LIFE WITH OR WITHOUT HIBISCUS

 

 Harry Hibiscus

It wasn’t that my garden was bare. There were of course the sun-dried grasses and weeds struggling in various phases of growth and death on the ‘lawn’. But in addition there were rudbeckia (known as black-eyed Susans), some survivor sunflowers and some revenant Sweet William. Varieties of aster were leafy but not yet in flower. 

 

Every year I’ve vowed to purchase a hibiscus and plant it lovingly by the hedge, watching it survive hot summers and thrive, just like ones along paths in the south of France – indomitable survivors. And every year, hauling bags of rich ‘or noir’ from the garden center I vowed that next visit would include this plant that seemed to grow everywhere but in my garden. I forgot each time, sidetracked by Canary Island date palms (with untrimmed dried fronds), tempting baby olive trees. I’d buy another hydrangea.

 

This year was different – I brought home a reddish-leaved plant that looked resistant to parching sun, flood or neglect in hard soil. My type of guy.

 

The summer was criminally hot, and his reddish leaves drooped if he was not watered. Sensitive and temperamental he went from bright enthusiastic outreach on cool, watered days to threatening us with his imminent demise on most days. 

 

This guy was not a survivor of Provençal sun, a casual splash of color living out thirty years by an old fence. He was a sensitive soul, grown in some greenhouse in the Département de l’Ain.  Had I not done my homework and read his small print? No, I hadn’t, just as I hadn’t read the small print when I brought my babies home from the hospital. I would wing it as mothers do, realizing that offspring never follow the expected monthly patterns in development laid out in popular books. I would follow instinct.

 

Instinct told me to use organic fertilizer and water him twice daily. He appeared to enjoy this, and his red leaves blushed and thrived.

 

Then one day a flamboyant pink flower emerged. Triumph! Beauty!

 

By the next day it was a memory, collapsed like a dead butterfly on a stem. One iphone photo was the only proof I had of this flash fecundity.

 

*****

For late August vacation I’ve had to give him in garden custody to a gentle but baffled Colombian, who believes that house-cleaning is vastly preferable to working the soil. 

 

I’d like to think that Harry will be cherished, fed and watered by his temporary custodian, his brilliant flowers heralded by passers-by. 

 

 

 

HEAT WAVE August 13th 2022

The soft warmth of the day tides over my sweaty neck,

time is leased for now to a brief tableau,

a masquerade.

Slow as honey that stutters

and stops at the rim of a glass jar

I sleep an instant at peak heat,

my cucumber eyes so cool, so closed

UNPLEDGED ALLEGIANCE

She stood up on the soapbox and screamed fury at the world. 

Now a continent away from her country of birth, but still tethered to it -- some notion of history and ideals, the founding of a nation that would promote liberty and representative government. Freedom and good governance. She'd loved history class with Mrs. Currie and her hefty junior high-school textbook with its 1950s narrative. Flawed with ideals.

Every morning, her right hand over her left heart, she, along with two thousand others within those walls, pledged allegiance to 48 stars. She thought of it as a kind of religion: you could partake and bear witness simultaneously. You did not have to believe in 'under God' (added in 1954);  you simply said it and let it pass like a foreign language you didn't speak. 

This was her bond of loyalty - her country was an entire world, a moral, social and industrial giant,  winner of a terrible war,

More than sixty years later it had cut its own wings, condemned women's rights and legalized weapons that slaughtered everyday people.

The  soapbox was soggy. Between sleep and non-sleep the box creased and collapsed. No strong wooden slats from another century propped her up.

She reached for her phone, contemporary life-support system, opened Notes and typed:

                                               You Sanctimonious Bastards

SUPREME COURT TURNS ITS BACK ON WOMEN - brackets on [[[ROE vs.WADE]]]

 Was working on another entry but I've been side-swiped by the news.

We knew the Supreme Court in its present formulation was going to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Of course we knew it. Without quite believing it. So it's no surprise.

But it's a profound shock to the system, our system, our rights, our safety, and the governance over our own bodies. 

Does a woman look forward to an abortion?  Hell NO, but there are times and circumstances when this procedure is necessary: from the quality of life of the mother and to avoid bringing an unwanted child into our fraught world to suffer its indignities. Not to mention forces majeures like rape, incest, underage pregnancies, poverty, too many children, drug addiction, illness.......Is it unfortunate to have to do it? Hell YES. But that doesn't mean a court can give freedom to individual States of the Union to determine what a woman chooses.  

I remember, and so do all of my friends and associates: back in the day women were butchered or butchered themselves and died of infection. Illegal abortions were highly dangerous, clandestine, unprotected. I knew women who travelled from other states to New York, where it was still 'illegal' but relatively easy to obtain and far safer -it was a place of refuge. A terrified, unhappy woman had to make the trip to New York - and it was still not truly legal. It was terrible. I helped one of them on her unhappy journey -- she came over from France in 1967 -- desolate and disoriented.

The court has closed a bracket on Roe vs. Wade --  a bracket that included a better, freer, remarkable period of time: despite horrible attacks on abortion clinics and their staff, it was legal, possible and relatively safe. 

Now it will be over in many states. Will this discourage courageous women from travelling to another state? No, but the poor, who can't afford the trip, and the young and powerless, who don't have the wherewithal, will suffer the most.

This is a shock. Off with the brackets, get back to sanity.

COGNITIVE RESERVE

 

Cognitive Reserve

The life raft for fading university graduates?

The buzzword of the year?

The little change purse of tricks to use when a common word eludes you? Like a small federal reserve, all in your head (well, you hope....).

Cognitive Reserve is a sexy topic these (post-Covid) days -- good for Baby Boomers. The Harvard label (branding?) implies Valid Research, Credibility, Academic Backing, Intelligent Perspective, Help For You Who Are Afraid You're Losing It. You can pay for online courses and exercise your flabby brain for hours. Ah, maybe this will do it! Boxes and flow-charts and sequence narration and memory games.

Your private Cognitive Reserve doesn't recall names all on its own. It needs care & feeding, the right diet, supplements in the form of gross pills and gel capsules, extracts and syrups, plenty of exercise, plenty of rest.. the right proportion of work / social life / hobbies / pursuits....i.e. A Meaningful Life. So help me...This is supposed to slow down dementia, which may or may not get you in the end.

It's all vague woo-woo, let's be good to our minds and bodies so maybe the old Alzheimer Witch won't come knocking at your cranium. Being a tad ADD,  'good to our bodies' puts me in mind of those healthy extracted fruit and vegetable juices - what are they called now? Ah yes, Smoothies! a late twentieth century term.

I'm still on the Harvard Health mailing list. I once ordered their booklet on hand injuries and arthritis and how to address them with the appropriate doctor, the right imaging, great rehab exercises. Complete with scientific illustrations and charts. (Or did I get the general arthritis manual?). Harvard Health appeals to hypochondriacs and true sufferers. I haven't yet purchased other wares or signed up for the privilege of asking questions on any medical issue that crosses my mind at 2 am.

Conversations! Famous Whoevers you try to fish out of the murky pool of memory in the course of a relaxed conversation....gone until your Cognitive Reserve kicks in (if you're lucky) and feeds you a hint, a rhyme, a song that will retrieve it. Hearing the song Lili Marlene I suddenly recall the exotic actress and gifted inventor with patents in her own name.....ah  yes, Hedy Lamarr! Music evokes memory. So does relaxation, when the name of that elusive flower comes to you at the end of a nap -- yes! Digitalis!

For now I take in Harvard's kind recommendations without paying for more detailed brochures (which I'd probably mislay) and try to lead a healthier life. I want to love life for whatever it is at the moment.

 

 

GEORGE W. BUSH AND ONE COLOSSAL FREUDIAN SLIP

George W.Bush made a Freudian slip of world proportions.

The Russian invasion of Iraq! ......oops, Ukraine.

Iraq was on his mind.

The US in Iraq, Russia in Ukraine and Syria, Russia and the US in Afghanistan, oh how do you keep all these straight?

The larger animal en-gulfs the smaller, merging messily to become a monster mistake of foreign policy.

His excuse? He's seventy-five! Aw shucks!

An excuse for this gaffe, conflating nations and invasions and time frames.

Do I fault the shucks-who-me? man who stumbled into the presidency with scant knowledge, a lot of money, a faux-Texan mouth slouch, charm and simply nothing to lose but his cheerful sobriety?

Hell yes! At 75 I make lots of mistakes, but not on the world scene of (ir)responsibility.

I forget things too, Georgie Porgie, but not vast invasions of truth.

I hope this on-camera boo-boo jolts you into sanity and you go somewhere sane. 

Recognize your colossal mistake.

It ain't dementia, old boy. It's guilt.

75 and still dreaming I'm younger and potentially fantastic

Here it is: I'm squarely in my mid-seventies. Today.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Last night I dreamt I was pretending I was some sort of doctor or scientist at a workshop - we all had to participate in the cooking and cleaning up, and although I'd just arrived, I was assigned at the last minute to prepare a gourmet dish. 

People were outperforming each other for culinary speed and virtuosity in the large collective space, and were proving that they were skilled above and beyond their prestigious professional credentials.

I was cooking cauliflower (?brain?) in a tasteless broth, and scrambling for other ingredients to add pizzazz, or at least something. A clever woman with lots of letters after her name was grilling cutlets on her own, not bothering with the collective efforts, and I had to admire her: plus where did she get the personal cutlets? Had she smuggled them in with her running shoes?

And there I was, with the false trappings of a profession I never entered and struggling with a smelly vegetable. Ignominious or what?

So there it is. 

I'm still narrating Dream Tales of the Ego to my subconscious and losing out as an impostor.

What will I be in my dreams when I turn 80?  

A geneticist? A charismatic cult leader? A garden-variety psychic? Simply 80?