Treated Like a Dog

What is it about people and their dogs now-a-days? I’ve lived with dogs and loved them. But to me they are not human. They are expressions of that uniquely loveable animal called dog. They are endowed with a spark of divinity, just as, I believe, all of creation is. They should be respected.

Yet, no one uses the phrase “treated like a dog” anymore. At one time that meant being left outside in the weather and being fed table scraps. Now, many dogs are treated as well or better than many children. I see doggie bakeries, doggie day care, doggie chemotherapy, doggie this and doggie that. It goes beyond respect.

What ethics are involved in providing more medical care to a dog than some people can get? My bottom line -- as long as there are people who are medically underserved I find it unethical to spend thousands on prolonging the life of a dog. Does it serve the dog to prolong its time of disability? Does it serve nature to try to cheat death? Does it serve society to spend money in this way? Does it serve the family to postpone facing the death of a loved one?

I believe in reincarnation. If we let the dog die, then it can be born again, maybe as a human. But alas, then the reborn one might have less food, less medical care and less attention than during its doggie life.

Blending

One day, while talking on the phone I paced around the house, doing thoughtless, little household tasks. Suddenly, right in front of me, in the kitchen, the blender turned itself on high, loudly whirring, with smoke spreading from the base. Wow! I quickly unplugged it.

Sometimes, being in a blended family feels like that useful appliance gone wild. The step family unit whirrs wildly into blending mode, short circuited into action by our fantasies of family. The blades mash our hard edges against each other, trying to smooth out our exotic flavors and textures originating in five or six different families into a new, hopefully pleasing melange.

We get mixed up. What are we? More than roommates, not quite a family.

Visits to the Land of Dementia- Searching for Words

We’re going around the table, practicing finding words and sharing something we like about ourselves. Most of the women spurt out some disconnected sentences, dementia limiting their fluidity in language. I try interpret their personal dialect and mirror it back. They nod or look at me with a puzzled expression.

“You mean you were a good mother?”
“You take good care of your husband?”

Maggie’s turn. She struggles and then, realizing her struggle, haltingly forms a new question for me. I mirror it back to her.

“You mean, can God understand your prayers when it’s hard for you to find words? God understands every language, even the language of silence. He knows what is in your heart and hears your prayers, even without words. God loves you.”

Tears well up in her eyes. “Thank you for telling me this. I know it’s true.”

Happy Birthday to Me -- Where Do I Come From?

I arrived on the ripples of desire that Mom felt over 50 years ago when she first met Dad, at that Wisconsin dance hall. “He was real cute!” Mom still says with an excited giggle.

I was sparked by the sparkling of snow on Norwegian hillsides my Grandma Moan skied to school and also by the beams of midnight sun in the village where my Grandpa Moan learned to speak his stubborn, Norwegian mind. Those Nordic lights became holograms twinkling in my father’s eye.

I also sprang from Grandpa Johnson’s Swedish immigrant parents whose first six children died before the age of 3. Grandpa Johnson came at the right time to survive, to marry three times and father three daughters.

I was born here by my Grandma Johnson’s spacious womb, where my mother gently gestated, when I was just half of me, a Terra egg in Mom’s fetal ovaries. Mom breeched her way out into the world and I was waiting for the right time when Dad’s Norway and Mom’s mostly Sweden met to form my physical geography.

Then the spirit song that I am, sang through that baby landform, to populate it with a personhood that came to America to live long and prosper and create new vistas for those who would follow.

Poetry - Warm Autumn Moment

This warm autumn moment
crisp, sunny, dried leaves chacha to the song of the breeze.
The sky burns bluely.
This warm autumn moment
a boy asks why people gather.
He asks if they discovered gold.
This warm autumn moment
the leaves are the gold,
the boy is the sky,
& I am the chacha to the song
of the breeze.

Waves of Tomatoes

Waves. The nature of Nature often flows in waves--inward and outward, or repeating Herself. This truth washed over me this summer, not at the beach, but in my vegetable garden.

The cherry tomato plants I bought in May seemed innocent enough. But they became a virtual explosion, with waves reaching out and reverberating across half of my garden. The chard & basil were overshadowed by them, and the butternut squash would have been overcome too, if I hadn't returned from vacation soon enough to cut back the tomato tidal wave to give them sun and space. The small supportive cages I'd put around the plants before my trip were easily overcome and covered with branches, leaves and the repeating pattern of tiny yellow flowers.

Those flowers were arranged along the growing edge of the side branches. As they were fertilized and bore their fruit, the tomatoes themselves also ripened in waves, the most inner growing and ripening first. The tiny green globes grew to be that cherry size and then ripen into the red tomatoes we all know and love. And it was over abundance. I couldn't pick them fast enough-- some of them ripened but split. Whether this is a "condition" or just a usual course of events for cherry tomatoes is still unknown to me-- I'm too busy keeping up with the plant, along with the zucchinis, to search it out, for now.

I had to do major pruning of the tomato plants but felt that sadness of wasting all those green babies that hadn't yet ruby-ed up. So I found a recipe for pickled green cherry tomatoes, bought some canning jars and tried 6 jars of the stuff. Now, after the time of fermenting, they taste like---pickles shaped like green tomatoes. Yum--I love them. My family, fearing my inexperience at such a project and less in love with pickles, has shunned them. Oh, well, more for me.

And wow-- they do green up over time if you leave the green ones together. Magic gases are released from them and they help ripen each other. So somedays I didn't have to trek out, just grab what I needed for salads from my ripening bowl. And as I continue to prune my plants, as they continue their slow motion explosion, I can now save those unriped ones for later use.

Soon the waves of summer tomatoes will subside. But I'll still have some of my pickles to remind me of them, as I plan my garden for next summer-- with more room for tsunamis of tomatoes.

Contemplation on Belly Fat

Why is it so terrible to have belly fat? Maybe Ameria is preparing for an upcoming emergency and we need the stored fat to survive. And same with sunshine on the bare naked skin - without sunscreen. The skin cancer police want us to slather on chemicals which for all we know contribute to skin cancer years down the line. AND now we are all deficient in Vitamin D -- the little time many of us spend in the sun has been cloaked by sunscreen, leaving us vulnerable to bone fractures, coronary problems and cancers (besides skin cancer). They sell us sunscreens and then osteoporosis medicines, statins and chemotherapy. Mmmm - very profitable.

Yes-- I want to live a long and healthy lilfe. But do I have to believe every health bulletin that comes along? It's only when I'm too busy or too unsure of myself, plus exposing myself to the harmful rays of the media that I take in that bullshit. I have never been into sunscreen. So for me to now buy into "the studies" about excess belly fat making me a likely candidate for heart disase and diabetes -- well, enough of that negative expectation. It's fear. Fear of being like my grandparents, my parents. Fear of not being attractive. Fear of death or disability.

I actually like my heavier, more womanly body, after I adjust my wardrobe to fit. How many women don't get a bit more belly with age? And one of my heroines, Susun Weed says it helps with menopause to have 10 lbs of extra to help with estrogen production when the ovaries ramp down.

OK-- so is this denial or am I standing in my own truth?