young widowhood

Writing


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My four year old loves to write. She will sit with a notebook and pen quietly scratching away in a language that is half letters/half symbols, and I wonder if she is mimicking me through example or DNA. When I was her age my stories were more of the performance art variety, told to invisible audiences via dolls or dance. Although I loved books, it hadn’t occurred to me that my stories could be written down for others to read.

 

I know I have written about this before, but my first written story was about pirates. Sister Rita, a tiny prune-faced thing who was barely taller than the shortest fourth grader and painted her meticulously filed nails bright colors that I am sure the Pope would have disapproved of, took the red pen that all teachers must have been issued with their licenses back then and buried my artistic endeavor under editing marks she never taught us the meaning of. If I had not been born a writer that might have been the end of my authoring days but for the fact that Sister aside, people liked to read what I wrote.

 

I began to write obsessively in the fifth grade.  Writing filled up the days while I was waiting for the other kids to “get it” so we could move on and was a way for me to look productive while I hid from the subjects that bored or perplexed me.

 

By high school, when the education process had progressed from the merely tedious to a test of my endurance, the idea that I could build a life and even make a living from writing was starting to take hold and was probably one of the bigger reasons I ended up in college. I thought, incorrectly as it turned out, that I could learn how to be a writer there.

 

University is a piss poor place to learn about writing much less become an author. Long story short, I became an English teacher instead. An English teacher who knew less than zero about grammar and couldn’t spell.

 

It was teaching grammar to thirteen year olds (who had no idea I was a mere chapter ahead of them every day) that taught me to love the language as much as I loved to see myself think on paper. But I still wasn’t a writer.

 

Ironically, it was graduate school that made me  focus on my writing  again. By treating it as a craft, I had many opportunities to test my abilities in an impartial setting . That and watching someone I loved beyond logic die right in front of me for months and years finally tipped the scales. I guess that is why the Palahnuik quote jumped off the page at me. I became a teacher only partly because I loved it. The other reason had to do with losing my confidence in myself and my gift and succumbing to the idea that one’s life work is about security not passion.

 

I began to blog about six months or so after my husband, Will, died. It was much the same as the writing that I had done as a teenager. Just thinking on “paper” but now I was very conscious of the process and the  idea of writing as a life began to flicker.

 

It was Rob who fanned the flames again and continues to do so. I think he will understand the quote, and the photo as well.

 

I envy those who can do what they love from the beginning.

Peeing in the Woods


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My first lengthy sojourn into the mountains of Arkansas was a memorable experience for several reasons. To begin with, it was the first time I have really hiked as opposed to just taken a walk in the woods. I am not a girly-girl, or at least I have never been accused to my face of being one, but I did not grow up in a rural setting, Despite what people may think of Iowa, and its small cities and towns, the majority of us are urbanites of the lite variety. The only real camping I have done could hardly be called that as it took place in campgrounds that are the great outdoors equivalent of suburbs. Second, it was the kind of less than idyllic situation where if things were going to go wrong they certainly would, but despite the lack of scenic  diversity and the winding trail that teased us by seeming to never take us too near where we wanted to be mile after mile, it was a really wonderful day. Finally though, and most importantly, I learned to pee in the woods.

 

When American poet, lecturer and essayist,  Ralph Waldo Emerson ( 1803-1882) said, “A man is related to all nature.” He was probably not referring to his ability to pee all over it. But, that is what my future husband, and indeed all men everywhere, are perfectly capable and content to do.  

I was quite prepared for the necessity of making like a guy and pulling up a tree or shrub except for one tiny thing……I had never pee’d in the woods before. Ever. Not once. Whereas all little boys, it seems, become acquainted with urinating just about anywhere no one will see them (and a lot of places that are pretty much in the wide open – as an example, the boys on my five year old nephews tee ball team simply run out to the farthest side of the right field, turn away from the stands and water the weeds that line the field. Well, everyone except my nephew who, not having mastered the “discreet” part, would drop his pants and moon everyone as he contributed to the weed watering.) Little girls though, unless they are Canadians apparently, are not encouraged to believe that the world is their toilet.

 

And so, I needed instruction and the only teacher at hand was……well….a man. A man who had not given much thought to impromptu female urination in the wild lessons. But after a few perplexed moments, my dearest husband to be managed to convey enough information to make me believe anyway that the whole peeing outdoors thing was not such a feat after all. 

 

“Just find a tree to hold onto for balance,” he told me, “pull you pants all the way down to your ankles, hang onto the tree, and stick your bum as far away as you can. Oh, and try to pee downhill.”

 

Nothing difficult about that. Is there?

 

Well, first of all, I didn’t want to be seen peeing even if the only one who could possibly see me had seen me naked from angles a whole lot less flattering. Then there was the issue of not getting the jeans and panties wet. Very important since there were a lot of hiking hours left and no change of clothing. I wasn’t smelling all that great anyway. No need to compound matters. Finally there was the balancing issue which of course would greatly influence the keeping dry issue, A woman would not want to be caught  mid-pee by anything or one is my impression because at that point there really isn’t anything she could do but finish up.

 

Afterwards I did not feel the liberation I supposedly should. Instead while listening to Rob’s discourse on the options for number 2, I decided that peeing in the woods was just going to be one of those things you become proficient at rather than something you take pride in accomplishing. It was just peeing after all.

Related articles

“Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how”


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Interesting article on MSNBC today by Wray Herbert who writes the “We’re  Only Human…..” blog. The title was Psychology: Time Only Heals Some Wounds. In it he talked about a research study by Michigan State University psychologist Richard Lucas.

Lucas questioned the idea that people have set-points for happiness in much the same way people seem to have set-points for weight for instance. It is the idea that some of us are just unable to sustain prolonged states of melancholy or conversely happiness. We are divided it seems into glass half empty or glass half full camps. What he found, however, was that people’s feelings are effected by life’s stresses and turmoils and that whether or not a person can adapt or overcome them is not predictable or even predetermined by personality. The stressful event has much to do with it.

For example adjusting to divorce is not the same as adjusting to being widowed. Widowed people, according to the study, seem to “get over” their grief though it appears to take about seven years on average* for this to happen, but the divorce appears to leave permanent emotional scarring that affects divorcees for the course of their lives. The reasoning behind this rather odd finding is that it may be easier for  people to adapt to an event that is a one time hit of “bad luck” than to adjust to a “chronic condition” like divorce.

They liken divorce to that of a chronic illness whose reminders are constant and go on to further postulate that people who get married and stay married until” death do they part” were actually happier people anyway whereas divorce seems to strike those who tend towards misery normally.

The widowed are able to reframe their thinking and adjust their goals/expectations and “escape” their misery and the divorced are trapped because the lack of real resolution makes it impossible for them to do that.

An interesting theory.

A poster at YWBB today,  Jenna, posted today about being irritated by the board and other widows. I could relate. Can relate. There have been more than a few instances when I have been “irritated” to the point of snarkiness at the defeatist lifer attitudes of another widow on the board. But what makes me, or Jenna, fight and “reframe” and others content to put on the black weeds of acceptance? Why are some of us “Scarlett’s” and others “Aunt Pittypat’s” or “India’s”?

*Update – Recent studies have found the time limits on grieving to be rather arbitary and anecodotal at best. Researcher George Bonnano has found that the vast majority of people, who have no underlying mental health issues, take on average 6 months to a year to leave active grief and begin to move on with their lives.