ainotar-blog

[ainotar-blog]

Senior Walk

Charming, I’m not. So says a close friend, smiling. As a budding blogger, I have to wonder what I can offer, if not charm. Friends would agree I’m a sarcastic, seasoned, and oft-times-silly senior. I’m days from seventy, which blows my mind. I, along with thousands of Boomers, am moving along the continuum from “young old” to “old old.” My almost-98-year-old father is definately “old old.” While I can point proudly to being “young old,” there’s no getting around the “old” part. I’m faced with the reality that I’m an elderly woman who sometimes gets asked first but still always gets the senior discount. My grandchildren tell me I’m lucky to be old—"you don’t have to go to school or go to work; you can travel whenever.“ All true, I tell them, but that freedom comes with a teeny price—I’m at the short-and-getting-shorter end of the age stick. (I’m also literally short, but that’s another topic.) My husband and I find ourselves saying more often, "we better do x while we still can.” Procrastination isn’t an option, which brings me back to this blog. I’ve talked about doing one for several years. If not now, when? Seventy seems like a good place to start. C'mon, explore with me. I might make you angry, amused, or angsty. Old age isn’t for sissies they say and, who knows, I may even learn to be charming.

[ainotar-blog]

Bloody Foreigner!

Despite the 12-degree temperature, we stood, a huddled mass, listening to the university president explain the importance of the Unity March. It wasn’t a protest, he said, but a coming together of the community to show support for our international faculty and students. Michigan Technological University depends on their expertise, culture, and, not incidentally, money.

I come from an immigrant family of Estonians that came to the United States in 1949, courtesy of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, hotly contested in Congress by the way. A Texas representative saw the war refugees as aliens, saying the new immigrants were “degenerates…the refuse of Europe, bums, criminals, black marketers, subversives, revolutionists…crackpots of all colors and hues…not the material out of which good citizens could be made.” Sound familiar? Except for the Native Americans, who also were immigrants in the far distant past, we Americans ARE the refuse. The ones who leave are different from those who stay behind. Some are seeking adventure, education, or riches, maybe even trouble, but most immigrants are desperate, escaping persecution, poverty, power, or pestilence. We have all taken turns being the bloody foreigner, some more recently than others.

I have pictures of my family on the SS General Muir, a military transport that brought us to Boston—didn’t get the Statue of Liberty moment. They did check us for disease and pests. This was no Caribbean cruise. My dad’s job was to make cold, exhausted people work for their passage. My mom was seasick most of the way, and my 7-year-old sister wandered about the boat. As a 2-year old, I have no idea what I was doing, except being a pain in the ass. I don’t remember a thing, except I have had nightmares all my life about overwhelming water—big water—something I can only attribute to traveling a stormy sea. I apparently tossed my pacifier in the ocean. Done! Big girl now.

Our boat landed on midsummer’s eve, a night of bonfires and dancing in Estonia. My dad said the lights of Boston were the most beautiful midsummer fires he had ever seen. We traveled by train, yes a train, from Boston to Chicago to Marquette where our sponsor family awaited with a room and a job for my dad (extra gang on the railroad). We had been given a little cash for food along the way. Sandwiches were expensive, my parents thought, and strange—two pieces of fluffy white bread? My mom said the first thing the new big girl did on land was to crap her pants. I often imagine my mother trying to find a way to clean me up as her first act in America. She remembers a black man on the train giving me an orange—both exotic sights. Anyone who has traveled with children knows how tenuous that journey can be, how badly you want them to behave and not cause trouble. I’m thinking I didn’t do so well. My first nickname here was “crybaby.”

My mom has been gone now for three years. Soon only my sister and I will be the keepers of these early immigrant stories. I know my situation is not unique, but aging brings with it worries of extinction. We want our lives to be remembered. Like many immigrants, as a kid I didn’t have cousins who hang out ragging on each other, no funny uncles or strange aunts who grew up with our parents, no people who help hold family memories. They existed, of course, but the family tree, except for our branch, grew in Estonia. Our relatives there know us and are fond of us; we visit regularly these days. I have seen photographs of our family in relatives’ homes, colored pictures sent regularly from the US and saved, but the pictures are set apart. We are the ones who left. Our pictures aren’t in the annual collections. We are known fondly and collectively as “the Americans.” Because of the Iron Curtain, we couldn’t share growing-up stories. My sister and I weren’t at graduations, weddings, funerals, christenings, or Christmas dinners. Our family tree became almost invisible, growing for years, pruned of us. Estonia is independent again, and the people are free to come and go. I’ve reconnected with relatives there. Our tree branch is duct-taped back on. My mom’s ashes are with her family.

So here I am, a melting-pot, white, naturalized citizen, married-for-almost-50-years woman, mother of two, grandmother of two, who lives in the UP of Michigan, marching in the cold for unity, for immigrants, with a tear in my half-frozen eyeball, my hands slowly numbing on my sign. I just hope I don’t crap my pants.

[ainotar-blog]

“Just hold on, I’m coming, hold on, I’m coming...”

I ran down the quiet hallways, my eyes jutting into each partially opened door, looking for my daughter. It was 10:20 pm. Hold on, I’m coming. Finally, I yelled my daughter’s name at a passing nurse. Right here! She pointed at a closed door. I flung the door open, and the nurse said to me, “There you are. Stand right here, grandma.” I looked over my shoulder. Was she talking to me? Oh yes, it WAS me, “grandma,” my new title. Our daughter had warned me she was hooked up to tubes, for me not to be startled, just necessities of a 5-week premature delivery.

I had rushed to the hospital in Hershey, Pennsylvania, from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I wanted so badly to get there before our granddaughter was born. As the plane had circled over Hershey, I gazed at the lights, wondering where they were down there. The song was stuck in my head—“Hold on, I’m Coming.” Were there three of them yet?

She had waited for me. At 10:49, a pungent, earthy, ripe odor preceded the actual spurt of human flesh and fluid and wails. Our expected little girl materialized out of my daughter’s body, me stunned as I witnessed the transformation of child to mother, couple to family, mother to grandmother. I spent three weeks there, drunk on this new love in my life, but she wasn’t just mine; she was theirs, so I had to learn my new grandmother role too—to step aside and step back and at the same time be available. Give advice or zip it? I made curtains. I held her on my chest and sang to her when they went out for drinks.

On Mother’s Day, all four grandparents were on site, kissing, cajoling, rocking, burping, admiring. We two grandmothers conspired to steal one tiny sock each, so we would have our granddaughter’s smell. Tell me we’re not primitive at heart!

My birth in Germany in 1947 was quite different. No one in Estonia knew where our family was, thus grandmothers had no clue my mom was even expecting. Serious discussions about aborting the pregnancy took place between my parents regarding the suitability of having another child in post-war Germany when their future was, at best, uncertain. Lucky for me, they decided my sister at five needed a sibling, and they hoped I might be a boy. In fact because of my size and activity in the womb, they were sure I was a boy. Here’s what my mom wrote in her diary on my birthday:

“Today’s weather is thawing. I felt pretty bad before lunch. I am pretty sure that I’m going to the hospital, at the latest in a couple of days. Even my husband had a dream last night that our son was born and was named Hendrik-Edgar. We’ll see later how accurate this dream was. “

Oops. I didn’t have a name for four days until my dad came up with Marianne Ainotar—an international first name and a middle name that means “Aino’s daughter.”

Clearly humans have a strong urge to procreate, even when it’s not in their best interests or the time isn’t right. I think there’s an urge to grandmother too. I distinctly remember after menopause wanting to connect with babies, which was not my usual mode. I would baby talk to strangers’ children in restaurants, making peek-a-boo faces. When we got the call that our daughter was pregnant, I screamed with joy. Later there wasn’t a detail about this child that was too mundane for me. She pooped twice today? Wonderful. She sucked her toe? Fabulous. She ate a pea? Outstanding. Once I had my own grandchild, I no longer needed to ogle strangers’ babies. 

My grandmothers knew my sister for the first two years of her life, but they probably didn’t even know I existed until I was in school in this country. Stalin died in 1953 when I was six. It was sometime after that when my family dared to begin contact by letters with our family in Soviet Estonia. It was too dangerous to acknowledge relatives who escaped. Better to say we were lost in the war. 

I never met my dad’s mother. She died when I was 16. All we have of her is a dozen letters or so and a few black-and-white snapshots. She had colored photographs of us, sent a few times a year, usually school pictures, carefully inscribed with our grade and age. Some were of us dressed up in front of the Christmas tree or posed in front of a new car. Always smiling. Her letters described how every night she would stare at our pictures before she went to bed. She discussed every detail she could glean from my dad’s letters, imagining what we might be like, building her USA grandchildren in her mind.  No detail too mundane.

Hold on, I’m coming.

I met my mom’s mother when I was 24. As travel became possible, my 50-year-old mother and I went to Estonia in 1971, her first time back since escaping in 1944 and my first time ever.  An older woman walked out of the bathroom as we walked into the apartment. She shuffled in wool slippers, wearing a shapeless paisley dress. Mom uttered one startled word, “ema!” [mother]. 

I suddenly realized my mother was a daughter too—this woman’s daughter. My grandmother was 71, just a year older than I am now. I can’t remember what I said to her. My Estonian was stiff, and she spoke a dialect. I learned during our five days together that she was funny, that she took care of my cousins, that she loved music. She told me I looked like my dad and that girls who looked like their fathers were lucky. Over several visits, until she died in 1993, we grew fond of each other, but she probably never wanted one of my socks to remember me by. The urge passes.

[ainotar-blog]

Listen. Adapt. Breathe.

We’re mostly middle-aged and “young old,” with a few youngsters sprinkled among us, arranging our mats, blocks, chairs, and blankets. The Gentle Yoga class meets twice a week before lunch—a perfect time. I don’t have to rush in the morning, and I have the afternoon free for other pursuits. Not rushing is the mantra in yoga as well as a personal mantra for the retired me. Even though I get up early, I don’t want to have to be anywhere early. That’s the past.

While this yoga class is not easy, neither is it a Jane Fonda of old “feel the burn.” Our instructor finds ways to be gentle on our bodies. Most of us have visible or invisible strained parts due to worn joints, new joints, after-effects of falls or illnesses, or just those unexplained problem areas. I have arthritic thumbs, a stiffened neck, a sometimes-tilted hip, and a growing right toe bunion. I place extra padding under my hands or knees and am cautious about sudden or extreme neck rotations. Our instructor keeps up a constant cheerful patter of instructions for movements and ways to adapt them. “Listen to your body,” she says. Pain is a signal to step back. We listen and move and breathe, hold and breathe, relax and breathe. Sometimes we tip over, or pass gas, or face the wrong way, but the room abounds with good-natured chuckles about our frailties and failures. Our brains are challenged as well with legs moving in one direction, upper body in another, eyes looking in a third. Left leg extended, right arm raised, shoulders down, core strong. More smiles as the wrongs get righted.

People don’t often listen to their bodies. We think we know what we need—air, food, water, movement, sex—but we mess with the kind—going to extremes, following fads, or ignoring our bodies all together, disliking what they’ve become. “I really need a drink” when my body needs to rest. “I need to just sit down,” when my body needs to move. We have to learn to listen.

I look around the room while we’re holding poses and think how beautiful we are—building strength, breathing, balancing. Stomachs held in, backs straight, arms reaching for the ceiling—older women without pretense, enjoying their bodies, however hurt, or overweight, or stiff. “Motion is lotion for the joints,” we are told, and we believe it because we can feel it. We can feel the release of tension and sore spots and the increase in strength and balance or just the plain relief of relaxation at the end of the hour. We smile at each other and say, “ahhh, I needed that.”

Forty years ago I would have run screaming from the room at the idea of a patient, slow moving, twisting exercise class. I used to teach aerobic dance in my 30’s—a high-energy, rocking, kicking, bouncing class. Heavy breathing was synonymous with sex and aerobics—good for you! I dripped sweat on the floor. My mind loved everything about it, but my body always didn’t. Periodically, my back would “go out,” leaving me behind on the floor in pain. I assumed I would eventually need a disc fused because I became a person with a bad back. I tried to avoid any twisty or bendy movements with my neck or my back, sometimes wearing a wrap to hold my spine in place. I made regular rounds with doctors, took muscle relaxants as needed, saw chiropractors, and enjoyed prescription massages. It all helped—temporarily. Live with it. Keep dancing.

About 16 years ago (after trying everything from Aerobics to Zumba) I went to a beginner’s yoga class. This instructor wouldn’t let me sign up any other way. Grudgingly, I agreed. We began the class relaxing, we moved slowly and deliberately, we ended the class relaxing. We were told to breathe deeply and slowly. In fact, we could just lie there and breathe, even if we couldn’t do anything else. I was highly skeptical to say the least—gritted my teeth and breathed—slowly, dammit. The benefits crept up on me slowly as well. Hmmm, back feels better. Neck feels better. Sleeping better. Nothing drastic happened, just little improvements, bubbling to the surface of my consciousness. Arms stronger, back suppler. I looked forward to each class, feeling like my body wanted it, even if I always didn’t.

I’ve been practicing different kinds and intensities of yoga ever since and am still learning. My breathing and movements are more coordinated and aware. Yoga apps are part of my life. I still have some body issues at 70 but no longer consider myself a person with a bad back, but, rather, one who is strong and flexible. What I get from my yoga practice is basic—listen, adapt, and breathe. Good advice all around.

[ainotar-blog]

Red Ball Jets

Run faster, Jump higher!

I would be sweating, running in navy blue gym shorts, my name embroidered on the lower right hem. The white Red Ball Jets on my feet proclaimed to the world that I could “run faster and jump higher, ” but I skidded to a sudden stop at the centerline, super sneakers squealing on the wood gym floor, and thrust the basketball through multiple leaning, reaching hands to my counterpart on the other side. She’d go dashing away, hoping to make a basket; I would try to stop my momentum, so I wouldn’t tip over at the line. Then we waited, at the ready, for the ball to come our way again. Voices echoing, jumping, running, reaching, our clumps of girls made their way back and forth on our half of the court until the shrill whistle of Miss Hill, the gym teacher, would put a stop to the mayhem.

 It was 1959. I was starting 7th grade, and I loved gym. I had been a genuine tomboy in elementary school, playing softball with the boys at recess, marbles in the dirt, and riding my bike no-hands down our blacktop road. I tended to come home, dirty and disheveled, folders frayed, knees bruised. My mom would just shake her head. When someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would retort, “just a plain woman.” I didn’t have a clue then—or later.

In junior high, ideas of what girls could be or do started getting defined. We couldn’t participate in official school team sports. We couldn’t wear long pants in the classroom. Living through a six-month winter meant we stuffed pants under our skirts for the chilly walk to school and stowed them in our lockers. In addition to half-court basketball and the dreaded dodge ball, we did calisthenics in gym class to trim our waists or slenderize our fannies. With her tight ponytail, no make-up, muscles, and no-nonsense attitude, Miss Hill was considered “butch.” We didn’t want to be like her. Getting muscles wasn’t feminine. By 8th grade, most of us pubescent, our upper body exercises were done to the chant of “we must, we must, we must increase our bust.”  We tried to get out of gym. Who wants to sweat and then go back to class? Deodorant didn’t do the trick for me. I frequently exhibited large, wet circles under my arms. “Um, I’m having cramps, do I have to dress for gym?” “It’s that time you know, and I have a headache.” Ok. Sit on the side.

Going to dances became my thing. The starched petticoats of elementary school gave way to sneakers paired with slouch socks and leggings, topped by a white “boys’ shirt.” I moistened my pin curls in flat beer for long-lasting curls and used shoe polish to whiten my Red Ball Jets. With stiffened shoes and hair, we girls would descend to the gym, which was now transformed by crepe-paper streamers and toilet paper flowers. When the music started rocking, pairs of us shot to the floor, sneakered feet flying and arms twirling each other—until a “slow dance” came on, then we all demurely scattered to a side (the girls’ side) and waited for the boys, who clustered on the other side. Who would be the first brave one to cross the centerline and come over to us? Our happiness was in their hands. We pretended not to care while we anxiously waited and made giggling small talk. Then the lights dimmed, Elvis would croon “Wise men say, only fools rush in …,” and we wallflowers enviously watched the handful of couples who slowly walked the floor together, sometimes even to the beat of the music. Girls didn’t dance together for a slow dance. That could be butch. Shy boys were out of luck too. We couldn’t ask them (too forward), except during the infrequent “ladies choice,” called by the chaperones.

By 9th grade, school sports soon became something my friends and I watched. “Girls aren’t allowed to do sports” morphed into “girls can’t do sports”—no stamina, no strength, no aggression, not competitive. Never mind that we could downhill ski all day or skate and swim for hours. My best friend and I hiked around Teal Lake one afternoon, fording streams and climbing bluffs. We went to all the basketball and football games, cheering the boys and learning all the chants: “two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, kids from Negaunee stand up and holler, hip, hip hurray, hip, hip hurray.” We even showed up at track meets. Being a cheerleader or a majorette, coached by Miss HIlll, was the closest thing to a girls’ sport. While these activities required some talent and dexterity, girls were clearly there to be pretty and to support the boys.

 Our magazines and elders taught us more boundaries and behavior. “Don’t talk too loud, keep your legs together, and don’t lead a boy on.” Why? He could get blue balls, friends whispered. Really? They change color? Poor things. “Don’t let a boy get to first base too soon because he wouldn’t respect you.” This sports metaphor was confusing to me. A base just sits there, right? The player runs past, around, steals, or lands on a base. Were parts of our bodies the bases? First base, lips; second base, boobs; third base, “down there;” rounding home, “all the way”? We never talked specifically about first base or what “too soon” meant. We wondered about “petting” Was that second or third base? We heard what happened to girls who were “easy.” Then there was parking. You drive to a scenic spot, sit in the car, and “make out.” We were warned about making out leading to petting, which led to all the way. During our senior year, several girls disappeared for a time, visiting an aunt or some relative out of town. We’d speculate about whether she “lost” or gave away a baby. Sometimes a couple would get married and drop out of school. Gossip indicated it was the girl’s fault. She was leading him on and trying to get her hooks into him. Clearly she was easy, and he was helpless. Did they “have” to get married, we’d ask, with knowing looks.

In truth, we knew nothing. My mom didn’t want to talk about those things, so I would ask my five-years-older sister. If she was in the mood, she would let tidbits fall. She said petting could mean above the waist or below the waist, and both were bad but below was worse—yet another centerline that shouldn’t be crossed.

I remember accepting on some level the prevailing attitudes about women. It was common knowledge that “all the great chefs (writers, artists, composers, scientists, actors) are men,” or that “no woman can host the news.” We couldn’t compete with the gravitas of Walter Cronkite. The leaders we saw on our black-and-white TV sets in government, business, the arts, sports, and the military were all men. “Boring old men,” I used to say about all the talking heads on TV. Women didn’t have the guts, nervous system, brains, strength, agility, or whatever to do “x” well. We did have sexual power over men and were the keepers of the gate. They couldn’t control their urges, so we did. In addition, we were not to show them that we were too smart or too strong. They were the ones to run faster and jump higher in all areas of life. We could be teachers, secretaries, nurses, mothers, and wives. Nothing, of course, is universally true, and later I learned there were plenty of females at that time, striving to vault the centerline or erase the boundaries. Mostly women operated in the background, not making the news. I didn’t know about them. All I knew was that things didn’t seem fair.

In my senior year, I did “go steady,” wearing a boy’s class ring wrapped in angora yarn to make it fit. Lots of kissing happened. After graduation one night, I felt him briefly touch my breast through my clothes before he drove off in his car. Oh man! I had wild sensations when I walked in the house, nerves tingling. I sensed a line was crossed, but I didn’t realize until some years later what that pulsating in my privates signaled. 

What next? My parents and I agreed I needed further education. I had good grades. Plus I need a degree just in case. Just in case, what? Just in case there was a war, and I lost everything but my education. Just in case I needed to dig up an educated man who would have a good job. Just in case, something happened to that future husband, and I had to work. Higher education was like having an extra dime in my pocket. I went to college, not thinking about what I might become but on the hunt for that educated man. Fall of 1965 began my freshman year at the University of Michigan.

On the surface at least in Ann Arbor, familiar uncrossable lines were in place. Girls had curfews in the dorms but boys didn’t. I guess they couldn’t get into trouble without us. Girls couldn’t be in the famous marching band or walk on the field in the Big House. I think there were intramural sports for us, but I hadn’t learned any team skills. In other aspects, Ann Arbor, like the rest of the country was in upheaval, resulting in protests and meetings with people who were against the Viet Nam war, for civil rights, for women’s lib, against rules, for drugs. I learned folk songs, smoked cigarettes, cheated on curfew, and sat in. We felt freer than we were.

Fast forward a few years—I had a BS in education, married an educated guy with a career, had two adorable children—got the dime in my pocket as instructed, but something was still out of kilter. I busied myself at home and with part-time teaching. By chance one day, I saw an ad for an aerobic dance class. Fitness for women was popular, thanks to Jane Fonda and Jazzercise, no beefy men teaching squats or Air Force exercises. Hundreds of women turned out for the classes, building muscle, losing fat, breathing hard, and we did it to music, learning complicated routines and making friends. After I became an instructor and then a manager, I learned that fitness led to real confidence. It became a portal as many of the women started changing their lives, one after another. I had not foreseen that strengthening my body would strengthen my will. I, too, went back to school with more clarity of purpose and became an editor—a job I loved.

I know now that barring us from sports in puberty affected our minds as well as our bodies. It took a new wave of feminism plus the legal clout of Title IX to make real changes. I don’t long for the good old days. I am content now because all parts of my life work well. Recently my husband and I attended a women’s playoff basketball game. He was commenting on the game—zone defense, breakaway shots, free throws; I was watching tall muscular women freely race down the whole court, arms pumping, shoes squealing. I always tear up. Every. Damn. Time. They don’t even need Red Ball Jets.

[ainotar-blog]

On the Road Again

We spent three nights in Chicago recently—a big 70th birthday splurge. Stayed at the Palmer House downtown, went to see Hamilton (beyond words fabulous), attended the taping of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,”—a gathering of MPR liberal snowflakes— and ate out a lot. While I love the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and our small university town, I get a hankering for city life, for something new.

When we were raising our kids, we’d take them out of the north woods to “the City” to expose them to real life. City kids go camping for two weeks where they worry about bugs, the dark woods, and strange animal sounds. UP kids do the reverse, where they worry about bugs, dark city streets, and strange people sounds.

When they were toddlers, “the City” was Green Bay or Duluth, a four-hour drive; as we could stand to be in the car with them longer, we ventured to Minneapolis, Chicago, or Detroit—all a day’s drive away. We adults, of course, had to plan the 8-hour drive south, scanning maps for the best route, arguing about turns to take or ones we missed. We made motel choices guided only by our sense of what looked right, Al often careening to a stop and backing up to a chorus of, “you missed it!” If we were exhausted, the slightly off, moldy smells emanating from the room would be ignored as would the pool with dead leaves and green fungus. Restaurants were luck of the draw, so the familiarity of chain restaurants (McDonalds, Arby’s, I-Hop, etc.) would win with the kids. Our children were chain-anything deprived; they only had passing TV knowledge of these fun-food places. Our daughter once exclaimed, “7-Eleven, I love that place,” exploding with joy when we agreed to a slurpee stop. She had never had one.

With our legs buckling, we dutifully dragged our children through science museums, art museums, aquariums, zoos, and planetariums. Never do a planetarium at the end of the day. While the audience leaned back in their tilting chairs to gaze at the sky, the silence was interrupted by the quiet snoring of my exhausted son who finally found respite in a dark room. The kids’ biggest joy turned out not to be the giant dinosaur bones or the walk through the human heart. It was riding an escalator. Trying not to look too rural, Al and I smiled gamely as the kids, gleefully waving, rose up and down the moving staircases. Revolving doors were another hit. Sometimes we would just go all the way around without exiting. Everything was exciting—the roar of the “El” on the tracks over our heads, the sirens deafening us as fire trucks and ambulances zipped by, even the heavy traffic—eight lanes of traffic inching towards downtown, completely dwarfing our hometown 5-minute, 5 o’clock rush. Elbow to elbow in a diverse river of people, we would loud whisper, “Don’t stare!” as we clutched our bags to our chests in the crowded train. “Ignore the person talking to himself. Don’t squinch up your nose at the smell. Do you have your wallet? Where’s your camera?” It was part of their education, we the fortunate seeing the less fortunate; we the rural, seeing the urban. We’d dip their toes into city life, expose them to the joys and dangers, and then whisk them back to the safety of home.

Shopping for UP road-trippers is a binge experience. Multistory malls and department stores beckon with an amazing array of choices. When I was in top shopping form, I could spend an 8-hour day, speedwalking through stores, scanning the offerings like a lion on the savannah. While trying on stacks of clothes, adding up totals in my head, and checking off my mental list, I became expert at the quick judgment required to know instantly whether a particular store was going to bear fruit. Sometimes we only had an hour to shop on a rest stop, again buying on the fly. It was hard to imagine that other people went to those stores weekly, buying what they needed when they needed it. It wasn’t just clothes. We also got excited about imported beer selections, interesting liquors, gourmet packaged foods, goldfish crackers, Toblerone chocolate, European breads and sausages, anything we couldn’t find up north but knew existed somewhere in the city.

After a few days of delirious, nonstop activity, we’d head back in our now-crowded, decorated with shopping bags car, kids passed out in the back, following all the roads that said “north,” the traffic growing lighter with each mile. Soon the suburbs gave way to scattered farms, the farms gave way to forests, and we gave way to silent introspection, tired, thinking of everything we saw. I refolded the maps (never on the right lines), knowing we knew how to get back.

It’s different now, just the two of us. We time the trip for more frequent stops to pee, to stretch a kinked back, or to walk a sore knee. Eight hours seems like a long time to sit in the car, so we often stay overnight midway, looking forward to a 5 o’clock beer instead of more hours of driving. Strangely folded maps are pulled out only for verification, as our GPS lady’s voice calmly guides us to correct lanes and turns. We still screw up driving but much less frequently. Hotels are chosen and booked online, no wild guessing at the last minute as darkness descends. We’ve already read about the dirty pool and the dried-out burgers, and we’re not coming to your Pine Rest, thank you very much. I can shop for an hour, maybe two, before I’m overwhelmed by choices and underwhelmed by another array of inappropriate 4-inch heels or tiny tops that are designed for an 18-year old.

Overpriced theater tickets bought online in hand, we join the group of excited audience members to see Hamilton. The show brings us to tears, the music reverberating through my body. Al and I smile at each other after the last round of applause, full of emotion. It was worth the trip. We are the privileged, absentmindedly walking past the homeless who are waving their jingling paper cups at us, trying to be seen, trying to get a reaction.

We come home tired, successful hunters and gatherers, glad to be out of the traffic and mayhem and back to our routine. I spend happy minutes hanging up my new clothes and putting away the fancy liquors, recording charges on the budget spreadsheet, wondering what I will do with yet another theater program, smiling at our selfies, and re-savoring the good meals. Thanks to Amazon and online shopping, there are fewer things we can’t buy in the UP. Technology eases the travel experience but also makes it less necessary. Why leave home when everything is available online? Although the siren song of the city will still lure us, I know there will be a day when we hear the call but can’t go—the drive will be too long, our bodies too old, our reflexes too slow. We’ll be happy to lie on the savannah in the sun. We know what’s out there.

[ainotar-blog]

Let There Be Light!

The anger almost choked me as I stared at a seemingly endless row of light poles, the tall ones that illuminate highways. Here they bordered open graveled areas about 30 meters wide. Remnants of vertical, jagged slabs of concrete stood at a distance of about 100 meters from the light poles. Cement rubble was everywhere. It was July 1990, and we were in what had been East Berlin. The “Anti-Fascist Protection Ramparts,” or as it was known in the West, the Berlin Wall, had been breached in 1989 and demolition had begun this year. The West Berlin side was colorfully painted with cartoon characters, political slogans, profanity, or names—just like any urban graffiti art surface. It was easy to pick out fragments of the wall from other rubble because of the bright paint on one side. We all pocketed souvenirs.

Of course the wall wasn’t just a single wall. It’s not that simple to keep people in or out. A barrier has to be seen and patrolled. The East Berlin side had really been double-walled. The actual 12-foot-high cement wall that ran for about 100 miles was backed by a 30- to 150-meter no man’s land, which was illuminated by that line of light poles. In addition, more than 300 observation towers looked over the main wall, and an inner wall of barbed wire or other impediments was designed to trap escapees in between. Soldiers lived in nearby barracks and walked the “death strips” carrying machine guns, accompanied by dogs. They had to be able to hit two moving targets at 200 meters with only four shots. Failure to shoot was a punishable offense. The entire concept was depressing, but the remaining light poles stuck in my craw.

 You see, we had just spent a six-month sabbatical in Estonia, which in 1990 was still a part of the Soviet Union. Estonia, just south of Finland, is a country that enjoys “white nights” in the summer. The sun sets briefly, then rises almost immediately. Folklore says that dawn and dusk kiss at midsummer. However, in the winter, or the “black time,” the sun sets by 4:30, making for long, dark evenings. Not incidentally, people need light. The streets and buildings were only partially lit, creating a shadowy dark interior that matched the gloom outside where streetlights were few and far between, if they had bulbs. The soviet state rationed light. I made frequent, fruitless shopping expeditions when a bulb burned out. Where were the damned bulbs?

When I saw the remnants of the Berlin Wall, a light bulb exploded in my head. So THIS is where the light was. THIS monstrosity was worth lighting up. These hundreds of light bulbs burned all night, turning the no man’s land into an illuminated death strip. A government always has to make spending trade offs. Here was evidence of a stark choice.

Soviet Estonia didn’t have a famous wall like the one dividing East and West Berlin, but barriers of all kinds were erected and manned. The state is roughly bordered by Latvia to the south, Russia to the east, and the Baltic Sea to the north and west. Travel was freely allowed within the Soviet Union, but travel was impeded elsewhere. Those areas vulnerable to western access were either off limits completely or strictly limited. It was more difficult for us to get permission to take a ferry to the Estonian Island Saaremaa than to what was then called Leningrad. We slipped into Leningrad with friends, just driving over the border into Russia. For Saaremaa, we needed special permission and an itinerary that detailed where we would be and when. Barbed wire, outposts, soldiers, and dogs guarded the coastal lands. No casual strolling allowed. Boats patrolled the waters.

When we left Estonia in 1990, we traveled by train through Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to Berlin. Before crossing the border into Poland, Russian soldiers searched all corners of our train compartment with flashlights. I was afraid they would tear apart our suitcases, but it turned out that they didn’t look there; they were searching for people who might be trying to leave, perhaps pressed like pretzels in the closet behind our suitcases—illegals.

Formerly communist Poland was transitioning into a free market economy in 1990, and we were curious about the differences we would see when we checked into our hotel. The first surprise was that water, albeit cold, came out of the hot water tap. In the Soviet Union, the hot water and the heat were turned off in May and didn’t return until fall. The official reason was repair of the centralized piping, which always looked decrepit and was unreliable. No water at all came out of the hot water tap; the radiators grew cold. The inconvenience can’t be overstated in a country where spring can have snow flurries, and even summer has its chilly nights. I kept the oven door open to heat our tiny “modern, convenient” apartment until a friend lent me an impossible-to-buy electric space heater. Water had to be boiled for baths, dishes, and clothes. We learned to take a bath in just inches of water, certainly not every day. We wore our clothes way past the smell test to avoid doing laundry, which involved carrying the sloshing pot of hot water to the tinny, wringer washing machine. The agitator could weakly slosh around one, yes one, pair of jeans. The wringer came apart, futilely squeezing said pair of jeans. The drain hose popped off randomly, dumping my precious warm water all over the floor. I cursed my Riga 17 washing machine, making laundry day a time to avoid mom at all costs. Al and I wrung out the clothes by hand, rinsed them in the bathtub, wrung them again, and hung them all over the apartment, still dripping (no dryer). This was assuming you had soap and detergent, which were often rationed or not available. The communist government controlled all aspects of the economy, including the quality and quantity of consumer goods. In the workers’ paradise, domestic needs were at the bottom of the budget heap.

Oddly enough, as we traveled west toward more democracy, hot water seemed to follow freedom, as did bananas, oranges, peanuts, chewing gum, band-aids, sanitary products, bags of coffee, and light bulbs. In freer East Berlin, lukewarm water flowed from the hot water tap, and it was in West Berlin where we finally got hot water. Toilet paper changed from rough-with-brown-wood flecks to soft white, and bathrooms became clean. Buildings and streets were well lit, and stores were stocked. What did communism have to do with these basic comforts?

In the end, walls are partially effective, despite “shoot to kill” orders. Of the 10,000 people that tried to escape East Berlin after the wall was built, 5,000 or so were successful. Some people jumped, rammed, swam, flew, tunneled, zip lined, or floated in hot air balloons, while most others just used forged documents and bribed border guards. Two hundred or so died trying, and the rest were imprisoned. The Berlin Wall lasted 28 years before people literally tore it down with their hands, pick axes, bulldozers, sledgehammers, and vehicles. Large chunks of the Berlin Wall are spread throughout the world, cement relics from a useless, expensive experiment. I keep my shards in a container as a reminder of what was and should never be again. The money spent creating, maintaining, manning, and lighting the wall was wasted.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, state spending priorities were for the military and border walls, not on people and their welfare. Estonia negotiated and sang its way out of the Soviet Union in 1991, allowing all Estonians to walk the beaches and travel to the islands or anywhere in the West. The winter nights are still long and black, but they sparkle with life and lights now.

Western democracies called the wall a symbol of the failure of communism. To me it was a symbol of a failure of priorities. If a government cares less about the welfare of its people than it does about military might, it can eventually fail, including a democracy. As President Reagan said in 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate, “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

[ainotar-blog]

Hopscotch-ing to Spring

“The number of cubic feet of snow that falls on the planet each year is about 1 followed by 15 zeros, which is a million billion. … Similarly, all this snow weighs about a million billion kilograms. A typical snow crystal weighs roughly one millionth of a gram. This means a cubic foot of snow can contain roughly one billion crystals.” — Jon Nelson, cloud physicist

I can’t begin to fathom what that really means, except that it’s a HUGE number. All I know is when it’s time for billions upon billions of snow crystals to leave the Keweenaw during March and April, our sturdiness as a people is severely tested. After coping with and enjoying (mostly) around 200 inches of snow, the calendar blithely announces the first day of spring on March 21. “Huh,” we mumble through our mufflers, lacing up our swampers. “Spring, schming.” We still had at least a foot of snow on the ground this year on March 21 with a high depth of around three feet in the midst of winter.

That’s a lot of flakes that have to melt one by one, a lot of flakes. The ones crusted with sand or other debris melt v-e-r-y  sl-o-w-ly. I know because I stare at them, willing them into puddles of submission. 

The first day of spring is really an indicator of sun location, and even up here we realize what that means. IF the sun is out, it will melt snow. The roads will go back to their grey-ish black pot-holed selves, revealing stiff-legged carcasses of unlucky road-crossing deer and porcupines where the high snow banks used to be. At least the crows are happy, noisily pecking and flying about—spring buffet! A positive early sign for me is the existence of melt circles around the tree trunks. Their insides are flowing, so the trees give off a subtle warmth. The first bare patches of yard are at the edges of things—roads, trees, foundations, water—and, of course, spots that get direct rays of the weak but strengthening sun.

So, today, the 4th of April, I am lurking in the yard and nearby woods, looking to see if enough melted patches of ground connect, so that I could wear my sneakers to walk to the swing overlooking the pond—yes, almost! I’ve done this since I was a kid. We would bounce through our yards from one bare spot to another, kind of a Yooper- kid snow hopscotch. But today the shady sides of the woods and places where my snowshoes packed a trail still sport a hefty 6 inches. Those dirty squeezed-together snowflakes are resisters, rising above the ground in the shape of footprints, but they are losing.

Before we moved to the country, the first sunny warm April afternoon would bring us out to our front yards, shovels in hand. We attacked with Keweenaw fury those remaining black hulks of snow, flipping them to the white underbelly that would start to melt almost immediately upon exposure. Up and down the street, we flung those resisters upon the altar of the warm road and willed spring to come to our forlorn yards, covered now in decaying leaves, stray garbage, and a ton of sand. It’s pretty ugly.

I know people in the Keweenaw who embrace our spring. Spring skiers. Some of my best friends are spring skiers, but we disagree in spring. While I hop across bare spots, they slither through the woods, seeking coolness and snow, like some kind of snow vampires who need their fix of glide. Our paths don’t often cross. Other strange species are the early bikers. Foolishly optimistic, they dig their bicycles out of hiding places on the first day the roads are bare and the sun is out. The bright sunshine deceives, because the winds grow cold blowing  across the still-frozen fields. They are out there, covered from head to toe in spandex, windburned with frozen fingers and an “it’s spring” grimace pasted on their faces. I have seen some close up, as one lurks in my basement.

Spring is a slow transition of snow to water, often taking two months, even longer. We can never predict the character of spring in the Keweenaw. It’s fluky and sometimes cruel. A few years ago, the temps never rose to 50 degrees in March or April, starting the month of May snowy and cold. Another year, all the snow melted at once over an unseasonably warm weekend in mid-March. It was downright creepy.

We know that even once the winter’s accumulation leaves, we can get another layer of fresh, frisky flakes, just to test our mettle. We also know that the unstoppable sun guarantees this season eventually ends with flowers—a profusion of spring blooms that can drunkenly bump into summer’s and overstay their welcome. One year after a very cold spring, mid-June sported fading creeping flox and lingering tulips while the first lilacs and summer flowers all came to the party.

Our first spring colors are gray sky and black dirty snow, interspersed with beige and brown ground, often saturated with water, and bits of blue peeking out of lake-effect clouds. One day we suddenly get that astonishing clear, bright blue sky and strips of blue water. We are manically happy. Outside! No Jackets. Grilling. The next day is winter again. Depressed. More beer. Nevertheless, we persist, well because Yoopers are crazy and because it’s crazy beautiful where we live.

It’s the season of melt. I’m watching … and counting down the flakes. Hopscotch anyone?

[ainotar-blog]

Voldemort Must Die!

April’s been an odd month for me with spring coming-not-coming—changing daily. One day it’s 68; the next, 39. Two days of sun followed by five days of overcast. Yesterday it poured all day; today, it’s ice and snow. Then there was illness and Harry Potter.

It all started with Kindle offering me a free book, the first Harry Potter—The Sorcerer’s Stone. My granddaughter is a Harry Potter buff, so I thought, why not? Would be good to read what she loves. Plus, something like 400 million copies in 50 languages have been sold. There must be something good here.

At the end of March on the 27th, my Kindle sported the first book—the introductory hit. Two days later, I needed more and found a new source—my granddaughter is a pusher and owner of all things Harry Potter. After three days on April 2, I was ready for my third hit, but the effect was diminishing. The books were getting longer and I had spring things to do—mashed leaves needed to be raked off the flowers; the house needed cleaning; laundry piled up. I needed a solution fast.

On April 4, I got a virus. Mind you, I wasn’t down and dead. I was just sick enough to have a low-grade fever, a tight throat, and total exhaustion along with a few achy joints, but I was not sick enough to be sleeping the days away—just sick enough to lie around and read. Two days later I was on book four. It was easy to get sucked into Harry Potter’s world and while away the hours. Muggles, Witches, Wizards, Death Eaters, and owls populated my life, as I, propped up on pillows, turned page after page.

After about two weeks, I was pretty much back at full strength, but in the meanwhile, as I got better, my dad had a health crisis on April 14th. He has congestive heart failure and is mostly stable, but suddenly he was retaining a lot of water and could barely talk or move. Just recovered myself, I went to see him under extreme stress, thinking this could be the end. He’s 98. He looked terrible. He looked cursed—puffy, skin stretched, voice hardly a whisper. I suspected a Weasley brothers trick gone wrong. The muggle nurse changed his medications.

Maybe she was really a half-wizard because he slowly started to improve. My reading slowed down. Then on the 18th, I had a new virus—this time my intestines. Back in bed with my books, stomach twisting, reading with greater urgency. Clearly the only way to get back on my feet was to to finish the series. I turned the last page on the seventh book and killed Voldemort on April 24. On the 25th I went to my dad’s to see him recovered—looking normal, weight normal, breathing normal. 

I had read 4,100 pages, seven books, in 29 days. That’s an average of 4 days per book and 141 pages per day. I have never read so much in so little time. The circumstances had to be just so—a series of medium-sized curses allowed me to take the time to leave the muggle world. The Death Eaters were beaten back from my dad’s door. Is that my owl flying overhead? Where’s my butter beer? I really need a wand.

[ainotar-blog]

Singing through South Africa

It’s pouring today and chilly, a damp cold that keeps me inside wanting to bundle up in cozy clothes, watching the bright daffodils drooping in the rain, their golden heads mimicking the absent sun. My tired jet-lagged brain has not returned from South Africa where we spent two exhilarating, exhausting weeks absorbing African life and food and song—and sunshine.

It was the Michigan Technological University’s Concert Choir trip, taken every four years, that drew us there. My husband has been singing in the student-community-faculty choir for 29 years. This year our 14-year-old granddaughter joined the choir so she could travel with us. As the non-singer, I am chief cheerleader. There are a number of us hangers-on, married to or followers of members of the choir, happy to guard belongings, sit through rehearsals, perhaps provide snacks or water, and sometimes just listen, teary-eyed. The reward is a trip that is part tourist and part cultural immersion. Always interesting, sometimes challenging.

This land of Nelson Mandela and home of apartheid took hold of our hearts and minds. Coming from our country, still coping with a legacy of slavery, we arrived at the place where it began, where African people were captured, held in chains, and shipped to colonies around the world, including ours. For both the USA and South Africa, slavery disappeared but other insidious laws created “separate but equal” and “Jim Crow” laws in the USA, while South Africa enacted the laws of apartheid. The results were the same: signs for whites only, Europeans only, no colored, no blacks; separate entrances, housing, and schools; voting rights nonexistent or curbed; lack of good jobs and transportation. No need to enumerate it all because the effects are visible even today to anyone who cares to look—inequality and poverty.

We expected to see the dusty, garbage-strewn township settlements that stretch for miles around the larger South African cities. We visited infamous Soweto, home to Nelson Mandela and Trevor Noah. Tiny shacks, one-story with rusted corrugated metal roofs, are crowded one on top of another, like a tenement building on its side—little or no yards, no grass, no running water. A few chemical toilets provided by the government cluster in threes and fours in the corners. Bootleg electricity is siphoned off, wires running in every direction like octopus tentacles from the sparse poles fringing the neighborhoods. Spear-tipped fences topped by curlicues of razor wire separate the haves from the have-nots—a dismal sight. But those people hanging around outside are entrepreneurs who sell everything from fruit to barbeque to haircuts to metal roofs to clothes to mattresses. Products are made, traded, repaired, recycled, maybe stolen, whatever it takes.

What was even more unexpected was encountering enormous joy, warmth, and pride everywhere. Every choir we met and sang with exhibited a love for music and movement that was contagious. For a choir that could barely tap a foot and sing at the same time, South African singers had our people dancing and swaying and clapping. The audiences cheered and waved, appreciating with tears in their eyes when our choir sang some of their songs in their language—Afrikaans, Xhosa, Sesotho, and Ndebele. Cab drivers thanked us for coming to South Africa and contributing to their economy. As our buses lumbered through narrow, unpaved neighborhood streets, sometimes lost, locals waved and smiled at us. Children blew kisses.

The tour guide in Mandela’s home church, eyes sparkling, told us how he had met Mandela and Archbishop Tutu several times and shook hands with the Clintons and Michelle Obama. He showed us where bullets punched holes in the church walls and ceiling during the uprisings, the uprisings that ended with prisoner Mandela becoming President Mandela in 1991. At the apartheid museum I heard teachers strictly reminding school children, lest they forget, what conditions were like for their grandparents. “If you wanted to work in the gold mine, you had to strip naked and stand with your arms raised above your head for several hours to prove you were strong enough to work. No CV required.”

South Africa is not a one-size-fits-all country for race, religion, or language—a rainbow nation they call it. While Afrikaans was dominant during apartheid, South Africans now do not want to officially impose a single language. When natives speak to a stranger, they might have to guess which dialect or language that person will speak. There are 11 official languages, and we met adults and children who spoke all of them. I tried, to no avail, to make the clicks integrated into Xhosa speech, but our guides switched back and forth among languages effortlessly. Public signage is in English, Afrikaans, and one of the dominant African languages (generally Xhosa or Zulu). We learned about a twelfth “unofficial language” that consists of hand signals for communicating with taxi vans that ply the townships. By pointing an index finger up or stretching a number of fingers to the side or making a shape, a person in the street can quickly convey a desired destination to drivers who will stop for people with similar destinations. This is a useful holdover from apartheid days when transportation was almost impossible for blacks.

The struggle against apartheid lasted 43 years from 1948 to 1991. The black majority could not vote. When the Congress Alliance, a group favoring universal suffrage, proposed the Freedom Charter in 1955, this was considered a treasonous act by the ruling white government, punishable by death, and resulted in the arrest of 156 members, including Nelson Mandela. This Freedom Charter, which undermined the essence of apartheid, offered the following simple idea: “We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.” Life imprisonment was Mandela’s sentence for supporting that statement, worse than death they thought. We toured sites explaining and displaying the tenants of the charter, etched in granite. There’s no forgetting. 

The history of the uprising coexists with the history of colonialism. We spent time at the Voortrekker Monument, which idealized the Dutch pioneers who settled the “empty” land they seized, turning it into useful farmland and mines, which could exploit the cheap labor they coerced. One of our guides couldn’t allow herself to enter the monument; another taxi driver dismissed it as a tribal relic, saying, “Oh the Dutch think they were the original people here. Doesn’t bother me what they think.”

While hopeful, South Africans are not blind Pollyanna’s. Many believe their current government is corrupt and that equality or prosperity is a long way off. Our bus driver on Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, revealed candidly that the country still suffers from the legacy of apartheid. While the physical barriers between races have been removed, he said the mental barriers are harder to erase. Apartheid created boxes for people—black, white, colored—from which it’s hard to escape. People were trained to hate difference. He said it would take more generations of South Africans to divest themselves of those tribal, racial, and class prejudices.

As president, Mandela instituted a period of “truth and reconciliation,” whereby the perpetuators of apartheid could confess and apologize for their deeds and be forgiven by their victims. This was a powerful and effective tool for getting past the horrors of apartheid and for bringing the country together. Forgiveness, not retaliation, was his theme. As we visited schools and churches, one of the favorite songs we heard and sang together was called Unity. Just unity. That was his goal, and now it’s theirs.

It should be ours. Unity with song just plain feels good.

[ainotar-blog]

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!

I was enjoying our finally warmish sunny weather the other day with a stroll through our woods. Spring has been so wet that I had to wear my big black rubber boots to clunk through the mud and wet spots. Suddenly I was shrilly accosted by a tiny bird in a nearby tree. There was no mistaking the anger and warnings. I was clearly trespassing. I stopped to jokingly argue, “hey, this is my land; I have every right to walk on it. I’m not bothering you, etc.” To no avail. Bird one was joined by bird two; spouse I assume. Soon I was harangued by the duo. They hopped from tree to tree, keeping up their verbal abuse. Finally, when I was a good distance from the original spot did one retreat, then the other.

Our group of friends belong to ecology groups that go after invasive species. They organize expeditions where the hikers rip out the latest culprit, currently spotted knapweed. We are also asked not to bring firewood from elsewhere and to wipe our boots entering or leaving a conservation trail. I understand it and sympathize. Really I do. (Don’t send me a lecture.) Color me skeptical.

I’ve pulled a few spotted knapweeds from my yard myself, even though they are kind of a pretty color. I’m an anything-goes gardener. Is it green? Does it bloom? Does it come back after a horrible winter? Can I neglect it? Ok. You’re in. and you’re on your own. My nagging thought on invasive species versus native plants is, how do we really know? I mean we know what was native fairly recently in our history—you know, bison, prairie grass, etc. But the climate has changed over eons, and we humans have been trading and traveling and mucking things up since we went upright, bringing plants, seeds, animals all over the world. All the expolorers, all the migrants. Me. We are the most invasive species and we keep changing the planet. That’s a given, not that it’s desirable.

Those birds definitely didn’t want me on their cloud. Further on my trail, the woods seemed to turn blue as I came upon huge patches – waves – of blooming Forget-Me-Nots. Our 40 acres was part of old farming complexes in the area, but when we bought the land, it was just forest. The extra rain has caused this explosion of blue, probably from some long ago garden-escaped plants. They are invasive too and spread their blue beauty in an unruly manner, ignoring borders and fences.

Then there are the squirrels that are turning my daffodils into invaders. I keep finding the odd stem or two popping up where I never planted them. The critters are cultivating them with great success at the edges of the pond and brooks. Animal waste is another invader enabler, filled with seeds in their own poop compost container. Ideal. In fact, Nature is a more efficient gardener than I am. Acorns and maple seedlings seem to do well in my poor plots. I reluctantly pull them out because the eventual tree is really going to be a lot of trouble to yank out of my red currants, which are consistently invaded by little green munching worms. It’s a constant battle for change, for invasion, and we’re not winning.

Just the thought of untangling the network of turf invasion on this planet has me exhausted. Every step I take leads to the growth of something somewhere. Perhaps if I stay on the deck and sip a beer…Two’s a crowd on my cloud, baby.

[ainotar-blog]

Back in the Saddle: I have saddle sores and my horse is lame

I don’t even know what that headline means, except that I need to continue my blog, which I started in my 70th year. I wrote 14 entries, the last one was in early August that commemorated my favorite uncle who had just died. Alas, that was just the beginning of an autumn of tragedies, a season of blogus interruptus where my brain could only cope and refused to write.

In late August, my independently living 98-year-old father with CHF fell and smacked his head. He seemed to be fine but slowly lost his sight. Called me one morning, many days later, and said, “I can’t see to read. When can you get to Marquette? I need to eat.” He is also severely hard of hearing and doesn’t choose to have hearing aids. Al has been taking care of my dad’s finances for years because he had trouble on the phone. He refused cataract surgery several times, despite the fact that most of his life requires vision or hearing to enjoy. He seems surprised by each setback and doesn’t want to plan ahead. “I’ll deal with it when the time comes.” No, dad, we’ll deal with it. “Who would have thought this could happen?” Everybody, dad, everybody. You’re old. Things are not getting better. 

So resistant to change, he also should have left his apartment some time ago, but he wouldn’t and wanted to stay in Marquette, which is 100 miles away from us. Besides figuring out what to do for him medically, we had to immediately move him to assisted living—one opening in the entire town. In a state of organized madness, we packed up his essentials and furniture and settled a mostly deaf and blind, and now confused, man into a new apartment that he will never see. This will kill him, I thought. He insisted he was moving back to his condo as soon as his eyes got better. Over my dead body, I thought.

Soon the rest of the family arrived, and we set about packing up the remaining belongings, distributing things to Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity (they pick up furniture, by the way). How fast can you pack up more than 800 books, and what do you do with them? He has 1,000’s of slides, 100’s of videotapes, music tapes, and vinyl records. Then, of course, he has dishes, glassware, art, letters, and memorabilia. It’s amazing what a small apartment can hold—including every postcard, greeting card, calendar, scratchpad, and address label ever sent to him and 100’s of vintage paper clips and dried-up rubber bands. Everyone took a few things, but the grim reality is that there is too much that nobody wants and that he insisted on saving. “They don’t ask for food, do they?” Our houses are full, and our tastes are different. My dad’s important memories and belongings are not ours. We scrambled 12 hours a day for several days and even rented a storage locker for keeping things we didn’t know what to do with yet. His sight didn’t come back. One eye sees shapes and a little light through a haze of macular degeneration. We sold the condo. There was no going back.

Only two weeks later, in a new frenzy to get outdoor work done that was postponed because of my dad, Al had a terrible accident in the woods. He cracked the talus in his right foot, a tore-open the back of his foot, and severed his Achilles as well as the side tendons. He couldn’t walk, had no phone, and thus crawled home two tenths of a mile. I drove him to emergency in great agitation. His left ankle was fused a year ago, now his right ankle was useless. In the ER, they cut off his pants, and, when they removed his boot, blood poured out onto the floor. I fell into another room, sobbing.

This was Al, the guy who does the heavy lifting in our country life—fixes, hauls, and digs things; clears snow and mows grass and brush; brings in the wood. Winter was coming. Some kind of bottom fell out of me, as we arranged our house for a patient who couldn’t climb stairs or put any weight on his foot. I realized that, despite 27 years in this house we loved, I could not live here alone if I had to. Al was in a surgical boot for four months.

My dad, the man who was the tough guy all his life, the man who survived a war, life as a displaced person and an immigrant, is blind, almost deaf, and fairly helpless in his old age. I was exhausted from dealing with his stuff and scared of coping alone with ours.

Because life is in a constant state of flux, we all move forward. We have to. My dad has adjusted to his new place and, strangely enough, is fairly content. We didn’t kill him. Al is healing, back to driving and clearing snow. I found places for some of my dad’s belongings, including 664 books in Estonian and have tried to resume quilting and writing, but things aren’t the same. I’ve been left with an insistent urge to divest, an urge to sort and give away, and to ease our life—maybe a smaller house, less land, fewer belongings—because life turns on a dime. Worse setbacks will happen as we age. It’s guaranteed, and they will be hard. We need to be flexible and proactive, not crisis-driven, to find new ways to live happy now, to not be afraid to let go, to make things easier on ourselves and our loved ones. Giddyap!

[ainotar-blog]

The Crone Gets Cataracts - II

Going from wow to well…?

I’m officially done with my cataract procedures from operation one on August 9 and operation two on August 22 to the final check-up on October 23rd—2-1/2 months from start to finish. Looking back, I realize that my expectations where too high and the hype surrounding the procedure encourages that. I was told I could probably get by with a pair of cheap readers. Not true for me unless I basically hang them around my neck so I can look through them every time I want to read or write something. And hang another pair around my neck for far distance vision.

 I probably should have done more research on my own in the beginning. Medicare pays for simple lenses that allow you to see near or far. You have to choose. Most people choose far, so you can use readers. But there are multiple types of lenses, including variable vision, astigmatic, and other types. I just took what was paid for and the eye doctor did not bring up any other possibilities. The doctor also discouraged me from having one eye see far and the other near, but that could have been a good choice for me. I feel like I didn’t know enough about options and costs in retrospect. I also could have waited longer to have the other eye done to see how the vision in the first eye evolved, but I was impatient to have the perfect eyesight I was expecting.

 The reality is that I am still wearing prescription glasses most of the time. The difference is that my glasses can now correct my eyesight. Before my surgery, a new eyeglass prescription could not clarify my vision enough for comfortable driving. Today I could get a license without restrictions—I could pass a driver’s vision test—but I’m not comfortable driving without, especially in strange environs. I couldn’t watch a movie or a performance without glasses.

 After surgery, it takes awhile for your vision to settle down, so what I saw in the first few days was not what I ended up with. I thought my near vision would be better than it is, but the food on my plate is slightly blurry, for example. Because I am frequently working on the computer, writing or reading, or checking info on an I-Pad, I need to wear glasses all the time. I have comfortable vision for taking a walk in the woods, skiing, swimming, etc. But most of my home activities require me to see close too, so my expectation of mostly living without glasses didn’t happen.

 An unexpected down side was the appearance of good-sized “floaters”—those dark specks you can see against the light. Unfortunately, a new clear lens allows them to be more visible. The clear lenses are also reflective, so nighttime driving is annoying with beams emanating from every light you see. At first, people also said I had an odd reflective appearance to my eyes, like an alien hiding inside a human. I don’t hear that anymore, but I don’t know if it’s gone or people have stopped commenting.

 In terms of cost, Medicare and our supplemental plan paid for everything, but I know other people who had to pay a few hundred in deductibles. Depends on your coverage. There is some discount on your first pair of glasses as well. Check on that. Medicare does not pay for the more complex lenses.

 So my enthusiasm has dimmed, but I am happy with my sight overall. My surgeon was competent, and I got excellent follow-up care locally. I have been told that I still could see some changes in vision up to year or so. I just reused old frames I liked for the new glasses. The procedure and recovery were physically easy. It’s the mind you have to grapple with. I should add the caveat that your experience will be different. Too bad I can clearly see the snow falling outside my window today!

[ainotar-blog]

Death from a Distance

My uncle was buried Saturday—a big man with a great heart, a gourmet cook, a fabulous baritone, an active participant in life. He was 84, which doesn’t seem old to me now. Heino was almost totally blind from an unlucky combination of glaucoma and macular degeneration. Weakened and thinner, he confined himself to his apartment for the most part—listening to the radio and receiving visitors. There are few people outside one’s immediate family who influence one’s life path to a large degree, but Heino did. His presence in mine was literally and figuratively huge.

He’s one of my Estonian relatives, my mom’s baby brother whom I first met when I was 23 in the summer of 1971 in Tallinn. We were enveloped by a tall, sweating man with a crooked smile and an entourage of relatives. He stewarded my mother and me through the ominous vagaries of the soviet state by cajoling, pleading, reprimanding, trading favors as needed to get what we needed. We stayed in the Viru Hotel, a place designated for foreigners, suitably bugged to track our movements. If we made a reservation for dinner, our Viru hotel “friends” were there. My mother, who escaped Estonia in 1944, was visiting her 70-year-old mother for the first time in 27 years. My grandmother needed to stay overnight in Tallinn. Heino asked the “floor matron” at the Viru, whose job was listening and reporting, if grandmother could stay in my mother’s room. “No. Our people are not permitted to stay with foreigners,” she intoned with words etched in stone. Seems my mother was a foreigner in the US as well as in her home country. Heino pulled himself up to his full height, glared at the matron, and spoke slowly, “They are not foreigners; this is a mother and daughter!” Grandmother stayed.

In 1978, Heino and his wife Silvi came to the states. This in itself was a miracle because couples were seldom allowed to leave together for fear they would not return to the workers’ paradise. They had tears in their eyes when they first saw a large American supermarket and our shopping centers. We had been sending them packages for years to help ease their lack of consumer goods, but even they didn’t realize how big that gap was. Upon leaving, they had multiple giant suitcases, full of new and donated items for themselves, their children, and the extended family—something for everybody, whether it was denims, athletic shoes, candy, t-shirts, cigarettes, aspirin, bandages, or gum. We looked at their impossible load and wondered how they would get through customs in Moscow with their bounty intact. Heino said he would simply coax goodwill from any agent with a little “gift”—cigarettes or cash. What he would do if he ran into a recalcitrant agent? Heino just laughed, “Not possible!” He agreed to send us a telegram. If all went well, he would write, “The sun is shining”; if not, well, the weather could be grim. Our telegram arrived: “At first the weather looked threatening, but soon the sun was shining!”

We brought our children to Estonia in 1985. This time it was our turn to travel with multiple, heavy suitcases bearing gifts but missing the required document for entry, which had been delayed in the mail. We were afraid we’d have to cancel the trip, but Heino’s motto was, “the only impossibility in the Soviet Union is to pull your pants on over your head.” He insisted things would work out. We were to go to the Russian Embassy in Helsinki and ask for Mr. Kass. Standing in line at the embassy, hearing the official insist over and over again, “No visa possible,” to others, my husband reluctantly stepped forward and asked for Mr. Kass. “Your name is Brokaw? There are four of you? No problem.” The Red Sea parted. When we wanted to travel where we couldn’t, Heino got the permission. If a party required copious amounts of food and drink, he found sustenance, despite empty stores, and cooked the food. If our suitcase couldn’t hold all we bought, he repacked with the patience of a monk until everything fit. No problem was too big or too small for his energetic attention.

When he visited the US for the second time in 1988, he asked my husband, a marketing professor, whether he’d be interested in teaching at the University of Tartu’s business school, which basically trained people to be accountants or clerks because a five-year plan didn’t require marketing. As director of the beer factory, however, Heino knew times were changing under Gorbachev and that new skills would be needed. Before long, we received an invitation from the university and were on our way to Tartu in 1990 to live for six months. Heino arranged housing, school for the kids, and transportation. Various relatives came by with scarce food items or apartment essentials. My dad helped finance a used car, which would remain with Heino’s family when we left. Heino picked up the red Lada, took it to his factory for repairs, and handed over the keys. What about permission to drive? His wife requested forms from all the appropriate government agencies. Nobody could or would do anything because there were no regulations to cover such a circumstance. Finally, Heino, knowing that an official-looking document was needed, produced one on beer factory letterhead, covered with stamped dates and initials. We drove for six months in the USSR with a beer-factory permission slip!

The biggest outcome for our lives was falling in love with Tartu. That teaching assignment led to many others. Our children learned Estonian, and we all began to visit more regularly, culminating in the purchase of our own apartment in Tartu in 2002 after Estonia regained independence. Heino, of course, welcomed us at the door—our new apartment had dishes, furniture, and curtains. He and his family had made it a home. Our lives were altered. We spent a lot of time with Heino and his family over the years, enjoying the changes in Estonia, drinking, eating good food, laughing about our escapades during communist times, discussing our children, enjoying concerts, and traveling about.

In the past when a relative in Estonia died, it was death from a distance, tersely announced by telegram, followed by a black-bordered envelope bearing somber black-and-white pictures of the deceased. My life was not really affected. Growing up, I hardly knew most of those people. This time, my cousin called with tears in her voice,  “We don’t have Heino anymore,” she said and broke our hearts. We had just been with him a week ago.

When we said our good-byes, I told Heino that we would see him next spring. Of course we would. “You’re still strong,” I said. He just smiled, wearing his favorite blue-and-white bathrobe, embraced us both and said in accented English, “I love you.” A week later, after we got home, they found him sitting at his kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. A good death we would say, but this time death wasn’t distant.

[ainotar-blog]

The Crone Gets a Cataract

I can see clearly now the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind It's gonna be a bright (bright) Bright (bright) sunshiny day

~Johnny Nash

It started slowly, a feeling that road signs just weren’t sharp enough. I went to my optometrist who said he didn’t think a new prescription would help much. Why? Beginning of cataracts, he said. What? Cataracts? Old people have them, old people with rheumy eyes and walking sticks. No, YOU have them. I still got a new prescription to see if tweaking would help. It didn’t. The only thing that happened over the next couple of years was that the blur got worse. Glasses no longer clarified my vision. I used to be able to read fine print without my glasses, but that ability also disappeared. I bought readers from Wal-Mart, so I could thread a needle. I stopped driving in unknown areas because I couldn’t read street signs until I was on top of them. My eyes had reached the cataract surgery point, but my brain hadn’t. I am 70. Everyone said it was quick and easy.

I kept worrying about possible things that could go wrong. The fact that my step-mother-in-law was blind in one eye due to an operation gone awry didn’t help. She had a glass eye. I was supposed to choose between seeing far and seeing close. Was it better to see far or see close without glasses? What about middle vision? If I chose far vision, would the food on my plate be blurry? Reading blogs online only inflamed my worries, as I read about infections, blurred vision, and pain. People talked about waiting until the cataract was “ripe,” but the definition kept changing. I imagined my lens slowly softening and browning. Yet, I really disliked the sight I now had. Shopping was hard because I couldn’t read labels or find things easily. Even riding as a passenger in the car was hampered by my inability to spot restaurants and motels or house numbers.

I agreed to surgery. My worse right eye first. Got the drops needed – over 200 bucks! Put two kinds of drops in my eyes starting four days before the operation four times per day. No food after midnight the night before. Only water and black coffee the morning of until 9:30 am. Then nothing. Arrived early and somewhat anxious for my 11:30 appointment—no make up or jewelry, wearing a button-front blouse, and trying to ignore my empty tummy. It was an assembly line of routine. I was interviewed about my birthdate, drugs, allergies, which eyeball was getting cut, etc.; another woman with an IV was on a gurney being talked through procedure; a third was in the operating room. I didn’t hear screams. More drops to numb and dilate my eyeball, then it was my turn to undress (blouse only, bra ok, pants and shoes ok—glad I was wearing cute sandals) and put on the lovely hospital gown and get on the gurney under a warm blanket. A perky nurse poked me for the IV, which turned out to be the only painful part of the procedure, so she could give me something “to take the edge off.” Yeah, I needed that. Doc also appeared to put gel on my eyeball, tape my forehead and initial the right eye, and reassure me it would be quick and painless. I think that’s what executioners say as well. My turn came too quickly.

I chatted with the doc but didn’t feel the actual work. I saw some colors and bright light but felt no pressure or poking or, gasp, cutting. I understand the doc disintegrates the cataract to remove it, probably using an instrument that looks like one my grandson’s many toy weapons. Don’t actually know, of course, but I’m sure I saw light sabers. All done! It took maybe 10 or 15 minutes max. I’m back in the other room with a plastic sieve on my right eye, which is looking at the world through a blur of tiny holes and rainbows. They said it went great and handed me black, out-sized, wrap-around, definitely-not-cool sunglasses to wear against the glare. Thanks, I mumbled, waiting for the walker to appear as well. I was told it could “take a few days” for my vision to clear, to rest, and not to lift anything above 10 pounds. Also received a new regimen of three drops, four times per day for about a month. They gave me V-8 juice and a granola bar, a poor combination in retrospect, and I immediately felt a little nauseated. Next time, water and a banana I think. Handed my stuff to my husband, while he opened all doors. Took a nap.

We went for dinner to a restaurant where several TV’s were showing some sports event. As I peered through the tiny vent holes on the eye patch with my head tilted at an odd angle, I started seeing sharp edges to things. By the end of dinner, it was happily obvious to me that my right eye (with the patch and still dilated) could see better than my left! The food on my plate was not blurry! As the evening progressed, I kept unscientifically testing my vision—one eye closed, then the other, trying to gauge my improvement. Waitress looked at me funny several times.

The next morning I saw the surgeon at 9 am who pronounced his work well done and removed all restrictions early, including the plastic sieve, so I could look at the world unadorned. I’m having the other eye done in two weeks. I will maybe need prescription glasses to drive and magnifiers to read, but for most of my activities, I think I will be able to function without glasses for the first time since I was 12!

 There IS a downside to all this clarity, however. Who the hell is that old woman in the mirror, the one who used to be slightly fuzzy? I thought my IPad camera unusually magnified my aged face. Now I know the painful truth. It’s just me. Every silver lining has a cloud clinging to it.