"A Beautiful Day"

          The most difficult part of caring for my mother comes on beautiful days like today. We woke up this morning with crispness. The air carried a snap to it that caused me to pull the covers up a little higher and bury myself a little deeper into bed. When I let the dogs outside, I lingered in the doorway, sniffing autumn. Sunrise takes on a clear golden glow this time of the year, and I long to grab my journal or a novel and swing under the live oak for hours on end.

Edna Abrams and Koi
September 29, 2011

         Because my mother can no longer get into and out of her wheelchair without aid, she needs someone close by throughout the day. I never dreamed that her condition would mean sacrificing morning walks to the park or afternoons spent in the gardens. Her limitations restrict my movements as well. During most of the day, we stay in the same room together unless I’m doing housework. Even when I do chores, I swing into whatever room Mom occupies to see if she needs anything—and just to let her know I’m near even if she can’t see me.

         My days become a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, it’s similar to having a very young child around—one that needs food to be the right temperature and cut into very small pieces; and one that requires help in bathing, dressing, and toiletry needs. On the other hand, I give care to an adult—and my own parent. I still try to defer to Mom’s desires and requests with respect. As speech becomes more and more difficult for her, expressing her wishes isn’t always easy. If she starts to laugh or cry, I’m at a loss to unravel what she’s asking for or from me.

         Each day, Mom begins her bed routine around three in the afternoon. One symptom of her disease is an urgency to eat. She’ll demand meals or snacks in two or three hour intervals and waiting for something to eat proves almost impossible for her. Because Huntington’s Disease affects her ability to swallow, she’s limited in her food choices. I tried a few months ago to rely on frozen meals as a solution to getting her something to eat as quickly as possible. After a week or so, Mom commented that the food tasted horrible and started refusing to eat them. I now prepare huge meals that I know she likes and freeze them in smaller portions.

         Once Mom eats her dinner, she insists on brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed. That means we’re pulling on her nightgown by four every afternoon. Since Mom gets up by 4 o’clock or 5 o’clock each morning, she feels exhausted pretty early in the evening because she doesn’t take any naps during the day. Mom will ask for help in getting into bed, get up ten minutes later with a request to go watch television, and repeat the bed-television-bed-bathroom-television-bed cycle until six o’clock. One day, she did this obsessive rotation more than twenty times!

         Recently, she’s taken to ringing her service bell just to make certain that she hasn’t been left alone. Today, because she watched Children of the Corn earlier, she rang the bell several more times than usual, finally asking with a devilish grin if we had an ax in the house “just in case.”

         Intellectually, I understand Mom’s need to have someone close at hand. My mother’s body traps her in space. Emotionally, it sometimes proves impossible for me to stay within the confines of her disease. Today, I escaped on a quick drive to Sonic once David returned home from running errands we used to do as a family. I keep reminding myself, though, that every day holds beauty. I simply need to look for it.        

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 

"National Geographic: The Gift That Keeps Coming"

 

         Every year for Christmas we receive a subscription of National Geographic for Christmas. I think this last year marked the thirty-second consecutive year that the magazine’s been renewed. Now, I love the magazine; but after so many years, I’m running out of attic space to store the back issues. I called around once to see if any schools or local libraries would take our issues, and gave up trying to find a home for them. Recently, I’ve toyed with the idea of tossing all of them into the huge recycle bins over by the local elementary school, but that seems so wasteful.

         When I taught, I’d take several years’ worth of subscriptions in for my students to read. Many of the kids enjoyed the maps, the wonderful glossy photography, and the articles on exotic places and animals. Occasionally, students would ask if they could keep magazines, and I thankfully encouraged them to take whatever they wanted.  Eventually, the thumbed through magazines became sources for art projects. Now that I’ve retired, I’m at a loss on what to do with them. Next week, our city has a huge trash pick-up and citywide garage sale. I toy with the idea of taking the boxes out to the front yard and placing huge FREE signs on them.

         I guess my longing to clear out closest and attic space signals a shift in my life. My tendency to catalogue and box away books and magazines for “future references” shifts to a need to clean, sort, and simplify. I donated hundreds of books to Goodwill during my last year of teaching. I had “open classroom” giveaway afternoons where other teachers came to my room, raided my closets and bins, labeled book shelves and tubs, and rummaged through thirty years of teaching treasures. Perhaps the purging bug began then, and now it’s continuing into my personal life. I did begin following the guideline that if I buy something, I need to donate or throw away a similar item. A new pair of shoes means I now forfeit a pair. If I succumb to the lure of a set of dishes, an older set must find a new home.

         If I have my way, some kind person will drive up during the curbside clean-up and appreciate the wonderful gift left in our front yard. A bargain hunter may snatch the magazines up to resale at a garage sale or a flea market to try to make a little profit.  I like to imagine another family picking up the boxes and discovering the world through National Geographic's perspective.

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman  

"Morality"

          Over the last couple of days, I’ve engaged in written confrontations with several acquaintances on moral issues. These clashes stem from the inability of some people to view our society from totally different perspectives. During my discourses, I find myself able to see the opposing view, but I haven’t found success in getting my angry opponents to even try to see my outlook. Instead, I’ve met with unexpected anger and open hostility. I understand the fear of some of these individuals that somehow another group of people in our society, who are perceived as undeserving, will reap benefits from those of us who “work hard for our money.”

            Trying to reason with fears and phobias never seems to work. I did a little research to back my points, but finding statistical proof that families on welfare receive benefits that are below the poverty line, or that more than one-hundred studies show that most recipients of welfare leave the system within the first two years, doesn’t sway my antagonists.

            The entire situation leaves me baffled and stunned. Insults come flying my way. My opinions are simplistic, liberal, stupid, childish, naive, and WRONG! I sit here and wonder, “How can I be wrong?” When did making a moral choice to protect those weaker and less fortunate become something so erroneous that I’m belittled for my sense of morality?

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"The New Colossus"

By Emma Lazarus, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"Blending in Marriage"

First picture of us together!

  

            After thirty-two years of marriage, friends often query, “How did you stay together so long? What’s the trick?

                I usually shrug my shoulders and shake my head, “I don’t know. Lots of love, but sometimes you fall out of synch with each other. The love may not feel as overpowering as it once was; yet if you wait it out, it comes back stronger and better.” I’ll pause for effect, and then continue, “You have to be friends as well as lovers. And you have to be willing to give up some of the things that are important to you as a person in order to reach for what’s best as a couple. Marriage is never easy—but nothing in life is, right? You’ll both feel anger, frustration and hurt. Own the negative as well as the positive. Always pull together when there’s a problem instead of heading in separate directions or relying on someone outside of your marriage to ‘fix’ things when they go wrong.”

At the Leakey cabin

            One of the tricks of marriage is taking two separate lives, with different upbringings and experiences, and blending them together into something wonderful and new. In the early years of our marriage, we made conscious choices of the things we liked or disliked about our childhood. For example, I hated that we moved every two or three years. I wanted to settle on a city or town, sink in roots, and build a life in one place. That didn’t matter as much to David at first. Later on, when I started looking for a bigger house, it turned out David rooted more deeply than I did; and so we added on to our home instead of moving.

Dinner with friends

            Our biggest area of contention those first years? Keeping house. I grew up a clean freak. Baseboards and door trims got a white glove inspection when we lived on base, and I transferred that tidiness into my adult life. Many of our early arguments revolved around housework. David always pitched in, but did such a horrible job that I ended up redoing many of his chores. After one explosion on why he didn’t clean something correctly, he admitted that he rarely did housework growing up. His bungling attempts, which I misinterpreted as a passive-aggressive dodge of chores, turned out to be total lack of knowledge of how to get something spiffy clean.

            When David and I had been married only a few months, he asked one night, “What do you do to the sheets?”

             “Sheets?” I echoed, puzzled.

          “They always feel so smooth. And they always smell good. Do you do something special with them?”

             “No. I just wash them every week."

           David paused, “Oh, that’s it, then. We didn’t wash our sheets every week. Sometimes more than a month would go by.” He made similar comments on the towels that never became cardboard stiff or smelled sour. Although all of David’s clothing when we first married fit into one paper sack, I was shocked to learn that he’d been told to turn dirty underwear inside-out and wear them a second time!

          These differences in upbringing caused friction during those first years. I couldn’t understand why David didn’t just jump in to clean something, often forgetting that he truly didn’t see that something was dirty because his level of tolerance was so much higher than my own.

            Eventually, we divided house cleaning and yard work not by the usual male/female divisions, but by what each of us likes to do most (or least hates to do). David prefers “picking up” or straightening up clutter. He likes to vacuum, cook, and clean the kitchen. I prefer dusting and laundry. We tackled grocery shopping together until recently. Both of us like working in the yard. Usually David will weed-eat while I’ll mow. We team up for clipping hedges, and I love to piddle in the garden

            Blending occurred in many other areas of our lives. Even after all of these years, we’ll sometimes find ourselves discussing a difference (yes, they still exist) and figuring out the best way to fuse two ways of viewing something into one solution. During this past year, we’ve had new challenges and changes that could strain a marriage; yet we seem to have mastered this blending skill. And frankly, it’s the mixing and merging that makes life interesting. 

Anniversary #45!

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 

"The Puzzle Piece"

 

            The puzzle pieces, dumped unceremoniously upon the dining room table, hide a magic surprise. I pick carefully through the pile, categorizing pieces by color, sliding edges to the side. Puzzles require thinking inside the box, so establishing borders comes first. Straight lines and matching designs group and regroup until I form pairs and short chains. Once the boundaries hold firm, the real work begins. My hands dance through the choreography: pick up, turn, twist, match, fit. Again and again until out of chaos emerges the picture. Gestalt.
          Then disassembly begins. Tearing down the whole back into the individual bits, I bend and separate until chaos piles again on the tabletop. Haphazardly, I swipe everything back into the box, not noticing a lone piece hiding under the edge of a book. Now the puzzle, unknown to me, loses its wholeness. The lone piece longs for reunification. When I pull another puzzle out of its box and spill it across the table, the hidden part slips into the mound, trying to belong where it no longer fits.
            The piece carries similar colors and shapes to this new picture. I don’t notice the subtle differences each time I try to find a place for it. I pick it up, scrutinizing it meticulously as I try to find a mate. Near matches frustrate me as I try to force the bit into belonging. I even resort to pounding it with my fist before casting it aside. I pick up my rhythm once the piece sits in isolation, an outcast within the group. Eventually, the picture sits in completeness upon my table. My eyes draw over to the castaway that caused me so much irritation, and in shame I realize my mistake. Picking up the stray piece, I recall the picture of the last puzzle I’d assembled. I go directly to my shelved boxes, pluck open the correct box, and return the piece to its home.

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"The Floating Teacher"

 

My job application photo- 1981

            The first three years of my career in education, I “floated.” The term, floating, is a misnomer. The word generates a cartoon image of this cherub-faced teacher drifting through the hallways like a helium balloon, gently tethered to the educational world by colorful hair ribbons and neon shoe strings. Instead, the teacher descends into the lowest level of Dante’s Inferno. The phrase, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” took on a new meaning as I struggled to find my footing as a new teacher while trying not to disturb or disrupt the other teachers forced to share their rooms with me.

            One hour of the day, I used the room of Ms. H, my wonderful mentor and friend. I did my student teaching under the guidance of this enthusiastic teacher, so she welcomed me into her room with open arms. She found space in her closets for me to store my personal belongings and kept me sane whenever I broke into frustrated tears.

           The second hour of the day, my class and I met in Mr. M’s classroom. This tyrannical man refused to leave the room because he couldn’t trust me, a first year teacher, to control my twelve-year-old students. He threw a fit one rainy day when a couple of boys tracked mud into the room. Face red and veins bulging, he forced the boys to crawl on their hands and knees to pick up each clump. After class, he stormed out of the room to file a complaint with the principal that my students were too messy. Since clods of mud dotted the entire hallway between his room and the office, his gripe went unheeded. However, his actions made me and my students feel horribly unwelcome in his classroom. I held my breath each and every day that something would set him off. One day during the first few weeks of school, he left the room long enough for me to explain to my students that I desperately needed their help and support. This group of students remains lodged in my memory as the best class that ever lived.  

            A third teacher, Ms. W fluctuated from day-to-day on how much she welcomed me or my kids into her room. I believe she hated the idea of someone invading her space. Teachers become very territorial about their rooms. They bring in little pieces of themselves and their home lives—pictures of their pets and children, favorite knickknacks or gifts from previous students, or saved projects and sample work placed on  special display. Sharing space with an “outsider” creates tension even if the other person tries to be as invisible as possible. Eventually, Ms. W realized I had a wicked sense of humor, and we became friends.

I ended my day at the room of Ms. T, a lovely Southern lady. More than thirty years later, I still treasure the open friendship she gave me from the moment I entered her room. She welcomed my students with all of their little quirks into her space with open arms. Sometimes I watched her instruct her classes and quickly learned the value of a good, skilled teacher.

            Condemning the first year teacher to roam the hallways either builds character or leads to burn-out. I grew determined to capture my own classroom, so I kept a smile on my face and cried or complained to the co-workers I learned would keep my woe private. When I finally received my own classroom, I vowed to welcome any “floating” teacher. I volunteered each year to have any of the roaming teachers in my room, and I made certain I cleared closet space and drawer space for that teacher. Supplies like tape, paper clips, and staplers remained unlocked and available (some of the teachers actually locked their supplies away, so I had to carry those along with the classroom set of books from room to room). I never placed tape on the floor to mark where the desks should line-up, as one teacher had done, and I never yelled at the other teacher’s students. I hope that all of those “floating” teachers felt relief and welcome whenever they entered our room.  

   

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"New Voyages"

 

David Chapman--artist

         I never want to spend my life fretting over the words never said, or the acts never completed. The changes in our lives during this last year bring home to me the importance of giving our best to those we love. Sometimes, I get so caught up in the minutiae of a situation that I bog everyone else down. “The Big Picture” always calls for taking risks and believing with heart over head. That outlook proves difficult for my often straight column approach to life, but whenever I’ve chosen my heart, I’ve never gone in the wrong direction. Whenever I push away my heart, anxiety suffocates me. Taking a breath, eating a meal, and sleeping at night all become impossible.

My head analysis tells me the “right” decisions, the cautious choices that assure safe passage across rough seas. My head won’t even weigh anchor if the voyage looks too dangerous.  The head must have life boats in tip-top condition. It makes certain there are enough jackets available for unexpected passengers. It plots my route and stays true to my course. But no matter how carefully my head plans for every exigency, a tidal wave broadsides me, flips my vessel over, and makes life boats and life jackets useless.

         My head, you see, doesn’t calculate for the totally unpredictable event. It cannot. That’s the heart’s job. The heart latches onto dreams and nightmares. The heart foresees the tsunami and still sets sail. The heart accepts risk because life’s random. That capriciousness doesn’t dissuade the heart. The heart believes.

         In the rough seas I now traverse, my heart speaks strongly to me. Believe. Believe. Believe. And so I trust my decisions. The moment I listen to the murmuring song of my heart, the decisions I must make ring true and clear. The head will step forward eventually. It will find the means of making the dreams a reality. By singing along with the heart, the voyage will prove challenging, but not impossible.    

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman