Companions and solitude

So how long has it been since I wrote? Why? Companions. Friends. Visitors. My friend visited for two weeks. My husband was here for two weeks. (My husband flew off to Scotland this morning). This time was on some levels difficult for me. Defer to others. Lose yourself. Was it these people? My patterns with these people? Me? I’m certainly left with these questions. And no immediate, easy answers.

It is clear that the basic patterns of my life these days assume solitary time. My work (yes I’m back to work) overwhelms me with people, talk, conciliation, compromise, listening (NOT one of my top skills). My personal life must leave me solitary time. This I know. So to what extent do I need people. I certainly want the answer to be that I thrive on the people I love--my kids, my grandkids, my husband. I do love times with them, look forward to time with them. . . . . . .

But I am just so relieved this evening. The first really alone since mid-February (except for three days in the middle). What does this mean? (Another question to contemplate should I have solitary time for such.)

Bev's true true colors

It seems that Bev is mostly succeeding. She is a happy soul. And she is finding a happy path at her day program and her new home. The girls at her home see her as the little sister (she is small, cute, clueless). The girls are helping her, protecting her, cuddling her, forgiving her. She spent the first few days cycling through her routines of misbehavior, but also of charm. I think she will be okay in both places. Stay tuned!!!

An alternate good to God's good

I just revisited Brideshead Revisited (the BBC version with Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier--original novel by Evelyn Waugh, adaptation by John Mortimer). To me this mini-series (I still need to read the Evelyn Waugh book) is a devastating meditation on religion--and a gem of television drama. The first time I saw this series my much younger self was overwhelmed by the last episode.. The Laurence Olivier character accepts last rights (his last act in lifeis to cross himself) though he has been estranged from the church, living in sin for some twenty-five years. As a result of this episode, the Julia character (daughter) pushes away the Jeremy Irons character--because of the gulf opened up by religion and belief versus skepticism. Finishing the series tonight, I was no less moved by this episode. Found myself in tears.

Julia (Diana Quick) rejects Charles (Jeremy Irons) because she is terrified that marrying him will mean embracing an alternate good to God’s good. The good that Catholicism signifies in this series haunts me. The mother is sweet, loving, lethal. All of the children are damaged by her love and by the church.

I’m not sure the alternate good must exclude God (though I have little talent for belief myself). But a god that wins out must be on the side of life. A line from the last episode, from the nurse about the Lord Laurence Olivier character. Says the nurse. He resists dying. Not because of a zest for life but because of a fear of death. I do not want this to be an appropriate epitaph for my end, and for my life.

True colors

So Bevin pulled out the stops her first night. She spent a good deal of the time being oh so charming. Smiling, eating well, hanging out with the girls for the evening, playing with the toys. The other girls want to mother Bevin, treat her like a little sister. So they were being excited, welcoming, etc.

Everything seems to have gone well until after Bevin’s shower, Lizelle gave Bevin her shower first, so that she had time after she was finished when Lizelle was busy. The time just after Bevin has had a bath or shower and changed her clothes is the point at which she seems particularly vulnerable to one of her puffing/anxiety attacks. And she put on quite a show, apparently. While Lizelle was in the bathroom downstairs, Bevin went into the bathroom upstairs and cleared off all of the surfaces, in her most violent manner, breaking some knick knacks in the process. Then she ran into the bedroom of one of the girls upstairs and cleared off all of her surfaces (thought I don’t think she broke anything there). She also tried to raid the refrigerator. When Bevin’s new roommate, Jill (a very sweet autistic woman) started to scold Bevin, tell her not to do that, Bevin actually managed a full sentence: “J (for Jill) shut up!”

At that point Lizelle arrived, finally got Bevin to settle down by sitting with her stroking her hair, cuddling with her--such good instincts. And then the good Bevin kicked back in, started smiling and babbling about Mommie. . . . . . .

I went over there mid-day today to talk to Lizelle. Luckily she was fine about what happened, felt like she had an idea of what to expect, how to handle this. Clearly, it’s probably best to leave Bevin’s shower until last. That way she’s more likely to stay in hang-out mode with the other girls. Lizelle will set it up so she can spend time with Bevin and help her through her vulnerable period after her shower. We talked about other possibilities (including, I’m getting Bevin her own TV for private Barney viewing when nothing else will do).

I was glad to hear that Bevin’s fit was outdone by Jill at her arrival, and even one of the girls, Ginna. Jill had managed to break windows and pieces of furniture. Now she’s mostly a lamb. So despite Lizelle’s quiet way (and she’s actually smaller than Bevin), I’m thinking that she may well be equal to Bevin.

Bev moves in

I took her clothes over earlier in the day. I took her over at about 4:00 and stayed until 7:00 or so. Bevin liked the place, liked the girls. Was happy, pleasant, pretty charming. Ate a good meal. I joined in. Took lots of pictures. Hung out with the girls. Bevin is taller than the care giver. Which means that Bevin can’t be consistently aggressive and stay there.

I’m hoping the good atmosphere, the fact that she will be busy, and that things will be happening between the girls. (All of the girls are much higher functioning than Bev, inclined to be protective and friendly.) These facts on the ground will, I hope, keep her well behaved and engaged. She is well behaved at Sarah’s, interestingly enough has more problem with me. I think because of the one to one time.The fact that I’m quiet, not that interesting. And that Bevin must make some decisions on her own to keep her life interesting around me (something she’s not that good at) rather than going with the flow. . . . . . . .

I hope so. This is a very sweet, loving place. I’ve done my part. I long to have Bevin do well here. It’s up to her. Which is the scary part. I’ve done what I can to charm, prove she has a supportive and loving family, buried folks in pictures of cute families and stories of Bevin as charmer. . . . . .

The Castle

Okay. It’s not that bad!! But over the past couple of months I’ve often wondered whether I am on the outskirts. The logic of the world I’ve confronted trying to find a place for Bevin has often left me mystified.

The immediate incident that has sent me along this path of contemplation:

I found a good day program for Bevin. Her soon-to-be roommate at the group home she will move to on Monday goes to the same program. The roommate travels to the day program with a transportation service called Hope Link--three days a week. Bevin will be going to the same program five days a week. So it seems that it should be a no brainer to have Bevin travel on the same bus, the Hope-Link bus, too. But. . . . . . The rules have changed. The center in Bellevue (this center is in Issaquah) is a few miles closer. Hopelink will only take her there. (Though they will compensate me for the cost to have her use a different service, that won’t be available for 4 to six weeks). No matter that the trip to Issaquah takes 10 minutes along i_90 and the trip to Bellevue takes 30-45 minutes along the 405/520 corridor (hell holes of the Seattle area commute).

(Though there is footnote to this narrative. The director at the Issaquah program talked Hope Link into taking Bevin to the program until June--by which time I should have the other program, subsidized by Hope Link, available.)

I’m sure there is a logic that I am missing.

Certainly getting to the point I could actually call real people who run group homes and day programs was rather indirect. Like going through a series of entries, with a warrant for entry (paperwork that made it through the system):
        1.        I couldn’t apply for services until Bevin was living in Washington. That meant that I filled out the paperwork and waited until I was told that once I apply she would qualify. (This took a couple of weeks.)
        2.        Once I had Bevin in Washington, I called. Then they put her paperwork into the system. After 10-14 days, I was assigned a DDD (Developmental Disabilities Division) caseworker.
        3.        In the meantime, I went to the Social Security Administration, assured them that Bevin had moved to Washington, had me assigned as her SSI Payee--and was told to wait for the paperwork to go through (and her SSI to begin coming to me)
        4.        I called the DDD caseworker; we played phone tag and then she finally got back to me and made an appointment--in approximately a week to ten days.
        5.        This was the “intake” caseworker. She did the intake discussion (the short one, less than an hour). Then she warranted that I could go on to the next step.
        6.        We waited until another week until Bev’s SSI information went into the system (another week). Then she assigned me the caseworker of the next level.
        7.        So I called him, played phone tag, finally made an appointment--for 7-10 days hence.
        8.        He came to our house and did the “long” interview--this one took two hours. Then he had enough information to present Bevin’s case to the group family home crowd.
        9.        So a week later he gave me the names of family homes. He also gave me the names of some day programs.
        10.        So then I made the calls and made the appointments to meet the family home directors. (Another week.)
        11.        Then I went to visit the homes, identified two that might be possibilities.
        12.        Then we had to have all the paperwork sent to them (took another few days).
        13.        And finally I identified a home--waited the best part of another week until I was accepted.
        14.        And so at this point we begin talking about the day program, the group home.
        15.        But my caseworker knows nothing about how things are paid for, what my next steps are.
        16.        You guessed it!! I have yet another case worker. The family home caseworker. He is the one who seems to hold the secret information on how things are paid for, what I need to do next.
        17.        So now I’m playing phone tag with him. I’m hoping this doesn’t take too long.
        18.        At least Bevin is supposed to move into her home next Monday. . . . . .

And I’m exhausted. . . . . . .

Found a home

Bevin is going to move into the home that is closest to Sarah’s house. It will be easy for her to include Bev in more spur of the moment kinds of things with her kids. It will be easy access for me off the easiest freeway here. So the location couldn’t be better.

The girls there are all higher functioning than Bev--more language, some of them even read and have jobs. . . . . I’m hoping this will be good for Bevin. It will mean more is going on. I just hope she behaves and fits in. It would be sad if she couldn’t.

Today we’ve been shopping for a bed. I will probably have her move in by the end of next week. That way, I’ll be able to get a sense before I have to go back to work about whether the placement will work. I’ll still have a little time if somehow it doesn’t.

Wish Bevin luck!

Visiting

I spent today visiting two homes where Bevin might live. I liked both women who manage the two homes. One exists. And the other is a new home; it doesn’t exist yet. I vote for the one that exists. But I realize that I am “auditioning” Bev, and I’m not sure she’ll get the part. Maybe in either home. My first choice. A home that exists. The girls are all much more accomplished than my Bev. They talked to me. One even asked me about my job. Bev would be the least accomplished of the group. She liked the place. She met her potential roommate--an autistic girl who is apparently more accomplished than she presents. Bevin liked her. She remembered her name. And when we left, she said, “bye ja (read Jill).” Not sure they’ll choose Bev.

The other home is a theory. A nice theory. I liked the woman. She has other homes and she is smart, in touch. I would assent to Bev living there. But I didn’t see the home as a living entity. It's assemgling. I liked the vibes in my number 1. I could see that organism.

Stay tuned. Maybe neither will want Bev. . . . . Who could imagine that?

Mommy and Me

Bevin can be weirdly wonderous. This is her masterpiece: she pronounces the consonant sound “M” for two words only, Mommy and Me. For all other words, “M” becomes “W.” Hence Milk is “Wa.” Water is “Wa.” Matt is “Wa.” Mike is “Wa.” Mommy is Mommy. Me is Me.

Even Freud would smile.

I’ve spent six weeks now with Bevin--pretty much full time (with the general exception of one overnight with her sister and family per week). It struck me recently, that this devoted one on one has not happened for the two of us since Bevin was a very small, nursing baby. Even then, I left her with her father, I left her with babysitters, and I left her with her siblings. By the time she was three, I was leaving her at a day care center--lots of kids and people. So despite the way Bevin’s language (admittedly limited and perhaps as a result more eloquent) focuses on the isolated dyad of Mommy and Me, our life hasn’t. Which makes the past six weeks all the more instructive.

I came to this experiment with hope. I would detox my daughter--love her, feed her, walk, ride, sleep. And we would arrive at the sweet, wild child I have in my heart, I remember from her babyhood, toddlerhood. . . . . Mommy and Me. The cure.

Ah those twisted family plots. This is partly true. Bevin is happy. She loves me, she cuddles, we have great times together. We love to drive, we love to walk. I’ve discovered that Bev is great in coffee shops and bars--any place where her focus can be on a good drink (for her a soda, or in Bevin speak, “pa” or “poppie.”) But I am now also confronting those epic narratives about mothers and daughters, Mommy and Me. One on one can be more challenging than one in a group. Especially for Bevin, who doesn’t have a great deal of commitment, goal oriented behavior. It’s easier for her to encounter me, love me, fight with me, disobey me, than it is to work herself up to such battle in a group.

Sometimes Bevin seems out of time, out of place. A world to her own. And then I push a bit deeper and I find a truth about the most common place things we do. Mommy and Me. Continuity. Disconnect. Love. Fight. Me. Other. It’s how we come to who we are. Bevin is so very human. And that means, oh so complicated, frustrating, frightening, intriguing, wonderful.

A Bevin whisperer

I want to be one. This is now my goal.

Bevin can be scary when she cycles out of control. Not often. But often enough to require attention. She dips down into a well of anxiety and discontent. She runs about the house. She flushes toilets--again, again, again, again, again, again. . . . .. She begins puffing, spitting (not sure how to describe this very weird behavior). If you impede her progress in running about the house (and flushing toilets, and puffing) , she is way pissed. Throws things, big things (a toy microwave, a lamp, a vase, anything at hand . . . .). And she is aggressive. That means she hits--me, if she can.

What to do? I love Bevin. I find her charming. Even at her worst I’m scared, but intrigued, interested, engaged. I’ve always thought of Bevin as my wild child. So I forgive her beyond what I can sustain for others.

The basic task: to control her behavior to the point that others will find her as charming, intriguing, lovely, as I do. And treat her the way they would any charming, intriguing, lovely, young woman. I find myself returning to two memories that are weirdly parallel, in synch. Which makes me pay attention.

Number ONE: Last fall, my husband and I visited my son and his wife. And I learned about how to be a dog whisperer. My son’s wife (SW) had rescued an enthusiastic, badly behaved black lab from certain death. Maggie. Smelly, loving, on the edge. SW was clear on these basic principles. Here’s what I remember:
--You (person, homo sapien) must establish yourself as alpha dog.
--Establish boundaries. (For Maggie, she can go into the kitchen, the family room, the hall, the stairs, but not the living room, the computer room, or the kid’s room.)
--Reward good behavior. (For a dog, lots of pets, loves, food.)
--Make bad behavior less than pleasant. (For a dog, this means a choke chain.)
--Ignore neutral behavior.
--Do everything you can to help your dog succeed. This means lots of exercise. Letting your dog outside when she’s about to lose it.
And Maggie was making progress. She lapsed from time to time. But for the most part she didn’t come into the living room and she didn’t come into our bedroom.

Number TWO: Bevin’s first school was CBTU in Salt Lake City--the Children’s Behavior Therapy Unit(at Douglas school on 13th East). Bevin began attending at the age of three. Most of the children were autistic (Bevin never had enough “points” to be autistic, or autistic like, but she this school definitely made a difference in Bevin’s life.) This school rescued badly behaved, developmentally disabled children. Taught them to behave in a way that brought them closer to what the world expects. You attend. You don’t bite, hit, fight. . . . . You comply. This is what Bevin learned, to attend, to fit in. And this was important. The rules of the therapy unit:
--You win. Don’t engage a struggle if you aren’t willing to take it to the end.
--Establish boundaries. The developmentally disabled child (DDC) will behave as specified. Look at me, listen, smile. . . . .
--Reward good behavior.
--Make bad behavior less than pleasant--boring, a dead end. (For A DDC that means isolation, repetition, boredom. For Bevin, that sometimes meant a blindfold, not looking at her, repetition, a timeout corner, a hold to quiet her in publoic.)
--Do everything you can to help your DDC succeed. For Bevin, this means, lots of driving, walks, trips into public places where there are lots of interesting people. . . . . .

Since bringing Bevin to Seattle, I’ve been rummaging in my grab bag for tools that will help the two of us succeed. And I’ve gone back to this twinning structure--the dog whisperer, behavior therapy. Bad behavior is annoying. How to extinguish the behavior? With a a very basic creature--she just won’t listen to reason. She has no reason.

And so? I want to be a Bevin whisperer. She needs to succeed, to be lovable. And that success depends on me--the alpha dog. And she’ll be happier if we succeed. Certainly I’ll be happier if we succeed.

Food

I recently listened to Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” (I was driving up the Oregon/Washington coast, a beautiful landscape, which was somehow appropriate.) At times this book is overwrought. But overall, the book dipped down into my own history with food.

I grew up on a farm. My parents had an amazing garden. We lived off the garden in the summer, canned the abundance, and lived off that in the winter. I remember killing chickens. I remember knowing the calf you ate during the winter. My grandfather had chickens. I know about feisty, nasty Banty roosters. And I have gathered eggs.

And I have a personal rivulet into hippy dreams of utopia, imagining we might live in a happy group and grow foods. In the seventies, I gardened, made food from scratch (bread from wheat, and ricotta and cottage cheese from milk). In other words, I have a pretty good sense of where “real” food comes from. I had an aesthetic that said natural is good and so on. I have gardened, frozen foods, canned foods. . . . . .

Fast forward. In the middle years I’ve bought food, tried to keep my life engaged with something real, not always successfully. I can never resist potato chips. I go through this pass down memory lane to establish why I would respond to Pollan’s book.

A guilty pleasure and a continuing link to my more basic connection with food: i buy cookbooks. I love the idea of great food. Though I don’t always get around to cooking that great food. I understand the difference between food as at least a craft, often an art. And I have a sense of food that diminishes. of food that somehow taps into what is basic, beautiful, important.

So here are my current rules about food:

1. At the very least try avoid processed food. Eat food that looks like food. Vegetables, meat, lentils, bread, grain. You should know the history of a good before you eat it--grow it, raise it and kill it, harvest or gather the food from a living being.
2. Organic is expensive, easily bamboozles, but overall still gains something. Compost instead of chemical, no pesticides. You can still have processed, horrific food. But even then, you’ve probably helped the environment. I’d still go for recognized food over processed food. (Though I do love potato chips.)
3. You can grow your own and buy from local vendors. At least then, you have some sense of where your food comes from. I love farmers markets and have my favorite in Sacramento, and in Seattle (mostly the U-distict). If you can’t grow it, know who did.
4. Pollan’s book gave me some tools for making additional distinctions. That is what I admire about the book (despite it’s limits). Grass fed versus corn fed. That was a useful distinction. I also loved his descriptions of the genre of idyllic food, encouraged a skeptical way to read the brochures, the cartons on the food. That was one of the most useful contributions of his book--encouraging me to bring my lit crit background to food collateral. These skills have informed my decisions about what I bought this past weekend. Be skeptical. Natural.

Bottom line. I’m back to thinking about my childhood experiences (when I knew where food came from and what it cost) and back to my idyllic dreams of young adulthood (close to nature, what I think of as my earth mother phase). In those moments, i was thinking about food with a history I could describe. The farm is sometimes cruel, but at least it is open to view. Food probably should take time. What is more basic?

Lesson learned

Bevin and I drove to Missoula last night. Spent today meandering through Montana to idaho Falls, where we’re spending the night. Sunny day. Huge skies. A decent audiobook. Bev happy. A great day.

I’m trying to keep Bev up a little later. So when we arrived here tonight, we went for a walk, ate dinner, went for a walk, and went to a lounge for a drink. Bev had a diet coke, I had a pinot. ( I do realize that the coke probably works against the going-to-sleep-early plan, but this was my best choice.)

Downside: Idaho has not yet happened upon no smoking laws. Having decided, that 30 minutes of dense second-hand smoke wouldn’t kill us, we persevered.

Lo and behold! Lesson learned. Bevin is a great success in bars. A bar plays to all of her strengths. She loves to sip a drink. You don’t have to eat in bars. (Bev is a messy eater.) She loves to watch people. She loves to flirt. And bars are noisy. (Bev, happy can be weirdly noisy to the uninitiated.)

Not sure what the future is here. But definitely an enjoyable evening with my daughter.

Idaho elegy

Last July I took a road trip to Idaho to attend the funeral of a cousin. He was a contemporary of my brother, ten years older than me. I have become accustomed to the deaths of our elders. My grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, they are now all dead. There are few of my relatives still living in southeastern idaho where I grew up. As a child, all of my relatives, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins lived there. Today i received a call from my sister, and my cousin Peggy has died. My cousin Bruce was someone I knew by reputation,, someone close to my siblings. Peggy has a place of prominence in my early memories.

In the most vivid of these memories I am 7 or 8 years old--a 2nd or 3rd grader, I suspect. She was 6 or 7 years older than me. She was my glamorous cousin, who doted on cute little red-headed Susie. Her mother had pretensions beyond us country folk. Her house had china figurines, beautiful pictures, a furnace, a picture window, and wall-to-wall carpet. And Peggy had store-bought clothes. Most of mine were sewn by my mother. I would stay over at my cousin Peggy’s house. She would comb my hair and dress me up. And I would go home with some of those glamorous store-bought hand-me downs. By the time I’m nearing my teenage years, I no longer have many memories of Peggy. I suspect she became too old to be bothered with this little cousin.

The irony is that this glamorous cousin is the one who lived her adult life in southeastern Idaho. She married a farmer and stayed there while the rest of us grew up, went to college, and moved away.

I saw Peggy in July when I went to my other cousin’s funeral. At this point, she probably didn’t know she was sick. She has spent the time since then battling cancer. She called my sister a few months back to tell her about her cancer and let her know that she was hoping to have one of the last couple of burial plots in the cemetery where my grandparents were buried. That was where my cousin Bruce, who spent his adult life in Manatoba, Canada, was buried. It seems fitting that Peggy, one of the only cousins from my mother’s family who stayed in Idaho, should have these plots.

I’m going to drive to idaho again, this time with Bevin. To say good-bye. To my cousin, again to my childhood. I did this last summer. It’s a very odd feeling to go back there. Especially to say good-bye to those who are nearer and nearer to being my contemporaries. But it’s also to look for myself, where I came from, who I am. It’s always hard for me to know exactly how I happened when I go back to my childhood haunts.

Twisted family plots

Almost a decade ago, I was asked to judge a Mormon fiction contest. Slogging through some very terrible novels, I came upon a mystery with a family plot--I can’t remember the details of the book, but I’m sure it was about a mother or a father, a daughter or son, murdering or sleeping with a family member. And the setting was Victorian England (I was working on a ph.d. in nineteenth century British fiction). I voted for this book, and that year the book won. The Mormon author of note for the Association of Mormon Letters, Anne Perry.

A Mormon author unlike the others. I discovered that she was already a best-selling novelist, and a Mormon convert. Talking to a friend, I learned that Anne Perry also was one of the girls depicted in the troubling movie “Heavenly Creatures”--the friend who helped the daughter murder her parents. (The movie was also an intro to Kate Winslet, actress, and Peter Jackson, director). Anne Perry the pseudonym she took when she came out of prison.

Since then I’ve mostly read the Monk series of detective fiction. The policeman whose memory has been lost. The nurse from the Crimean war, Hester. The two eventually marry. Always, those twisted family plots.

I took the opportunity in Menlo Park to go to a reading by Anne Perry. Heard her talk about a regular writing schedule and teaching Sunday school.

I won’tjudge this woman’s fiction. I just read it with continued fascination. I would like to be as spunky, brave, outspoken as Hester. Right now I’m listening to a Pitt mystery--Charlotte and her husband. She’s also spunky, brave, outspoken. And her husband, like Monk, is an outsider, odd, but a good man and underneath a kind and sensitive husband, lover. Also a good policemant, who can always use his wife’s help. Who wouldn’t want such a man.

Still I continue to be fascinated by those plots, given this complicated history. The current book--two baby bodies unearthed in a public garden square. Abortion, murder, sex. Anne Perry at her best. My beloved Mormon author.

Reading out loud

I am an audiobook addict.

I love being read to. I love going word by word through a book, listening, paying attention. Doing the different voices.This is the closest I come to meditation. In blessed moments, listening to a book takes me out of myself, stops the restless play of my mind.

I’m not so good at reading out loud to myself. I’ve been experimenting with this over the past week. Reading Hardy poems out loud. And today, I may have been lucky. The rain drove Bevin and me back to our rooms earlier than I planned. I wanted to read, so I read out loud to her.

We’ve had a good afternoon. Only the charming Bevin this afternoon. Perhaps we have found something new to share, riding, walking, reading. I hope so.

Detox

I’m trying to ween Bev from the anti-depressant. I want to figure out what her baseline is. I just haven’t had enough continuing time with her over the past five years to know what makes sense. I took her to a doctor last week, and he agreed this makes sense.

So for this week, I’m halving her perscription--1/2 tablet, rather than 1 tablet each night. For the past couple of days, she’s been mostly half and half. I’m trying not to reward “bad” behavior. That means, when she’s really out of control, I’m trying to find a safe, time-out place for her to calm down. I don’t want to take her driving or take her walking (both things she really enjoys) when she acts out. I’m harkening back to early training. Bore the nasty behavor. Find a quiet, dark, boring place where she can stay until she finds her calmer, more charming sense. I’ve created a place like that in my house.

For the detox phase, I’m cheating a bit. I’ve been taking her driving. Though I let her in the car only when she’s got herself more or less together. Yesterday, we did a ride to Concrete and then to one of the islands and on the ferry. Now I’m spending two days on the Olympic Penninsula at Rialto Beach--one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, I think. I’ve found a great little place to stay here on a river about 5 miles or so from the beach. I want her to have it easy not going psycho while we detox. I believe in contributing to her success. So far we’ve done pretty goo. Though she did spend a little time in the closet here tonight (bored finally) until she decided the bed sounded better. She’s now bored, sleepy, in bed. . . . . . . .

Two weeks at 1/2 says the doctor, and then take her off for a couple of weeks. We’ll see where that leaves her and whether I have the patience.

I like the happy Bevin better than the psycho Bevin. . . . .

Sleepless in Salt Lake City

I was concerned back in January after talking to one of Bevin’s caretakers in Salt Lake City. She told me that Bevin had been having trouble sleeping. She got up in the night and wandered through the home, slamming doors, stashing things in closets. One night she had even managed to go outside and set off the alarm. I had always thought of Bevin as a girl with an infinite capacity to sleep, so this development surprised me, alarmed me. To me it was a sign of Bevin’s underlying anxiety. And also probably related to the fact that she was always in a group situation, really didn’t have down time. The caretaker told me that she had never seen her in “veg” mode--resting with a blanket over her head. This is often what Bev does when she’s in group situations and gets overwhelmed. That made me think that she really didn’t have a chance to be in quiet places or alone where she was living. I wondered whether her increasing anxiety, that had to be the cause of her sleeplessness, was related to this.

I heard from Pam, her stepmom, that East Side had put Bevin on something to help her sleep. When I picked her up in Salt Lake City last week, I was given a bottle of her “sleeping” medication. I decided to give her the pills--until I figured out more about what is going on with her. I can’t remember whether I gave her the medication the first night, but I know that I did the other evenings until Saturday night. I decided not to give her the pill but gave her a Benadryl instead. I only had four or five pills left, so I thought I would just stop giving them to her and see whether she could sleep without them.

Bevin’s behavior can be alarming when she has what I think of as an anxiety fit. For some reason, sometimes related to something that has happened but often pretty mysterious as to origin. her emotions run out of control. She begins running around, slamming doors, throwing things off surfaces, flushing the toilet, and making a peculiar “puffing” face. It’s amazing how quickly she can move and how little she responds to any verbal cautions. When she was smaller, she could be restrained when she acted out. But now that she’s older, that’s harder to do. Often I take her walking or driving in the car to help her calm down. Because that’s what needs to happen, she has to somehow get out of the rage of anxiety and back to quieter, calmer place. Bevin’s “normal” self is cheerful and rather cooperative.

Over the past six months or so when I’ve spent time with Bevin, her anxiety fits have been the exception rather than the rule. Occasionally they happen when she is getting ready for bed. She is most vulnerable to losing her cool at times of transition or at those moments of chaos that happen from time to time in a group or family situation.

Bevin woke up last Sunday morning, after her night without the “sleep” medication in a vulnerable mood. She lost her calm by the time she got out of the bathtub--usually a relaxing experience for her. I had a difficult time getting clothes on her. I let her go out and get in the car without getting shoes on her. I was just glad she wasn’t naked. We drove around for a little while, and then I brought her back and gave her breakfast. But I could tell she was still anxious. So I spent the day driving. We drove from 10:00 or so until 5:00. She is always pretty calm when we drive. She loves to drive, and I do too. So we’re a great pair. We drove to Whitbey Island via La conner, took the ferry to Port Townsend, drove back via the Tacoma Narrows. I could tell when we got back she was still on the edge. And she lost it when I tried to get her ready for bed. She started running around, pretty much naked, and I couldn’t calm her down. I also wasn’t inclined to go driving again. I knew that I had to get her calmed down in the house. I herded her downstairs where there were fewer things to throw and clear from surfaces. I finally cleared out the bathroom and blocked the door until she sat down. Finally she let me sing to her, rug her back, and finally put her nightgown on. Eventually I coaxed her into bed.

I had given her the “sleeping” pill before I tried to get her ready for bed, beginning to wonder whether the behavior was related to not taking the pill.

She woke up the next morning a different person. She was cheerful, funny, cooperative. And remained so for the whole day. We drove a little, but mostly we worked around the house, went for a walk. And she watched Barney, an old favorite from childhood, on the TV. I gave her the pill again last night, and she’s been Bevin the charmer all day again today.

Obviously I also began researching her “sleeping” medicine--trazodone. It turns out that it’s an anti-depressant, in particular used for anxiety and prescribed some times for sleep problems. It is one of the drugs that has been noted as problematic in teens--causing sometimes thoughts of suicide etc. Obviously taking her off the medicine quickly is a problem at this point. I’m left wondering about next steps here. Maybe this is just the thing to help her manage anxiety. But I also wonder how much of the anxiety is biological and how much contextual. I’m thinking that I somehow need to get to ground zero with Bevin, to figure out where she is, before I can begin making good decisions about her future. I can’t imagine putting her into another group situation until I have a sense of just what her emotional, physical situation is.

I did refill the medicine and found a doctor to see her this Friday. I want to begin working on a plan to figure out who and how Bevin is at this point in her life. That has to be the first step here.

Will she also be sleepless in Seattle? Or can she find her way to a calmer self? I just don’t know.

An inappropriate friendship?

I’ve been going through Bevin’s discharge paper. Interested to learn just a little bit more about her “inappropriate” friendship with a girl at her group home. Bevin has always been one to form friendships--her ability to do that has often left me meditating on the nature of friendship. But that’s another story.

Here’s what was “inappropriate” about her relationship with her most recent friend--according to her discharge papers. They were cuddling and, I take it, touching each other. Though who knows what that means. Given the structure of their lives, I suspect that it was mostly cuddling, holding--a head on a shoulder. . . . .

Now Bevin doesn’t have any ability to contemplate her life. So I’ve been thinking about what she knows about friendship, love. I’m not sure of the total range of her patterns for friendship, love. That’s how she lives her life--according to patterns. And my concern about this has a good deal to do with why I am bringing her to Seattle. I don’t know, can’t know, that much about the details of her life in Utah, the patterns of her existence there.

Here’s what i do when we’re together, my pattern of interaction. I cuddle with her. I hold her in my arms. I stroke her back, her hair, her hands. And I have this strong sense of how she takes to this touching. She opens herself. I know she hasn’t had much of such physical comfort in the pattern of her life. A person should have this. The luxury of touch from one who loves you.

I’ve often worried about her sexual vulnerability. To those men/boys in her environment who don’t understand, but could still hurt her. To those who do understand, and would still hurt her.

I hadn’t thought about a friendship such as the one i read between the lines in her discharge papers. How would she know this was “inappropriate”? Was it? In the world she was in, where did she find the touch that she longs for. How do we decide what “should” be?

I find myself with more sympathy, than judgment.

Home

Bevin and I arrived in Seattle this afternoon. Settling in. . . . . . .

The adventure begins

Friday was my last day at work until May 21. I leave tomorrow to drive to Utah. I'll pick Bevin up at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Burn her bridges.

And then the adventure begins. I am so looking forward to bringing Bevin to Seattle.

My eddy in the global economy

Recently I’ve been attending to my own eddy into the global economy. I was given the job at my work of “mentoring” a new doc team in India, charged with supporting and documenting Adobe products that are being engineered there. Unfortunately we didn’t have a stellar beginning. Too late. Every decision tactical--and a bit late at that. Never quite got ahead of the curve. . .

For the past week (and this continues next week), we’re hosting our new writing manager (pretty much “all” of the doc team in India) from Bangalore. Welcome to Adobe, our group, corporate America.

I just did a google search on Bangalore. I’ve been hearing all week from Guru of the virtues of Bangalore. He’s definitely a home boy. Grew up there. Proud. Silicon Valley of India. Educaton. English spoken in the home (an important point for a writer writing in English for an American audience. Interestingly, he couldn’t tell me the population of Bangalore. The internet tells me it’s somewhere between 5 and 6 million--a pretty big city by American standards. Certainly he finds our mild 50 degrees of the past week cold. He did let me know that my love of driving would be difficult to maintain in India.

I’ve been putting off making a judgment about Guru. He arrived in the middest--never a comfortable moment. A minor crisis on his first day. Perhaps his name is a harbinger?

It’s an interesting puzzle to put together a picture of a person conjured up from a time zone discrepancy of 13.5 hours. I’ve learned that folks in Bangalore work late. That means that if I’m on e-mail by 7 in the morning, I have perhaps 30 minutes of real-time e-mail with my colleagues in India. If I send an e-mail at 7:00 a.m., they’re answering my message at 8:30 p.m. These global conversations demand patience. I send a message in the morning. I get my answer (if my friends in India are attentive) 24 hours later. In this world of instant messaging, an abberration, a frustration, a chance to contemplate.

I have been working with two folks in India--I realized with chagrin today that I’m not even sure both work in Bangalore. Does one work in Noida? A female project manager who knows almost nothing about writing. But she’s clearly competent, proactive, fearless. She is always pressing at the edges, moving folks forward, forging into a space with a meeting, a suggestion, an action item. Since she knows nothing about docs, I’m as often dismayed by what i face when i fire up my e-mail in the morning as I cheer. But I do cheer. She is smart, active, accessible, flexible. No matter how often I have to pull her back, press her in another direction, I find her a pleasure to work with.

And then there’s Guru. After a week, I’m left cautious in my estimation of his prospects in the company, and a bit sad. I like him. He’s clearly accomplished in the world he inhabitants. I’ve learned that competent tech writers are far scarcer in India than engineers (and pretty much all competent tech writers, and even more editors, aspire to management). He has some six years of experience with such tech companies as HP. I do believe, after a week in discussion with him, that he is well informed, competent in his sphere. But I fear he is too accommodating, too deferential, too cautious to succeed in the situation he’s in.

And I’m left contemplating questions I can’t answer. How much of this is Guru? Why do I respond to Bhavna, despite her innocence of my profession? Why do I worry about him? How much of this is cultural? How much of this has to do with gender? How much is simply transactional, tactical?

I’m far too tired this Friday night to answer this question. But these are clearly questions that are in the center of my work life going forward. Do I have the tools to do a good job here? I am an Idaho girl after all? How did I end up here on this frontier? Never knew this is what I was preparing for. . . .

The aging of ordinary

I just finished reading a blog posted by someone I knew at a distance during my college years. This person went on to become a professor, the professor of my son, and in the end his friend. He now blogs at the same site as Nathan. Jim posted a fine blog on the ordinary.

Here’s a passage from the post that arrested my attention:


                Much about the ordinary world has changed in my life time, though I am not yet sixty. I was born in rural Missouri, and when I was born rural telephone systems were mostly party-lines, phones were hand-cranked, electricity was a relatively new arrival (within 30 years, and often much less), and for many people water pumped by hand and out house toilets were ordinary. Before my children were all born, that had all changed. The order of the world in rural Missouri was very different than it had been. And, as an expatriate of Missouri, I have changed even more than has my birthplace. Today I seldom think about what it takes to get water, and I use my Trio for phone calls, e-mail, and my calendar, wishing at the same time that I’d perhaps waited and bought an IPhone. Though I come from a long line of people who did what they called “honest work,” day-laboring, small-scale farming, blacksmithing, and machine work, I make my living as a bourgeois professor of philosophy.
                Nevertheless, though the ordinary is common, customary, and usual, it is also not something to be ignored. Indeed, we ought to celebrate that things such as vaccination, full supermarkets, city sewage systems, treatments for cancer and epilepsy, public transportation, private cars, mobile phones, cable television, literacy and education are all now ordinary, and all deserve our praise. Our lives are what they are because so much has become ordinary, and we ought to labor and pray that what is ordinary for us becomes ordinary for many more. We live longer and more comfortably because of many extraordinary things that have become ordinary. We know more and have access to more because of other extraordinary things turned ordinary. What was outside of the ordinary has become part of it and is no longer much noticed or noted.

Reading this, I’m left contemplating aging. I remember a childhood ordinary very similar to Jim’s. Setting aside the whole Mormon thing--rural Missouri in the 50s was much like rural Idaho. Jim is describing my experience too. I grew up in a rural town of 350 inhabitants, six miles from the big city of 3000 (doctor, bank, grocery store, library, drug store, Penney’s). If anything, my adult life has pushed to the edge of the new ordinary even more aggressively than Jim’s. I work for a software company, live in a large city. It’s part of my job to play with, and document, changing technology-- Web 2.0, tag clouds, social bookmarks, blogs, flickr, podcasts, WIKIs, and so on. I have a cell phone, a laptop, an IPOD, a Trio is one click away. . .

Over time, this is what I came to resist about growing older: getting frozen at some moment in time, losing vulnerability to the unknown and to change. I knew what middle-aged women looked like and did with their time as I grew up. Once you married and joined the group: you had shorter hair and had it done at Marion’s on the edge of town. You left behind young clothes, young things. Whenever I’ve started to feel stuck, frozen, in my life. I’ve tended to make what I’ve come to think of as a “leap”--and started a new version of my life. I never became the young married woman my mother raised me to be.

In the language of Jim’s post today, a series of ordinaries have been my life. I still resist getting frozen in time. But I do find that I increasingly survey the past with indulgence, fondness, sometimes a sense of loss and regret. I’m thinking more and more that I want to approach life as I’ve always, through this life of change, approached my books. Books are the one continuing thread of continuity in my life. Reading, especially novels, narratives, stories. I have expanded my sense of books. I now listen to as many books (I love my iPOD), perhaps more, than I read with my eyes (which like everything else age).

I’ve always collected books. I keep them around after I’ve read them. I buy more than I’ll every read, keep them on my shelves, hopefully look forward to reading them some day. Love living in their company.

I’ve been contemplating the changes I want to make to my house. And I’ve decided that I’ll build book cases, in the study, in the basement, maybe even in the bedroom. I love to collect. Look back as well as forward. I love the old ordinary, the aging ordinary. I don’t want to lose it. But I hope that I’ll always be open to something new. Looking for a way to build just a few more shelves. Though I do reserve the right to throw some things out.

Middle management

Between my early twenties and my early fifties, I never held a full-time job. To be honest, I generally held multiple jobs. Part-time jobs when my children were younger. Multiple jobs, at the same time, as they grew--graduate student, teacher, editor, writer, single mother. But 40 hours a week at one job never.

In my early fifties, I was hired as an editor in the documentation group at Adobe, a software company in Silicon Valley. To tell the truth, this was my first “company.” And, to my knowledge, the first I had ever had a “manager.”

During my first months on the job I used to laugh with friends that folks at my new job were gullable enough to think of my ignorance as “fresh perspective.” I had a very good gig. Within the first few months, my boss asked if I wanted a permanent job. I said yes. And then a couple of months later, she asked whether I wanted to be promoted to manager. Since each “yes” on my part meant more money, I began my trip up the corporate ladder. I was a bit chagrined to learn that, as a manager, I was expected to lead and manage entire projects. Still I coped. And within three years I had been promoted to the position of Director.

At which point I began to contemplate in a more organized way what this meant. I was sent to a year-long set of classes for “Women Unlimited”--women, as I was led to believe, on their way up. I spent one full day a month for an entire year attending these classes. I play acted, talked, listened, met with my mentor, listened to our coaches, contemplated what it mean to be a woman on her way up. Contemplated ultimately my own misery. On the final day, each of us graduates stood and told what we had learned, what we planned to do with our future. I stood, admitted my sense of being misplaced--and described my plan to get out of my job. I was lucky to talk my boss into cutting my job in half, hiring a new director, and demoting me to exalted editor and middle manager. And I took the opportunity to move from the center office to Seattle.

Where I have been for five or six years--coming on my 10th year anniversary with the company, a very good company. An ethical company, a humane company full of smart, creative people.

But ultimately the job of a middle manager is a thankless one. I’m not a particularly social person. I prefer solitude, books, walking, driving, writing. I hate parties. It takes a good deal of energy to expend myself in minor social situations. And I spend most of my time in rooms with people listening to their problems, trying to find solutions, making tough decisions that never make anyone happy. Today I came face to face with my continuing sense of misplacement , alienation, as I listened to a writer, strung out at the end of a project, unhappy with his manager, tell me what a mess our group is, of the miasma of fear and distrust, and so on and so on. When I contemplate my work, I can feel pride at progress, change. I have a modest sense of what one should expect of a job, of a company.

But I’m wondering again. Why?

Dear reader

My son, it turns out, discovered this blog and has visited it from time to time. He was left scratching his head about the question of audience.

Do I imagine an audience? Is this really public discourse? Not sure I have a good answer for a good question. Certainly what I have been writing is personal, random, modest, no obvious thread of continuity. I’ve been happy to think I have no readers. Though the gesture to publish rather than leave this on my desktop must be significant. Why have I been doing this?

Mostly the gesture comes from a lifetime of journal writing. I’m tired, bored, disgusted with what I have made of the journal. I have some random scribblings that go back to grade school. But I have journals, not daily, but consistent, since I went off to college. I have boxes of these things. And mostly I find it difficult to read them. I write when I’m frustrated. I use these journals as personal therapy. So they are full, mostly of the miseries of my life. Daily miseries are repetitious--and boring. For the most part, I don’t particularly like the person who emerges in these journals.

And I’ve had a fair amount of experience with journals. I have worked as a historian for significant periods in my life. In particular I spent a huge stretch of my middle life working daily on an amazing journal--that of Wilford Woodruff, which begins in the 1830s and continues into the 1890s. He was dedicated enough in his journaling that if he didn’t write he accounted for his lapses when he returned. On more than one occasion he wrote of his own illnesses, stopping only when he lapsed into unconsciousness. That happened with his final illness. He details this illness until days before his death.

I started by indexing the nine volumes of Wilford’s journals that had already been published. And then I excerpted from the 900 plus pages to create a one-volume version, published as “Waiting for World’s End.” This was rarely an introspective journal but always a descriptive one. And that description makes it core in plotting the story of Mormonism in its first century and the story of Utah in its first decades as well. A journal to come to again and again. It stands up.

I’ve always been entranced by those literary journals, where great writers captured glowing words that found their way into poems and novels. But that’s not what I wrote. For the most part, I fear, my journal deserves a fire, not a reader.

I realize that mostly I’ve found myself exhausted by my own journal. So this blog began as an attempt to bring discipline to my personal writing--or more precisely my writing about the personal. I would be embarrassed to publish my journal. This exercise forces me to reflect on my experience, shape it a bit.

So perhaps, I’m mostly still the reader. But I want to find a way to find some pleasure myself in what I write. Maybe that will help me find a public voice and even confidence to search more aggressively for a dear reader.

The latest on my idiot girl

Things are progressing.

My application at work has been approved. With luck, my family leave will begin on February 19.

I’ve heard that Bevin qualifies in Washington. When she moves here, the application can go in? What does that mean? I admit I’m feeling major anxiety. I will bring Bevin to Washington. But I don’t know what that will mean for my life.

Something that really hit me. I just realized that Bevin has spent more time in her life in group homes than with me, at home. How could that be? I just want to make sure that she has a good life. I’m not sure that has been the case over the past few years. i can’t continue to prioritize her life over mine. What makes her happy is very different from what makes me happy. I want to be realistic about that. I am so blessed that she is easily pleased. But I can’t take advantage of that. And I do want to make sure that her life is good. Thought I want my life to be good too.

Thomas Hardy: Things to write and think about

I’m currently reading a biography of Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomlin. I think it’s a very good book. Here’s what it’s made me think about in my own life. I want to write about both.

--Hardy at the death of his first wife wrote an incredible cycle of poems. Some of my favorite in his oevre. Her death, the end of the story, helped him to look back to the beginning. And those poems are about the beginning. I’ve been thinking that I need to write in a sympathetic vein about Richard, my first husband, the father of my children. It was good that I left him.But I wouldn’t be the person I am without him. So I need to make that clear, to myself, to my children.

--Hardy because of education and personal impulse left behind his roots. Much of the insight and energy and brilliance in his work came from a sense of being alone, finding no home, alienation from his roots--and yet love and yearning after what he’s lost. I identify here. And I want to write about that experience in my own life.Come to some kind of understanding, reconciliation, foregiveness.

I’m very much enjoying this book. I am downloading “Return of the Native.” I’ll be listening to that book again soon, returning myself.

A miracle

That saves me from my moral dilemma.

Someone at work told me to freeze my cell phone to help it dry out. So I did. After a couple of days, I extracted it from the freezer. Before I went to bed last night, I plugged it into the charger. It lit up to tell me it was charging. I woke up this morning to a helpful message that it was charged. So I took the obvious next step. I turned it on.

Voila! It started. No fanfare. No problems. Picture of my daughter still on the desktop. All my phone numbers stored. Message about voice mail (5 or so from my husband frustrated that I wouldn’t pick up).

At a meeting today, I exclaimed, "It’s a miracle."

And my co-worker quipped, "You’re pregnant?"

" No, I laundered my cell phone. I froze it. And now it works."

“Now, that’s the miracle,” he agreed.

Dodged that one. . . . .

A Moral Dilemma

Over the holidays, my husband and I changed our cell service. And as a result got new cell phones. Cool razor phones--is that the term? Fit easily in the pocket. Easy text messaging, pictures, and so on. Great fun.

Well, that was the problem. Easily fits in the pocket. A couple of nights ago I managed to launder my new cell phone. Went through the entire cycle.Found it the next morning. Very wet and very dead.

So here is my husband’s solution--after giving me a predictable little lecture on how I’m always the one to do this kind of thing. That’s another story. But I digress. . . . . His solution: take it back to Costco, play dumb. It quit. Need a new one. You should give me one.

My husband has proved over time that Costco has an amazingly liberal return policy. He has used items for years (I don’t think I exaggerate) and then returned them. Now for me this seems suspect. I don’t believe I can do this. I don’t think I can return my cell phone and maintain my cool. I will cave. I will tell them that I laundered it. I will tell the truth.

The dilemma? Two-fold. There’s the part where my dear husband continues to lecture me on my incompetence. I think that returning the phone partially redeems me in his view. I don’t like to be criticized. I’m a great avoider. So do I go against my moral, my commitment to truth telling, in order to avoid the struggle with him. But at a deep level, this little description is a blind to hide the deeper issue. Whatever brave face I put on this, I’m thinking about sending the phone to him (he lives in another state--yes, yet another story). He can return the phone. That way, I won’t have to. I won’t have to lie. But I won’t have to buy another phone.

Now this gets to the real moral dilemma. Exposes the real weakness of my position--and my character. I don’t want to do the dirty work. But I’m pretty sure I would be willing to reap the rewards. I’d be happy to have a new cell phone, a free one. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d be willing to reap the rewards of my husband’s willingness to push at the limits. He downloads music. He downloads movies. He downloads TV shows. I buy them. I work for a software company and have a lofty view of intellectual property. Still in the end, I copy his music, his movies, his TV shows to my computer, and to my ipod. I enjoy the fruits that drop from the tree of his view on what is fair and proper.

And there in is the dilemma. Or perhaps, to be blunt, my failure. I’m simply weak. I don’t have the courage of my convictions--or perhaps, to get to the point, my lack thereof.

Dumbo

I watched Dumbo this weekend with my 5-year-old granddaughter and my 2.5 year-old grandson (one of two). I can’t remember when I last watched Dumbo. But it was at least as interesting to watch my grandchildren watch Dumbo as it was to watch the distantly remembered movie from my own childhood.. The granddaughter loved it. Watched every minute. That was Clara. The grandson was a bit more on the edge. That was Sam.

Admittedly the sound was just a wee bit muddled. This was on my iPOD (I bought it from Apple site), played through the TV. (Another story, just far have we come since I last watched Dumbo. I’m not sure I even took my own children to Dumbo. Maybe the last time I saw this movie, I was a child. That is like the plot of a science fiction movie, at least one I would have watched when I was a child.)

Sam fidgeted. I had to do a running commentary of excited interest to keep him at the show (also pausing for the cookies). He did manage the movie all the way to the end, if just barely. What struck me about the movie was just how little story there was. How much was eddy, song, dance, laid-back singing and story telling. The birds in the tree, the pink elephants. No driving toward a powerful ending. No whamb, bang. It seemed so sweet and meandering. Even I was having a little problem with the pace. Get to bed, get the kids in bed, get the treats done. Get to my own book. . . . . . . .

I had thought something of the same thing the weekend before when we played part of Bambi. The first part of that movie, at least, has no plot beyond growing up, making friends. Compare this to 24 (not a children’s show I would admit). But that story takes the drive toward plot to the edge of the ridiculous and beyond. How many plots, sub-plots, dead ends, can you pack into, of all things, 24 hours. Compare the opening gambit of 24 last week (nuclear holocaust as a teaser, left behind in the end as the central plot??).

This has left me pondering patience. Meandering. Taking time. Not a skill the kids have (but should they yet?). Not a skill I may have any more. How sad. I’m the one who should know how to find a moment, savor, take my time.

Library Thing

I just found a really wonderful site called Library Thing. I had experimented with ReaderWare--cataloguing books that I buy and writing short summaries of books as I encounter them. Help the old failing memory. This site allows this online. I always like web sites--not the need to have local software. You can access the site from multiple locations. Also, it is more easily available to others. I could, if I wanted, shared with my kids or friends. Also, I like the possibility of tags, surrounding chat.

All of this is what we’ve been talking about at work. Thinking of ways to do this with software documentation. So I’m always glad to experiment online. So here’s what I’ve done over the past few days:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=idiotgirl

(And I’m also experimenting with posting this from a desktop journaling program. I write lots of pathetic stuff I’d never post. Even to this very private public space that no one reads. At least the possibility of the public makes me think twice about “bellyaching.”)

Snow

Snow in Seattle amuses me. The city shuts down and waits for the snow to melt. Schools shut down. The roads gridloack. Businesses don't open. No one talks about anything else.

I grew up in southeastern Idaho. Snow in the winter, lots of wind, and below zero temperatures. I walked to school through the eighth grade. Walked to a bus stop and waited for the bus outside until I graduated from high school--and left Idaho. We certainly never had snow days. It never even occurred to my parents to drive me to school. I can remember a few "blizzard" days--snow blowing so there's no visibility, the roads are blown shut with drifts that mount up the side of a house.

We've had some snow days for the past couple of weeks. And I've taken advantage. Stayed home. Worked "remotely." That means that if i send a lot of e-mail I can watch a little TV and walk around Green Lake (if I take my cell phone).

It does make me realize how much the world has changed, or at least my world, since I was a child. Children were pretty much on their own in southeastern Idaho. Get to school. Get home. Entertain yourself. Don't cause trouble (my dad's major advice in life, "don't bellyache. And in my family, your were expected to get good grades. But if you obeyed the rules (dealt with the snow), you were left alone, had your independence.

Probably not bad lessons in life. Not sure if snow in Seattle contributes to the betterment of humanity the way snow in Idaho did.

My new hybrid

I started talking about buying a new car last fall. I had a 2000 Volvo S40 that I loved. Few problems. Driving is my hobby. I love to explore the area, listening to an audio book. My commute is under 3 miles (and alas I drive rather than hop the bus at the corner). Most of my miles come because I love to drive. It goes back to Sunday drives with my family. Or weekend drives. To Yellowstone. To Teton--Jenny's Lake. I lived within a day's drive of those beautiful places. We used to take a day's drive with a picnic to such places. I think that set my pattern for driving. I love to drive. And since I discovered audiobooks this is a perfect experience. As close as I come to meditation. I love to read. I love to drive. I can do them at the same time. And the lure is hard to resist.

So I love to drive. And I loved my car. But I was concerned that my luck would give out. Seven years with virtually no problems for a Volvo. Everyone seemed to tell me that this couldn't last. So I started to look. Research. Do web searches. Watch cars I saw on the road.

A couple of month's back, I called my husband (he lives in Sacraento, I live in Seattle, that's another story) and started talking about car. "I just saw a Civic Hybrid on the road. Thought it looked interesting. Not so ugly as the Prius. Thought I'd do some research." And my dear husband said, "If you buy a hybrid, I will never ride in your car again." And he hung up.

I wasn't quite sure where to go from there. Who wants a husband who won't ride in your car. But who wants to fall into such a threat. I did what I'm good at--and this time around this was the best I could have done. I just didn't think about it much.
A dilemma. I was clear about that. I didn't want to fight with him. But I didn't want to fold. So I just waited. Continued to look at cars.

Why was he so against hybrids? Mostly the Prius. Someone here in Seattle put it in words for me. The smug factor. Don couldn't deal with the smug factor floating around the Prius. And I had to admit the Prius is ugly. And i've met the smug before. A waste of money. He spent 20 plus years dealing with car dealers and car credit. It will take, and I'm convinced, 5-7 years to regain the extra cost of the hybrid. You don't save money. It's a waste of money.

Which set me to thinking about why I would want a hybrid. The same reason I recycle. I want to be responsible. That's what I decided. I love to drive. And on one level that may not be a responsible hobby. I want to be responsible as I can. i want to be as little tied to the gas pump as possible. That's why I'm intrigued by the hybrid.

By the time the holidays come. And the time when I was really thinking about buying my car, my husband had mellowed as well. We test drove the Civic. He let me know, quietly, that he could live with the Civic Hybrid. So that's what I bought over the holidays. I'd rather get 40 mpg rather than 20+ if driving with an audiobook is my habit. I put 3000+ miles on my car over the two weeks of the Christmas holidays. Obviously my love of driving and reading goes beyond hte normal. So I'm glad to have my hybrid.

I'd rather feel that what i do is responsible, even if the problems of the world won't be solved. I don't want to add. My small commitment.

And I do like my little car. (Except for those fabric seat. These will be a problem!)

Vilette

I just finished listening to Villette by Charlotte Bronte. I had read the book before but never had it read to me. I didn't expect to enjoy it quite as much as I did or be as impressed. This is an odd and impressive book. Bronte is playing so explicitly with perspective. One of the key themes in the narrative has to do with surveillance and spying--watching, perspective. Much of this is focused through the contrast in the novel between Protestant and Catholic, English and foreign (French). The country is a fictional country patterned after Belgium. Bronte herself studied in Belgium, fell in love there with a teacher. The subject of her first novel, the Professor, a key focus in this one--the love interest, in the end, of Lucy Snow.

Lot of literal spying. But also amazing little set scenes such as the evening celebration when Lucy, drugged but not quite to sleep, wanders through the lit and celebrating streets, alone, distressed, and watches. She sits close enough to listen to those she knows.

A very striking book. Not so easily lovable as Jane Eyre, also a great book. But more unsettling. My Charlotte Bronte favorite.

Growing up

I do have thoughts on issues other than my idiot girl. But right now that seems to be what I write about. So I'll go with that. And then maybe try to prove I think about other things (like politics and movies and tv and food and. . .. .) as well.

There has been a case in the news recently. A family here in the northwest who made the medical decision (and found doctors, ehticists, and a publishing establishment to support them) to freeze their severely handicapped daughter in time. Physically she has been frozen as a young child. On a practical level, I can understand why they did this. And given that I know how difficult it is to make these decisions, I support their decision. Their objectives I can support: love the child, keep her included in their life circle as long as they can. If she gets too big, she'll be hard to carry, hard to include. I respond to this. I see what led them there. The main criterion I have come to use--balancing the life quality of the handicapped child with the life quality of family members. On this front, I can allow what they decided to do. In their situation, I can imagine coming to this decision. My child was never in so extreme a situation. So I won't judge.

On a more metaphorical level, this case becomes more troubling to me. I can understand the impulse. I never considered this possibility in a realistic way for my daughter. She functions at a much higher level. I would never have considered this for me. But I can understand the impulse. I look back with longing for the days when my daughter was young, beautiful, beloved by just about everyone who encountered her. As she gets older, she has become less charming. And fewer people are charmed by her--for long periods. She is still beautiful and charming for that first glance of a second or two.

More troubling, I encounter more frequently the anxieties, the worries, as I realize that Bevin isn't frozen in time. At some level I expected her to be. But she's not. I expected her to always be as she was in her late childhood and early teens. But she's not. She changes. And it's hard to understand why. She talks less. She has trouble sleeping. She gets upset more easily and throws little fits of "puffing." She gets hostile and runs around without her clothes on. She makes messes in her pants and wets her pants--a young lady trained totally from about the age of three. She has anxieties I can't understand. She gets angry. She takes her frustrations out on some unsuspecting person, less capable, in her surroundings. I don't want these changes. I want her to be frozen at her best, most capable, most charming moment.

And it's not entirely selfish. Bevin's life is better if folks are charmed by her. If she stays more like the charming, elfin, odd little thing she was as a child.

So I understand the impulse. For Bevin, she is capable enough that it was right to let her grow up. But I realize I have to expend more of myself to keep her as capable, as charming, as possible. Because Bevin's life is better if folks find it easier to deal with her. As her mother, I have to help keep her within the realm where people treat her kindly, enjoy her presence.

So I totally sympathize with those parents. Imagine a scenario that led to their decision that was generous, focused on that child they love. Not selfish. The adults must have a life in order to give the beloved, needy, totally clueless child a good life too.

Progress?

Not much. I just discovered that I haven't even completed all the paperwork. But I forge onward. I've begun telling everyone at work that I'l be out on "family leave" between middle February and middle May. So I have to get my act together and bring her to Seattle.

Here's how the holidays went. From what I can tell, Bevin is sabotaging herself in two different ways in Utah. With her group home: she can't settle, doesn't rest, doesn't sleep. She roams at night and they've begun giving her sleeping pills. I find it hard to recognize this set of problems. I think of Bevin as the young lady with an infinite capacity to sleep. What does this tell me? That she doesn't have quiet, solitude, a way to rest and veg. We all need that.

At her dad's: she's begun ignoring her bathroom skills. She wets, messes. Makes herself generally unpopular. As a result this past year, she was disinvited to the family summer vacation.

My goal for the holidays. Let her succeed. Have positive interactions. Lay down a good pattern, a good habit. I was concerned by what happened in Sacramento last vacation. She had accidents, she became disturbed, even hostile in the evenings. I was traumatized. Though I didn't tell Don what I was feeling, not sure I told anyone.

So this year, I made going to the toilet an ever-present, very light, fun game. We spent our time bathing, eating, driving, going to the bathroom, cuddling. The goal. Success, pleasantness. We did well. But it took effort.

And my husband, Don, was concerned. Is this our life? Does Bevin now rule our life.

And here's my bottom line:

I won't make choices that ignore Bevin.
I won't choose.
I will do quite a bit in the short run to lay down a pattern, habits, that I can live with.
I don't want to choose. . . .
But I just won't abandon her this time. I can't.

I don't want to lose mylife. I've come to value it too much. But I don't think I will need to choose.

I hope Don will let us succeed. I don't want to choose. But perhaps I will, if pressed.

In the moment

About ten years ago, I made some decisions about Bevin based on this line of reasoning: she is easily pleased, easily okay, even happy, with her world. She has an amazing capacity for optimism, moving on. And so I balanced the quality of my life against the quality of hers. And I've allowed myself some ten years of focus on the quality of my life--work, personal time, creativity, travel, peace, companionship. And to that end, I've paid attention to the quality of Bevin's life on a transactional, don't dig too deep basis. I think she's been okay. She's lived with folks who cared about her and did their best to take care of her. Jeraldine. East Side.

I don't want to revisit those decisions, flagellate myself with guilt, could have been, should have been. In important ways I think I was right. The last ten years, for all their limits and disappointments, have been important to me. I can't imagine not having them.

But I do find myself thinking that I haven't appreciated Bevin's world enough. At her best, she has an amazing ability to live in the moment. She has a deep sense of affection. A deep sense of pleasure in the moment. She can move on, embrace change, whatever is over the horizon. I should learn this from her.

And I worry that the life she has been living recently has caused the balance of pleasure and anxiety in her life to tip. The anxiety rather than pleasure may predominate. She does have this talent for the moment, for affection, for pleasure. That is what I need to work to preserve. Bevin doesn't have the ability to manipulate her environemt. I can do that for her. I need to create an environment where she can succeed in what she does so well. Better than me--the normal. Live in the moment. Let go. Find pleasure.

If she loses that ability, it falls on those who create the world she lives in. What a responsibility.

Us

Privacy

I've made some progress on bringing my beloved idiot girl to Seattle. I've filled out the paperwork. I've explored things to the point that I know I can take a leave of absence from my work when she comes. And I'm going to do this. I've made the commitment.

I spent time this week talking to the good people who run the group home where my daughter now lives--in Utah. I had a conversation with the administrator there that stunned me. I think of Bevin, my daughter, as having two extremes for coping with stress. On the one extreme, the anxiety builds up and she acts out. She runs around, can't settle. She becomes angry, grumpty, and she exhibits a range of alarming behaviors. She sniffs, she hits, she picks up things and stashes them in closets, she slams doors, she flushes the toilet again and again, she begs for soda and candy, opening the refrigerator door, raging if she doesn't get her way. At the extreme these behaviors overwhelm me. I don't know what to do. I have a hard time remaining calm, not becoming alarmed, angry, sad, tearful.

And then there's the other extreme. She lies down on a couch. Draws a blanket over her head. And sleeps. Goes into a deep quiety place that is something like a trance. I feel guilty when I let this go on too long. I want her engaged in the world. I love her happy smile, her affection, her openness to whatever comes next. I'm afraid if she goes too deep, she won't come back. She becomes less engaged, less the wonderful little person I know she is. I feel guilty, because this Bevin is so much easier to deal with than the other Bevin.

I was stunned because the administrator at her group home told me she had never seen the latter behavior. Only the former. And she told me something I found it hard to believe. Bevin has a hard time sleeping. Because of lack of sleep she is grumpy. And if anything this seems to becoming worse. She wakes up in the wee hours of the night, roams through the home, has even managed to get outside and set off the alarms.

I was stunned because I think of Bevin as someone with an amazing capacity to sleep, to descend into a deep quiet place. As I thought about this I realized that Bevin lives in a situation where she is always in a group. A group home after all. She has a roommate. The television is always on, a group of women/girls, a group of helpers. She travels on a bus with a group to "work"--spends the day with that group. I was stunned today to think that Bevin basically has no privacy. No time alone. She does need constant supervision. You can't leave her alone. She can't make any choices. But in her current life, this means she is always in a group.

Bevin definitely has anxiety in situations of transition, in crowds, in public places, in transitions, in noise. And in important ways I realize this is the structure of how she lives. No privacy. No time alone.

She has an amazing capacity to be happy. To live where she is. But that seems stressed.

I don't know what this means about where Bevin is right now. For the last few times I have spent time with her, she has been so pleasant. But I realize now how tired she must be, what a relief the quiet and peace of being alone, being able to put her head under a blanket and lose herself, must seem. Bevin is amazingly difficult to move out of a pattern. I wonder what imprint this time of living in a group, in a crowd, will have made on her. I can understand a certain kind of anxiety I see in her behavior now. But what might that mean overall in the range of life she can live.

This leaves me more committed to bring her to Seattle and to create a place where she can be alone, be quiet, be isolated. But in the context of a balanced life. What will this mean? How will she have changed? I look forward to this. I'm committed to this at this point in my life. But I am a bit afraid. What will this mean? And am I a big enough person.

Dilemma

I keep wondering about how to find language to explore the dilemma that is my metaphysical, spiritual life. I can't believe. I don't believe. That I admitted some twenty-five years ago. And I still feel at peace with that recognition. I spent the first thirty-five years of my life dutifully trying to believe, to do the right thing. And at some point so much had shifted that I had to admit to myself that I couldn't. And wouldn't. And that has described my life. And I've been releaved, at peace with that admission.

But I remained fascinated by religion. By its good, bad, and ugly. By the hair that can divide the believer from the non-believer. I read a book recently that made me think for the first time about the term agnostic. A-gnostic. Not a gnostic. That describes me. Not a believer. But where does that leave me. Not an atheist either. Atheism seems like a belief. So stable. So satisfied. So right. So ready to stop and live right there in that place--perhaps a very narrow place. I find exploration, questioning what describes me. Not staying some place. Not being comfortable. The notion of belief assumes such a stable world, a stable place to stand. I haven't found that. Not really looking for that any more. What I want is a way to keep finding the string that starts to unravel. It's that quest that sustains me.

A conflict of interest?

I spent last Saturday at a symposium sponsored by Sunstone. Sunstone publishes a magazine on Mormon history, literature, pop history, politics, you get the idea. Sunstone also sponsors a yearly symposium in Salt Lake City and smaller symposia in local areas. I visited the one in Seattle.

The magazine and the symposia live on a short list of publications/groups/events the official church (of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, substitute Mormon) at best ignores and at worst harasses. Some 20 years past a number of folks who had published or spoken in venues like Sunstone were publicly excommunicated. I had a bit of a brush with the church over content I had published in Sunstone during that period. But I managed not to fight. And I'm still on the official roles of the Mormon church (but that's another story).

So here's the story on my background and why I'm thinking about this now. Some 20 plus years ago I worked as an editor for Sunstone magazine. I was part of the group who sponsored the original symposium in Salt Lake City. I was the editor for all(yes, I do think all) the articles or books cited as justification for the excommunication of the folks in the 90s. That's my history. Editor. Magazines. Books. Print. Design. The printed word.

That's my past. My present? I work for a software company in Seattle. I create documentation--help systems, tutorials, user guides. I get frustrated every day at work by silly folks who cling to the printed word. I want folks to move online, to the web, and now to Web 2.0--to blogs, WIKIs, tag clouds, community, interactive, up-to-date, way cool communication (so okay "cool" shows my age).

So what did I do last weekend. I found myself volunteering to help with Dialogue--yet an another very Mormon, very much old hat, PRINTED magazine. And over the past couple of days I've been e-mailing back and forth about the younger intelligensia of Mormondom. They don't read the old "liberal" magazines. They flock to the blogs.

The blogs. At work my hope of the future. And at home. My son, my daughter-in-law, they rule in the blogosphere, the bloggernacle (that's the Mormon, mostly faithful, sphere).

So here's my dilemma. Why I'm thinking I may have a conflict of interest, an unresolved tension in my life. How do I bring together my impulse to join the greying crowd who care about a magazine, a print artifact, something bogged down in the past? And my impulse to embrace the web, the community the interaction, the immediacy of the blog, the web, the community--web 2.0 as it's styled by my crowd at work.

I just plain worry about what it means to lose the boring reality of these old print venues. My son blogs very persuasively that the problem is the quality of the work. I often agree that's true. But I find something very troubling in much of what happens on the web, in the blogs I read, as well.

Such short spurts of argument. The emphasis on controversy (lots of comments, fights only generate lots of comments), popularity (again comments and links). And brevity. Again a conflict arises here. I value, conciseness, elegance in the word. But I also worry about the lack of attention, of digging through. I find myself rejecting any comment that goes beyond two paragraphs. What does this say about what reading attention tends to be online. (I still read very long books.)

So you see it here. Look at the length of this mess. Way past the rules of good blogging. Too rambling, too undisciplined to make it into print. Alas, where has the world left me.

A plan is emerging

I have decided that I am going to bring my lovely idiot girl to Seattle. Lots of planning to complete. But I've decided that I'm going to take time off from work to find a decent place and settle us all in. I'm also hoping to cut back on work. More time for Bevin. More time for life. The goal is late January or February. I'll try to make an account of this.

So far I've learned that Bevin can't apply for services in Washington until she's living here. That means she is no longer living in Utah. That is a gamble. She is far away but she has a decent place and good people. No guarantee here. If I bring her here I'm back on call. And that's difficult. For my life. For my relationship with my husband. But I've decided that being her mother is the most important thing here. I need to take some risks for her. I've had my time. I want to be a good mother. I'm hoping that we can both have a good life--here in Seattle.

I'll try to write more about this.

Can Idiot Girl come to Seattle

My heart won over my head this weekend. I went to Utah, in large part to spend a weekend with my Idiot Girl. I visited friends. It was a perfect weekend for Bevin. We ate out twice on Friday. Three times on Saturday, with an additional picnic. That means this is how the days went: eat, drive, eat, drive, eat drive. What is more perfect for Bevin. Her topic desires: eat, ride, walk (and the fourth is cuddle). That is at least what I do with my Idiot Girl.

A grand weekend. On Sunday, we ate, drove. And then I took her back to her group home. A very good place. 15 girls or so. But they care, are responsible, do their best. It isn't a scary place. Not in the world of places where a young woman (she's 26) like my dear Idiot Girl, my Bevin, can live on her own.

I stopped at the home. And she was just plane mad at me. On the roam as I took her back. Now this is where it is difficult with Bevin. She get's over it. I knew that she'd settle down. Her grand ability is this: she's happy, she lives in the present. But it was so striking for me. She was angry, she expressed her feelings. She seemed to care, if only for the briefest slice of time.

But it broke my heart. I drove away, but I couldn't leave. So I brought my Idiot Girl home with me. Definitely heart over head. I have a job. My daughter has a family of small children. Bevin, for all her charm, can be very difficult. And as I called around today to begin the assault on the officialsom of this state. It's not easy. It's a catch 22.

So what do I do. I have made so many compromises in my life around my children. They know I love them. And the other two have done fine. Truth to be told. Bevin is doing fine too. But am I? I want to take care of her. Touch her. Love her. I just can't let this go on. My easy life. My Idiot Girl isn't in Seattle. She's hundreds of miles away.

And that is what I must fix. For my heart.

Me

I think I'm safe

So I've had this blog for several years. And as near as I can tell, no one has visited it. So I think I'm safe. Maybe I could try writing something just a wee bit public. Push these lazy fingers. Lay myself out there a bit.

We'll see

What I distrust

I haven't been writing. Because I don't think? Because I'm private? But who is reading this? So I'll proceed and see if I can write.

I just saw a clip of Ronald Reagan and his famous "tear down that wall." I suppose I've come to believe that Ronald Reagan was a good man. And listening to an abridged version (I hesitate to admit) of his biography, I'm also willing to think that he was more accomplished than I gave him credit for. Particularly in being able to articulate his own vision.

But I still can't respond to someone like Ronald Reagan. Even if in the end it turned out better than I might have thought. And certainly, given what I distrust, things have gotten more troubling, not less. (Now I'm thinking about George Bush.) So what do I distrust. A person who trusts an idea, a belief, without submitting that idea, that belief, even a "gut feeling" if that's what it is, to inquiry, thought, investigation, skepticism. I just can't trust belief. And it's not that I trust reason or thought either. But human animals do have the ability to reason. The ability to discover a view of where we are standing, a sense that it's one of many places we might stand. That's what the ability to reason can help to glimpse. Another way things might be. A sense of this place, this context, a horizon. And a horizon, a view, that might just be different. That is what I value. What I try to find. Another way to think about this. Then I have a way of choosing, valuing, my view. Otherwise it's blind. So what I continue to question, to distrust is the true belief, the only belief, the obvious, the one true way. One.

And one that has an easy enemy, an easy other. My husband always tells me this leaves me in a murky, muddled place. But I have worked very hard to get to this murky, muddled place. And I value those things I can still value so much more, living in this place. So I continue to distrust the Ronald Reagans of the world. True believers. Even if kind and benign. I can sometimes admire. I can wish. But I just can't trust. I can't trust trust.

Idiot Girl at Inn N Out

I've been reading the new book by Temple Grandin, "Animals in Translation." Grandin is interesting because she is autistic and has enough language and ability to generalize to talk about what it is like to be autistic. My daughter Bevin is not autistic. She belongs to that broad spectdum of disabilities that autistic belongs to, however. And I learn more about her when I read about autism than anything else. Autism is diagnosed on a spectrum--it's like you get points and so many points add up to autism, a few less to autiistic like, and a few less--you have my daughter. Little language. Profoundly out of it.

Grandin is a gift because she can talk about what it is like to be inside a mind that must be something like my daughter's. As she talks about her experiences, I often feel a sense of recognition.

One thing that she focuses on is the way that she thinks in pictures. That she doesn't have memory or thought stored away in language. She has that memory, that experience, that wisdom stored away in pictures.

An instance yesterday that reminds me how profoundly--and weirdly--visual my daughter is. (My fondly named "Idiot Girl"--the source of my name.)

I took her driving yesterday. Left to sit at home, she'll either cover her head with a blanket and sleep. Or roam the house, clearing off surfaces, stuffing things in closets, beg for soda. Driving, she is amazingly engaged. She looks around, at the cars, at the scenery. And she will not fall asleep. It doesn't matter how far or how long you drive.

But to the incident of yesterday. And to the visual memory. We were driving yesterday. And we stopped for lunch at Inn N Out Burger--a popular chain in California. I set us up at a counter with high chairs and a view out onto people waiting for their burgers. She thought it was great fun. We ate our burgers, fries, and she took her drink along. When we returned that evening we went out for a drive to visit friends with my husband and his son. They decided to stop for a burger at an Inn N Out Burger. All of these chains are set up in exactly the same way. Bevin trounced in with great confidence (she is great for ritual, repeated experience). Before I realized what was happening, she recognized her chair--the second chair from the right in the middle bar with the high chairs. She threw her self into the chair with great gusto. And greated the three teenage boys sitting in the remaining 3 chairs (of the four) in the group. "Hi," she smiled.

She had remembered her place, the pattern. The three teenage boys were beside the point. This was her place, her chair. The place she gets good food and has great fun.

Mr. Deeds goes to the Blue City

Last night my husband and I watched the Gary Cooper movie, "Mr Deeds Goes to the City" (is that the title?). Mid-way through the movie my husband commented, "This movie has a lot to say about the world today. Red states and blue states. The urban, the blue. Elitist, without heart." I lost it. "You've always lived in a city. You've never lived in a rural area in your life! Does that mean, you're blue." I was furious. He had turned this lovely movie into a tale about who voted for George Bush.

I shouldn't have screamed at him. That doesn't help. But this alarms me. My husband is semi-retired. Works out of our house in California (that's another story). He has a great deal of time he can use as he will. He spends hours each day listening to conservative talk radio--Rush Limbaugh in the morning, Michael Medved in the afternoon. And later in the day the likes of Michael Savage and others. He watches Fox News. And he reads books that tell about the elitist bias of the news, books written by the likes of Ann Coulter. Listening to his comments on the movie, made me think about the world he is inhabiting these days. It is so polarized: red and blue, democrat and republican, conservative and liberal. There is a moral struggle that falls along these lines. The good and the bad, the moral and the not moral, the duped and the wise.

I could definitely see a moral for our age in the Gary Cooper movie. But I don't see things falling out along these smooth, easy lines. And it is disturbing, alarming to see my husband stuffing the world into these categories. He is a kind and good man. An odd duck I love. He escaped Vietnam as a conscientious objector.

I wonder how many others live in this either/or kind of world. I hope not so many.

By the way, I've let the flag fly over my house over the past year. I make what I will of symbols. I love America. It's my flag too. I won't let him make the meaning of that.

I listen to audiobooks. I started this when I had a 140 mile-3-hour commute every weekend. It kept me awake while music put me to sleep. Just enough engagement of the mind to fight off exhaustion from the week and sleepiness. Last year I asked for an iPod for Christmas. And that device and Audible.com have been my friends for the past year. Now I can listen to audiobooks without fighting with multiple cds or tapes and finding a place to store all the boxes. I still read. But this extends my ability to read.With my iPod, I broadcast books through all the radios in the house. So I can "read" while I clean or cook or just sit in front of the fireplace and watch the fire. I can listen in the car. I can listen while I walk around Greenlake (yes, I do live in Seattle).

It's luxurious to be read to. It slows the experience down. I read too quickly. And I cheat. I skim. I skip backward, I skip forward. This way I must concentrate and be in the moment with the story. With a very good reader, it is a wonderful experience. And with a good book, a bad reader is tolerable.

My best listen of the past few months. Rohinton's Mistry's "A Fine Balance." Devastating. Hopeful for people, if not for society. I recently listened to his second novel, "Family Matters." More later.