Reaching Out

Searching Faces

Visiting the old folks
I strain forward in my seat,
trying to coax from them
stories of who they are,
where they’ve lived,
what they’re proud of.
Sadly, and too often,
pictures on the night stand
tell the only tale I’ll hear:
him in his uniform,
her in her wedding gown.
Sometimes, the best that I can do
is whisper in an ear,
“You’re beautiful,”
or pat a shoulder saying,
“I’m so proud to know you.”
Later, in the paper, I may read
of an extraordinary life
I never got to know.

Loss of memory, loss of self,
are barriers greater than time.

This bi-weekly prompt for Christine's poetry party is a graceful picture from her family album. Maybe I'll try again sometime to make a poem from it, but what comes to me today is the difficulty of reaching out to connect with others, not only across time. What I've written is more prose than poetry, but you can try your hand at it at
Invitation to Poetry

a better day

I am still dragging a little, and the idea of investing myself into new relationships with four new patients and families sounded taxing. The new patient I met yesterday had not been able to communicate; but his family was there visiting, and they were delightful.

Today's first visit was with a man who had been dying last week, but is now making a speedy recovery, a fact that he seems cognizant of without any show of emotion. Since he has no family around, I can't tell if his frequent answer, "I don't have it," means he can't hear me or can't recall the information. Too bad, since it included his name. "That might be it," he said, but without any sign of recognition. He did agree to prayer, and said "Amen" at the end. I left puzzled, wondering if there's anything I can do that will feel supportive to him. Sometimes I worry that my questions and their loss for answers may cause distress. I asked him, though, if it bothered him to not remember things, and he said no.

My second new patient was asleep in his recliner and wakened only when I was standing in front of him. He looked neither startled nor welcoming, but indicated that I should sit on the bed, at least that's what I thought. He was very difficult to understand. When I made out that he wanted his hearing aid, I found it for him and then tried sitting in a chair on the other side. That time he was clearer that I should sit on the bed, evidently near his better ear. He told me there wasn't much use getting to know him because he won't live much longer-- he'll be 99 on his next birthday. He was one of eleven children, seven boys, none of whom ever married! He worked as a maintainer in a TB hospital, and he built a greenhouse for them because he enjoyed plants. He also likes animals, and his young kitten kept attacking me playfully.

I might have put off the fourth new patient until Monday, since she lives far out in the country on a farm and it was getting late; but I'd heard she might not survive long. She is a beautiful woman in her early 50's with breast cancer. The noise and activity of her family were bothering her, and she was restless. They had obligingly moved their piles of photographs to label and organize several rooms away. The kitchen counters were covered with cupcakes fresh from the oven, and the smell of bread baking was inviting. The daughters-in-law had been busy.

Her husband took me back to the family room where she was reclining. He said she'd told him weeks ago that she didn't want any people coming in. He'd told her, he said in his quiet voice, that her friends needed to see her and talk to her, and he let them in anyway. They were always glad they'd come and had done what they could, and she was always glad afterwards that she'd seen them.

He wanted the three of us to pray together, and we did. On the way out, he showed me a marvelous scrapbook which people at her work had put together for her. It included all the cards she'd received, and messages reprinted from emails, all beautifully laid out and decorated with some children's pictures and scripture verses interspersed. It was a work of art. He said he couldn't look at it closely or he would cry.

This house, and this family, was filled with and surrounded by love.

It was a good day.

Whenever you connect with people, it's a good day.

the apres vacation blahs

Yes, we had a wonderful time. Sorry I can't get more excited about it at the moment. My jaded nature has the upper hand tonight. I'm tired, and we both caught some bug that new daddy John had and brought it home with us. Ick!

Yes, the baby was an amazing little soul, so different from my babies and their babies. He has such black hair, and even the backs of his ears are hairy. He looks very solemn most of the time, and then a grin will raise one lip and give him a drunken leer.

Now I don't want to offend anyone, but, as a species, three-week old babies aren't all that much fun. They nurse, and they sleep. Some of them cry. Mine did. This one doesn't get much chance to. His parents don't know a lot about babies, and "the book says" they should eat every two hours or so, play a little and then sleep. The parents are distressed that it doesn't work quite that way. They're used to a life they have control over. Well, ha!

Ordinarily, the sight of palm trees thrills me, and the tall oak trees with the Spanish moss. I guess they still affected me that way, but I was inside most of the time. We didn't even get to the beach! Every day went about the same way. I petted the dogs, who are feeling left out; and I did some laundry, and some grocery shopping, and read a couple of books. Bill played games with his son John on the Play Station 3, and helped with some plumbing and wiring and other manly chores. I baked Elizabeth a birthday cake, and we went shopping and out to eat many times.

It was lovely to be with them, and I wish we could see them more often, but Florida is clear across the country from us. We got up at 3:30 a.m. to get to the plane, and arrived in Jacksonville three airports later in time for bed. Coming home, we opened our front door at 10 p.m., which is 1 a.m. Florida time; even though I got a good 9 hours of sleep, I'm pooped. I'm tired of traveling, tired of shopping, tired of eating out, tired of spending money. Just plain (plane?) tired. Tired of being in somebody else's world.

If I could have done anything I wanted today, I don't know what it would have been. I didn't have time to really dig into anything and see it completed. The suitcases were emptied and back downstairs, most of the laundry done and put away, but I felt no satisfaction in it.

After reading a good poem in the blog of Sunshine Sister, I tried to think of some words to describe the foggy day and how I felt as I drove toward town to go to work.

the day was stuffed with fog and mush,
and I, undone by things undone,
was captive in a paper bag of gloom.

I didn't get any farther with it than that, but by then I was having a good time. My creative tinder had caught her spark. I began to look with a poet's eye, and it makes all the difference.

In the thick fog, I noticed one of the plant nurseries along the highway, looking drab in its midwinter, not-in-season way, all boards and pipes and muddy ruts. And then I saw the palettes of primroses, cheerfully alive; and I remembered, from somewhere, that God is in the Now.

Owyhee Crack

The picture above is one I took from our little plane on the way back from Oxnard, California, last summer. I was looking through my photos, hunting for a winding road, when I found this one. It amazes me how much twisting and turning a riverbed takes, even when it's at the bottom of a steep canyon, as is this one from the south of Oregon.

Today was the first Sunday in Lent, with its lengthy litany that brings to our minds all the ways we've fallen short and asks for the Lord's deliverance. The Great Litany was the first part of the Roman Catholic liturgy to be translated, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, into English; and people were worried that it might attract the Lord's vengeance. It did not, and England's defeat of the Spanish Armada gave them reason for relief.

My prayer for all of you during this season of Lent is that you'll take the time to be introspective. Look over your life, where you've been and where you're headed. Do what you can to make amends for things done wrong or left undone. Make peace with your family and your friends. Make peace with yourself. Open yourself to peace from God.

Not timeless poetry, but poetry in time

I have written several poems to prompts from Christine's Poetry Invitation, but never before in time to enter them in her bi-monthly contests. Thanks to Sunrise Sister, I now can post the actual picture above my poem. Thanks, Sister!

To take up her invitation to poetry, which happens every other Monday, check the link below. You'll enjoy her wonderful site any day of the week. http://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/category/poetry-invitation/.


Opportunity

Only when the flouncy sea has hiked her
skirts up high and left to meet her lover
in the daily deeps,
only then can we see, on the beach,
what’s left behind.

Only when our buzzing lives are sidetracked
by the weather, death, some accident
of time that leaves us stranded, makes the
pass impassable—
only then can we hear, in the pause,
what’s possible inside.

I think I'll write another verse sometime, but not tonight. :)

U R A P? I R A P 2! o-o

Many of you will be familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a test designed to predict a person's personality preferences, as first suggested by Carl Jung in his descriptions of typology. One pair of possibilities is the 'J' or the 'P' type. P stands for Perceiving, J for Judging.

J's and P's are often the bane of each other's existence. J types are decision makers. They work well with structure, time limits and specific goals. P types are more open-ended. They prefer the process to the outcome, are often unaware of time and space, and the details necessary to reach a particular goal.

I am a 'P'. It is definitely my preference to take whatever time is necessary to gather information or finish a task. How can you stop, just because the clock hands are straight up, when you're getting such good data, such interesting responses?

The other chaplain I work with is a 'J'. She is always on the move, quickly, getting from here to there, finishing this and that. Quantity seems to attract her more than quality, but that may not be fair. When we work together, I try to do my part to organize, be timely, plan ahead, so that I won't drive her crazy. When we led a grief group together, it worked out all right. When we do another, I will take a little more latitude to do what I do well. We'll have better snacks, more thoughtful questions, a little more leeway in our agenda.

I'm doing a grief group for children now, with a social worker who is new to our agency but has lots of experience with children. Now that we have done four weeks of groups, I can see that he is a 'P'. He leaves all the snacks, set-up and planning to me, not by agreement but by default. The curriculum-- I don't know who chose it, but it isn't very age appropriate. I suppose we didn't know who would show up for the group when it was first set up.

It's a strange feeling to be a 'P' and be responsible for getting things begun and ended on time, set up effectively, etc. I had an EFM group for four years that had many 'J' members, yet I was the one who had to round them up to get them started on time and herd them along to finish the evening by 9. I am more sympathetic when it's another 'P' I'm working with, but still, it's a surprise to find myself needing to fill that role.

half way to something new

Here are some pictures I took yesterday that you might enjoy.

After the game was over Sunday, Bill was grumpy because he had wanted me to be watching the Super Bowl with him, and I had been trying to get some pictures into my blog.

(I have heard this particular whine before. "I want you to be doing things with me" means "I want you to be doing what I'm doing.") I told him if he wanted to share, next time he should try sharing what I'm doing for a change! So last night I invited him to help me put my pictures up on www.weatherunderground.com

You can guess how that went. He throughly enjoyed himself, but they're all under his name because he was the one logged in! (BeechSportBill) He didn't help. He did it himself while I watched. Rolleyes Sigh. Anyway, it was fun, and I'll do it myself next time.

The picture of him, by the way, is, thankfully, a few days old. He was growing the hair for his part in H.M.S. Pinafore, but if that's going to happen it won't be till April; so I convinced him to shave it off. Funny picture though.

http://www.weatherunderground.com/wximage/myphotos.html

I'm really a hedgehog

You probably noticed. That was really a hedgehog picture, but it was the best that I could do. What's fun about her that I just discovered is that if you click her, she jumps. If you click several times, she rolls into a ball-- hedgehog fashion!

Trying new things--hmmm...

I don't know how to make my little map wide enough to include other continents, which it did in the sample. I haven't figured out how make my "ground"hog full width either-- his full width, that is, not the column's-- or how to drag him to the right side. He's determined to be at the top, or at the very bottom of the page beneath all entries.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to fix, or even read about, this difficulty?

P.S. Never mind-- this time any way. I changed the template, and it made room for the whole map, although I tried unsuccessfully to change the dots to red. I reduced the size of the hedgehog, and she fits now. Isn't she cute?

miscellaneous February thoughts

I've had a variety of odd topics go through my head today but no time to elaborate on any of them yet. I did get them jotted down though.

When I was grocery shopping for green onions and black beans to make some more couscous salad to take to a nurse friend whose father just died, I noticed something odd in the bakery. In fact, I asked the baker behind the counter about it. There were lots of Valentine choices for sale already: cookies, cakes, heart shaped doughnuts. But not a single Ground Hog Day cookie to be had! She stared, and finally laughed, but I'm not sure she realized I was making a joke.

Can you believe there's a holiday we haven't commercialized yet? I see great possibilities here, although Hallmark is probably already in the market. But cookies, cakes, tiny lights on strings, groundhog costumes, special issue celebratory champagne for the days he doesn't see his shadow....

Several groceries were enticing super bowl shoppers with specials on Coca-Cola and Pepsi. If you bought three 12-can packages of Coke for $12, you could have two more for free. Or, if you bought just two packs of Pepsi for the same price, you could have three more packs free! Confused What a deal! I think they're both trying to convince us that a 12 pack is no longer regularly under the old $3 top price.

It's bad enough to have gas go up, but please, not my Diet Coke!

On my way home, there was a pickup truck ahead of me chock full of unsplit wood, of which there is an ample supply after our big windstorm. A flurry of traffic went by as we sat at the stop sign, long enough for me to estimate the fore-mentioned tree was about thirty-five years old. Think of all the shade it's given, the birds it's been home for, and all the good warm heat someone will have. That's one more thing we forget to give thanks for: trees.

Have a good weekend, and I hope you don't see your shadow.