Does anybody really know what time it is?

back porch/bird room

Tick tock, motherfu%@er. This could be the theme of my current life phase.

living room

I think I’ve told this story before, but I remember when I was 15 worrying that my mom was at death’s door, maybe even one foot over the threshold, and that I would somehow have to go on without her. How would I manage? Would I be forced to go live with my dad? Would my brothers and I all end up in the orphanage? Would I have to run away and live on the mean streets?!?

Mom was 35 at the time. THIRTY-FIVE.

I’m turning 70 this year, and I’m here to tell you my take on time has drastically changed. It took another twisted turn when I retired just before I turned 65—time crawled to a stop as I re-thought my daily life, and it simultaneously sped up as I made friends with my mortality. How could it be doing both?!?

kitchen

I won’t say there’s no such thing as time—as Siddhartha argued—though I have come to believe that time, at least our marking of it, is irrelevant. If I get up with the dogs at 5 a.m., the world goes on. If I sleep in till 10 a.m., the world goes on. If I stay in bed all day reading another Louise Penney novel and eating Scottish shortbread cookies, the world…well, you get it.

All that time I spent worrying about getting older, and what happened? I got older anyway. All that time I spend slathering on 18 organic Norwegian moisturizers, shea and beeswax magnesium body butters, beef tallow and Manuka honey hand cream, coconut oil and rosemary foot creams, and what’s the result? I have a face full of beautiful wrinkies, veiny longshoreman hands, skin that flakes off every winter, and tired feet that smell pretty good.

music room

Some days, I don’t know what time/day/month it is—unless I look up at my 92 clocks and calendars or at my slave-driving Apple watch, which also helps me remember to be mindful, drink water, and stand up.

Speaking of which, I have my Apple watch, which syncs to my phone’s calendar, in which I keep track of birthdays, appointments, Ray’s band gigs, my poetry stuff, my kids’ and grandkids’ events…basically my life. I have two wall calendars, one upstairs and one downstairs on which I track the same info; I have a purse-sized monthly calendar with the same info; and I have a BIG kitchen white board on which I write the current week’s activities/appointments. I STILL forgot a speech therapy appointment (post-stroke vocal cord exercises) and had to reschedule.

broken but still in the living room

I also seem to have a sort of love/hate relationship with time now. After working since the age of 14 (except for three periods of late pregnancies/childbearing/birth to pre-K homing), I now mostly refuse any unnecessary scheduling of my life. I don’t like to join things that require regular attendance; hence, my spotty or non-participation in clubs, organizations, and social/exercise/spiritual/political groups.

I mostly arrange things so that I only have to attend/do ONE thing per day, so the rest of the day is mine all mine. If I kayak, that’s it for the day. If I have a doc appointment, that’s it. If I clean the bathroom, that’s it. If I’m going out in the evening (getting more and more rare), I don’t do anything else that day. I jealously guard my time now, after years of feeling like I never had enough. At long last, I’m the master of my days!

kitchen

At the end of Herman Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha contemplates the river and its cycle of flowing, evaporating, raining, filling, flowing, evaporating, etc. and comes to the conclusion that time is an illusion. And when I remember that the stegosaurus had been extinct for 80 MILLION YEARS before the tyrannosaurus even existed, I think Siddhartha may have been onto something.

kitchen

Do I still watch the clocks (one in almost every room of our house)? Slavishly. So much for being the master, I guess…

Because I could not stop for Death...

Here I am, contemplating death again. We’re not great at talking about or dealing openly with death and grief in Western culture. But now, as I’m fast approaching my seventh decade in this incarnation, I can’t seem to avoid it. And maybe that’s a good thing.

I’ve said goodbye to people throughout my life—grandparents, too-young friends, cousins—but right now, maybe starting just before the pandemic, it’s become a pile-up of losses, and it’s the pile-up, I’m convinced, not any single loss by itself, that’ll do you in. In a pile-up, there’s no recovery/healing time between blows. I’ll spare you the list of people we’ve had to let go of in recent years—trust me, it’s a looooong list that includes both parents. And I know I’m at the age where more frequent deaths are natural and inevitable—just check out obituaries and you’ll see how many people are…well…my age. What I’d rather talk about is how to climb over the pile-up and keep moving on.

Everyone has their own way of navigating death and grief—some ignore it, some bottle it up, some rely on religious faith, some fall apart. I’m not a person who can choke it down effectively (I tend to spontaneously spew my despair eventually; heaven help the innocent bystander). Bottling usually results in some physical manifestation for me—a twitch, a pre-ulcerous condition, inflammation, achy joints, etc., so that’s not a good strategy for me, either. So what I try to do is what I do with most things—analyse: its wrinkles, contours, possible meanings, effects, and outcomes. My basic belief about what happens after death is that, like everything else, we are energy. And because energy doesn’t die, I think we just drop the skin suit and disperse. That much is science, not woo-woo. Beyond that, I don’t KNOW, and neither does anyone else still alive (some BELIEVE they know, but belief isn’t KNOWING).

That’s actually pretty comforting to me. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed, some essence of us continues. But I don’t think the part of me that will continue has anything to do with the “me” I’ve crafted over the seven decades of my earthly life—the stories I tell myself that make up what I perceive as my individuality/personhood. I don’t think I’ll be playing canasta with my mom and grandma in some heavenly parlour, or have wings, or burn in an imaginary hell. Instead, I’ll revert back to unformed pure potential. Potential for what purpose? I don’t KNOW that either.

I do have a personal BELIEF (woo-woo) in reincarnation, because it’s energy changing forms, which energy is wont to do, and would explain a lot of things for me—déjà vu, memories that don’t seem to be mine, instant feelings about someone I’ve just met, a finite amount of energy (remember it cannot be created) and a constant or growing population—recycled energy.

Science and my beliefs help me process grief, which we don’t really “get over” but learn to live with—I’ve experienced waves of grief out of the blue months or even years after a loss. An “energy is all” death/dispersal explanation doesn’t satisfactorily explain for me why people have to suffer, why there are so many devastating ways to die, why we can’t just “blink out” when our bodies are injured beyond repair or are no longer serviceable. I guess maybe it’s still better than my energy suddenly changing forms by being eaten by a leopard or an alligator, as happens with many other animals.

This week we’re saying goodbye to a dear friend of many years, and to a gifted mentor and poet. In both cases, they leave their kind-hearted, intelligent offspring and their musical, artistic, and lyrical talents behind for those of us still here—like bodhisattvas in the Buddhist tradition. And now that we know a mother’s cells continue in her offspring (https://www.sciencealert.com/millions-of-your-mothers-cells-persist-inside-you-and-now-we-know-how) and that cells might have memories (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-a-cell-remember/) I have even more faith in our continuity, albeit in a different form.

I'm excited for new neuroscience and quantum physics, both of which are re-thinking consciousness, time, space, and life/death. But for now, when it comes to death and grief, I guess I find solace mostly in energy science, with a smattering of woo-woo, to remind me that life truly does go on. Also, I have a strong community with which I share this road, and as Ram Das said, "We're all just walking each other home." 

 

Navigating the GAP

I’d like to overshare my recent/current thoughts about getting older. Look away if you’re squeamish, because I’m 69, and this is the Golden Age of the Procedure (GAP).

Even when I was younger, we wanted to talk about our health—how super-fit we were, why YOUR lifestyle choices were all wrong, why you should have listened to our “friendly advice” on diet/supplements/workouts/blahblahblah. However, post-retirement and currently in my “golden years” (which I now understand to mean tarnished with a smattering of heavy metal poisoning), the conversation has changed.

Now, we compare conditions, illnesses, strange growths, bodily losses (elasticity, hearing, vision, energy, hair, flexibility, the ability to laugh/sneeze without peeing), titanium replacements, and procedures like we used to compare career accomplishments or rare bourbon finds.

A new topic of GAP gossip is GLP meds and/or our “weight loss journeys.” I’m in no way ashamed to tell you that thanks to GLPs, I’ve lost 60+ lbs. And although GLPs may have their own problems (believe me, I get earfuls of “friendly advice” about the disasters awaiting me—hair loss, diarrhea, nausea), it sure beats dragging around those three 20-lb sacks of potatoes I used to have strapped under my chin(s), around my non-existent waist, and on my hips. And does it feel good to get back into human “girl” clothes after decades in circus-tent Big & Tall men’s athletic wear? You betcha.

When my friends and I got together in our youth (anything up to age…uh…60), we compared vacations, concerts, our sex lives, recipes, and various partner-related adventures. Now we compare bone density scans, hormone replacement therapies, arch supports, sleep (or non-sleep) cycles, orthopaedic procedures, ENT follow-ups, CPAP settings, functional medicine specialists, supplements (pumpkin seed oil for hair loss, DIM and A-Drenal for hormone support and fatigue, magnesium for dang near everything…), and the best bras for hoisting up the girls. Talk about sex has moved much lower down the list, just below a good gel eyeliner that doesn’t pull on delicate old-people skin and a body butter that solves the “scaly leg” problem.

Ray and I go out to dinner with friends once a week, after his weekly gig at our Little Town Watering Hole. The topics of conversation can be varied and fascinating, but upcoming appointments and procedures, as well as general medical advice (because we’re all medical experts now) usually pop up once or twice. We drive each other for colonoscopy and cataract appointments now, like we used to drive each other for shopping or salons.

We do occasionally talk about other things. Lately it’s politics. But given a choice right now, I’d rather hear about your plantar wart removal…

Lend me your ears.

Let’s TALK about LISTENING. 

See what I did there? That’s how TERRIBLE we are at listening. High on my very long list of “to do” inner work (practicing kindness and compassion that doesn’t expect recognition or repayment, offering ACTIVE help rather than passive talk about helping, creating and giving more positive energy, lovingly letting go of attachments to things and people that aren’t in some way life-giving, not burning the potato soup, and so much more) is striving to become a better listener.

If you pay attention to most conversations—really pay attention—you’ll quickly notice this pattern: Someone speaks to you, but you don’t really pay attention or register what they’re saying. Your mind is already busy planning/rehearsing what you’ll say next about YOURSELF. And as soon as the person speaking to you takes a breath or pauses, you shove into the “conversation” something similar, relatable, better, more interesting, or wonderful about YOURSELF. And while you’re talking, the person you’re talking to isn’t listening to you, either…they’re busy getting ready with whatever they’ll shove into the next pause. Ad infinitum.

Good listening is essential, I think, for these reasons and more:

• It can build relationship, community, trust, and mutual respect.
• It can teach us to distinguish nuances, tone, subtleties that can reveal another person’s needs.
• It can teach us about unfamiliar "others." (There really are no others, in the "we're all one" sense of humanity...)
• It can bridge differences between people, but only if we give our FULL ATTENTION.

Most people on this planet long to be heard, but it’s as if we’re all talking about ourselves at once, so NO ONE is really listening. We can’t give our full attention and plan our next monologue at the same time. And listening is so much more than just waiting for our turn to talktalktalk; listening is an ACTIVE art, and like any art, we need practice. We need to practice slowing down, calming ourselves, and giving our speaking partners UNDIVIDED attention.

Think of the way babies and children learn—we think they’re often idling away their time in thoughtless bliss, but as a mom of three who swears like a pirate, trust me—they’re usually listening carefully. The old saying, “It’s more important what comes out of your mouth than what you put in it,” is actually a gem of listening (and dieting) wisdom.

So how did we get to be so terrible at listening? It may be partly the myth of multitasking and our modern obsession with busy-ness. But I’m with creative strategist (whatever that is) Noah Rabinowitz when he suggests our inability or unwillingness to listen is mostly the result of unchecked and/or undisciplined EGO (the culprit in most of my necessary inner work). I like how he explains the ways EGO undermines our ability to truly listen:

-- Preoccupation with Self: When our ego is in control, we become preoccupied with our own thoughts, opinions, and experiences. This self-centered focus makes it difficult to genuinely listen to others….

-- Need to Be Right: The ego often drives the need to be right and to win arguments (debates). This need can lead to interrupting others, dismissing their viewpoints, or not fully considering their perspectives. Instead of listening to understand, we listen to find flaws in the other person’s argument and to assert our own correctness.

-- Fear of Vulnerability: The ego protects us from feeling vulnerable. Truly listening to someone else requires us to open up to their ideas and emotions, which can be uncomfortable. The ego resists this by keeping us guarded and defensive, preventing us from fully engaging in the conversation.

-- Judgment and Assumptions: The ego often leads us to judge others and make assumptions about their thoughts and intentions….We filter what they say through our biases, frequently missing the core essence of their message.

I’m not saying better listening would solve the world’s problems, but I’m pretty sure it would help. It’s our 37th wedding anniversary this month, the alabaster anniversary. I can’t see gifting Ray an alabaster statue of Socrates, so maybe I’ll give him the gift of really listening to him—for a day, at least. 😉

Can it get much colder? Always.

Consider this our “Christmas card/letter,” which I gave up sending out on the regular back when I spent every minute of my holiday break grading essays/finals, prepping for a new semester, and squeezing in a day or two of decorating/shopping/making/wrapping/cooking.

It’s 2026 now, and we’re currently in an arctic deep freeze. Right now it’s 1 degree (wind chill of -7), but it’s been colder in the past week. And none of this is as cold as the turned shoulders in Washington or ICE in Minneapolis.

Winter’s never a joke around here, so it pays to be prepared. As our friend Spiro says about South Dakota winter, “It keeps the riffraff out” of our fine state. (Sadly, politics may have changed our “finery” some, and we may now be attracting riffraff.) We’ve been lucky weather wise—can one be “lucky” in the face of global climate change?—and have had milder winters these last couple of years. Seriously, we probably could have kayaked a couple times last winter. This year seems a “real” winter, though.

Ray is busy with his winter “lockdown” activities—archiving digital music and transferring CDs, tapes, and vinyl to digital; refining/reorganizing several notebooks of chord charts and lyrics; and practicing guitar and trombone daily (you haven’t lived until the trombone version of “Moon River” wafts through your heat ducts). He plays drums every Friday with his pals at our Little Town Watering Hole, a weekly gathering we like to call “church.” And he spent part of his pre-holiday time playing with an annual touring Christmas show, A Holiday for Fiddles.

Meanwhile, I’m off to later this week as a facilitator for two out-of-town stops in the 3rd year of the South Dakota State Poetry Society’s POETRY ON THE ROAD. I’ve been criss-crossing the state from last September till May with other SDSPS members, giving readings and holding open mics in 21 or so South Dakota communities.

My 4th poetry book, Hysterian, came out from Finishing Line Press in August, and we had a wonderful book launch at our Little Town Library, with a reading, slide show, and discussion. Three of our four kids showed up to pitch in—daughter brought her delicious baked treats, younger son videotaped, older son staffed the book sales table, and grandkids ran amok. My fifth book, Stroke Stroke, comes out in February. I’m otherwise busy with jigsaw puzzles (very meditative), knitting silly hats, and being trained by chihuahua Fiona Diane, Goddess of the Hunt (aka Fifi, aka Phoebe, aka Tyrant-osaurus Regina, aka The Boss) to heel and obey.

While we wait for Jack Blizzard to throw his next tantrum—it’s inevitable—the larder is stocked with our summer garden gifts, we’re warm, and we’re enjoying semi-hibernation. Kid visits are always a highlight, and three dogs, 12 canaries, and a 29-year-old grey parrot keep us on our toes. Yes, it may take a LOT of Advil to limber up again in the spring. Yes, we may need to renew our gym memberships to conquer the Festivity Flab. Yes, we may be hairier and muskier when the doors open again for good in April or May. But we’re hearty prairie people, and by gum, we’re just swell.

Wishing you and yours a prosperous, peaceful new year, and wishing us all sanity and justice ASAP.

Fiona, Pretzel, and Pedro