A Mark On My Wall

Lordy, have I been busy. I haven’t even signed on to my own blog for over a week and just now when I did I caught a glimpse of a word yoga-esque that causes me little heart to quiver…

Speaking of yoga, while in Chicago last week, I went to an early Sunday morning class led by Pere, a presence as evolved as any I have known. I was merely trying to unwind from lots of travel, a high powered and exhausting private tour at the zoo, construction woes (yes, we’re revisiting the hardwood floor issue of this time last year) and more importantly, friends with worries. Yet another dear young friend, the mother of my 18 month old surrogate granddaughter Alexis, has cancer. One of my closest Michigan friends has a wayward ticker, literally, so she is facing some tough decisions close on the heels of her husband’s death. My skin is like something out of a science fiction movie, behaving as an evil alien life force, so I’m trying to make decisions about the best place to have surgery and recover. (I’m felting a Phantom of the Opera mask for myself) So on and so forth. Really. Just moving forth.

But there I was at yoga class, looking for a bit of inner calm, when handsome Pere asks, “When you come to yoga class today, who suffers?” What??? Why this inane new-age query, right in the midst of my fuzzy peace of mind? He went on to quietly and simply elaborate. When you chose to do something, anything, who suffers? Defensively, I was thinking no one suffers if I come to yoga for a couple hours on Sunday morning. And then “Juanita!” popped into my mind. Juanita is my young friend having breasts removed. I thought, if I hadn’t been in Chicago taking care of that private tour and consulting floor installers and dermatologists, I could have been by Juanita’s side or playing with baby Alexis or giving a soothing pep talk to her husband, Chris. Pere went on to wonder aloud, “who benefits when you come?” Um, om, I guess that would be me. Perhaps a couple hundred strangers at the zoo had a beneficial moment. And then he talked a bit about gratitude and balance in the world as we find our way and make our choices. It was good.

I have had a similar discussion with daughter, Abby. The Snarl is getting ready to sit for the LSATs with an idea that she will go on, thousands of dollars in debt later, to become an environmental policy lawyer and maybe even a judge in that specialty area. I asked her if and where she saw a family in her future and she responded that she wasn’t sure she did. It was more of the “who suffers?” sort of thing, about the karma of the human footprint (Find that new series on National Geographic channel this week. Your jaw will drop.) I, of course, take the “who benefits?” side of that argument.

When it comes to bringing children into this world, while I relate absolutely to Abby’s thinking, I also feel the most amazing sense of delight and, yes, gratitude, when I see these women I know and love and respect presenting us with new life. It seems almost as if we are being gifted with beautiful little bundles of hope and positive energy and, maybe, salvation. I know for certain I would feel that way if the Snarl or Daniel ever have children. I feel that way about baby Alexis, as her mother struggles. About the numerous children of a certain yo-mama who are all out enriching and healing and growing our world.

And then there’s my good, sweet friend here in the neighborhood. (Thought I’d never get there, didn’t you Kimberly?). There’s delightful Raehan. Raehan is bulging (harsh but true, I’ve seen the belly) with her soon to arrive baby and I am gleeful at the prospect. She has written long enough and eloquently enough and in the most sweet ways (like the darkest, finest bittersweet chocolate sweet) about the slings and arrows of motherhood and family life she enjoys with her two already lovely lassies that I know this to be true: Raehan is precisely the sort who benefits us all when she has a baby. Thank you, Raehan! Thank you. Feel free to push.

You can help celebrate Raehan’s bloggy baby shower by stopping over at Petroville where a few of us are gathering today to wish Raehan the very best in these days and weeks- and lifetimes- to come. Or, you can go directly to Raehan’s place for a skin shot. She posts as regularly as I do, but we all still love her…

My week in Chicago, with the exception of that yoga class and one other five minute blip, was hustle, bustle, run, lift, sort, disseminate, and race about airports. The other five minute blip happened when I arrived at the zoo early, before the entire rest of Windyville out for the first warm Spring day, to greet another new arrival. Speaking of baby love, I give you this new Bolivian gray Titi monkey. He or she spends the entire day hitching a ride, because like the rest of us primates, Titis have low fat breast milk and the newborns are pretty much helpless. The cute factor helps mitigate the cling factor. Raehan, don’t you hope yours is this cute?

I’m at the airport, waiting for my plane to fly back to Chicago. I’ll be there for most of the next week. The primary reason I’m flying back is that I’m giving a private donor tour at the zoo on Saturday. Because Lincoln Park is the last free private zoo in the country, we are highly dependent on generous benefactors. On one end of the continuum these donors give enough to build entire pavillions, a state of the art primate habitat and research facility and on the other end, lots of our supporters have just a family membership. In both cases, these are the people who sustain us and our charges.

This private tour will be fun- it will get me back into the zoo at full speed after several months away. For a private tour I have to be on my toes with all of my animal facts straight. Tomorrow and Friday I’ll go over and see who has hatched, been born, moved to a new enclosure or arrived as a visitor from another zoo.

I didn’t bring my camera. I’m traveling light and besides, I’m cranky with it because it is again having focusing issues. It may be time to keep the lenses, which are fine, and switch out cameras. I’ve loved my Canon but over 20,000 photos later and lots of travel, well, perhaps it’s time to retire.

I’m thinking I’ll have quite a bit of time to get around and visit you, especially since Rich said that the cable was out, again, and I’m so done dealing with our provider I’ll probably just wait until we return for good in a month and switch.

I did want to share this little video clip about the zoo with you- it was shown on ABC Evening News the other day. I’ve mentioned here before that older zoos often have older populations and, as one of the oldest zoos in the nation, Lincoln Park has more than it’s fair share of geriatric residents. Sometimes the public sees one of our animals looking less active and agile and think it’s tied to care. In fact, just the opposite is true.

I also wanted to share this sweet picture of two of our Lowland Gorillas. I love this pair. I’ll be interested to see if they remember me.

Back in Ann Arbor I used to go to concerts at Hill Auditorium, a magnificent venue, aesthetically and acoustically. But the audience- yeesh! Talk about your blue-haired snoots. Great, high energy artists would come and the audience would sit there, rigid and self-conscious, murmuring, “yes, yes, that was quite exceptional…” I remember when I saw Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma together and one remarkable piece after another, the restrained applause was stupefying. After these concerts the Ann Arbor News would give rave reviews- but seriously, you couldn’t tell by the reaction of audience.

Tonight I revisited the home of my Hollywood debut, Eckerd College, to see The Harlem Gospel Choir. They performed in the gymnasium of all places, to a packed house, of mostly old, mostly white people. Well, can you say amen, mama?! The choir was incredible and the crowd was an absolute hoot. The choir insisted that the audience get up! GET UP, I TELL YOU! Shout. I SAID SHOUT! DO YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN FLY?? I asked you now, DO YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN FLY? About the time the choir got through Ride On, King Jesus and into Oh, When the Saints every octogenarian in the place was dancing in the aisles. Old geezers in blue polyester golf pants were waving their arms back and forth to the rhythm of Jesus Can Work It Out and these creaky old gals were grinding away to Down By The Riverside. By the time the choir started singing “the Black national anthem” every square inch of floor space was jammin’ to Oh, Happy Day! The evening ended with the audience roaring, “A-AMEN! A-AMEN! AMEN, AMEN! It was practically a revival meeting. All I can say is amen to cultural diversity. Also, thank you Jesus, for concerts down here that only cost 10.00 as opposed to 120.00 at Lyric Opera in Chicago and thank you for starting them right after the Early Bird specials and ending them in time for me to be home in bed by nine.

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Last year and now this year, I start to miss springtime about now. What I really miss is springtime in Michigan, in Ann Arbor, where eight different mature flowering fruit trees in the half acre front yard would begin to get the vaguest tinges of various shades of pink. I miss living in a place where we would have ducks up from the Huron River and nesting birds gearing up for eggs and then hatch-lings. Chicago is okay; I mean, at least the season changes but it is so crowded, urban, hustle bustle that the main signs of spring are the melting of the blackened snow and the blooming of my dozen tulips Betsy gave me. (Next year, of course, I’ll have 1000 bulbs, thanks to Bud. Right after I jack hammer the courtyard and alley, bring in 800 yards of dirt and get those puppies planted…Betsy, I see daffodils in your future.)

Down here in Florida, it appears there are two seasons: warm pollen season and hot hurricane season. We’re at the tail end of the former. I’ve lived through the annoyance of falling leaves and the allergens of changing seasons but I could never, ever imagine that a tree (the Live Oak or Querus virginiana-querus, indeed) could drop leaves and seeds continuously for 3 months. Damn! Those pollen infested stringy seeds are piled up 2 feet deep around here. You can rake and sweep them up one day and the next day it’s raining down seeds all over again. This goes on for weeks. The leaves make good mulch but the seeds! And the little one inch strands break up into a million microscopic pieces when a 22# cat rolls around in them (ya, ya, he’s not losing any weight). McCloud comes in looking like a giant pile of compost and where he normally has spiffy white sox, these weeks they are bright yellow with pollen.

The good news in the yard has been the Earth Boxes. I am so in love with my Earth Boxes. Remember when I started them mid-January?

And then, within a month they looked like this:

I have a plan to start an Earth Box franchise in Chicago. These will be a huge hit for all the city dwellers who want so much to be green. It’s not easy being green (tee-hee, I made myself laugh) when there are no yards or gardens but these would work really well in courtyards. I’m planning to take back several and start all over again with cool weather lettuce and peas and then tiny tomatoes. The amount of fruit, the constant moisture level, the lack of bugs, the short season high-intensity gardening works for me.

We’ve had a steady supply of beautiful greens and just this week I have more pea pods and tomatoes than I can eat.

I also have peppers: sweet bell, jalapenos, habaneros and datils. So far, only the jalapenos and habaneros are ripe enough to pick; the others are within a week or two.

It’s time to start sharing with the neighbors.

(My father used to always call me either kiddo or munchkin. Not sure why that thought floated through…)

They did another one of those segments on the high cost of having children on the news yesterday. Now it’s up to about a half million per child. That includes 18 years of housing, food (they eat 34,000. worth of food, for pete’s sake. And that’s if you don’t let them acquire a taste for sushi). 25,000. is the average cost of child care. I know I paid more than that. And then there’s scuba gear and skateboards and saxophone reeds and lacrosse sticks…If you earn more money, a kid costs you more of course, because then you can’t just toss them a bus pass; you have to get them a car (a used Suburu will do. Actually, neither Dan nor Abby have a car which is pretty much unheard of these days. They do a whole lot of biking.). A computer. And a phone. Well, you don’t actually have to give them a phone, but back in September of 2001 I got them phones and after that it was hard to say, “Okay. There are no weapons of mass destruction. Give the phones back.” Whatever.

The main problem with this segment was the small print, the cost of raising a child “for eighteen years.” Who, these days, is raising a child for eighteen years? Hah! Try thirty years. And that’s only as far as people my age have gotten. For all we know, you’re raising them until they’re subduing you in a nursing home.

Okay. I’m joking. Mostly. All our four children are hard at work trying to support themselves, with a fair amount of success. Still. Our children are seeing the effects of a changing economy. I was able to buy my first home in my mid-twenties and Rich had two children to feed by the time he was the kiddos ages. (I waited longer because I loved the sound of “elderly primip.” That’s what they wrote in my medical records when I showed up for prenatal care with Dan. Laugh. I don’t care.)

Speaking of Dan and issues financial, I suggested that he really should get good with Uncle Sam, especially with Bush’s Walmart Special this year. It’s aimed directly at impoverished musicians like Dan. Not really. It’s aimed at all the people who are being ripped off by sub-prime mortgage lenders and credit card companies; they’re supposed to go out and spend their 600. and stimulate the economy (probably on a flat screen that costs 800. but they can put the balance on the credit card, not to worry.) I did point out to Dan that if he just files he’ll get a check in the mail that is bigger than any other check he’s gotten. Plus, I have a hidden agenda: if he files he’ll have documentation that he’s living below the poverty level (while working endlessly and tirelessly) and he might qualify for his home county’s low-cost health care insurance. That would be good for him to have, given the heart defect and all. Sigh. Can we say, “ready for change”?

Taxes are, ah, taxing for kiddos with one giant right hemisphere and only a speck of left. Plus, it’s not as though he gets a W-2. He is paid twice a week or once every other month, after the record contract is signed or after the wedding reception, 50.00 or an eighth of the door take, dinner and two beers or nothing at all. To please me, he went off to our accountant to file his taxes. The only problem (s): He had no documentation. Not a single slip of paper. Nada. He didn’t know how much he earned. No guesstimate. Not a clue. Dan didn’t see the problem. He figured that he would multiply his rent by 12, add in some nominal amount for a weekly food budget, track down the receipts for instrument repairs and reeds and that was precisely, exactly the amount of money he earned last year. Apparently, in his own disarming way, he convinced the (entirely left brained) accountant because, together, they are concocting a financial history for him that can be submitted on a 1040 and get him that stimulus check.

Around here, Rich got a bonus at work. This is a new concept for us. I was always self-employed and Rich had his own business. Now he’s working in the corporate world and this bonus check showed up. (Personally, I think bonus checks should just “show up” for teachers and social workers.) It was sort of like winning a drawing or door prize- something that always happens to other people. We had a lengthy discussion about how to spend the bonus. Point in fact, there was enough to set aside some in savings for property taxes and rowhouse roof repairs, a little slush fund, a small check for each child and then we divided up the rest so we would each have our own money. Rich doesn’t care about having his own money but while I fully endorse the concept of “our money” (hence, “our bonus”, right?) there’s a little part of me that is like Pearl in that YouTube video with Will Ferrell and the landlord. She’s this little toddler screaming, “I WANT MY MONEY!” This is a new psychological problem that has developed since I stopped earning a living. I suppose we could have pooled our funds and bought one of those flat screens but so far we’ve gotten along fine with our 19 inch big butt TV. Besides, “I WANT MY MONEY!”

Anyway, we were like kids in a candy store for a couple days. Rich immediately went out, that night, and bought himself a weight bench and an electric drill. I bought myself an iRobot Roomba. How comical are we??

The Roomba is the most wonderful invention known to womankind. I’ve named her Cinderella or Cindy, for short. Cindy wanders around, relatively quietly, sucking up all the sand and cat hair and wool felting dust that seems to accumulate rapidly down in this Florida house with all the wood floors. She has some kind of sensors that map out the dimensions of a room and then she goes back and forth in a pattern of sorts. She rumbles along all the edges with little revolving brushes and works her way under the lowest furniture. She gets herself on and off rugs and doesn’t get tangled in fringe or cords. Just when you’re certain that she’s overlooked a dust bunny she spins around and whips over to snap it up. When she’s all done, she sends herself back to the docking station for recharging. She’s worth every single penny of my 250.00 bonus.

Rich has pointed out that Cindy is not really a time saver because I spend all the time she’s working watching her. It’s riveting stuff. She’s like a useful pet I don’t have to feed. I do need to empty the litter. I haven’t pointed out yet that Rich hasn’t drilled anything around the house in all the time I’ve know him ( although he can, because he built a house full of closets in one day for Habitat).

Well, that’s all of our personal business I’m going to share for now.

These little duckling kiddos were raised by Abby a few years ago when we lived in Ann Arbor. They cost about 24.00 in duckling chow to raise to age 3 months and then we tipped them into the Huron River and off they went. But then they came back the next Spring, with girlfriends and boyfriends and hung around the feeder. What can you do?