Activism – Mary's Room With a View

The Truth of Consequence

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Truth or Consequences is not only a desert location in New Mexico, it was also a popular game show that bridged radio to television years from 1940 to the early 1980’s. The object of the game was to discern which guests told the truth about some life experience. Guess right and the consequences were a win. Guess wrong and you were a loser. Seems right in line with our polarized either/or world; however, I want to depart from those extremes and think about the truth OF consequences.

Here I am at our Quilcene cottage in late August harvest time . The romaine in my garden lines up like a green battalion of soldiers. In parallel lines — arugula, carrots and beets. All are ready to eat NOW, but we can’t consume it all, and neighbors graciously accept only enough for a salad or two. As you sow, so shall you reap. Did I over-sow? With minimal reading of seed packets, I should have planted sequentially, a few seeds each subsequent week, and prepared for a staged harvest (consequences). About a dozen years ago, I bought a small one-gallon size fig tree and planted it in the middle of our little orchard where a pear tree had failed. Yesterday we drove up and down East Quilcene Road with buckets of figs for neighbors we hoped would accept some. Luckily, Scott and Susan have a food drier and accepted the load. How could I ever have imagined that little potted fig would produce so many? Neighbor Raj calls figs “the fruit of the gods.” Funny that we live at the foot of Mt. Olympus, because our fig harvest this year could supply a bacchanalia for every god from wood nymph to Zeus. Some consequences we should/could have foreseen. Others resulted without possible foresight.

Similarly, What goes around comes around. That expression is a first cousin to the sowing maxim. It connotes consequences like just deserts. Parents admonish children that their actions, if ill considered, could ricochet, causing them harm. Punch the neighbor child, and that kid may grow up taller and stronger and seek revenge. We relish such consequences when we root for an underdog. There is always a dog in there somewhere, and it may grow up to bite back. These are the consequences of justice. Such ironic justice explains the popularity of mysteries. it is satisfying to see the criminal in irons, even more so if, as Hamlet plots revenge on Claudius, the miscreant is “hoisted by his own petard.”

Although not always anticipated, consequences can be as pleasant and circumstantial as tying a child’s shoe prevents stumbling. May I assume that you too want the consequences of your choices to be favorable? Last week I stood in line to check out groceries at the local Safeway. I chose the shortest line, only one customer ahead of me. You can see what comes next. Murphy’s Law: the adjacent check-out line with four customers moved faster than mine. Ahead of me was a man of my age (elderly) in a large, motorized wheelchair. His shopping cart brimmed with purchases he handed, as best he could, one-by-one to the clerk. As he sought his food coupons to pay for his purchases, I watched as one-by-one some of his items were set aside to be returned to shelves. My heart hurt. He could not afford to buy the chicken, the slices of ham, primarily the more expensive groceries. I could buy these for him, but I also didn’t want to insult the man with an offer that might look like charity. Nonetheless, I knew the consequences for me if I failed to speak. “Excuse me, sir. I see you don’t have enough money with you today to cover everything. Would you please let me pay?”

He smiled and accepted: “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for paying it forward.”

I hadn’t heard that phrase in a while, but his gracious acceptance drew me into community with him.

“I try to pay it forward too,” he continued. “I served in the military, and that was me paying it forward.” As I walked home laden with my own groceries, they felt lighter, the way happiness diminishes weight.

This past week the Democrats held their national convention. This coming week the Republicans will nominate their choices. There isn’t a voter in this country who should fail to think of the consequences of voting. Whether in local or national elections there will be consequences, and that is the TRUTH with which we will live.

Social Distance

All crises add to our common lexicon, and soon we use novel phrases with a shared understanding, even when those idioms are seemingly contradictory. Example? Social Distance. The very nature of sociability is closeness. In my years between the 1940’s and 1980’s, meeting a friend involved a warm handshake and smile. That evolved to hugging, polite kisses (as the French do), even between people I barely know. Attend a museum opening of a new exhibition and prepare to be kissed by men who probably no longer enjoy kissing me any more than I welcome their whiskered greeting. Being social demands intimacy

In this year of Coronavirus, the social thing to do is to stay away — one from another –and preferably six-feet apart while wearing a mask. This past Friday evening we made a reservation at Finnriver Cidery where we met friends to make up a fewer-that-five table. After washing our hands at the soap pump – local, home-brewed soap –our invitation was checked off at the entrance by a friendly masked host who ushered us to our sanitized table.

“Who was that masked man?” If you are my age, your mind recalls The Lone Ranger on his white stallion riding off into the sunset after rescuing some oppressed homesteader. Now that question is common as we try to recognize people by their squinting eyes peering over a face mask that hides any smile of familiarity. Our friends laugh their muffled chuckles in agreement about efforts to use our eyes more expressively. A wide-eyed greeting, through glasses and above the mask, or a squinty smirk of disapproval for a negative message? Hand dances may come back into fashion.

I agree that the six-foot and masked decrees are the best social expression after all. If we are social, we care about others. We seek what is common among us, and today that is a desire for a healthy community. Let’s forget that the phrase is an oxymoron, and instead value what it means to have a community embrace without touching.

The medium is the message. If the message comes from the governor’s office to mask up and stay apart that is an authoritative and respected message.Perhaps not so, if you don’t happen to like your governor, or the governor belongs to a political party with which you don’t identify. Sad, but true, communicating emergencies connotes urgency depending on who sends out the warning. Hard to think if we get the next big earthquake and warnings come from your unpopular government official so you stay exposed to falling structures. Perhaps the shaking ground will prompt people to safety.

Marketing is everything. The very humor of Finnriver’s sign exhorting us to stay a cow’s distance apart invites compliance. There I was enjoying my veggie pizza and Apple Oak Cider while envisioning a heifer between my friend Kathryn and me.

Humorous signage reminds me of a No Trespassing sign on the barbed wire fence that surrounds a nearby cow pasture in Quilcene: Warning: Don’t cross our Pasture Unless You Can Do it in 6.8 Seconds Our Bull Can Do it in Seven. IMG_0779[1] My imagination is engaged. I can feel a bull’s snorting breath on my derriere. Had I been inclined to take a shortcut through the rancher’s field, I dismiss the notion with a laugh.

Here’s another neologism: The New Normal. Perhaps you have used this one too. It suggests our acceptance of practices molded by the pandemic. It too is contradictory, as what we once considered “normal” is now abnormal. Someone threw in the word “normal” instead of the new “behavior,” because we are all longing for “normality,” a state of being to which we can’t return. With a resigned sigh, we embrace “the new normal,” indicating acceptance. Perhaps “embrace” is the wrong word here. Since March, the only embrace I have allowed myself is for my husband and my cat. I embraced my husband in March and four days later he showed Covid-19 symptoms, because I was unaware I had been exposed. Yep, we needed a cow between us.

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Frog Blog

I thought I had lost my hearing aid while scooting down the hill above the pond where I was weeding . Later, I returned, my eyes focused for little things among the dense ferns. There I noticed a spotted stone that seemed to breathe . A frog, motionless and likely aware of me long before I saw its pulsing, crouching disguise. Unlike the robins and swallows that flutter away when I raise my camera, the frog remained for six shots before I continued edging down the hill, when it leapt away to the still waters below us. Splash!

Six shots. I am back six decades. I am fourteen-years-old, spending a week with a friend on the beach at Onset, by Cape Cod. Marsha walks with boys in her wake, and I am eager for the overflow — one boy in particular, a ringer for James Dean. Summer nights we drive with the guys to cranberry bogs where the boys take.22 gage rifles from the car’s trunk and aim them out toward the bogs where frogs have stilled their songs. Then the guns fire, the shooters gleefully enjoying the sight of frog parts exploding among the cranberries. Easy, fear-frozen targets for reckless teenagers.

I have not met anyone my age who doesn’t carry remorse for acts committed in thoughtless youth. And although I didn’t fire a gun, I witnessed without reprimand. Of all scenes collected in my memory there are few more vivid – the humid, salt-laden air rising with a fragrance amidst violence. My eagerness to blend in where I sensed I did not belong.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, in March, Nature’s early promise of spring comes with frog song from the pond and surrounding woods. Weeks before robins, chickadees and violet-green swallows take up their warbling sopranos, the bass line is sung by frogs caroling for potential mates from misty dawn until dusk.

Is it a coincidence that fairy tales have frogs turning into princes – princes into frogs? Potential for love abounds.

This spring is a moment in history to reconsider our world view. We are sequestered in our close environments with an invitation and time to consider the smallest and largest of things. We can watch and listen to the way our world is singing our seasons along.

Who else is wearing “unnoticeable” camouflage, aware that to be seen can threaten their existence? How can we value those songs we take for granted, knowing they are not our own, but somewhere around us in the vernal woods and waters that we treasure?

By the way, I found the lost hearing aid when I was dusting behind the couch in the cottage. I don’t regret having searched outdoors. Looking for something small, I found within myself, something large.

Kitty Walk

Now when the world shouts, “Stop!” we are slowing to notice life at a measured, appreciative pace. May all of your senses awaken your day with observation and gratitude.

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Weekend mornings here at our Quilcene cottage, we begin with the Kitty Walk. Allan makes us each a steaming latte in tall covered mugs. From underneath the cottage, he fetches a red plastic bucket he has filled with bird seed, stuffs a couple of dried ears of corn in his breast pocket and returns to the front door where he whistles for me and our two cats to follow. A dozen years ago, the cats would skitter after him almost tripping him up in their eager escape. Today, Willow doesn’t budge from her bed by the wood stove. Homer reluctantly lumbers along to the whistle, with a heavily furred sigh, “Ok, if we really have to do this again.”

Up the trails softened by aromatic cedar chips, we walk the circumference of our three wooded acres, stopping at each of six benches my brother built for us as scenic rests. Allan reaches for a vine maple limb with a chain to which he screws on a cob of corn. Walking on, he scatters seeds on fallen logs that line the trail, tucking more seeds and peanuts in the cavities of trees. IMG_0278[1] Some trees are decaying remains of towering firs, in their slow death, still useful for persistent woodpeckers. Stellar’s jays drop from limbs above, then hop along behind us snatching peanuts in defiance of Homer who long ago gave up terrorizing the hungry birds, choosing instead to pounce between us on a bench where he nestles against the warm coffee mugs. Today, we have passed our first trillium sticking up like a green finger from the middle of our trail. IMG_0282[1] We have touched the pliant leaves of wild plums.

The first bench is by the stream that tumbles like a toccata into the pond below. We reminisce about the creation of our arboretum, a restoration of once-forested land devastated by previous owners who clear-cut the site for building, then sold off the property for being too hot, lacking shade. Sitting on this first bench, we reimagine how we transplanted 20 – 40-foot Douglas Firs from across the road, built a stream and pond, planted vegetation and fruit trees, made room for a sun-lit vegetable garden.

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The coffee is cooling as we climb the ladder to a treehouse, our next stop. Only a three-foot shake covering suggests a “house,” Although we billed the project as a treehouse for our grandchildren, all along my husband envisioned an elevated station for hanging bird feeders, a panorama for spotting flickers hammering on the birches. About thirty feet above the treehouse, a nest of eagles is new, but the tall fir was long a roosting point for them to oversee the bay below — the migrating ducks, the salmon run spring and fall. We hug Homer closely when we hear the eagle’s piercing cry mid-swoop to fetch whatever the eagle feels like fetching.

Our treehouse pause lasts a good while. Allan fills the feeders and teases the jays to come closer as he lines peanuts precariously on the railings. Homer makes that twitching sound cats make when birds are nearby. The hummingbird thrills around the red disk. The only other sounds may be high cedar wind wisps or the distant gurgling of the creek. I take my journal from my jacket and write. Today I begin this blog.

Those mugs are drained of coffee as we step down the ladder. Sometimes Homer rides Allan’s shoulder, for the cat’s weight makes a downward climb cumbersome. Then we are off down the trail to the sandy beach. This bench affords a western panorama of Olympic foothills. The sun illumines snowpack or new spring green. Along this lower trail, I kneel to clear off fallen leaves that cover two crosses made of stones, one with the name Celeste, the other Toulouse, grave sites of our first two felines whose companionship named our routine the Kitty Walk.

Circling back up the hill, purpled with periwinkle, we return to where the creek has emptied into our pond. A bench above the pond allows a wide-open view of lily pads in summer, but this March morning a few drops from hovering trees shed last night’s rain. The drips entertain me with their concentric circles interrupting a blue, reflected sky. Homer takes his sweet time to leap between us, then impatiently hops down toward the vegetable garden.

We cross the driveway through the woods above the cottage, on our last trail through a wooded plot we acquired years ago — a steep, heavily treed site whose massive trunks remind us of our smallness in the woods. More chipped trail, some narrow stairs built into the bank, then on to shoreline again before pushing open a driftwood gate that returns us to the front of our cottage. Homer does not follow us through the gate, but pushes himself between a capacious gap between two of the driftwood planks behind a line of rose bushes. He has caught up. He meows to let us know it is time for Allan to hang up the red bucket and climb the stairs back to the cottage kitchen for breakfast. Both man and cat have been anticipating the aroma of bacon.

The Readiness Is All

“Mrs. Kollar!” a student returning from her freshman year in college greets me, as she confidently bounds into what was our last year’s senior English class. “I have learned so much in my English 101 class at the UW. I found out that ‘between you and I,’ isn’t grammatically correct, because between is a preposition and it needs an objective pronoun.”

These weren’t her exact words, but she and other college returnees excitedly share some “newly discovered” wisdom that I had taught the year they sat in the front row of my senior College Prep English class. They may have recently “learned” that Emily Dickinson was a recluse or Walt Whitman sold verses of Leaves of Grass on street corners in New York. Unknown-1 How excited they are to fill me in on what I failed to teach the year they were in my class. Here I could groan in 3-D cynicism, not to mention disappointment. Instead, I share their joy that their minds are still engaged learning about their English language and literature.

I had not failed in the way I taught any of this knowledge they think they have now heard for the first time. When I taught prepositions or the poems of Dickinson and Whitman, they weren’t ready to take it all in. In college they are ready.

If I taught only one literary work, it would be Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In that play there is more truth and psychology than Freud could later explicate (as if for the first time). Unknown-2 In the final act, Hamlet is about to have a duel with Laertes, a fight that he will likely lose. Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, tries to deter him from the match, because Laertes is by far the better and more practiced swordsman. Hamlet won’t be dissuaded, saying, There’s special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. ( Hamlet, V, ii, 230-233). Hamlet knows he will likely die, so when he dies is not his concern. What is important is his readiness to die. He is ready. How lucky for Act 5 and for preparing the audience to accept the inevitability.

Well into my retirement, Hamlet’s accepting wisdom echoes. The readiness is all! Am I ready to retire, to slow down my life, to give up running, to see my friends leave the world, to die myself? And how do I make myself ready for what is coming next? This is a big question having to do with acceptance and a volume of self-knowledge. We humans are not quitters. We flail to keep going long after our muscles fail. Young Dylan Thomas exhorts his dying father, “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light / Do not go gentle into this good night.” I wonder if his father was simply ready to go. The readiness was more with the old man than with the son.

There is power in readiness. Children who are not “ready to clean up their room,” or the haughty person who is never dressed and ready when the car has pulled up the drive. On the opposite side, there is humility in readiness. These are the agreements we make with each other to step out of our comfort zone, to try something new. One-two-three- ready . . . set . . . go! and I am leaping off a small ledge to cold waters when my brother encourages me to swim downstream.

So far, I am seeing readiness as positive, something akin to preparedness for everything from earthquakes to college entrance. This week, reading for a UW class I am auditing, I see readiness may also lay the groundwork for evil. It is a Comparative Literature class: The Literature of the Holocaust. Holocaust Memorial Reading about the German environment prior to Hitler’s rise – the accepted antisemitism, distrust of immigrants (Roma), excessive nationalism, putting The Fatherland first – it is clear that enough of the German populace was ready for Hitler. He was duly elected in a “democratic” republic.

Perhaps readiness may be a power we can wave like a flag against Authority. I guess it depends on who is the Authority. I am ready to plant my sugar snap peas with the first south western breeze in February. The soil turns easily beneath my spade. Earthworms rise to the soil’s surface as if to welcome the peas to join them. I imagine myself crunching on sugar snap peas in April, weeks before my patient neighbor who plants when she hears the spring robins. Inevitably, a freezing March wind, sometimes even a foot of snow, laughs at my readiness. I hear myself reciting from another sacred text: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . .. God has made everything beautiful in its time. (Ecclesiastes 3, 1 & 11). Yes, a time to plant and a time to sow . . .. Every year I jump the gun when my readiness does not match Mother Nature’s.

Readiness calls in voices other than my own. Perhaps this year I will be ready to listen. There must be a few other teachers out there to prepare me for what I might learn in 2020, even if the subject has been sitting on my lap for the last seventy-six years.

My Feminist Garden

I am a seventy-five-year-old poet

who writes lyrical poems

tuned to iambic pentameter.

Today, I want to write a modern poem

about daffodils I planted in October.

Some line up in a row by the split rail fence,

but more often now I plant them in clusters.

I’ve learned over the years that one flower

isn’t beautiful because she stands

next to one that is plain.

In clusters, or circles, the yellow bells

sing like a choir of sopranos.

That simile slips out from the lyrical

voice I am trying to suppress,

in order to present as post-modern.

Yet, over seven decades, I’ve learned to be heard

by suggestion, not assertion,

a voice others call strident in women.

I have endured cruel winters

like my green daffodils

standing unblossomed in March.

January tricked them with moderate rain,

so they pushed through soil

before February snow muffled their mouths.

The package of bulbs boasted

they would regenerate each spring

without my having to do a thing.

It is like a law, once passed —

say a woman has a right

to choose motherhood or not —

forever she might decide.

Yet, I return to our nation’s capital to march.

holding high a drawing my granddaughter made–

a uterus with flowers growing from within

reading Not a Political Object.

Two generations from my granddaughter,

my seed within her germinates

in colors I will not live to see.

She speaks in phrases I did not have:

sexual harassment, right-to-choose

equal pay for equal work.

She didn’t have to work at the corner drug,

where the pharmacist draped mistletoe

above the counter where I reached

for packages to deliver to nursing homes.

I am straying from my struggling daffodils,

something I do often these days,

meandering like Wordsworth in my garden.

I text my granddaughter to tell her

I enrolled in a University class:

The Philosophy of Feminism.

She texts back: Woohoo!

Spring arrives in twenty days,

but I have history on my side —

the bulbs I planted will bloom.

I will still need to pull weeds.

OPINION OR OPINIONATED?

My husband startled me once at dinner with another couple, where we were discussing marital contentment. He said, “I married Mary for her opinions.” He meant it humorously, because before his statement, I was freely offering opinions about the upcoming elections. After his publicly parting the curtain from my prominent practice, I have pondered whether I am opinionated, or a woman who offers opinions. Connotations matter. We don’t discount people who have opinions, but we don’t like “opinionated” people. Opinionated people leap like an eager dog on visitors without being sensitive to others’ willingness to be accosted. Do I want to abandon sharing opinions, or do I want to avoid being opinionated?

Opinion or Opinionated may seem an unlikely subject for a blog Thoughts After Seventy; however, what shapes our opinions and how vigorously we voice them fluctuate with time. Thus, here I am, at seventy-five, weighing in on when I should open my mouth and when I should keep it muzzled, fully aware that the opinions of older folks get readily dismissed as old fashioned. Whoever made the connection between old age and wisdom?

My friend Kristin recently forwarded a quotation from a prominent philosopher that one should only offer opinions when one can argue the opposing viewpoint with equal vigor. I admire the sentiment, but not all opinions have opposing views. Nonetheless, if I cannot or will not study an opposing view, I can be sensitive to a listener’s perspective.

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Last summer, I was discussing with a close friend the eulogies given by G.W. Bush and Barak Obama at the memorial service for Senator McCain. I opined that both presidents were eloquently presidential, to my surprise, for during Bush’s administration I found his speeches bland. Bush’s eulogy was as eloquent as Barak Obama’s. My friend had not heard the speeches, and may have had other opinions associated with Obama, so she expressed her disdain for him whom she accused of speaking only at exclusive events sponsored by wealthy people, and then exacting lucrative fees from which he was living a “high life” in Washington D.C.; whereas, he had once determined to live in Chicago following his presidency.

images-1 I jumped to Obama’s defense. “Are you aware?” I asked my friend, “that you regularly disparage people who have money, although you are quite wealthy by any standards?” My words reduced her to tears. I felt as if I had wounded my sister.

Clearly both of us had strayed from the initial opinion of the eloquence of the two eulogies.But could I have phrased my Obama defense in a kinder way, rather than take her to task for comparison of wealth? Could I have let her express her opinion without countering? I want to learn to express opinions without attacking the person giving the opinion.

As to seeking the opposing point of view, once I tried to level the playing field of my political opinions by watching an hour of Fox News to collect information that may have passed under my blue radar. I hoped at the least to discern motives that might lead the Fox commentator to a political podium opposite my own – a kind of empathy strategy. I failed. Before the commentator completed the segment, I was tallying up my points for attack. Some of that tallying closed my mind to what was coming up next. It is the timeworn, self-inflicted wound that curtails following an argument. So much for empathy. Impartiality is really hard. photo (1)

Timing and frequency of opinions deserve some thought. My friend Judy says her mother claims that Judy was born with her hand raised. What an appropriate image for her, a respected and outspoken 1^st amendment attorney. I have the similar urge to raise my hand at every opportunity. But it is not true for everyone. What about those who refrain from offering opinions? Do they have none? Take Tuesday Morning Bible study, for example. Among the 30 people who regularly attend, only seven or eight of us regularly contribute to the discussion. Some silent members comment after the meeting how much they enjoyed the discussion. I want to challenge them: “How can you enjoy an experience where you took no active part?”Yes, but I also envy one who is intelligently observant without participating.

A favorite student from my honors senior English class comes to mind. Elizabeth sat in the first row of the class. Whenever I led a class discussion on literature, she raised her hand to answer almost anything I asked. I often ignored her, hoping others would join the discussion for the first time. After class one day, when only she and I were in the room, I told her I hoped she wasn’t offended when I overlooked her raised hand.

“That’s okay, Mrs. Kollar” she said, “I can’t NOT raise my hand.” Her voice held a note of apology as if she wished she could be one of the confidently voiceless, but popular students who couldn’t or wouldn’t risk their posture of being too cool for class discussion. I may not always have called on Elizabeth, but what joy I heard in her voice when I acknowledged her hand, and she shared her opinion.

Do Americans more freely offer opinions than people from other countries? If so, perhaps there is a link to the way we teach our students. When teaching high school English, I may have started the class with “What happened” questions just to review the plot of our current book, but I soon moved on to the Why questions, those asking for opinions, granted opinions backed up by the text. We call it critical thinking, and American schools pride themselves in educating not only willful students but also ones who think critically.

Our media backs up the practice. Even televised football games wave the American flag for opinion. The game itself is supposed to last an hour, but after eliminating commercial time, a viewer still endures at least an hour of pre-, mid-, and post-game time where commentators toss around opinions. So many balls in the air at one time. Then back to Fox News, or CNN, or any other show touting itself as a news source. Good luck at finding anything approaching factual news. A body lies on the pavement, a VW in the ditch, but the commentator is rushing around with a microphone asking twenty people what they THINK happened.

How challenging to validate opinions for the expertise of the one giving it. Clearly the most authentic holder of opinions must be “They,” for so often we hear “they say” before every opinion from upcoming elections to the weather report.

Are opinions poisoning our water? Should we refrain from forming, expressing, or critiquing opinion? Would doing so make us more affable? Cutting opinion from newspapers might save a forest without lighting a match to our brain. Besides, who wants a quiet brain? Our determination to think, to share, to shape what we experience will not lie down like an exhausted hound. Today, that’s my opinion.

Why Run?

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Other than listening to folks describe their medical procedures one of the least favorite topics is the athletic endeavor. That said, when over seventy-years-old, I am running – rather, jogging—along East Quilcene Bay and up the cedar lined hills, the kilometers demand an examination of why I am doing this and why I feel so good.

Last Sunday, we awoke to steady rain, and would have crawled back under the quilt, but we had volunteered to man the water station at the 5-mile mark of the annual Quilcene Half-Marathon Oyster Run. By the time we dressed, the skies began to clear, so I asked my husband to man the water station alone, and I went to the starting line at the Linger Longer Stage where I signed up to run the 10k race. I don’t think I have run more than 6 miles in 2-mile increments, since 2016, when I ran the half marathon (another last minute decision) . This Sunday, I turn on I-Tunes on my phone at the start of the 10K. It will take only two complete replays of Pink Martini’s “Get Happy” album to keep me company until the finish line.

The scenery alone will keep me running. Morning shadows lengthen, stretching across the dampened road so the tree shadows appear even longer than their height, and I am running from one to the other. After a kilometer up Center Road, the course dips down past a farm, its green barn open like a mouth to exhale its hay-fresh breath. Sunflowers shine from the garden, September heavy with produce. Behind the garden, ochre grasses cover the tidal flat intersected by Donovan Creek. The salmon will soon work their way up that creek, and though I can’t see them from the road, their perseverance energizes me. After the farm, McGInnis Road ends at East Quilcene Road, that hugs the bay like a necklace around wavelets of white, because the wind that brought that daybreak rain still billows from south to north. Its force reminds me that I am a slender woman who with a big gust could be blown off the road to topple on to the grassy fields. I pass ancient apple trees, their trunks bent in testament to the wind, fallen apples fragrant with fermentation.

Then the road turns to a slight rise by the Sunday Egg Stand a girl from a nearby farm built to sell eggs and flowers. White dahlias smile from the stand by the egg cooler. I begin the slow ascent south that will take me by the field where Racer the horse used to run to greet me for a fistful of grass. Gone now, his spirit keeps me running. Soon I approach the water stand outside our own drift-wood fence where my husband sets out paper cups of orange and lime Gatorade on a small table. I grab, gulp and go on. I know the hill rises steeply for another eighth of a mile, the open view from the top, showing the bay is at high tide, the longer autumn shadows splitting the sun on the water’s surface. Blackberries thrive on that hill top, berries now dried and fragrant as old wine. Turn-around for the 10K comes in a dip in the road, darkened on both sides by Palmers’ woods, old as the peninsula itself in giant Doug Firs and Big Leaf Maple trees. If I were not mid-race, their deep woods would invite me in. But here is turn-around, monitored by Linda and Stan Herzog. Linda calls my name. Stan snaps a photo.

And that is another reason to run — the people. Two years ago, when I ran more often, I would do this 10K stretch alone. Some days it felt demanding, lonely and masochistic. Running in a community is exhilarating. Back at the start line I stood among families who would walk the 5-K, some with toddlers in strollers pushed along like envoys on a mission. Kids in t-shirts and jeans, twenty-year-olds in fashionable running tights that show off the ripple of taut muscles, people my age wearing rain or sun hats tied securely under sagging chins. Then there are the thin men in short shorts. They are lithe and slim hipped. Have they never stopped running? Some might be 25, some 65, but the way they stretch out their hamstrings, you know this will not be their only race of the year. Around us white tents cover food stands staffed by volunteers. Unknown This is an oyster run, celebrating Quilcene’s famous oysters, so the aroma of wood coals and garlic bread already permeates the air. Depending on where you stand, it is fried food or local ale to keep a mind motivated for returning to this spot after the race. Everyone is happy. Those who know me, cheer me on. They seem more confident than I that I will make it the whole way. I will make new friends as the race begins, when I discover whose pace falls in with mine. That is how I meet Michele and Meg. We don’t talk much during the run. All of us are tuned in to whatever music lifts one foot in front of the other, but there are moments of encouragement among us. Good going. Feel free to pass. Yes, the hills are tough for me too. I pass a woman with her arm around her young son, a stalky boy who clearly has some cognitive impairment. He smiles widely at me.

“You brought out the sun for us,” I tell him.

He laughs. My voice and his voice fill the same space on the road. That connecting moment energizes me all the way up the hill.

The sheriff at the bottom of the road directs me to keep to the right until I am at the police cars where I can safely cross over to the finish field. She applauds me as I run. Her green shirt has an oyster image: Sheriff Volunteer it reads.

And finally, the physical part. I want to remember when the endorphins kick in after the 2^nd kilometer. I am running downhill by the green apple tree where yesterday I stole enough for a pie. I look up to Mt. Walker ahead and my chest fills with autumn-washed air. Breath is wonderful. Deep, deep breath is exhilarating. I could run forever on this feeling. I could spread my arms and mimic the gulls and ravens swooping over the bay. I start to write this essay in my head so no feeling will fail to remain.

Farther into the run, my legs get heavier. I need to remind myself that I pronate on my right foot. I might trip over my foot if I don’t consciously lift it. Remembering coaching from my friend, Jan, I extend my legs, more forward, less up and down. My face flushes in the sun, so I scold myself for forgetting sunglasses and sunscreen. I have long ago left the cool morning start, so I toss my rain jacket to my husband when I pass his water table. Sweat alternately warms and cools me. When the finish line is in sight, I imagine myself lying in the park grass. I imagine how good it will feel to pull my knees to my chest and hug my shins. When I do arrive at the finish, I stride out as I had not for the entire run. Here I am about to cross under the finish balloon, people on each side applauding, the announcer calling my name and town. The friends I know who are standing behind tables loaded with water, fruit, oysters and beer, smile at my success, but show no amazement that I did it. Only after one takes my picture, do I realize my face is raspberry red. I sit by another runner on the grass while our bodies cool. The sun is full out, but I am beginning to chill. My newly acquainted runner drives me back to my cottage where I peel off my running pants and shirt. My tongue tastes salt. My skin feels like salt. I realize I have excreted a good amount of salt water. As soon as I persuade myself to leave the hot tub jets, I will drink a tall glass of water. Every part of my body has been used: my feet, my legs, even my shoulders and neck. I should feel beat up, but I don’t. I feel twenty years younger. Maybe I will get back into this running thing.

The best way to feel like a big fish is to select a small pond. There were 40 runners who ran or walked the 10K. There was one 81-year-old walker, but I was by far the oldest runner at 75. I finished smack dab in the middle at #20 with 13 minute miles. I am proud enough of my over-seventy pace, my over-seventy race.

Fast Cars and Fast Women

“Do you want to read the draft of my new blog post?” I ask my husband before his first sip of morning coffee.

“What’s it about?”

“Preparing for loss.”

He rolls his eyes, (his reluctant “Ok”) revealing he has no interest, but will acquiesce for marital harmony.

He twists the espresso arm in place. “Why don’t you write about fast cars and fast women?”

He doesn’t have to say that “loss” is depressing, and why would anyone want to read about something depressing?

My gut rejects “fast women.” After all, it is MY blog, where I would have no inclination to write about a guy’s interpretation of what makes a woman “fast.” I inform him that I named my blog domain thouightsafterseventy.com. People over seventy think about loss and death and stuff. He need not remind me that he too is over seventy, but he would rather think about fast cars and fast women.

I am feisty enough to take his suggestion as a gauntlet thrown down. I decide to write about “fast cars and fast women” for those of us over seventy.

And none too soon. Driving back to Seattle later that morning, we spot a sleek, futuristic car speeding past us on I-5. Its silver lines are like a heron in flight. Sharp and angular, the chassis is mostly sculpted metal for aerodynamics, with only a small bubble for driver and passenger. As it speeds by our 1997 Toyota, I note a New York State license plate.

“What kind of car is that?” I ask my husband

“A McLaren,” he tells me. “Very rare. Super expensive.”

“Not much room for passengers.” I am critiquing it as if anyone might find the car useful.

“Probably some young, rich, techy guy with money to burn,” he says.

The lane that holds the sexy McLaren slows, so we are now side by side. We strain our necks to spot the fast, rich dude.

The driver has blonde hair, falling to her shoulders, an attractive woman about thirty years old, her chin raised confidently to see over the steering wheel.

“Fast car. Fast woman.” I tease my husband.

If once we sought out fast cars and fast women, do our tastes change substantially fifty years out from our youth? Clearly my husband maintains his interest in cars. Two of his most cherished: a stock 1951 Chevy truck and a rebuilt 1938 Ford Club Cabriolet. We keep both automobiles at our Hood Canal cottage, driving them only on sunny days, a rarity except for summer months. He also pauses the T.V. remote on the car auction sites when channel surfing for a program we might both enjoy. As for fast women, I can’t say. I snagged him pretty early on, and he was a shy guy who found me interesting enough to ask me to a movie.

As I pass from one year after seventy to another, I often tell friends that no matter how old I am, I am always 16 inside. When I was sixteen I was a string bean, 100 pounds, in a time when Marilyn Monroe’s curves graced gas station calendars. My brother joked I was so skinny that if I stood sideways in class I would be marked absent. Nonetheless, I wanted to be a fast woman. I struck up friendships with girls who looked like Veronica in the Archie comic books. original-grid-image-10351-1487214506-7 Marsha, for example, had that same silky black hair that cascaded in a rakish wave over her left eye. She rolled her shoulder length hair in wide curlers that she slept on all night. I did the same, waking in the morning, my cheeks branded with curler rounds, having slept fitfully on the plastic rings that were held in place by stiff internal brushes. I also learned how to smoke, tapping out a Pall Mall Thins from Marsha’s pack that she kept in her plastic purse. Those were the sacrifices needed to be a fast woman. I could only dream that the good-looking guys would look at me the way they looked at Marsha.

Sometime between our twenties and where we have landed, we give up pursuing those adolescent fantasies, but I don’t think fantasies disappear. When I was forty and in the second year of psychotherapy, Dr. Phillips asked me about my fantasies. That was after bemoaning conflicts with my teenage daughter and emotional distance from my husband. I was teaching high school full time, and feeling a failure as wife and mother. Every minute of my life filled with Must Do’s.

“Well, I do have one,” I told my good doctor. He encouraged me on. “I am sitting by a slow-moving river on a warm spring day. I have spread out a picnic cloth on which there is a glass, a bottle of good French wine, a loaf of French bread, a wedge of brie, and a great novel. I have all day to stay there if I want.”

“That’s it?” he asked, stifling a yawn. “You know some people fantasize about sex or even murder. Even doing away with their defiant children”

I shrieked in opposition.

“There is no right nor wrong to having fantasies,” he explained. “It is acting on them that gets people in trouble.”

Now we are in the midst of the #METOO movement where hundreds of women are stepping forward to indict men who tried to actualize their fantasies. If wisdom comes with maturity, here might be the lesson. Hold tight to your fantasies. but keep your zipper zipped.

It is good that finally there is a public platform to expose eons of sexual abuse against women. Men are becoming more sensitive about what they say or do around women so their friendliness is not misinterpreted. I wonder how caution affects their fantasies. We are all sexual beings, even if the libido takes a nap after sixty. I cringed when my husband suggested I write about “fast cars and fast women,” for I considered his words most inappropriate for this #METOO time, but I appreciate his freedom to express his fantasies. MV5BMjg4MmZiYTAtYzRkNy00OWE2LTlmMWItZGFkZmQzM2VkMDJhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODc1NDEwNzQ@._V1_UX99_CR0,0,99,99_AL_ Besides, the night before, we stayed up late to watch an old Paul Newman movie, The Young Philadelphians. I can never get enough of Paul Newman with his shirt off. It has been years since I relinquished any fantasy that Paul would leave Joanne Woodward for me. Today I cherish my husband’s stride with a noticeable limp from his basketball years, while I still remember the muscles in his thighs when he leapt for his famous hook shot.

Interdependence Day

Interdependence Day

Ashes settle on Quilcene Bay, acrid gunpowder seeping through the bedroom screens where our two cats huddle in terror under the bed: Independence Day. Few people call July 4^th “Independence Day,” preferring. “The Fourth of July,” a fiery celebration, rather than a recognition of a significant event in our nation’s birth. It has become the night when all are free and independent to explode whatever they have purchased, usually at discount stands in a nearby Native American reservation, (irony intended). It appears that Independence has morphed into “my privilege to declare my freedom with explosives.”

Could we take the notion of Independence back to the birth of the nation? From whom did the colonists want to be independent? The despotic King of England. Did the colonists want to cut off trade in tobacco and tea? Of course not. The colonists were dependent on trade. Was the revolution waged as an Independent battle? That is, did Massachusetts ever think of going it alone? Not in a thumping heartbeat. The colonies depended on each other to keep the stars overhead of one as well as the other, until they wove a common galaxy in the new United States flag.

I love the evolution of language, — how “nice” in Shakespeare’s time meant silly, and now connotes kindness. So, what about Independence in 2018 America? The current president is off to Make America Great again. In his mind, that means Independent of commitments to stand side-by-side with countries that have lain their young on battlefields years before we acknowledged that Germany or Japan may be dominating the planet. Have we ever acknowledged our dependence on England or France? Rather, our country has cast ourselves as the great liberators, the Independent nation on whom the rest of the Free World depends.

For many, Independence has come to suggest self-sufficiency. How many men (yes, it is more of a male thing) have boasted that they “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps?” My love for figures of speech intrigues me to imagine some dude leaning over his cowboy boots and tugging on those side-leather extensions until he becomes entirely erect, feet shoved into the narrow toes, head shoved high into a ten-gallon hat. Under that hat he has not imagined the person who made the boots, or even the parents who, at the very least, fed him for his early years, and likely purchased the first boots for his tiny toes. No sir, he did “it” all alone, whatever “it” is.

It is time to assure our pets they are safe to come out. It is time to trade in Independence Day for Interdependence Day, a time to celebrate how one gift, one gesture of kindness, fulfills another person’s life. The farm-bountiful Chimacum Valley is a testament to Interdependence. Soil rich, green pastures are watched over by the snow-topped Olympic Mountains. That valley could have gone the way of flat valleys East of Hood Canal and become a shopping mall. However, the Jefferson County citizens hailed their interdependence with agriculture. The Jefferson County Land Trust, supported by nature-loving citizens, funded small organic farms.

In an abandoned shed at the crossroads between the town of Chimacum and those farms, citizens chanced a country farm stand, a place where farmers could sell their produce, where citizens could buy fresh food, where young people could find jobs in an employment-depressed community. For eight years, the farm stand has expanded: fresh eggs, vegetables, plants, ice cream, pastries and bread. The founders loved the gifted farmers of the area and wanted them to make a good living. They cared about the youth who needed jobs. They valued a local economy. A “local economy” is not the same as an “isolated” economy. To celebrate success, the farm stand owners decided that the week after the 4^th of July, they would declare an Interdependence Day. Over eight years, the celebration grew too large for the farm stand and its pebbled parking lot. The party moved over the intersection to Finn River Farm and Cidery, today, a million dollar business that started because one farm family and the Land Trust figured out a way to acquire land for orchards, and farm buildings for cider tastings and casual dining adjacent to fields along the salmon-running Chimacum creek — where families could toss horseshoes, or play shuffleboard, while local musicians tune up their fiddles in what once was a feeding trough for pigs.

2018 Chimacum Interdependence Day Poster 2

Last Saturday, Allan and I sat at a round table we shared with new friends. We drank cider, ate pizza and watched parents and children line up for the talent show. Sitting under the late afternoon sun, families and friends applauded as each child stretched to the microphone with a ukulele, harmonica or their own sweet voice. The audience whistled and clapped. Children need that applause because they are growing. They are growing, not by themselves, but with the love and support of that community on which so much depends.

While my musical nostalgia embraces Frank Sinatra, it is pleasing to imagine Old Blue Eyes stepping up to the Interdependence Day microphone to belt out, not ”My Way,” but “Our Way.” Interdependence Day — a day of music, good food, and connections with others who love life — not to be better than any other community, not to be proudly separate, but to be comforted in our connectedness.