The Cold, Dark Night

I heard a rumor that boneless, skinless chicken was on sale at the grocery across the street, so I decided to find out for myself. On the way, I saw an obviously homeless man sitting on a low wall in the parking lot of our apartments. He was leaning forward and swaying back and forth a little, clutching a water bottle in his left hand. I couldn't see his face because he was leaning so far in, and the hood on his jacket was covering his face.

I wondered what I could do for him. It was cold outside already and getting colder by the hour.

I didn’t know what to do, so I kept walking. The grocery had closed early, so I turned around and came back. I thought that maybe I could figure out some way to help him in the meantime. Beyond giving him cash, I couldn’t think of anything.

It didn’t matter ultimately: he was gone by the time I got back. So I went on down the parking lot to get some things I had left in the car. As I was opening the trunk, I heard a familiar slow, metallic “tap, tap, tap.” It was the sound of a metal cane on a hard surface.

I looked farther down and saw him. And his cane was splayed out like the man I wrote about here. I wondered if it was, so I started following him.

He had a head-start on me, but I saw him turn onto one of the sidewalks leading to the interior of the property. When I got to that sidewalk, I could still hear the slow “tap, tap, tap” ringing in the cold, dry air.

But then I lost him.

I walked around for a while in the trying to find him, but all I found was two little raccoons playing. I watched them for a while, all the time wondering where the mystery man had disappeared to.

And I don’t know what I would have done had I found him. Give him money? Since he wasn’t soliciting for any, would that insult him? Give him a blanket and then let him sleep out in the cold?

Things like that baffle me on both moral and spiritual levels. My ingrained beliefs tell me to help when I can, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do that, far too often. It frustrates me.

We’re sitting here watching TV in the relative lap of luxury. No servants, but a roof over our heads and a refrigerator full of food. Central heat that will stave off the cold night. A car that is less than 2 years old with less than 10,000 miles on it that gets amazing gas mileage. Health care. DSL. Magazine subscriptions. Books everywhere you look. And a warm, very comfortable bed.

It’s New Years Eve, and there’s an old man out there in the cold, dark night slowly tap-tap-tapping his way to a destination I don’t know. I wonder if he realizes that a new year starts in less than two hours, or if he even cares. He’s probably more worried about survival.

I can only hope that he does survive. He went out of my earshot and into the care of God. I hope and pray that God watches over him this cold, dark night.

The Warren Report

When my mother and I were visiting my father in the CCU in the final couple of days of his extended illness, I turned around and was startled by a tall man standing in the doorway. With the light from the hallway behind him, he looked like an angel. And turned out to be one.

He had been watching us for some time, I guess, and didn't want to intrude.

It was Mama's preacher. He had already been to St. Louis to be with the family of a congregant who was having a transplant of some sort, but he spent the night in the hospital with us in Memphis (120 miles from his home and family), then went the next morning to see someone who was having heart surgery across town, but was back in the evening.

And he was there when Daddy died later that night. To offer compassion, comfort and counsel.

The preacher's political and social views line up with Rick Warren's, but that did not stop me from valuing his presence and support, even though I'm a middle-aged openly-gay man who's unabashedly liberal.

That’s why this whole brouhaha about a conservative preacher delivering a prayer at the inauguration of the century baffles me. He did, after all, host a forum for the two candidates to talk about what they believed.

People are more than their political views. And many on the left make the mistake of not seeing beyond those political differences to see the value of a person.

2 days after we buried my father, I took my mother to church and saw her preacher in action. And he’s good: charismatic in the pulpit, preaching a message of hope, rather than the hell-fire-and-brimstone sermons I heard growing up.

For a small town in West Tennessee, it's grown into a mega-church. And I can see why. People always will take hope when it’s offered. While I didn't agree with everything he said that Sunday, I agreed with most of it.

He's a good man, an intelligent man. We don't see eye to eye on everything, but I'm sure we could many interesting conversations about our differences.

Jesus told us repeatedly to love those that would persecute us, the ones we don't agree with who might have power over us, as did Mohamed, Buddha, Krishna and, most lately, Dr. King. Only then is peace possible. Both within ourselves and within the larger social context.

That's the context the Warren controversy might best be seen in.

For a New York Times op-ed piece, go here.

JibJab2008

Abs Fab

The President-Elect:
We already knew he was pretty, but my, oh my. . .

The Card

About the pictures
The Texas capitol with this year's Christmas tree and fireworks. It never happened but should have. It's cobbled together from a couple of photos. Sometimes we need to see beyond the real to dream of what is possible.

The one below is what's inside the card..

Shannon and I don't do a lot for Christmas. This year, we're hosting a friend and his daughter for dinner, and we've given money here and there for worthy causes that impact our local community. And since it's a lean, scary year, that's about it.

No presents to speak of. We only bought something for Shannon's nephew. He's autistic, and his birthday is also Christmas day, so he gets short-changed usually. He doesn't understand that hard times mean no presents, so I put together something special for him.

The one thing that we do, and hope to continue doing, is Christmas cards. They're also locally oriented. Some go to people around the country, but the majority stay here in the area. For the people that live somewhere else, I want to show them what Christmas is like here in Austin and why I love living here so much. For those in the metro area, my goal is to remind them of the beauty all around them.

It's not much, I realize, but people seem to appreciate the effort that went into it. And if they had seen Shannon laboriously signing all 80 of them, they'd appreciate it even more.

Now, it's time to start planning next year's

Busy Being Busy

We got a Christmas card a few days ago with a usual year-end newsletter. But those things are seldom usual. I got one a couple of years ago that told me that two of my friends from grad school had lost all the parents they had left. The one I got a few days ago told me that the second year of grieving is harder than the first. Her mother was killed in a car wreck a little over a year ago.

I knew about the second year, already. I lost my first partner about 13 years ago, my best friend 8 years ago and my daddy 1 year ago. I'm not sure which was the hardest. They all hurt in different ways.

Rich, because he was the first man I ever loved. And we had a great life together for 5 years. His sudden death at the age of 28 left me adrift. I spent the next several years doing things I'm not too proud of today.

(We won't go there. Not this time. Possibly never.)

When Bucky, my best friend, was diagnosed with cancer in an advanced stage, I knew the prospects were not good, but I put on a brave face. I told him he'd come back to exactly what he left behind, knowing full well that he he'd probably not come back at all.

In the mean time, I met Shannon. He was the only person that didn't run away from Bucky's illness. I don't know if it's a gay thing, but nobody really wants to talk about someone who's most likely dieing or to anyone who knows him.

Shannon was different. He stood by through the uncertainty and bad news that got worse every day. He went to Bucky's memorial with me. He held my hand and let me cry on his shoulder, literally.

Then Daddy got sick. He was sick a long time, and Mama didn't tell me how bad it was until near the end. She probably didn't want to say it out loud. That would have made it more real. Too real.

In the end, I lost them all.

At first, there were details to attend to that kept my mind occupied. Then utter and sheer exhaustion, when my mind didn't process much except the basic things to keep me going to work, eating and craving sleep. After that, a period of disbelief, the conscious denial that what happened was real.

A year or so later, it finally sank in: it was real, it did happen and ain't nobody comin' back.

It didn't sink in so much as fall like a stone wall collapsing on top of me.

At that point, the real battle begins. One can either go crazy, like I did when Rich died, or stay busy.

Staying busy is like aspirin: it doesn't fix the problem; it masks the pain. If you're busy enough, you can take the pain in smaller doses that don't push you into the abyss of grief and anger and hopelessness.

It helps to have a partner standing by, but even they can't share the absence so palpable that you can reach out and touch. It's a void that they don't feel. Not because they don't care, but because they didn't have the same relationship that you did with your partner or best friend or daddy.

They may have an idea how big that hole is, but they can't touch it or live with it every day. Even as a son who lost his father, I can't know what void my mother lives with that I don't know about. Between Christmas and New Years, they would have celebrated their 48th anniversary. Add that to the 3 years they dated, and they were together for about 50 years before he died. 7 years longer than I've been alive. Only 20 years longer than she's been alive

She stays busy. Volunteer work at the church and with the high school band my nephew used to be in keep her busy. And if the house is too quiet on a weekend night, she goes to local high school basketball games. She doesn't have a stake in either team any more, so she just has fun.

Mama played basketball when she was in high school. She's only 5'2", and she told me they had to special-order her uniform. She had an 18 inch waist back then. And not because she was malnourished. She was quite buxom, in fact.

We deal with loss in our own private ways. We stay busy. Whether it's working too much (as Shannon says I do) or writing or going to basketball games, that's the way we work these things out.

In the end, it makes us stronger, better and more compassionate people.

I just hope this round gets over soon. I'm tired of being so busy.

How to Maintain a Happy Home (a 12-step program in disguise)

Live in the present.

Plan for the future.

Take care of the past.

Hold those you love close.

Let them know they’re loved.

Forgive.

Forget.

Allow others to be the flawed human being that you are.

Be.

Don’t just exist.

Never forget where you came from.

Live.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Winter in central Texas means two things: erratic weather with temperature swings of 30 degrees or more in a few hours along with unexpected ice storms and cedar pollen. I’m not sure which is the more difficult to live with. The first makes my bones hurt in ways they don’t usually, and the second leaves me sneezing, sniffling and draining with itchy, watery eyes that aren’t much good for anything.

Yesterday at 2 p.m., it was warm enough that I was a little too warm in short sleeves. Mid-to-upper seventies. When I left the office at 5 p.m., it was cold, with fierce winds howling out of the north and west. The direction changed so quickly and frequently that I couldn’t get used to being barraged from one direction before another took over.

By 8 or so, we had sleet and rain, and by midnight, snow. The temperature hovered around freezing from about 9 on. Not cold enough to mess up the roads, but just cold and wet enough to be miserable.

And then there’s that other misery of central Texas winters: cedar fever. A particular variety of cedar that thrives here and surrounds us for a hundred miles or more and creates a vicious pollen in huge quantities. Image cedar trees enveloped in clouds of orange dust, emitting huge plumes of it when the wind is blowing enough to stir it up.

Cold weather triggers its release, and we got the first of it today. A mild dose, for sure, because it usually takes a couple or three cold days for it to get into high production, but we have them coming up over the next few days. Tomorrow, the temperature supposed to go from 28 overnight to 60 at some point. And more of the same the rest of the week and weekend.

I don’t much care for cold weather, especially the wet, blustery kind we’ve had the last couple of days. And I don’t care at all for swollen, dripping eyes and a scratchy, itchy throat.

Austin is an urban paradise, except when it isn’t. Personally, I favor a giant dome with filtered air and climate control over the entire city. Just the city, though. The suburbanites can fend for themselves.

As it is, I’ll tough it out, yet again. Keep my supply of tissues and antihistamines up to date. Wear warm clothes and dig out a scarf from where-ever we put them last spring.

Then, I'll start over again.

Waiting to Pee

It started at 4 o’clock this morning when both of our alarms went off at almost the same second. That’s not a good time for me. When I was younger and just getting home at 4 a.m., I handled early hours much better. And it’s infinitely easier to go to bed at 4 in the morning after a night of doing things that I’m not going to talk about (I have a constitutional right to not incriminate myself) than it is to get up at that un-Godly hour after a boring and blissful evening sitting at home.

When we did get on the road, I remembered yet again why I don’t drive at night. Between the time the sun goes down and comes up again, I have little to no depth-perception. The road in front of me curves where there are no curves and narrows where it does not. The normal optical tricks of perspective multiply exponentially to the point that I can’t tell where the road goes until I get there.

Road signs might as well not exist. I can’t read them until it’s too late to take the right exit. Sometimes I can’t read them at all.

So I missed the exit to the hospital because the sign identifying the street was only 2 or 3 seconds away from the last chance to take it.

I took the next exit, made a left, then another into a McDonalds’ parking lot with the intent of cutting through back to the highway. Turns out the street I had landed on was one-way, going away from where I needed to get.

On the other side of the parking lot, the street was one-way going the direction I needed, but it was divided by a barrier. The part I could get on didn’t go where I was headed. I didn’t even realize it was one-way until I pulled out onto it going the wrong direction.

A quick right turn put me back on a two way street. So down the way, past the original one-way street that had landed me in traffic-planning hell to a funeral home parking lot where I could turn around and go back down the same two-way street to get on the one-way street that finally took me to the highway.

All of this in the dark at 6 a.m. on 4 ½ hours sleep with bad eyes.

We made it to the hospital on time, and even had enough leeway for one final cigarette (for Shannon at least) until we went in. (The only benefit of getting there so early in the morning is that I didn’t have to park four blocks away. I got what someone I know calls “rock-star parking”.)

After checking in at the out-patient surgery desk on time at 6:30, we waited. They had given us one of those buzzing-flashy coaster things that some restaurants use to tell you when you table is ready, and as people trickled in, everyone’s coaster went off but ours. When it went off we were supposed to go through the “authorized personnel only” doors to see what was next.

Kind of like a game show.

We waited 45 minutes, and finally got our chance to go through the magic doors.

Our coaster flashed and buzzed, so we went in to sign waivers that pretty much said that they were not responsible for anything. That was what was behind the magic door.

That done, they whisked Shannon away for pre-op, told me to wait until my coaster did its thing again, then go through first set of magic doors to a second glass door. “Follow the red line. Push the silver button on the wall, and the door will open. It’ll be 10-20 minutes. Just depends on him.”

2 hours and 15 minutes later, they finally summoned me. The hold up was that Shannon couldn’t pee. He’d been trying for 2 hours, but with no liquids since midnight, he didn’t have anything to contribute. The anesthesiologist wanted a tox screen before he put him under, just to be sure that Shannon hadn’t been out the night before snorting coke, smoking crack or shooting up heroin. I assured them that he had not.

So they gave up on the pee sample and took him on in for the main event. I asked the nurse how long would it be and did I have time to get something to eat. It was after 10, and I was starving.

She said they had him booked in the OR for an hour, so allow that, plus 30 minutes to one hour more. He was going to be taking a nap, and they can’t always predict how long it takes someone to wake up from one.

He got to take the nap that I desperately wanted, but I went in search of food, instead. And also ditched his clothes that they gave me in a plastic bag, his cane and coat in the car with rock-star parking so I wouldn’t have to tote them along with a tray when I finally found food.

The cafeteria at the VA’s hospital in Temple is okay, but nowhere as good as Seton’s in Austin, but much better than the Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Seton always has heart-healthy options, like baked chicken and fresh veggies. Methodist has over-cooked canned veggies, macaroni and cheese and fried whatever-you-want. The VA had a mixture: the option of a salad bar, sandwiches or fried chicken.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool Southern boy, I went for the fried chicken with fried potato wedges. (We call then Jo-Jo potatoes up north in the south. Not sure why, but the ones up there are better.) Not knowing when I’d have a chance to eat again, I went for the heartier meal.

(Rating hospital food must be a sign of aging, by the way. I've been around long enough to be able to do it.)

After eating, retrieving his clothes, cane and coat from the car, I went back upstairs to wait for my coaster to go off again. Wait and wait and wait.

2 hours later, the surgeon came out to tell me things went fine. Shannon was awake and alert. The doctor didn’t anticipate any problems. They would buzz and flash me back soon.

An hour later, the trusty coaster hailed me back behind the magic doors. He was fine, sitting up and eating a tuna fish sandwich. He was ready to go. As soon as he peed.

Three small sodas, three glasses of water and two containers of orange juice later, we were still waiting for his bladder to work. He doesn’t pee well on a good day, so having to pee behind a curtain with noise all around and someone waiting for it makes it almost impossible. But they wouldn’t let him go until he did.

I was ready to take the IV out myself, give him his clothes back and make a run for it.

Instead, I picked up his prescription from the pharmacy and got a big cup of iced-tea from the cafeteria. (He had fluids coming at him from everywhere, but I’d been sitting in a waiting room, parched and dry.)

In the end, we spent most of the day waiting for Shannon to pee.

We got back 11 hours after we got up.

All to get a small toe fixed.

Right now, there’s something that looks like a push-pin coming out of his second left one. The ice bag on his ankle (I don’t know why the ankle, but that’s where they said to put it) has to be taken off and put back on every 20 minutes. And he is to stay off his feet as much as possible.

Still, it was necessary. And I’ve come to expect that anything involving Shannon and hospitals will not be easy.

This time, I didn’t anticipate the source of the difficulty.

After all, who would have expected that it would take four hours for anybody to take a whiz?

Survive

Any number of people wouldn’t and don’t know why I love Shannon. He’s a fair amount older than me, has health problems and has been known to go crazy from time to time. I have to drive him to Temple every time he has to go to the VA hospital for routine stuff. It’s a 130 mile round trip, too far for him to do safely on his on.

All I have to say to people who question our relationship is “what planet are you from? Don't they make people who love each other where you came from?”

Those folks are focusing on the little things and not the big picture. Like the life we’ve lived together for somewhere between 8 and 9 years and continue to (The time frame's a little fuzzy as to when we actually committed) .

The big picture is coming home every day to someone who really wants to see me, and that I want to see, as well. Having common goals. Being there when the other needs picking up off the metaphorical floor yet again.

That metaphorical floor is not so much a solid surface as an abyss. A metaphorical one, but one that sometimes doesn’t seem to have a bottom.

He’s lost weight in some places and gained some in others. So have I.

We’ve both gotten older and changed shapes over the years, but one thing hasn’t changed: we take care of each other. He is my guard-rail on the edge of the abyss.

I’m his, too. And if he goes over it into never-land, I’ll be there to pull him out.

We’ve been through too much, me and the old man, to give up now. And it hasn’t been a leisurely stroll through an enchanted garden. At times, it has been nothing short of hell.

Dealing with serious mental illness takes a resolve and understanding I didn’t know I had before I had to deal with it.

It’s made me a stronger and better person, though.

I’m more patient than I ever have been and have enough perspective now to understand what’s important and what’s not. Watching someone writhe in mental anguish, tied to a hospital bed in ICU, not knowing who he is but is living inside a nightmare has a way of creating perspective.

Like Tammy Wynette, I stand by my man. Good, bad and worse. The “good” is great, the “bad” can be very nasty and the “worse” can be downright ugly. But without that commitment, nothing else really has any meaning. At least as far as defining a relationship is concerned.

I’m an aging, stubborn old coot. I take the bad with the good. That’s the only tenable position I think anyone can or should take.

And when things go bad, my motherly genes kick in. If that means I've have to go a couple of days without sleep because I have to, I will. If it means sitting in a hospital waiting room for hours, I will.

Any time I need reinforcements, I put Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” on the play list.

What God can’t cure, disco can.

Giving Thanks

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. One of the best I can remember. The food was great, and the company was delightful. It was what every holiday should be: relaxing.

Even though I started cooking Wednesday night and started cooking again about 8 a.m. on Thursday, I've come to enjoy the Zen of preparing a complicated meal. I guess I've done T-Day dinner enough before to have the comfort that I know what I'm doing. I had as much fun making it as I did eating it.

I got to, as Shannon would say, "put on the dog." Good china, gold (plated) flatware and some antique crystal I found at a thrift store a couple of years ago but almost never get to use.

We started with a honey-citrus fruit salad with holiday spices and moved on to turkey (most of it's still in the fridge), dressing, portabellas stuffed with vegetarian dressing, giblet gravy, vegetarian gravy, a cranberry relish with apples and celery, carrots with tarragon and mashed potatoes. Cherry pie for desert. (I didn't make the pie, but it was good.)

We sent an entire grocery bag of food home with John, our guest. He has Parkinson's and is mostly home-bound. Can't drive. Even walking is a problem. He was in the hospital the last 2 Thanksgivings, so we were happy to see him at least able to get out this one.

When he sat down and actually looked at the table, he started crying. I had finished it off while he and Shannon weren't looking, and I do lay an impressive table. (W and Cheney should talk to me about shock and awe.)

All in all, a very good day. I've matured enough to not get frantic over cooking, and Shannon's matured enough to stay the hell out of my kitchen when I'm doing it. I enjoyed everything from the planning to the shopping to the cooking to the eating in a way I haven't in a long, long time.

And John was so sweet. He brought a purple orchid that I'm determined not to kill. It's absolutely beautiful, but delicate and fragile. It reminds me of egg-shell china: I'm afraid to touch it because I might break it.

I did some research, and it's in a family that likes indirect light and water only when it's dry. I put it on the porch where is will get the light it needs. I think it's grown overnight.

I told John afterwards that he had to take the food with him if he wanted a ride home.

And if I had any spare money, I'd be out shopping today. But I don't. Instead, I think we're going to pawn off some more of our left-overs on another friend of Shannon's who is in the middle of moving and couldn't make it over yesterday. We can't help him move, but we can bring him food.

I took Shannon to the VA hospital on Tuesday for pre-op procedures. We go back next Friday so they can re-set his left big toe. It's out-patient surgery, but they have to put him under to do it. So we have to get up early, get him there early, spend the better part of a day there and then make the hour to hour and a half drive back home.

Good thing T-Day was fabulous, 'cause this coming week's gonna suck.

Still, Shannon has coverage that will pay for everything, thanks to the VA. Medicaid thinks that his SSI is too much money, but the VA doesn’t. Whether they will bill Medicare for it or not, I don’t know and ain’t gonna ask.

I’m thankful that we both have health care coverage. Mine costs about $7500 a year (1/4 of which I pay), and Shannon's is arguably better. But it’s better than a lot of plans out there right now, and it’s certainly better than none at all.

And I don't have to go back to work until Monday, so I have a couple of days to rest up before I have to brave I-35 again. (Being paid to stay home and employer-based health insurance, by the way, are among God's greatest innovations.)

Our rent’s going up in January, and we still have un-addressed repair issues. On the other side of the coin, I can walk to work, there’s a great small natural food grocery across the street and everything we need is within a few blocks, so we spend almost nothing on gas. And even though there’s been a spike in auto burglaries in the last few weeks, the streets are safe enough to walk at night. I never think twice about it.

We have a roof over our head (even though it’s also the floor of the cow-people upstairs) and we can afford to live in a nice, upscale but human-scale, livable neighborhood.

And my job is fairly secure, something of a luxury these days in and of itself. I have more vacation and sick time than I can take. I get 10 or 12 paid holidays a year on top of that.

Times are tough, and money’s tight. We have cut back spending for a lot of things. No extras right now.
Thanksgiving dinner is not an extra for us right now. And neither is offering hospitality to others who have even less than we do. When we have to cut Thanksgiving out of the budget, I’ll know we’re in trouble.

But we aren't and we don’t.

For that, I’m ever so humbly thankful.

A Thousand Pictures

When I was young, older people still spoke of Roosevelt in an almost reverential way, when they talked about the Depression at all. Most didn’t want to. It was water under the bridge, roads they didn’t want to go back down and every other trite way of saying that they were focused on the future, not the past.

Every now and then, though, nostalgia got the better of them. And when they talked about Roosevelt, they used words that they normally reserved for their favorite preachers. Savior is the one that came up most. “Roosevelt saved the country” was what I heard from many of them.

They never mentioned the New Deal or the WPA or any other of the programs he put together on the fly. And he did put them together on the fly.

What they talked about was how inspiring he was. He talked to them and told them how bad it was, but reassured them that things would get better. I doubt that he ever told them exactly how bad it was, but hearing his voice on the radio gave people hope.

He realized quite keenly that financial crises are most often crises of confidence. They have as much to do with psychology as with economics. They are driven by fear as much as anything else.

And they feed on themselves: crisis breeds fear which exacerbates crisis as people act in fear which creates more fear that creates more crisis that goes on and on in a downward spiral until everybody’s broke.

I’m glad that Mr. Obama has been reading Roosevelt lately. He’s inheriting an analogous mess.

So when the Bush administration remained silent for too, too long, Obama spoke up to offer words of hope that had been noticeably absent. Words that calmed the markets at least a bit because it looked like someone was in charge.

The markets are going to be up and down and all over the place for the foreseeable future regardless of who is or seems to be in charge. There’s too much damage to be cleaned up quickly.

And bailouts are a stop-gap measure, at best: they do little but stanch a hemorrhage. They provide little to no long-term relief.

What we need now are words. Encouraging ones that tell us “things will be better.” Ones that reassure us that there is a plan for recovery. That the American dream is not dead.

Many people discount the power of words, but I’m not among them. Roosevelt used them to blunt the Depression. They didn’t fix it, but they gave people hope and thereby shored up the shaky foundations of both our financial and political systems.

Words have power. They hold hope, joy, happiness and goodwill. They inspire. They reassure and comfort. When they are released like the endangered species that they are into native environments, the results can be staggering.

The recovery from this economic crisis will be as much a matter of psychology as of economics. Until fear is fully replaced by hope, the crisis will deepen.

The right words breed hope. And if hope doesn't show its face across the broader markets soon, we're all in for a wilder ride than any of us want. Until credit markets thaw, nothing will change. When those who control financial institutions can visualize hope, then stability and prosperity will return.

Someone has to draw a picture that makes sense to Wall Street and to legislators and their constituents.

And if the sitting President will not, the President-elect must. Even if it's just words.

A picture is not always worth a thousand words; sometimes, the right words, though, are worth a thousand pictures.

Chain of Fools

Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. Or at least mostly right. Citigroup got partially nationalized over night.

American taxpayers now own more pieces of more banks than ever in history, and that trend disturbs me. Greatly. The federal government should not be in the business of owning major shares in banks. Or any other business, for that matter.

We now collectively own pieces part of multiple banks and the largest insurance company in the world. And we likely will end up with a good share of failing auto companies, too.

When this whole mess started, I had more faith that bailouts might work. But so far, companies have taken the money and changed little to nothing about the operating policies that had them looking a pauper’s funeral a month or so ago. And the pauper’s grave isn’t out of the question for most of them, still.

Like mine, the government’s pocketbook is only so deep. When it gets tapped out, there won’t be any more bailouts for anybody.

The Chinese will quit buying US debt at some point when they perceive that we have no possible way as a country to service that debt. And since they’re our primary source of funding debt, the results could be catastrophic.

And the primary reason for bailouts has been un-freezing credit markets. But they’re still as icy as ever. When banks won’t lend to banks, I don’t think it’s worth my time pursue credit on any level.

My mood is shifting from holding-on-to-hope optimism to how-in-the-hell-do-we-get-through-one-more-crisis pessimism.

Like many people, I have bailout fatigue.

How long can it go on, and how may times can it happen? When will enough be finally enough? When will it all end?

I have to only remember the greed, irresponsibility and lack of oversight and regulation that put us where we are today to need a Prilosec for intense heartburn.

Shannon and I lead a fairly complete and rich life while paying our bills on time (or at least close to on-time. With any number of bills, close is good enough). We don’t accumulate debt that we cannot service.

We do those things because they are the smart, practical things to do. In the long run, it’s easier and cheaper to live within one’s means than to not.

If only the people begging for bailouts now only knew that.

No Maybe, Baby

The economy's going to hell in a row boat. Next week, Citigroup will likely fail or be taken over by the Fed. It might sell pieces part or the whole bird to someone else, but no one else has pockets that deep.

Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are the only possible contenders for a sell-off. But each has already taken its fair share of buying companies on life support. None of them have the will or resources to take on more bad debt.

Some times, enough is enough is always enough.

Thanksgiving's bearing down, and the world is going crazy around me. There is no good financial news to report. Every indicator points to a recession that might out-do the one triggered by the Arab oil embargo of the early 70's.

I know how bad it was back then. I was just a kid, but kids aren't stupid. They know when it's not the right time to ask for new clothes, even though they're growing out of the ones they have. They know that a haircut is a luxury. That if their feet keep growing, they'll have to ask for new shoes, knowing full well that something else will have to not be bought to get those shoes.

Money was tight back then. Daddy was only working 20 or 30 hours a week. “Partials”, they called it. If the hourly people worked fewer hours, no one would have to be let go. That meant he made less money and that we had to make do with less.

Even as the price of everything from gas to groceries soared.

It wasn’t pretty.

And neither is this go-round.

My fear is that things will get worse than they were back then. All the factors are in place to trigger a total economic collapse. Despite a $350 billion cash infusion, credit remains frozen.

Banks don’t trust each other, so they won’t lend to each other. The Fed has said it’s done until after the inauguration.

There is no cash to be had, and the next one at the guillotine is CitiGroup, executed as a pauper. At $3.77 a share, they can’t last long.

I’ll admit that I’m scared and conserving cash where I can. But my cash doesn’t go as far as it used to. Gas prices have dropped ($1.87 around the corner), but the price of nothing else has. And since my company has taken an incredible hit to net assets just 4 months into the fiscal year, I doubt a raise or modest bonus will happen.

We’ll muddle through. I have no doubt of that. We won’t eat out as often (which isn’t that much any way), we won’t buy clothes, we won’t renew magazine subscriptions. Not doing things like we normally do will contribute to the overall decline, but if I can’t pay for it, I ain’t buying it. And I don’t have enough money to throw down any black hole of “maybe”.

Maybe if I spent more, the economy would recover sooner. Maybe it I went out to eat more, waiters might not lose their jobs. Maybe if I bought new clothes, one more clerk wouldn’t be let go.

We’re entering a period of survival of the fittest. And I intend to survive.

No maybe about it.

The Black Kennedys

Who'd of thunk it? Elegant, cosmopolitan and literate. The both of them. And they're going to be the leaders of our next first family.

Quite a change of pace. One that's long over-due.

Who else could carry off those boots as a First Lady to be?

Even the Clintons never looked this good.

Glamor is back.

And it's about time.

The Bitter Pill

While I have little sympathy for auto execs that fly in to DC on private jets to beg for money, this story is about much, much more than them. The number of jobs that would be lost if GM failed is staggering in and of itself. Such a failure wouldn't create ripples throughout the broader economy: it would be a tsunami.

While I agree that US automakers have been unresponsive to customer demand and that the execs at all the big US companies enjoy bonuses that cannot be justified by their companies' performance, allowing those companies to fail would be a disaster.

That sentence leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I don't like it more than most people, but I also think that we have to be pragmatic at this juncture.

The idea of the Fed owning large shares of US corporations frightens me as much as the government loaning money it doesn't have to shore up companies that might or might not make it out alive once the fat lady sings.

There is no good answer to this crisis. There are only ones that are better or worse.

Even the better ones aren't pretty.

If GM goes under, so will Goodyear. They haven't been having a good time of it lately, and losing one of their largest customers could easily send them over the cliff, too. As it will any number of other suppliers.

I have a vested stake in all this, I'll admit. And perhaps it colors my opinions.

The pension my father earned that now is a primary source of income for my mother would go away if Goodyear fails. And Goodyear doesn't have enough breathing room for GM to fail.

Daddy worked a good part of his life for them with the promise of a pension. With bankruptcy or outright failure, that will have been a lifetime's work for nothing but a broken promise.

There are millions of other people who will have to deal with same harsh realities given the same scenario.

It's a bitter pill, as I said, that goes against everything I would normally prefer. But these are not normal times. With the economy teetering on the edge of what could become the 2nd Great Depression, rules and ideology go out the door.

What matters is what happens and how quickly it gets done. And It's got to be done now, not later. We can't wait until January 20 of next year. The clock is ticking, and the bomb's about to go off.

There's no time to lose.

Jazz Fruit Salad

Just about every year, I make a fruit salad for our Thanksgiving pot-luck lunch at the office. And every year, someone asks me for the recipe. While that’s flattering, I’m at a bit of a disadvantage because I use recipes to get ideas and not to actually cook from. Like musicians who play by ear, I cook by sense. Sight, smell, taste and touch, to be exact.

Having a general idea of where I want to get to, I start improvising, measuring nothing, changing ingredients on a whim or based on what looks good when I’m at the grocery. I measure nothing, but tweak until the taste, texture, aroma and presentation are the destination I had in mind.

With my fruit salad, the most important part is the citrus dressing. You can choose whatever fruit you like or looks good at the grocery to put in. Just about anything will work.

I usually use cantaloupe as a base fruit, then add grapes (they seem to be best when they are sliced in half long-ways), Granny Smith apples cut into wedges and then into big, hearty chunks, pineapple, kiwi, mango and mandarin oranges. Sun-dried fruit, like cherries, work well if you have enough time to let them soak overnight, and I’ve used pecans halves tossed in melted butter and then roasted under low heat in the oven. Leave some of the halves intact to use as garnish, but give the rest a coarse chop. Optionally, you can toss the pecans in butter and then sugar before roasting. (Turbinado sugar is the best because it retains a bit of molasses flavor. Raw sugar’s ok, and refined sugar works so-so.)

For the dressing, combine the juice of 2 medium oranges, 1 lemon and 2 limes with enough honey (a cup or two) to coat your fruit well. (The citrus will keep anything like apples from turning brown, but you should probably put them in last and when the honey-citrus mixture is ready.) If the lemon and lime make it too tart, you can add more honey until you have the flavor you want.

Also, if you use any canned fruit, you can add the liquid from it at your own discretion. Caveat: don’t add so much of the liquid that the dressing gets too thin. It should coat the fruit well with a small amount of liquid standing. When you refrigerate it, the other fruit will release juices, and you don’t want so much liquid that it becomes a cold fruit soup.

Toss the fruit in the dressing and add cinnamon, nutmeg and clove powder to taste. Heavier on the cinnamon and lighter on the nutmeg and clove—the last two are fairly potent in small amounts. One additional option is dried ginger, but the other spices tend to overwhelm its subtle zing.

Tip: I like to buy the spices in small quantities from the bulk section at Sun Harvest. They can lose their flavors quickly, especially the cinnamon, and the bulk products always seem fresher. Also, you can buy in the quantity that you need. (It’s much better than buying full bottles that will go stale before you use them up, so it’s also cheaper.)

Finally, I like to refrigerate it over-night in a closed container to let the juices meld and the spices seep into the fruit.

Like most dishes, the single most important thing is the ingredients you start with. The cantaloupe should be firm but not hard and fragrant when you smell where the vine was attached. The juice oranges should be softer and deeply colored. The apples should be very firm and the grapes sweet, not tart. (Purple ones seem to be better than the green ones.)

There’s really no end to what one can do with this basic framework. For a summer salad, leave out the spices other than ginger, and pile that it in. And instead of pecans, use toasted shaved coconut. Choose the fruits that are in season or you just happen to have a hankering for.

Improvise. Create. Enjoy.

I Can Be Your Hero. . .

Post election, after that sweet moment the polls closed on the west coast and CNN called the election for Obama at 10 p.m. central time on the dot, before they even released the results of California, Oregon and Washington, I’ve been wandering around trying to make sure it’s really true. Everyone says it is, but part of me still doesn’t believe it.

It’s sinking in slowly: we have the black Kennedy’s moving into the house we all own in a couple of months.

Not the Kennedy’s, exactly. Our future first lady has no problem giving her husband, the future leader of the free world, a little bit of grief on national TV. Watching the interview on 60 Minutes tonight, I got the distinct impression that it hasn’t been just his grandmother, Toot, who kept him grounded. Michelle Obama keeps her husband in line all the time.

Not that I think he minds.

I know a little about someone making me want to be a better person. And not just for myself. To include other people in ways that we can. Giving money to local charities rather than buying Christmas presents that people don’t really need or even want.

Michelle Obama is the power behind the throne. Not that she dictates policy or even gets involved enough to express an opinion. Not that she doesn’t have one. I’m sure she does.

Her power comes from a deeper place.

She makes our future president want to be better than he might have been, otherwise. Not because she brow-beats him, but because he wants to be her hero. And his kids’ hero. He wants a better world for his family than he had himself.

He created his life out of nothing with a strong woman standing by, letting him do what he needed to do to live his dream.

Daddy worked long hours, taking as much overtime as he could stand, to make sure we had a better life. I don’t know if that was his dream or not, but I think he was proud in the end. He raised a family, and then another. He was a parent from the time my older sister was born in 1963 until he died last year. 45 years of being a parent to children.

That in itself is remarkable.

Heroic, some would say.

The Obama family is not too different from a lot of others around the world.

Including mine.

Triage

Since all is said and done (the fat lady sang real loud), I'm engaging in gratuitous political endorsement and celebration. Not that I'm shy about voicing my opinion.

But the election's over and the path forward is a little clearer. But only by a bit. We know who will move into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave on January 20. What happens afterwords is anybody's guess.

I do not envy the President-elect, although I respect him thoroughly. He's inheriting a mess that's not going to get better any time soon. From what I've been reading from people who know more about economics than me, we're in a triage stage right now: save the ones you can, leave the iffy for later and let the hopeless cases die. Give them morphine and let them go.

I know that sounds ruthless, but that's how it has been playing out.

Still, I have more hope than I did last week. And not because I believe that a President can change a whole lot by executive order. That and the veto are about the only powers one has, other than appointing Secretaries.

I'm more hopeful because of the message of the President-elect. Throughout the campaign, he's come back time and time again to the message of hope and possibility, invoking the idea that we can achieve all things. That we can become and be what we want. That all things are possible.

That's the most important quality of any President: the ability to inspire hope in times of great peril. The times we're living in.

Hope inspires faith, and faith calms all things.

These days, hope is a priceless commodity. An intangible asset that can be valued only by how people respond.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't think so.

In this election hope trumped all else.

Too Much Time on my Hands . . .

I’ve been off work since Thursday at 5:00 p.m., and I’m amazed by all the things I can get taken care of if I don’t have to go to work. I got ink for the printer, unloaded the dishwasher, did laundry, took Shannon out for lunch, went to the grocery, cooked a fabulous chicken, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher and picked up the dry cleaning. I also paid rent and the water bill, along with a couple of other bills, filled up the car and got it washed.

(Baby was horrible-dirty. Between the landscaping and construction on this property and the mall being demolished across the street, the dust gets a little heavy some times.)

This morning, though, my eyes are swollen, and they burn. The bathroom wall collapsed in on itself a week ago, and it’s been sealed off since. The water damage that had accrued and been neglected over the years reached the point where the tiles no longer stuck to the walls around the tub. They starting falling off in sheets and left water-logged wallboard covered in mold exposed.

In theory, we have 2 bathrooms, but since the toilet and tub for the master bath are in the contaminated area, we really have 1 bathroom and an extra sink. I sealed the mold room off with clear plastic packing tape and a towel as best I could. The worst part is that the sealed-off room has the tub with handicapped grab bars for Shannon. They were supposed to already have them in the other tub by now, so I’m guessing that, since they don’t, the great mold makeover may take a while longer than I had anticipated.

And the Democrats won’t stop calling. On Saturday, I called the county Party office and the state Party office to tell them that enough is enough. I voted over a week ago, so they’re wasting my time as well as theirs. Still, over Friday and Saturday, we had about a dozen calls from one or both of them. I don’t think it was the national Party, because Obama has no chance of winning Texas. He’ll take Travis County handily, but we’ll be one of only a few counties where that happens.

Other races on the state and local level, though, remain important. The carpet-bagger who took over my newly-gerrymandered US Congressional district a few years ago faces serious competition. The man who used to represent me and got gerrymandered out of my district has little to no competition. In Travis County, TX, home of old-fashioned Texas liberalism, old hippies and intellectuals, the US Congressional map is so contorted that it looks like nothing so much as water draining down a toilet. Or a satellite picture of a hurricane about to make landfall. Or a black hole.

Take your pick of analogies. One is about as apt as the other. And appetizing.

We met Shannon’s mother and sister-in-law down south for lunch earlier today. Just one more thing I was able to fit into my fun-filled 4 days off. His mother’s about 80, but spry as ever. She’s as excited about the upcoming election as me, so I’m sure the other diners enjoyed our sometimes-animated conversation. She doesn’t hear so well anymore, so I had to talk louder than I would have otherwise done. They got an ear full, I’m sure.

And his sister-in-law is still going through chemo for uterine cancer after undergoing a radical hysterectomy last month. She’s putting on a brave face, but I could tell it’s wearing her down. “2 more rounds,” she said. “Then we’ll see.”

I have to go back to work tomorrow, so I took another nice, long nap this afternoon. The clock continues to confuse my body. It’s already getting dark, and if I had worked today, I’d just be getting home. It will take weeks to adjust. But I’m sure I’ll be up half the night tomorrow watching election returns, so I’m not sure the time change is going to matter too much over the next few days.

And I’m taking inauguration day off if Obama wins. It will be an historic day that I want to see for myself in its entirety. I didn’t think I would live to see a black president. I thought a woman was more likely to come first. (She almost did, but that’s another story.) And a voice of hope and unity when it seems like to sky is falling makes my heart sing instead of sink.

Enough is Enough is Always Enough

I have received so many campaign calls, many of them from machines that don't understand "Leave me the hell alone", that I finally snapped yesterday. I called both the county and state Democratic Parties to see if they were responsible and to tell them to quit. They're also going to get this letter by mail (although what they get will include name, address and phone number, details that I'm not publishing online for many reasons).

I encourage anyone who is being harassed by any political party or candidate by phone to do the same. I may accomplish little, but it sure feels good to tell them to leave me the hell alone in my home.

The calls have stopped, for now. We'll see.

Click image to enlarge.

Amazing Grace

This afternoon as I was walking to get a meatball sub for lunch and standing at an intersection waiting for the walk signal, an old man walking with a cane that looked like the bottom half of a crutch hobbled out to the island in the center of the street. He propped himself against a street sign and held his sign asking for money right above his belt. That was probably as high as he could get it and hold for any length of time.

He looked like a gust of air would blow him over, and the island he was standing on was only a couple of feet wide. Traffic is always heavy at that intersection, especially at lunch time. Watching him standing there made me nervous as hell.

But that was only half of it: he looked like an older version of Shannon. The shuffling way he walked, the slumping posture that made him look shorter than he was, the grey beard. The similarities so struck me that I almost started crying on the spot.

The old man reminded me of what might have happened to him had Shannon and I not met and become involved.

Shannon's life and ability to respond rationally to its challenges were declining rapidly. At any given time, he was only a few steps away from disaster, both financial and mental. The problems fed on each other: financial crisis added to mental crisis; mental crisis added to financial crisis. And the cycle was gaining speed as he went downhill.

He could have easily ended up unemployed and out on the street, alone with no one to watch out for him.

Truth be known, I wasn't too far from there myself. Both of our lives were in a dangerous downward spiral.

Since we’ve been together, Shannon and I have both become better, saner, more responsible people. We’ve been good for each other. He makes me want to be a better person, and I make him, I think, do the same.

When I saw that old man, I saw a glimpse of what could have been. And it broke my heart. I haven’t been able to get the image out of my head since. The obvious labor he took moving just a few feet, and the way he held his head down and didn't look anywhere much but the ground. That he looked clean. And that, while his shoes covered his feet, they were well-worn and had seen better days.

On the way back from the sub shop, I saw that he had moved a few feet away from the sign he was leaning on to get to more cars. He started hobbling back to the sign when the light changed, using his cane to drag what looked like the leftovers of a cheeseburger closer to him.

By the time the lights changed to let me walk, he’d made it back to the sign post to start all over again. I walked over and gave him 5 bucks and then hustled to get across the street before the lights changed against me.

I've looked for him every day since, but I haven't seen him. I don't know what became of him or what will, who he is or whether or not he has a place to live.

I don’t know what he did with the money, but I don’t really care.

All I know is that there but by the grace of God. . .

"W" is for "What?!?"

Click to read.

Flash Point

My 401(k) is performing ahead of the market. Since January, I've only lost 35% of it. A 35% loss is good news these days.

That, in and of itself, is a pisser.

Still, I haven't reallocated my asset portfolio because I'm not sure what good that would do. Everybody's losing money hand over fist, and my 35% loss is actually better than what some folks are getting.

Our 401(k) rep has been in the office at least three hours for the last three days holding back-to-back meetings with who people have suddenly become aware that they have a portfolio that is losing value on a geometric scale and want to know what to do about it.

I wasn't one of those people. I review and re-allocate mine every few months based on performance. I look at performance over as long a period as I can get, and transfer assets from under-performing funds to ones that have better histories. But no one is performing well these days, so I don't see the point of reallocating or spending time talking to someone who's just going to tell me to remain calm.

Making changes like that in the middle of a firestorm makes about as much sense as using a martini to put a fire out that's reaching a flash point.

Even though a graph of the markets looks like documentation of a heart attack or stroke, I'm already remaining calm. I can't touch that money for 20 years or so. If the market doesn't recover by then, I'll have much bigger problems to worry about. And if it does, I'm picking up stocks at fire-sale prices. My contribution hasn't changed, but prices have, so my dollars go farther than they ever have.

It's kind of like my favorite thrift store, Top Drawer. It's in the middle of some pricey neighborhoods, so it gets the good stuff. And every Saturday they mark certain categories (men's shirts, women's pants) to a buck or two a piece. Among other things, I got a very nice Perry Ellis suit for $15.

Pennies on the dollar.

It's the upside of a downturn.

Honestly...?

When people ask me how I’m doing, more often than not I don’t know how to respond. I could say “just fine”, and that would let me off the hook. And too often it would be a lie. My grandmother, whom I adored, died last week. Year to date, I’ve lost 31% of my retirement account. Daddy’s been dead only a little over a year. My baby sister is making my mother’s life a nightmare while Mama’s trying to put her life back together after being with the same man for almost 50 years.. Shannon’s sister-in-law just had her uterus taken out because of cancer. One of his oldest friends is wasting away with Parkinson’s and another’s leukemia has reduced his survival prognosis to 5-10 years.

People who ask that question more often than not will respond to my answer (“okay, I guess”) with “just okay?” I tell them it’s a hell of a lot better than “crappy and depressed”. I’ve visited that town too many times already.

I don’t understand the implicit expectation that one should always act like any given day is the greatest in ones life when that is rarely the case.

Great days are increasingly rare.

Aging and surviving means by its nature that we outlive others that we care for, that those same people will develop serious health problems that may or may not be terminal. It means that more people have more chances to disappoint us on every level.

We do not live in bubbles where bad things cannot intrude. At least I don’t. Anyone that does should probably seek professional help.

Very few people expect an honest answer to that question. Most don’t give a rat’s ass about anything outside their own little delusionary worlds, where lollipops do grow on trees and the sky is as green as the Emerald City.

The military has a policy called “don’t ask, don’t tell”. That one’s fraught with problems, but I’d like to see a general policy of “if you don’t care, don’t ask.” Leave me to work out my life in my own time and in my own terms.

My life is neither the best nor the worst. It simply is. Good, bad and scary, all at once, all piled in on each other.

Some think that honesty equates with pessimism. I am not one of them.

Honesty is the beginning of peace. Without it, every thing else leads down Valium Lane.

Not a place I’m comfortable with.

Dancin' With Them That Brung You

With the nomination of John McCain as their candidate, the Republican voters gave voice to their growing discontent with the party as it today. They were tired of the lies (great and small), mismanagement and arrogance of the sitting President. But with little to no party support, Mr. McCain rode that wave all the way to the convention.

And, still, the party hasn’t listened. Instead of hearing the discontent that will most likely leave their opposition in control of the House, Senate and presidency, it pushed McCain as far to the right as it could without him toppling over. It created an older, though infinitely more well-spoken, version of the current tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

(My cats are more well-spoken than GWB, by the way. And I never have to wonder what their agenda is.)

What are they thinking? That with a mismanaged war in Iraq that didn’t need to happen in the first place, a neglected war in Afghanistan that needed to happen but has gone off the radar and an economy in such shambles that no one can say with any degree of certainty that the $700 billion bail-out package will have any effect on the under-lying credit crisis people would be lining up to vote for more? That minute differences between the candidate and the incumbent would put just enough lip-stick on failed policies to make them look demure and not like whores?

Not that I mind the implications. I haven’t seen a good thing come out of the Republican party in my life time, so I don’t mind if they dig their own graves. I just wonder whose pockets are deep enough to lead an entire party down the road of political suicide. It’s either deep pockets or that they really are as un-intelligent, un-informed and out of touch as they seem.

So, on the off chance that any of them stumble across this, here’s a reality check: I’ve lost 20-25% of my 401(k), which is invested in what were stable mutual funds, in the past 3 months; my health insurance costs $7,200 a year, ¼ of which I pay, so a $2,500 tax credit would barely cover my current cost if I had to pay for all of it; my rent is going up $55/month, but my income hasn’t; everything costs more than it did a year ago. I’m on the losing end of this equation.

I know I’m not alone. I work hard, don’t take on debt that I can’t service, and give money to worthy causes as I’m able. I don’t have a mortgage that’s in default because I can’t afford a mortgage. I’m doing better than any number of other citizens.

And yet I’m being asked to allow companies to continue to operate irresponsibly even as I help bail them out.

I don’t see corporate greed and a lack of oversight as a worthy cause, and yet, in one way or another, I’m going to be making non-deductible contributions to the charity not-of-my-choice.

Any party that chooses to forcibly sculpt a W, Jr. out of what used to be a fundamentally decent man and then run him as a palpable candidate is hopelessly out of touch.

They’ve made a deal with the devil. Now they’re going have to dance with him.

Jewel in the Crown

It happened this morning: my grandmother died.

Jewel Mae Michael Blackshire Western passed on to her reward, and I have every confidence that it will be a great one.

She didn't amass a fortune in this life, nor did she seek to. She lived simply and responsibly, as many who lived through the Great Depression have done. But her inheritance in heaven will be substantial.

She's going to have to get used to being a rich lady.

When I was in college about a half-hour or so from her, I'd drop by in the afternoons on a random basis. It was usually the same: she'd get me a glass of iced tea, we'd go out to the front yard to sit under enormous trees, and then we'd talk. She told me stories about the past, and I told her what was going on in my young life.

And before I went back to school, she'd bag me up whatever produce they had, couldn't sell, but was still good.

It was always hard to get out of Grannie's house without one of those bags. Didn't matter much who you were.

My grandfather died before I was born, and she remarried when I was about 4. Grandpa Western, her new husband, was in the produce business, so she ended up in the produce business by default. And they prospered.

Whenever something was in season, they always had the best stuff around. They never made huge amounts of money, but they made enough. I don't know that they wanted for anything, and that in and of itself is an accomplishment.

And on any given weekend, there was no telling who would show up at her house unannounced. 15-20 wasn't unusual. When it came time to eat, there wasn't hardly any room to put a plate on the table because it had so much food on it.

Cakes and pies (she always had a selection in the freezer) went on one end of the kitchen counter, and tea glasses went on the other. At some point, she got a piece of plywood to put over the sink so she could use that space, too.

I remember graduating from one of the kiddie tables to the adult one very well. Sitting at the main table meant I was grown up. (I wasn't, of course, but it made me feel that way.)

She wasn't just a gracious and tolerant hostess, though. Grannie was ahead of her time on a couple issues.

One that many people today might not understand the significance of was her use of the word "negra" as opposed to the other one that I'm not going to use. All her life, she had heard people using that unspecified other derogatory word to refer to people of color. It would probably be perceived as derogatory by many people today, but in her day, “negra” was a respectful way to refer to a person of color. She never graduated to "negro" or "black", and certainly not "African-American". In her mind, she was using respectful language.

The other one that sticks out is the pre-nup she had Grandpa Western sign. It said that all of her assets at the time of their marriage (including the house and land) would convey to her children only. It gave him a life-hold estate on the property, but that was all. On the copy I saw of it, he had written "I did it for love."

Grannie's house sits about a quarter mile off the highway and is surrounded on 3 sides by farm and pasture land. The property backs up to a railroad track and, beyond that, a military arsenal. Whenever there was a rumble in the air, we never knew if it was thunder or them testing munitions next door.

She didn't get an air conditioner until Grandpa Western started to get sick with respiratory problems, so we spent a lot of time in the front yard under those trees. But I don't ever remember not feeling comfortable in that big old house of hers. Tall ceilings, big windows, lots of shade (the front yard was covered in moss because it was too shady for grass to grow) and fans always sufficed.

And I spent a bunch of time there. My cousins and I always seemed to end up in the creek that ran between the house and highway, even though we weren't supposed to be down there. And it got really dark and quiet at night. As the house settled in the cool night air, it creaked and made noises like footsteps in the distance. And in the winter, parts of it get cold, cold, cold. The only heat was a floor furnace in the living room. Some of the best sleep I’ve ever gotten was under the blankets and quilts in the back bedroom where it wasn’t much warmer than a cold, Tennessee winter night.

I miss that place as much as I've missed my grandmother for years.

When Grandpa died, she was already getting a little dotty. I remember her not being able to remember the word for "table", so she said "the thing with 4 legs and a top that sits on the floor". Not long after, she started to get worse. The rest is water under the bridge.

She got worse and worse and worse over the course of the better part of a decade.

I've often wondered whether it's easier to live with someone dieing over a long period of time or going suddenly. I think that both scenarios have their own unique pain. Watching someone die in slow motion is as hard as watching it happen suddenly. They just hurt differently.

Still, the most important part isn't death or how it happens. It's life and how it's been lived. The legacy left behind. The impact one has had on other people.

She lives on in me, my mother, sisters, niece, nephews, her grandkids and great-great-grandkids. Whether we realize it or not, we've all taken some of her with us.

She was a great woman. May she rest in peace and enjoy her well-earned rewards.

Rain, Rain: Go Away

When Shannon told me that Mama called today before I got home from work, I knew it wasn't a good thing. Any time she calls when she knows I'm probably not home, someone's either dead or nearly there. She has my office number, but doesn't have it on her cell phone, and she doesn't want to call me at work with bad news.

The long and short is that my grandmother, her mother, may not make it through the night. So I very probably will be taking my happy ass up to Tennessee some time in the next few days. It'll be a short visit: I can't be away from home too long right now.

We're finalizing audit at work, and Shannon's sister-in-law had her uterus taken out today. I have responsibilities and obligations 750 miles apart from each other, so it'll be tightrope meeting them all. If Daddy were still alive or Morgan (my niece) would be there, I wouldn't worry so much about going home. But he isn't, and she probably can't be.

My little sister is showing herself to be insane, once again, and my older one might or might not go. And if she shows up with her herd of ill-behaved dogs, it'll just make things worse.

For Mama, it'll be something of a relief to see Grandma go, I think. She's been in a nursing home not really knowing who she is for too many years. And as Mama told me tonight, " She's had a long, long life."

But at the same time, I can't imagine that it's ever easy to let go of a parent under any circumstance.

We'll go see Shannon's sister-in-law tomorrow evening, assuming that she's up to it. Then I'll probably start making preparations to be gone for a few days. I don't see an alternative right now.

It's a long trip, but I seem to cycle from one NPR station to the next up the line the whole way there. I'll be caught up on the news, if nothing else. Then I'll come back and finish up loose ends at work. There aren't too many, and if I need to, I'll go back tomorrow evening and tie nice, neat little bows on them.

It don't seem to rain when it don't pour. And right now, I'm desperately in need of a towel and some dry clothes.