On Being a Girl

In 5th grade, girls couldn't wear pants. In 6th grade we could wear pants every other Thursday as long as they weren't Levi's brand jeans. By 7th grade, pants were a daily occurrence. In 7th and 8th grade we had separate PE classes for boys and girls. By 9th grade we were co-ed.

I've spent a lot of years doing things that "girls don't do." When I had a life (before my mom's stroke) I used to work on cars, slam dance in the mosh pit and surf (a lot). I also liked to sew my own clothes, bake my own muffins, kiss boys and garden.

I'm still here only now I work with computers (me and the guys on my team, but the other team has a couple of girls who wore pants to school starting in Kindergarten and didn't even know there was a time when that wasn't allowed). I still surf from time to time. Last night I saw friends surfing together and sharing stories with each other about the inside wave they caught or the one that caught them by surprise and bounced them off the sand. They looked so happy together and I wanted that. They were all male.

I have female friends that will go to the beach with me, but they don't surf. I've had that story sharing with male companions before, during and after surfing, but I've never in my entire life gone surfing with a woman and the worst thing is I just realized that yesterday.

When I started surfing, I was recruited for Surfrider's Paddle for Clean Water because I was a woman surfer and they needed more balanced energy. I tried to explain that I suck, wipe out and am basically not physically coordinated, but off I went to paddle around the pier at the second paddle in OB and I've been doing it ever since. These days it's families, young girls, older women and me.

Since I've been locked in a house taking care of my mom, San Diego Surf Ladies has come into existence to foster that type of camaraderie with other surfing women - although they are quite a bit younger than I am. When I go to the beach, I sees women in their twenties surfing in groups of 2 or 3 and having fun as only good friends can do out on the water.

All these things make me very happy. But maybe before I die, I could meet just one woman my age who likes to surf Black's (and maybe isn't that great) to bond with and walk up the road telling stories of the triple bounce off the bottom or the 6 foot wave she caught because she was too scared not to take the ride.

Dying from Alcoholism

In this year's season of dying, I just lost another friend. The mother of my first long term committed relationship significant other, passion of my youth. His mother, like my father, died from alcoholism. Too many people dying from alcoholism, yet I take it as a given. I grew up in a world where grownups drank a lot. I don't think that at the time, they considered it to much. It just was. These days we consider drinking yourself into the grave a tragedy - and one that should be prevented if possible. But then again, my father drank himself into the grave at 76. He was basically healthy until a couple of months before he died and then he went quickly - a blessing for him and his family.

Most of the people I know who have problems with alcohol have problems with the world. They are lonely or don't fit in or are stressed by the de-humanization of life in the USA. Some of them suffered destruction of the world they thought they were going to lead due to war. Some of them broke ground in changing the world and weren't able to live with the changes.

As a child of an alcoholic I'm supposed to have issues but I can't tell, because I don't think I've ever had a friend who wasn't the child of an alcoholic.

In the end we all die. I may have been hanging out with the waiting to die set far too long, but going quickly is the key. Of course a sudden heart attack while gardening or walking in the woods is best, but even the swift death of liver failure isn't bad. At least it's only a couple of months, not a couple of decades.

Shirin - thanks for everything.

The Dreaded Questions

There are two questions that ruin my day:
1) How are you?
2) How is your mother?

Most days I try to stay focused on the moment and work on my to do list. I think about my goals and hope that if I keep working towards them, someday I will be in a place I feel good about. As long as I stay in this space, I'm OK even happy at times. But then that space is blown by one of the two dreaded questions.

When I get question #1, I have two choices. Just lie and say I'm good (and that doesn't come natural). Or tell people I haven't slept in ten years, had sex in way too long (and that sounds whiny). I have like two friends in the county who I see a couple of times a year and spend the rest of my life in front of a computer or with a woman who can't talk. I never have any privacy but I never have anyone to talk to either. I work 14 hours a day six days a week and 8 on Sundays. I'm fat, out of shape and have a skin problem on part of my left foot that is driving me crazy.

When I get question #2, I feel like it's a slap in the face. When I finally get out of caregiving or computers and spend time with a friend or acquaintance, I don't want to even remember that my mother exists. And how should she be? She's severely disabled but healthy as a horse. When she dies, everyone will know because I will have a life again and friends and maybe even a lover. She can't talk, go to the bathroom or make a phone call. She doesn't know how to roll around in her wheelchair, so she's basically a brain trapped inside a body. This is how she was in the year 2000 and 2005. This is how she is today. Disabilities don't get better, so please stop asking.

Least you think I'm off the deep end, I do recognize that in polite society asking how people they are is the polite thing to do. Yet when others do it to me, I feel that the asker lacks even the most basic understanding what caring for a person with this level of need entails and how their questions make me feel. (Like crying in case you care)

Ethnicity and Culture

Today was the annual House of Sweden Christmas party. My mother being Swedish and a long time member, she goes every year and I take her since she can't go alone. It's sad as no one visits much with my mother because she is aphasic and can't find the words to express her thoughts (but that's an aside).

As a child, I was dragged to all sorts of functions, taught to dance traditional Swedish folk dances and sing in Swedish. I even sang on television once as part of group of Swedish Christmas song singers. Imagine twenty girls and three boys, ages six to eighteen, walking single file through a dark room wearing white robes and tinsel in their hair. All carrying lit candles.

Most people would think a group of people involved with the House of Sweden would be primarily Swedish or at least of Swedish ancestry. My heritage is mixed. My mother was born in Sweden; my father in Estonia. But there wasn't a House of Estonia and I grew up more in touch with my mother's culture than my fathers. There were other kids of mixed heritage back in those days. Lots of Swedish Americans of course, but Mexican Americans and even if I remember correctly a young girl who was of Chinese descent. More recently, a Japanese American woman wrote the monthly newsletter and the Lucia pageant, while still mostly blondes, included a very dark skinned young woman of Indian (the continent) or African ethnic descent.

I wonder if Sweden has a House of America and if its members include Swedish Arabs or people of Pacific Islands descent?

Graduate School Round Three

In 1999 I returned to college to finish my undergraduate degree so I could go to graduate school. Unfortunately, just before I started, my mom had a massive stroke and lost the ability to do much of anything. I decided to put off graduate school for a year or two to help her get back on her feet (literally and metaphorically). In 2006, I realized that waiting for her to get back on her feet, or die, or for me to win the lottery just wasn't going to happen, so I applied to graduate school and left practical thoughts like how to pay for it and where would I find the time to the wind.

Either I'm too old or too dumb or something as I was rejected by all the programs I applied to (a total of three). In the fall of 2007, I quit my job and entered into my own version of graduate school. I took classes in literature, writing, publishing and received a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation to finish my novel. I also attended a three day symposium on The Art of Writing at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California.

My first introduction to depth psychology and creative writing and tending the soul of the world was like seeing my heart outside of my body. I've always known it was there, but seeing it made be want to learn more about it.

The desire for graduate school hasn't gone away either and I'm trying again. This time I'm expanding my horizons. In addition to MFA in Creative Writing programs at UC San Diego and UC Riverside, I'm going to apply to Pacifica. The only problems is there are two programs I'm interested in there: an MA in Engaged Humanities and a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies.

My heart wants to apply for the Ph.D., but my brain says the MA would be easier to fit into my life. Either way, there is knowledge and wisdom that I am lacking to help myself and my community in the twenty first century and I'm feeling that an advanced degree will help me shore up my skills a bit in the area of "changing the world" and writing about the amazing people that I admire from the depths of my heart.

Wish me luck.

How Riding the Bus Saved Me from a Nervous Breakdown

Every morning when I wake up, I'm already behind on my to-do list and before I've even had breakfast, my stress level is through the roof. My brain knows that if I take a few minutes to sit quietly, I'll feel more relaxed, but once I'm loosing my sanity, it's hard for me to figure out how to sit still. Not to mention, trying to find a moment between trips to the potty, phone calls and the endless stream of work related messages to my crackberry, relaxation seems as out of reach as Jupiter.

Yet the moment the bus arrives at the bus stop and I climb on board, everything stops. I can pull out my book and read, watch the boats on the water as we zoom by on the freeway, edit my novel, or just eavesdrop on the conversations of excited teenagers wrapped up in what Bob said to Sally or other simple problems. My heart slows down and I can make notes on what I need to do or think or how I'm feeling. I can do nothing. Today I wished the trip was longer. Thirty minutes after climbing on board, I was off and speed walking through the streets to my office tower overlooking San Diego Harbor. Now I'm anticipating the journey home so I can get back to working on the synopsis of my novel I need to have done by Friday for the La Jolla Writers Conference in November.

Hail to the Number 30 Bus - my savior.

How personal is the political?

Looking back on writers like Anais Nin and the women's movement of the late sixties and into the seventies, a common mantra was the personal is political and if you examine the personal closely enough, you find the common humanity of all.

As I watch the media staged events that are the campaign for president of the United States, I've started to reframe my own life. For the last nine and a half years, I've been looking at all my problems as my own personal failure to be able to juggle full time work, full time caregiving, and part time projects such as writing, environmental activism not to mention a social life. But listening to some of the speeches floating around, I am beginning to wonder, if there might not be a balance that comes from the direction the President is supposed to provide our country. So I wonder, if for the last eight years we'd had a president who wasn't a spoiled little rich brat, maybe somehow my life would be easier.

Maybe, a descent paying 75% job would be available, because in this job market, it's either work fifty hours a week at a livable wage or work thirty hours a week at the same wage I earned in nineteen eighty. Maybe, there would be health care without a co-pay for calling your doctor on the phone. Maybe, the caregiving burden I am taking off the government's back would be recognized for something - either earnings towards my own retirement or caregiving subsidies. Maybe I would be making more in real terms now than I was twenty five years ago. Maybe we would have had a president who was smarter than me and could come up with ways to lift a burden placed on my shoulders by the failed health care systems.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm to blame. After all, I could just work and care for my mom, not try to save a creek or write a novel or organize my community. Maybe if I was happy working for a corporation so the CEO could vacation in the Bahamas every year, I wouldn't feel so frustrated with my options.

Unfortunately, I'm one of those crack pot dreamers who thinks that there is a way for people to live fulfilling lives, love and be loved, to follow their bliss and still support themselves, and that maybe, just maybe, my hard work will help someone else someday, somehow. That's been an unpopular belief these last eight years. I hope it won't be forever.

To my sister who blazed that trail ~~ RIP Shirley Chisholm ~~ you will not be forgotten. And to all those who have come since, don't forget whose shoulders you're standing on.

La Jolla Shores by Moonlight

Too often I complain and whine about my life: the lack of sleep, the lack of friends, the lack of sex; but sometimes I am reminded of miracles.

Yesterday, I worked my day job from 8 AM to 6 PM then went off to a consulting gig with with a company by Miramar. Yesterday was also the first time in over a year that I had a regular caregiver working on a Wednesday evenings.

I finished with my consulting meeting by 7:30 PM and heading home I realized that La Jolla Shores was on the way home - how sweet is that? Of course I had a swimsuit and towel in my car so I pulled on into the parking lot as the last traces of the orange sky was lingering on the water. After changing into my suit, I walked the length of the beach, very slowly, trying to remember to breath and walk with my shoulders back and my pelvis tucked in to lengthen my spine. (My yoga teacher would be proud.)

Then about 8:15, when the only light on the water was the hideous flood lights from the Beach and Tennis Club to the north of me and the perfectly shaped crescent moon, I slide into water. The sea was warm, the waves mellow and it was the perfect reminder that despite all the things wrong with my life, there are occasional high points.

As I swam I thought about the poor people who have never been night swimming in a moon glow ocean or who have some place like La Jolla Shores to stop by on the way home from work.

Denver is Light Years Away From San Diego

The Democratic National Convention is being held later this month in Denver and I'm stuck on the sidelines while the activist community is gearing up to protest the farce. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a member of the Green Party.

The Democrats masquerade as the party of the people and the people are going to be on hand in Denver to let the Democrats know what we mean by "for the people." From free food to childcare, this time around the focus is on creating an alternative future as well as disrupting the old power structures.

From Recreate 68 and Disrupt Denver to the clandestine insurgent rebel clown army the people's voice is gearing up to be seen and heard. And I'm stuck in San Diego with a new job in corporate America and a wheelchair bound mother who was born to a life a privilege and squandered her life.

My daily mind is filled with questions like how can I say I want to create a positive future for all if I throw away a human being? How can I create a positive future, when the past has me shackled? I know that most traditional cultures hold their elders in high esteem, but how does that play out when modern medicine interferes and the percentage of the population who can't go to the bathroom by themselves grows? How much can you give to the elders without taking away from the children? What about elders who have no wisdom to pass down either because they don't think or because they're too disabled too think?

It's not PC to question the sanctity of human life, but western medicine has blurred the line between life and death and now we have armies of half dead walking around and western medicine says "see you later" leaving families to stagger under the weight of the walking (or wheelchair rolling) dead. Our ability to keep parts of the human body funcationing has gone beyond our understanding of life. Now if all those doctors had to grapple daily with lifting dead weight from the bed to the wheelchair or getting woken up in the middle of the night for nine years to change a diaper, maybe there would be some level of understanding. But as long as the consequences of western medicine are divested from their so called "healing" actions, the science of keeping a heart beating will have nothing to do with living.

So I send some money to Recreate 68 in Denver to help with legal fees or food or whatever people on the ground need to spend money on when challenging the power structure of the United States. I read Indy Media and send my energy to my brothers and sisters who can be there to create the future I want for all of us.

Sitting here behind my computer, my heart breaks over the irony of life. I, who see the farce in creating a life in computers, am stuck behind one watching from afar. If you're able to make Denver, go, participate, feel the power that comes from changing the world when holding hands with new friends and old comrades. You won't regret it. I'll be doing laundry, changing diapers, washing dishes in San Diego and shedding a few tears about being stuck in isolation while you are creating the world we want.

Let's take back our future. Peace!

On Bad News

I emailed a friend the other day and used the subject line of "Bad News" and she thought someone had died. In my lexicon, people dying is never bad news.

Now before you think I'm harsh, I've been taking care of a severely disabled parent for over nine years. Think about it, that's before the second George Bush started what I hate to call his "presidency;" perhaps we could just say his "residency" in the White House.

But I disgress. Dying is easier to deal with. You can cry, stay in bed for days sobbing. You can grieve and mourn and then you can move on with a new life or move or go on a date. Sure it's a life missing that person and frankly I doubt I'd mourn for more than five minutes if GW died, but that's not the point. When people live, you have to keep dealing with them. And dealing with them and dealing with them.

That means rinsing out urine soaked pillows every night because someone can't leave them under the water proof pull sheet or trying to teach someone how to say the word yogurt every other day or one thousand, six hundred times since this nightmare began. It starts with a "y." We draw the "y" with our fingers on the kitchen table and out comes "sharez" or some other non sequitur. Then we draw an "o" on the kitchen table and try to sound it out. "Sharon." Then five other words that start with the "sh" sound. Finally I say it starts with the sound "yo" and then the word "yogurt" is uttered.

Once we've established the word yogurt, we move on to cereal. And so it goes.

On Momentum

I have a friend named Karen who has three boys, ages five and under. I have an eighty one year old mother with a brain damaged by stroke and physical problems on the side.

I often wonder how the other Karen does it, keep up with three young kids, and I realized it has to do with momentum. Kids supply their own momentum if not always in the necessary direction. Of course, three small boys combined probably don't have the amount of mass that my mother has, but they have a plethora of velocity. Given that momentum somehow equals mass times velocity, I think they are off the charts.

My mother is lacking in momentum. She has the desire for it, but can't seem to remember to ask, suggest or do anything. I have to provide momentum for two. It's hard to to muster up the necessary momentum day after day to drag a 130 pound woman plus wheelchair into the pool, out of the pool. For a walk. To do exercises. A struggle to mount a conversation with a woman who omits verbs and nouns from her not quite sentences. When asked what she wants to do, a common response is "This one" with her first finger pointing at the ceiling.

If you're confused, no worries. So am I. "This one" can mean a sleeping pill, reading a book, television, a walk or a number of other things that will require five minutes of guessing games before communication is established.

So some days, I grit me teeth and chat over dinner. An exchange of three sentences is about fifteen minutes worth of questions, signs, waiting and frustration on both sides. Some days I don't even try. I'm too tired, or too frustrated, and just want to put food on the table in front of her and read the paper or clean the toilet while she eats.

So the next time your small child chatters up a storm, count your blessings. At least feigning interest and a few well placed "oh really" and "that was very nice" will carry your for fifteen minutes with kids. I on the other hand, am stuck flipping through a Swedish-English dictionary, trying to comprehend a nounless and verbless sentence and asking questions that will help me figure out what my mother is trying to say.

Least you judge me, when you've been trying to teach someone to say "bedroom" for nine years without consistent success, it's frustrating and you have to give me kudos for trying again tomorrow - a tactic I've employed for nine years now.

I Lost My Mornings

I lost my mornings nine years ago and I only realized it this week. It's not that I don't have mornings anymore, but they're not my mornings. Not my time to catch the sunrise surf or wake early and watch the sky change color.

The one day a week that I do own my mornings, I use them to sleep, since sleeping when you have a disabled parent to care for is an oxymoron. But let's not worry about that now. My concern is that it took me nine years to realize I hadn't been swimming at dawn in, well you guessed it, nine years. I could have noticed after five years that I hadn't watched the sunrise in five years. Or noticed after three years that I hadn't stayed up all night and watched the sky change color in three years.

So I'm not sure what that says about me other than I've been sucked into Zombie land. Zombie land is a strange place. No fun. No play. But you're so busy working, you don't even notice that recess has been canceled. I'm not really sure what to do about it. There doesn't seem to be an exit gate or glow in the dark signs pointing the way out of here. Or maybe the signs are there, but because I'm a Zombie, I don't notice.

If you happen to notice some befuddled mornings walking about in circles not quite sure where they belong, will you send them my way?

I was in denial

For months now, the washing machine has been acting up. Sometimes it works great for a week and then the motor overheats and it shuts down. If I don't turn it off then, it blows the circuits on my house. It didn't happen all the time and usually if you turned it off for an hour, you could turn it back on and all would be well.

No longer. So a repair person (probably a man) is on the way to replace the motor. $100 labor plus $150 to $200 for a new motor. Still cheaper and less wasteful than a new washer, but I hate it. I hate that we do at least one load of urine soaked clothes everyday - on a bad day it could be two loads and we can add bowel movement to the mix.

In the old days, I used a laundromat. Once a month I would load up my clothes in my little-old-lady laundry cart and drag it two blocks to the laundromat. Then I would read for an hour while my clothes swirled in soapy water. It was great people watching drama: husbands and wives bickering, children whining and on cold winter nights people with no place warm to go just reading the newspaper and defrosting.

When the load finished, I'd load the wet clothes back into the cart, take them home and hang them on the line to dry. The next day I would take the clothes off the line, fold them and put them away and I was DONE! Done with laundry for another month.

These days the first load starts by 7 AM and at 10 PM I'm folding the last of the day's laundry. I guess in the olden days, old people just wore their dirty clothes.

Friday Afternoons in Spring Time

A long time ago in a life time so far away that it feels like it belonged to someone else, Friday afternoons in the spring time held a magical promise of possibilities. Home from work and the sun still shining bright. Maybe a quick swim at the beach and an entire weekend slowly unfolding in front of me.

A weekend. Two nights in a row to sleep in. A Saturday morning and a Sunday morning to wake up when ever you want to. A Saturday and a Sunday afternoon to hang out at the beach or nap or go hiking. Two nights to sit out on the front concrete slab or porch and watch the night sky fill with stars.

That was in the twentieth century - a century that seems so long ago and far away that we often forget how people survived without cell phones pressed to their ears (but I digress).

In the twenty first century, my weekend runs from 5 PM on Saturday evening until 3 PM on Sunday afternoon. Barely time to remember who I am.

The rest of the weekend I work caring for my mom. It's easier on Mondays when everyone is working, but spending Saturday on laundry and pushing her around Mission Bay feels like I'm left out of the fun of riding my bike around the bay or having a conversation with someone who just sky dived off Mount Whitney or went searching for tigers in the Sundabans' gigantic mangrove swamps. I generally go to be early on Saturday nights as it's my one night to sleep without a baby monitor pointing at my pillow. The one night I know I can fall asleep without instantly being yanked out of bed to adjust a blanket or a pillow.

So today, instead of revealing in the fact that it's Friday afternoon in the spring time, I'm tired and sad knowing I have to slog through this evening and most of tomorrow until 5 PM comes and then if I have any energy left, I'll try to ride my bike to Black's Beach, walk the road down to the beach and scan the swell for dolphins and a memory of life before, of life when a weekend lasted from 5 PM on Friday afternoon until 8 AM on Monday morning.

For those of you who have the luxury of an entire weekend, stay out late dancing and kiss a boy you never met for me.

Spring on the Land

The land in question is only a seventy five by fifty foot lot in the low lands of Pacific Beach. Somehow, this land came to be mine in the eyes of the law in 2004 despite my lack of belief in owning the earth, but a person has got to live somewhere and while I can live anywhere I can fit a sleeping bag, a bike, a surfboard and a laptop computer, my wheelchair dependent mother likes a bit more in the way of creature comforts - things like indoor showers, heat and a television with fifty seven channels.

So we settled here for the rest of her life.

After the fuss of remodeling to make the bathroom and kitchen more accessible for wheelchairs, I started thinking about the land. Not that there's much. The back yard was a postage stamp of concrete and the front yard two small blocks of soil topped with bark and a couple of recently planted palm trees.

That first summer, I would sit on out on the front concrete slab in the evening and look at the bark and try to decided what to do. After a while, the land started talking to me. It wanted to be the way it was before the Americans, before the Californianos, before the Mexicans, before the Spanish Conquistadors. The land wanted to live like it lived when the footsteps of the Kumeyaay Nation and the hoof beats of Pronghorn antelope roamed the sandy banks of Rose Creek and the Great Blue Herons waded through the marshes and the American Wigeons wintered here and took flight in huge flocks that blocked the sun.

My nephew (who was eight when we moved in) and I discussed the possibility of keeping an antelope in the yard. He didn't think it was practical to have antelope in Pacific Beach, but I could keep cantaloupe instead. I have yet to take him up on his suggestion.

So I read books, listened to the wind, talked to the wealth of knowledgeable people in the area on what plants would have lived in my yard in the year one thousand five hundred. And then I planted. Dug, chopped, hauled rocks, tried to create a balance of plants to bring happiness to the land and the people living on it now. This spring the land thanks me. A carpet of bright orange California poppies, bunches of bright yellow Coast Sunflower and clumps of butter cream Beach Evening Primrose fill in the gaps. Even a purple Wild Hyacinth lurks in the corner of the yard sprung from the soil as if slumbering for generations.

Black Sage and San Diego Sagewort rub up against me as I pass and envelope me in the smell of San Diego. Even the Scrub Oak is growing, tiny tender shoots stretching up towards the sky. This is where we live, along the once upon a time shore of Rose Creek in the land of sage and the ghosts of antelope and Kumeyaay basket weavers.

To all the ancestors and the Grizzly Bears who fished the shores of the bay - spring blessings, we are listening to the words in the wind. Peace to all my relations.

Desert Wildflowers and Aging

So this weekend I dragged my movie to Borrego Springs to visit Anza Borrego Desert State Park and see the spectacular wildflowers in bloom. By movie, I mean disabled Mom in a wheelchair, her caregiver, myself, a gel filled mattress pad, a suitcase full of clothing, a canvas bag of medications, quad cane, baby monitor, food and assorted sundries.

We were only gone for two nights, but filled up a four door sedan with stuff to make sure the routine we maintain at home could be simulated at a golf resort in the desert peopled with grey haired men golfing with their younger wives.

The visitor's center now has a paved trail that runs between the campground allowing my mother to get out into the desert and observe the ant hills, Golden desert poppies, bright yellow blooms on bladder pod, the red tips of Ocotillo like miniature flags in the wind. Blankets of rust colored grass and magenta Desert Sand Vergena teasing tourists to walk slowly, look closely.

Our biggest outing consisted of rolling the entire length and back again. We were surrounded by people with grey hair, strolling about with cameras and guidebooks and I wondered what happened to my life of hiking desolate trails and hearing the voices of those who lived before me. We also drove out a dirt road and ventured thirty feet into the desert - a lot of work for me as I had to pop a wheelie with my mom's wheel chair and drag it through the sandy wash. Then we sat there, in the sand surrounded by purple, white and yellow flowers. The stark mountains rising up to the north - a few scattered bushes on the south facing slope like my scarce moments of remembering who I am.

I saw my future. It is is my present. I don't want it to be. I don't want to be another grey-haired lady dining with friends in the hotel restaurant, shopping for t-shirts, and discussing how spectacular the blooms are. I want to feel the wind speaking to me, sharing tales of vanished worlds and lives still to be lived. I want to rise at dawn and feel the stillness all around, not start my morning off cleaning up urine soaked sheets and pillows.

Unfortunately, I'm living the life of an eighty one year old woman. Early to rise. early to bed. Indoor pool exercise. Conversation for three days about the flower we saw. What's next? Dying of old age by the time I'm fifty?

The Path Less Traveled (Stuck in Traffic)

So one of my oldest and closest friends just was accepted into her dream MFA program at the University of New Mexico. I am thrilled for her. Thrilled that she took the risk and put herself out there. Thrilled that she was accepted. Thrilled that she'll be starting a new phase of her life this summer. One that will lead her down an exciting writing path and into a career as a writer and journalist on NPR. And above all, I'm so proud of her for opening up old wounds and trying to heal them.

The part that I'm not thrilled about is being left behind. Everyone else keeps moving onto new phases of their life and here I sit, babysitting an 81 year old woman who is unable to function without assistance every fifteen minutes. I too am ready to take the leap into the unknown, create a new life, explore the world. But I'm living the life of an 81 year old disabled woman and have been since she was 72 and I was 38. I try to tell myself that I'm on the path less traveled. The run away from home at 17 and join a commune path. The travel around the country in a VW van path. The mosh pit, sweat and tattoos path. The path to adventure and great things. The path where redemption or wisdom or joy is going to come out of taking care of an old person: I've been waiting for nine years and still nothing seems to have materialize except the flab around my tummy and the etched wrinkles on my face.

Somehow I've been stuck here in one place for so many years I can't even remember what life was like before and I don't see any exit ramps. Sometimes people tell me about the twenty first century. I read about it on the web, catch snippets of it on the nightly news. But it's not my life, my world.

Saturday night, I'll drink champagne to celebrate my friend's success. Then I'll go home to my same life that never changes.

I Was Hoping The Car Would Last Until My Mom Died

Least you think I'm a cold hearted bitch, my mom is almost 82 years old and had a severe stroke in 1999 rendering her completely dependent on me for everything: meals, potty breaks, getting dressed, answering the phone, making doctors' appointments, bathing, and moving around the house. We do have the wonderful Samantha who comes in five days a week and helps my mom with her exercises, helps me with the laundry and is always calm and cheerful - even when I'm not.

Six years ago, we bought a used 1995 Ford Contour with the wonderfully bubbled roof - perfect for transferring mom in and out of the car without banging her head on the ceiling. The trunk was low and folding up the wheelchair and putting it in the trunk hasn't been too painful on my back. The car has gotten good gas mileage, been great for transporting commodes and stockpiles of pillows and it's an easy to see turquoise.

But alas, after a trip to the mechanic with yet more problems, I'm having to face the truth. The blue car is on the way out and will need to be replaced as my mother is still alive and wanting to go to the pool, to school, to the every popular Crown Point Shores.

Cars are money pits. I should know I have three. It didn't used to be this way. I didn't even own a car until I was 28 and determined to travel across country with my dog Ziffle. So a 1971 VW camper van sucked my money for a few years although I did learn to work on it myself and even rebuilt the engine after it blew in Big Sur on New Year's Day. The red van committed suicide after the dog died and that brought me to car number two - a 1956 Ford Step van camper. Car number two also obliged in liberating me from my money but has hung in there and is still with me.

When mom had the stroked she lost her driver's license. Which meant she lost her insurance. Which meant she could no longer register her car. Which meant she could no longer own a car. So I inherited a large gold Ford LTD with only two doors and an engine that sucked gas, couldn't be parked anywhere and created bruise after bruise on my mom's forehead.

Then came living in the suburbs and commuting to work. I tried it for awhile in the step van, but three-speed-on-the-column, all manual brakes and stop-and-go traffic on the interstate for an hour each way was brutal. So my roommate lent me his '74 VW van and I used that to shift from first gear to second and back again. That didn't last long and I bought a 1991 Red Geo Metro hatchback - 50 miles to the gallon on the highway, 35 around town. It too has been kind enough to remove dollars from my wallet.

Then in 2002, the gold cruiser started crumbling and was replaced by the very Ford Contour that is now gimping down the driveway. Will it never end? Probably once I'm dead.

Sundays Suck

I’ve never been a big fan of Sundays. Oh sure Sunday morning is great. I have an overnight caregiver on Saturday night, so Sunday morning I sleep in. Wake up when I want to instead of when a bleeping alarm jolts me out of the sweaty dream and the naked man beside me turns out to have been whisp of wishful dreaming.

Then Sunday evening drops itself on my heart and I am lonely. In lifetimes past, Sunday sunsets were spent surfing at Black’s Beach or catching some late night tunes at the Covered Wagon Saloon and not fucking Michel Dean. Now it’s dinner at six. Every night it’s dinner at six. My eighty one year old disabled mother is an early bird. So we eat at six which in my lexicon is the middle of the afternoon while I’m still trying to plant purple needle grass between the pebble pavers on my strip or dreaming of the evening glass off.

She goes to bed at eight and then I’m all alone. Lonely. No friends. No music. No pelicans gliding past my head. Alone to contemplate yet another week of being alone. For 450 Sundays, I haven't had a life. I know other people socialize, attend poetry readings or workshops. There’s even a drum circle down the street from my house; I never go.

Sunday evenings I think about things like having a lover or meeting some grrrls at a bar for drinks or even going for a long bike ride in the evening so I can collapse into bed and fall asleep in a heart beat instead of thinking how this is yet another Sunday when I’m alone. Sunday evenings I watch trashy television, try to forget that I’m alone. That the world outside my front door is off limits to me. That the only people I know are murdered on the million and one detective shows. Sunday evenings are when I get scared I’ll always be alone. At least the murder victims get to spend time with the detectives.

Sundays suck.