History of a Flag

     Flying next to the post office in Laytonville, there is a special-to-me American flag. It's been raised every morning and lowered every evening for less than four years. It’s faded and frayed. I thought it would last forever. But I guess they don't make them like they used to or maybe the wind’s been stronger than ever and the rain wetter, the sun hotter. For me it’s been a beacon, something I could count on seeing whenever I went into town. I no longer live in Laytonville and I’ve learned that the flag is going to go to its own rest and be replaced. Now, I feel I can tell its story. It feels a little like offering the eulogy at a memorial for a special person in my life or saying a few words before a building or a ship is going to be demolished.  

     After August, 2010, when my husband, Yuwach, passed away, I received mounds of paperwork from the Veterans’ Administration. In between forms there came a voucher for an American flag. Y had served in the 32^nd Infantry Division of the Wisconsin National Guard beginning in 1959. In 1963, his division was activated during the Berlin Crisis. He and his new wife moved to Parkland, WA. That's when he discovered there was something more than cold winters and outrageous summer humidity. He was on active duty for a year, then finished his military commitment while attending Tacoma Vocational Technical Institute.

     I don’t know what made me fill out and return the voucher for the flag but I did. A month later I was called to come to the VA office in Ukiah to receive this symbol of The United States Of America. As I drove to the offices, I still pondered the question of what in the world was I doing? Both Y and I had believed in peaceful negotiation. Neither of us had thought that showing “might was right” was a way for our country to be in the world. In fact we both agreed that capitalism and democracy were causing our government to see war as a way to prop up the economy when other methods didn’t work.

     When the head of the local VA department brought the brown cardboard box out, I asked for another moment to prepare myself to receive this gift. I had to sit down in the midst of photos of our current president and the regalia often seen in military establishments. Each item on the walls and on pedestals were familiar to me, and I realized my life had been affected by the military since before I was born. My dad had been a top sergeant in the Marines and had served for almost thirty years before retiring. He had served in Iwo Jima, Korea, and the Philippines. When he died, he had not wanted any ceremony or flag. My first husband had retired from the Army and had served in Korea after that war and in Viet Nam during that one. Y’s son, Steve Gleisner, had served in the Navy where he held a high-level security position on a nuclear submarine as a Cryptographic Radioman from 1981 - 1984.

     I stood and nodded that I was ready. I remember tears filling my eyes and emotion clutching at my chest as I told the man I was accepting the flag in honor of all the men in my life who had donned a military uniform and gone off to do their part in keeping the USA free, whether I agreed with the sentiment any more or not. They had been willing to change their lives for a dream of making it a safer place. Their decision had been selfless. Each one of them had wanted to be a part of the greater good.

     So I accepted the flag and wondered all the way home, what was I going to do with it? Put it on a shelf? Display it in a cabinet or hang it from the balcony? It was huge!

     One day I took a good look at the flag outside the local post office and saw in 2010 that it was fraying at the edges and coming loose from one of its grommets. I asked the head clerk if they were going to get a new one soon. She said there was so much need for flags for coffins of vets from Iraq and Afghanistan, post offices were way down on the list to receive new ones. They'd been on the waiting list for over six months.

     I asked if one could be donated. She said they’d never had one donated before but if it had the appropriate grommets, the flag would be gratefully received.

     I thought about it and brought it in the next week. The flag honoring four of the five important men in my life had found a home. Now it too has done it's job and can be retired.

Singing the Popeye Song

           Moving into a one bedroom rental has been harder on me physically, and I’m only one year older since the last year when I sold my home and moved into a bedroom suite at the Flower Farm. I had Maggie then who would use her strong arms and organized mind. She was helpful in more than many ways and I could share ideas and challenges with her. This time, I was the one doing all the organizing, with little or no input from anyone. I had to decide what I wanted, where I wanted it, and how to move it. I also had to learn how to ask for help which was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn. I truly began another level of the process of re-creating myself, and it was tough making all those decisions.

I’ve done so many things in the last year: bought new items, searched new pathways of thought, made new friends, tried new ways of expression.  I had to fill in as many of the gaps that had been created by the loss of friends and husband and a community of people who shared a way of life with me. I gave and packed away so many items that, as I now open each box from the storage locker, I am surprised by every other item I find: like the picture of the Hummingbird Katchina or the Dan Stolpes pen and ink renditions of the spirit animals as commemoration of Rolling Thunder and Semu Huaute. Last year, I set up my life experiences in such a way that I was forced to pursue my life without these trappings packed in cardboard boxes. I had to move along my path in a different manner.

            The image of a space suit flashes with its long life-preserving tether to a main ship. How far can a person move away from his/her core beliefs before the life line ruptures because it is stretched too far?

            On a drive with a new friend one Saturday to transport my ‘new-to-me’ washer and dryer, she asked, “What sustains you?”

I answered without hesitation, “Our Earth in all her rhythms and beauty. The energy in all that is.” I had no doubt, no reservation. Some would argue that I am not accepting or knowing or depending on “God”. If they are categorizing “God” as the fellow sitting on a cloud with a white beard and a pointy finger, I don’t accept him. What I do accept is the multifaceted way the details of each moment, day, season, year present themselves to me while I walk through my life. If I am worried, restless, anxious, sad, glad, angry, I breathe the air and drink water both with huge gulps. However much I need to be nurtured and patted on the back, I only have to stand in the sun and feel the presence of aliveness seep into my muscles and bones. The smells of whatever is blooming stop me in my tracks. I am offered blessings whenever I take the time to notice.

What I’m realizing is that I didn’t really move that far away from what I was after 33 years of living the life I lived with my husband. I’ve strengthened who I am and I am more able to exemplify the person I am in the way I want to express it. I can do my life my way instead of the way I did it as a wife and companion, mother and nurse.

As I think on it, that’s what made this move harder, not the physical effort, but the conscious attention I gave to all the details, plus the excitement and anxiety of putting my life back together for me and my beliefs. "I am what I am, I am , I am."

Turning a Challenge into an Art Form

Being in balance is a little like standing to put on a pair of tennis shoes without a chair in the room and without giving up and sitting on the floor.

The act requires first standing on one foot then the other to place a sock over each set of toes.  The second challenge is getting the laced openings open enough for one fell swoop of a foot to enter at least far enough into the shoe so you can put it quickly back on the floor and wedge your heel into place.  The third challenge is tying the laces into a bow.

I find I can tell many things about myself and how my day is beginning by how well I can execute this task. I’m almost beginning to think of it as my morning yoga exercise or maybe even a meditation. From another perspective, I feel it as a dance and perhaps it is becoming a personal morning art form. This practice developed after an introductory Aikido class I took one summer at Brightenbush Hot Springs with 50 or so other Reiki Masters.

We were asked to stand with one foot in front of the other in our best balanced form.  We each had partners who then pushed at our shoulder to see how much it would take to topple us sideways.  I was appalled at myself when my partner had only to exert a feather touch and over I went.  I had no balance, even when I asked to do it again and planted myself more strongly (or so I thought) on both bared feet.  Over I went, again.

Later in the morning after I’d learned where my center was, how to hold onto my Chi, and how to ground plus after I’d discovered various other reasons I was off balance, (like my ragged breathing, lack of focus and self awareness) my partner had to press a little harder on my shoulder to get me to topple, but it wasn’t much pressure at all.

Using this ‘putting on my tennis shoe’ routine, I can now tell much about myself (whether I’m in a rush, not remembering to breathe, or am ungrounded ) by the way I hop in place trying to put on a sock or how my upper body drifts to one side when I’m working on the ‘toes-in-the-shoe’ maneuver.  How much I struggle, while I accomplish this task, lets me know how alert I am or how disgruntled or how much I may have on my mind.  Sometimes it goes well, sometimes not.  This daily experiment is just a little thermometer of my level of stress. It’s like a dance with me that tells me I have too many thoughts and distractions going on inside me and around me.

If I can slow down and settle myself before I start this challenge, the whole event takes much less time. I can find a place where my muscles seem to float and barely feel used.  I can become so engrossed in this morning test that I can feel light and heavy at the same time.

As it is usually the final piece of dressing, my entire sense of self ends up being absolutely ready to get on with my day.

The Balancing Act of Aging

I used to wonder when I was going to get old. I wasn’t sure when that particular experience was supposed to begin. Given the results of a questionnaire, “How old is old?” on one of my favorite blogs recently, I saw where many individuals have a wide spectrum of opinions about what constitutes the concept of "old."

Every respondent posted an age that was relative to their own. 50-years-olds said 65. Sixty-five-year olds said 70. 70-year-olds said 75.

I can remember when my mom (25 years older than I was) seemed old until I studied my grandmother who was 50.

“Old” seemed a long way away. Now it seems quite a bit closer.

My project now that I’m living through my 70^th year is to make as little fuss about it as possible. I’m not trying to hide my age, rather embrace it without calling attention by bemoaning it. Aches and pains do give me pause in my day or change my plans. I find I’m paying more attention to where I place my feet when I hike up or down a trail. I’m more conscious about what shoes I’m wearing for what task. I’m also getting sassier or saucier in my demeanor because I’m a little less interested in blending with the wallpaper” so to speak.

Every moment of every day seems to be more precious. I’ve decided to make each one a bit more fun if by no other means than laughing at myself and some of the seriousness I’ve held regarding me and life all these years.

Take my cookie baking project yesterday. All of a sudden I was to be visited by my two oldest grandchildren. I was thrilled and wondered, “What is a grandmother supposed to do?” My answer was, “bake cookies?” Neither of my grandmothers did any such thing, but, no matter, cookies it was. So I pulled what ingredients I had from my corner of the shelved pantry I share with my landlady and searched for a favorite recipe I used to bake regularly four years ago. Living in someone else’s home also demands I make do without my usual utensils and equipment, an adjustment that has caused me some confusion and frustration.

I spread out on the kitchen island and decided while I was there I might as well construct a soup for my dinner with vegetables I didn’t need to save. (They were wilting.)

A simple project turned into an extravaganza with the first pan of cookies being cooked without all their ingredients (soda and cinnamon). The second pan had everything in it and I timed it carefully. The third batch conflicted with chopping veggies and stayed too long in the oven. They were not burned exactly, just crispy. Then the beans boiled over because I had misjudged the amount of dried beans to water. Then the veggies burned on one side because I was stir-frying them so they didn’t boil away with the beans.

All I could do was shake my head at myself and laugh as one mistake after the other trailed after themselves like a train coming down a hill.

In the middle of the mess, I sat down for a cup of cool water and surveyed my disaster area. Still chuckling, I reminded myself I probably hadn’t needed to do a thing but hug these two teenagers very hard and listen to what they were doing in their lives. I had been the one trying to be more, to fit into some kind of role of my own creation.

Aging I think takes on a bit of that mental exercise. We come to a cross roads where our perceptions of who we are as an older person can be influenced by some set of social norms created by fiction or some one else’s wishful thinking. The young girls (ranging from five to eleven) next door decided to play-act grandmothers one day and walked over, each with some kind of walking assistance device, ( a walker, a cane, and four pronged metal cane) and they were dressed in flavors of black. I asked them how did they come up with their costumes, and they answered they got their ideas from programs on TV.

Because there are rare positive models in the media about aging, they and we pick up what there is. How many medications are there now being advertized by grey-haired men and women for chronic conditions? Skin creams and treatments for balding are offered at discounts. Secretly smiling elders are advertising pills for erectile dysfunction instead of dancing suggestively on a date. The old age prevention and treatment industry is getting as prolific as the dieting corporation’s spiels.

I’ve decided not to fight “old” but applaud it. It is the next stage of life. After all, the day we really began the aging process was the day after we were born.