wifebeaters and bungee cords

My youngest began her high school career at a former Catholic boys’ institution converted, sort of, into a coed nonsectarian hall of education with various remnants of pedophilial staff lurking around the athletic and English departments. Within two years, we understood enough to a) get her into another school and b) bring this hallowed institution under the scrutiny of the Board of Education as well as various legal entities who, within a very short time, cleaned house from the top down and terminated, rather than incarcerated, two of the offenders. This disturbing notion continues to haunt, as at least one of these men pursued teaching in another state, while his son left and then returned to consummate at least one sexual relationship with a former student.

Interestingly enough, it was at this school that girls began wearing men’s undershirts, calling them “wifebeaters.” To my knowledge nobody knows where the name originated, only that it seemed to conjure images of balding beer bellied mill workers or weight lifting grease monkeys who practiced adolescent schoolyard bully moves on their splotchy faced, mousy haired housefraus, too exhausted by multiple births and dead-end lives to fight back.

A few months ago I returned from town, six thousand miles distant from where my girls grew up, having lobbed myself between the eyes with a thirty inch bungee cord. The mishap took place at the transfer station where we go to get free truckloads of mulch for the landscape and where, blood streaming from my forehead; hands, face and torso covered with mulch dust – no one proffered help. Either I looked too much like a garden variety Carrie or these men playing with their big machines were too stunned to offer assistance. At any rate, trying not to soak the truck’s interior with my own body fluids, I gingerly fished out some wet naps and a first aid kit and administered, as best I could, to my woozy self. Minutes later as the bleeding began to ease, I noticed in the rear view mirror that all eyes were still upon me, wondering, I guess, if they would have to scoop me up in the bucket loader and heave my carcass onto the steaming mulch pile or if I would relieve them of this agonizing decision by simply driving away. I ended up doing the latter, much to my own and their apparent relief.

I was, however, determined to finish my errands in town. Despite a slight headache and haggard appearance, it was still an hour’s drive home. Handkerchief in hand, I pressed on. As I moved among the masses, it began to appear as though folks were either averting eyes or staring at me strangely. And then it dawned on me that the odd soul probably thought that the old man had given me what-for before I bolted out the tattered screen door of our shack, spilled into his favorite truck, and headed straight for Costco.

 

image: guardian.co.uk

The hair of the dog

It’s sitting right here on my desk, the unsent letter to the IRS. I thought to write it because, well, they might appreciate an explanation as to why we haven’t paid our taxes and might not yet for awhile. Then I was out riding my bike and found a little dog by the side of the road, obviously struck by a car and left there to suffer. Two other women witnessed her as well right in front of their professional office, and were ready only to call the humane society, who would have promptly put her down. They didn’t want to soil their hands with her, and barked suggestions from afar when I gently took her tiny head into my hands and gazed into her frightened eyes. Their excuse was ‘no money, no time,’ which I could have claimed with equal vigor. Yet my decision was made with a clear head, and when I phoned my husband, he was immediately in accord that we would do whatever we could. Of course.

No collar, no chip, loaded with fleas and formerly nursing a litter of pups somewhere in her recent past, this small being is barely a year old, give or take a couple of months. One thing led to another and we are trying to coax the little creature back to health, if such a thing can even be expected. She has yet to put any weight on her two hind legs but seems to have some feeling in them, though the vet says only time will tell. There remains a stack of papers to file, floors strewn with our other two dogs’ hair and dishes in the sink. And then there are the unpaid bills in a stack roughly equal to the file-worthy one.

Life changes on a dime, and those of us willing to be open and prepared to encounter the unpredictable are living it. The rest is just memorization, not really participation. And if sometimes that which inserts itself into our comfort zone feels overwhelming, this is the stuff of living – not the papers, the corporate demands, the manic housecleaning. Life supporting life as it does in nature, with no expectation of result. Death occurs every moment, and the symphony of creation is not ours to conduct. We can only play our part when the music is set in front of our noses, sometimes last minute, often without rehearsal. There is a fundamental rightness in this, a prioritizing of values that streams into the foreground like a runner breaking ribbon – and though there might ever be a close second, there’s rarely a tie – even if the first squeaks past by only a hair.

 

image: shadow-of-the-statue.blogspot.com

Morning has broken …

Pondering strength: the lungs and the legs to kick out into deep water, swimming back and forth across the bay. What it would take to remain calm in the face of a shark sighting might require more strength than I could muster – then again, maybe not. I often marvel at the reserves of strength humans harbor.

The strength of survival: how people make it through this life in the face of considerable adversity. After voluntarily reading Hersey’s The Wall as a teenager and recoiling in horror at the extermination of Jews in Poland during Hitler’s reign of terror, I swore I couldn’t broach that topic again. And yet it’s like a wagon I’m riding in, perpetually circling, trying to form a defensive barrier while wondering if what’s in the middle is worth protecting. I can’t shut my eyes to what’s true – never could.

And so I find myself in a thrift store, grabbing Vikram Seth’s Two Lives, putting it in my basket. It is only later I delve into this memoir of the author’s beloved aunt and uncle – he, an east Indian dentist who lost his arm in WWII, she an Israelite who escaped before Berlin was systematically purged of its Jewish occupants, sweeping her mother, sister, and countless dear ones into horrific oblivion.The book starts out benignly enough, as do most of our lives – family, friends, parties, schooling – shaping us, all innocent and free, onto paths unknown even to the wisest among us. We live, laugh, love and sometimes despair over trivialities. We are children, after all, until life turns on a dime and we transition into adulthood. How this should be versus the reality of how it goes down for many of us determines our character. And what we can share, if we survive, are our stories. For better or for worse, experiences unfold, peeling back the protective skin, revealing the core of the collective. It is you. It is me. It is us: the human race.

How do we live with the knowledge of our very worst tendencies? To deny history dooms us to repeat it. Platitudes we do well to remember, and yet …

begins the day. Thoroughly unfathomable, until, bit by bit, it opens before me …