The Crab Chronicles

Life As A Turtle

When you see a turtle it's a striking example of how an animal protects itself by carrying its hard exoskeleton on its back. The shell protects the vulnerable creature inside it. When threatened, the turtle can pull its head back inside and hide, until the threat disappears. When it's not threatened, the turtle can extend its stubby legs and move, ever so slowly, across the ground. I remember reading a few years ago that one shouldn't move a turtle far from where it's found because turtles rarely venture more than a mile from the place where they were born. I think I read that right after spotting a turtle in the middle of the road and getting out to move him out of the way so he wouldn't get run over.

I am like a turtle. I just realized it last night.

What separates me from the rest of the world isn't a hard shell, but it's a fortress of flesh.

I am fatter at this moment than I have ever been in my life. I am too embarrassed to reveal the exact weight, but I will say this: it's enormous.

I have to go to the internist in a couple of weeks, and a week later, the cardiologist. I have a heart arrhythmia and thus the twice-yearly cardio visits, where they take a readout from my pacemaker and tell me how my heart has been doing since the last checkup. It's pretty weird and sci-fi to have a tiny computer embedded in my chest, but it's better than being dead...

Why am I talking about something so personal?

Simple. I am holding myself accountable. I am also aware that, like the Catholic confessional, unburdening oneself to strangers can be quite liberating. Finally -- and most importantly -- I want to spread an important message about compassion. You see, when you look at a fat person, a person who has dealt with their feelings in an unhealthy but compulsive way. You may feel disgust. You may feel superior, if you are not overweight. You may also look away as quickly as possible because, let's face it, most fat people are not attractive, at least not in the conventional sense.

What I ask you to do, however, is to feel compassion, and let that be your overriding emotion. Fat people cope with feelings of sadness, grief, hopelessness, stress, etc. by eating. We don't manage our feelings well. We internalize everything and try to be sweet and cheerful rather than moody or fretful because that's what we are taught as children.

Like me, most fat people have struggled to handle emotions all their lives.

I have struggled with weight issues since I was about 7 years old. That was the year my father had to have hemorrhoid surgery and my mother was hospitalized with a blood clot in her leg and nearly died. I was sick with pneumonia that fall and stayed home from school for three weeks. It was a very stressful year, and I started stealing cookies (from the kitchen) to make myself feel better, at least for a few minutes. I didn't realize I was setting myself up for a lifetime of weight struggles. [below, me at age 6 before the overeating started]

I do remember that my grandmother would see me with the cookies and hold out her hand so I would give her at least half of them. She would smile and say "Thank you!" and not let me go away until she had at least 2-3 of my 4 cookies in her hand. I felt bad about eating cookies in front of her. She was chubby and always trying to diet. So was my mother.

At school, the other children -- mainly boys -- started teasing me about my weight in first grade. It continued, every year, the bullying, until 9th grade. Middle school was the worst. All through middle school there was a group of boys who taunted me every time they saw me. During those years, pretty girls were "foxes" and ugly or fat girls were "dogs." I would be walking down the hall in school and those boys would bark at me. I would want to just disappear, flooded with shame and embarrassment. 

The summer between 7th and 8th grades my mother and I went on the Atkins diet together. I lost 35 lbs. I got back to school in 8th grade feeling much better about myself, but no boy expressed any interest in me. The girls in my class and I formed a tight bond, but I felt like an elephant amongst swans when we were together. It didn't help that our Social Studies teacher was an open misogynist and pitted the girls against the boys, tallying up our test scores after every test to show how much smarter the boys were than the girls. (I always made very high grades in social studies but we had some girls who didn't study.) One girl, who was also chubby, was singled out and the teacher said to her "You want to lose 8 lbs. of ugly fat? Cut off your head!" I was stunned he would say that, even jokingly.

The only reason that me getting bullied about my weight stopped, was that my brother decided enough was enough. We were on the school bus my freshman year of high school, going home. Brother was a senior. One of the boys started saying really cruel things to me about my weight. Brother told him to shut up, but the bullying continued. My brother [6'0, 165 lbs.] got up and walked up to the bully and punched him in the face. The bus driver threw Brother off the bus, but my parents didn't punish him, and the kid who got punched must not have told his parents because there was no reaction from them about it.

I was never taunted or bullied by that boy or his friends again. That didn't make my weight issues disappear, though.

High school was a social nightmare. I wasn't grossly overweight, but I was chubby. I have fat legs, and despite playing basketball and tennis, and swimming and water skiing, my heavy legs and cellulite persisted. The phrase "body positive" was unknown then. There were still two types of girls, foxes and dogs, and I was not a fox. I stayed very busy, with voice lessons, church activities, drama club activities, choral concerts, and hanging out with friends. I never went on a single date and I was never asked out to a single dance. [below, me at age 16, cutting the cake at my cousins' wedding]

I found out many years later that when I was in high school there were two guys who had crushes on me but they never said a word to me about it. I wish they had. It would have helped me to know not everyone thought I was repulsive. I felt like a social pariah, despite all my activities.

College was less painful socially but not easy. I socialized with a mixed group of friends but there was no boyfriend. I developed a crush on a cute guy my sophomore year, only to be sad when I found out he was gay. We became close friends though, and he is still a friend today.

College dorms are a nightmare for girls trying to watch their weight. Someone was always ordering pizza, or chicken fingers, or pulling out a big bag of M&Ms to share over a game of Uno.

Between my freshman and sophomore years of college my father paid for me to go to one of those weight loss programs where you get pre-packaged foods. As long as you eat only those foods, you lose weight. Problem was, I then went back to college, and between the dorm and the dining halls, I couldn't maintain the weight loss. I had few friends that year, and that made me overeat more. There are literally no photos of me from that time.

When I finished college, I was 22 years old and I couldn't find a job. I moved back in with my parents, and that was rough. They were not getting along well and I knew my dad resented me mooching off of him, because he told me so, daily. That's how he was able to talk me into paralegal school. I just went along with the plan so I could get away from my fighting parents and live in Atlanta for 3 months while I did my paralegal training.

I rarely talk publicly about being a paralegal, for a good reason. Saying negative things about the profession could come back to haunt me in a job search situation. It was not my career choice, though. Dad wanted me to be a lawyer and he thought after a year of being a paralegal I would want to go to law school. He was wrong. I saw how hard it was to get thru law school and the brutal hours the young lawyers put in, and I wanted no part of that. True confession here: reading case law put me to sleep, so law school would have been a snooze-fest for me..

[left, me during the husband hunting years]

Between ages 22-42 I actively engaged in The Great Husband Hunt. I dieted. I dressed very carefully. I joined gyms. I wore makeup. I had a plan: get married, have a couple of kids, become a full-time writer. I went on a lot of dates but didn't actually Fall in Love with anyone, until I was 42. That didn't work out. By then I had given up on having biological children and was in the process of adopting my daughter.

After I became a mom, the husband hunting stopped. I put back on all the weight I had lost, however.

Becoming an instant mom to a 13 year old girl who speaks no English is a trial by fire. There were many challenges and lots of Drama ensued. My daughter had issues related to early trauma she had suffered. I read books, took her to therapists, did everything possible, but every day was a battle. None of it was her fault, and I am not going to give details here.

Adopting my son in 2007 brought me great joy, but also added stress. He is missing his right hand, and also suffered a lot of trauma as a small child.

Overall, I loved being a Mom. It was just impossible to stay on a diet during those years.

Suffice to say, raising both my kids was great fun but also very hard. They both had significant issues. At the same time my mother, who had moved in with us, faced some health issues and I slowly became her 24/7 caretaker.

Add to those facts the fact that I got laid off from a great job in 2009, my daughter left home in 2011, and I suffered health issues requiring surgery in 2013 and 2015, and there's a recipe for disaster.

The weight kept creeping back and creeping back and my spirits kept sinking lower and lower. My mother set a great premium on always being cheerful so I tried to be cheerful around her. I failed a lot, but I tried.

Unlike most parents, I didn't have 18 years with my kids. I was basically child-rearing from 2005 to 2019. Then they were grown. I felt like I had only been marginally successful as a parent. Adopting older children was a passion for me, and I still believe in it wholeheartedly, but it's a very stressful thing to do.

I started writing novels around 2016 and it helped me to feel creative and empowered.

In 2019 my mother started becoming increasingly frail, and in 2020 she died. After years of being a 24/7 caregiver I was pretty much mentally and physically wiped out but I grieved hard for her. She was my co-parent and best friend. I got Covid and she got Covid, and although she died from kidney failure, I still felt terrible. Quarantining, masking, etc. didn't work. I was hyper-vigilant but we still both got sick, months before there was a vaccine.

In 2021 I struggled to find a job and I had to sell my house. I sunk into a period of Depression, without even realizing it. Instacart and DoorDash became my main food sources. I didn't socialize with friends. I stopped taking long walks with Lola because the doctor put me on a heart medication that zapped my energy.

A few weeks ago I finally felt like my luck change. I accepted a job as a marketing writer for a local mediation company. I am finally getting to do the one thing I really enjoy: write. Everyone I work with is kind and supportive. People smile and make jokes, even though we all work from home. Unlike paralegal work, I don't feel daily unrelenting and terrible stress.

I feel like I have awakened after a long Covid nightmare and now I am wondering where the normal person went and trying to get this stress weight back off. It isn't easy. I still have very low energy. I struggle to eat healthfully. I don't like living in an apartment but right now it's the only option.

Last night I realized that for the first time in my life I am not interested in losing weight just so I can find a husband. I want to lose weight so I will actually feel better. I am tired of being tired. I want to be able to walk the grocery store without it wearing me out. I want to get back out, resume normal life, be with people again. Losing weight after 50 is hard. It's hard to not be sedentary. It's hard to not get depressed and reach for a cookie, or three.

As soon as my new insurance coverage goes into effect I am going to find a therapist. I'm a big believer in therapy. It has helped in the past. Hopefully the therapist can help me to like myself and not beat myself up about the past.

Try to be compassionate to your friends and family members who struggle with weight. It's often because we try to cope with feelings by eating too much. We hide behind our flesh. We push the world away rather than allow it to hurt us more. Facing feelings is exhausting and scary. Faith helps.

I hope in a year or so I can revisit this blog and report a major transformation. Y'all pray for me.

 

The Post Plague Years

I did not realize until yesterday just how much I have missed feeling like a reasonably normal person in a normal/typical/average world. I did something yesterday I had not done since approximately January 2020.

I met a friend for lunch.

I know it's not a very exciting event to report, two women sitting in a Greek restaurant eating and catching up, but it gave me a tremendous boost that was sorely needed. I just didn't know it was needed.

I have known my friend Dana for almost thirty years. When I first moved to Atlanta in 1993 she was working as a legal secretary at an insurance defense law firm just off Clairmont Road and every day we ate lunch together in the break room. When she left the firm it was really upsetting to me, but I understood her reasons. She eventually became a paralegal. We stayed in touch and over the years socialized as often as our busy schedules allowed. It seemed like right as her sons were getting grown and freeing up her time I was adopting my kids and my life got super complicated. Dana and I have very similar tastes in movies and books so often we would go to an afternoon movie together. Sometimes we would read the same book and enthusiastically discuss it. 

Here's the fascinating thing. I don't recall every having a serious disagreement with Dana. I treasure her friendship.

The greatest thing Dana ever did for me -- besides taking me home and staying with me after I had dental surgery 20 years ago -- was recommending a doctor for my mom. The last ten years or so of her life Mom was the patient of a gerontologist at Emory who had been treating Dana's dad. Mom hated doctors on principal but she loved Dr. Graves. Yep, you heard that right, a gerontologist named Graves. Great guy.

After Mom passed away in 2020 Dr. Graves called me and talked to me for 20 minutes. He told me he had reviewed all the hospital records from Mom's final days and although she had Covid, it was really kidney failure that did her in. I had unwittingly contracted Covid and given it to Mom, so it was really kind of him to call and discuss her final illness with me. A great weight was lifted from me. When Covid hit in the spring of 2020 Mom was in rehab, and when she came home in April of that year I had been so careful to quarantine, restrict her visitors, mask when out of the house, wash my hands, etc. I did everything the CDC said to do and I still got it. Mom was 86 though, and it was just her time.

Anyway, I digressed.

Dana is now taking care of her Mom and I know so well how hard it is to be a 24/7 caretaker of an elderly person. Mental health breaks are super important. Dana also is in the process of selling her house and her mom's house and I know the gut-wrenching process so well, having sold my house last year. So I've tried to pass along a few tips to Dana.

It has been really hard getting accustomed to being alone after my mom passed away and my son moved out. Strangely enough, although I miss my wonderful neighbors very much, the apartment has not been all bad. I walk Lola twice every day and I often run into familiar faces and we chat. Lola loves everyone and makes new friends easily. I can feel the sun on my face. I know if there were to be an emergency I could go knock on the door of a neighbor and they would help me. There's a lot to be said for being part of a community.

I had a work event a week ago and that was my first time being around a large group of people since covid began. I won't lie, it was a bit frightening seeing all those folks without masks, and eating around people I didn't know. Everyone was incredibly nice, however. I just started a new job as a marketing writer for a local mediation company. I get to work from home, and write, and be creative, and everyone is super nice, so it's a huge win for me. 

Covid has taught me the value to human interactions, while also making me more cautious about germ transmission. My grieving process for my mom has been complicated because of covid but there are many people in this country who have had it much worse. Perhaps the world needed to be shaken up, a bit. Perhaps like the Spanish flu of 1918 we will always mark this time in history as a learning time, as a nation. Despite all the chaos in the world today, I think most Americans are grateful to be alive, grateful to be American, and much more aware of our need for human connection.

We are all in this together.

left, my son and Lola

right, outside my apartment

Fish on Good Friday

On this Good Friday/Passover I wanted to share a few general thoughts about Easter, and finding a church home.

I grew up looking forward to Friday because I knew chances were good we would either get to eat fish sticks for dinner, or macaroni and cheese. My parents raised us as High Church Episcopalian and (like the Roman Catholics) we were supposed to sacrifice and not eat meat on Fridays. We ate fish or mac & cheese instead. If we were really good we might get to go to the cafeteria and partake of both! Plus jello!

Let me explain something important. My parents were both raised Southern Baptist and they remained part of that denomination until shortly after they were married. About six months after the wedding Mom miscarried a baby at about 5 months along. She and Daddy were devastated. Dad's father was also very ill and would die a few months later. Shortly after Mom was discharged from the hospital the pastor of the church they had been attending dropped by the house and told Mom she should be happy because her baby was with Jesus. She was shocked and upset, and he couldn't even understand why. My father was livid when he heard about it.

Mom and Dad then decided to look for a church that felt more like a home. They went all over Augusta visiting mainstream Christian churches, for several years. No church felt quite right. They talked about this one night at a party with some of the neighbors and the neighbors strongly suggested they visit Church of the Good Shepherd, which was [and still is] an Episcopal church.

At last, Mom and Dad felt at home. My one set of living grandparents were horrified, but they got over it. [They took us to their church once and I tried to drink all the little glasses of grape juice in the tray so we didn't have to go back after that...]

I knew very little about other churches as a small child. I just knew about our church. I knew I had to wear a hat or big hair bow, and Mom had to do the same, because women were supposed to always have their heads covered when they entered the sanctuary. I loved seeing Mom sing in the choir because she looked like an angel, although she stopped doing choir after a while. I knew how to genuflect. I knew I was allowed to sit in church with my parents and skip nursery as long as I behaved myself. Mom always carried paper and crayons in her purse for us.

I loved how everyone spoke a lot of the service at the same time. I knew the Lord's Prayer before I started school. I loved hearing the hymns. I loved the vestments. I wanted to be an acolyte one day and light the candles.

It felt like a holy place, our church.

Easter was my favorite holiday. I loved coloring eggs. I adored getting a pretty new dress and a basket full of candy. I loved going to church and showing off my patent leather Mary Janes and white lacy anklets, and comparing notes with other kids as to who got the most candy in their Easter basket.

Eventually, though, Mom realized that our Friday "sacrifice" was not really a sacrifice at all. My brother and I loved meatless Fridays.

After we moved away from Augusta, when I was 8 years old, Mom quit doing meatless Fridays. We were disappointed but we didn't carry on too much because we didn't want her to feel bad.

We got Easter baskets and chocolate bunnies all the way through high school. However, I learned at a fairly young age that the Easter bunny was as fictitious as Santa Claus.

Somewhere around the fourth grade they felt I was old enough to learn the details of what happened to Jesus that caused us to celebrate Easter. I remember being horrified by the thought of the evil Romans nailing our Lord to a cross and leaving him to die in agony. Years later I couldn't watch the movie Spartacus because it had a very graphic sequence showing crucifixion. Ditto for The Passion of the Christ -- you could hear me sobbing all over the theater, embarrassing my date.

I think if we focus on agonizing death we miss the point, however.

I watched the Today show this morning and they had a story where they interviewed a rabbi and an Episcopal priest [both female, yay!] about Passover and Easter, and what we should be thinking about. They basically said the same thing as this, which I found on the Good Shepherd website: "We will offer our lives as active partners in God’s mission, remembering that we are people blessed with an amazing array of gifts and abilities to bless others."

What I think we all need to remember and think about this Easter is very simple: how to remember to be grateful for our many blessings, and bless others. I think that's the message for all of us, whether religious or not, the importance of gratitude, and the importance of healing ourselves and others.

Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, willingly. So why can't we sacrifice some of our time and energies, as a way of honoring that? Food for thought.

 

Sneaky Southerners

I was born in Augusta Georgia and I have lived my entire life in Georgia or Tennessee. I never gave much thought to being southern until I was grown and I realized there is a distinct and ugly bias against southerners. To put it plainly: southerners are viewed by a lot of other folks [non-southerners, of course] as being either moronic or evil racists or both.

I used to take non-credit courses at Emory University and I was furious one day when I opened the course catalog and found a course titled How to Lose Your Southern Accent. The description said basically “Hey, if you have a distinct southern accent people will think you’re a moron.” I was very tempted to sign up for the course and sit there and argue with the teacher but I figured it would just anger me to the point of spiking my blood pressure unnecessarily and I didn’t need that. I felt personally insulted, however.

Southerners onscreen are often redneck racists, dim-witted southern belles, or steel magnolias who will happily cook up some fried chicken and then shoot you if you don’t use good manners. [I wouldn't shoot you for using bad manners but I might call your mama and ask why you weren't Raised Right...]

There are exceptions, though.

We southerners know the stereotypes, and sometimes we use it to our advantage. Think about Andy Griffith. A lot of the episodes of The Andy Griffith Show centered around people from out of town assuming Andy Taylor was a rube, an idiot. Andy always bested them. In his later series, Matlock, that was pretty much the premise of every show: Matlock appeared slow but totally upended the convention and beat his opponent, who had underestimated him. (My mother loved that show)

I think part of the enduring fascination with Scarlett O’Hara is that she is far from stupid, but she reinforces the scheming manipulative southern female trope. Yet despite all her bitchiness, we are rooting for her at the end. That was Margaret Mitchell’s genius.

BTW, concerning Gone With the Wind: yes, it described black people in a very racist way, undoubtedly. However, if you want to know what it was like to live through Reconstruction in the South, read it. Mitchell spent years researching and writing the book. She easily recalled listening to her elderly family members reminisce about that time in the south. She knew her subject.

Also, in her later years, Mitchell changed a lot of her racist opinions. She became close friends with actress Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in the GWTW movie. Mitchell quietly funded a number of scholarships for students to attend Atlanta’s Morehouse College and became friends with the head of the school, Dr. Benjamin Mays. (Source)

The Southern Villain

How many times have you watched a movie and the villain had either a British or a southern accent? There’s a reason for that. In American history the British started off being the enemy: we fought a revolution against them, and fought them again in the War of 1812. For a more pop culture explanation, the Brits themselves glory in their villainy, as this article articulates:

“And while not all Hollywood baddies are British, a disproportionately high percentage of them are. From Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula to Alan Rickman in Die Hard and from Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate to Ian Holm in Alien, the majority of wrong ’uns speak with an English accent.”

The Brits may be cold and ruthless but Southern villains are of course racist, often moronic, and frequently show the cunning of a rattlesnake. Think about Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear or Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit.  A recent movie that I liked a lot, Live By Night, features a southern villain who is racist, stupid, and deserved to die in a hail of bullets, Virgil Beauregard.

 

I will never apologize for being southern, nor will I endorse the stereotypes that are so popular in Hollywood. The south I know, while obviously not perfect [what region is?] has a lot of nice people in it. Many African Americans have moved back to the South from up north because they feel welcomed here, and frankly the weather and cost of living are so much better here. A lot of people in the North move to the South when it’s time to retire. If we were all stupid, hateful, bigots I don’t think folks would flock to the South to live…

 

Below, my grandparents Algie and Cordelia Thompson when they were dating, around 1922. Grandaddy would go to town and play the rube and hustle pool until he made enough money to buy his kids' shoes and other things sometimes he couldn't afford during the Depression. I have always admired that.

The 2022 Best Picture Oscar

The Oscars are tonight and I will be watching, as I have done every year since 1972. That year I was ten years old and I was supposed to be in bed by 9 p.m. but most nights, after my parents went down to the basement level to watch TV, I snuck into the kitchen and watched TV on the small set in there, with the sound very low.

I remember seeing Charlie Chaplin win a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1972 and I was very happy because I knew who he was from watching silent movies at Shakey's Pizza.

I have always loved movies. My parents loved movies. My mother went into labor with me at a John Wayne movie in 1962. My parents used to load me and my brother into the station wagon and take us to the drive in movie and we would play in the back and then fall asleep. Paying our way in was no problem because I think kids under 6 got in free. It was cheaper than paying a babysitter.

Movies offered an escape. I would sit there in the dark and feel like I was actually part of the action of the movie. Movies consumed me. They were like a two hour vacation from every day reality. I was the fat kid who got bullied a lot in school. I was a tomboy and my mother was constantly trying to make me ladylike. I was constantly craving Dad's attention and he worked all the time, and spent a lot of free time taking my brother hunting. I outgrew my clothes every five minutes and so my clothes usually didn't fit properly. I didn't learn to read until second grade and before that I was convinced that I was an idiot and my parents were too nice to be honest with me about it.

In short, childhood was not a happy time for me. I spent much of it being miserable and wishing I were somewhere else.

Movies offered escape. Once I learned to read, at age 7, books did too.

I was watching a story on CBS Sunday Morning a few minutes ago about this being the 50th anniversary of the release of The Godfather. We went to see that as a family. I don't remember much about seeing the movie that first time except the wedding scenes. My parents loved it. It offered a glimpse into a world that was entirely alien to me. I didn't know anyone who was Italian. All I knew was the white middle class suburban Southern world.

This year I have only seen a few of the movies nominated for Best Picture, but I am dismayed by the choices. Here are a few thoughts about the films I have seen.

Last night I watched Belfast, which I thought looked charming. I am part Irish and I usually enjoy seeing movies filmed in Ireland. Kenneth Branagh usually does excellent films and he wrote and directed it. Caitriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan star and I like them both. Unfortunately, I hated it. It was in black and white, which was very frustrating. The plot meandered all over the place. The accents were so thick I couldn't understand some of the dialogue. The grandparents were played by Judy Dench and Ciaran Hinds and he is 20 years younger than her so that was bizarre and creepy. I was just disappointed by the whole thing.

 

I moderately disliked Belfast but I hated Don't Look Up. I wanted to slap every character. The movie is just a long sermon about climate change from Leo DiCaprio -- an overgrown child who only dates supermodels and who flies all over the world in a private jet lecturing everyone about climate change. The day after I saw the movie I went back and re-watched Armageddon -- a much better movie with a sense of humor.

 

BTW, in 1998 these were the Best Picture nominees: Titanic, The Full Monty, LA Confidential, Good Will Hunting, and As Good As It Gets. All terrific pictures. Titanic won, which was insane, but at least all the films were excellent. This year instead of 5 films we have 10 and several of them are awful.

 

I have always liked and admired director Jane Campion. I really liked The Piano and Portrait of a Lady. Unfortunately, I hated Power of the Dog, which is another 2022 Best Picture nominee. Power of the Dog is basically about intolerance and people being cruel and/or abusive. I don't mind seeing conflict onscreen but I hate seeing abuse. It was really hard for me to watch.

 

Nightmare Alley is the only other movie I have seen that's nominated for Best Picture. It tries to be an old-fashioned film noir and it almost succeeds but there are too many bizarre elements to make it authentic noir, in my opinion.  David Strathairn, one of my fave character actors, is awesome. Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett are great, as always.

 

I want to see all the other nominees except Drive My Car and Dune, and I may watch one or two this afternoon.

 

What Real Estate Listings Don't Say

Last year I sold my almost 3,000 square foot home and moved to an apartment. I didn't want to live in an apartment but the house prices around here were crazy and I needed a better job to be able to get a mortgage, so the apartment has become my temporary home. I still look at real estate listings online a lot, on Zillow and Realtor.com, mainly just because I find it fascinating to look at houses, and see how everything is laid out, the colors, the kitchen design, etc.

It occurred to me only after I moved in here that whoever upgraded this apartment was a very tall person. This apartment makes me feel like a child. I couldn't reach the ceiling fan cords. I couldn't begin to reach the shower curtain rods. The bar in the kitchen is the height of my chin. The bathtub sides are so high I had to figure out how to climb over them, and it's quite a gymnastic feat. I am too short to see out the peephole on the front door.

I am not THAT short. I'm 5'3.

I had to take the apartment sight unseen, because after making dozens of calls, I could only locate ONE place in my preferred area that would take pets and had an elevator. Some places would take pets but only if they weighed less than 40 lbs. Many places simply had NO units available on my move-in date. It was maddening.

Anyway, I still look at online listings, just out of curiosity.

It occurred to me today that whenever I get ready to move into a house or condo again, I need to look for the following items in the listing description, and if the item isn't mentioned then I need to ask the seller about it.

Is the home set up for a VTP? [Very Tall Person -- see issues above]

Has the home recently been sprayed for roaches? [I had to get a pest control guy in here right after I moved in, and the guy sent by the apartment folks was a moron. I paid my own guy and it solved the problem.]

Is flood insurance required by the lender? [learned that lesson the hard way]

Has anyone ever died in the home? Would a spirit removal be covered under the home warranty, if necessary?!

Did the prior owner smoke? [Yes, some people still smoke inside, and it can be really hard to get the smell out.]

Would the neighbors freak out if I wore a bathrobe to get the mail? [my dad used to get the mail early on summer mornings, sometimes wearing only boxers, much to the delight of the neighbor ladies]

Is there wallpaper? [sometimes they don't take photos of the wallpapered rooms for the listing; fiendishly clever]

Is the water hard or soft? [in my younger years, when I "fixed" my hair every stinking day this was a hugely important question]

Is the toilet right next to the wall? That's probably not FCF [fat chick friendly]

How high is the property insurance every year? Will it kill my chances of retiring early, at around 70?!

Have snakes ever gotten lost inside the house? [yes, I personally know of that happening in several homes...]

When we tour the house can we look in the attic for signs of squirrels, possums, raccoons, dead bodies?! [Don't laugh -- in older homes this can be a real thing.]

How is the internet connection? [I learned the hard way that if there are lots of tall trees around the WiFi may be affected]

How far away is the nearest hospital? [if you're over 50 this is something to consider]

Does the power go out a lot when it storms?

How close is the nearest swimming pool? [at my last house, whenever there was a swim meet the street was choked with parked cars for hours]

Finally, I borrowed some shots of a home that is currently for sale, and these poor folks are going to have a hard time with this one...

I think this bathroom was designed by Vincent Price and Debbie Reynolds...

 

 

 

 

Below, the home of the Dumb & Dumber guys...

International Women's Day

I was very blessed to grow up in a home where strong, resilient, brilliant ladies were all around me, loving and encouraging me. My mother Elva Hasty Thompson was the chief influence of course, but also her mother, my memaw, Wilma Butler Hasty. Both ladies were smart, quick-witted, strong ladies who worked hard and had an unshakeable faith in God.

I was also blessed to have 4 very strong, smart ladies as aunts, all of whom I loved dearly. Two of those ladies are still alive, at 90 and 94!

I love the goals of International Women's Day, particularly the aim of empowering women. My mother and grandmother both faced gender bias in the workplace, and unfortunately there are still countries where women are treated very unfairly.

Below, some inspiring quotes and some images of women who are/were really important in my life.

Nora Ephron, journalist

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, Former First Lady

“Perseverance is failing nineteen times and succeeding the twentieth.”

Julie Andrews, Actress, Singer and Author 

 

 

What Lives Inside you Defines You

A prose poem for Michael

 

What lives inside you defines you.

Words that pierce us with stinging cruelty, shocking images seared into memory, or simply feelings that spring up like weeds through the pavement – battle them boldly into powerlessness.

Only in laboring to vanquish pain will pain stop having dominion.

What lives inside you defines you.

Pain drives splinters into our living flesh. Splinters remind us of the violence that created them. Splinters may never be removed but they can be smoothed over, by the hand trained to do it. Pull them out if possible, with guidance from a therapist.

If therapy proves elusive, rub the place and examine each splinter, making it smaller. The screaming voice. The slap. The search for mama in a vast store. The panic when the teacher talked gibberish. The fear of being unworthy of a kiss. The fear of anyone seeing your naked legs. The bills that cannot be fully paid. The hospital beds and the funerals. The roomful of eyes staring. The exhaustion. The grief. The hopelessness. We all know these.

Then there are the bigger ones that challenge us particularly; a terrible interior slide show. I am 9 years old, watching in shock as the dirt falls on my grandfather’s coffin; I am 14 years old, confused by the aftermath of a massive stroke that felled my tiny grandmother; I am 34 years old, desperate for morphine for my dying father; I am 47 years old, laid off from my job; I am 58 years old and I must send my mother to the hospital alone to die of Covid.

Erasing massive memories often proves impossible. Even sanding the small splinters is the work of a lifetime. Remembering is essential, though. Numbness grows the pain.

What lives inside you defines you.

If you are lucky enough to survive for as many as six decades you may discover something. Even though erasing memories may prove impossible, you can crowd them out of importance. The sight of waves, advancing and retreating timelessly. The pure gold joy of a baby laughing. The velvety texture of fur beneath my caressing hand. The smell of cake in the oven. The taste of dinner prepared for me with love.

Knife memories may be dulled by the simple weight of beautiful ones. Grow beauty deliberately, with care. Seek it out every day. Notice the daffodils poking up bravely into the February air. Notice the sky, wrapping us in a bowl of color.  Notice the love in a friend’s eyes and advance it into a hug. Notice smiles and smile back.

What lives inside you defines you.

Note: I used to write a lot of poetry but this is the first poem I've written in years. Sometimes a poem is the only real way to express what's in my heart. I was inspired to write this while watching a documentary about the writer Kurt Vonnegut. He saw terrible things in World War II, but much of his work was humorous.

Learning from Dad

Like most folks my age, I have now experienced the deaths of both of my parents. Mother left me in June of 2020 and I am still processing that loss. My father died in 1996. I had just turned 34 years old. Although at the time I felt middle-aged, I look back now and realize I was embryonic. I had led a fairly sheltered life up until then. I just didn't know it.

One of the nice things about being on the dark side of 50 is that you may have developed the ability to look back and see how the puzzle pieces of your life fit together. When I was in my twenties I found the future terrifying. I had calmed down a lot by the time my dad died, but his death still felt like someone had kicked the chair out from under me, and I couldn't get off the floor for a long time.

I wanted to share with you some things my dad shared with me, that I only realized in hindsight were really important.

Dad had an amazing ability to forgive people who had wronged him. There was a man who had worked for him and gone over Dad's head to say some ugly things about Dad to the big boss at the bank, which in my mother's view was utterly unforgivable. Dad forgave him readily. Another man Dad worked with was mentally ill and wouldn't take his meds, and Dad had to fire him, which was really painful. The man threatened to kill him, and Dad carried a pistol in his car for years and was hyper vigilant as a result. Years later, the man heard Dad was dying and went to see him in Augusta and Dad was gracious and nice. My mother was horrified -- but Mom was much more inclined to hold a grudge.

In my own life, I have friends I rarely exchange a cross word with, and friends I fuss and fight with frequently, but I forgive them (and they forgive me) and we remain friends. My brother is like mom in that he holds grudges, but I don't really see that as a positive trait. In the end, not forgiving is more harmful than forgiving someone because you are holding onto ill feelings that are poisoning you, not the person who wronged you. Forgiving releases you from that prison of negativity.

Dad always hated hypocrisy. I remember him going to a funeral of a man he knew professionally who wasn’t a personal friend and coming home really disgusted. Everyone at the funeral had spoken about the man in absolutely glowing terms. Dad told Mom they guy was a real jerk, but nobody was telling the truth at the funeral. Everyone felt they had to only say nice things because the guy was dead. Dad hated the dishonesty of that. Mom’s attitude was well what did you expect?! I see hypocrisy sometimes now and I feel like Dad; it’s nauseating to me. However, I refuse to let it bother me. Hypocrisy is like death and taxes; inevitable.

Snobbery is a terrible thing. I’ve seen Dad go out of his way to be kind and friendly to the janitorial staff and be just polite to the bank president. He had a way of being friendly to everyone which made people love him, because they could see that he was the opposite of a snob. Even though Dad had a master’s degree and spent 95% of his professional life as the vice president of a bank, he was never snobby. I think that humility was one of his defining characteristics because Dad was raised by two parents who couldn’t have been more different. Grandaddy was raised in a poor farming family in South Georgia and he had to quit school and help support his mother and siblings at a young age. Grandmother was also raised in a farming family, but in a prosperous, socially prominent southern family. A lady in her position shouldn’t have fallen in love with an uneducated man who had very little money and wasn’t her social equal, but she did. Mom said when Thompson was dying she nursed him faithfully and would talk about how beautiful he was, and Mom had never seen someone so loving and devoted to their spouse. Grandmother obviously was not a snob.

I like to think I inherited Dad’s anti-snobbery. I have known girls [mostly in high school] who came from well-to-do families who were just obnoxious. I also had a friend in high school who came from an obviously poor family, but he was far more friendly and interesting to talk to, and he was brilliant. I was delighted to find him on Facebook a few years ago and see that he is doing really well. To be fair, most of the obnoxious girls are now nice people, I am happy to report, and many are grandmamas now. People mature – a good reason to forgive. [Nobody should be judged forever by how they acted in high school!]

One should always be kind to young people who are still learning. Dad was always unfailingly kind to my friends, our neighbors, people he worked with, people at church, etc. but he had a soft spot for younger folks and I think that came from being raised by a teacher. Helping someone learn and grow as a person is a hugely rewarding thing. I’ve seen him mentor and nurture folks at the bank only to lose them to higher-paying jobs but Dad always wished them well.

I have tried to be a good friend/mentor to younger folks, personally and professionally, but I’m not sure if I am always successful. I do try.

Savor the joyful moments in life. Sometimes we are so anxious and/or stressed out that we forget to be joyful. I have fond memories of seeing Dad’s unbridled joy at something as simple as going swimming, or getting a phone call from one of his brothers, or discovering a new barbeque joint. His joy was contagious, too – I would see his delight and it would make me happy. He loved Christmas and would always take great delight in opening presents and seeing us open presents. I sometimes forget to enjoy my life, because there are so many things that are worrisome. I need to try and remember to seek out and cherish things I enjoy, and to put aside fear as much as possible. [Covid has made that difficult to do consistently.]

Love fearlessly. If Tony Thompson loved you, you knew you were loved. You would have no doubt. We would have some major disagreements sometimes, but I never doubted his love for me. I try to tell my kids and my friends I love them, fairly often. Some people say the words are meaningless but that’s not true. Saying the words is important. At the end of your life you are not going to look back and say “I shouldn’t have said I love you as often.” No, you will regret not expressing that more, because in the end, you will realize that material things are meaningless, and love is the most important thing in life. I hope when I am gone people will say If Dee loved you, you knew you were loved! It would be the highest tribute.

Teachers I Remember

I grew up surrounded by teachers and I think they deserve a lot of credit for keeping me in line. My mother was a teacher and loved to tell stories about her days as a teacher, and my father's mother was a teacher. Two of my uncles were teachers. One of my aunts was a teacher. I have a cousin who is a [now retired] teacher.

I considered a career as a teacher but I lack the required patience. When I was young and had not yet learned to control my Hot Mess characteristics, if an irate parent had given me grief I would probably have told them off in no uncertain terms, and gotten fired. I did take on a volunteer teaching job one summer in college, teaching art at a children's museum for a few weeks. I couldn't control the class. I was a disaster as a teacher -- but my respect and admiration for teachers grew immensely that summer. I would go home after teaching for a few hours and be a zombie for the rest of the day.

I remember asking my mother how on earth she had managed the stress when she was a teacher and she said something like "I had a nice vodka tonic at the end of the day" or something equally [or more] funny. Not long before she died she was telling me about my grandmother Cordelia, who had been a teacher before she married, then gotten called back to teach during World War II, and Cordelia had told Mom that at the end of every day she would have to just go home and be in complete quiet for a while to unwind from the day. She was teaching in a very tiny school, the only one in Hephzibah, Georgia, and one year she had to teach her own son. Dad said it was the worst year ever because he never got away with anything!

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot lately about how teachers are so influential so here are some reminiscences from my school days.

[[right, me age 7]

I was working the other day and I had a phone conversation with a lady who was French Canadian but she spoke perfect English. At the end of the call she asked me "What is your name again?" I said "My name is Dee." She said "What?" I had to repeat it about four times. Finally she said "Okay..." sounding very skeptical. After I hung up I sat and chuckled a minute. In French, my name means "of." In Italian my name means "of" too... I recalled sometime later that I had a real run-in the first day of kindergarten when my teacher asked me my name. My teacher, Mrs. Hibbs, was French. I told her my name was Dee and she didn't believe me. She kept saying "No, what is your REAL name, dear?" and I finally said "DEE is the name on my birth certificate!" My parents were called and questioned and had to clear it up, which likely would not have happened if I had had a teacher who was American. (After that rocky start, I grew to love Mrs. Hibbs and she was a delightful teacher.)

Nowadays I am betting teachers are never surprised by any name of any child -- Apple, Dakota, Wolf, Bear, Mars, etc. I had a call yesterday from a lady whose name is Precious. That was my mother's nickname for me when she was in a good mood. My other nickname -- when I was being a pill -- was Miss Priss...

I had a teacher in middle school who was my English teacher 3 out of the 4 years, so a huge influence on me, Miss Gettys. I liked her handwriting so I copied it. She taught me how to think creatively because I always got extra credit for writing short stories. I learned how to diagram a sentence and most of my knowledge of grammar and punctuation comes from her. She tolerated the fact that every year I wrote a book report on Gone With the Wind because I had read it so many times I could pop out a book report on it in about 15 minutes. In 8th grade I was seriously disappointed when, at the end of the year, instead of getting the prize for being the Best Student in English I got the Most Improved in English. I sometimes think my entire writing career is my way of thumbing my nose at her and saying HA! HOW WRONG YOU WERE! -- but then again I hate to think of myself as being so petty...

I had an English teacher in high school who was a huge influence in a couple of ways, Mrs. Beverly. One, she announced at the start of the school year that she would not dumb down her vocabulary. I love words and I knew most of her vocabulary. Many of the kids complained. Two, she wore whatever she liked and didn't care what anyone thought. It was around 1977 and she was wearing clothes from her college days in the 1960's -- miniskirts etc. -- and some of the kids made fun of her wardrobe. I envied her her ability to not care what anyone thought!

I had an Algebra teacher in high school who was a very negative influence. He had been a fighter pilot in Vietnam and he was very intense and scary. My math anxiety skyrocketed in his class. The first day of class when he got to my name he stared at me and said "You're Bruce Thompson's sister aren't you?!" and I said yes. The look in his eyes told me that was a big negative. When I got home, I asked my brother about it and he said something about making some sarcastic/disrespectful remarks to the teacher and I thought oh great, now he will think I am as obnoxious as my brother! OH NO! - I was not, of course. Around teachers I was very respectful and polite. / I could not figure out how on earth he connected me with my brother though, because Thompson is a pretty common name, and I felt like I looked nothing like my brother. Only much later did I realize there was, in fact a resemblance; very blue eyes and high intelligence... That teacher called my mom and said "Mrs. Thompson Dee is making A's and B's in her other classes but failing my class. Can you or her dad give her some extra help at home?" Mom replied "We will try, but the only way I passed Algebra in college was by wearing very low-cut blouses and sitting on the front row!" Dad was great at math but not the "new math." [they hired a tutor for me]

[above, me [in glasses] and my brother [in vest] in high school, with family friends]

I had a Biology teacher in high school who was a huge influence. He hated teaching Biology. He loved Physics. So he very begrudgingly taught one class of Biology with minimal effort on his part. He would give tests by writing a sentence on the board and making us just write out the answers on our own paper. I still remember one test -- "Trace the path of a bite of food from the mouth all the way out the other end, explaining all the processes of digestion in detail, and drawing an illustration." He also introduced us to the controversy between Creationism and Evolution, by reading to us from a book that talked about humans starting out as one-celled organisms, then becoming fish, apes, and finally upright humans. The more conservative parents were horrified. My parents were sort of amused, and just said "Look, the bible is allegorical. You can believe in it AND evolution without going to Hell."

The world was a very different place when I was a child in school. I was probably the last generation of kids to be taught by ladies with high bouffant hairstyles, who weren't allowed to wear pants. I was in middle school before I ever saw a teacher wearing pants. We also had PE every day through the 8th grade, and Art and Music twice a week. We said the Pledge of Allegiance every day. Watching a movie in class was a big treat. When writing papers, we had to go to the library and research the old-fashioned way -- there was no Google. I never saw a computer until I was in high school and I wasn't allowed to touch it. I had never personally used a computer until I was out of college!

Those days are gone forever...