This is a testing post in preparation for moving to a different email subscription provider since Google has decided to remove that capability from their blogging product. We have a replacement and are in the process of changing over.
For all existing email subscribers, you should not have to do anything (except perhaps click a confirmation link in the first email after the changeover). Details to follow in a couple days.
Thx for your patience,
Sweet Hubby (Granny Owl's tech support team)
Mom died in 2016. Dad died in 2017. Sweet Hubby's mom died in 2018. Our adorable little Stachie kitty died in 2019. 2020 was COVID. And Donald Trump was there through it all. It's been a bad few years. But I'm aware that they haven't been nearly as bad for me as for many others, what with war, famine, tyranny, violence, and whatnot.
I know, I know. Our own is the only pain we truly feel and every person's problem is her worst problem, no matter how insignificant it might look to others. Comparisons are pointless, I know, I know. But still, I can't help but wonder what life is like for others, to try to put myself in their place, and to keep some perspective on my own ups and down. Sometimes when Sweet Hubby and I are driving somewhere, one or the other of us will say "Look at all these other cars, these other drivers. Every one of them is going someplace. The life of every one of them is as meaningful to them as ours is to us." It's a small observation, but it wakes me up every time.
It seems to me that it's vital that each one of us think about the other person, about other people. Grant him his humanity. Remember that your life is just as much mere scenery for her life as hers is for yours. We've got to remember that we share the planet and that all of us want to live decent lives. We must see the fullness of the life of other people, if for no better reason than because then the fullness of our own lives might be recognized.
When I wrote to the young woman who sent me Robin Wall Kimmerer's gorgeous Braiding Sweetgrass, I promised her that I would let the book, its deep wisdom, affect me. I have not consistently kept that promise, but this morning, it came to mind as I was picking blueberries from the bushes in our backyard.
I remembered to be grateful to Sweet Hubby for planting these bushes. To the soil and sun and rain for nourishing them. To the berries themselves for feeding us and the birds. To the good genes which have given me the gift of a body that has remained healthy through so many decades of wear and occasional abuses and neglect.
It's such a small and often silent thing, gratitude, but I find myself feeling less empty when I give it. It has been suggested to me that this blog too often shares dark, angry, sad thoughts, and it's true that I am often most inspired to write when I'm confronting some challenge or chewing on despair. I know that we humans grow emotionally from our dark times; there's little incentive to grow or change when we're happy and content. But I know I can choose which thoughts and feelings to give energy to, and would do well to focus more on what I am grateful for than what I'm ashamed of, angry at, and sad about.
I am grateful for the family, the time, the country I was born into. I am grateful for the meandering and rocky path which brought me finally to Sweet Hubby. I am grateful for whatever mysterious whim helped me decide to live where I do, because I love it so. And I am grateful for you, because if you are reading this, you are my friend.
Do the women who live a more (native/natural/indigenous/elemental/earth-based/primitive/tribal - take your pick) life than mine ever think to themselves "My legs used to be hairy but now they're smooth and I'm growing a beard"? This is the kind of thing I have the luxury of thinking about. Do they?
I recognize that every one of my problems is a first world problem. (Side note: I have an idea of what the third world is and who is supposed to be in it or of it, but what the heck is the second world?) And every one of my privileges is a first world privilege. I flick a switch and have lights and warmth. I turn a knob and have water, hot and cold and clean. When I notice them, I am thunderstruck by the enormity and inequity of my completely unearned privileges. I wouldn't last a day in a primitive, elemental world. Or a war-torn world. I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to cope or exist. Yet there are millions of people who do.
So what am I supposed to do with this understanding? I can't apologize for the luck of the circumstances of my birth, which I had nothing to do with. I can at least say that I do see it, the disparity between how I get to live and how those millions live. But so what if I can acknowledge that I'm better off than most people and through no virtue of my own and no fault of theirs? What good does my acknowledgment do anyone? It's like the announcements which have become standard before cultural events, acknowledging that the event takes place on the unceded lands of the indigenous peoples who occupied them before the lands were stolen. So what? The ruination of these peoples isn't undone or healed, no reparations are made, the native cultures are not restored so what good has been done?
I guess what is incumbent on me is what always has been: to live as kind and generous a life as I possibly can; to offer help where I see it's needed; not to take one moment nor one part of my life for granted; and for heaven's sake not to complain about my ridiculously trivial problems. But still, what good will any of that have done to correct or balance the inequities of the world?
I know that life is just what it is, the world is just what it is, and there has probably never been a time in all of human history when there weren't some who lived better than others and that's just the fact of it and not my problem and not my responsibility. But still, I just can't help but keep asking myself "Who am I in this?"
Last night I saw something, or was inspired, or had a revelation, a moment along those lines. It was about a play I started years ago, and have always wanted to return to, but hadn't gotten back to yet. It's about four generations of women living together; the oldest is slipping into dementia; her daughter, in whose house the play takes place, is trying to hold the family together; her daughter is angrily bitter from a recent divorce; her daughter is recklessly throwing herself into the future. I love love love this play, at least what it might be.
I hadn't gone searching for this inspiration. I hadn't (consciously at least) been thinking about this play. The moment came from the magical mire of my imagination. But all in that moment, I saw that the play belongs to the two older women; the other two are subsidiary characters who show up in the oldest woman's moment of clarity; I need to know their stories, but only tell bits of them. I saw a new possible structure for the play, that it needs to take place in stages, and what those stages should be. I even saw a complete scene unfold, one that made my heart feel sore and soft.
Also unbidden came the thought "This is the one. This is the play I will finally get right. This is the one which will get noticed." I suppose I've had the same thought about other plays; I don't actually remember if I have. But the thought was strong and terribly exciting.
Now, of course, comes actually having to write the darned thing, choose each word one at a time, in the hope of being able to fulfill on that thrill of promise and possibility which came to me all in a flash.
