Virginia

I am Virginia, I am 83 years old and I am suffering from Trump poisoning.I thought it was something I had kicked, but then late last year it reared its ugly head again. I am amazed at the various forms it can take.

It's worse than an ad for pharmceuticals, if you list the side effects that appear in a moment out of nowhere. Unfortunately there is no way to avoid them. Consulting my physician didn't help. She suffers from it too, and tells me to find ways to relax and focus my attention elsewhere. And then she said that if I found out how to do that, I should immediately contact her so she could do it too.

I think I was in my early 70's when I discovered I could no longer hop, or jump -- even a little bit. I had my two granddaughters over for the afternoon, and we were in the garden enjoying a sunny day. They had sidewalk chalk and were making art that was as good as any I've seen. I wanted to play too. So I asked them if they knew how to hopscotch. They were little -- maybe 3 and 5 years old. "No. Show us!"

The democratic process is tough. We have seen that over the last eight years, and we are in for another four where it will be even tougher. There are forces that undermine our hard-won democracy and it is crumbling. And I know and you know that finding middle ground, compromising, settling, mediating, are the bricks and mortar that hold our democracy together. But there has to be agreement on how we use them.

Some days are easy and full of light. The weather is not too hot or too cold. The winds are calm. The air is sweet, and full of bird song or an occasional high flying airplane. There is a new bloom on the rose bush, or a bright dandelion in the grass. The coffee maker is rumbling away or the teakettle is about to sing. 

I've been keeping busy with holiday plans since Thanksgiving, and mostly it works to keep my spirits, if not high, at least a degree above lukewarm. Anything that can lift me out of the icy waters of constant political news is all to the good.

Sometimes there is good news sandwiched in between the bad. There are new innovations with incredible mushrooms, for instance, that have the ability to clean toxins from polluted dirt. And innovative young people are discovering amazing ways to reuse and recycle the mountains of trash our consumer economy gives us. Bees are  finding ways to survive, thanks to many changes made in small ways by home gardners and cities all over the world. In my garden things are still blooming, even in December. 

I have run out of patience. Can't get more at the store or from my neighbor. I guess I will have to wait until the patience compartment fills up all on its own. So there you go, I have to be patient to have patience. 

I have run out of waiting. Can't get more at the store or from my neighbor. I guess I will have to be patient until the waiting compartment fills up all on its own. So there you go, I have to wait. Patiently.

One of the things I am not out of is angst. That compartment is overflowing. I have plenty of worry, too. Concern overfilled its bucket long ago. Anger has combined with frustration and put a slightly muddy color over everything. 

So much in my garden is still green even though the fall equinox has come and gone. Usually by this time I would have fall decorations out, in anticipation of one of our favorite holidays, and as the kickoff to all other fall celebrations. But not this year. Today may be the day I dig out the countdown black cat, the various pumpkins made of papier mache or ceramic, and the orange twinkle lights. Maybe I will pull out the crepe paper flowers. 

I've been thinking about another kind of fall today, for some reason. Maybe because fall is a season for kids, and the fall I'm thinking of took me right back into my childhood. Wham. And I was there. 

When I left home in the 1960's, I only left one small hamper behind. It took up very little space. So many years later now and I cannot remember everything that was in it, but I know it wasn't heavy. There was Maggie the auburn haired doll and the beautiful clothes my aunt made for her one Christmas. There was a faux leather zippered notebook that probably contained some of my writing. I think there may have been a stuffed animal or two, but I can't remember. Maybe one of the diaries I was always starting and then aburptly forgetting about? 

My family had a saying to explain almost every aberration they came across when it came to unusual behavior within our system. "Don't worry about it, it's just nerves." Huh. Thinking back on it, every expression that seemed extreme to the occasion was brushed away with that phrase. "Just nerves" was nothing to be afraid of, it was to be expected, it didn't matter. "You'll get over it." Of course you will. It's "just nerves". So for a kid, I took that to mean that any strong emotion did not have value, couldn't be indulged, and should be brushed aside. 

I have done a few homely tasks today, and that makes me feel like I have contributed something. I like that feeling. Women in my generation were raised to serve. We served as waitresses, secretaries, administrative assistants, nurses -- the roles we felt had been assigned because, well, women do these things. It wasn't until the end of my working life that I achieved a position normally held by a man, and for the first year I had to be classified as temporary until I could prove that I could do the job. I could. So for three years, from the age of 62 to 65 I served as Administrator/Chief of Staff for the union that represented 15,000 staff employees in one of the biggest universities in California. I enjoyed the job, and under my watch our budget went from red to black. Programs were working, union staff had workloads balanced, and things hummed along, mostly.