S.K. Waller's Blog, page 15

This is a Good Day

On rainy days like today, when everything is tinted grey and the streets are wet and quiet, I like to remain as still as I can manage. A full week of physical labor leaves me feeling not only satisfied, but grateful. I'm myself again. I have energy and endurance and I'm not laid low with crushing fatigue, depression, and massive pain as I have been for the past seven years. Seven. Years.

In the past week I've tended established flower beds, planted new ones, taken care of some much needed fix-its around the house, and I've even painted the front porch floor. Normally, these things would have taken me months. For the past year nothing has been done at all; last summer was spent virtually bedridden. I cannot begin to describe how I'm feeling mentally and emotionally...
Part of me thinks this is only temporary, that the misery will return any morning now and I'll waken to a day like literally thousands of others. It can't possibly last. Can it? "Don't trust this," a little voice says. "You're setting yourself up for a huge disappointment." Such is the nature of any disease that goes into remission, I believe. We grow so accustomed to the abuse that it becomes part of who we are. It'll take time for me to trust my body again; it has a lot of kissing up to do.

The week's exertions have left me a little tired and a little sore, but no more than any woman my age should expect and, where fatigue is concerned, well, there just isn't any. I go to bed feeling that satisfying tiredness of jobs well done and goals accomplished.

Today is a good day to dedicate to music and to do some web design work. I hope your weekend is wonderful!

In My Garden a Flower Grows

I had every intention of writing a long blog entry about the phases of womanhood, but something has happened that keeps me from spending a lot of time online, especially on this blog, which may or may not be a good thing. My health had taken such a dangerous turn, I finally had to bite the bullet and make an appointment with my doctor, something I can no longer do unless I'm really just frightened for my life. The lack of healthcare insurance and no money leftover in the budget for such "frivolous" a thing as a doctor appointment are just too daunting. Just to talk to her costs me $150 and that doesn't include treatment, lab work, or prescriptions. If I go see her, my family doesn't eat for a week. Welcome to America. But lest you think this is an entry of "unpatriotic" faultfinding and whining, I move onward...
I finally decided to see my doctor, slip out before paying, then make somewhat affordable payments after receiving the bill in the mail. I've gotten quite good at this and, to tell the truth, they really don't mind. A lot of people do it this way these days at this particular clinic. After learning that my blood pressure was dangerously high, I was told to spend the next two weeks on virtual bed rest and keep stress to a minimum while waiting for my new dosage of Synthroid to work its magic. Of course, this would cost me an additional $230 for blood work as well as $55 dollars for the new prescription, not to mention $65 for pain medication. I told my doctor I couldn't even take Nettl out for our 14th anniversary, much less shell out $500 on one appointment. "You're not a cheap date," I said. "I really don't want to see you anymore."

Forgoing the pain meds (big ouch, that) and getting two months of Synthroid from a fellow Hashimoto's sufferer whose doctor changed her own prescription, I was able to make things work. The really good news came when the clinic's receptionist told me to apply with the CBO, Stillwater Medical Center's assistance program. These are the same people who paid for Nettl's emergency gallbladder surgery in 2010. So, long story short, I haven't had to pay for any of the visit while waiting for my application to be approved. When it is, I'll make an appointment with an endocrinologist and really get this soul-sucking auto-immune disease under control. A GP just doesn't have the training to handle something this serious and specialized. At least not anymore. Gone are the days when my GP was my only doctor, including my OB-GYN and my surgeon.

Anyway, in the meantime, an holistic massage therapist moved her practice next door to Nettl's office and they got to talking. Compassionate soul that she is, and a fibromyalgia patient besides, she offered to give me treatments in exchange for a website, which I will build and maintain. As she charges $75 an hour and I charge $20 an hour, I believe I'm getting the better end of the bargain. I've been seeing her for about a month now and the results have been nothing short of miraculous. My blood pressure is down (it's not perfect, but it's significantly lower) and the excruciating pain I've been living with for years (even with medication) has subsided enough that I spent the entire last weekend gardening. I also can keep up with Nigel, which is saying a whole hell of a lot. Between her and the new dosage of Synthroid, I'm at least no longer a zombie. Bad days still come and go, but they're not as bad as they have been, and morose thoughts of not wanting to be here no longer plague me. I'm no longer entertaining thoughts that perhaps my family would be better off without me because I'm nothing but a financial drain and no fun anymore.

I'm learning how to emotionally detach from people, situations, and conversations that stress me out and make the whoosh-wooshing in my ears start up again. Being eye level with a stroke has a way of helping us recognize what's important, and I will not have one over other people's moods and dramas or my cell phone being de-activated due to non-payment, thank you very much. There is nothing so terrible in my life that I will get to that point again. Unless someone breaks into my house and holds a gun to my head, or I see a tornado coming up the street, I just won't allow stress to make me that sick ever again. Staying alive is more important than anyone else's problems. Sorry if that sounds cold. Walk a mile in my shoes.

I'm still not out of the woods, not by a long shot. My improving health is tenuous at best and every day I face the challenge of keeping myself centered, which isn't easy when money is so tight, but I'm growing in directions that I might not have gone, otherwise. I'm learning to face life with more humor and I feel that I'm even attaining a certain amount of grace. Because of this, my garden and various flower beds are flourishing as much as I am. It's great to be alive!

The Passing of a Great Soul - Maya Angelou

"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded."

There's not a thing I can say about Maya Angelou that won't be said many times over today so I will leave it at this and allow her words to speak for her, just as they always have.

Wings

"We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings."

Henry Miller

Time to Take Stock

I have the kind of mind that falls naturally into the understanding and use of metaphor. Even in the most casual of conversations you'll hear me say, "It's like..." I love metaphor as long as it isn't trite or obvious, and my health's sudden nose dive brought up a comparison that I really loved. Let me see if I can explain it to you. It won't be easy because the brain fog I'm currently struggling with is a bit daunting...
You know, of course, that writers like myself create fictional worlds and characters. Sometimes these are representations of what already exists within the writer. I say sometimes because some writers create the exact opposite. If this isn't true, and some nightmarish worlds and evil characters exist inside other writers, I really don't want to know.

In Beyond The Bridge , I've created a world and characters that have long existed in myself. I wasn't aware of this at the time of writing, of course. I was just making up a story. Little did I know what this could teach me about myself. In the end, writing really is nothing but self-analysis.

In the world of dream symbolism, a house represents one's life. It represents you in your dreams. You are the house and the different parts of it—rooms, floors, windows, doors—represent different aspects of yourself while the items in these rooms represent the issues you’re going through. There is a reason why I unconsciously chose Gunthorpe Hall as my model for Chadwicke Hall, Gordon Hammond's rock star country mansion. Not too big, added onto through the years, a bit a-symmetrical with a strong, fortress-like tower through which anyone who enters must pass. I even put a meditation room in the top of the tower (my higher self) and an art gallery (my creative self) sandwiched in between. So there I am "in a nutshell", presenting "like the layers of a cake": a guarded but welcoming entrance topped by my creative output, and crowning those are matters of the spirit. A neat little pile with a secret staircase tucked inside a hidden door.

My health issues have brought out a lot other correlations between my books and myself. The characters, for instance. Gordon Hammond is the part of me that takes care of business. The slow, methodical, calm center of myself. He's also the me I've always run away from the most. He's compelling, but not particularly fun. He has things to do and people rely on him to deliver, to make sure things are in order and that life runs as smoothly as possible. He's also my spiritual side. He spends a lot of time in that meditation room trying to find and maintain a state of grace. He doesn't always succeed, but no one knows this because he hides it so well. He's always looking out through those windows, too. Scanning, peering, not for signs of danger, but for opportunities for more growth, more experiences from which to learn about himself and his place in the universe.

Noel Saunders is the direct opposite of Gordon. He's cynical, sarcastic, self-destructive, and a bit out of control. Life isn't easy, but he does whatever it takes to fool himself into believing everything will turn out okay in the end. He has a soft side, though. He loves his family and friends, fiercely, and will do whatever is required to see that they're safe. He'd take a bullet for them, in fact. He's rough and gruff, rude and crude, inappropriate, and not everyone likes him. He lives to party and there's no crowd too large to feed his huge energy reservoir.

I won't go into my other characters because what I really wanted to explain is how these two are battling inside me these days. The truth is, just as Gordon had to do, it's time for me to kick the layabouts out of Chadwicke Hall. Noel doesn't want to go; he doesn't want the fun to be over. His worst nightmare is coming true: he has to grow up. But Gordon needs to be alone to deal with his issues, to regroup and recover. In light of all I've said here, this is a metaphor of what I find myself facing. The very real possibility of a stroke has woken me up and I feel it's time to take care of business, to "clean house" and de-clutter my life of those things that no longer serve me. This is the game, after all, and not batting practice. (Oops, another metaphor.)

But what does this mean? It means I'll be taking better care of myself on every level. I'm dropping the things I can't change in favor of working on those I can. I'm locking the door on certain kinds of people from my entering my life. Anyone who sets out to harm me in any way will be put on permanent ignore. They will "cease to be" in my world as if they never existed in the first place. I'll be doing things that are healing for me: gardening, painting, writing, and making music without desire or expectation of reward or notoriety; the doing will have to be reward enough. I won't be partying like I used to do, I'll be meditating more, and I'll avoid conversations that only get me worked up and make me feel out of balance. Metaphorically speaking, Gordon is kicking Noel's arse out of the "house". He can come visit, but he can't live here anymore. He was a lot of fun, but he's weighing me down and has become a dangerous, life-threatening load. I love him, but he can't live here. Tough love.

Sorry if this reads a bit disjointedly. I guess all I really wanted to say is that this scare is good for me in a lot of ways; I see only better days ahead.

"Tell Me About Your Mother."

Easter 1952.I always come to Mother's Day a bit warily. It's not a day I place a lot of stock in, but when I'm remembered by my sons I'm always delighted. On the other hand, when they don't acknowledge it I'm not usually hurt. It depends. I'm sure they're as confused as I am and aren't really sure what to do about the day, either. I lay all this confusion unashamedly at the feet of my own mother with whom I had a complex, conflicted relationship...
My mother was 26 when I was born, after seven years of miscarriages and dashed hopes. All she ever wanted in life, even as a child, was a bright, curious red haired daughter. She'd been disappointed when, at the age of 18, she gave birth to her first child, my brother, who later suffered severe brain damage due to high fevers as an infant, who was as apathetic as a stone, and who had black hair. When I came along, all of her secret dreams came true. It was a lot to lay on a child.

Her own childhood had been pretty bad. She came late to her parents after five siblings, all of whom were adults by the time she was born. It didn't help that her mother had tuberculosis, was awaiting menopause, and didn't have the energy or health necessary to raise another child. She was severe with her kids; her husband was even more so, but in an emotionally distant, critical sort of way. All the same, Mom adored her.

When she was just 14 Mom came home after school one day to find her mother in the final throes of death, having swallowed strychnine poisoning. Life as a consumptive had gotten that unbearable. To make matters worse, no one wanted my mother, not even her own father, and she awoke one night to hear him and her siblings arguing over who was going to get the burden of raising her. I don't know why her father didn't want her except that he was a selfish bastard all his life, a professional (failed and disgraced) politician who had better things to do than look after a daughter he'd never wanted in the first place. Her sister Helen was busy earning her Ph.D. in physics from UCLA and her brothers were raising families and building careers as writers and oil company engineers. No one wanted the child. In the end Helen took her all the way from western Kansas to Los Angeles, where she placed Mom with an aunt and uncle, a female cousin who was her own age, and a senile grandfather. She spoke fondly of her cousin all her life so it could have been a nice turn for her except that her grandfather repeatedly molested her. When this was discovered, Helen sent her back to Kansas where she lived with their father for about a year.

It was then that the Waller family took a shine to her, welcoming her into their home and opening their arms and hearts to her. The Wallers are just that way. They knew Harley was a mean old prick and they wanted to give her a sense of family. I think it was only natural that she fell in love with Jack Waller, a curly-haired, handsome high school football star, gifted musician, and all around sweet guy. And the more she hung around the more he fell for her, too. Why wouldn't he? She was cute, curvy, vivacious, and romantic, with stars in her eyes just for him. He was drafted, and they married in 1941 before he shipped out. This all sounds like the quintessential WWII storybook tale, complete with the Andrews Sisters singing Apple Blossom Time in the background, but it wasn't.

The Wolcott women had what we now know as bi-polar disorder for as long as anyone can remember (back then, women who suffered from it were called "nervous".) Helen eventually took her own life in 1955 just as their mother had, with strychnine, unhappy in an affair with a married man, questioning her sexuality, and coping with the pressures of her job as a new physics professor. She was brilliant as well—Mensa brilliant—which probably didn't help.

When I was born my mother swaddled me in all of her expectations. Unfortunately, I had my own agenda and couldn't fulfill all of hers for her. She hadn't considered that my being bright included a will to be independent and that curiosity demanded I search beyond her boundaries to find myself. The red hair was easy. It was the least I could do for that poor little girl whom nobody had wanted.

My mother's mental illness (bi-polar disorder and anxiety) made her difficult to predict. One minute loving and nurturing, she could flip into Mommie Dearest at a moment's notice. (The wire hangers scene wasn't the least bit funny to me and I was deeply offended when the audience at Grauman's Chinese Theater laughed the night I saw that movie.) I never knew what it was I did that made her flip out; I of course blamed myself. She could also be devastatingly abusive, both verbally and emotionally, cutting me with her words and accusations until I felt I should bleed then withdrawing her affection so completely, it was like watching her disappear into vapor before my eyes. She hadn't protected me from my brother's sexual attentions, either. In psychological terms she was the Silent Partner . It took me many years of therapy to come to terms with that part of my childhood.

As horrible as this all sounds, I must add that despite it all,I never felt unloved by my mother. I always knew I was adored, but it wasn't hard to recognize that she was a troubled person. Much later, when Lynette and I moved her in to live with us following her stroke in 2000, I was better equipped to handle her episodes. No longer able to physically abuse me, she tried to compensate verbally, but Lynette wouldn't allow it. I was her caretaker for four years, a time that was so difficult, it irreparably damaged my own health. She wasn't the only cause of the stress that destroyed my auto immune system, though. There were financial worries, the responsibilities of a blended, second family, relentless internet abuse, and chronic pain. I remember saying to Lynette one day when my mother had been especially difficult, "I will never be completely free from her until she's dead." I had no idea what little time I had left with her. She died at Christmas time in 2004.

At last I was free of her abuse, but not of the long term effects of that abuse. It wasn't until 2010 that I was finally able to recognize her as just another wounded woman and not as my mother. As I looked more carefully at her childhood, as well as her mental illness in hope of understanding her—and as more years came between her treatment of me and myself—my compassion began to grow. I understand now just how wounded she was and I forgive her completely and voluntarily. I'm now able to love her, let her off the hook, and wish her nothing but peace.

Mother's Day is always confusing for me, but I've learned how to focus on the deep and abiding love she had for me, to celebrate the sensitive, talented, artistic, generous woman she was rather than judge her for things that were beyond her control.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I do miss you.

If this seems a bit disjointed, it's because my health has taken a serious turn and I'm battling an unusually high degree of brain fog. I've fixed a number of typos so please reload the page. Thanks for understanding!

Incommunicado

I haven't been online much this week due to health reasons, but I'll be back as soon as I can drum up the desire to communicate. Things are looking better.

The Week I've Had

Monday: I moved bricks around the property to
make a Hollyhock and Sunflower bed.
Tuesday: I made a devastatingly tasty potato soup. Wednesday: I was homesick. Thursday: I paid for moving bricks on Monday. Friday: Lowrider didn't like all the pillows I put on the bed.

Interview: Cast of a Thousand

 On my California Gold Coast Dreamin' website.  Read it here .

Lifting The Grey

We all thought the promoters were crazy to hold a music festival in early April, but they said it was the only weekend the headliner had open so they had no choice.

I was a nobody. Just a young singer-songwriter trying to find her way into the big time, accepting little-to-no pay and crappy dates. The rain didn't intimidate me. It was 1970 after all and the weather hadn’t done any harm to Woodstock, had it? This festival was much smaller with smaller names, a smaller stage, and in all ways a smaller vision. It was a gig nonetheless, and I needed all the gigs I could get.
The bus ride to Idyllwild—a Greyhound stuffed with musicians, roadies, groupies, dealers, and the usual hangers on—was a party in and of itself, a party that might have become legendary except for the fact that the headliner was comfortably ensconced in their limo drinking champagne and cutting coke none of us could possibly afford. We didn’t mind. Being on a road trip with musicians in those days was like being in a cool, happening circus. There were, as the saying goes, no bad seats. In fact, looking back, I think we had the better time. Full of high spirits, herb, and Red Mountain wine, we arrived at the concert site, pouring out of the bus like a tribe of raggle-taggle gypsies with only one thing on our minds: music!

That night, after the crew had set up the stage, speaker stacks, and backstage tents, we gathered around a large campfire to jam and pass around the pipes and wine jugs before retiring. In a lot of ways I enjoyed this time the most. There was no pressure and no audience, just a bunch of hippy musicians doing what we loved best. We shared songs and stories, learned each others’ fingerings and chords, and didn’t worry about wiping off the mouth of the wine jug when it was passed to us. We were a clan, a cosmic chorus of innocents trusting the karma of love and music. The weather was nice that night; it had cleared up and the moon passing behind the tall trees in the clear night air promised a beautiful day for the concert.

I awoke in the arms of an angel with long, curly blond hair, cozy and warm in his tent whose interior walls were hung with Indian tapestries, posters of Krishna and Ganesha, and a huge assortment of handmade bamboo flutes. He was a magical creature, more elf than human with pale, delicate skin, expressive, fluid gestures, and bells and braid adorning his clothing. As the rain fell outside, he made me a breakfast of dandelion tea, fried bananas, and pumpkin bread drizzled with raw honey. He bathed me in the stream with lavender and rose soap. He washed my hair with lotus blossom shampoo and he braided feathers and beads in it, fitted turquoise and silver rings onto my fingers, and sent me off to the staging area with his blessing, a kiss that told me we’d never meet again.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I won’t let the grey devour you.”

I humored him with a smile, touched his cheek one last time and joined my band of musical gypsies in the rain. It wasn’t the drenching kind, but the slowly dripping kind, enough to make playing onstage miserable and singing into a microphone dangerous.

As people arrived, laying Indian bedspreads and Native America blankets on the ground, we all wondered just how many would stick it out and how many had decided not to come at all. Our audience were stout souls, as it turned out; they came and they stayed, huddling beneath umbrellas and wrapped in coats and scarves as their banners and their balloons struggled against grey gusts of wind.

Jesse opened the concert as the rain gathered glistening in his Grecian beard and dripping from the curls that embraced his face. He performed like a warrior, whose battle was against the drizzle, rendering it invisible with his music. He was followed by a vocal trio who cut their set to just three songs. So the afternoon went until it was at last my turn to perform, the rain coming down even harder.

I walked to the set up of two microphones—one for my guitar and one for my voice—and, as I fine-tuned my top strings, my eyes caught the sight of my golden angel, a lone figure standing in the audience. He smiled at me, his eyes kissing mine, and lifted his hand into the air, palm up, as if lifting the grey sky. And as he did so, the rain stopped. Everyone looked up to see the sun peaking out from over silver clouds, backed by the cobalt blue sky of early evening. I too looked up, laughing with joy, and when I turned my eyes back into the audience I saw that my angel was gone.

I never saw him again, but now that I am old, my face lined and my heart weary, I sometimes feel him braiding feathers and beads in my hair and, with silvery, gentle hands, lifting the grey.


Mag 216

Copyright © 2014 SK Waller