Keepin' It Light

You have to keep it civil; otherwise things get ugly fast.Like millions of Americans I watched the debate Monday night, but not before I attended a shortened meeting of the book group I’m in with fellow alums from the school I went to. They are all very cool women but the coolest of them might be the one who is soon to turn 90.“I think I won’t join you on the 16th," she said in her email to us a few days earlier. “I didn’t read the book anyway so I’ll stay home and become enraged again watching this new debate.”I could see her smiling as she wrote that. She always smiles when delivering these little quips. It’s the key to aging I think; not digging in and getting too serious.Like millions of Americans I also had my phone on while I myself watched, at the house of David’s brother and his wife, and how could I not look at the chatter on Facebook as I watched?You could tell the Democrats by what they said. “Bully! Let the President speak!” posted one.You can could tell  the Republicans too. “He sure blew the Libya question!" said another.I can’t stand to see people fighting, having grown up in a household run by a mother and aunt who could pull out the long knives and slice each other up before you could breathe in and breathe out again, so I tried to say only neutral things.At one point I remarked on Twitter about how sort of cute it was that Obama had on a red necktie and Romney had on a blue one, an exact flip of their red-state blue-state affiliations.Then on Facebook, at one point, I wrote “Grecian Formula”. It just popped into my head as I looked at Romney.I have no idea if he colors his hair or he doesn’t, of course, but it made me volunteer the information that my husband is the exact same age as Mitt Romney, and his hair is completely white.A Facebook friend who I knew for one year when he was a 15 posted that he would be glad to have any hair at all, but he doesn’t anymore. Easier when the wind is up he said.And then I posted this picture of David holding our newest little baldie…I was bald myself for years and then the curls came in and foamed up out of my head like Jiffy Pop. Maybe that will be her fate too.Anyway this kind of talk kept me from getting all nasty. Why spread that around in the atmosphere when it’s all we can do to deal with the real pollutants. (Tip: when the snow finally does come don’t – DO NOT – gather it in a glass and tip it back - not until it has a chance to melt and you can see what’s really in there!  And there's a topic for much more national discourse!

Open Your Mouth and Say Ahhh!

“I got this PAIN doc.” Bet that’s what our man Obama heard  from 20 different places the second he walked into the Oval Office today and boy don’t we ALL have pain.

I have a steady pain in my neck that requires me to see a specialist in ghost-buster gear at the world-renowned Mass. General Hospital. He puts me on my side like a horse, covers my face with a cloth like I’m dead, then takes a lethal-injection needle left over from the Dead Man Walkin’ wing at Alcatraz and slides it THREE TIMES into the wee facet joints of my neck, the teeniest places imaginable where the delicate shell-like bones of the cervical vertebrae touch together - tap! - like the baby teeth of the littlest children.

The needle has in it this super-steroid called astroglide, no analog, no no wait I know, kenalog that's what it is and the first time he gave it to me in the fall I nearly threw up on his shoes. Two weeks later when he asked how it felt I had to give it to him straight. “How did it FEEL? It felt like gray death entering my body! Tell me, Doctor, has anyway ever done this to YOU!?”and he blinked a second, not really getting it, the joke of it, a doctor having a taste of his own medicine, but then burst out laughing: “NO no one has ever done this me! I’m about the only guy who knows how to do it!”

So off I went today to have this second injection because I was desperate. My man was desperate. Even my cats were desperate because no one wants to be around a person with neck pain.

The Doctor finally admitted today he could give me a couple of little pills ahead of time to take the edge off, like what people take before that big Roto-Rooter Exam everyone over 50 has to have and as I swallowed them I thought of our shiny new friend walking into the Oval Office for the first time today to see 300 million patients just like me lined up at the door.

“I have this PAIN Doc, I lost my house, my kid is both fat AND anemic and I’m out of work…"

If we had a cloth over our eyes for a while during the last eight years it is sure enough gone today, and we can finally SEE how bad things are..... So now here comes your medicine; just open your mouth and say Ahhh!

"It's Full of... LESBIANS": On Judging Not Lest We Be Judged

I have felt so ecstatically happy since Election Day that I look back at the column I wrote the week before and can’t believe how sorrowful it seems. In fact so very different in tone it is from the way I have been feeling for these last two weeks I couldn’t bring myself to post it here at the top where it says 'This Week’s Column' so let me copy it below where it will live forever as a post and not disappear and be replaced as the column is each week. It’s not that much fun but it had God in it and also my wonderful old friend and fellow blogger Milton. Here it is:I once bumped into an acquaintance who asked me what college my daughter was hoping to attend the following year and so I told her. “Oh, I would never my daughter go there!” she exclaimed with delicate horror. “It’s full of lesbians!”It’s funny but I felt a wave of kindness toward her and so went and put my hand on her arm: “You must know that isn’t true, Sarah.” (I will call her Sarah.) And even if there are lesbians here and there in colleges, they’re our daughters first aren’t they? Our own young people?”I was calm in those days.I was less calm last week after my conversation with the Postal clerk I will call John. I was sending something to one of our honorary sons, a young man we have long loved and a brand-new homeowner. I asked him if the letter would get there fast; I was worried because it held important documents.He read aloud the name of the city and shook his head. “Tough area,” he said unsmilingly.“What do you mean?”“Full of minorities” he answered with lowered voice.“HE’S A MINORITY HIMSELF JOHN,” I said with a voice not at all lowered. I embarrassed him – made an awkward moment - but for the first time in my life as a careful and courteous female I didn’t care.And so a silence hung between us until our transaction was complete and I had thanked him and turned away.But ever since I’ve been wondering: What is wrong with us all? An hour earlier, in another place of business, a man passing the time of day there said to the shop owner and me, “Barack Obama was handed through college, same as that WIFE!” For some reason tears sprang to my eyes and maybe the shop-owner saw them because self-proclaimed McCain man though he is, he led me aside, and put a hand on my shoulder.“Don’t listen to him; he’s not himself today” he murmured, thus showing kindness to us both.And later he told me that he too is troubled by the high feeling we have seen in this political season now just ended.I think of something I just read by Milton Brasher Cunningham, songwriter, ordained minister, student of history and professional chef. He writes a blog called Don’t Eat Alone where he cites the Biblical verse “Be Ye Kind One to Another” as the idea he most needs to keep in mind.“I would love to say I have mastered the art of kindness and moved on, but it is not so,” he writes.His favorite station was having its fundraiser one day and so he turned the dial to hear something other than the appeals for money and landed on the local talk radio station. “I felt as though I had crossed into a parallel universe. That they presented a view farther to the right of NPR for me was not a surprise; the level of volume and vitriol was, however. These are guys who command huge audiences across the country, or at least that’s my perception. How can anger that severe be so popular?”That is his question. Mine is, What can we do about this?Milton says we can remember this: that “regardless of our political preferences, our fundamental allegiances are to God and to one another. “Not to country. Not to party. Not to ideology…. Not to class or race or even religion. “To God,” he repeats “and to one another.” And that’s a truth I mean to remember from this day forward.