me and the kids. (If Andy were to fall off a cliff!) Of course, this was not necessary. My husband was the primary bread winner. But this fact never deterred me from working every single year of my life. And it was up to me to figure out what to do after working a full day, about child care, cooking, shopping, house maintenance, and the daily crap of taking kids to their athletic, educational, and artistic places, and taking care of the pets. But work was sustaining.

The most tender and meaningful thing my husband ever said to me (and he has said it often) is that he didn't know and was oblivious at the time. So were all men then. My husband made five times in salary what I did and so I thought at first, anyway, that this was what one settled for. We so often thought then that there was a numerical value to what one did. i.e. I am a woman and I make a lot less than a man and so I am of less value.

I see our daughter, now in law school, who never doubts the fact that she will ultimately be responsible for making her life. No one ever told her she would have to settle for less because she's a woman. She doesn't have to make any sense of this crap we put on ourselves back then. We expect her, of course, to be as responsible for her choices as her brothers.

I see my assertive grand daughter who will never know about all this. She'll take her place as a person in America, same as her brother. She'll be able to do anything!

I still have the legacy of my age in being responsible for other people's happiness. I constantly think about what would please others. Tentatively, I am now being assertive about not doing the things I used to do (and hated!). I will not go to loud banquets seated at tables of ten.

Ten years ago, my same-aged friend, Marie, and I began taking annual trips to Central and South America and other places. We experienced many amazing things, but most of all those times were time outs of having to be responsible for the happiness of others. Those times have been so golden!

Our daughters most likely would have no idea what we were about. And this is what we have wanted all along; we want our daughters to be truly on an equal footing with men - and they are!

And yet.. women have always been the care-takers and the ones responsible for others' happiness. In some ways this is the best.

What do you think?

Friends

The wild flowers and the butterflies are wonderful these last hot days of fall. In the vegetable garden the flowers are rampant above the broccoli and beans and eggplant. Lettuces are available in abundance. We are in the dry season so each day I must water all the gardens.

I am thinking about so many wonderful friends I have in my life. Connecting with them takes hours each day, lots like watering the plants. If you don't do it, they will dry up and die. Each weekend brings friends to our guest house and each day brings e-mails and phone calls. When some friend or other is in crisis, the messages and calls fly back and forth. Our near neighbors drop by with produce and local talk.

In some ways, I am quite a hermit here, loving this place as I do. Sometimes I know that I have a few days that do not have anything on the calendar that I must do. But it doesn't stack up quite like that.

We have been working on the gardens every day, clearing out the debris and cutting back the wild growth from the summer. Andy cut and stacked logs for the fireplace today. Our weekend guests, who are staying on, always help out with the things that need attention.

Tomorrow is my volunteer day at Lacoochee. We'll be making pasta, and I'll read to the kids. The next day, I'll be volunteering at SunFlower School in Gulfport and I'll be making Flubber!

To be truthful, I am finally beginning to love retirement.

Those Lacoochee kids

Today I went to do my usual Tuesday gig with a class at Lacoochee Elementary School. Each Tuesday I go to do some cooking with Rachel Aguilar's class. Though I never cook at home, I am still pretty competent. We are putting together a class cook book to include all the things we have made. So far: fruit salad, green salad, and smoothies. Next week, we will make pasta with tomato sauce. (The kids suggested doing huge gooey sundaes, but I demurred. They know I am into healthy fat-free cooking.) There are two classroom volunteers, wonderful Mexican ladies who are very helpful without being asked. I have invited them to help me prepare some Mexican dishes. Their eyes light up and I know that we are going to have a great time with this.

The kids, like all kids, love the hands-on stuff. And so do we all! What will these kids remember about this week? The smoothies, of course. They will not remember the drudge from the dog-eared science or social studies texts. Kids are like adults (but they are beaten back!) : they respond to the immediate and interesting in their environment. They tune out the boring and repetitive stuff.

I certainly get a good feeling in this classroom. The kids want to please and most of the time there is a harmonic hum going on. They love their teacher and they see in her such possibilities. In fact, it is such a good classroom, I think these kids could do a whole lot more in terms of investigating everything and anything.

But we have the dreaded FCAT and all its many tests and preparatory tests and prepreparatory tests etc. Teachers, nowadays are considered to be idiots, and must be led through every part of teaching. (Thanks to Houghten Mifflen and the others who rake in the money) These teachers are NOT idiots, and given the task they have, they do their best.

They do not have enough time on the present schedule! They cannot read out loud every single day to the kids (though all the research says that this is key to making good readers). Most kids do not have time every day to hunker down and read their good book. There is not enough time for kids to explore math or science or social studies. (When, in this public school, have I seen the kids working on a project about Lewis and Clark or John Adams or de Soto or Columbus that was not something canned and on a worksheet to be filled out in fifteen minutes?)

These things take time, not just 30 minutes. A kid could spend the whole day or a whole week or a whole month researching what people ate on the trail out west with Lewis and Clark. And on and on. FCAT does not take into consideration how children think and act. Or, teachers, for that matter.

Our teachers, so stellar for the most part, need to get up on their hind legs and say, "Enough is enough! Let us teach!"

Cold front!

Today is what we Floridians have been wishing and hoping for. Last week we had a hot spell that made all of us think we were in Puerto Rico in July. We complained like crazy as the beads of sweat poured down our armpits and we couldn't think of how in the world we could ever venture outside in such heat. And now, it is cool, even cold! We all spent the last two days outside in our gardens, reducing the biomass, pruning stuff, actually looking at the damage the heat and drought brought. We all found those sweaters from last year, old friends.

The giant mutant cosmos you see in the photo are full of butterflies. These plants are so heavy , that many of them have toppled over. Soon, when they have finished their profligate blooming, we will uproot them and throw the carcasses over the fence. This morning I tackled the water garden and took out at least half of the plants. I discovered many treasures in the process. The pancake plant had many pups and a monarch coccoon and a very cute jumping spider. I replanted this, cut off the pups to be planted in a different place.

Andy spent the morning pruning the dead wood out of the citrus trees that took such a hit last winter in the freezes. Tomorrow I will attack the asparagus bed, so overgrown over the summer.

The vegetable garden was so wimpy during the last heat wave, but, now, in just a couple of days, it has perked up. Tonight we had eggplant, beans, lettuce and herbs for dinner. I am emotionally unable to remove those wonderful butterfly attracting volunteer plants in the vegetable garden, so when I work out there, I am surrounded by Monarchs, Queens, yellow sulfurs, zebra long wings, tiger swallowtails, black swallowtails, and so many others. They are all busy with the red sage, volunteer zinnias and milkweed. How could I possibly remove their food source? The peas seem to love these cool days and cold nights and are tightly clinging to the fence.

The armadillos are working at night digging up the yard. I have managed to trap one big mama and I have released her far from here. But more come. At least they haven't so far breached the fence around the vegetables.

The night is full of stars and bats. The insects that call in the evening are in full cry. The green tree frogs are massing on our windows, intent on catching any moth that comes by. I am thinking that soon I'll be under my quilt with my husband and dog, all of us happy to be here in this magical place.

The Last Milestone

When we walked the mile or so to our newspaper box up the road this morning I rejoiced to see so many wildflowers blooming along the way. I scattered the seeds for these more than a year ago in honor of the passing of the mother of one of my friends, and now they are flourishing in tiny bursts of yellow and blue and white. I think of this area as Trudy's place.

Nearer to the house I tend the small orange tree we planted in memory of Ray, our neighbor for many years, who lived well into his nineties. I have memorial plants all over the place: some were given to me by the people who have died, and the plants live on. Others have been planted in honor of people I have known who have passed on. My mother-in-law, my old best friend, lives on in a tree planted in her memory on a Connecticut hillside. Betty's tree.

I made a decision many years ago that I could not attend funerals for the parents of my friends. I think I am better at planting trees or wildflowers in their honor, or maybe just spending time looking at the stars on a clear night, knowing that one of those stars is the essence of the person who has lived and died.

This seems to be the season of the end of life for the parents of many of my friends. I have been through this season a few years ago because I was a late child of an old mother. My mother died at a ripe old age and I was privileged to be present in her sweet last days. She died in the west, and we had a raucous musical memorial there, but her last wish was to be buried next to my father in North Carolina. So, I dutifully accompanied the casket across country (with two changes!)

On a cold wet day in November, colorful leaves plastered to the ground, my daughter and I witnessed her burial next to her husband. All my tears had been shed.

Every death is different, and yet has common elements. Right now I am cheering on the mother of my best friend, who has such life force, despite being eighty-five and on dialysis.

We willingly take on the responsibilities of caring for our parents in their last days. What we don't know until the last of our time with them is how much it means to us to have these moments with them as ours.

After your parent dies you quickly get over the grotty details. My mother told me such a lot of things about our family and who she was and a lot about the books she read and funny stories. I would not ever have missed this time with her! We laughed a lot. I never think much about the moments of turning her in her bed, bringing the bed pan.

I am not attending funerals and memorials. I am planting things and thinking about how much these old people have contributed to our life, not to mention life itself.

After the death of a parent, after the raw grieving, there comes a time to think or say, "Mom said.. Mom thought.. Dad used to.." And then you know that generations pass along, you're just a part of it, and it's up to your kids.

Generations

Here are Devin, 21, and Quincy, 4, riding their bikes in the extreme heat of this Florida autumn. I snap this photo today and what is on my mind is the concern I feel for their generations. Devin is working on her senior college honors project in ceramics, and Quincy is nearly new and works hard at everything. What in the world will life hold for them? Right now they are smiling and moving forward at a rapid pace to get a glass of ice water. Soon, they'll be moving forward into life as citizens of this planet.

I awoke to the news that Obama had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace! Twelve hours later the pundits and the nattering nabobs say their pieces as they will. Some say it is all political as a powerful message that Obama should take this as a boot for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan, or whatever..

What I choose to believe is that the Nobel Committee simply recognized the power and drive of this good and brilliant man to make a better world for mankind. He's not been able to accomplish much yet, having had to face enormous tasks and the opposition and fear of change from people, especially Congress. I hope Obama will navigate these extremely difficult times. He's a pleaser for sure. He must carefully tread the delicate line between what he sees as the best way to make this world a better place, and the noisy naysayers who are out to thwart him at every turn. But he is a good man, and I think is genuine in his desire to bring everyone to the table of good conscience.

In this era that brought so much greed and corruption culminating in such an economic decline, our ship of state is large and slow to turn around. I am privileged to have lived to see this time. I feel confident that if anyone could do it - pay attention to global warming, the economy, health care, and our involvement in Afghanistan, and begin to find solutions, it will be Obama.

Devin and Quincy are counting on how this turns out. Their world will be different from ours, for sure. We cannot leave to them a world with nuclear weapons always threatening to annihilate us all, or a country that leaves so many with no health care, or a planet that becomes ever hotter and polluted, or belief systems that disparage segments of human populations.

Tonight, I feel just a small bit more optimistic.

The "defectives"

To get to our place (paradise!), you have to go over the railroad tracks and wend your way through rural America. You'll see plenty of trailers and small block homes, citrus groves and yards of chickens. For the most part these places are house proud and neat.

But there is one place that fascinates me every time I pass it. It is so politically incorrect, but we call the people who live there "the defectives". I don't know them and I have never spoken to any of them. The many children who spill out of the yard and into the road never fail to give any passerby the finger. They don't return our neighborly waves. There is a man in a wheel chair who sits under his confederate flag. I had thought he might be a Viet Nam vet, but I find out he became disabled as a result of a drunken driver event. He is covered with tattoos.

The house is a small wooden shack and in front is an amazing array of derelict plastic toys, broken bikes, trash, pit pulls chained to a post, and old cars with their hoods up, exploding automotive innards. Usually there is a fire burning in the beaten earth yard. Right on the dirt road is a dysfunctional play set placed in the tall shrubs. Whatever the hour, day, night, morning or evening, a posse of young adults lounge there.

I could completely bypass this house by going the other way, straight up Puckett Road to the main paved road into town. But usually, I do not because I am interested in the lives of these people and I am a voyeur I suppose. I am expecting something to happen. Last week, it did. One of them tried to shoot someone else. This person was arrested and no one was actually shot. Of course the obvious thing here at this place must be something to do with the manufacture or sale of drugs.

But now, the posse still sits there at all hours, the kids come and go (looks like a couple of them go to school, and they look like any kids on their way to the bus with their backpacks.) All summer I worried about all those disheveled people without a/c, and the kids out in the road.

On my slow way past this house (no way am I going to run over a child!) I imagine stopping and talking to them, maybe offering them some vegetables and fruit from our place. I have imagined inviting the kids to come for a swim in our pool. But I don't.

Such a vast chasm in our country between the rich and the poor. I see it every day and feel powerless.

Tending to the gardens

At the end of the month I am going to get a new and very much more powerful computer! Look for changes to this blog.

Meanwhile I am still spending a couple of hours each day weeding and tweaking the gardens. The vegetables are coming along. No longer will we have to buy the pitiful lettuces picked days ago in California. Our ugli tomatoes are ripening and we have enough eggplant to supply all of Italy. The beans are in blossom and the greens are getting big enough to peel off some leaves. Broccoli is starting to make heads. I have to figure out how to harvest the sweet potatoes that have been growing all the hot summer.

I have heavily mulched everything with the cheapest hay I can buy from the feed store and the cuttings from mowing the grass. I enjoy the many butterflies zooming around as I weed and mulch and water. The colorful monarch caterpillars are busily eating the milkweed that I could not bear to pull up. Their chrysalises hang everywhere. The volunteer zinnias have inserted themselves in every corner of the garden, even in the paths. The butterflies so love them, I can't pull them up just yet. I apply the summer's worth of compost around the plants.

It is still beastly hot so all this activity must happen before mid morning when I could keel over from heat stroke. I vow every day that I will weed and feed the asparagus bed, but so far nothing has happened. I have weeded the rose bed and mulched it with grass cuttings. Tomorrow I will sort out the rampant growth around the lily pond, though I do love the sheer exuberance of all those flowers. The giant mutant cosmos are now eight feet tall and in full bloom.

We put out the bird feeders for the new migrants from the north and all winter we'll enjoy these noisy birds. The hummingbirds have returned to Mexico and we have taken down their feeders. Soon, the chimney swifts will vacate in time for the fall fires we hope to have in the fireplace.

The fall wild flowers are blooming like crazy. I can't identify most of them yet. The wildflower books are no help, so I just enjoy them as we do our two mile morning walk to get the newspaper.

Tending the garden is a lot like the tending I do for family and friends. It takes every day time, a lot of it. This week I reconnected with two wonderful young friends, Hey-soon, and her brother, Jeh-whan. Former students of mine, they are now launched and both engaged in horticulture and solar energy, some of my main interests. And, Laura, my old book editor, now graduated from college and about to launch into-what? And Nick, in high school now on the straight path to something brilliant. I love these young people who come to visit and keep in touch and require things and trade books with me and know I will always have room for them. At times it is exhausting.

Sometimes it feels weird to be so old and to have young people actually want to visit so often. I am not particularly wise or anything, and not of much use to society anymore. Probably I am still fun and I am a good listener and I challenge them. Whatever, I love having them visit and we feel blessed that this peaceable kingdom is a place where people want to come. We tend the gardens.

It's a lot of hard physical work, but also a kind of meditation to tend to your garden. In every way.

Being in the garden

Here is a photo of the first quilt I ever made and it hangs in our bedroom now. It represents the vegetable garden from the top to bottom. The actual quilting was so awful, I recently reprocessed it as a wall hanging for our newly painted green bedroom. I made the panels a few years ago, one by one, as I traveled, and it represents my garden from top to bottom.

I am still there. I am still planting those same veggies and a lot more. I have learned so much since then. I know what will grow in our climate and I know about watering and fertilizing. I know, for example, that one should not grow tomatoes in the fall because as late bloomers, they will die in the December or January freezes.

Today I went to my favorite store, Farmers' Feed, where they had a cornucopia of seedlings. I bought all sorts - kolrabi, spinach, red cabbage and many onion sets. Tomorrow I will plant everything, poking holes to place them in the heavy hay mulch. The broccoli, beans, carrots and collards are doing well and the left over eggplants and peppers are really producing. (With thirteen eggplants on the table, the cook (Andy) made an exquisite eggplant casserole for dinner.

I am still thinking about having chickens, especially after reading the Susan Orlean article in last week's New Yorker. My family continues to be negative on this issue.

Everyone in our neighborhood has been absolutely manic about the first cool days of fall. We want to go out and DO. And I will go out tomorrow and plant those seedling vegetables in the cool of the morning.

We live in a terrible summer climate, but when the change comes, we know it's paradise for the next six months.