Dance

I'm a natural dancer. Not a particularly good natural dancer, but what I have is innate. I hear music, and I move in time with it. It's irresistible, anything with rhythm, syncopation, flow- and my feet, my arms- have to make it physical. My mother also had this, I believe. I have sensory memories of being a babe in arms, held- and danced. I remember dancing on the shoes of my brothers and other men in the family. A very silly, and wonderful experience only enjoyed by the very light, so -the very young. There was a square dance in some Aunt's basement, a real caller with a record player, and a lot of people, me scampering through legs, trying to get the steps right. I have been told I couldn't have been there, and by my brother that certainly I was. I was, I know. My feet remember.

My mother danced with me often, a shared love. She told me stories of her ballet class, which makes me wonder how in her impoverished childhood that was available. But then she sent me to ballet when I was 8, to turn out my turned in, squished up feet at Patton Park- at little cost. We had a cold mirrored room, with a real live piano player- elderly black gentleman. Ballet class was not the tutu costumes and toe shoes I wanted, but I learned to love the discipline, enduring through pain, practice, and posture. How to sense where I was in space and a lot about how I learned. Feeling the girls around me, part of a group, I did not feel shy. I could not learn involved choreography well, a continuing deficit. I move well but do not memorize set steps. Counting while dancing is like counting letters while writing poetry.

High School was, I assumed- to be when I could dance, at Dances. Seemed a reasonable assumption. Sadly, I only danced the group dances-circles of girls for the fast songs. Boys had no interest in me, a source of deep frustration. It wasn't until college, that I found the Folk Dance group at Wayne State University. A huge bunch of ordinary people and not a few oddballs, would meet in a large old gym, lovely wooden floors, and do circles and lines and Cotton Eye Joe, Swedish spins, African stomps, Square Dances and the Hora, Promenades and waltzes. No issue of a partner most of the time, and no trouble when one was needed.

It was a time when I was taking a lot of dance classes for Theater requirements, and I did well with repeated patterns but not complicated choreography. Nira, the movement teacher, didn't think much of me. I was not the right shape, the right look, for her. I do have presence that draws the eye. A moment of triumph: a famous theater movement instructor taught a guest class, I was singled out for praise, irritating Nira to no end.

Here it is, the inevitable Army story. Drill and Ceremony, D&C. Left right left right left right..... it seems like a simple thing everyone learns in childhood, but really knowing left from right is not so easily learned. And some never do. Being dropped for push-ups every time I got off step, or turned the wrong way, or anticipated the order, I got it into my bones. And doing it for an hour before every meal every day, grinds it in deep. All the commands, so we would respond without thought, or before thought. The sound of 33 women marching in boots, sounded, after eight weeks, like one woman walking softly. I was simultaneously one and 33. A fast, powerful and confident step remains.

So in my last, painful year in nursing school (those damn desks) I found the Bellydance Festival in the park, and that classes were cheap, to my poor student delight. Eventually mastered belly rolls and snake arms and hip lifts. This did wonders for my desk-induced sore back. It was low impact aerobics, full range of motion for all my joints, very smooth and sinuous skilled folk dance. And often, the point was to improvise to the music, a joy, exhilaration, patterns without damn alien choreography. I performed once for the festival, to the They Might Be Giants version of Istanbul, a short song, a vibrant bit of improv dance, funny, and I moved. Laughs, applause, a satisfying fulfillment of childhood dreams. Although the certificate said Most Likely to Succeed in Ballet, not Belly. Close enough.

D does not dance. He does not tap his foot when he plays guitar. He cannot skip. I learned not to try to teach him. Not that he would not try. When D and I had our reception, graced with a bellydancer, I danced at my wedding in a very different way than most imagine. The rest is a confidence known only to those friends who were witnesses. D will dance with me at home, he does sway nicely as long as he keeps his feet still. I dance around him, and we share the delight.


Others go through their lives in other ways, but I dance. I dance through work, I dance down the street, I dance my life. Unable to follow the set choreography, often off balance, tripping and falling, but I laugh, get up and make up new steps. The music of the world is irresistible. I flow along.

Belief

My earliest clear memory of going to church, involves my mother deciding not to go in because it was a "high mass", and something about hats. I still have no idea what the real issue was, perhaps just having a young child at a longer mass was not what she planned. I vaguely remember the controversy around Vatican II changes, mostly as they involved Latin and women having to wear head covering, and the altar being turned around to face the people. It made little difference to me. I still had to be quiet, and I spent many hours imagining myself climbing on the high ledges and swinging on the chandeliers, especially during the incomprehensible sermons. I loved the incense and the vestments of gaudy color, the Infant of Prague statue in robes that changed with the season, and the statues shrouded during lent. I loved singing, and saying "Amen" with everybody else. In All Saints, the main painting above the altar was of Mary Queen of Heaven, stars as her crown, moon under one foot, snake under the other, very iconic. But her face was so stern and disapproving. I always wondered why she was so mad at me.

My mother took me to see a weeping BVM, (Blessed Virgin Mary) statue that was touring through Detroit. I was ready to see tears, a real miracle. We stood out in a long line in the cold, singing. Saying the rosary, for a couple of hours, which seemed way too much to me for a bit of moisture on a statue. We were offered scapulas, two small squares of fabric with the BVM and a prayer, on strings, to wear as an act of devotion. Ok, sure, I could do that. Finally, we were shuffled through a small room with a small and unimpressive statue that was perfectly dry. I knew I had been had, like a tourist trap with a lot of billboards, but no substance. I think my mother felt a bit the same, although she did not admit this to me any more than I admitted my own conclusions to her. So much for those kinds of miracles. My mother's silence, and refusal to question, left a gap where we could have found common ground.

Then there was the Creche in our home every Advent until Epiphany, and the manger where baby Jesus would lie. Every time I was good, I got to put a straw in the manger, to make it soft. If I did something bad, I had to take one out. Now, this was manipulation of the worst kind, because I was a good child already out of fear and no doubt some natural predisposition. I only remember having to take straw out once (playing hide and seek in the closet where I was told not to, probably that was where the Christmas presents were.) Such guilt, such anger I had. I was very small, and I had already failed my given god.

I was told every Ash Wednesday "Remember man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return." And the priest smeared my forehead with ash. Crossed candles warm and waxy against my neck I received the Blessing of my throat on the Feast of St. Blaize. I held my candle lit from the new flame at the Easter Vigil service. I felt the truth of such blessings, lacking much of the explanation for them. I found them reassuring, directly addressing my fears instead of dismissing them.

It was really only comprehending the reasons and dogma of the religion that nudged me away. Why women could not be priests, or why abortion or contraception were such sins, or why girls could not be altar boys. Mostly the silence about my adolescent changes and pain left me abandoned. My given god seemed not to care about what was most intimately affecting me. So I struck out to find my own way, and grow my own soul. As I could not believe the facts of any flavor of Christianity, I turned away from the institution. Still the heart of it burns inside. To love one another, be kind to one another, to act in private as I would in the gaze of the world, to serve and be honest and whole. The difference for me is that I do this all with no hope of a heaven. Done with a whole heart, instead of the coercion of eventual reward or punishment. I live as well as I can for it's own sake. I live for nothing but obliteration, or a return to the soul of the world.

That said, I like ashes smeared on my forehead at the beginning of Lent, I have a glow-in-the-dark BVM in my kitchen, I fancy a guardian angel, and believe in prayer. Just don't know where the prayers go. All part of the mystery. I strive to live well, only because the only reward for a life well lived, is a well lived life.

I don't need a pope for that.

Comedy

I ran in to get to the bathroom from outside, dropping everything on my way in. As I was about to come out D says,

"Um... Z?"

"Yes?"

"Did you mean to put your scarf under the cat?"

I found a funny one. He makes me laugh, even when I'd rather be glum. Usually it's all kinds of blessings. I cry easily, for all kinds of stupid reasons. This used to bother him a great deal, until he followed my instructions to tell me a joke. Now I can just shove his arm and order him, "Make me laugh" and we both do. Breaks the tears readily.

His sense of humor is very dry, a bit obscure and easily missed by people who do not come by sarcasm naturally. Often involving elaborate language. My first example of this was a lecture on the importance of fry sauce. He still claims this is no joke. On coming out of anesthesia, he referenced a scene from Henry V where the French princess is learning some English, and she mispronounces elbow- so what he'd broken was his "Delbow". He was amazed that his classmates found his phrase "Other than rational reasons" to be amusing. This humor is hard wired deep into his brain bed.

I make him laugh more usually with visual jokes. He cannot keep a straight face when I make a puppet out of whatever comes to hand- literally. Today on the train, the conductor's door popped open, I waved at the driver and after a beat, the driver waved back as he closed the door. There must have been something about the timing, D burst out laughing for the next several minutes. What he says he likes best is when I do voices, which means interpreting the cat's action into human voice*. Cat flops to the ground headfirst, paws up. "Pet me, I'm cute and furry!" I interpret. Or sitting regally- "You may adore me." D returns the favor by asking Moby terribly serious questions. Like, "Have you had enough sleep, cat?"

Neither of us can say anything without being taken literally. "I don't feel like pizza," is always followed by palpation and agreement. "You are right, you feel nothing like pizza" or simply a LOOK. All delivered in utter deadpan, followed by hitting with the nearest soft object, i.e. a pillow or hat, often just a raising of the eyebrows, then we both grin, or giggle.

And it's not just jokes, but a general sense of whimsy. We have a four foot blow up Emperor Penguin in our living room. A stuffed Gromit. Not to mention the stuffed cold virus toy given us by friends this Christmas. It sits on D's desk, and he delights in turning one or other side up, since one side is cute, the other sinister. "See? Cute... sinister... cute... ... sinister?" he will demonstrate, repeatedly, if you ask. Or even if you don't. He used to keep a can of Diet Chocolate Shasta on his desk, because he liked the idea of having toxic waste nearby. Don't even ask about what he would do with the dummy grenade, lost in one of our moves, sadly. Sadly only because I miss the loud "BOOM!" shout. Really, I do miss that.

Someday, I will postulate my ponderings on women with no sense of humor with funny men-if I can ever figure it out. A keen sense of funny has always been an essential for any kind of friendship for me, especially a kind, ironic sense of humor. The kind of healing laughter that follows tears and broken bones, broken hearts and griefs and losses. Keeps us from taking the difficulties of life too seriously. The exhaustion and challenges of our move across country to Boston was lightened by our bemusement at the high rise apartment we were housed in. Wherever we are, when we see the towers, we point and say "I can see our house from here!" When we move, we will have to come up with a new joke. I'm not worried.








* This I got from my Aunt Alma, who would tell me what Gigi was saying. It was a way of teaching a very young child about how to treat a dog, then a kind of game, and very entertaining. Leaving me with a lifelong anthropomorphic tendency.

Art

Saint Veronica Giuliani*. A huge portrait of her, gently bleeding (she was a stigmatic) hung in an ornate frame in my mother's living room. I knew it had belonged to her mother, and I accepted this as sufficient reason, and do not ever remember being told her story. The print was dark and looming, although she had a pleasant look on her face. My first exposure to art. I had never looked it up before, to see if it was a print of something famous, it's not. I would recognize it at once. It disappeared from the wall after I moved out, with a vague reference about it falling and the glass breaking. I miss her, and I would like a copy, although not on my wall. My mother liked pretty art, religious art that told a story, and not much else. She was one of those who saw abstract art as 'what any child could do'.

Balance this with school trips to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). I cannot remember the first time, they all run together, I basked. Meandering from room to room, stunned. There is a painting of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, such a sense of immense space, which I conflate with an image, photograph probably, of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. I imagined myself there, in that immensity, and I yearn for it still. The tiny lapis figures in the Egyptian cases, the waxy translucence of real, and ancient alabaster. A mosaic of fish from Greece, the wooden medieval Madonnas with their weirdly adult and often grumpy babies. The suits of armor. The bright modern sculptures that invited exploration, or Oldenberg's electrical outlet of giant proportions. I could not understand how one would not be awed, delighted and amused.

My love, talent, was to gaze. I sat before an Italian renaissance painting of a young girl asleep on every one of my many visits. Or of a German expressionist sculpture of a woman, actually almost certainly a man, but I saw it as female, solid and thick, but rushing forward with a sword held over her back, ready to swing. Such a sense of solidity and movement, paradox holding her together. I entered a gallery, and startled, at a Segal figure, white plaster, lumpy, such the improbable presence of someone very real. This was not mundane, not safe, not about being pretty, but about expressing the inexpressible.

I saw naked men! Actually it confused me more than satisfying my curiosity, since it appeared that they had Three somethings dangling down, and the concept of intercourse from that angle.... it boggled in my head for a very long time. But any kind of naked was fine by me. Still is, to tell the truth.

Several classmates told me I had a double, in one of the French expressionist paintings at the DIA. And I do, several. Insight struck, that was my genetic heritage, those beautiful French girls gathering nuts were my cousins. I felt less ugly, less alien.

So when I went to Wayne State, the campus adjacent to the DIA, lived just off campus, worked at the Main Library just across the street.... I spent a lot of time there. I ate lunch next to a copy of Rodin's Thinker on the steps. I puzzled over the strange awkward portraits in the Early American wing. I learned to tell the greater from the lesser works, and keep my personal preferences separate. I came to love them all, and to "get" the new works- well, mostly. Got to see special exhibitions, Diego Rivera, El Greco, the art between the World's Fairs, Boucher.

Then I moved to Salt Lake, and a great void opened up in my life. Natural beauty in the wide high desert, mountains, dramatic canyons. But the art, the human interpretation, was.... small. The galleries there were... nice. D and I stumbled upon the Sister Wendy series, it came on right after Dr. Who. I was sent a dumpy buck-toothed nun with a beatific smile to remind me of my love. I was a work of art -modeled for art classes at the U, got tattoos to make my art permanent- paid for in pain. The growth of the internet had given me some access. I took pottery classes- but I am at best a craftsman, not ever an artist.

When I finally took D to the DIA several years ago, we were both awed, him for the first time, me all over again. To be in the presence of the very old, the larger than you expect, the vibration from the subtle colors on the canvas, feeling the weight of soaring steel, cannot be known from a screen or book. I stood before a painting that was explained to me as a kid, that I have sought and contemplated ever since. It is about seven feet by three feet, red, dark intense slightly varying red, with a single narrow intense white line down the center, top to bottom. I'd like to think I would have found it myself, without it being pointed out to me, but I was urged to it by a docent. Standing before it is like standing before god. It was not just me, I made D stand there, and he was struck by the power of it as well. I think it is the idea of heaven being right here, if only you will look. Be silent and let it draw you in, the sacred is beside us always.

Then there is Oldenberg, who blows everything to such a size, Wonderland like, and I laugh. There is no Tao without laughter. God from all angles. Buddha's eyes. An ivory carving of a girl in a rice bowl, as she looks inside the bowl. The best art does not just look at us, but also directs our gaze deep inside.

Now I am exploring the art of Boston, human habitation over hundreds of years. Collectors and crowds. Political and public art. I am back to puzzling over what it means, and where it fits. Where I fit.

*St. Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727)

She was born in 1660 at Mercatello in Urbino and became a Capuchiness at Città di Castello when she was only seventeen. Because the bishop who confirmed her had prophesied that she would one day become a saint, she was given a hard novitiate which was further complicated by illness.

In 1694, the crown of thorns was imprinted upon her forehead and in 1697 she received the stigmata; but what is most remarkable is that towards the end of her life she seems to have had an accurate mental picture of the physical constitution of her heart. She even drew a chart on which she indicated the position in the heart of the several emblems of our Lord's passion: a cross, a chalice, a crown of thorns, three nails and seven swords. On her death, the heart was examined by two professors of medicine and surgery before a committee of notable ecclesiastics, and a formal testimony was made that a number of minute objects corresponding to those shown in St. Veronica's plan were to be found in the right ventricle.

Letter

I have written letters all my life. My eldest brother went to a seminary in high school when I was about 5 or 6. I wrote him crayon letters, no doubt pictures with my name printed in multicolored letters all across the page. I do not remember what I would have said, but I clearly remember doing them, and feeling more important, connected to my big brother. As both my brothers moved out of the house, to college, into the Air Force, into a religious cult, off to Thailand during the Vietnam War, and I struggled to grow up in their wake, I would be directed to blow them a kiss every night, sent in the proper direction, like praying to Mecca. The letters followed, becoming more legible, rambling streams of consciousness and childhood thoughts and miseries. I would hone my writing skills, as my mother had for her own brothers in WWII, in letters to my wandering brothers.

My first real job was as an assistant camp counselor. I wrote letters from the start, to my mother, to my Aunt Evelyn, to my brothers still. Now I was the one to be away, and I knew well how much my letters meant to those at home, and found out how valuable they were to me- so far away for the first time. When I moved to Kalkaska, at 19, I lived for the letters both written by me, and sent to me. I had developed a chatty, rambling style, often several pages each.

I wrote to my brothers for many years. I sometimes wrote to Aunts, but I got to prefer simply making phone calls. I would write letters, then never mail them because I was not quite finished. When I moved to Salt Lake, I renewed the writing, although to my brothers only rarely, and less while the "marriage" fell into shame. All renewed full force when I went off for the Army National Guard training. I wrote letters constantly, daily to the not-yet-ex, doing my best, yearning for love and acceptance. I got more letters from my Mother-in-law back. She was the most faithful writer, and I sent her quiet thanks today in prayer if not in letters. I wrote him far less when I went for advanced training after a miserably urgent trip home to save that useless connection. In my last year with him, I wrote very little to anyone, then not at all. I was isolated, and disowned and grimly considering not living much longer.

Then there was that little trip to Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the US Government. My material got better- nothing like a war to inspire cynicism and wry humor. I wrote daily letters to everyone I could think of, family, a brief period of lucid connection with my eldest brother, open letters to my work at the library. I had stories to tell, and my own no longer felt over.

D was the Unit mail clerk, so when not on duty myself, I hung around with him as he passed out mail. He came to know everyone by name, and became the focus of intense frustration and great joy. Although brusque and irritable, clixby to the extreme, he faithfully went out of his way to make sure folks got their mail. He detested the musical Christmas cards, which often went off and could not be delivered, nor shut up. The masses of mail "to any soldier" wound up dumped on us, as a hospital unit not out in the dirt, clogging access to mail from our own families and friends. We rarely complained out loud, but it was a constant bother, with rare random letters being of use. I did get a letter with folded cranes on my 29th birthday, though, which touched me deeply.

Home again, with D in my life, I stopped writing paper letters, and rarely ever do today. But I began posting on Mike's BBS on D's Atari. I had to think more about what I wrote, as the guys reading had instant access and no inhibitions or social manners, and would rip at ill considered statements or unformed ideas. My writing had to be more careful, but the immediacy and free form aspect, as in letters, remained. Later, email became my forum, my medium. It lay between the ephemerality of phone calls and the need for formality of epistles. Clarity and brevity, logical progression and natural language, were my virtues to be pursued.

Then a nascent friend moved away, and we began to write, growing an amazing friendship we had not been able to foster with opposite work schedules. Email, then a blog, then another, and we really appreciated each other because of the distance of writing that allowed us to become very close. The paradox of the confessional, we found it easier to speak truth across separation, through electronic letters. Now 2000 miles away, she is my closest friend, and I blog to her. I adore other's feedback, but she is my audience.

All this to explain why I write in essays. They are actually letters, formed and tuned as they never were when sent to family or friends. This was just my idea of how emulate James Burke of Connections fame. My twist on following a thread, to weave a story, what D, the historian, calls deconstructionist. Letters are what I know, a form and a length I understand and can get in my head all at once. I write letters in my head as I walk, when I am alone, when I am troubled or interested or pondering. I spin the idea and shape it with words until it starts to look like a useful pot.


P.S.

A special thanks for those of you who leave comments, it's always sweeter after sending a letter, to get a response. To know that the message got there, and was worth the stamp to reply.

Embarrass

I am today not easily embarrassed. Partly because I do whatever I do with a conscious will to do my best. I am an honest person, with good will and integrity. I am not negligent or mean. When I am lazy, I announce it and flaunt it. "I am sitting down and not doing anything, you got a problem with that?" But only when I am sure there is nothing pressing to do. Mistakes and silliness are not reasons for embarrassment. Losing my temper, lashing out, is.


But what, exactly is embarrassment? That horrible feeling of being seen to be wrong or stupid, the sinking stomach, the blush, the heat. Shame is embarrassment when I feel I am wrong, stupid, worthless, or made to feel I am a bad person. Embarrassment -for this essay, is to feel that I have done wrong, and been caught. I have grown out of the impulse to be embarrassed when I have done nothing wrong- by the foolishness or shameful behaviour of others. I often apologize for the discomfort of others, but not out of blaming myself for other's lack of consideration.

As a child, I was painfully shy, I hated nosy attention, or being stared at. Oh, I wanted recognition, but only that, not praise or fuss. To hear, "Yes, that was done well." I cannot say that I have changed much on that. I will always duck out on public displays of honor, be it a graduation or an award. I was in an awful phone sales job, and someone found out I was at my one year wedding anniversary, and she made a big fuss with everyone gathered around. To me that was private, and they'd never met the guy, and I wasn't really such a blushing bride, not to mention I was having my doubts about marriage at all. They seemed to delight in putting me in a spot, and assuming they knew what I was feeling, "Aw, she's embarrassed, how cute!" Really I was angry at their presumption of intimacy with me. There was an element of embarrassment, like having someone walk in on me on the toilet, but it was more anger or irritation over an uninvited intrusion. Anger over people trying to shame me.

Another time I was at a friend's house, a whole lot of people that I didn't know or didn't know well, action movie playing way too loud way too late at night. I fell asleep -more or less, trying so hard to be tolerant for my dear one's sake, as they were mostly his friends. I finally had to move, as I was far too exhausted and the headache was too far gone, I was crying and upset, and I just wanted to go sit in the quiet of our rental car. One friend stopped me, tried to be consoling, I was embarrassed that I had been noticed-- and then lost all my self control, and I about bit his head off. I wasn't even that angry at the helper, so much as that he would not go away- trying too hard to be a good caring friend and doing all the wrong things. I felt I had to snarl to make him stop bringing everyone's attention to my loss of composure. My loss of control in front of friends was embarrassing.

Embarrassment involves a lot of anger for me, at intrusion and manipulation, thoughtlessness. I was in a high school play, and was to have my first kiss -on stage. I made my mother promise not to come, or at least not to let me know she was there-because I was feeling shy about my mother seeing my first kiss. Instead, she sat front and center with my father, uncle and aunt. I was furious. I still want to know what she thought I meant when I asked her not to come. I even gave her the option of coming for her sake, as long as I didn't see her, could keep my illusion of not her watching, and thought she had agreed. When I asked her after, she waffled, claimed she didn't think I meant it, or certainly - "Of course I had to come!" I am sure today she doesn't even remember.

Intentionally embarrassing anyone is mean, and thoughtless and manipulative, malicious humor. I do not act in a way I think is wrong, so any attempt to make me feel foolish is more about them than it is about me. My flaws and mistakes are honest, I have no illusions about them, and I can stand them being laughed at, since I can laugh at them myself. I have had lots of practice. As for when I have a come-apart and hurt those who are trying to help, I am still working on my anger, my temper, and keeping it from the undeserving. When I fail there, I am embarrassed.

Teacher

Mrs. Baumgartner. She looms large in my second grade class, a kind woman who prided herself on skipping rope in class, despite her age. I don't know how I felt about it at the time, oddly enough. Perhaps very deeply buried in my mind is the assumption that play is not just for children. Her self consciousness about it implies that she had been taught that it was wrong, and rebelled. I didn't see it that way as a second grader, and I never worried about looking foolish playing. I skipped with D at Fort Carson as we were falling in love, he needed encouragement, but I had never stopped skipping. Turns out, he just can't skip.

Teresa Kowall, taught a children's ballet class at Patton Park in Detroit, small or nonexistent fees were charged. I would've been 7 when I started, ugly saggy tights and leotards, dyed -we were told- from a far uglier color. I tried so hard, strived, wanting to dance, to do it right. Miss Kowall instilled a sense of discipline a love of movement. Once, she danced for us. It seemed impossibly beautiful, that something human could be so perfect. I still love the feel of a moment of gracefulness, of synchronization with another, of rhythm, elegant competence. I remember her, and that cold room with all the mirrors, as the beginning of skill.

Mrs. Zelinski, sixth and seventh grade, she got us all fired up about science. Taught out of her head, so alive and funny and challenging. Then I caught her in a lie, or at least an error that she would not question herself about. I had been to a nuclear plant, on a tour over the summer with my Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ernie. Heard about Heavy Water, an isotope used in cooling towers. I pretty much understood what it was. I asked her about it, possibly because I was beginning to doubt her exuberant style. She said it was mineral laden water. I tried to explain what I had understood, but she stood by her idea as if it were the only possible fact. I came to distrust information dressed up in enthusiasm, she inadvertently taught me that, as well as an excitement for science. Doubt is vital.

Mr. Esper told stories. And taught history as stories. He loved tactics and strategy and the personalities of history. He talked about being a fire jumper in the summer, so I wanted to do interesting, worthwhile jobs. Mr. (Mark?) Novak taught social sciences in high school, but began the morning with the weather. Drew a map of the US on the board and talked pressure systems. When we had a tornado, he described himself as looking like a "butterfly in heat" chasing to all the windows. Such delight in danger appealed to me, even though I was frightened of everything then, I did not want to always be. Courage as virtue, stories as life, and to look up the NOAA site every morning. I think they would both be proud of me.

Mr Howard Shirkey. Bless his funny soul. Odd, nerdy, bespectacled, balding even then, remembered all his students and where they sat in his class. Never called in sick, Ficus plants and tarantula spider, he taught biology and more to his sophomore classes. Used a read-along second grade level film strip to talk about Anton Von Leevenhook, who first identified animalcules with his microscope. I retained what he told, everything was anthropomorphized, told in both scientific and lay language. Perhaps that is where I get my facility for translating medical terminology into comprehensible terms. Mostly, I hold him dear in my heart for an indefinable, ephemeral lesson that will not sit still for words. And I know he remembers me, he told me so when I wrote to him a few years ago. He wrote back.

Many, many, my teachers come in droves, yet I could write on each of them. The task becomes impossible, the choice of who next overwhelming. The stagecraft teacher, Blair Anderson, who once dropped both cigarette and chalk talking about fasteners, and made us tie ropes around our final to demonstrate knowledge of knots. Don MacDonald who showed me how to communicate with clay on a wheel. Sharivar who is a bellydancer, and a subtle teacher of same. Liz Herald, dry, sarcastic, caring, who has an immense nursing knowledge base, and wants you to know it all as well, preferably five minutes ago. I diminish them by putting them in thumbnail sketches, for they have all touched me and left their mark. Impressions that I treasure and cultivate, to honor them, yes. To become more myself, and in turn to pour out on others.

Smell

I had the illusion as a child that I had no sense of smell. Identified with my granny who had very little sense of smell due to some turn of the century medical intervention, and when her hearing got bad it was rather funny that she thought her loud and odoriferous farts were unnoticed. Or perhaps it came of living in Detroit, the pollution, and our coal furnace with humidity led to much nasal congestion. The reek from Zug Island, an industrial island in the Detroit River that glowed on my small horizon. I remember snot as an integral part of my childhood. My perception of being smell-less is not accurate, since I remember many odors and aromas, mostly bad. My father's cigar, onion breath and factory sweat smell, or hot coffee on shredded wheat reminiscent of wet dog. Engine oils as I held a worklight and was raged at by my unsatisfiable father. Bad smell, bad emotions.

The good smells were isloated, rare treats. My Uncle Walt's pipe smoke was woody rose, and I loved it, I associate it with knowledge and intelligence, as he would tell me about ships and planes and engineering and science, whatever came to his mind. Church incense, spicy and stinging, holidays and hope. My mother's baking, sweet and nutty, leading to holidays and a house full of aunts and uncles and cousins. Aromas of connection and warmth.

There were blizzards, when the snow piled up taller than small me, and the smell of the snow, clean and sharp surrounding. Or maple leaves in piles of reds and golds, earthy, sweet, dusty and warm in my nose. Once in particular, a hollow in the Irish hills- I turned summersaults into endlessly deep piles, swam in pools of autumn leaves with both dry and moldy odors together. I would, at 19, sit in a christmas-tree piney woods, on an upturned rowboat at midnight, a foot of snow on the ground, more laying down heavily in the deep darkness. In that wet cold blackness, with only the woody, damp white smell that enveloped me, I would feel warm and safe and leave behind forever my fear of the dark.
A wrong turn. Budweiser vomit. Later Vodka, but not mine this time. Cleaning up someone else's mess, and a lifelong aversion to vodka. The odor of defeat.

Better: beer, good beer, round and bitter, surrounded by friendly people, and clove cigarettes. I smoked one year, rebelled self destructively. I was burning away bad choices with bad habits. I didn't care if I survived. The smell of cloves cigarettes at concerts still reminds me of my potent if tardy rebellion.

The taste of Saudi Arabian dust in my nose, camel shit aerosolized, Army smells. Mothballs of Army issued clothing, wet temper-tent, floor wax, gun oil and gunpowder, Kiwi shoe polish. Spam and reconstituted eggs, the same smell for the best meal of my life- the first hot, adequate meal in four days of travel, and innumerable very bad ones when I was not hungry enough.

Medical smells: aromas, stinks and stenches, turned into diagnoses, without emotional content. I really do know shit, healthy shit is just a smell to me now, without quality of good or bad. I detect decay, illness, blood, cancer, rot. Prostate surgery, because it is a hormonal gland, had a particular and cuttingly nauseating odor, that I can no longer smell. Only liver cancers still really upset my gut. Peppermint or wintergreen swiped on a mask to stop the stench of dead bowel, sickening instinctive repulsion. Acetone breath of a diabetic, anxious sweat, fasting breath, the oozy smell of fever. The dump of jet fuel means Life Flight is taking off, and there may be a trauma later. Anesthetic gasses waft, bone cement attacks, autoclave heat puffs wetly. Informative smells, data.

The aroma of savory sausages, winter stews. Wonder Bread bakeries, giving away the only good part. Eastern Market, rotting vegetables, and spices, teas and nuts on a busy Saturday morning, reinterpreted now at Haymarket- fruits, vegetable, fish, all crowded with the world's people. The sweet warmth of early spring days. Japanese incense. Lake reek in Salt Lake when the wind came from the west, often followed by rain or snow. Fog in the Boston morning now. Tang of an approaching thunderstorm. Evening sea breeze. Breathing in the world, sure now of my sense of smell.

The smells of home and D, his orange musky scent, subtle in the winter, strong and sweaty in the summer, the smell of home and love. The smell of the right road, when I am head down and can't see where I am. The odor of blessing. Breathing deeply.

Sleep

I remember being in my small bed, beneath the slant of the roof, light through the vent to my brother's room. I sang to myself, long involved stories, as I lay there expected to be asleep. I would get bored or thirsty, or scared of the dark- or rather what I imagined in the shadows. My childhood nightmares as I fell asleep were of skulls and eyes, fish nibbling off my toes. Not the self contained dreams of deep sleep, but nasty clear images of prodromal sleep. I had stuffed animals, Raggedy Anne, Pooh Bear, others, that would be at my back, keeping anything from rasping at my spine. It felt then that it took a long, long time to drift off. But I was not to get out of bed once put there, and I was terrified of what would grab my ankles if I got up. If I needed something, I would yell for mom over and over, trying to be heard. It never occurred to me then that I was being ignored. The sounds of the oceangoing boats on the Detroit River, fire trucks, the steady roar of the freeway a block away, eventually lulled me to sleep.

When I first lived in Northern Michigan, the silence was deafening, and I could not sleep. Watched a lot of bad TV. Because when I just lay there waiting for sleep, I thought anxious, repetitive, dark thoughts. Took about a month to accustom myself to the quiet. Came to love the soft dark stillness.

Sleeping in the Army was much easier, due to exhaustion. Problem was being alllowed to sleep. I would have to get up for a fireguard shift, or woken by companies of soldiers yelling cadences outside the window, or the night CQ doing bed-check with flashlight, "Smells like my grandmother in here!"- (because of Ben Gay.) Or the lights from aircraft shining in the window, we were the other side of the flightpath. Or my own coughing during the last two weeks when I had bronchitis.

Morning came barging in at 0430 or 0500, unless I was on KP, then it was 0330. We all caught naps through the day, not real sleep, the kind that you wake from at a sound, at the presence of boot steps. The head snap modified into a pushing up of glasses that hid closed eyes. Five hours interrupted sleep a night is survivable, it is not happy. Deprivation of dreams and rest would continue in Ft Sam, where the fire alarms went off almost every night, sometimes several times a night. If I was sleeping during the day on a Saturday, and the alarm went off, I would hide in my locker until everyone was gone, then get back in my bunk. I would risk the unlikelihood of a fire for the sake of sleep.


When I returned to civilian life, I would grow new nightmares. For years after I would start awake in a kind of terror. I would mull and get into anxious, self destructive thoughts. Every night of nursing school I had thoughts of shooting myself in the head, not because I wanted to die, just that I wanted to stop and not get up and try again. I had grown tired in my bones, tired of not having enough money, too much to do, too many losses to grieve, too many fears that my new love would slip from me. Nightmares of still living in my parents' house, with the ex, with failure and debt. Grace was waking to D beside me, that I was ok, that he was there. That HE was the one there.

My insomnia has gradually decreased, apogee until age erodes my sleep quality I expect. We have been listening to books on tape, now on mp3s on the ipod. Le Carre books, and Shelby Foote mostly. Still, some nights drag on until sleep catches hold. My dreams are wispy experiences, there but inchoate, not graspable. Only the weight of the cat on me when I need to turn wakes me these nights, I touch D and drift back to black.

Pretty

Prettiness is a virtue. Every little girl knows this. The highest praise is to be called pretty. To be told she has a pretty name, or a pretty dress, pretty hair or pretty face. Any other compliment is a consolation for not being really pretty. This attribute gives a girl approval and attention, and privilege. Had I been pretty, my father would have loved me, I would have had lots of friends, boyfriends, and happiness.

I was never pretty. Oh, I was sometimes told I had a pretty dress or a pretty name, but these were always strained and palpably false comments. I knew I was not pretty. I was sturdy, slim, smart, or strong. But I was not really pretty. When I was eight, my oldest brother married a very pretty girl, delicate with long sleek blonde hair. I felt such a clod around her. She gave me a load of her old clothes, and I was delighted- such stuff as I had never seen before. I couldn't believe she didn't want all those clothes anymore, it was beyond my poor girl's ken. I wore them all until I could not fit them anymore. I'm sure I looked dreadful in most of them.

I was told make-up made a girl pretty. Truth. I took a year of theater make-up. I did the full on glamour treatment on my face, layers of base and contouring. I could look gorgeous, but not without failing to look like myself. I saw the most strikingly lovely woman in the graduate theater program without make-up, she was perfectly ordinary. I could never wear make-up without putting on an hour's worth that would only have looked natural on stage. It would come in handy when I bellydanced many years later. I normally kept to a bit of liner and cover-up for my dark circles.

I wanted to be kissed so badly it hurt, from the time I was 10 on. But I wasn't pretty enough for that. I would be nearly 21 when I had my first real kiss, and I wasn't going to be picky. I married badly, because he liked me anyway. Despite not being pretty. And flat chested as well. He pressured me to wear more make-up.

One guy, Army time, fell in love with me. Acknowledged that I was not pretty, not the type of woman who would normally attract him, but he said I had "Something". I was heartened. More would find me attractive, though not pretty. I would fill my empty heart with a number, proof set out like geometry, that I was worthwhile, attractive, sexy, and fill the gap left by lack of pretty.

Then D calls me beautiful. Not just not pretty. Beautiful. He says it often enough, persistently enough, that I must believe him. Not pretty, that's for girls. I am too much, too strong and powerful, too like a force of nature to ever be pretty. He compared me to Zion and the raw red rock country of the southwest. Nothing as small and ephemeral as pretty. Nothing as easy as pretty.

I work with a woman whose highest praise for any female is pretty. She is most sad about girls who have damage that destroys their prettiness. "That poor girl who was in that fire, she used to be so pretty." I call her on this, on her sympathy for girls having nose jobs and boob jobs, her own wish to have some part of her face fixed, her preoccupation with losing weight. I take it on my harsh features and flat chested self- it's much better to like myself than have surgery to fix an imagined fault. She tries to force her compliment on me "You ARE pretty." No. I am not. I am not pretty. There is no virtue in pretty. It is an accident, a cultural whim, a transient phase. One that I have never possessed. One that I cannot now lose.

I never call a baby pretty. Wise child, bright eyes, strong grip, it takes observation to look beyond what most call cute, but it feels important to look for the real worth, under the veneer of pretty. Pretty women deserve the same- so I look beyond the prettiness, and look for the beauty. I do not begrudge them their advantage, but I do wonder what it costs.