A conversation

"Sandi, you know what I miss?" said my dad. "No Dad, what do you miss?" I replied. "Driving" he said.
My dad died in 2000 at the age of 83. The last years of his life in living in Florida, in heart failure and suffering from dementia. He had given up driving voluntarily in his 70's because he realized he was a danger behind the wheel. He had issues with walking because of a disease call peripheral  neuropathy which meant he couldn't feel his legs or feet. So the man that once traveled the world was now confined to rides for errands or doctor's appointments.
As I drove home the other day from my own doctor appointment down in Keene, NH up Route 12 heading towards home, I watched the sky as the sun set.
Winter is coming to New England and just a few days before I had the ritual of having my summer tires taken off my vehicle and my winter tires mounted and balanced. Unless you live in a region where snow takes over the roads for a portion of the year you are probably unfamiliar with this ritual. I remember it from my childhood. My dad's car, my mom's car and eventually my car going through this every year. Dragging the snows out from storage, going down to the local garage and having the switch made. It marked the end of one season, the start of another and it still does for me.
I was listening to the hum of my tires.  I felt the steering wheel in my hand and I admired how even the oddest looking of vehicles (I own a Honda Element) can feel so wonderful when being driven. Feeling the dips and curves in the road. Steering around the bends, gas pedal, brake pedal, even in a vehicle that is not a sports care or even fancy it is a wonderful feeling.
As I moved speedily along I watched the sky. The sunsets start earlier this time of year. It was only about 4:30 pm and the gray clouds had parted enough for the last rays of the sun to color them and the sky in vivid shades of pink and gold. The clouds themselves like cotton balls pulled by childish hands. Round and fluffy here then stretch across the sky with sharp and flattened edges. Greys of various shades colored the clouds. At one point a cloud appeared diagonally up from the others, breaking into a free space and the sun painted it gold like the wing of a phoenix about to take flight from the ashes of the day.
With every mile the scenery changed. There are no 'flat' roads in that drive between Keene and home. There are places where it seems flat but if you pay attention you realize it's not. Even with all the technology of road building, New England roads cannot be flat. It is against their nature. There are always small dips and rises. Just as a New England road cannot stay straight for long as there will always be curves, following rivers, creeks and the sides of hills and mountains.
There is one spot along Route 12 where for a brief time you can see the breath and width of the Connecticut valley laid out before you. The fields slope towards the river in New Hampshire and rise on the other side in Vermont. At sunset you can see the lights in homes in both states start to come on. This view has always taken my breath away. It is beautiful and serene and it is just a moment or two in my drive. I realized as I watched the scenery change, passed the houses with lights flickering on in the dusk, drove along the road with my fellow commuters that I to would miss driving. I finally understood what my dad meant. I love where I live but being able to get in my vehicle and go elsewhere is nothing short of amazing. It is something we take for granted. The scenery so familiar from so many drives in one direction or another become new and different if you take a second to see it that way. Watching the seasons change, how the fog lowers down on a mountain top, how rain can change a landscape. These are things we forget to see as we drive. We concentrate on getting there, where ever there is. Getting there faster, getting there before the other guy. Paying attention to what is around us while we drive also makes us better at driving. You don't just concentrate on the 'tunnel' that is the road. You take into consideration how the road feels under your tires, what the weather is like, you look more around you to see what is there and in doing that you just may see what may happen. Guess it comes down to just being a simile to life. Slow down a bit, enjoy it while your here because at some point you may realize like I did, that missing driving is also missing life. I came to that conclusion with my dad when I looked at what he had done with the old black and white photos of his mom, dad and sisters. He had tore the backgrounds away leaving only the upper torsos and faces. He had spent his life achieving. Taking little time to slow down and enjoy the ride. So in his dementia he ripped away the backgrounds and saved the faces so he could remember them, those whom he missed. There was no more driving. No place to go.
We all miss something or someone that is inevitable. Just part of the human experience. But if we are lucky there will someone to drive us when if we cannot drive ourselves. Someone who will enjoy the feel of the road and be willing to look at the sunsets with us.

What is life?

That has to be the most ambiguous title I could think of. Something that covers conception to death and maybe the hereafter. Or at this point, my life, here and now.
As of late many thoughts flit in and out of my mind. Some come at night in the form of dreams. From real concepts to abstract thoughts my brain finds them coming, some unbidden and some unwanted.

I am to face the possibility of surgery again. In 15 years this will be number 4 and I don't care whether or not you stay overnight in a hospital, surgery is surgery and therefore it is major surgery. It is your body being filled with drugs, you go to sleep (a term usually associated with putting an animal down) and you are trusting a bunch of people that you don't know, with knives and things and you hope they don't leave anything behind (who hasn't read one of those stories?) and you hope in your brief stay in the hospital that you do not contract some sort of infection. Really makes me want to go. Then in the time between diagnoses, biopsy (in my case) and surgery you have to wait. Maybe days and maybe weeks. This wears on a person. The thought racing through my brain are unpleasant, unwanted and for the most part they just make me very cranky. I try through reading, my friends and my own optimistic nature to keep the thoughts good. But it doesn't always work. In through the back door comes the word cancer. It's a word, a thing I don't want in my life ever again. But there is this ever so slight chance is could be there, hiding in a nodule, growing, yet undetected. And that bring me to the question of life and what it is?

How do we know we have for filled our purpose in life? That our little cog like life has done what it is suppose to have done. Do we ever know? I am not a believer in an afterlife. Of voices talking from beyond the grave. If this were true then the word would be filled with people capable of hearing those voices not just a couple of television personalities. Our lives would be filled with voices from the very roots of our family trees to the tips of the newest branches. Do you get denied this voices if indeed you are nothing more than a graft to that particular tree? Or when a family dies out and there is no living decedent do all the voices disappear? Odd questions? Yes. But this is where my mind starts to lead me.

I would like to have conversations with people that aren't confrontational. Seems lately because of my job or a committee I am on there is no subject however benign that isn't capable of starting a conflict, some real and some imagined, especially when someone feels that they must play devil's advocate even though the situation doesn't call for it (part of their personality I guess).

Am what I am doing in life making a difference? Those 3 clicks in the morning, donations by proxy to autism, vets, and animals, are they really adding up? It somebody with autism getting some help, is a vet in need getting services and is 1 animal saved from death? I don't know, I do it on faith that somewhere these things are happening. I just never will see the results so my faith must be my pillar in this.

I worry about our future, me and the hubby. So far I am the one needing surgery and the accompanying baggage. He is the one who is 'healthy', a relative term as he needs his eyes checked and needs to go to the dentist and I have to bug him to get a yearly check up. He is the financial pillar of our house. I make enough money in my job to pay a 1/3 of the property taxes. Which leaves a big chunk left to be covered. There are all the usual bills to be paid, electric, gas, car, food and I wonder how long can we afford to live. Do we need a cut off date because at that time we won't be able to afford our lives? How can we live on less when like so many we live on the edge?

I am the housefrau when a life time ago I was to be an artist. Although I seemed to have a rather wonderful temperament for being an artist, I didn't seem to find the one thing that I just had to do. I believe that as an artist you are driven by your art. You can't just let your paints dry up, your kiln grow cold or drop your pencils and walk away. It is your life force, it is you and you are it. No matter which medium you choose or how many you choose, it is the biggest part of your life. I don't draw anymore or use inks. There are no canvases hidden away to be painted on. No gallery to show my work. So I take it on faith that this is where I am suppose to be. I have made a hundred or so blankets and booties for newborns, I have graced family members with blankets (of the crochet kind). I have painted the walls of my house as if they were my canvases. Rooms are filled with colors, plants and stuff. Stuff being the term for things that may bring me joy. Last year I found several small birds nests, I was fortunate in finding a large pedestal type glass bowl. I filled the bowl with the nests. Then I added closed rosebuds and other flowers that dried among the nests in lovely shades of pink and cream. The finishing touch was feathers, small and delicate stuck in among the nests and flowers. It presented itself quite well for almost a year and then dust and age took it's toll and my little arrangement became part of the compost bin. My 'art' if it is that is temporary. It seem to be what is left over from my childhood. Arrangements made of the bits and pieces of my every day existence. My little 'finds' from walking our dirt road, a rock, a piece of bark, a feather, found and stuffed in my pocket like I was six again. Then brought home a displayed. Not for all to see as very few indeed see these displays never mind understand what they mean. I don't think I understand what they mean except they give me joy.

Maybe all in all that is the answer to my question. What is life, it is joy. The joy you give when you pass on a smile, when you say thank you, get your first kiss or hold your first baby. Maybe that is why there is so much hatred in the world. The joy of the simple things, admiring art, tasting fresh bread, listening to street noises or listening to the silence in a wood has been forgotten by too many.

Life is what you make of it, how you have treated family, friends and strangers. It is not your name in lights, it is your name being said by a friend or a lover. It is the hugs and kisses from your family, your children. It is pasta necklaces and school drawings. It is the smile returned to you by a stranger. It is taking the good a paying it forward and letting spread like ripples in a pond. You can choose to live life in a manner that respects and pay homage to those around you or not. That is what life is, choice. What is your choice?

Days of Glory

On days as today I wish I was a writer of prose and verse so I could describe the beauty and the awe I see and feel when walking on my dirt road.
The Shad trees are starting to drop petals off their blossoms. Delicate slivers of the palest pink lie on the dirt road. In the woods not too far distant from the road, the wood floor is covered in painted Trilliums, white with deep red centers.  On the very edge of the road, wild oats, shooting stars, wild lily of the valley and foam flowers in the palest of cream colors, grow in the very poorest of soil. Colts foot, almost gone by now, sends up one last stalk topped with a bright yellow flower, defiant in it's last days. Violets, yellow dog tooth and purple join in the burst of wild beauty while the tiny sweet white violet scents the air with it's delicate perfume.
Deeper in the woods you can see the white flowers of hobblebush set against the many shades of spring green. The trees have dropped their own flowers and replaced them with small perfectly formed leaves that will unfurl and grow in the coming days. And if you venture off the road and a little further into the woods you may see Jack-in-the-pulpits and the first leaves of a wild orchid known as a Lady Slipper.
The air is becoming heavy with the promise of rain and around me I can hear the various songs and cries of birds. A great blue Heron takes off with amazing ease from the beaver pond when it hears my tread upon the road. Red wing blackbirds dart in front of me racing from the wooded side of the road to the wetlands surrounding the pond. In the distance I can hear the call of the Pilated Woodpecker. Ducks take off in startled surprise from the creek as I walk down the road.
As I come closer to home, swallows dart about the field across from my property. A walk up my own driveway and I am greeted by dandelions standing at attention by the edge of the driveway. One section of our lawn looks like an early snowfall has come because of the many  tiny sweet white violets that grow there (the flowers are only about 1/4'' across). Boldly looking out from other sections of lawn are Johnny Jump-ups, purple violets, large white violets with purple eyes and reddish violets. I am not sure where they all came from but they are welcome to inhabit my lawn.
My pear tree is ready to bloom and the Bishop's Cap which dwells by it's roots is putting on a show of it quaint little red and white flowers shaped like a bishop's cap, what else?
What days of glory are these. Being able to watch a world awake from it's cold winter slumber. To see life renewed.To be reminded that in a world filled with such ugliness there can by so much beauty, like on the side of a dirt road.

Call me by my name

When I was taken in to care by my future adoptive parents at the age of three (according to my mother), it was suggested that my name be changed. Unlike a dog you can't just change a child's name. A dog may respond to treats and cookies and quickly adapt to a new name. Children take a little longer and there is a transition period.
My 'official' name is Sandra Cathy Rudski (for ease I am not including my married name of Capponcelli). My grandmother on my father's side was Alexsandra before she decided to 'Americanize' her name after immigrating to this country from Poland to Alice. So that is where the Sandra came from. The Cathy was an homage to my previous life before adoption. Although my parents either got it wrong or choose deliberately to get it wrong. In my previous life I had been know as Kate, although my birth name was Catherine (with a 'C' if you please), I was Kate or maybe Cate. Anyway that was BA, Before Adoption.
For almost a year before the official paper work was typed up, signatures added and seals affixed I lived in an odd world of having no name. I was not Catherine or Cate, Sandra or Sandy (with an 'i' nowadays if you please). I was sweetie, honey, dear and any other term of endearment you can think of. I am sure my new name was slipped in there every now and then so I would hear it and adjust to it. Just as I am sure my 'old' name disappeared as if it never existed.
Of course as I grew older I had no memory of this time period but I developed some slightly odd quirks about names. I do not like being called Sandra. I love the name but it has and edge to it that bothers me. The sibilant 'S' and the hard 'R' at the end. I prefer Sandi. It, to me, is soft and comfortable. My middle name Cathy was always quite vexing in school. As a child I wanted desperately to blend in, to be part of the wall, to just watch. Having Cathy as a middle name meant every year as I moved from one grade to another, as the teacher read our names out loud on that first day of school, I would be questioned about my middle name. 'Is it Kathleen?' they would ask, 'or Katherine?' 'No', I would reply, 'it is Cathy with a C.' One thing I understood from my earliest memories of school was the process of reading. Understanding the alphabet and unlike most of my classmates in the earliest of grades, I knew how to write my name, Sandra Cathy Rudski. Of course the teachers would say, 'is that Kathy with a K.'. This conversation year after year would inevitably end up with me going to the principal office (I mean I went to the same elementary school for 6 years, you would have thought the teachers could have foregone this name game every year). I think I may have already developed a bit of an issue with the whole name thing. Fortunately for me our principal Mrs. Allen was a kind woman who knew of my 'circumstances' and would let me sit outside her office for a few minutes to cool off. Before she doled out some words of authority and kindness to me. I never feared going to the principal's office. For me that was a place of retreat not punishment.
I developed a fondness as I grew older for the name Kate. I wanted to be a Kate. Specifically I wanted to be Katherine Hepburn. Cool, calm, yet passionate. This must have driven my parents crazy. It wasn't till years later that I found out my birth name was Catherine and indeed I had been a Kate all along.
I would prefer that any 'terms of endearment' not be used in conjunction with me. I am not your honey, sweetie, dearie or any of those homilies. I am Sandi, plain and simple. Nicknames should be used on dogs and cats and other 4 legged (or 2 legged) animals. A person should have a name to be called by, not a nickname or a general purpose name but their name.
My name is Sandi (which is the diminutive of Sandra) and I am sticking to it.