Surrender!!!

This weekend I finally gave up. I have decided to let the bindweed bind, the pig weed oink and the Bermuda grass grow all the way back to Bermuda if it so desires. The little rectangle I had called -- with great hope and sense of purpose -- a "garden" just a few weeks ago is now released to become whatever it will, which is probably just more badly maintained lawn like the rest of my yard.

Nature, my schedule and a bad wrist conspired to bring me to this turn of events. In May I had lots of small plants in pots, ready for the soil my occasional landscape guy had so diligently tilled for me. Then the rains came. And came, and came and came. When I was 5 I would have loved the pool of gumbo all that water and all that soil became. Now? Not so much. And it was simply not the kind of place you'd want to maroon a sweet little tomato plant.

So I bought large containers and bigger bags of soil, trying all the while to ignore the voice sniping in my head. "Now that's just about ridiculous, paying for topsoil when you have a ton of it sitting right over there ..." "You know, if you were actually trying to raise food to feed anyone, you'd all be on the brink of starvation right about now ..."

Thank you for sharing. Now shut up.

Actually, this process has made me even more appreciative of the people who do manage to make this soil and seed and rain and shine stuff work and actually do bring food to market. I noticed that our local farmer's market -- provided by people who live in roughly the same geographic area as I do -- was loaded with vegetables. How is it that they managed to get seeds in the ground and starts started when I just sat on my porch drinking a microbrew and wishing I could get in the garden?

I'll blame it on my wrist. I had carpal tunnel surgery in April and just couldn't wield a shovel with my usual level of enthusiasm. That and my schedule. Killer, I'm tellin' ya. Just an absolute killer. Never a moment to spare. Except, of course, the occasional microbrew and half hour or so sitting on the porch with my foot on the railing and some nice accompaniment on the iPod.

Reluctantly, I may have to conclude that my most fitting role in gardening is that of appreciator, a sort of garden fan, full of profuse praise for cucumbers someone else has raised, vociferously thrilled with the tomatoes of another's labor and happy to sprinkle a couple of contained peppers and basil with sufficient water to keep them from croaking in full view of the neighbors.

Hey, everyone needs a cheerleader, don't they?

Rah, rah, ree, sorry 'bout your knee;

Rah, rah, rass, Dude, I think that's grass ....

Earth Loses One Smart Lady

This photo of my mother was taken seven years ago, when she was 80. It hasn't been manipulated or retouched -- that's the way she looked at 80 -- eyes full of intelligence and spirit; complexion still like a bowl of cream; a body as fit as eight decades would allow it to be, thanks to daily swims and an energetic, can-do approach to life. The photo was a publicity shot for the back cover of one of her books -- each one a romance, published after her 80th birthday. You haven't lived until you've read one of your mother's love scenes, but as she said at the time, "I wasn't born old, you know."

Indeed, she didn't really start to get old until five years ago when her hip was broken -- irony of ironies -- when someone accidentally tripped her at the YMCA where she had been swimming laps. After that, her life became increasingly focused on a series of medical procedures and interventions, all of which she met with her usual verve and snap. The surgeon who performed her hip replacement asked to use her in a video demonstrating how to use a walker, thanks to her ready response to physical therapy. The years of exercise and her refusal to let age be the definition of her life made her an ideal patient, quick to recover and determined to meet the challenges of her physical limitation.

That relentless determination ultimately prolonged the suffering of a body that needed to quit long before the spirit was ready to let it go. Saturday night as my daughter, neice, sister and I surrounded her and sang her to the finish line, that powerhouse heart kept trying and trying to stay in the race.

As her body began to shut down and the hospice nurse rounded us up for the final farewell, we began to sing every song we could dredge up from a lifetime of harmonizing over dishes and family road trips. Although she had been unable to communicate for several days, her color improved and she began to breathe a little faster as we found the harmony on Somewhere Over the Rainbow and the beat on a medley from The Unsinkable Molly Brown, leading the nurse to speculate that Mom was trying to sing along with us. I said, "It was probably because she noticed I was flat on the high note -- and that will just never do." We all laughed at this acknowledgment of her commitment to vocal perfection, but decided to chill with the stirring renditions of show tunes and focus on slightly more sedate selections.

Then I thanked her for teaching me to sing way out to the cheap seats, and I thanked her little body for giving life to all of us and to the rest of us who weren't there, my sister thanked her for teaching us to be wonderful cooks, and one by one we began to thank her for every connection, every contribution, every good thing we could trace from her life to ours. There were many and we could have kept going, sending her out on a sea of acknowledgment and praying that she could somehow let it in, she who so often shrugged off warm fuzzies in favor of sharp edges.

Ultimately, the little clock wound down. With my hand over her heart, my daughter's hand cradling her head, my sister's arms around me, my neice embracing my daughter and even the nurse holding Mom's toes, she breathed one big sigh and just like that, she was gone. It was a gentle, kind exit and I will never get over the honor of participating in it as we did.

We washed her little body ourselves -- given her lifetime care of her appearance, I couldn't stand the idea of strangers receiving her disheveled and poorly groomed -- and dressed her in her favorite nightgown. For good measure, we wrapped her in a thick, warm robe she loved. I gave her a last pedicure and manicure and laughed at myself as I did so. As if it really matters that my mother's nails are pretty when she meets her Maker.

But it mattered to me. It mattered that we were the ones to wash and dress her, to comb her hair and give her back to the Earth not as one discarded, but as one annointed and prepared.

My dad used to bear my sister and me off to bedtime modifying Shakespeare's, "Good night, sweet Prince. Flights of angels sing thee to thy sleep," to fit his girl children and also his whimsical sense of humor. "Good night, sweet princesses. Flocks of angels sing thee to thy sleep." It helps me now to imagine him standing on that mythical Other Side, his arms open wide for her as those flocks of angels take up singing where we left off.

In my version of this story, they get the pitch right on all the high notes. She'll see to it that they do.

Have a not-so-mushy Mother's Day

A traditional tattoo in prisons everywhere is the arm or chest emblazoned with loving salutes to “Mom.”

Mother apparently is singled out for special attention because she is the only one in the bearer's life who has loved, forgiven and taken him back time and time again, regardless of how seriously he has messed up.

Maybe she shouldn’t have.

While their tribute is as touching as all get-out, I'd say both mother and offspring might be missing something. Children should know that the greatest acknowledgment they can give their mothers doesn't come in the form of flowers, nice cards and gifts, or even a cool tattoo scratched into a really buff bicep.

What your mother wants most from you is for your life to work. You want to say “thank you” to your mother? Be a good person.

And Mom? If you believe unconditional means any old behavior is accepted, overlooked and forgiven, you're missing the boat. Mothers have to be as much a wall as a pillow.

With apologies to Hallmark, what I dislike about the day devoted to Mother, with all its treacle and fluff, is that it focuses entirely on the soft side of mothering and completely ignores the solid. Being kind, gentle and forgiving is an essential part of the mothering gig. But being a tough cookie who won't let kiddo get away with zilch is equally important.

When our kids are straying from the straight and narrow, they need to run smack into a brick wall that directs them back on the path. That wall's name should be Mother. One of the qualities our society needs most right now is respect. Respect for other people, respect for other opinions, respect for natural resources, respect for ourselves. And, like it or not, the first and strongest lessons our children learn about respect come from? You guessed it: Mother.

Sometimes, in the mall or grocery store, I feel instantly anachronistic and appalled by the way I hear children addressing their mothers -- and vice versa. I cringe when I hear a little child of 5 or 6 sassing his mother, being bratty, disrespectful and demanding, and I feel a nasty foreshadowing of the direction that relationship will take as the child grows taller. Children usually don’t get sweeter as they get older.

As mothers, we must generate respect – give it, show it, expect it, and sometimes command it -- and receive it with graciousness and dignity. This is a complex process. It means that, in addition to respecting ourselves, we must respect our children.

Demonstrating our respect starts early and manifests itself in subtle, practical ways. For example, a mother who respects her baby won't just walk up without warning and start scrubbing a washcloth over the child's face. From a baby's perspective, that amounts to assault. Mothers who respect their children take time with them, and try to see adult actions from a child's viewpoint.

Mothers show their respect for their children in their behavior, in the tone of their voices. You can bet a mother who orders a toddler around and consistently bellows at an 8-year-old is going to end up having a disrespectful, out-of-control teenager. Young humans are utterly dependable at mimicking what they see. Insist that a child respect you without giving respect first and you simply breed insurrection – an equation that is persistently missed not only by parents, but also by school administrators and politicians.

Children also learn respect by how much respect their mothers command. Lifetime patterns are based on this. If we let our children speak hatefully and disrespectfully to us, we train them to believe that the rest of the world will accept such behavior. If we are in a relationship with a partner who abuses or demeans us, we train our children that this is what we, what women, deserve. Children will act out that message for the rest of their lives.

It isn't easy to be firm in a world that so often confuses firmness with meanness. Learning to insist without coercion, to be resolute without nastiness, to be compassionate without being a sucker can be a tricky business. Training ourselves to give and command respect in a culture that tells us we aren't worth much can be a lifetime pursuit.

To do all of this with the clock ticking, with a child's future hanging in the balance, is the trickiest of all.

When we become mothers, we hit the deck running, learning life's lessons on the fly. Most of us don't do a perfect job of it, and many of us are much more aware of the ways we've failed than the times we've succeeded.

So this year on Mother's Day, sure, take your mother to brunch, give her something nice. Thank her for being sweet and understanding and kind.

But even more, thank her for toeing the line with you. Thank her for insisting that you behave, for demanding that you do well, for requiring decency of you. Thank her for the occasional kick in the rear that grabbed your attention and steered you toward a better future.

Thank her for being your wall as much as your pillow. Have a great life and let her know she got the job done.

Tethered to Life with Steel Filament

My mother is tied to life these days by the slenderest of tethers. Her world, once full of music and passion and words and ideas, has narrowed to the width and length of a hospital bed. Once a swimmer evangelical in her belief about fitness, her last walk was the four steps from her bed to the hospital room's door.

That was two days ago. The little bird in the bed is barely recognizable as the force of nature once known as my mother, and with each ebb I wonder if this time she will finally let go her grasp on the physical and known in favor of whatever is next. Her answer so far has been: Not on your life. She is tied to this life by the slenderest of tethers, but then, so are the cocoons on milkweed that survive gale-force winds.

She has always been impossible, this hard-headed mother of ours, and feebleness and fragility have thus far produced no miraculous alteration in that trait. My sisters and I have tried for several days to have some practical conversations with her, only to be met with, "I don't want to talk about that today. We'll talk about it later. Tomorrow." Last night, inexplicably, her hearing failed and now the woman whose hearing was so keen she could hear me from the other end of the house going flat on that high C or my sister sneaking into the house five seconds after curfew can't hear a word unless you stand right in front of her and yell.

Every conversation has to be conducted at a decibel level that defeats nuance. Try discussing "durable power of attorney" and "living will" and "hospice" at essentially the same volume you'd tell the motorcyclist next door that his muffler appears to be broken.

Regardless, she isn't having any of it. "I'm just dealing with what I need to do next," she says in response to our attempt to have her formalize her wishes for the next time her blood pressure crashes or pneumonia returns. She hates us for "making" her go to the hospital, but refuses to sign papers because "maybe I will need to come back to the hospital." She wants to be well-cared-for and she wants to be left alone. She doesn't want heroic medical intervention, but she wants anything that can be done to be done. She wants to be who she was even five years ago before the hip broke and the systems started shutting down and her able body became undependable. Impossible.

And yet, I would expect no less from her. She isn't being ornery for the sake of being ornery. When she says she is just focusing on what needs to be done next, she's being who she's always been, minus the physical resources. I learned persistance and a never-say-die attitude from her, so why would I think when it's actual Death she's facing, she'd just roll over and let it carry her away?

"Do not go gently into that good night" could be her theme song. She will rage against the dying of the light with her last breath -- not with histrionics and drama because she doesn't have the energy for that anymore. But with that set of her jaw and that deep, deliberate exhalation as she focuses all her energy into just one more bite of pudding, she will keep going because that's what she knows how to do. She doesn't know how to surrender, doesn't know how to quit.

She never did. And for that, I admire her and despair.

I’m About To Be Seduced Again

I can see the signs; I can feel the stirrings in my heart. The alluring photos, the sensual descriptions, the come-hither language. And here I am, the eternal optimist, allowing myself to be charmed – even encouraging enchantment.

Day after day, the seed catalogs appear in my mailbox and day after day, I allow my mind to drift to how life could be if only. If only I planted the “Butterfly-Hummingbird Garden Collection” that's practically fluttering in bright pinks and purples from the pages of the Audubon Workshop; if only I made a cold-frame like those described in the pages of Mother Earth News and started some pretty lettuce and spinach plants from the seed packets I received as a come-on from Nichols Garden Nursery; if only I turned that corner of the yard by the back door into a little kitchen herb garden.

In the background as I’m thumbing through these catalogs, making lists (in pencil at this point: I’m not ready to commit) and wondering exactly how much I actually could grow on a small urban yard, I hear the snazzy tune of an old, familiar song. I’m jest a girl who cain’t say No; I’m in a terrible fix. I alluz say Come on, let’s go! Just when I orter say Nix!

I know better. I’ve been here before. The first year I moved to Kansas – from the wind-swept wilds of Wyoming, where, if you planted 32 tomato plants and tended them carefully, you might end up with 64 actual tomatoes – I went a little mad in the local nursery. I bought heirloom cherry tomatoes, heirloom slicing tomatoes, heirloom sauce tomatoes and then, just in case the heirloom thing wasn’t as great as I hoped it would be, I bought some of the old standbys: Big Boy, Celebrity. And then, because I wanted to make sure I had tomatoes as early as possible, I even bought a couple of Arctic something-or-others, developed with a very short growing season for people in cold climates. 32 tomato plants.

I also bought three tomatillo plants, just to see how they’d do here (the answer: Splendidly.) If anyone in Kansas is looking for a cash crop, allow me to recommend tomatillos, that pungent little green fruit so essential to South-of-the-Border sauces. Tomatillos love Kansas’ climate. I had tomatillos for the multitudes.

And sufficient tomatoes to feed global hunger. I started out carefully nursing my tomato plants, fussing over them as though I still were in Wyoming and needed to say the appropriate incantations and hold my mouth just right to get the earth to cooperate. By the end of the summer, I was practicing not benign neglect, but openly hostile neglect. See? I can pass right by you and NOT turn on the garden hose.

Of course, I couldn’t keep that up for long, given the spirit of my father, a.k.a. my garden wizard, tsk-tsking his disapproval in my ear. So I watered and I weeded in a surpassingly minimalist way. And I got tomatoes! Exuberant, oh-my-lord tomatoes: Yellow tomatoes, orange tomatoes, paste tomatoes, slicers. The day I happily put together a basket of tomatoes to share with my co-workers, I discovered an awful truth: In August, everyone in Kansas is trying to pawn off tomatoes on everyone they know.

I was stuck. So I froze and I canned and I dehydrated and still I had tomatoes. I ate so many tomatoes that the acid gave me mouth sores. By early September, I was actually happy that the grasshoppers had discovered the tomato patch. I had a dream in which my neighbor Nancy (with whom I was sharing a garden space, and who had planted tomatoes of her own) and I stood in our garden wearing tattered nighties, laughing maniacally and chucking tomatoes at passing cars.

So this year, I know I must let my head lead my heart. Just because the Kitizawa Seed Company says those blue melons can be grown in my climate doesn’t mean I need to try. And just because the magazine article says I can make those cool garden-tipi trellises in an afternoon doesn’t mean I actually have to. Maybe ornamental gourds will grow along my south fence, but honestly, are they really right for me?

There’s a certain predictability to this romance. I’ll fall for the pretty pictures and the sweet nothings and then time will move on and I’ll be left with all these offspring and neither time nor money to give them everything they need. By late August, I’ll have an orphaned garden and a heart full of shame.

No. I simply must resist. Must be rational. Must not ….

But look: Right here in the Nichols catalog, it says “Easy care.” And here … in the Audubon catalog, “Fun to Grow!!!”

I’m jest a girl who cain’t say No ….

We All Have Scarlett Moments

A friend I'll call Cynthia called me once upon a time to tell me she'd finally broken up with a man she's been with for several years. Though I kept it to myself, my first reaction was uncharitable: "I've heard THIS before..."

Those of us who know Cynthia had listened over the years as she told us that this time she really, honestly had had it with this guy. But as I listened to her this time, I heard something new in her voice. Before, she'd been hopeful that she could leave him. Now, she was determined – not only to have him out of her life, but to change her ways so there was no longer room for him or his kind.

"I swear to God," she said, in a voice vibrating with determination, "I will never again get myself hooked up with a man who doesn't even LIKE women. If I have to live alone the rest of my life, that's the way it's going to be."

As soon as those words came out of her mouth, I knew: Cynthia was having a Scarlett O'Hara Moment.

Remember the scene in "Gone with the Wind," when Scarlett, exhausted and defeated, shook that sad, droopy turnip toward the sky and proclaimed, "As Gawd is mah witness, ah will nevah go hungry again." In that moment, Scarlett became the quintessential survivor, determined to do whatever it took to overcome her circumstances.

Scarlett O'Hara Moments aren't common. It may be possible to live an entire life without one, although I suspect one's character would be lacking important ingredients if that occurred.
S.O. Moments are times when character is forged, when who we've been being suddenly slams on the brakes, looks around, then hooks a radical turn in a different direction. These are the times when every cell in our body cries out, "Never, ever again."

It is in these moments that we reach the bedrock of our character. We reach the end of our needs, desires and/or capacities for tolerating the intolerable and we begin to change.
The real work of 12-step programs always begins with a Scarlett O'Hara Moment: "As God is my witness, I refuse to ruin my life with alcohol, drugs, violence (fill in the blanks) again." Changing one's life is implemented one day -- sometimes one minute -- at a time, but it all starts with that surge of determination that things are going to change, and they're going to change now.

I don't know the mechanism by which this happens, but I know once we've had a Scarlett Moment, circumstances begin to rearrange themselves around our resolve.
At first, it seems as though someone out there wants to test the strength of that resolve. "Oh, yeah? You just think you're through with the wrong sort of man just like that?" Then someone or something very tempting appears in our path and we have the opportunity to prove – to ourselves, if no one else – just how committed we are to this new direction. Joseph Campbell describes this phenomenon in The Hero With a Thousand Faces as encounters with the threshold guardians, who place themselves between the hero and the Golden Fleece to force the hero to discover just what she or he is made of.

One of my S.O. Moments came shortly after my children's dad and I divorced many years ago. A single mother of two small children, I felt utterly unprepared, particularly for the financial demands that suddenly were thrust upon me. I had to borrow money a couple of times from my parents, but finally just couldn't do it any more. "I swear to God," I declared, "I will never borrow one red cent from my parents again."

Within a week, of course, my dog got sick, the car broke down, the babysitter raised her rates and my son had to make an expensive trip to the emergency room. What little savings I had were wiped out and I was completely slammed against a rock, with a hard place looming just ahead.

I knew if I picked up the phone, Mom and Dad would rescue me again. But I was nearly 30 years old and that option had become completely untenable for me. So I made my own way around the catastrophe, inch by inch, and eventually pulled myself out of that particular pit.
In doing, so I began to remake myself in ways I liked much better.

This new sense of self is the most important by-product of these moments. We begin to respect ourselves, to see ourselves as heroes rather than victims.

And as Gawd is mah witness, everything changes after that.

Bouncing Out of the Chute in the Two-Dog Rodeo

Every morning and every evening these days, I play a challenging game anyone can play (but few would want to).

The alarm clock awakens me before dawn, but it's the expectation of two dogs that actually get my feet on the floor. If I didn't walk them, I could sleep in a little longer, but Bob Dog, the elder statesman of DogWorld, would look at me that way. Amazingly peppy, he's physically sound for such a senior gentleman, partly because of the morning walks we've been taking, except for illness (mine -- Bob is never sick) or sucky weather, for almost all of his 15+ years. We even walked in Wyoming in the winter, and believe me, that's some commitment.

For Bob, I could do no less. It's part of the charter of our friendship. I give him food, water, a warm place to sleep and two walks a day and he gives me all of him, with no reserves and no judgment. Bob is love.

Newer to the equation is the ebullient, sassy, irrepressible Miss Grace. Rescued from a flood and a bad beginning in New Mexico, Miss Gracie is being fostered at my house until I can find the just-right home for her. At four months, she's way more energetic than Bob or I have patience for -- and as for the cat, just forget about that. Sable Cat has taken up residence on my bed and says she'll come down when we get rid of that thing.

Gracie is only in my home temporarily and I could, theoretically, leave her in the back yard while Bob and I take a spin. She's not mine, after all. But Gracie is in her formative months and if she doesn't get trained in being a companionable dog now, who knows what might become of her? I didn't ask for the Gracie assignment, but it came my way and I wouldn't be me if I had just turned the other way.

So, we walk.

Actually, walk is not quite the correct verb, but I'm not sure there is one. From the moment the leashes come out, the bouncing begins. Boing, boing, boing, Bob is bouncing stiffly on his mildly arthritic front legs while I hitch him up, and Gracie is so excited, she's just a little blur careening all around us until she sees me bending down with her leash. She's learned quickly that the game doesn't continue unless she gets the leash on, so now she comes and stands as quietly as she can muster -- which isn't very -- by my side until she, too, is hitched up.

Then, out the front door, down the steps they go and over each other and under and around and over again. Within two minutes, one dog has gone left, the other has gone right, Gracie has seen a squirrel and lunged toward the tree and Bob just wants a moment's privacy, thank you very much. The leashes get tangled, I duck and pirouette and plunge, and occasionally swear in a stage whisper and try simply to hang onto both leashes and also a tiny bit of my dignity.

Eventually, someone poops and a plastic bag of warm dog dirt adds to the challenge. Surely there's a judge somewhere giving me extra points for the difficulty of that maneuver.

But also, somewhere along the way, the leashes untangle, the dogs start trotting in tandem, and I begin to notice the morning stretching and yawning all around me. The streetlights shine muzzily through the fine mist that spritzes my face, the train whistle hoots in the distance and there's nothing in the air that could be mistaken for anything but autumn.

The real dance is the one with my own reactions. If I resist the dogs' energy, they wear me out. If I start thinking the walk should be anything other than exactly what it is, I get upset. If I mentally start tapping my foot and moving on to the next item on my schedule, I end up tripping on either a dog, a loose brick in the sidewalk, or my own impatience.

But if I stay present and if I keep myself interested in the dogs and the moment we find ourselves in -- observing the dynamic of their interactions, the enthusiasm with which they smell abosolutely everything, the delight with which Gracie pounces on the shadow of her own ears, the familiar tick-tick-tick of Bob's nails on the sidewalk -- I stop feeling like a stranger in this world and begin to feel a part of every molecule of it.

The moment passes, the bouncing begins again and soon I'm swearing sotto voce as I try to unwrap the green leash from around my ankle and get the stickers out of Bob's paw and Gracie away from the sticker patch and not drop the warm baggie before we get to the trash bin a few feet away.

Briefly, though, there's been a little pocket of peace on this earth and I've been right in the middle of it, basking in my First Prize win in the Two-Dog Rodeo.