Continuing to Refine

I've been struggling with how to limit the overwhelming amount of time I spend volunteering as I look at the gradual end of my productive life...I'm only 73 but now that my Mom died I am feeling the deadlines coming up for my body and cognitive ability. It's a harsh reality but the list of things I can get finished to my satisfaction in the time remaining to do them is compromised. I have to prioritize.

My position with all of my groups is that I have made myself super useful. It's somewhat intimidating to take on the tasks I do...I have well-developed skills and I have set a high bar. Even I know I am attached to seeing the progress I have enabled continue after I leave. I can set things up for the next people and I think I will learn to let go, but my problem is how to document the jobs while at the same time making them look like jobs people can easily take on. Unknown people...I do not know anyone currently who will take on these tasks, for any of these positions. Time has shown, though, that someone will, or no one will, and things will survive.

So I'm making lists for each group and will present them with a plea to lighten my load. If that doesn't happen rather quickly, I will have to just quit. It's not a threat, just a way. If I don't walk, everyone will likely sigh with relief and let me continue to give away all of my time for the benefit of others, and of course, the mutual benefit of our organizations. 

At the same time, OCF Best Practices keeps working hard to increase the number of tasks. When this stuff was voluntary, I was willing to step up my participation in the interest of better practices and communication, but at this point, it is no longer going to be voluntary. At least that language is not in the motions. Now it says "must" and "shall" and although on the face of them they seem to clarify expectations, they subtly go from "best practices" to requirements. I get the usefulness to the Board and organization, but what went out the window is that we are volunteers giving our time and that comes out of our desire to apply our skills, as we choose, when we choose. If we choose.

My list of tasks for the committee I'm on, Craft Committee, is giant. Some monthly, some annually, some ongoing whenever changes happen, and some I have just taken on as I saw the need. I'm Scribe, so some tasks just seemed to be in my realm...I am a good writer and they were writing tasks. Increasing information dissemination and helping the crew coordinators do their many-more-than-mine tasks served a lot of people, so I felt good about it. I like being supportive when I like the people. That is in fact the thing I will miss. I see needs I can fill and it feels good to fill them. Makes the work easier for everyone, and usually better quality as well. 

I like solving knotty problems. This morning I had a dream that seems to be directly about this: I volunteered to take on this task of assembling a wooden award for The Best Volunteer of OCF. It was a new award and The Best Award ever given. There was a table of wooden pieces that needed painting and assembly, and I stepped up as it looked like pure fun. As I tried to sort the pieces I saw that there was no design or model to follow, just a vague picture in my mind of some peach-like thing, and the pieces did not seem likely to make a recognizable object. Plus, they were made of fake wood like floor laminate that I knew would break easily so only one attempt at assembly would be possible. 

So I started asking around for plans, or someone who knew the plan, and I found this one guy who said he would bring me drawings. He brought me an assembled but not glued up model which immediately fell apart, plus he told me his wife had designed the award by looking intensely at a fern frond for 20 minutes so I knew it was a complex work of genius and I wanted to do it justice. But I could not, and he brought me another model, metal this time, and suggested I put the wooden one together in Saran wrap so I could see both sides. I set about trying but it was already not possible and the pieces I was supposed to use were indeed, as I was saying, not the right pieces. Putting some varnish on them would not be useful. I found myself kneeling on a sidewalk on Pearl Street trying, while some people came by from one of the many volunteer groups, all excited about the idea of winning that award. They had lots of enthusiasm, but about winning The Award. Best Volunteer for Best Event In The World.

No need to delineate the irony for the event that has the most white supremacy, ableism and cultural appropriation and denial of such of any event with which I am associated. You know who We are.

Which is when I woke up. I took a look at my position in this dream, kneeling on a hot city sidewalk in the sun, making something other people were going to compete to win, and knowing that there was no way I was going to succeed in making this thing. I never once considered that I would be The Best Volunteer. It was just a fun job in my view that turned into a super frustrating nightmare at which I was certain to fail. I had gotten a little help from the one guy, but it came with emotional strings (couldn't complain about his wife's genius idea) and whomever had cut the wood pieces was long gone and gave me crap components to work with without any additional resources. And this was not during the event, but now, so even though I finally know people on Quartermaster Crew, I couldn't go ask them for help. There was no available help, just the expectation that I would accomplish the impossible all by myself. For free.

For an award that I was not even eligible for. I mean, in thousands of volunteers, there is no Best Volunteer. It's not even a concept to entertain. Competition is counter-intuitive. We're all working together for mutual benefit, right? We all wanted to do all the things because we all got fed and had the camaraderie of knowing we were creating something really special, that would endure and be incredible and worth the effort. Life-changing, in a good way.

I do not want any awards. A couple of weeks ago I wanted a thank you, an acknowledgement that I had given from outside own needs to serve others, but today I don't even want that. I just want to stop being of service. I just want to hand over my task lists (another task I took on, making the lists...) and walk away. 

I don't know if I will like my life, or myself without my service, so I'm not doing it all at once. I'm taking some time to figure out which ones are likely to be able to replace me, so the work won't just end when I go. I also have to walk far enough away so I don't have to watch these people I have loved working with and learned to love as people, struggle. I don't want to be missed. I want the tasks to be manageable, not intimidating, and easy to take on for people who have more youth and slack in their lives to give more. I am feeling depleted, and I like the possibility that the next people will do even better than I have. They will be able to build upon what we have built so far, and make the things that are beautiful and functional and inspired like a fern frond: fractals of complexity that people will marvel over. Things of beauty and elegant solutions.

So it is probably obvious now that OCF is the first to go. I can't make the thing. I don't have the resources to support me, there isn't anyone to ask for help, and the task is impossible. Committee volunteers are not supposed to have a page-long task list. I probably shouldn't have developed that list to begin with. A more successful volunteer would have hung back, said no, and somehow managed to watch while things remained undone and dysfunctional.

When I came on the committee, there was outright bullying behavior at every meeting. No one was allowed to do anything that would improve the reputation of our committee or our sector of Fair (which is a pretty important sector) or actually to take any positive actions to move things forward. I said fuck that in so many ways. Now we have productive meetings with some actual progress to increase communication and respect Fair-wide. Now we have a group that enjoys meeting and gradually gets things done for all of the mutual benefit. It's actually going well. The bullying stopped (not that it can't start right back up any minute...always a threat.) We wrote a lot of things and have been of actual service.

Now the dysfunction is more external to our committee. We got gaslighted and guilted for things that happened this year and told that we are going to fix them. We look like a strong group that will move things forward despite the fact that people are getting paid big bucks to do those jobs. I'm not gonna. I'm not willing to sit there and get lied to at meetings. I'm not taking on responsibility for crafters who were dissatisfied enough to make petitions and speak up at Board meetings about the things that went very wrong this event. I'm ready to just be a person who shows up and makes my living and doesn't have to field people telling me I shouldn't complain or shouldn't even admit that things are wrong and people could have done better. I had two leaders contact me and tell me I was being ungrateful and unhelpful and disloyal and should not be speaking up. Yeah, no.

I don't have time for it. I'm not even in the running for Best Volunteer. The award is going to look like crap anyway. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I would rather just stare at a fern frond for 20 minutes and call it good. That's my goal: staring at ferns. Unbothered. Not guilty. Finished being helpful.

Might take awhile, but we'll see. Might be easier than I think.

Carving out a Moment

 Sunday morning has always been my favorite time for writing here, and it has been many months since I have felt like I was having a real day off with enough mental space to do that. It seems today is the day. I doubt I can corral all of my many topics into something coherent, since so much has happened and continues. It's the last day of the Lane County Fair, so I'm looking forward to getting my neighborhood back although the impacts have not been intolerable for the last few years...except the shootings. There was one Friday night, on the other side of the Fairgrounds from me, but still, so concerning. That and the clearbag policy probably has something to do with the lessened popularity of the event. I don't care to go anymore.

At Market our staff recently went through an Active Shooter training and our emergency plans are being updated, but being vulnerable on the Park Blocks is nothing new...I remember the end of one Tuesday Market when a young woman was threatening to shoot us. I have a tendency to dismiss these things over which I have no control, to the point of dissociating and just working to get to safety while pretending everything is normal. Obviously normal has changed, and as I age the vulnerability just increases in every way. On Friday I was walking home and someone across the street was giving CPR, with the EMTs a couple of blocks away still. I started crying and was reminded of how useless I can be in emergencies. I'm probably a great candidate for training as it would increase my skills and confidence in being helpful. I knew crossing the street to repeat the questions of others would not be useful but if I had CPR capabilities or Narcan I might have been able to support the other helpers. It pains me to not be helpful as my normal mode is trying to make myself responsible for every solution to every problem and I have to actively counsel myself about the many things that are just not my job.

I have a lot of jobs, and people tend to come to me for help, but I am also in a phase where I am not being consulted and included in solution-making processes, both as a result of my age and my edge of burnout which I've been experiencing for some time. My Mom dying made me instantly older and I recognized the quite short time I have left in this lifespan. I don't want to shelve all of my ambitions to creative work that uses my skills in more important ways than taking minutes at meetings but I am still attached to being useful and keeping a valuable public record is important work to me. But I have books to write that aren't getting easier to write. I vividly remember trying to help Mom finish her book when her capability to do that was greatly diminished. She tried very hard and did well but we had to abandon the finished ending we had planned and when I tried to get her to write an acknowledgement of my role as editor for clarity, she couldn't do it. I had to let a lot of things go to get it published, which I am most certainly glad I did, but the letting go was painful for us both I think. By the end of her life she had mostly forgotten she had written the book, although she reread it when she could still read and pronounced it pretty good. And then it was history and then she became history too. As will I.

So I need to get cracking. Getting the archives out of my living room would be so freeing and I am moving that much higher on my priority list. Sadly I am still doing catch-up from May and June as I was so busy with OCF work and still have a lot of it to do. My efforts to be efficient to carve out a trip back east were successful. I had enough time to get organized to move out to the OCF site and solve all the attendant difficulties with that, and I actually enjoyed the trip east as well which was always up in the air. It was very valuable to be with my family and the only part I really regret was not taking my son which I would have done if I hadn't been too stressed to communicate better with him. I'm pained that he was not there. Next time we'll do better.

OCF...so many things. There was truly a breakdown of the communication systems for the craft sector and I feel some responsibility for that. My goal in volunteering on Craft Committee and on monitoring the Board has always been to increase mutual understanding of the needs and perspectives of all of the interest groups and I feel like petitions and comments at the Board meeting show that artisans, even members of the committee, do not know what the channels are to get their needs met in the system. Granted, the disappointing nature of the main problems we had was extreme and much more affecting than in the past. We had zero promotion as artisans, we had the worst internet service since I told Charlie Ruff what Square was and how retailing had changed and was the first to bring admin attention to the issue. There were some simple solutions that could have been communicated, like creating a hotspot in your own booth for your own access. I could even have borrowed one from the library if I had known to do that. I personally can do fine with the cash economy and doubt I lost very many sales as my most expensive product is $30, but others were heartbroken as the petition showed. It didn't have to be that bad. And some simple information-sharing would have greatly helped, but we lost big parts of our communication systems with the electronic interfaces. 

It's ironic that putting everything online and posting things on the .net site would be worse than sending paper packets of multiple sheets to each booth rep but the transition was just not communicated early enough and well enough, and it wasn't the fault of any volunteers, all of who were working so damn hard to get it all done. Mostly it did get done, but with a maximum of frustration instead of greater ease as it could have been experienced. To go from people registering us for multiple weeks in person at Saturday Market to everyone doing everything themselves online, even with multiple reminders and email links, has just not been a successful transition yet. Maybe next year. And the lack of promotions and visible appreciation and presence of the 800 fine artisans was connected in many ways to this transition, which is cultural and organizational and just very difficult for our particular in-person and vulnerable culture.

Really what we are undergoing is a shift from being taken care of to taking care of ourselves and as we're (many of us) shifting in the opposite direction personally as we age, it's a generational clash and a complicated dance where needs are just not being communicated and met. I am not the kind of person who wants a lot of help, but the systems before were set up to be easy for artists who are maybe not managers and now artists must also be good managers of the myriad aspects of small businesses. Lots of extra phone calls and efforts were made to bring people along who didn't get things and the lower numbers of volunteers willing to overwork has made this impossible. So anyone who doesn't self-manage is just not succeeding. And people in management and volunteer positions don't necessarily understand how hard artisans work to make Fair happen. Not only do we need to bring a viable retail shop with all of those fixtures and requirements, but we have to bring our survival systems and our teams of helpers and the time frame is very tight. I have to be there on Tuesday to get it all set up, and this year required three trips to site before that. I now think I will need to lobby for and begin shifting load-out to Tuesday from Monday which is of course prohibited and not supported. Bathroom access, water, garbage service, and food is all stopped earlier on Monday than I can even exit.

A big part of that is getting a vehicle into my space on Monday. This has been hard for many years and previous strategies have evolved into moving my car closer while trying to avoid the long lines of people with their air-conditioning on, waiting in lines for literally hours. I am not willing to wait in those lines. I couldn't get in until after 4 pm and my car overheated on the way home so I had to stop three times. The truck that had my stock and fixtures had similar issues so it was evening by the time I even had my stock stowed indoors. The upside was that I had time on site to really break down my camp and was able to put off my clean-up trip until my car is ready for it. Staying over Monday night would be so much less stressful and safe. We're all so tired on Monday. It's really dangerous.

And cuturally, as crafters at OCF, we have to make an adjustment toward more participation in the systems that support us, which is of course another primary goal for me. The year that we had all the mud (2009?) I sat there with my pile of packed, wet shirts until Tuesday, as they would not let my driver come in, and he was angry and had other plans that didn't include another two-hour delay on Tuesday morning as Charlie and Steve surveyed the roads in their golf cart while we digested the promises we'd heard on Monday. My operation is big out there...almost equivalent to a food booth, but I was not recognized as a bigger business and after some reflection post-Fair, I realized that even after 40 or so quite visible years, I wasn't known, and that was my fault. So I became a volunteer, taking minutes for a few different committees until I landed on Craft Committee and made myself truly useful. 

I'm still not all that known, but now at least I understand a lot more about the structure of the bureaucracy and the convoluted ways things work in the organization. This is of course a blessing and a curse, as I often know whom to ask and also whom to "blame." I try not to throw blame and definitely not shame but some things are being inadequately done by people who are getting paid well to do better. I need them to do better. I'm wanting to hold people more accountable and make fewer excuses for them. 

Knowing as much as I do about the Board and staff, I suffer from horror at what has developed. A person whom I have witnessed committing crimes is still in power and perhaps increasingly so, and I don't see this playing out well. It has already destroyed so much, and caused so many good people to walk away. I do know how hard it is to take toxic people out of power, but having done so more than once, I know it has to be done. It requires a lot of personal sacrifice and days and weeks of agonizing and strategy and a steadfast conviction of the facts and one's own values. I'm still there for it, but with such a large organization as OCF it is very damaging and hard to maintain. The part I am willing and able to take in it is small. I would much prefer to work on some of the issues that I have hope of easing, such as the communicating with crafters part as we try to shift the culture into a more giving one from an entitled one. 

Fortunately I find the crafter population mostly receptive and intelligent about the solutions and we are making slow but significant progress. The  resistance to change is built into the systems more than it is the people, I'm finding. Hardly any of us is ready for fast change, but most of us are ready to work on the incremental change that seems to be the most viable path. Education can be gratifying and it's just a big, tough challenge when so many thousands of people are involved. The backsliding and loss of progress is just part of being an activist and I try to remind myself that everything I do is a lifetime task...I will do my part and that is what I can do. Or...I can retire and leave it to others...but that doesn't seem to be my style.

So OCF the event is almost put away, and OCF the lifework resumes. Saturday Market is in pretty good shape in contrast, after the many crises of the past couple of years. We are in construction hell with the tearing up of 8th Street, but that will have an end in a month or so and we'll get the benefits of it. I think we can hang on for the duration. There is a cost...but my sales are still good and I still manage to motivate myself to show up. Having the Wellsprings X-tians show up yesterday again was a shock and chaotic despair moment, but we survived it and will again. The city and county really mismanaged the FSP thing once more so that got worse, but I long ago resigned myself to just enduring it without hope of solutions. I'm pretty high on endurance points. This will be important for the next couple of decades, as it becomes more challenging on so many fronts.

I hope I can endure. I feel resilient, and almost rested, as long as I get my Sundays off and can recharge in silence. I love summer so am just happy to be here, even though I can't get my house below 78 degrees. It could be worse. True, a lot of my happiness today is because I went to the library on Friday and got four books I really want to read, and today is reading day. I got food yesterday, I watched a youtube about how to fix my car. I have money. I have people who care about me. 

I just remembered that one of the traditions of my youth was eating popcorn on Sunday mornings, so I think I might make some. I can do anything I want today. I don't have to do anything I don't want to today. I'm so lucky to have carved that out in this world. One day can be very precious, and all the more so when it is summer.

Fighting For Lives

Same fight, different day

 

 Have been working on trying to separate out so many types of feelings so I know what actions to take. It has seemed like everything contained a contradiction...I suppose most things do.

It's my first Mother's Day without Mom. I am not the biggest fan of Hallmark holidays but honoring your mother is deeply ingrained and I can't send a card or write the long letters I used to do for awhile, reminding Mom and myself of all the so many things she did for me to keep me encouraged and alive for all these years. She supported my art and my life even when it worried her and I'm trying not to keep remembering the crunchy interactions and focus on the lovely ones. There were plenty. I'm so lucky I had my Mom for 73 years. 

One of the things that scared her was my political activism and it didn't quite fit into my own motherhood. It was hard for my son to be taken to protests he didn't fully understand and my anxiety about them made him anxious, and vulnerable. I stopped going to protests when he was small and gradually recognized that I had a lot of anxiety about them myself. I always cry, which in itself is not a problem, but in the streets is not a place for people who need safety. I'd do well to have an affinity group and I guess online I feel safer, so I can still express my politics, just not so much in person. I get uplifted, but also have to do a lot of silent retreating around them, especially after.

We're being besieged at the Market by the Wellsprings Church from Roseburg, which is sending a cadre of sign holders and proselytizers every other week, ruining our event for several hours and driving away both our customers and our own members who just can't handle the chaos and disruption. Neither the members or the organization can handle the expenses and losses we're experiencing. We're not exactly getting support from the EPD or the city. It's confusing, since some of the chaos is coming from our own members and supporters who want to loudly counter-protest. This week it was over the top. 

I guess there were a couple of assaults and arrests, and now with the mounted cameras on the 8th and Oak corner and so many people recording, there is some evidence. We as an organization are just getting back on our feet from the losses of the pandemic and our internal issues of the last few years, and we do not have the resources for legal actions. Yet we will be pursuing them, as well as trying to reason with the police and the city to find ways to support us. We rent the Park Blocks, and all of us pay quite a bit for our weekly payday...but these extra costs are egregious and it costs the Church nothing to send these disruptors and they seem fully unaware of our rights. They also seem not to care. 

It's domination games, the part of society I hate the most. I am not a good competitor. I avoid confrontation...I want reasonable, logical problem-solving. But these disruptors don't respond to logic or reason. Their goals are not our goals. Some of us are engaging with them to see if they can at least respect our rights to livelihood, and I kind of think individual to individual can be effective, but not really in the face of religious zealotry. 

Currently we are asking the city and EPD to at least enforce their ordinances. Next steps get harder. We're writing policies about things like active-shooter plans...what is next? How passionate are people going to get about imposing their will on others? It's horrifying to imagine, since we all know how violent people are getting in their righteousness. No one is feeling safe.

At the same time, the struggles over the FSP are still complex and being sorted. The structure of "professionalism" demands from us that we pay for permits, care about creating public safety, provide amenities like porta-potties, and purchase insurance, pay for security, and all of that in order to support our members. Our members pay all of those costs from our sales. This has been true since 1970 when we first began using public space for our commerce. We were required to create and maintain structure and follow all of the business rules to operate in our city. So it's hard to accept paying for all of the people who use that fourth block. I can accept sharing with poor people and helping them work their way out of poverty, but that's not all that's happening over there. I want some solution that drives out the ones selling who are merely taking advantage of the unregulated activities. 

So I support enforcing the DAZ requirements, although they are tough. Some can't hack it and it seems oppressive, and I expect the city and EPD are also hearing from those people as an unrelated but linked problem. If, perhaps, the Free Speech Plaza was actually functioning as that, the signs and proselytizing could happen there, though they'd likely still want to be on our corners obstructing our traffic. But at least it would be an option, which it currently isn't. Eugene and Lane County lost a place for opinions to be aired. So it feels to us as Market members that this is yet another burden we must pay for as opportunists take advantage of what we have built. 

It has been so much work to build, maintain, and protect our community gathering and event and opportunity to thrive as small businesses and handcrafters for over 5 decades. I know...I have been here doing it since 1976. I have played many roles and taken a break or two but my support has been a big part of why we still exist and are solvent. It has often been way too hard. I've spent many hours puzzling like this on what we should or shouldn't do to keep holding it up. This is not the worst place we have been in, but this one is knotty. If we can't get the city to support us against this hate campaign, we will decline. Customers are flighty. All of the expense and effort the city has gone to in creating the pavilion and supporting the farmers can also be wasted if people won't come down to shop or attend the many events being held there. 

I'm not resentful of the support the farmers have gotten. I was there on the inside as we tried to improve both markets and the three blocks we use, and I get why it worked out the way it did. I want the farmers to thrive too. I also want people to be able to work their way out of poverty until they can afford to join Market, which is just a small level up from selling for free at FSP, for those who handcraft. It's not easy or all that cheap now, but it's still a wonderful value for the money. I have built my life there. 

I have empathy for people who are closed out by disability, lack of basic necessities, and need for greater support. My generation is seeing that ourselves as we get too old and beat up to do the 12-hour day on my feet that a Saturday is for me. I'm approaching that limit myself. I don't have as much empathy for dominators and opportunists. 

So I'm gradually coming around to the hard realization that I must join the fighting against these dominators who would take away my bodily autonomy, and are currently compromising my ability to do my work. I must figure out what tactics I can use and how much I can do to make this stop and return the Market to a more peaceful type of creative chaos, a more positive and enjoyable one. I have to dedicate myself to this as I have to ending racism, the white supremacy culture, and the domination structure that is only getting more oppressive every day around us. I don't have a right to comfort. I can't use my avoidance tactics on this one. It's in my face. 

And...Saturday Market opens again for the 54th time

Getting through it better now...told a few people yesterday at Market so I can feel less vulnerable holding a secret that doesn't need to be held. Everybody knows what it is to lose a Mom, or will at some point anyway. 

It was cold but as always not as wet or windy as predicted. Market was half-empty though. I wish people would learn not to believe TV weather broadcasters. Their agenda is always...surprise...to get you to stay home and watch TV. We got a little coverage, and a little from the day, but apparently Opening Day of the Saturday Market is more of a regular fixture than a happening that needs community support. Not true, of course, and we did get community support, just not as much as an Opening Day deserved. The Slug Queens did not slack! There were like ten of them.

I stayed warm enough with my rechargeable handwarmer from Light Harvest Solar where my son works, and of course the multiple coats and layers I did not forget. I actually didn't forget anything except to actually get in shape, and my knees and legs and bad foot were not thrilled, but I managed and there were the usual lovely and heart-warming moments to sustain me.

And the good food, and easy access to farmers, although they are nearly always sold out by the time I get over there. It helps if you know what you want and where to get it so you can do the dash across the street and quick purchases. I don't have time for waiting in lines so if I can't go early I have to see what's left around two. And when the weather is iffy I can't leave the booth, plus when it is good I can't leave the booth. 

I worked out a more compact footprint finally which worked okay but I'll be glad to switch out the popup for umbrellas next week if the 70 degree sunny day materializes. If it does we will be busy! 

I'll have to get back into work mode. I did print a couple of days last week, and was in shape for that, but my workdays were short and lifting minimal. I'm glad I lost that contract, finally, instead of still being mad about it. I'm mad about other things, but it does no good to be mad, time to put more effort into humorous takes on it all while I transition out of caring about orgs that don't care about me.

Market still does care a lot about me, but my role is moving more into the "elder who carries the legacy forward" in some ways and that is something I was trying to get to a few years ago, until rudely interrupted by a complex crisis that is kind of over. Not fully. Hardly anyone was masking, including me, so we can expect to see more Covid transmission and I got more free tests so I can test every week. I have a feeling I would not notice symptoms since I got a 5th shot and don't really notice my health issues a lot of times. I did avail myself of one of our excellent plant people, Ryan of Boto Boho who is really great in so many ways. I realized my anxiety did not need to go unaddressed just because I didn't want to involve doctors and pharmaceuticals. I got two kinds of nervous system support tinctures so I can see which one I like when...one is for more instant relief and one is more for stabilization. I'm bad at self-care but this is pretty easy so I hope it works for me. I am sure they work, it's just that I forget to take things like that...even vitamins, which I know help my moods quite a bit when I remember to take them.

Today is a rest day and I will watch some episodes of 1883 which is a guilty pleasure as the prequel to Yellowstone, which I don't know why I like...it's predictable and unrealistic but I have that romantic fantasy going still from my Colorado days. I know it is silly and colonialist and even racist at core (singling out people of color and loving them more than white people is just a perverted type of racism, that doesn't help real systemic racism, and involves some ridiculous romantic fantasy that is just objectivism. I'm not fooling myself about that but still trying to get over it.)

Lots of heart connections as is usual at Market. Didn't have to go off and weep but it isn't easy seeing people age over decades and then stop appearing, whether by retirement or incapacity to do the hard day of work. It looms. I haven't had knee problems before. I need to walk more, but not on sidewalks. I need to do more preservation of what capacity I do have. Taking vitamins and reducing anxiety ties into that of course...my body is a system. Systemic damage to myself is just self hatred made into excuses.

Time off, then. Gotta dry some things out. Sure glad this weather we are having today is not what we got yesterday. Once again we got lucky. So glad for that.

The annals of loss

 Mom's obituary, mostly written by my brother, John.

https://www.dohertyfh.com/obituary/Rita-McWhorter?fbclid=IwAR2zoIafxo1i28Fr2KEjFfbXJzi_kojpHnQV_sK06HNCv8bueTGfwk9p-_8

We all added input and corrections over the last weekend, a meaningful but difficult process for all of us. I had thought I was doing well, but I knew there was more to come. Yesterday as I made myself do my volunteer tasks I had committed to, I dissolved into a space of absolutely hating everyone and everything in my life. I wanted to immediately quit every single thing. Of course I knew not to, and put myself under a blanky, but even food sounded terrible and I just hoped it would pass before I went through with all the quitting. It was the most negative space I can remember being in, in my whole life. 

I feel marginally better today but not much. It's not fun being this vulnerable. Of course at the very same time the Oregonian article came out, all about me, in my living room, which I also was hating and being unable to fix. The article is wonderful of course, and there is a video coming soon, too. 

But the colors of the world have changed. I remember this from losing my Dad over fifty years ago. The world is different, but only to me, and it doesn't really matter to anyone but me. Nothing anyone can do or say will really make me feel much better about it. I need my mommy.

And she has gone. I'm glad she left behind so much love and approval of me for me to hold onto. I would not be me without her endless support and understanding. I had the best Mom.

How Life Goes

 

My house is filled with flowers and a lot of it is daphne, so it smells wonderful. Since I only have six readers most of the time, I'll just tell you. My Mom died on Wednesday. She had been in hospice for about a week...that was a bigger shock moment, when I knew the time had come. She was 97, so the feelings are of course also mixed with relief, that her pain and confusion are over and she gets to rest.

I am experiencing some of the many forms of grief, along with guilt that I'm not more sad and stopped in my tracks. I wasn't able to see her in person since just before the pandemic hit...I was there just as we were realizing we were in for something new. I remember kissing her and thinking later that I shouldn't have. I spent a few days with her and have a few regrets of course, but have cautioned myself about kicking myself for things that aren't fixable. It wasn't possible to go at the end to hold her hand but I said goodbye in a phone call and she smiled. I told her I would think about her with every bird and flower I saw and that is as it has always been. We loved beauty.

We had a close relationship within limits and shared a lot of love and so many years. I know I am lucky to have had a good, supportive Mom and she gets a lot of the credit for me being who I am. She had an even temperament and lived through a lot of hard things. I depended on her well into adulthood and she was there for me. It took me awhile to figure out that she was not that interested in my long stories but she never stopped me until it came time to remind me that I always met my deadlines or always figured out the right thing to do, or some similar Mom homily. She was good at parenting, overall. At some point we all decided that we would no longer hold her accountable for the past, in retrospect, something we should probably have done sooner.

Sharing the news is not fun and of course I appreciate the flowers and condolences but I don't want the attention. I just want to grieve alone as it develops for me. Doing it at the same time as the Jell-O Art Show is the best and the worst. At practice I forget about her and laugh and sing, which she would be fine with I expect. The rest of the time I think about her constantly. I carry her photo from room to room. I made her the most elegant bouquet and while I was arranging it I remembered that she had never liked the way I arranged flowers, which is a mostly casual haphazard method that pleases me visually. She would sometimes rearrange my arrangements when I brought in flowers from her gardens. I think she even studied flower arranging at some point in her constant self-education. Most of how she lived was much more formal than I am willing to be, but it wasn't that big of a deal to us. Sometimes I would take her hand-me-down clothes and on rare occasions I would wear things she had bought for me, but mostly our styles were not similar, though we looked somewhat alike. I got her wonderful hair with its cowlicks and widow's peak hairline, and of course her brown eyes and some of her other features, in a mix with my Dad's big nose and teeth. Everything that made me initially was part her and part him and all that growing up in the fifties with three sisters, and eventually a brother, added up to. 

Most of what sticks in my memory are the times we did clash over our assumptions and cultural positions and my siblings have been kind as I repeated what are probably often-told tales that I just think I have not told before. Not saying I am developing dementia but it has been pretty common in my mom's family, so it could happen for me. I'm sure I will be in denial and will hide it for as long as I can get away with that. I hope it does not happen that way for me. It's sad, but it also allows you to say goodbye in stages and accept loss over years, which is not the worst. She always knew me, except a few times on our weekly phone calls which eventually I stopped when they were more confusing than comforting to her. She also couldn't hear well so that further isolated us. But the zooms every two weeks with my siblings and her were wonderful since we could just see and sometimes hear her and keep up with her just a bit. It was invaluable in keeping us together so we could make it through this transition and retain some feeling of family, which will be hard without our central figure.

I remember when my Grandma Hytrek died and it seemed like the reunions would not continue, but they did, and the younger generations continued to add to our numbers and bring forward the memories. Editing her book was one of the best things I ever did and I'm so glad we got that done. At the end of it, she had mostly lost her writing ability, so it got hard, but we finished it up. I remember telling her that she had to write the part thanking me, as I didn't feel right doing it. She couldn't really put sentences together in a satisfying way by then, so I ended up having to write it anyway, but only I can tell I suppose. I didn't need the credit much, just an acknowledgement, which I have gotten over and over as we share the book. 

It's fine for the Jell-O show to be juxtaposed with this. There was no question of quitting it, though it has been hard to keep up with some of my other commitments. I don't want to have to talk about it at the show, but I am sure I will. I don't want to tear up. It wouldn't be the first time I cried at a Jell-O Art Show though. 

Here's a photo of her when Aunt Lud turned 100. Mom was 90, the sixth child of ten, and Jack was 80. He's the youngest, and now the only one left.

Rainy Days and Mondays

 That was a song I hated when it came out, but it did make an apt title. Not a cheerful day out there, but at least I don't have to go anywhere. I might resort to music, which I rarely do, but musicians have something I need, I admit. I have to practice all the songs for the Jell-O show, but that's all silly.

 Tom Prasada-Rao I found this on a Facebook friend's post, a friend I made during the pandemic, working on Fair in the Clouds. We know each other in the Facebook way, in the bits and pieces we post, and she posts lovely intimate reflections about loss, which is my current area of study. I expect to be studying it for some time, maybe going for a PhD. There is no way around enrolling in this course.

I go to class with this every day in a new way. Every evening it's different, every morning lying in bed thinking about plans and my lists of tasks and my ambitious plans. Every day another facet of loss appears, shiny at first, then tarnishing as it becomes the same old Loss. I want to revisit the meme world and read a lot of webcomix as that seems to be the place the deepest exploration of this is being done, in the flip bits and pieces that hide how deep the river runs. I need to challenge my intellect and ran out of good books to read, though I have stacks of books. I think the internet is the deep hole I need to fall into as often as possible. And I have always found truth more approachable in comix, which is why I have a big collection of undergrounds from the 70s and 80s. Probably part of Jell-O for me, too, since within jokes and joy there is always something universal we need a soft landing within. So we laugh.

Anticipatory grief is something we are all experiencing, as we watch our planet scream at us to make big changes we hardly have any power to do, and as we feel the push of fascism and racism that just won't get into that grave we've been trying to dig. We're horrified at our fellow citizens, our family members, our Facebook friends, and even our real friends. We're not even sure about ourselves. Self hatred and depression are twins that live in the murder shed out back.

Some things feel so obvious I want to scream every day. Don't buy plastic! Don't you know what vinyl is? Don't you see the connection between sickness and all of those consumer products you are putting into your body and home? The dissonance is so fucking loud that we buy some gelato  that is made from dairy in a plastic container that we (I mean I here) think we need. I'm grateful to Jell-O as I have to keep a super clean diet for the next week and a half or I will be unable to sing. I can indulge in none of the things that cause my respiratory distress. Of course that means I don't have a lot of comfort foods except I did remember fried egg sandwiches, which is something my Mom would make me anytime I flew in late at night or needed something. There are a couple of vegan butters now that are very tasty and I can still eat bread. And eggs. Not the time to be a real vegan. My Mom made me pork chops a lot too. And canned peaches, home canned. I might have one jar of those.

It's raining hard and that's okay, I've given up any more pruning now that all of the trees are budding out and I'm hoping it helps the big maple in the neighbor's yard recover from last summer's drought and do that pink flush it does before it turns bright lime green with new growth. If that tree dies my horizon will leave me bereft as my view from my kitchen window is pivotal to my well-being. It's one of the oldest trees in the neighborhood and for sure no matter what next summer I will make certain it gets watered. Even if I have to buy a new long plastic hose and climb over two fences myself. Nobody on my block gets to be selfish enough to not notice the neglect of that tree just because it is in the middle of the block in the yard of what has become a rental that will remain empty as it is too expensive. Most likely too-expensive rentals get filled with people who go to work all the time and use their backyards for drinking on the weekends to forget work, but we'll see. You never know when your contradictory choices will get worse or easier. Last hose I got I found free down the block and somehow carried/dragged home. It might even be long enough to snake under two fences and leave there since no one will probably notice it either. 

Contradictory choices are a lifestyle so I just cruise from one to another. What is the least-awful choice I can make here? That is an everyday question, and I'm sure not just for me. Since sometimes waiting to choose eliminates some of them, I can get left with more awful ones. I changed a dental appointment that was next week but now it lands on the day before my birthday...but that is not soon so I don't care. Birthdays take care of themselves and I ignore them more and more. Since I quit alcohol and can't eat whipped cream, some of the birthday activities are not as fun now...and it is a Friday, so there won't be any going out on the town, even if I wanted to. I will probably just enjoy my clean teeth on the deck with a book, since by then I will surely have found something I want to read. 

Birthdays are just a march toward more loss, anyway. I might be a little panicky about death these days. I have so much to do, so much important work. I have so many interests, so many curiosities, and I waste so much time. I keep putting off the self-maintenance things I need to do (the dentist being the least of them) and finding excuses for that, even though I know the satisfying feel of doing something virtuous and good for me. Don't I want to live long enough to do all of this work, and learning? 

Well, yes, but...what I want isn't really the most important thing operating, is it? I want a healthy world and a rise in people being unselfish and good to each other. I want the mean people to die off and not the lovely ones. I want the pork chop without the dead pig and the factory farm.

I want to get some tasks done today so I had better attempt that. Next time.