Where's Your Heaven ?

I received an email from a dear friend a few days ago. As I recall, it was a general note including a number of fellow writers. In it my old friend briefly described where he was, in the far NorthEastern U.S and parts of Canada, which have always been heaven to him.  How nice, I thought, to know exactly where heaven is. A longitude and latitude are comforting. This writer is no simple thinker; science and philosophy are his friends. He knows that heaven is not to be taken lightly.

I remember my mother telling me where heaven was to her, without exactly calling it that.  It began at that point on a long train trip from the mountains and deserts of the west, when the train windows began to reveal thick, lush woods, fields, little country streams, and tall, cool grass of the Mid-west. It was that point at which she said to herself, "I could walk home from here." That's it: the turning point for our heart's home.

I walked into my portent of heaven the other day, with two giddy leashed dogs, dancing with the excitement of their prospective walk and the chance to go leash-free and fly back into our arms when called.  On a warm, blue sky morning, we drove just a few miles to a place called Price Park.  Only about one hundred and twenty-five acres, very lightly trafficked  and home to birds and butterflies and no doubt many feathered, furred and scaley creatures. It begins just off a busy road, with an asphalt turnoff and lot this day unoccupied by other cars.

A wide swath had been mowed , creating several adjoining pastures, making the most distance of a fairly small area. The paths are bordered this time of year with meadows full of purple, yellow and white flowering weeds (?)  taller than our heads.  At the far edge, all around, there are tall oaks, some with benches beneath.

Walk far enough and you will come across a small incline down to a creek, bubbling over sharp  granite outcroppings and polished pebbles, home to glittering fish swimming among the stretches of mica-laced sand. There is even a narrow sandy beach where dogs and children can dabble.

Back on the trail, a field of what I think is yarrow and maybe wild mustard is filled with bumble bees, so fat they make the stems bend when they alight on their blooming tops.  The sound of ciccadas and crickets competes with the bees' buzzing and the bird calls from the oaks and fruit trees.

I never thought, when I left my beautiful Mid-west, that my portal to heaven would be in the deep South, although I know well that the South is the very definition of heaven to many. But there it was, a little stretch of land near a busy road, preserved in it's pristine form, close enough to visit on an early fall morning with two eager dogs.

And to make it even more certain that it is in the territory of heaven, there is a biscuit shack on the way home where we sat on porch rockers and  had wonderful, just-made, flakey biscuits and coffee. Well, no coffee for the dogs. Just bowls of cold water and warm biscuits. Heaven for them, too.

Don't tinker with me, colds and flu. I am armed!

I have taken this exercise thing to new heights, for me, at least.  That explains why I was in Walmart buying lifting gloves. Those are what weight lifters wear to keep from tearing up their hands on barbells. "Wimps" my daughter said. I should note she has been a rower, and a pretty good one, at that. "They should just pound their hands to numb them. And if the cuts are too deep, just put in a little SuperGlue." Rowers are seldom hand models.

Listen, Sugarplum, I thought , if you knew how much I can bench press, you'd be calling me Mom Ma'am.

"Well, I sometimes have to shake as lot of hands, " I said, "and I don't want them to feel like I'm a stable hand in my free time."

"You still shake hands?" she asked in amazement? "That is so germy.  Everyone I know just hugs."

And blowing your germy breath into someone's neck is more sanitary? I wondered  .

And that brings me to my question. Just what do you know about Goji berry juice? Or Acai berry, for that matter. And does Airborne really work?I have been thinking a lot about contagion lately, ever since the the We Now Have Flu Vaccine sign went up at the Kroger doc-in-a-box.

I  usually deal with cold and flu season by not going out much.  Now that my children are grown and I don't do school related things, and I no longer work with little kids, I can have pleasant solitude for a good part of the winter, which is fine with me.  This fall, however, my calendar is buzzing with unaccustomed activity, the germiest probably being airplane flights and the gym.

Call me flirting with danger, but I have never had a flu shot.  Ever since my mother-in-law nearly died from her flue shot (either the shot, or she got the flu at the doctor's office, also entirely possible) I have avoided the "Elderly should be vaccinated" warnings and the AARP scare literature and have been vaccineless and flueless. But now, I think I may have pressed my luck far enough.

I toyed with wearing a mask on the plane. Not some merry Halloween interpretation of Lady GaGa, but one of those staid white medical masks like the Chinese wear in their polluted cities or that Japanese seem to wear just because they know something we don't. That could be a good way to avoid chatting with my seatmate, so it has some appeal.

Of course there will be an excessive amount of hugging and insincere air kissing at my reunion.  If I had known fifty years ago that I would be expected to hug and kiss some of these people, well, let's just say, I would have used them even more cruelly as characters in my books than I already have.  But it's never too late.

Anyway, on to the remedies. I posed the question of Goji berry juice to Kay and MaryBeth when we had lunch last week.

"I wouldn't know a Goji berry if it came up and bit me on the leg," Kay said, although perhaps a bit more colorfully.

"Well, an acquaintance of a friend had cancer, and he went into full remission after drinking huge amounts of Goji berry juice for several months," I said.

"So you decided to drink it, too?" Kay was unimpressed. Kay had cancer, too, and she got rid of it after chemo and a diet of eggs fried in bacon fat.

"Well, yes, sort of, " I said. "But only 3 ounces a day. It doesn't taste bad."

"Boy, are you a sucker." Kay dug into her unusually healthful lunch of sliced steak on a green salad.

"She is," MaryBeth unhelpfully added. "I can attest that she has an entire kitchen drawer full of Green Coffee Bean capsules, which Dr. Oz was peddling."

"Listen, this is not about me. What about Acai berries? Zinc? Super C? "

So, here it is:  I am going to drink my Goji berry juice (a powerful antioxident, everyone agrees on that ) get a shot, take my extra C and maybe take zinc (two people I know swear by it) plus eat all the vitamin loaded good stuff I already swear by, and hope for the best.  And I better not get sick.

But, my daughter put a positive spin on it. "Look at it this way.  You'll just lose those stubborn last 40 pounds a little faster."  Ah, the  annoying cheer of youth.

Temptation, Thy Name is Cheesecake

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in years.  In fact, I can landmark when I did it last. There was a Woolworth's Five and Ten in Ansley Mall. That's how long ago it was. And I did it this time because of my friend Kay.

Over one of our horrendous, cholesteral-laden breakfasts, I lamented that I was planning on trying on a few of last winter's clothing items, and I wished there were a way to save some favorites without expensive alterations. I was thinking particularly of a black and white tweed jacket.

"Simple," Kay said. "Just slap a belt on it. You put a black belt on that sucker, and it'll be brand new."

Hmmmm, I thought. A belt. They show this all the time in the fashion mags. It might even give it a little peplum effect around the hips. Peplums are in this fall. I was obviously not thinking clearly, since  the models in the magazines are about twelve years old and as big around as my finger. Of course they can well afford that fanny ruffle. They haven't got fannies, for God sake.

So that is how I found myself standing in front of the belts at my local Target. Since I bought my last belt at Woolworth's, not a lot has changed in the belt world, as far as I can tell. They are still generally made for women with waists. Losing weight or not, a waist is not really in my future. It wasn't in my past, either, but I didn't let that deter me from making the purchase.

I picked out a black belt with many grommet options which would let me strap myself into the boxy Chanel-esque jacket  so it would look a bit less like a cozy tent for a family of four. Instead it looked as if I had decided to strap closed a piece of luggage with a broken clasp that I just happened to be wearing. Not the effect I hoped for.

But I haven't returned the belt.  Maybe I'll put it over that white "big shirt." It looks like a lab coat, now, with snappy pleats down the front. At least a belt, any belt, is something of a triumph. I am advancing into core exercises now. In case you aren't up on fitness lingo, "core"is pretty much the same thing as "gut."I am working on having less core, although that isn't how they put it in the fitness world. I am "toning" my "core," presumably so I can tie my sneakers without needing oxygen.

Tonight I lifted weights while I watched Masterpiece Theater.  I deeply wanted a cup of coffee and a slice of cheesecake with a swirl of strawberry chocolate ganache as the label so cruelly taunts. And curses on the person who brought it to my dining table and refused to take it home, knowing full well I couldn't put its beautiful swirls down the disposal. There is a ring of hell especially mentioned by Dante for just such a sin. This Pilgrim is making progress, and I wasn't an English major for nothing.

He once was lost, but now he is found. That is today, not tomorrow.

Well, Jack was lost, to me at least, and now he's found, and that shows you that lost and found can have many meanings. My daughter posed the most provocative question : Do you need him to be found, or does he need to be found? Is being lost about him or about you?

It is true that it more about me than about him. Sometimes I get this panicky urge to reclaim some part of my past, a place or a person that I fear is lost to me forever. I have no more family of my own heritage.  I didn't claim them when I could, and now they are claimable no more.  That's at least part of the reason why, I think, I keep rattling around in the houses and bones of my past.

But back to Jack. Part of his disappearance was very mundane. His move to a new address caused enormous perplexity with the telephone company(does he have AT&T, too? I curse them daily)Part of the disappearance was a dreadful and largely undiagnosed illness that may best be described as a broken heart, but landed him back in the hospital with a newly manifested seizure disorder, just as he recovered his ability to walk.

Part of the reason was what a friend of mine once called "going to earth." That is what the fox does when pursued by the hounds. That is what she did, a 1950's beauty( a decade older than I was)and debutant who  appeared on the cover of Life Magazine, exemplifying the "Audrey Hepburn look,"with a spread inside the magazine showing her jaw- droppingly elegant Atlanta debut. There was a 50's style paparratzi response which drove her to a little run-down cottage on St. Simon's Island (that was in the days when there actually were little run-down cottages there)where she worked in her garden, never wore make-up,and no one ever thought of her as rich, or social or beautiful. Going to earth. Literally.

And Jack triggered the" hunter and hunted" in people, too.  Wealthy from his own genius before 25, owner of a magnificent, almost mythical house, cars in the garage that included a Maserati, and other equally absurd icons of glamor, and handsome, it goes without saying, he was the object of gossip and then some. An ocean-going sailing yacht and a beautiful wife just upped the ante.

It sounds like I am making this up, doesn't it? I assure you, I am not. This, in fact, is the tamer, more believable version of the facts.

So, it was rumored that Jack was divorced, had an unhappy marriage, and those turned out to be just rumors. I am sure that anyone that creative and driven was not necessarily the easiest person to be married to, but people who really knew him, whom I encountered in my search, say that they were happy, and that when his wife died, he truly fell apart. One day he could not stand up. Not paralyzed, he just couldn't walk, or drive or live as he had.

And so we talked, and arranged to meet in October with a mutual friend, our partner in "crime" when  we were ridiculously young. I am hoping for the best. Not for me but for Jack.

Did I mention I am thinking I am going vegan? I'll let you know how that is working out next time.

Pumping Iron, Lentils, and a Search for The Lost.

Well, I take it all back. I have sort of snickered at the idea of having a personal trainer. Never again. I thought all I wanted to do was walk on the gym treadmill when the weather was bad.  I have seen the light. I started on my arms and upper body, machines, a soupcon of free weights, and today I was able to increase the resistance and/or reps. by 40 %. I already have more energy. With time (I am doing this three times a week,) I think my rheumatoid arthritis will inhibit my knees and ankles less and less, and who knows where I can go from there? It really is a science, using breathing, body placement, and weights to gain strength and tone, and incidentally lose pounds, and I should have known it all along. Just like fewer Twinkies do not a diet make, doing more exercising the wrong way does not make a good exercise plan.

Now, to the legume recipe I mentioned previously. I started adding more legumes to my diet when I found I didn't actually have to spend time cooking them.  Kroger's began carrying a  Good Life Food product named Melissa's Lentils in the produce section. They are steamed and vacuum packed and ugly as sin. Snip the sealed 8+oz. package and dump the lumpy greenish-brownish-blackish unappetizing heap into a skillet, into which you have already put a little olive oil. So much the better if the olive oil is the kind with herbs that you use for dipping.

Add plenty of finely minced garlic (the kind that comes packed in oil in the produce department is fine) and heat on medium. You will need to break up the lentil mound and stir it around a bit. Add almost anything that strikes your fancy. Chopped sweet red and yellow peppers will improve its looks a lot. Chopped kale is good. (When isn't it?) So are chopped onions. Low sodium soy sauce is a good addition in small amounts, because lentils need some salt. If not soy, grind in a little sea salt. Andouille sausage, the vegetarian kind, is delicious. I have also used small chunks of previously cooked chicken which turns this side dish into a healthy main course.

If you spend more than five minutes on this you are trying way too hard.  And if you can't find the steamed legumes, buy a bag of the dried ones (more work but cheaper)in the aisle with the rice and pasta and follow package directions, leaving out most of the salt and all of the bacon that most packages suggest.

And now, put your best vibes into the universe so that I might find a dear, lost friend. Jack (not his name, of course)was a friend so much on the same mental plane that we almost thought as one person.  Often I repeated things to him that had happened in his past that he had never mentioned to me.  We used to joke that we didn't need a phone, and it was true. We went our separate ways when I was about thirty and went to law school, and he married a young woman who had idolized him since she was a teenager.

Years passed with only a couple of contacts, and then nothing. About a year ago, I heard that his beautiful wife had died, that it had been an unhappy marriage, and, that with her death, he became unable to walk. He was in a wheelchair for a time, but with therapy had started a slow comeback.

Finally, early this summer, I reached him on the last phone number I had for him, and we talked for a long time. I told him I would be back in town (our home town)in the fall, and I wanted to get together for lunch.  Now after unanswered emails, phone calls to a line with a filled mailbox, and every source I can think of, nothing.  I am haunted by what he said when I told him the autumn date I was hoping we could get together: "That's such a long time. For me, at least."

Vibes have worked  before.

A One Muu-Muu Girl in a Two Muu-Muu World

I have just come back from a week of visiting some of my husband's family in the Palm Beach area.
That t.v. show thinks it captures desperation, isolation and bizarre behavior "Under the Dome"? Oh, Stephen King, you know not what of you write, you poor innocent.

For starters, no vegetables, no fruits. Ever. One relative who went to the grocery store to supply us, knowing that my husband and I ate oddly, came back having "bought out the store," in his words.
A box of sliced mushrooms and a bag of shredded iceburg lettuce. That follows a family rule of always having the one least qualified do the job. Who always picks the restaurant, and here I have to interject that they eat out every single night...so...  The restaurant picker?  Steak and potatoes man. Always,  Except, wait.  Sometimes Italian, as long as there is plenty of breading and sauce. And then back to steak and potatoes.

And I am sorry to sound ungrateful, because I was able to eat well on someone else's dime. Scallops a couple of times, salmon once, and my horde of fruit and veggies from the local Publix which I visited within minutes of hitting the house. The good news, I lost weight. I didn't have to pay for a comfy room. Like the rest of the house, our room was apparently magically transported from Connecticut, their residence many, many years ago, with all the furnishings completely unable to be touched by anything that might be damp, sandy or beach related.  Not quite as dramatic as the former house which had pale marble floors that spotted if so much as a single drop of water hit them, where I ran behind two little kids, in from the beach, leaving God forbid wet footprints on the floor. The beach was literally right outside the door.  And the sofa was suede. Suede for God's sake!

So, I took, along with a lot of eating-out type clothing, a single muu-muu. A muu-muu sweats up fast and has to be removed and laundered immediately before it touches a piece of furniture, which limits comfy, sit around type clothing. A muu-muu is never worn outside of the house, except when I wore mine to the beach and on a hike through the nature preserve next door, home to many enormous spiders ("You should see them in another month. That's when they are really big.") so one muu-muu would have seemed enough, but next time, two. The other two female members of this ensemble, wore skirts to dinner and at all other hours of the day, and in one, perhaps both instances, nylons.  I have always been the only female among all the family extensions, to wear slacks, for anything, ever. The late patriarch did not approve of women wearing slacks, but because he so deeply disapproved of me for so many reasons, adding slacks did not seem as if it would matter. Now his portrait just gazes  down from the wall disapprovingly.

And yet these are really nice people. I like them as I tastelessly criticize them, and forgive them for not noticing that I have lost sixty pounds since I saw them last. And as for my venting in this blog, I promise to come back with a wonderful recipe for lentils. I made it tonight, and it was better than anything I had in any restaurant that had the words "steak house" in its name.

Now That My Husband Has Shown Me How The Iron Works, I Am Feeling Empowered

Why is it, no matter where I am going, no matter how far in advance I have known about the trip, I am always packing right down to the moment of departure?  Why did I decide to wear a shirt on the plane that requires ironing? Well, I know the answer to that one, at least.  It's because that shirt  happens to look good on me, and I want to make an entrance, more or less.  I vowed I would get down to the next weight "decade" before this trip to my mother-in-law's, then lamented because I was sure I couldn't make that goal, then I did make it, minus a couple more pounds to boot, so I very unwisely ate a  wonderful Greek dinner from Nic's in Marietta tonight and am praying that I don't regret it tomorrow in oh so many ways.

So now I have lost 60 some pounds, and I have to get serious.  I met with a personal trainer this morning who works at the gym I belong to, and I have seen the future. It is filled with gray and red machines that look as if they are just waiting around for a casting call for a new sci-fi movie being filmed in Atlanta. Actually, it was a good experience.  Chris (the trainer) did not talk down to me which is a major plus for him, since so many people think it is perfectly OK to talk to anyone over 65 with gray hair as if they are about to enter kindergarten.  None of "young lady" crap, which makes me furious.  Oh, let's call attention to the obvious, why don't we. And I call them on it too. They shouldn't think I find it charming when what I find it is condescending and trite. I do not mince words, which I would do if I were charming. 

 After this week out of town, I will put my newfound info on how to tone my biceps and triceps, to use with regular trips to the gym.  The flesh of my upper arms, while no longer really fat, look like the folded wings of a bat. I didn't foresee tank tops in my future, but this is a bit more hideous than I had expected.

Back to "charming." My friend Kay, she of the face lift, said to me at breakfast the other day, "Yuh know, (she's from Jersey)neither of us are charming. Or is it 'is charming.' I can never get that straight." She was having breakfast, as I said. It is her favorite meal, and it happened to be in the middle of the day. Lox, bagels cream cheese, scrambled eggs loaded with cheese and fried potatoes in huge chunks. I should mention she was putting the lox (raw smoked salmon, for you uninitiated out there) and cream cheese (a schmear) on a cinnamon raisin bagel. Maybe I should repeat that: a cinnamon raisin bagel, for God's sake. And drinking coffee with seven packets of sweetener and cut with half a cup of milk. Who needs to make up characters for a book?

Now that my husband has shown me how the iron works, I am feeling empowered. I would iron more things if I didn't have to get up so early to make the plane.