For All of You, I Give Thanks

Hello to all of you whose blogging friendship has enriched my life during the past year. All of us, I hope and trust, have so much for which to be grateful. Each day, life offers us blessings pressed down and overflowing. Often these blessings come as surprises: we feel a sudden upsurge of gratitude within our innards. A lightness of heart and mind. Joy. A feeling of contentment.

These transcendent moments enrich our spirits as we meld with all others who inhabit the Universe and are part of the Holy Oneness of All Creation.

That Oneness unites us despite our differences with regard to religion or politics or skin color or ethnicity or sexual preference or other beliefs to which we cling sometimes as that which defines us.

What really defines us I believe is our ceaseless search for authenticity, for wholeness of the human spirit—a wholeness that speaks loud and clear of the great gifts we bear to all human—and animal—kind.

This year I am especially grateful not only for the friendship you have extended to me but for my family, the cats with whom I live, my home, the beauty of our natural world, and my health. And one thing more: renewed possibility.

Meniere’s entered my life in 2006 and has narrowed it in many ways. But this month I flew—for the first time since the disease took up residence within me. Flying is somewhat tricky for those of us who are often in the throes of vertigo and the accompanying headaches and so I’ve given up traveling to anyplace except where I can drive. And driving long distances at seventy-seven is tiring!

This past year, a young mother and her four children “adopted” me as their grandmother. During my lifetime I’ve been daughter, sister, and aunt, but I’ve never been called wife, mother, or grandmother. This is a whole new episode in my life and I feel humbled by it—and grateful.

When this family of five invited me to visit for two weeks I hesitated because the distance was too far to drive. I checked train and bus schedules but both time and cost were prohibitive. After much mulling, I decided, with some trepidation, that I had to venture forth and take to the skies. I found an inexpensive roundtrip ticket that pretty much made the decision for me.

A Meniere’s friend in Stillwater, Minnesota, gave me sound advice on how to prepare for the flight. Nevertheless I felt stressed, which can exacerbate Meniere’s. So on November 6^th, both anxiety and I boarded the plane.

Now here is the wonderful news: I experienced no problems in flying across the country and back. NONE. O ye jigs and juleps! O, joy in the morning! This means that my life has opened up to possibility again.

As I’ve aged, my life has narrowed. Partly because of Meniere’s and partly because of moving away from friends of thirty-eight years and settling here in Missouri. I am neither a joiner nor a churchgoer and after volunteering for fifty-some years, I’m ready to leave that enriching way of meeting other people to the younger generations.

But discovering I can fly means I can visit with friends in Minnesota more often. I can visit those places that are on my “bucket list.” Moreover, the realization that Meniere’s is still present but that it no longer holds my life in thrall has helped me realize that even here in Missouri I can venture out more and seek new experiences. I can get on that superhighway to Kansas City and enjoy the concerts and plays there.

And so today as all of us honor the courage of the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, as all of us give thanks for our health and our families and friends, as all of us gather with loved ones to embrace the goodness and abundance of our lives, I am saying a special thank you to the Universe for the treasure trove of possibility that I now see opening up before me. Life is good.

Peace to all of you, pressed down and overflowing, on this Thanksgiving Day.

Note: The photographs from Wikipedia are of the Rocky Mountains. I flew over them and also was driven up them and through their canyons. The world is indeed beautiful.

PS: Next Thursday I hope to begin posting regularly again. You’ll find me in Seneca, Kansas, teaching fifth graders.

A Friend Recognizes My Desperation

(Continuation from Monday of a random and unexpected act of kindness . . . )

Yesterday I shared the story of the European trip two friends and I took in 1976. That posting emphasized the kindness of Evelyn, a friend I met when teaching in Dayton, Ohio. Accompanying us on that trip was Paullene Caraher. She and I had been in the convent together.

Paullene, on the right, and Evelyn in Amsterdam.

         In 1963, Paullene and I taught together in Kansas City, Kansas, and became good friends. By 1968, both of us had left the convent, but remained friends. Thus it was that she visited me during Thanksgiving vacation in Claremont, New Hampshire, where I was teaching 268 juniors during the 1972-73 school year.

         The year was being difficult. In 2011, I posted three stories about how the Claremont students and I clashed for the first three months. If you’d like to read those stories, click here. And here. And here.

         While Paullene and I prepared Thanksgiving dinner, the russet potatoes unexpectedly boiled over. The ring of fire beneath the stainless steel pan flared high, fingering a dishtowel I’d foolish left on the range. The flaming cloth reached upward toward the framed picture on the wall.

         Even as Paullene began calmly to search for baking soda to smother the flames, I panicked. “We’ll burn the building down!” I shouted.

         Grabbing another towel, I swiped the flames. The second towel caught fire in my hand. Dropping it on the floor, I stomped the flames. Then I ran to the window, threw it open, and tossed the tattered cloth outside.

         Frantically racing back and forth, I bumped into the kitchen table, the counter, the windowsill. Now the smell of gas filled the kitchen. “It’s gas,” I shouted at Paullene. “We’ll die!”

         All the while she quietly and efficiently smothered the flame, turned off the gas, and cleaned the dark smudges from the stovetop.

         Halting my frantic activity, I watched her. My breath slowed; the panic subsided. Silently, I slide down the wall to the floor and began to sob.

         It was then that Paullene said, “Dee, what’s wrong?”

         I just shook my head. I didn’t know. The students seemed to despise me. The teachers seldom spoke to me. Life had become unbearable.

         “Dee,” Paullene continued, “you haven’t smiled once since I came. You haven’t laughed.”

         I continued crying.

         “That’s not like you,” Pauline said as she sat down on the floor next to me. “Not like you at all. You’ve always been able—even in the convent—to see humor in everything. What’s happened?”

         Haltingly, I told her about coming to Claremont. About how confused I was. Lonely. Muddled.

         Paullene wrapped her arms round me and rocked me back and forth, crooning, “It’s going to be alright. We’ll get help for you. We’ll find you a psychiatrist to talk to.”

         Biting my lower lip I moaned, “I don’t know how to get a psychiatrist. I just don’t know.” I felt helpless. Totally unprepared for survival.

         “We’ll find help tomorrow,” Paullene assured me. “Now let’s mash those potatoes and have supper.”

         That night I slept as if dead. When I woke, Paullene had news for me. She’d called Dartmouth College. “I made an appointment for you with a woman psychiatrist there,” she said. “She’ll see you on Monday at 4:00.”

The Latin motto for Dartmouth translates to

“a voice crying out of the wilderness.”

         I stared at her, amazed. She made it all seem so easy. School would be out at 3:30 and I could drive to Hanover in a half hour. It was all so uncomplicated. She’d unmuddled my muddle.

         “You’re going to be alright, Dee,” Paullene said. “You’ll smile again.”

         I must have looked doubtful for she said, “Trust me. You will.”

         And I did.

         And even now my heart smiles in remembrance of her kindness when I wandered in the desert of my own despair. When she arrived in Claremont I was lost. With her great good sense and her own steadfastness she rescued me. Such is the strength of a caring friend.                                               

                                      ( . . . to be continued on Wednesday

                                                      with a Random Act of Kindness

                                                                  at Mount Saint Scholastica Monastery.)

So Much for Which to Be Grateful

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who have found your way to my blog this November morning. May your day be filled with overflowing gratitude for the wonders of our world and the humanity that inhabits it.

         Here's a video from YouTube in which the narrator sums up the gifts we have been given so abundantly. I hope it speaks to you as gently as it spoke to me.

 Just a reminder: Tomorrow—Black Friday—I’m thanking the Universe for the great abundance in my life by giving away free downloads of the Amazon e-books A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story and A Cat’s Legacy: Dulcy’s Story (which was originally entitled Twelve Habits of Highly Successful Cats and Their Humans). Just come back to my blog tomorrow and click on the words beneath the pictures of the two covers on the right-hand side of the page. That will take you directly to the two e-books on Amazon.

         I’ll post this notification again tomorrow. Please let your feline-loving and animal-loving friends know about this gift from Dulcy and me. Peace.

Postscript: If you want to read a funny story about food and not being grateful for it, please read my posting for yesterday about white sauce!