For the first time in a few years, this summer has been a quiet season, filled with the unassuming work of making a house and a yard into a home and a garden, my personal oasis. It feels peaceful, far removed from the heartache and frustration of the last few years. It has actually been a very healing season, after the griefs and the guilts following my mother's death a couple of years ago and the physical and mental stress of a job I came to hate. Sometimes it seems as though I've stepped aside from the wider world, off the trail as it were, enjoying a fallow season in my working life. A chance to rest and rebalance, and I know what a luxury that is in these uncertain times. I am lucky, truly. Especially with a good glass of chilled rose and fresh local fruits for dinner....
So what could be the problem with this? Besides the vicious mosquitoes we have out here on the Shore....
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
It seems idyllic, this chance to create a space to nurture my family; indeed, it feels idyllic -- my never-ending kitchen do-it-yourself remodel notwithstanding. I've got a lovely yard that will be a splendid garden before long, a gorgeous crape myrtle nearing bloom, and lots of great azaleas to rescue, relocate and replant. I have my family heirlooms all around me, including Dad's ancient but pristine LP of Carlos Montoya playing Malaguena currently on the turntable. The truth is, it seems to me more of a mirage than an oasis. A mirage is, of course, an illusion the mind creates out of the desert heat-haze, while an oasis really is the life-affirming refuge in that same desert. From a distance, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the two. And so I remain too sharply aware of how time and chance could upend this peaceful space, make a lie out of what I think I have right now. There have been other spaces like this, a brief period of building some sweet refuge, only to see it disintegrate when a crisis erupts. I know that sooner or later I must step back into the workforce, and preferably sooner, to help my husband build up the financial reserves that will protect our home, our oasis, and keep it from becoming just another mirage. But I want to move back into teaching part-time, either at the local community colleges or as a substitute, get used to the work again, build a reputation in an area where almost no-one knows me, even after nearly a year of living here. It's almost time to start making those plans, and September can't come fast enough to suit me.
A visit from an old friend over the July 4th holiday weekend brought back to mind my earlier aspirations, cut short in the craziness after my mother's death. It has taken more than two years to get over those shocks and the sense of reactive guilt, to realize that to not finish my PhD is to punish myself for things I neither knew about at the time nor had the power to change if I had known. So the thought returns that perhaps, that dream could become a reality still, not just another mirage. It is something else to work towards, another creation to tend. But where that dream fits into the larger world, how I will make that the basis of a renewed working life, I still don't know. I could teach at a community college or private school, if the right opening comes up. That's a big if. And my study is a total freaking disaster....
Other options present themselves. I've enough yard for real gardening, not just flowers, but veggies and fruit and herbs. A few years ago in Kerala, I went up into the mountains to the tea plantations and spice gardens. It's some of the most intensive land use I've ever seen. Can I adapt that for here, and sell any extra at a farmers' market? I don't know, but I'd sure like to try it. I've also made connections with the crafts shops, and have a standing offer to sell my weaving there. One hitch: my would-be studio space is filled with stuff yet to be sorted and unpacked. A lot of it needs to be in the garage, but the garage is full of kitchen cabinets that can't go in the new kitchen yet! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhh!!!!!
For all my stepping aside to reassess, recover and re-create my life, it's not really possible to ignore the outside world. Still, all my information is national, global, not local. Our house is on a busy street, near a hospital. Traffic buzzes past my front windows and door, the occasional siren of a an ambulance punctuates the passage of cars, boats on trailers behind trucks and SUVs. Earlier today, it was a cortege, complete with every fire/rescue vehicle in the city. Who died?, I wondered, and realized I hadn't a flippin' clue. I know my neighbors here, and that's about it. That has got to change. Meanwhile, my husband set the BBC news site as the homepage on our computer's browser. Countdown and Rachel are fixtures of our evening news fix. I read Krugman in the NY Times twice a week. More to the point, I refuse to ignore the rest of the world, even if I wanted to... and sometimes I do want to, despite knowing how dangerous that can be. For example, I haven't much patience with the incessant coverage of the latest GOP sex scandal du jour, until it comes to my attention what philosophy underlies such ridiculous behavior, and what a danger it poses for our political system. We think we live in a postmodern society, one that strives to become cooperative, collaborative, egalitarian. And yet there are those who would take us into a new feudal order, one that runs on the cynic's golden rule (he who has the gold makes the rules). Then the latest leftover BS from the Bush/Cheney administration pops up, and the only thing I can think to do is to grab a Dogfish. And we still can't prosecute these sons of bitches????
I suppose the above could sound more than a little self-indulgent, and I freely confess it's just a short meander through my worries, anxieties, what-have-you, rather than any serious problem afflicting me and mine. It's summer, I can barbecue on the charcoal grill outside, if I'm coated in DEET, that is -- voracious little bloodsuckers out here flying around, just waiting to feast on my blood. And it's got to be that sportsmen's strength stuff. Skeeters here laugh at wimpy-ass 5% DEET. Come to think of it, they're not too impressed by citronella candles, either. At least we don't have any reports of encephalitis or West Nile here -- yet. Honestly, with an FP like this, I should simply shut up and count my blessings. The truth is, I am not used to doing that, am too prone to indulge in a summertime whine, and I'm willing to bet most of you are, too -- otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this piece of tripe I've written. Too often I see mirages where there are really oases. I am lucky to have a home, to own, not rent, and to have options, career-wise. We are lucky to have writers, journalists who speak of the cold truths underlying new scandals, and a system that allows such speech. Still we continue to fret over the injustices that remain in our society -- the unjust "don't ask, don't tell" policy, the fallout of the financial crisis, the struggle to reform a healthcare system that is broken for too many of us, the power-hungry and money-mad politicians and corporate entities that strive to block any reform that would create a more equitable society for the majority of our population -- and we are right to do so, provided we don't lose our sense of balance. If all our dreams, our hopes of refining our society into an oasis open to all, are not to dissolve like a mirage, then we need to not count our blessings, step up and bitch loudly. But we also need to be able to discern between problems that are genuinely threatening, and those that are simply irritants.
So, in the cool of a summer's evening, tell me, what's your f*@&ing problem?