We Are Swimming

Some people swim with sharks and others find safer places to "swim". Sharks are heartless kinds who don't give a whiff about other folks but see only their own personal goals. They appear to "eat up" anyone who stands in the way of their achieving them. They happen in any competitive field. There is no fixing that sort, and the only way of avoiding being "eaten up" is to swim away as fast as possible. But sometimes in waters without sharks, life feels like swimming in a myriad of  flotsam and jetsam that we can barely hold our heads above.  The saying, and I hope I have it nearly right, "the world is so full of a number of things,  we should all be as happy as kings" has a kink in it. Sometimes the "number of things" is just too numerous and it appears to be drowning one under its weight. Human creatures empathize. It's natural and if we do so too intensely, we are pulled under, also. At that point, it's necessary to hold back somewhat, save ourselves from complete inundation and head for shore. We need strength to give of ourselves, and if we are exhausted, we can't help. There is always  the need to know when to pull back and regain our sense of balance and when to continue on. When a family member or friend, someone who is dearly loved, begins a kind of descent into a personal crisis, it is one of the times when we feel we are needed. The call isn't always actual. Sometimes there is no call, but only a sense that someone must help and it may be us. It's a bit like watching a person floundering in the water and needing a life jacket to be tossed when there isn't one available.  I am sure most of us have experienced this kind of thing. We don't know what to do initially. The first response for most of us is shock. When that calms, the next step is to do something about it.  Jumping right in without thinking is the worst solution. Emergency workers, even though they are trained to know what to do,  assess a situation first. That can work for anyone. It doesn't have to take a long time to think about what happened and what needs doing, but it does require a level head. From that point on, it is time to decide what's best to do, who should do it and what end result is likely to occur or not and if not, the next step. All this has to happen quickly and sanely.  If you are the one who is to do the helping, you have to know if you are able to do it.  Should there be someone else with more knowledge or access to assist or take over?  The situation, be it immediate or one that has a broader time frame, needs thought before action.  Disease, acute illness, accident, mental health, abuse crises, relationship matters or criminal incidents all call for the intense consideration of those wanting to help. Sometimes it's best to stand back and realize that someone else can do the job better. If you are needed you'll be called on. These are deep waters and full of the most intense kind of human to human involvement. The backwash is also part of any life preserving and saving action and often it is worse than the original need. Life is a swim and the waters change as we go. But, when we are needed, we are much stronger swimmers than we know.

The Birdbath Inspiration

I live in an urban tiny place, windowed up and down and all duded up with white and black this and that to make up for its lack of space. My patio on the ground floor opens onto a bit of lawn and little disciplined bushes that are allowed to flower shyly in their seasons. It's very private, being surrounded by my little rows of juniper hedges. Birds love hedges and trees, large or small, whether in the city or not. They have adjusted their habitats nicely to telephone wires, cables, signal poles, window ledges and roof tops. To them, it's merely  life. They take it as it comes.  They peal their morning songs and flit about happily in spite of the noise and grit of the city. What they don't often have is water. Being ever an optimist, a single up-polar type, I put on my little patio,  my bird bath with its little pile of rocks collected from jaunts around the world. I rinse the thing daily fill it with clean water. My pioneer family crow friend comes daily and has for years, to dip his various foods in the bath, and play a bit with the pebbles.  On my sunny morning reading sessions there, I look up from my e book and stay stock still, while first, the crow, then a robin and later a finch drop in to have a beak or two of water, a bit of a flit bath and then, fly off on their important businesses.  They completely ignore the fact that I am sitting  only four feet away. (I don't think in centimeters, but that's another topic for another day.) I am delighted by the visits, because my prime reason for getting out the old iron bird bath, in the first place, was really for the bees and butterflies that apparently like to take their water on saucers set out. I hadn't thought that birds would bother with my insignificant old bird bath. Also having ample little trees and plants on my deck that barely has space for me among its greenery, I felt honored to be accepted into part of the natural bird sphere even in the city. It is hard enough to hear the bird song with construction maddening back-up beepings and truck grindings, lawnmower gardeners with their gargantuan leaf blowers and edgers, the cars whizzing by and the train whistle where I live, but the birds don't care. Their songs and the cries of the gulls and eagles who chance to land in the huge cedars still remaining on the property, continue to grace the air and make us not forget that we aren't the only owners of the earth, but fellows of it with all living things. In our hubris, we forget the littles of life. We get ourselves all twisted into global matters that we admit we can't do much about: water shortages, too much water, storms, volcanoes, disappearing wild life, lack of pollenizing insects. We CAN start doing something about "it". If we care to start somewhere, tiny though it may be, it could be a small saucer of water with a pebble in it on your widow ledge outside, a pond in the back yard, a rain barrel or yes, even a bird bath on your deck in the middle of the city. 

How To Ruin Appetites

Last evening, I was with a dozen or so who were about to enjoy coffee and goodies. Those gathered were intelligent, mature people wanting an evening partaking in relaxed conversation. Coffee and tea poured, the accompanying treats were offered. The first topic that arose was the fact that the cream in the jug, was the lowest of fat content. Sentences were built around percentages of fat in  cream and rampant cringes observed at the great indulgence of sipping a tablespoon of it stirred into the beverages. I sipped my white wine, thank you very much, and eyed the cheese cake, longingly. After expressing their guilts over the skinniest cream, I have ever heard of, we saw the knife beginning its job of dividing up the luscious cake onto small plates. The trick apparently was to see how thinly it could be accomplished. The maker of the creation started in on her choice of the ingredients, and how this and that was done to prevent as little fat and sugar as possible into the recipe while ensuring its taste. I did taste the lemon but the rest had only vague hints of the expected sweetness of cheese and sugar that was not of a reduced kind.  Again, talk of dress sizes and the agonies of dieting to get into a size blankety blank rather than another with higher digits became the choice. When, oh when, were we going to discuss the climate, political or otherwise?  I saw  my blubbery self desperately wondering how I, someone who resigned the diet club long ago, could make enough polite hums and haws to appear at least part of the weighty conversation. Not possible, and finally I had to admit that, sorry, I wasn't part of the dieting mentality. Sympathy was tossed my way, though brief, and led to terse comments about their not wanting to have to throw out clothes if one's size increased and how expensive it would be. I noted the speaker seldom came to the group with garments that were anything older than a month. But having a generous mouthful of cheese cake, however short of sugar it was, prevented comment. The others, started in on their food intolerances. These ranged from wheats to pastas to cheeses to nuts and onward. Good bakers and restaurants were name-dropped: names of outlets that did not use milk products or animal fats, salt, sugar, cheese and used only things that were full of "lites" and "nons" and "lesses". To me, they all tasted like it, too. Talk turned into such as milk made from anything that didn't include cows or goats, sugar that came from a little bottle of liquid you could tuck into your handbag and meat made from beans. There was arm waving and great enthusiasm amongst the holders of the thinnest upper arms in the neighbourhood. The sugarless chocolate chip oatmeal cookies as yet to be served, that I anticipated eagerly,  apparently had raisins that were cranberries, oats of some kind of wheat that was said not to be, chocolate chips that were not chocolate and eggs sans yolks.  There was huge enthusiasm over the cookies passed around. Suddenly, although they looked good, they left the realm of any remotely high feelings of appeal to me. I knew that after the party, I would take my empty wine glass and go home to my friendly fridge that had nice fat yellow cheese, bread made from whole wheat spread with cow butter. I might even have a cup of hot chocolate made from real chocolate beans, laced with fourteen percent whipped cream and sweetened with brown sugar. Yum! As I waddled my ten extra pounds out of the room, waving bye bye at the bony women with their "little bits of extra" padding tucked in here and there to give themselves "shape",  I dropped the take away diet cookies into the bin and fled home to happiness where there are no rules to spoil the appetite or scales to worry over and no size fours on hangers.

Gramma's? Oh, no!

A friend of mine and I, in our twenties, were off to the city shopping for the day. On the way, let's call her Annie, said that we had to stop by her gramma's to see if she were all right. When we pulled up to a very nice home, I looked forward to meeting the lady. I knew she had been an attractive, respected professional in her day. I fancied tea in the parlour. Not so. We walked down a garden path to a back basement entrance and into a rather dark looking rental suite there. On knocking at the door, we heard a shuffling and it opened. There before us, stood  a very elderly stooped and frail woman. She was delighted that we came. The place smelled musty and while clean, was close and cluttered. No tea was offered of necessity, and the visit was short, timed, I suspected. That scene is often in my mind, as I, now, too, as described "elderly", recall it. Old age happens to us all, and it is, in truth, a time that is not "golden". Pain is a daily companion. Loneliness can be one, also, but not necessarily. Some need a social life and others don't. Exercise is reduced to whatever can be tolerated in spite of rampant advice to the contrary. The well-"meanies" who spout their theories about old age and how one should live it are, frankly, to put it nicely, full of baloney. Most of them are not elderly. But when you are elderly, you find yourself being told what to do constantly. "Mother, you should..." or "Dad, you have to...". If elders used the same tones with their younger humans, there would be conflict! Old people take it, because they feel vulnerable and often, intimidated. All they really want is to be treated exactly the same way everyone else is. If they need advice they will ask for it. Some elders allow themselves to submit and discard their independence gracefully, while others choose, as the little lady in my story above, to do it their way. She wanted to live on her own and fend for herself no matter what that looked like to others. She could have chosen to live with her daughter in the back bedroom but she didn't. Her choice wasn't  "pathetic" to her. Hard as it is for younger adults to conceive, the physical body ages and changes in ways that are unimaginable to youth. Once beautiful and lithe, the body can twist and grow in ways that seem ugly. Like all of nature, aging happens and it is not ugly, it's natural. There are no easy solutions. Getting a hip or knee "done" is not a light endeavor. It sounds simple and some run out and get the surgery at the first twinge. It is surgery and not a tooth extraction. Cataract surgery is another "easy fix" or a colostomy or any other medical procedure may not work as advertised. We take our chances. And they all have the danger of downsides. We are warned. Finances, also, can be hard for those who worked and saved for their retirements, but Inflation ate up all of their plans. Most of them have to "sell the farm" to survive. It's not easy. People aging, are not always the attractive models you see in those cute ads for the ideal "retirement" home. But old age can be a great ending to a great life lived. It just needs understanding.