My Little Golden Book of Phobias

It's overcast here today. Looks like rain which would be fine because I've planted lettuce, beans and peas. And spinach.

I ordered a pizza yesterday and went to the place to pick it up. They were very careful to distance and I washed my hands when I got home. The pizza was heavenly. Anything to not eat my own cooking for a change.

I'm tired today, could take a nap right now. But I gotta walk the dog. He's quiet too, unlike him. We've been walking around at a great clip for days so maybe today is a rest day. Maybe not.

Tomorrow is a board meeting for a board I was elected to serve on. I wrote a letter to them to state my position and to state what is unequivocal, ie. I will not serve on a board that is 100% white. I'm happy to do social justice work with/for the BOD. There have been two scandals over the last few months. And remember here, we are only two meetings in from the new year. Sheesh. I'm weary of the drama so early in the game.

Mostly, I talked with my old lady friends and what is really bothering me, what is REALLY BOTHERING ME is the happy combo of sexism and ageism. We have been sidelined and when I think of my friends, there is tremendous wisdom, compassion and clarity there to be tapped. My friends and the health field, doctors, midwives, nurses, all with so much to share.

But the young want to start over, make the same mistakes, stumble around when great wisdom is available on every side. When I think of the elders we are losing to this virus, we are losing our past.


"Waiting in Line"


You the very old, I have come
to the edge of your country and looked across,
how your eyes warily look into mine
when we pass, how you hesitate when
we approach a door. Sometimes
I understand how steep your hills
are, and your way of seeing the madness
around you, the careless waste of the calendar,
the rush of people on buses. I have
studied how you carry packages,
balancing them better, giving them attention.
I have glimpsed from within the gray-eyed look
at those who push, and occasionally even I
can achieve your beautiful bleak perspective
on the loud, the inattentive, shoving boors
jostling past you toward their doom.

With you, from the pavement I have watched
the nation of the young, like jungle birds
that scream as they pass, or gyrate on playgrounds,
their frenzied bodies jittering with the disease
of youth. Knowledge can cure them. But
not all at once. It will take time.

There have been evenings when the light
has turned everything silver, and like you
I have stopped at a corner and suddenly
staggered with the grace of it all: to have
inherited all this, or even the bereavement
of it and finally being cheated!--the chance
to stand on a corner and tell it goodby!
Every day, every evening, every
abject step or stumble has become heroic:--

You others, we the very old have a country.
A passport costs everything there is.


--William Stafford

William Stafford says what I want to say.