Category Archives: Small truths

Small truths, Whatever

In which I foresee the future and rant some

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Today was a beautiful day, so beautiful and warm for the first time that it was hard to stay inside at work for so many hours.

Spring fever got the best of me this evening and I skipped the gym (again!) and wandered around the garden instead to encourage the bluebells and bleeding hearts in their progress towards blooming. I checked in with the fish in their temporary home until the pond is cleaned (soon!) and tried to find a frog or two hidden amongst the muck at the bottom. Once it started to get dark, I walked the farm fields in back hoping for woodcock. No luck; it’s too late and I missed my chance for the year. I knew it was all wrong when I heard only robins caroling and no white-throated sparrows. Usually, I know to expect the peenting to begin once the white-throats have quieted down for the night. The robins are singing at dusk and the woodcock have moved on.

In short, it was another of those days that left with me nothing much to blog about. Around 9 pm I finally got to open the mail and found my topic for the day: my impending poverty.

😉

My birthday’s coming up in a couple months and as you working people know, Social Security sends out an estimated benefits statement each year. Mostly I don’t pay much mind to it because the idea of retirement is so far off for me now that it feels like a waste of time to even contemplate it. But I spent some time looking at those numbers tonight and am sort of sorry I did.

The bad news is that if I continue to work two jobs until I’m 62 (another 25 years or so) I’ll have earned enough to qualify myself for a whopping $576 in monthly benefits. $576 a month is way below the federal poverty level, you know.

Worse is that if I continue to work two jobs for another 30 years, I’ll still qualify for benefits that keep me below the federal poverty level, but which are too high to entitle me to food stamps or any other sort of government assistance.

Worse still is that if I continue to work two jobs for another 33 years (until I’m 70 for christsakes!) I’ll barely qualify for enough to keep me out of the poorhouse.

Does anyone else find this terribly depressing?

Can anyone wonder why I try to be so kind to my poor downtrodden clients? I’ll be one of them someday!

😉

Granted, I’ve not made lucrative career choices and don’t believe it’s up to the government to support me in my old age, but jeez! Where’s the motivation to go to work on a sunny spring day?

The truth of the matter is that I can also expect a pension as a public employee, assuming the other taxpayers in my fine state don’t whittle that away to nothing by the time I’m old and gray. ‘Taxpayers’ seem to think that we public employees, your teachers and public health nurses and garbage men, and even us dopey social workers, have too many perks and earn too much and shouldn’t also earn a nice pension for our old age. The truth is in those numbers though… I earn so little as a public employee that, were it not for that anticipated pension, I’d be going to work everyday for the rest of eternity only to set myself up to be poor in the future.

I’m thinking of leaving it all behind… running off to join the circus or finding a band that needs a groupie or setting up a lemonade stand on some deserted beach in the Bahamas; anything to avoid the seeming drudgery of working everyday for nothing.

Maybe I should just find a really good financial advisor instead.

Birds, Small truths, Snapshots, Travels with the flock, Wanderings

Birding in Delia’s backyard

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Susan seems to think I have all these fabulous photos to share with you from our visit with Delia. Well… I don’t. I carried that darn camera with me everywhere and was distracted with laughing most of the time and didn’t get very many nice pics. But, there is this one from Delia’s backyard – isn’t it fabulous? As much as I love being near to the shore, I can easily imagine myself happy to have a view like this out my kitchen window. I’ve no idea what type of trees those are up on top of that mountain, but if they ever turn green or in the fall are colored with reds and yellows, and oranges – wow! Delia called that a ‘hill’ rather than a mountain, by the way, but to me used to the coast it all seemed pretty spectacular. Please click on the pic to enlarge!

It was really neat to see the places that Delia blogs about. It felt to me like she lives in the middle of nowhere, but that must come from my being too accustomed to traffic and noise and people. Made me wonder what in the world they do with themselves! But then I remembered when I first started reading Delia’s blog and she talked about building her own scope from scratch for birding, and then making an adapter for her camera for the scope she finally bought, and her posts about moon and starwatching, and all the time she spends birding in the marsh that’s in her backyard. Anyway… it seems like a nice life there in the ‘hills’ – even if there’s only one Dunkin Donuts within a hundred miles and you have to pump your own gas!

(Don’t ask – I’m sure Susan will embarass me with that story – even if she doesn’t have photos!)

So, we spent a couple hours ambling through the marsh, talking and laughing like old friends – which felt really nice – and doing the things that birders and naturalists like to do. Only we weren’t really serious about it, or didn’t bother trying to pretend to be serious. We just had fun in that easy way that near strangers can when they share a common interest. We scared up lots of ducks with our laughter, and thought of Lynne when we saw a TV, puzzled over some bloody feathers along the trail, spotted a stinker for Mary as it flew over the marsh, Susan and Delia chimped their way through a pile of canine scat – while I kept my fingers clean behind the camera! Good, clean fun… but for the picking through poop – come on girls! Yuck.

In the end, I came away feeling like a 10 year-old, jumping through mudpuddles with the silliness of it all. Who in their right mind drives all that way to show support for a friend, misses the main reason for going to begin with, and then is perfectly happy with a few hours of backyard birding and wet muddy feet before a long ride back home? (Click here for the story and opposite view of this pic.)

What I mean to say is that I’m so often amazed with the friendships that’ve developed as a result of this silly blogging we all do, yet furthering those friendships beyond just reading one another’s blogs feels like a very natural extension of the connections we’ve made here. I think to others who don’t ‘get it’, it must all seem pretty peculiar, yet we bloggers all carry around little bits of each other and one another’s lives, don’t we? Going out of our way a bit and meeting in ‘real life’ makes it feel almost like a homecoming of sorts. Or a 20 year class reunion… you remember these people, but you’re surprised with how your memory of them has changed since you last saw them (or read their most recent post.)

😉

Growing up, Remembering, Small truths

Yeah.. we’ve always been a little off

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I wasted a few perfectly good hours this morning (and enlisted my husband in the project, too) looking for the grown-up version of this pic – I know it’s around here somewhere; can see it even in my mind – but I’ll be damned if I can put my fingers on it. It’s Kevin and I at the beach, me in a bikini looking amused, he up to his knees in the sand, building something to keep that amused grin on my face. I was twenty or so. He thirty or so. Grown-ups. Building sandcastles.

What’s the matter with us?

I heard from him the other day, for the first time since.. oh Christmas, and what did he do? He complimented me on my snowman. The one I built with the five-year-olds from the neighborhood. He told me about the snowman/igloo combination he built; you got to crawl into the snowman’s belly and hide out. Maybe have a nap there. Or a cup of cocoa.

What’s the matter with us?

My brothers and I… we’re a little off. But then, isn’t everyone, in one way or another? Of course I know there’s nothing wrong with us, at least nothing seriously wrong, but I wonder where this sense of whimsy comes from. Why do some of us still have it long past the time when others have grown up?

Not everyone sees the value in our foolishness either. Certain relatives just roll their eyes at us when we get laughing together and planning our next bit of imaginary mischief. Clearly, we are not to be trusted with the trappings of adulthood: the car keys, the checkbook, the children.

Sitting down to write this today, I thought of so many stories that point to our immaturity, but really I’m hoping some of you might share some stories of your own with me, from your families. Are you as *off* as we are?

Garden, In the neighborhood, Small truths, Snapshots

Note to a neighbor

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You don’t know me, but might recognize me from the neighborhood. I walk by your house with the silly black Lab puppy in the early evenings; sometimes we wave to one another while you’re out to bring in the garbage cans from the street.

Maybe you saw me this afternoon on my knees in my good clothes in the middle of your front garden. I had the camera with me on the way in from work and couldn’t resist stopping to take some pics, even though I worried you might think me a little nutty for doing it.

You see, those snowdrops you’ve planted have been drawing my eye for the last week or so; in fact, I look for them there every winter around this time. Last year, their blooms were suspended in ice, but my winter weary eyes were reassured at the sight of them.

If you’d noticed my pausing as I drove by earlier this month, it was just so that I might catch a glimpse of the green shoots poking the way through their bed of ivy. That was magic enough the morning I finally spotted them, but last week their blooms lifted my heart some on a day when it was otherwise heavy.

I can see from your carefully-tended garden that you’re as much a lover of the most delicate flowers as I am. But snowdrops aren’t delicate and they’re as generous with themselves as we gardeners tend to be. Yours are slowly monopolizing the small space you’ve allotted them and before too long will be blooming down along the sidewalk. When that happens, I hope you’ll forgive me if you should find me there one afternoon with a small spade in place of my camera.

I’d be happy to return the favor, if only you’d knock at my door sometime and introduce yourself. I think I saw you out there one spring day at the edge of the garden with an eye on my patch of lily-of-the-valley. It’s quietly covering the ground beneath the dogwood trees and making its way towards the street.

If we wait long enough, your plot of snowdrops may meet my patch of lily-of-the-valley, and then our flowers will be neighbors too and we’ll not have to steal glances from one another’s garden any longer.

From the field, Remembering, Small truths

The older we get…

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“Seek out old people. When you find some, give them joy. Listen closely. Remember that each old person is a library. Listen closely. Be useful. Bring the gift of yourself. Be voluntary. Visit with magic. Try playing their game. Let wisdom seep in. Cradle your own future old person. Be gentle. Listen closely. Pay attention to an old person. The treasures will be revealed.” –Sark, A Creative Companion

I had a second visit with an eighty-something-year old client today; quite the character this man is! Today’s visit was a bit more enjoyable than our last in early January; he’s since been fitted for a hearing aid and we didn’t need to shout at one another this time. He’s almost practically blind with glaucoma so couldn’t read the letter I’d sent to let him know I’d be stopping by. I stood in the pouring rain for the ten minutes it took him to get to the door with his walker to let me in and then he couldn’t see me to remember who I was.

😉

The real purpose of my visit was to make sure that his landlord had done some necessary repairs that I’d required, but I could have just as easily done that over the phone – but for all that shouting! – the fact is that I love to visit my elderly clients in person when possible. They’re often grumpy, but I love them anyway and usually end up feeling like I want to bring them home with me or at least adopt them for the holidays.

We had a nice visit and chatted about all his health issues and the problems he’s been having adjusting to the hearing aid. Then the stories started – that’s what I look forward to the most, you know! He told me about the jazz band he played horn in for many years – dixieland – and the time his band was asked to play at a funeral and had all the mourners up and dancing in the back of the funeral chapel. He also told about a half dozen bad jokes, but I laughed and he laughed and that’s what matters, I guess.

Most of the seniors I visit live alone and are too far from family to have any sort of support network in place. Plus, I imagine they’re really lonely and like the chance to talk with someone who’s kind enough to listen.

I know it was that way with my dad. I used to pity the poor telemarketer or grocery store clerk who met him when he was in a talkative mood – which was practically always! – he could go on and on for hours and mostly my brothers and I had already heard all of his stories at least a thousand times so had stopped listening, really. I regret that now, of course, and sometimes feel like I would give almost anything to hear my dad tell the story of breaking my mother’s Christmas angel or any of the hundreds of others he had saved up, just one more time.

I think the lesson for me in this is that it’s too easy to take your own family for granted; the old guy I saw this morning has a few sons around, but I wonder if they are able to delight in him the way I found myself doing today. It’s not easy to do, I guess, when other issues or emotions get in the way of just enjoying one another’s company, but I think courtesy, a lot of patience and some extra attention can go a long way in making the elderly feel like they have something to offer the rest of us. It doesn’t take much to be kind, does it? And they see far and know so much; we need only really listen.

Pastimes, Small truths, Snapshots

Horseshoe Cove sunset

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“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I had the time, or better said, if my work schedule permitted it, I think I would be in a place everyday where I could watch the sun set over water. Especially in the wintertime, when the colors are just so much more spectacular somehow. As it is now, it’s a race to be home before dusk, but everyday the light is lingering a bit longer. Have you noticed that yet? Spring must be on the horizon.
Small truths, Whatever

Blank map

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“This is a blank map that lets you go as far as you want in any direction, with no questions asked, but it’s no help at all if you want to know if you’re going the right way.” –Brian Andreas

Where would you go… if you could? If you didn’t have to worry that it was the right way?

Remembering, Seasons, Small truths

Waiting

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Christmas Eve is my most favorite day of the holiday season and I try to reserve it for simple joys: watching the sun rise at a decent hour and then seeing a dusk come that is like no other time of the year, filling the daylight hours in between with cooking and preparing for tomorrow’s gathering with family, visiting with friends and calling on neighbors with homemade cookies, seeing the college kids from the neighborhood at home and so grown and changed from their short time away, the long afternoon church service with candles and bell-ringers.

Once it was dark today I took a break from the kitchen and drove through the downtown to admire the glittery lights and be glad that I wasn’t one of those people still out shopping for last-minute gifts. There’s been very little in the way of that this year, for whatever reason. Not in the mood mostly, but there’s a part of me that feels empty in buying gifts when so many need something that can’t be tightly bound with a red or green bow.

I was home in time to hear the sirens far enough away in the distance to know that I hadn’t missed Santa on his firetruck prowl through the neighborhood. Funny that I should look forward to that each year like I do, but there’s a certain childish eagerness on my part for seeing him arrive with gifts for the kids who live behind us; I can’t help but wave as he goes by and remember the sound of sleigh bells from my own childhood. Someone, most probably my brothers, made a point of my hearing them from the front yard bushes before bed on Christmas Eve. Brothers, I think, are one of those gifts that takes years to appreciate or find a use for.

So now I look forward to that particular quiet that comes only after midnight this day, after the preparations are done and there’s no traffic on the road, the house dark and quiet but for the lights of the Christmas tree and rivaled only by the shimmer of winter’s brightest stars.

– – – – – – – – – – –

“Prayer
is the pathway

Stillness
is the temple

Love
is the offering we bring

Peace
is the gift we are given.”

-Joan Walsh Anglund

I wish for you peace and the simple joys that only this day can bring.

Growing up, Remembering, Small truths

Nameless things

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As children, we were unaware of so many things that we lived in a strange paradise of invented names and things that, in our eyes, were full of mystery. Birds, insects and flowers that had no names other than those we chose to give them. In this way, each of us possessed our own beautiful and magical kingdom made up things as ephemeral as the baptism of a tree, or a creek, or a particular path through the woods. We used to say, “I swam in your creek”; “Look at your birds”; “This is my flower.”

I had a special love for certain animals that in the opinion of many were quite disgusting. I remember a toad. It lived under the rocks near a little creek that was close to where I grew up. I called him Sam the Mindreader, and although I can’t seem to remember why, the reasons behind any of these names for plants and animals were vague and intangible to begin with. And if we loved some of these, we also hated others, such as the thistles, pastel purple flowers born among the weedy fields that signaled the coming end of our summer vacation. When the purple flowers appeared we would squash them furiously with our heels or cut them from their roots.

One day someone killed Sam the Mindreader. I found him squashed and dried up. I stayed there for a long time just looking and listening to the creek running across the rocks. Suddenly I was left with a name in the emptiness, a name I didn’t know what to do with. A strange feeling came over me then. I remember that I went away slowly; it wasn’t sadness that I felt, but the emptiness of something that had fled, like a bird or a memory. I felt this loss to the point that for days I went around repeating to myself now and again “Sam the Mindreader” without understanding it well any longer.

Many times since I have felt the hollowness of a word that, in reality, never existed. But then, for the first time, I became aware of certain words or echoes that leave a hollow in our thoughts that neither hope nor memory can overcome.

From the field, Small truths, Whatever

The public’s business

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I remember fifteen years or so ago when first offered a job with social services being asked, rather snidely, “You don’t intend to stay there very long, do you? Who wants to work with those people?” I really had no clue what I was getting myself into and was just interested in a paycheck and the chance to put all those years of studying Spanish to good use.

I remember being bothered, to begin with, mostly by the lack of any similarity of values with my clients. It seemed like everyone was having kids with just anyone with no concern for how they were to be supported. Fourteen-year-olds having babies really bothered me. Women staying with the same abusive guy for years. Teenagers having abortion after abortion.

For most of these fifteen years, it’s all been stories on paper or over the phone, with very little direct face-to-face contact. Other than an occasional visit to a little old ladies’ home to complete paperwork, it’s all remained very abstract and I’ve been able to pretend a certain distance from the people I work with.

Not so anymore.

If anything, in all these years, I’ve learned that there’s really very little that separates me from my clients; us from them. Values and chance are what I think it comes down to. Big factors, but easy to explain away by circumstance or luck.

Something else I’ve discovered recently is that nothing shocks me anymore. This hasn’t been a sudden thing, I don’t think, but the accumulated weight of years of sad and twisted stories. I do wonder that I’ve not become cynical or jaded. Maybe my own values have just slipped along the way; who knows.

Two days a week now I’m out there snooping around in people’s homes and poking into their private lives, all in the guise of making sure that their living situations are safe and sanitary because you and I are paying a portion of their living expenses each month. Most live just like you and I do; others, well… it’s not anything that is really polite to discuss in mixed company.

😉

But discuss it we do; usually late in the afternoon when any sort of productive work is well beyond possible. It’s a good sort of release and a good time to laugh at ourselves, mostly, and the things that still bother us. Not shock us, just bother us, or make us afraid. Child abuse, bed bugs, gang shootings, cockroaches, sex offenders.

This afternoon after I sent a letter along to notify a client that I would be visitng in the next two weeks, I took a minute to look through the case file. Oh boy! Do I really mean to go there alone? Safe-enough neighborhood, but the client has a history of drug use (not just that, really, more like a history of running crack houses) oh and look there! – a police report about prostitution and confining women in the home against their will, and just last month an arrest for crack possession (again) and buying alcohol for minors.

So I went to the big boss and asked if we shouldn’t just terminate any sort of assistance to this guy and do I really need to go into his house… please? Well, the fact is, he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet, so I need to make the visit.

I think I must have sat at my desk for an hour trying to come up with a way to sell this visit to any one of my more experienced coworkers – a trade maybe? Fresh-baked muffins everyday for a month, perhaps? In the end I just asked if anyone had the time to accompany me on a visit to a crack house and dear sweet Susan, who sits across the way and is totally overburdered with her own work, volunteered to go along with me. How two blonde German-Irish girls are to make each other feel safe I’m not sure, but she assured me she’s not fazed by it. She’s sat across the kitchen table with the mothers of murderers and knows that these people, our clients, the ones we mean to help on their way to self-sufficiency, really like us and mean us no harm and are glad for the intrusion into their lives.

I’m not convinced of that yet, but wonder if I shouldn’t have offered fresh-baked muffins everday for two months instead, or just taken that job on Wall Street so many years ago.

😉