100 Day Challenge: Day #14 (continued from Day #7): Please Don’t Give Me Flowers

At first, no words came. Flora stared down at Jake’s hand that held the old woman’s. 

“Did you see what happened?” he repeated.

“She fell. Taking out the trash. It looked like she tripped. Her garbage bin rolled away out of reach. I think she hit her head.” 

She tried not to cough, tried to ignore her eyes which had started to water. Jake leaned forward with his phone hand and touched Flora on the shoulder. He must’ve thought she was crying.

“Help’s on its way,” he said. 

She just nodded.

The dispatcher came back on, confirming that an ambulance was on the way and not to move Mrs. Johnson unless she was in harm’s way. 

“Were you walking by?” asked Jake.

“What?” Flora had been staring at his eyes as he spoke on the phone. They were a light shade of blue, like morning sky. “Oh, no. I saw it happen from my bedroom window.” 

She pointed back at her house.

“Oh,” said Jake, “Oh, you’re that girl.”

That girl. Flora felt her cheeks, already surely mottled with a growing rash, flush warm.

“Sorry. I’m Jake,” he said quickly. 

“Flora.”

“It’s funny that we’ve never met.”

“Yeah, well, I spend a lot of time at my grandmother’s apartment. Sometimes I’m at my dad’s. I don’t get out much here.”

“You have really bad allergies, right?” 

Flora wondered if she should just leave, just rise and walk away, back to the house for an epi-pen and a bath and the air purifier, and to breathe through her nose. And to never come outside again.

Sirens crescendoed and an ambulance and fire truck pulled up next to them, lights flashing. 

It was a whirlwind after that as the EMTs took Mrs. Johnson’s pulse, transferred her to a gurney and loaded her into the back of the ambulance. Flora and Jake took turns answering questions, Flora about the fall, Jake about Mrs. Johnson’s identity, conditions and relatives. 

“I think I can find her son’s phone number and let him know where she is. Here’s my number in the meantime. We’re pretty close, Mrs. J and me.” 

With another roar of siren, they were gone. Jake and Flora stood watching the ambulance disappear around the corner. 

Then Flora started coughing. A raspy cough, a bad kind of cough. The coughing of a girl with every allergy in the book, a cough that might not stop for hours.

100 Day Challenge #13: Morrie Talks about Consumer Brainwash

Consumerism—What’s Really Consuming Us?

“We've got a sort of brainwashing going on in our country,” says Morrie Schwartz in Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.

I’m listening to it as an audio book as it is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary in publication. It’s one of the most quotable books I’ve ever read. There are so many meaningful lines that it took me a half hour to choose a focus for today’s challenge.

Then I remembered I have 100 days of writing (86 more to go after today), so expect more references to Morrie! :)

I found myself selecting on a long quote by Morrie about material possessions and how they don’t bring you lasting happiness. It’s an old theme, but worth discussing again and in different ways, since it is one of the disadvantages of a capitalistic society, and that’s what we live in. This is not to say there are many advantages as well to capitalism. A sword is only sharpened on one side. Day has night. No system on the planet—and we need systems (think the human body, the aquafer, systems for survival and living)—is perfect. 

Morrie

Morrie Schwartz is a sociology professor with a respectable zest for life, huge capacity for love, joy enough to dance by himself in a crowded room, and a lifetime of wisdom to impart as a dedicated and compassionate teacher. And as a person who is consciously present and aware. Awake to life, not asleep.

And he is dying of ALS.

He’s a real person and the book is based on conversations and experiences with the author, an ex-student. 

Morrie, given a finite time to live, decides to share his very positive experience of death with as many people as possible. 

“The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” - Morrie Schwartz

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

Here is what he says about consumerism:

“We've got a sort of brainwashing going on in our country, Morrie sighed. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it—and have it repeated to us—over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all of this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.

Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you about it. 'Guess what I got? Guess what I got?'

You know how I interpreted that? These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.

Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have.” 
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

In our household, we’re currently looking at putting in a hot tub in our backyard. Do we need one? No. Do we have ample funds for it? No. But we’re probably going to buy it anyway. But I’m okay with that after reflecting on Morrie’s words, after asking the REASON for the purchase in an honest way.

We’re not getting the hot tub to keep up with the Jones or to tell others we have it or as a symbol of success and leisure. We want it, because our kids are teenagers, one a senior, the other a sophomore, and we want them to have a safe and enjoyable place to bring their friends. We want our house to be a welcome and secure place, knowing full-well the turbulence of adolescence. It’s a device to help them build and maintain community, friendships, romance, love. 

This was an interesting reflection, because we have many more practical things to spend our money on like house repairs and paying down some debt—which we are doing, but slowly. 

The thing is there’s a clear expiration date on the value of this particular purchase: one year until our eldest is in college somewhere. The umbilical cord will be stretched far (but never severed).

What if we looked at every purchase with this kind of questioning and reflection? 

Why am I buying this? Really? What do I hope to accomplish with the purchase? Is it for me and my happiness? Does it encourage more self-love and love of others? (We’re not talking lust here.)

If a material thing is for your own joy, is it a placebo for love and affection, for compassion and tenderness?

Still, it’s worth more reflection. A hot tub isn’t required to create community. There are other ways to make a home feel welcoming and safe for teenagers certainly. Is the idea itself generated from the repeated message of consumerism, of expectations of our society?  

Tuesdays with Morrie was released in 1997, and yes, Morrie passed away in 1995. 

And we’ve only seen more and more of the “brainwashing” Morrie talks about in the book. I remember in the 2000s hearing the message from national leaders equating good citizenship with being a good consumer. Oh no! I thought. 

And we want to be good. We want someone in authority to tell us we’re good people. Because shame is way too prevalent in humankind, often never identified as such, but festering and eating away at self-esteem, consuming. Yeah, a different kind of consumerism. But definitely related. 

And that makes us vulnerable to all kinds of repeated messages, an effective marketing strategy, especially when they are emotional. There’s been a few of those lately!

Photo by Jingxi Lau on Unsplash

100 Day Challenge #12: Fire

Fire. California is burning. Now close to a piece of my heart. 

Last I saw, the Caldor Fire was one mile from our summer cabin on Silver Lake off of Highway 88. It has been in my family for four decades now, but I started going to Silver Lake when I was four years old, long before my parents acquired the cabin, mostly staying in a rented cabin at the charming and rare Kit Carson Lodge. Within the next few days, it will either have survived in a landscape forever changed or it will be gone. 

Knowing this is happening is a strange feeling. Not quite real. Then tremendously sad. Then bordering on drama before remembering the situation is utterly out of my control. And I’ve vowed not to create personal drama when I can help it, having dabbled in it unawares in the past. 

And maybe it will help to pen about Silver Lake. 

I have long considered it among the most beautiful places in the world. It is my measure of natural beauty, with the sparkling lake, hugged by white-barked Aspen trees with leaves like green coins undulating in the breeze. And all around that, the pine forest, with sap that smells like vanilla bean and maple syrup, climbing up the sloping hills. There are wide fields of gray-white granite, carved by ancient glaciers and spotted with granite boulders looking like a moonscape. 

My morning walk from the cabin is to a waterfall, a thunder of white water funneling through water-carved granite and plummeting 25 feet onto rocks and logs below and into a stream that moves snow melt into Silver Lake (elevation 7,300 feet). Of course, these last few years the waterfall has not roared like it did in the past, when there was reliably more snow and rainfall, but it’s still majestic and paintable. 

On the way to the waterfall is Hidden Pond. Off the trail about thirty feet and camouflaged by a short rise of granite, you’d only know it was there if you knew the area or explored a bit. This makes it extra special. The pond butts up against sheer granite on the other side and creates a mirror in the still water. It is home to snakes and salamanders and all kinds of critters. One time, when he was seven or eight, my son Max and I spent almost an entire day by the pond. In long socks—to avoid the leaches—with a bucket and a bug-catching net, he spent all day wading in the pond catching frogs and skimmer insects and whatever he could find to put in his bucket. I happily watched him and photographed his catches, all released back into the wilds of the water. 

The backdrop to our lake is Thunder Mountain with jagged peaks of dark volcanic stone, a dramatic contrast to the smooth, gray granite. The mountain is in the shape of a dinosaur or a dragon, with a long tail and arched back, its head sitting on natural caves—fun to explore and offering a seven-voiced echo at the mouth. At the peak is a canister, in which you can leave notes for other hikers willing to make the climb and sit on the sleeping monster’s back and take in the view from the top of the world. At sunset, Thunder Mountain turns scarlet and magenta, changing the pallet of the entire landscape. All day log, it changes moods with the light, not hiding its emotions from the world. A worthy role model.

Within a day’s hike are many small mountain lakes, each with their own unique landscapes of rock, grassland, flowers, forest and birdsong, rises and falls. You never know when the woodland will suddenly open into sunlight bathing meadows of wild daisies, iris, lupin, Indian paintbrush and fuzzy mule ears.

There’s nothing like a mountain storm in this area. Raindrops dancing on the gray water of the lake as beautiful as the sparkles in the sun, clouds in gradients of gray and white billowing, moving, changing the shape of the sky. The thunder rolls through the forests, the timpani drum climax of a symphony.

At night, the bats come out, swerving and turning in serrated flight, their small dark shapes lighting on the water, deftly catching insects and leaving concentric circles that disappear in moments like a magic act.

It is a place familiar to me. A soothing place my imagination can go to in relief of a nightmare. It is a place of song and beauty and life.

What will this place look like after the Caldor Fire has blazed its way through?

100 Day Challenge #11: I Tasted Just Like Birthday Cake

For today’s entry, I’m sharing a children’s story I wrote some years ago. Like so many of my stories and essays, it has remained unshared in a folder in the Cloud. So, I’m excited that this challenge allows me, encourages me, forces me to put this story and many others out into the world.

I hope you enjoy it!

I Tasted Just Like Birthday Cake

One night, as Andrew hopped into bed, his mom told him a special bedtime story.

“It’s about you,” she said. Before you were born, you were in my belly.”

Andrew looked alarmed. “Mommy, did you eat me?”

“You tasted just like birthday cake.” She giggled. “Actually, you were inside a sack, next to my stomach.”

“Like a grocery bag?” asked Andrew.

“No,” said his mom, “the sack was more like a bubble.”

Andrew pictured himself floating inside a giant bubble.

“And it was weightless for you.”

“Like in a rocket ship in outer space?” asked Andrew and he pictured himself soaring through space in a rocket ship.

“The bubble was full of a special growing water and you swam around in it.”

“Was I a fish?” asked Andrew.

“No,” said his mom, “you were a growing little boy, but your lungs couldn’t breathe air yet, only that special water.”

Andrew pictured himself in a giant fishbowl, swimming around.

“What did I eat?”

“You ate what I ate. We had a tube that connected us called an umbilical cord.”

Andrew imagined his mother passing him a hot fudge sundae through a giant waterslide tube.

“Ew, Does that mean I ate broccoli?”

“Yes,” said his mother smiling, “and never complained. See your belly button? That’s where the umbilical cord used to connect to you.” She tickled him on his belly and Andrew laughed.

“What did I do in the bubble?”

“You grew and you kicked and rolled around and you had the hiccups.”

“Oh, I hate getting the hiccups!”

“You did all kinds of things in there.”

Andrew pictured himself playing soccer, doing karate and tumbling in the fishbowl bubble, holding his breath to get rid of his hiccups.

“As you grew bigger, Andrew, so did my belly. It got to be very round, like a basketball. Then my belly got so big, we thought you would be a giant!”

Andrew saw himself taller than his house, resting an elbow on his chimney and holding a basketball.

“And then you were ready to come out and meet us and breathe air. So, the doctor helped. Your skin was wrinkled from being in water for so long.

“Like when I stay in the bathtub too long?”

“Yes,” said his mom. “And your daddy helped cut the umbilical cord so you could start eating on your own. You cried too.”

“Why?”

“You had never heard your own voice before. You wanted to hear it right away. Daddy says you sounded like a rock star.”

Andrew pictured himself with an electric guitar singing to the doctor and the nurses and his parents in the hospital.

“And you were tiny.”

Andrew pictured himself as small as an insect bouncing on his mother’s belly like a trampoline.

“The nurse wrapped you in a blanket to keep you warm, and I held you and cried with happiness. That’s how you were born.”

“Wow,” said Andrew, “I bet nobody else in the world has a story like that.”

“No,” said Andrew’s Mom, “That’s your story alone. But . . .” She rubbed her tummy. “Your little sister is swimming in a sack of her own right now.”

“My what?” asked Andrew with surprise.

She put Andrew’s hand on her belly, which was rounder than he remembered it. And suddenly he felt it move, like someone kicked it from the inside. Andrew looked at his mother. He looked at her belly and frowned. 

“Mommy, did my baby sister taste like birthday cake?”

“No, Andrew, only you tasted like birthday cake.” She smiled, “Your sister tasted more like strawberry pie.” And they hugged each other tightly.

100 Day Challenge #10: Another Line at the Good Ole DMV

I hate going to the DMV. 

The greatest deterrents: the lack of efficiency, standing in multiple lines, taking three hours to do a transaction that could actually take 15 minutes, getting DMV “gatekeepers” who act and talk to you like YOU are the problem, a BIG problem, the yelling, swearing customers that get everybody else worked up, and—did I mention the lines? I’m not good at queuing up for just about anything—and finally, how the entire experience can make you feel like a head of cattle in a herd heading to slaughter. 

I’m always so grateful when anyone at the DMV treats me like a human being, with courtesy, like they really want to help you complete your transaction. Today, it was the woman guard outside. Ahh! A real human interaction.

Yes, I had to go today to register my son’s car, a gift from his grandparents out-of-state. 

I tried going online ahead of time to get instructions, but the DMV website lacks clear communication, as inefficient as the physical office, so I showed up with what I hoped was the correct paperwork filled out correctly, enough to complete the transaction.

It wasn’t.

Today’s experience at the DMV included the woman yelling insults at her child inside her car parked next to the outside line. As she pulled out of her parking spot, not looking around, another car coming into the lot had to stop abruptly, and she cursed at them out her car window, yelling at them to slow down. 

There was the old, bow-legged man in front of me in line, looking a bit down-and-out. He was wearing a leather jacket and cowboy hat on a hot, muggy and smoky day. He was the only person in line not wearing a mask. I watched as he threw an old tin can top into the parking lot from the sidewalk. Then he put down a plastic cup he was drinking from, abandoning that too for someone else to throw away. Not able to stand as long as the line required, he finally ended up lying down on a bench.

After an hour and a half in the outside line, I finally got instructions inside the door. To drive my car into another line for VIN verification, a process of having someone look at the VIN number on the title to confirm it. That took another 40 minutes. Thirty-five of waiting. Five minutes of inspection. 

Then I had to wait by the door to be allowed back in again, where the woman gave me a number to go wait again. This time at least it was inside with air-conditioning. I took a demeaning plastic chair and watched the numbers tick down on the screen. 

Miraculously, mine came up only about 10 minutes later. Not bad for the DMV.

I reached the desk. That’s when I was told, I’d need to smog the car and come back another day to again stand in line outside, stand in line inside, and stand in line again to get new California plates for the car. 

Two and a half hours later, I headed home. I admit, until writing this eight hours later, I had been feeling deflated, angry and despairing most of the day. Thus the wonder of writing! I feel a lot better!

Until the next trip to the DMV…

100 Day Challenge #9: The True and Unfastened Story of the Zipper

Believe it or not, there is a National Zipper Day. It is April 29th. I love invention and innovation. With a father who’s an inventor, I know very well an invention is not developed in one day. It can take years of R&D. So, what is the story of the zipper? Who invented it? How did it get its name?

The first inventor to get credit for the zipper was Elias Howe in 1851, better known for his invention of the lockstitch sewing machine. He received a patent for an "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure." But his patent day is NOT National Zipper Day. Elias didn’t try to do much with this closing mechanism, too busy with the new, popular and revolutionary sewing machine. By the way, there’s a delightful account on Wikipedia about how he discovered where the eye of the needle had to be located for the sewing machine to work.

In 1890, Max Wolff of Moscow, invented the spiral zipper. That’s not the celebrated fastener either.

         The next inventor of the zipper was Whitcomb Judson, 42 years later in 1893. He patented a "Clasp Locker," mainly a fastener for shoes that made its debut at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. It didn’t have much commercial success. Sometimes it popped open unexpectedly. Judson also invented the pneumatic street railway, used in the first attempt to create a subway system in New York City in 1870. Politics halted the system’s expansion. 

         Judson did, however, start the Universal Fastener Company. After it reorganized in 1901 as the Fastener Manufacturing and Machine Company, an electrical engineer named Gideon Sundback came aboard. Judson patented again in 1905. 

A turning point in the development of the zipper could have come about by a patent registered 1911 in Switzerland by Mrs. Catharina Kuhn-Moos and Mr. Henri Forster. 

But it was Sundback’s next patent in 1913 that started to resemble the contemporary zipper and is the patent date celebrated as National Zipper Day. 

Sundback had another patent for a greatly improved zipper in 1917. It wasn’t until 1925 that consumers started seeing zippers incorporated into clothing, first on leather jackets. Fabrics had to catch up with the zipper to be strong enough for the new metal fasteners. There were several more patents before people really started to see the zipper in merchandise in the 1950s. 

And how did the zipper get its name? It was Benjamin Franklin Goodrich (of rubber tire fame) who saw the invention in 1923 and liked the “zipping” noise it made. He decided to incorporate these fasteners into the company’s new rubber boots. And the name stuck. It’s an onomatopoeia.

And that’s the real, convoluted story of the zipper. There’s even more nuance to the tale, but I’ll zip it for now!

100 Day Challenge #8: The Zipper (or rather) the Introduction to Why I Will Be Discussing the Zipper

Shit! I did miss yesterday’s challenge! 

Well, this is supposed to be an imperfect experiment. 

Practice makes perfect; it doesn’t start out that way. 

Not that perfection is ever the goal. Like Nirvana or pure Democracy, perfection is an ideal, not an achievable destination. Well, it can be an ethereal destination, achieved only in one individual’s perception. But generally speaking, trying to actually achieve perfection is a persistent confidence killer. 

Or a reason to drink. A lot.

So, that said, today I will write both challenge #8 and #9.

 I’m okay with that! So here is #8:

The Real Story of the Common Zipper (PART 1)

Today, I’d like to talk about the zipper, but I’ll probably only get as far as the introduction. My timer just went off. Fifteen minutes already!

So let me correct that.

Eh hem.

Today I’d like to talk about why I’d like to talk about the zipper.

 Almost every morning, while making my coffee—heating water in a kettle to pour into a paper cone perched on a coffee mug (I think it might be time to upgrade!)—I tell Alexa, “Launch This Day in history.” After each historic headline—usually USA-centric but covering a few centuries sometimes millennia—you have the choice to hear more about that event, hear about another event from that date or stop the app. 

To stop this particular app, you have to say, “Alexa, stop.”

To which she replies, “Good-bye,” as if wounded and passive-aggressively angry. It’s great fun!

I often skipped the detailed war history—and there’s a lot of war history—too much war history. I prefer human-interest stories. But anything that triggers my curiosity is okay with me.

A few months ago (on April 29, to be exact), I learned that on that day, the zipper was invented. It was National Zipper Day. 

I’m sure you celebrate it, find zippers around the house, on clothing and luggage, and give them a good zip back and forth to revel in their magnificence and that distinct sound and feel of the zipper. Right?

I heard something to the effect of:

“National Zipper Day commemorates April 29, 1913, when the patent for the modern zipper was issued. The day celebrates something that we often do not think about and may automatically take for granted. The first attempt at creating the zipper came from the inventor of the sewing machine.”

I was intrigued. I love innovation. To contrast the atrocities committed by humans, is ingenuity, imagination, creativity and kindness. I celebrate those things. And the invention of the zipper definitely required the first three. Perhaps even the fourth in some way. 

But here’s the thing. My father is an inventor. I know firsthand that inventions don’t just come about on any one day. That might be the patent issue date, but what is the real story? 

Don’t zip away! Fasten your petticoat for STORY OF THE ZIPPER or Zipper Madness! in Challenge #9!

100 Day Challenge Day #7: Please Don't Give Me Flowers, continued—

Between her allergies and hyper-olfaction, Flora spent most of her time indoors. And most of that time was spent in her room, the hum of the air purifier a constant. She was curled up against pillows on the window seat rereading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, probably for the fifth time, when movement outside caught her eye. Old Mrs. Johnson was wheeling a trash bin down to the end of her driveway in her hunched, slow shuffle, a fragile but determined little machine of a woman. She had just managed the bin out onto the street and was turning it to place it next to the driveway, when she lost her footing. Flora watched frightened and stunned as the woman yelped, grasped frantically at the bin that rolled away from her and fell to the pavement. 

Flora leapt up, letting the book fall and ran out of her room, down the stairs, out the front door and across the street. Smells, a swarm of smells, a stampede of smells of all kind came at her at once. She gagged in the invisible fumes, toxic only to her, breathed through her mouth and willed herself to keep going. She could already feel her skin itching from the grass and pollen.

“Mrs. Johnson! Mrs. Johnson, are you okay?” she yelled “Somebody help!” 

She knelt down. The old woman was still.

“Please don’t be dead,” Flora whispered. She put her hand over the woman’s mouth and felt a warm breath. Thank god. 

That’s when she realized she had run out of the house so quickly she hadn’t brought her cellphone. 

“Help! Somebody! An injured woman! Call 911! Help,” she screamed. 

“Oh no,” came a deep voice. Suddenly kneeling on the other side of Mrs. Johnson’s limp body was Jake De Meola.

“Mrs. Johnson?” 

He gently took her knobby hand in one of his. In the other, he held his cellphone, 911 already dialed. Flora had never been this close to him before. Close enough to see his eyelashes and that his lips were dry. 

He gave the dispatcher the address.

“Yes, I’ll stay on the line,” he said, finally glancing at Flora for the first time. “Did you see what happened?”

100 Day Challenge Day #6: A Personal Bill of Rights

I have my own “Bill of Rights.” My therapist suggested it, making a list in response to the work I was doing to stop judging myself. I was tired of going to a place of shame, a place I lived way too long in my youth and many years of adulthood. My Bill of Rights continues to grow and contains many rights. It starts off something like this:

I have the right to be uncomfortable.

I have the right to take chances and fall on my face publicly.

I have the right to say no.

I have the right to love myself every day.

I have the right to not give to others when I feel I can’t.

I have the right to falter.

I have the right to not be perfect in anything!

I have the right to feel fear.

I have the right to be angry. 

I have the right to follow my heart.

I have the right to be confident about my ideas.

I have the right to be wrong and move on.

I have the right to not like what I’m doing!!

I have the right to not know what I want to do. 

I have the right not to judge myself or others.

I have the right to not like people. 

I have the right to have fun.

And there are more. I keep adding to the list. While helping me feel more confident and loving, the list also helps disempower those unexamined or unconscious belief systems from childhood that helped us to survive in whatever situation we were in.

It’s been a self-empowering exercise, and I highly recommend it. It works! I rarely feel shame these days. It’s much simpler, addressing life’s challenges with a little less inner-struggle.

100 Day Challenge Day #5: We’re Fertile, I swear!

For today’s Challenge writing, I decide to post a piece I wrote in August 2007. And never shared or tried to publish. Sharing my work, my thoughts is an important part of my personal challenge, so I may occasionally include something I wrote long ago. I’m excited!

This one is about trying to get pregnant for the first time in 2002. After a miscarriage, we were successful in 2003 and gave birth to our first son, Ben in February of 2004. But, in the process of trying to conceive, this happened…

We’re Fertile, I swear! 

After all those years of daily pink pill intake and defying the 3% risk of condoms, I wondered: Would the machinery actually work? I finally met the man of my dreams, we took a year to enjoy the impact of marriage (four and a half years of dating), and decided it was time to start popping out babies. By this time, I was 38 years old; he was 40. 

Now that we were ready, I was anxious to get started, anxious for success. Unlike my meandering self at 28, at 38, I appreciated efficiency, quick and dedicated execution of plans. But, of course, getting pregnant naturally doesn’t exactly work like that. Especially when you are into those late thirties and forties. How I began to lament and grieve all those years of recreational procreation wasted.

Like women at any age, I heard the inevitable advice and wives tales: Missionary for a boy, reverse that for a girl, headstands after sex to help the swimmers; get him to start wearing boxers, Robitussin before sex, measure your mucous ( I didn’t know!), just do it every other day. Tums and past-date prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet were tossed in a drawer to make room for ovulation kits and Walgreen’s home pregnancy tests. A basal temperature chart and thermometer and a stack of books sat on my bedside table. Among them the bible of pregnancy, What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

But we’re old, biologically-speaking. So after only a few months of trying, I convinced the nurse practitioner to sign us up early for the Infertility Clinic. Could the name be any worse? For months, I refused to use it. And it was worse once we arrived at the mandatory Infertility Class that would allow us to access the drugs, tests and reproduction specialists we sought. For women my age, this right is yours after six months of trying, after a year for women under 35. That’s what it says in the hospital’s Infertility Handbook under the title, “When Should I Worry?” Great.

My husband was already seated in a rigid plastic chair when I sprinted into the basement meeting room at Kaiser and took another torture chair beside him. He returned my nervous grin with one of his own. Around us were other stiff or squirming couples and single women in the hodge-podge rows of leftover chairs. 

“Welcome to Infertility Class,” smiled Nurse Donna. The overhead screen questioned in three-foot black letters, “What Is Infertility?” 

“Yes, this evening, we’ll talk about infertility.” Infertility. INFERTILITY.

“It really hasn’t even been six months,” I wanted to announce. “We may be as fertile as can be!” It was the first time I felt a sort of animal pride in the ability to reproduce. It took me by surprise. The pressure to be fertile was immense. We would be failures if we were unable to procreate, a shame to our ancestors. We’d be banned forever genetically from our species. 

Evelyn started covering the Art of Conception, and I was stunned by how little I really knew about my body. Labeled pictures of female and male anatomy that I remember vaguely embarrassing from high school biology flashed on the screen. I felt like I had never really seen them before. Unlike in high school, I stared with rapt attention. 

The most fascinating and important information was about the hormones involved in childbirth, giving me new respect for those hormones that I so often complained about and blamed for my poor behavior. 

There’s progesterone and good old estrogen. They are responsible for maintaining the lining of the uterus and are thus involved in menstruation. Prolactin is a hormone made in the pituitary gland in the brain that stimulates milk production. Too much prolactin can cause you to have irregular periods and sometimes trouble ovulating. I thought I might have that. When we attended the class, I was on day 73 since my last period, not uncommon for me. Even in high school. But unnerving, given the task at hand.

FSH and LH are important ones. FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) stimulates the growth of the egg within the ovary while LH (luteinizing hormone) stimulates ovulation or the release of the egg. That one, LH, became my particular favorite, though I know I shouldn’t choose. They all work in tandem.

We left the class ready for conceptual battle, armed with prescriptions and lab requests. I had several directives: a pregnancy blood test, Rubella and HIV blood tests, progesterone to stimulate menstruation, a new basal chart day 1 of my cycle, test for FSH day 2, and test for progesterone day 21. 

Doug only had one test. But it was THE test for men: the sperm sample.

That had been a highlight of the class. Nurse Donna’s favorite stories were sperm stories. She told about the good Catholic, who waited until everyone else had left after the Infertility Class to approach her with his problem. It was against his religion to masturbate. He was a good Catholic. What could he do? Nurse Donna patiently explained that he could ask his partner for some help in the matter. 

Men have a choice where they produce the semen. They can occupy one of the specimen rooms in the basement lab to fill their cups or do it elsewhere and bring it in within one hour, keeping the sample warm in transit.

The good Catholic dashed in with his sample from home, head down, face hidden in the collar of a raincoat, and in his complete embarrassment, thrust his cup quickly on the counter and rushed out. With the lid lose, it fell over, spilled and he had to do it all over again.

My favorite story was of the man who, taking very seriously the idea of keeping his sample warm, presented his cup to the lab receptionist perched on a pillow, with a scarf carefully wrapped around it, his sacred offering.

My husband was a good sport and decided to just visit a specimen room on his way to work one morning. The lab doesn’t accept samples on weekends. I was a bit concerned, wondering how he would manage in the sterile atmosphere. 

He called me that afternoon with his report. “Not my most stellar performance,” he declared, “but the sample is in.”

I started right away on the progesterone I picked up from the pharmacy that evening. Ten days of it and I should start menstruating. Day one, I felt a mild, pleasant euphoria. Day two, I was crawling out of my skin. My whole body tickled and itched from the inside as I squirmed in front of my computer at work. I finally just had to go home. But it worked, which was reassuring. Then I started the daily chore of taking my temperature as soon as I woke up. 

The tests came out mostly positive. My progesterone level was low, possibly indicating, among other things, that I might not be ovulating regularly. But that made sense to me with my irregularity. Doug’s swimmers were active and not two-headed or mutated. The volume and count were just below normal. He blamed it on the three-hour delay in testing we saw on the lab results and vowed to retest. But the doctor assured us it was fine. It’s hard not to take that kind of thing personally.

I tried to relax that month. I figured you have to be relaxed to get pregnant. I became very stressed out about relaxing. Then I realized that mothers of seven in the past frequently had an eighth. And they certainly couldn’t have been relaxed! 

Were we fertile? We would see. But we were in the clinic, which meant that we’d get some of the best care you can get in an HMO. And we could call and ask the Infertility Nurses any questions we had. Like about the Robitussin. It’s true, as it turns out, thins the mucous, which is thicker when a woman ovulates, and lets the sperm through. Who knew?

And desensitized to the name, I can finally say it  . . . infer . . infertil . . . well, it depends on the context.

100 Day Challenge Day #4: Please Don't Give Me Flowers

(…continued)

I can’t believe it! Day #4 and I almost forgot! It’s after midnight. I’m rarely up this late. But I have to do this, so here goes…

(Continued from Day #1) 

Jake was drop-dead gorgeous, at least to Flora. He was more Peeta Malark than Hunger Games-Gale, strong but gentle, capable and kind. From her window, Flora observed him talking with the old Mrs. Jackson from next door. He made the old lady smile, and she unconsciously attempted to straighten her curved back while talking to Jake, as if trying to become a younger version of herself. It was something to behold. No one made Mrs. Jackson smile! He even helped her bring in groceries. He mowed not only his own lawn but her lawn on Saturday mornings, along with several others in the neighborhood. Good spending money, thought Flora. And good relations.

Jake’s house was across the street and down one, a pretty blue thing with white shutters and a front porch with a rocking swing that was in direct sight from her bedroom window. The funny thing was that she rarely saw anyone else besides Jake enter or leave the house. Occasionally, a man pulled a car into the driveway and took out from the trunk a suitcase and briefcase before going into the house. She presumed this was Jake’s father. He must travel for work, but she didn’t know what he did. The car was gone more often than it was parked there. 

She never saw Jake’s mother. Well, one time, looking up from reading on her window seat, she saw Jake and the man escorting a frail-looking woman to the car. She shuffled like an old person, but she had long blond hair. The woman jumped back a little when squirrels chittered loudly in the tree in front of their house. She looked up, eyes wide. It was scary, the look in her eyes, as if she had never seen a squirrel before, as if they were chittering just to frighten her. Her face, Flora realized, was fairly young. She looked like she was younger than Flora’s mother. 

Flora replayed that moment over and over in her head. Could that be Jake’s mother? And if so, what was wrong with her?

Other girls at school noticed Jake too. Even though Flora was only on campus two days out of the five—with the rest home studies—she saw. She observed lots of things that others didn’t, the result, undoubtedly, of living life by looking out windows most of the time. Girls giggled as they passed Jake in the hallway. They glanced at him sideways in classrooms. He was that handsome. If he had been a Greek sculpture, Jake Di Meola would’ve been a kouros, which Flora learned about in World History, a statue that embodied the ideal of youthful male beauty. He was Michelangelo’s David. He could’ve dated any girl he wanted to. But Jake stuck to himself. He had a smile for everyone as he passed them in the hallways, but he walked home alone every day. Jake was a mystery. Like Flora. Except his brand of mystery made him desirable, while hers seemed to make everyone else uncomfortable.

Like a statue in a museum, Jake Di Meola could only be admired from afar. Flora accepted that she might never be near him, might never utter a word to him. But that was okay, really. What if he emitted some odor that ruined his perfection forever? Though in her imagination, he smelled subtly sweet, like a single cherry blossom and slightly robust like mild sandalwood.

100 Day Challenge Day #3: OUCH

OUCH

It’s the end of the day.

Shoulders are sore.

My neck was craned

From eleven to four.

Too long in one chair!

My sitter is numb.

The ache in my wrists

Is making me glum.

The editing work

Was fun for a while,

But the strain on my back

Has erased any smile.

Gosh, I love writing

But hate sitting still.

What a daily conundrum!

What a battle of will!

And I don’t like ambivalence

That uncomfortable state.

How can I keep moving; 

At the same time create?

It’s not good when work

Is equated with pain.

Oh, true ergonomics

I sing your refrain!

100 Day Challenge Day #2: Discipline, Schmitzapline!

Discipline, Schmitzapline!

The professor who created the 100 Day Challenge talks, on a website, about the perplexing and challenging combination of creative freedom and discipline that an artist must have to succeed. That word—discipline—has always given me pause. What IS discipline? 

It means so many things. It has a negative connotation when used as a verb, to discipline someone. The military usage of the word brings images to mind a frowning sergeant yelling profanities and insults at lines of troops, young men and women being trained to obey orders and not think for themselves.

In seeking out a business mentor many years ago, I sat down with a retired businessman who happened to be the father of a high school classmate. “Your problem is you lack discipline,” he said. I recoiled in pain. Per stupid childhood training, I didn’t ask him what he meant. Instead, I stopped seeking his support and let that statement knock and bounce about and bruise inside my head.

It didn’t make sense. Even by then, I had written and published multiple books of my own. And created biography and history books for clients in the double digits. I finish my projects. I complete books. How can you say I lack discipline? 

But still it made me angry. And tapped old insecurities. Do I lack discipline? I certainly can get distracted. I’m a dreamer. I love to live in my imagination. With so many pursuits and pleasures, like singing and dancing, I can take on too much. I don’t do daily routine easily.

So, I sought out a better definition of discipline and found one on another website that I could live with: Discipline is doing what you love even when you don’t feel like it. 

 Among the Webster definitions is: “a system of rules of conduct” (n.) or “training oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way.”

I appreciate ritual. I understand the value of routines—And—I’ve always really enjoyed breaking them. A few years ago, I was able to finish the first draft of a young adult novel by getting up at 5:30am or so each day to write before work. But there were consequences: A loss of connection with my husband, a night owl, since I was in bed by 9pm most nights. And the hardest part—that remains true—is that when I start writing fiction first thing in the morning (I’m a morning person and at my freshest), it’s ALL I WANT TO DO. Even setting an alarm, I want to keep writing. If I don’t set an alarm, it’s three hours later, and I haven’t gotten my production hours in for work yet. And I’m resentful that I can’t just keep going.

As a matter of fact, my fifteen-minute alarm just went off. And I’m still writing. 

But I want to finish this line of thought—for now. And that’s important too.

The other day I was discussing this fear that I lack discipline with someone. She said, “I don’t think you’re talking about discipline. It sounds more like what you mean is persistence.” 

Yes, I thought. Persistence is something I actually want. Discipline, no. I don’t like to “obey.” Discipline sounds boring and rigid. I love a good solid structure. Boundaries. But discipline—the word just doesn’t sound like me. 

When I was a high school teacher, starting when I was only 23 years old—five years older than my seniors; how crazy is that—I wasn’t able to control my classroom until I took a management course called Discipline with Dignity. I was SO afraid, in my naivety, that I would have to be that grumbling sergeant in order to command the room. But the class, with a wonderful upbeat instructor, taught me I could manage from a place of love and caring. Hey, I can do that! Fair, firm and consistent were his words. Firm and consistent were harder. I was brought up—unfortunately—to be passive and subservient, something I’ve worked very hard to uneducate about myself. But with practice, I got better from this imposed illness. I get better all the time.

And there it is. Practice is about persistence, more than it’s about routine. Maybe it doesn’t have to be about the same time, place, lighting, or position each day. I greatly appreciate people who can create and fall into such routines. But, that’s just never worked for ME. What I think I finally understand is that my brand of persistence—a.k.a. discipline—doesn’t have to look like any prescribed model or what other people do. It just has to work for me.

So, imperfectly, I have embarked on this 100 Day Challenge. Because I want to write WHATEVER I want to write (You must choose a focus, the experts say. Hell with that.), whenever it works to write it, for approximately 15 minutes, and share it with others (on whatever social media I have time to get it on), but for sure every day. THAT sounds exciting and fun! 

 I honestly don’t care what discipline means anymore.

100 Day Challenge-Day #1: Please Don't Give Me Flowers

Inspired by a friend who took this challenge (Thanks Kim!) and created some beautiful artwork, I’m embarking on the 100 Day Challenge (or 100 Day Project).

My daily repeated activity will be 15 minutes of writing. About anything. Ten minutes to clean it up. Five minutes to post it with a visual (If possible. Since I love visuals). If this gets so it takes too long each day, I’ll go down to 10-5-5.

I’m giving myself no limits. I might write fiction, opinion pieces, research, questions, quotes, poems, lyrics, gibberish, recipes…who knows! It won’t be perfect. There will undoubtedly be typos and grammar issues. Some pieces may be incomplete—and stay that way. No limits! Just write and share. Every day for 100 days.

Wish me luck!

Please Don’t Give Me Flowers

or No Flora for Flora

Flora didn’t like flowers, which was a problem given her name.

“Who doesn’t like flowers?” said her mother who had bequeathed the name, who was a horticulturalist and loved flowers.

Flora had nothing against flowers really, the colors were beautiful. She knew they probably smelled wonderful to everyone else. Problem was that Flora had terrible allergies, and most flowers made her sneeze. Then it got even worse. It turned out she was extra sensitive to smells, just born that way, with some rare condition of which she couldn’t pronounce the name. And so while the perfume of a rose might make one person hum, it was a sickly sweet odor to Flora that made her want to vomit.

 Flora could never visit her mother at work. Her mother worked in a Garden Center, was co-owner. Her whole world was flowers. Except Flora. Outside of Flora‘s home, at the center and select clients’ houses, her mother kept wonderful lush gardens, living rainbows that made entire neighborhoods smile with the scents of lilac and lemon, the kind of atmospheres that inspired paintings and songs. 

With great reluctance and resentment—Flora supposed—her mother had torn out her lovely home garden when Flora was five years old, when it was clear without a doubt what was making her daughter sick, when test after test after test at the hospital made it undeniable. And pronounced it incurable. Now, in the place of that magic fairyland of crayon-colored blossoms, were rows of succulents and cacti. Even some of those flowered. If they had a scent, Flora’s mother’s had to clip the pretty buds as they desperately tried to open. One time, in homage to her mother’s sacrifice, Flora took out the tiny unopened buds from the green bin and buried them in the back with a cross made of popsicle sticks (from her homemade popsicles of water and a hint of lemon).

Because of Flora’s sensitivity to smells, certain foods were also repugnant. Cake frosting at birthday parties was overwhelming. Curries, like the ones her father‘s family made and he grew up on were intolerable and made her run away, gulping air through her mouth, pinching her nose red. 

There were hazards in every day occurrences. Like When the neighbor’s dog pooped on their lawn, when the garbage trucks roll through on Thursday mornings, and most every day in early spring when the citrus trees bloomed. 

One time when a skunk sprayed in the neighborhood, her parents had to take her to stay at her grandmother’s apartment. Flora liked Grandma’s place. It was in a sterile retirement center, one of those upscale ones where all the residents ate three meals a day in the dining room and all the flowers were plastic, dusted regularly. Grandma had a small kitchen but never used it except to make tea, for the most part. So, there were no kitchen smells in Grandma’s apartment. No smoking was allowed in the building. And Grandma didn’t care for perfume. The only issue was the occasional scent of urine that old people sometimes have. But because of the upscale nature of the place, the residents kept themselves clean or someone else helped them. 

 Flora had started going to Grandma‘s apartment after school in fourth grade, where it was easier for her to concentrate on her homework. It was in the opposite direction from home on the bus, a terrible commute for her mother to pick her up at the end of the day when it was dark. But it was worth it if Flora was happier, her mother would say, even though she didn’t smile when she said it. 

As a result, both of her absence from home and her sensitive nose, Flora never really got to know the other kids in her neighborhood. This was a problem, because she became a sort of enigmatic figure, the weird girl, the antisocial girl, someone whispered about. Most kids did not know about Flora’s disease for a long time. It was worse when they found out. 

 The knowledge of Flores sensitive nasal passages amongst her peers coincided with early puberty, a cocktail for misery. Kids started doorbell ditching and leaving smelly things in front of Flora’s house. Sometimes it was bouquets of tube roses or a Tupperware of cheap perfume open to the breeze or cut lemons and oranges or coffee grounds. On the worst days it was more dog shit, cigar buds from someone’s uncle, day-old refried beans in a Taco Bell bag. Flora became the local science experiment, a living chemistry set. If the kids had known, they would’ve realized they were creating a hypothesis each time and testing their subject to see if the reaction was as expected. That’s how Flora chose to look at it. When she could. 

Now that she was sixteen, besides her mother and her books and puzzles and her stuffed bear Frosty, and a few other nostalgic comfort toys, there was only one other thing that drew her back home each day. Jake.