Month: May 2010

Balloons in the Bedroom

Two balloons float near the ceiling of my bedroom. The one with pink roses says, “Happy anniversary.” The other one, showing a bear holding a bunch of balloons against a blue sky, says,”Hang in there.” On the dresser nearby sit an African violet plant loaded with purple blooms and two cards filled with handwritten messages from the people who sing in our choirs at Newport’s Sacred Heart Church, where I’m one of the music ministers.

I am so grateful for their love and support, even though tears stream out as I read their words. On May 18, my husband Fred and I had been married 25 years, but Fred, who has Alzheimer’s Disease and lives in a nursing home, didn’t know who I was. I had come with our wedding photo album, hoping to share our memories, but he didn’t understand that he was married to me. He looked at me with the eyes of a stranger. I can’t begin to describe how much that hurt. I held my tears until I left. Driving toward home on Highway 20, I cried so hard I thought I would break.

Eventually I found some peace, and Fred did know me on Sunday. This disease is crazy, cruelly giving and taking away. Sometimes I get my love back for a little while. It will never be the way it was, but we have to treasure the moments we get. It is so precious just to sit holding hands or hugging and saying, “I love you.”

I had mentioned the anniversary to my church friends, noting that my family had let the day slip by unnoted. Last night at choir practice, they surprised me with their gifts. If I seemed to not react at the time, it’s because I was stunned and trying not to cry. But I went to sleep surrounded by their love, and when I woke up, it was still there. It means so much to me.

I guess sometimes the most loving family is the one you find for yourself.

It was waiting for me at the door

I got home late last night from visiting my husband in Albany, and I was dog tired. It was a good visit, but it’s almost 200 miles altogether, and I provided entertainment. Fred knew who I was, and there were no tears, so life was good. However, it was raining so hard on the way home that I missed my exit and had to go about 25 miles out of my way. I found myself driving through farm towns I had never heard of with nothing but fields and old barns around. I was so glad to see the signs for Corvallis, which meant I could turn west on Highway 34 and go back home to the Oregon coast.

I arrived at my door, guitar in one hand, purse, coat, music book, and melting-ice Burger King drink in the other, went to open the screen door, then stopped and stared. The biggest slug I had ever seen, about eight inches long, was plastered across the door and frame just above my head like a giant tape sealing the door shut.

It was the color of snot, same consistency, too. Slug-ugly. Unappealing though it was, I didn’t want to kill it. Nor did I want to touch it with my hands or anything else I treasured. My keys, for instance, might not do the job and would be rendered forever sticky. Finally I just put the guitar down and opened the door, ducking under the slug.

After I got myself in, I went back out to look. The slug had shrunk itself down to one side of the door and was fine. Fifteen minutes later, it was gone, probably snacking on my rhododendrons.

Visits from bugs are common here. In my shower, I have had a cozy relationship with a spider for the last five days. If she stays on the ceiling, I don’t mind, but when she comes down opposite my eyeballs while I’m wet and naked, I get a little nervous. I’m not into murder, but I wish she’d go somewhere else. I’m beginning to wonder how long a spider can live. She gets plenty of water, and the ants I saw a while back have disappeared, so I guess she has food. I’ll continue this live-and-let-live relationship as long as I can, but you never know what’s going to happen.

This morning, for instance, I went to put my soap in the rack above the bathtub and it slipped through the holes, falling directly into my glass of orange juice. “Oh no!” I said, staring at it in horror. What a way to start the day. Then, when I went to open a new can of frozen OJ, the plastic pull-off deal that seals it shut broke off in my hand. Hello, Monday!

But all is well. I just checked on the spider. She’d like to borrow a little soap and shampoo. The slug is oozing along under the hydrangeas, and I’ve got new orange juice chilling in the fridge.

May your week be free of slugs at the door, spiders in the shower and soap in your orange juice. And if your soap does fall into your juice, offer it to the spider or the slug. Or both.

Take a look at these tulips


I just love bulbs–not the kind you screw into your lamps, the kind that grow in the ground. They hide under the soil all summer and fall. Just when you’re about to go nuts with too much winter, they pop up and start blooming. You don’t have to do anything. They just keep showing up.

Somebody planted tulip bulbs in my garden long before I moved to this house. I thought I dug all the bulbs out when I started my great gardening plan a couple years ago, but I guess I missed a few. Right now, I’ve got white tulips and some that look like rainbow sherbet. About the time they start to fade, the wild poppies will appear. Later in the year, if I’m lucky, the gladiolas will bloom. What a gift for someone who gardens about once every six months.

Some folks are more serious about tulips. The town of Woodburn, OR, about 45 minutes from Portland, hosts an annual tulip festival in April. I know, we missed it. Mark your calendars for next year. (But we’re in time for the rhododendron festival, which happens May 21-23 in Florence, OR.)If you’d like to get your own tulips planted for next spring, check out The Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, which grows tulips by the acre and takes orders online.

It rains about 80 inches a year around here, but in the spring, when the sun comes out and everything’s in bloom, we look around and know we’re living in paradise.

Parts of me are excellent, Part II

Getting old ain’t for sissies. Bette Davis said it years ago, and it’s so true. Thursday I walked the dog with my eyes looking like two black marbles. I had just come from the ophthalmologist’s office, where I learned that I have a cataract in my left eye. Now I knew I had the beginnings of one, but I figured I didn’t have to worry about it for another 20 years. Wrong. It’s bad enough to operate on right now.

The proof was in the vision test. The right eye worked fine, but when I tried to see the chart with just the left, I saw two of every blurry image. I couldn’t read any line properly, even the giant E. Instead of giving me a new prescription, the technician said, “We have to see what’s going on with that left eye before we can proceed.” Uh-oh.

I sat in the big chair and prayed until the doctor hurried in, all tweed suit and gray hair. He was unusually quiet during the exam. Double uh-oh.

First he told me all the things I didn’t have. Then he told me about the cataract. I’m not old enough, I protested. He said even babies sometimes have cataracts. Indeed, an Internet search showed it’s not unusual for infants to be born with this milky coating on the lens. It comes more commonly with age—prime time for cataract surgery is late 70s and early 80s—but it can happen at any time with illness, injury, stress, or quirks of nature. I made that last one up. I was too busy panicking to listen to everything the doctor said. A real gearhead, he went on about a new lens coming from Europe that will enable patients to see both far and near. Ooh wow. Give me old reliable, please. We’re talking about my eye.

The doctor advised me to wait six months. I’m getting along all right with it now. Let’s see how it progresses and see if the right eye, which has a “trace” of a cataract, catches up.

Gee, I just wanted some stylish new glasses.

I cried all the way home. Now I’m trying to see the bright side. Eventually, sooner than expected, I won’t need glasses after 42 years of contacts and specs. It was going to happen someday; might as well get it over with.

So, my eyes are older than I am, too. But really, most parts are younger. Look at that picture. How old do you think I am? Then think about this: I remember Bette Davis.

P.S. You can find lots of information at www.cataract.com. I’m not making that up.

Parts of me are excellent, part I

Suddenly my back was killing me. It hurt to get up, to get down, to roll over, to brush my teeth, to do anything. I put up with it for a week, remembering unfondly my many sessions with chiropractors in the ’80s and ’90s. Back then, a doc had told me that if I walked or swam every day my muscles would get strong and I would not have so many problems. It worked for almost two decades.

I don’t know whether it was moving furniture and painting my den or the last-minute rush to finish my book while sitting scrunched up at my desk for hours, but I was in pain. I made the call. After x-rays, talk and an exam, Dr. Schones, who is young enough to be my son, told me I have a disintegrating disk in my lower back. Just like millions of other baby boomers. He signed me up for three treatments a week, with ice, Ibuprofen and careful movements in-between. Nuts. I was sucked into the chiro zone again.

Folks at church got to watch me struggle up and down from the piano bench last week. We Catholics get up and down a lot. Okay, grab the bench, eeeease down slowly, carefully scootch forward, ahhh. Let us pray? They’re standing. Oh no.

Just when I’d start to feel better, I’d go back to the doctor and he’d crunch my bones again. Back to the couch with the ice pack. By Friday, I had stopped screaming, “Jesus!” with every adjustment and just said, “uh.” I only have to go twice this week.

I’m feeling much better. I’m doing my walks, doing a little yoga and looking forward to saying adios to the doctor, even if they did have homemade cookies on Friday.

Meanwhile, I’m sick of looking at that plaster vertebra with the squashed red disk. Dr. Schones says mine looks much older than I am.

Last week I learned of another body part that’s aging too quickly, but I’ll save that for next time. Meanwhile, get away from the computer and move around while you can.

Small World

Newport is a small town. You expect to meet people you know everywhere. Driving into town yesterday, I passed a friend from church choir. At the grocery store, I ran into the woman who lives in the house behind mine. I also saw the crazy guy who walks up and down Highway 101 muttering to himself. A woman I met in the vegetable aisle looked so familiar. At a concert on Sunday at the Newport Performing Arts Center, I felt as if I knew everyone on stage and off from singing, writing, church or all three.

But when my wonky back flared up and I went to a new chiropractor last week, I found the most amazing connection. It wasn’t so weird that his assistant, Joe, used to live in my old neighborhood in California. That happens all the time. But Dr. Paul Schones used to live in my house. That’s right. My house. He spent the first nine years of his life in the house where I live now in South Beach. He started drawing on my X-ray envelope. This was the kitchen, this was the living room, this was my room . . . He did not know about the den that was added later, but otherwise he remembered it exactly as it was–and is. I only knew about the family who lived here just before us, the Fends. I had no idea the Schones were here before them.

And you know that neighbor in the grocery store? That’s his aunt.