When the Time Comes...

In Blackwater Woods (excerpt)
by Mary Oliver

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

My grandma died last night. She was 89. When I talked to her a day or so before Christmas, she asked as she always asked, "When do you think you'll be coming to visit?" I couldn't say. I was prepared to take a leave of absence and help care for her if needed. She'd been under 24 hour care for a couple of weeks. My mom, my aunt, and a few friends were sharing caregiver duties. Mom told me that grandma was more confused, couldn't remember something that happened an hour before, but she could remember big pleasant things, like my calling. Mom tossed out the Alzheimer word, but it sounded more to me like the withdrawal that comes before death. The happenings of this physical world become less important. It also seemed Grandma was getting less oxygen, her lung cancer depriving her of that brain food. Mom told me they had a nice Christmas, with everyone remembering old times.

Now I am thinking about going back to Wisconsin, of visiting the house without my Grandma there. As much as her absence, I am thinking about the dismantling of her house, her big house that she'd always wanted, filled with the keepsakes of five generations. I think of sleeping for the last time on the bed that was always "my bed," and before my time, my aunt's bed. I think of the bed my grandma and grandpa shared for years, and my grandma alone for another decade. Who in my family will take these, or will they be sold, the past lives of these objects meaning nothing to the new owners? So many photos, scrapbooks, pieces of a life, how will they be scattered? We each will receive pieces of her, physical mementos, reminders for our hearts.

My grandma (and grandpa) and their house were always a refuge for me and my brothers. Theirs was a place we could find unconditional love, treats (ice cream every night), and none of the negative judgements. Even as I let her go, she will always be a part of me.

Better Together

Today, like any other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~Rumi ...translated by Coleman Barks

Today Steve and I celebrate our anniversary. We officially married on December 27, 2002.

Notice the date just before the end of the year. We bought our duplex together that year, and when we thought of the complicated tax preparations, we decided to make it a little easier. So many legal documents are rolled up into that one signature. I know, that doesn't sound very romantic. From our point of view, we didn't and don't need that document to forge our commitment and love for each other. I was a little ambivalent about it, thinking of my gay friends who cannot get married and resolve so many legal matters in this way. This morning Steve and I were saying it didn't make much difference to us. In fact, we've never had anybody question our right to speak for each other. All we have to do is say we're married and the doctor will tell all, or the insurance will cover us.


Steve took this photo of us Christmas night. He spent Christmas day with Krissy. He asked me how my day went, and noticed my lack of enthusiasm. I didn't want to say so, but I'd been feeling lonely. I didn't want him to feel bad about spending Christmas Eve with me, and Christmas day with Krissy. In the end, I was glad I confessed, because allowing the words to come out, I realized my pain was about something deeper than that. I'd meant to do so much more on my vacation, and I missed him that day as a distraction from the things I didn't do. Also, we were going back to work the next day. His sabbatical over, we'd have no more relaxed days together, very few chances to dine out for breakfast. Thus the look.


As he left for work today, Steve said, "Don't spend all day reading a sad book of poetry." He'd seen the book in my hand, Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation.


I said, "It's about love!"
He said, "And poems about love are sad. At least bittersweet."
In a way he was right. Poems about love, or more especially about revelation, are about death. This will all go away.


I don't see it as sad, though death still scares me even after 20 years of a Buddhist practice. I see it as a reminder to let my divinity shine.


I'm not doing that when I'm wallowing in loneliness because I'm seeking distraction from inertia. Sometimes I escape in reading, as Rumi cautions against. Often I escape in TV. I watched way too many Christmas movies this year, even though there are only a few types: Santa (Miracle on 34th St), Love (A Holiday Affair), A Christmas Carol, and It's a Wonderful Life. I suppose I could include a magical category, but those can usually fall into those other types. At least all those holiday movies were uncomplicated fun, and always had a happy ending.

On February 7 it will be our 10th anniversary of the day we first met. For me, it was love within a couple of days. Steve declared love a few days after that, but admitted a few years later that he was slow to feel his was a deeper love. He is careful like that. It is easy to love him. If we're walking along a sidewalk, he will reach out to touch me, or put his arm around me, and I think, oh my, am I showing my love enough? I need to reach out more. and I reach out to touch him. It goes like that. Neither of us ever seem to think, I do too much. Rather, we keep trying to do more for the other, and my gratitude never ends.

Between us, it is not the way Marge Piercy says in "To Have Without Holding":

"It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives."
[snip]
...to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

I don't find that finely tuned tension that Piercy writes of. Rather, I feel that we amplify each other, bring out the best in each other. We have each other, and like Piercy, we do not hold tight. We value the autonomy of the other, and the returns are so sweet. When I have loved others wide open, there has been this pain of stretched muscles, but with Steve, who so generously met my passion of a few days, I found warm embrace. We have found the sweet trust of non-ownership. We don't expect or want to be the only one, the soul mate, the one who is entitled, and through that not-holding, we find a peace that comes with never losing each other.

Tonight we went to the restaurant where we got married 5 years ago, Takahashi. We go there often, but tonight after reading these love poems, and remembering our 10 years together, I was excited about revisiting the night we tied the knot. Our same waitress was there, and when I said, "You'll never guess what night it is," she said, "Would it be an anniversary?" She told us there have been three marriages, three proposals, and when Steve asked, thinking of course not, "Yes, there was! One divorce." They wanted to give us free ice cream, but we didn't feel up to ginger, green tea, or red bean ice cream.

We decided to get dessert at Palio. A chocolate mousse tort for Steve, Red Velvet Cake for me. Divine. Once home, we finished the Scrabble game that we've been playing for over a year. We usually only play this travel Scrabble at Takahashi, and lately the food has been arriving much faster.

Santa was very very good to me

This was the last photo I took with my old camera:


Santa gave me this new camera with 8.2 megapixels and anti-shake technology. I don't know exactly what those mean, but I do know I can capture our cat so you can get a glimpse of her cuteness now. Old camera just gave us a black blob. I kinda knew Santa was bringing me this gift because we looked at various cameras in the store.

This is the first photo I took with my new camera:

We had a tiny bit of snow on Christmas Day.

Among other things we had this

for our Christmas Eve dinner.

Steve asked, "Are we having that dragon food?"
"Dragon food?"
"You know, that thing you got at the farmer's market that looks like a dragon."
"Oooohhh. I think of that as the fractal vegetable."

For the life of me I couldn't remember the name of it, but I kept thinking of Brendan Fraser reading "Dragon Rider" and talking about the humunculus. The folks at the farmer's market told me it is the father of broccoli and cauliflower. I don't know about that, but I did find from some creative googling including the word fractal that it is called Romanesco. I like Dragon better. It tasted a bit like cauliflower, only more green, that is, bitter. I liked it, Steve not so much.

Goodbye, old camera. Steve wants to have it.


Steve's dad gives him a Christmas carving every year. These and the tree make up most of our Christmas decor.

Winter Colors

May all beings be happy. May all beings be at peace.

Breakfast Around Town

I've been on vacation the last couple of weeks. I meant to do a bit more writing buuuuttt we all know how that goes. I also meant to spend a bit of time with Steve while his sabbatical vacation wound down. It's been nice to relax, get some things done around the house, and go out to eat together. Steve's been on a breakfast food kick, so we've been going to various diners around the city. He's found that if he eats a really big breakfast, his day goes better. Me, I have more energy if I have a light breakfast of fruit, and I usually like to eat the traditional breakfast food for lunch.

We found that the restaurant around the corner, Sckavone's, the place I like for an easy-going place to hang out, use the wifi and maybe have a spiked Italian soda, has a decent pancake, along with the other breakfast usuals.

Steve's really been into the pancakes. I usually like eggs, potatoes, toast, but like a taste of the pancakes. I get to have a few bites of his. The best place for pancakes was, wait for it, The Original Pancake House. I don't mean The Original Hotcake House, a place closer to home that we don't like to go to anymore...they have great pancakes but cheap syrup and bad coffee. I don't mean just any Original Pancake House either, but the original Original Pancake House. We saw the chain featured on a travel channel Top Five breakfast show. Krissy got the chance to go with him first when she took some time off work last week. (Steve took my photo at TOPH.)

Steve told me he used to go all the time to TOPH when he was a kid in Aurora, Illinois, and here I thought he'd first heard about it on the show. He just hadn't tried it here in Portland because there usually is a seriously long wait. In Aurora, he told me, they never had to wait. He went there with his grandpa, who was a cop. The waitstaff always hustled them to a table, and somehow he got it into his child's head that people were waiting because they wanted to wait. If he'd known they got to skip waiting in line because his grandpa was a cop, he'd have been embarrassed.

Another day, we tried TOPH again, but this day the wait was indeed too long, so we went to a diner a few blocks away that serves breakfast all day, and which we'd figured was a backup plan for people who couldn't get in down the street. The Golden Touch became our own backup plan. I was fascinated by the decor, most of which didn't seem to have changed since mid-century. The food was good enough. Steve appreciated that his over-medium eggs were actually over-medium, and not runny. I especially liked my lunch choice, which seemed to me a carnivore's attempt to provide a vegetarian option without being too familiar with usual vegetarian offerings. It was called a veggie melt, and was scrambled eggs with onion, peppers, some other vegetables maybe, and cheese on a sandwich. It never occurred to me to put scrambled eggs on bread before, even though I like a fried egg sandwich.

Before I get to today's restaurant, let me think. Did we go anywhere else? We must have. Well yes, of course, we went to Genie's several times over the course of Steve's vacation. Gotta love their Eggs Benedict.

Funny thing is, Steve just walked in, and he told me he's been wanting to go to The Original Pancake House for oh 15 years. He's mentioned it to me, to Krissy, to previous girlfriends, but none of us expressed any particular interest in going there. I don't remember. Maybe he pointed to it in passing and I didn't know what he was pointing at. Suddenly within 24 hours both Krissy and I wanted to go there. I was interested because the tv show featured the Dutch Baby pancake that came out of the oven kind of like a souffle. I'd never eaten such a thing. Steve got the buttermilk pancakes, yummy unto death. I want to go back to try the sourdough pancakes.

Oh, there was at least one late night visit to the Jubitz truck stop. We were reminded of that place because of another travel show, the top 10 truck stops around the world. What a hoot. Steve liked the diner food there more than I did.

I'm sure I'm missing someplace. Today, we went to Sanborn's. Krissy introduced Steve to this place. The pancakes were great, I got my usual taste from Steve. I decided to go for the breakfast burrito with a mimosa. I remember getting breakfast burritos in the sleaziest casino on the river in Laughlin, NV sheesh 18 years ago, Don Laughlin's Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. (That place incidentally is where I saw Dick Tracy and got my T-Shirt for a ticket. The theater inside the casino served booze before serving booze was cool in movie theaters. If my ex secretly reads this, that will take him back.) Quick things with scrambled eggs, beans, cheese, and green chiles. This was not that breakfast burrito. I could choose my insides, and I chose eggs, green chiles (of course), and jack cheese. On the outside I also got black beans, sour cream, guacamole, mango salsa, and lime. And Santa Fe style potatoes on the side. Yum. Mee.

Book Group: The Last Town on Earth

The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen was suggested for our library book groups by the Multnomah County Health Department. If a book group chose to read this, the department would contribute the books, and send a pandemic health department expert to the group. We chose this for our November read.

Jessica, our pandemic expert, was excited about this opportunity to work with the library. She loves the library, and participates in Everybody Reads as a library patron. This was her brainchild, and she hopes to make something like this as big an event as Everybody Reads. (Believe me, it is big here in Stumptown, known for its readers. I've had people stop me and exclaim, "Oh, that's the book everybody's reading, isn't it? Do you like it?") The health department? Not so well-known. She was excited about the greater visibility the department could gain by partnering with the library. She'd heard the author on NPR, and took it from there.

The Great Influenza, a non-fiction book about the 1918 flu pandemic, was considered for this joint venture, but she and the other planners felt this fictional account would be more approachable.

Up to a point, it was. We readers enjoyed the background history we learned, not only about the flu epidemic, but about the unions, the Wobblies, feminists, and their influence in the Pacific Northwest. As a group, we felt the characters and plot failed to live up to the subject. (It's unusual for us all to share the same opinion, to be fair our numbers were small just before the Thanksgiving holiday.) I tend to enjoy a plot that is driven by interesting characters. This seemed more to us like the author had a plot in mind, and created characters to fill those roles...not so believable to us. One person summed it up, that it seemed to be written with the movie in mind. She already knew the actors: Tommy Lee Jones for the town's leader, Jude Law for Graham, the stiff-upper-lipped young man just trying to protect his family. I was a little annoyed at the implication that an attempt to create a utopia was doomed due to human nature. Another felt the book started out well, but then got too simplistic.

One of the first things Jessica told us is that this story is a good illustration that quarantines don't work. I'd been wondering about the effectiveness of the masks. Wouldn't a sick person contaminating the outside of a healthy person's mask still manage to spread the disease? Just so. It would be more effective to have sick people wear the masks. The 1918 flu epidemic was what they would call a "category 5" flu. The world hasn't seen such a flu since. There were some global pandemics in the 50s and 60s, but not like this. Recently it was discovered that this flu did indeed come from a bird. (They got samples from bodies frozen in the permafrost.)

The bird flu existing now is difficult to pass from person to person, but a few cases have. As to whether there will be a bird flu that is easily passed...it's a crap shoot. Jessica told us plans would trigger if "anywhere in the world a confirmed cluster of a new flu" has a certain "fatality ratio." Plans can't include a vaccine really, because we can't predict the strain of a pandemic. Part of the problem in 1918, the US government so controlled the media that communities couldn't learn needed details about what worked in other communities.

We learned that here in Multnomah County, the "community mitigation strategies" for a category 5 pandemic come from the best practices that cities and towns took in 1918. Portland happened to utilize these, and didn't fare quite so badly.

These practices are:

• multiple social distancing strategies (don't get too close)
• cancelling school classes for up to 3 months
• urging businesses to stagger shifts so less people are working at one time
• if an individual is sick, urging families to stay home voluntarily

Another health dept expert, Amy S, has been perusing the archives about the 1918 epidemic in Portland. The first case of "Spanish influenza" in Multnomah County was reported on October 15, 1918. Because of the US media blackout, the big news coming out of Spain made it seem as though it originated there, thus the name. In the Oregonian, on September 29, 1918, 85,000 reported dead in Boston. In Portland, shipyards were affected, businesses "concerned as to the loss of ship production."

Challenges faced in a pandemic? Jessica said, "The closing of the schools: teens get antsy." [spoiler alert] In the book, 20-something adults were the culprits when they got antsy. Also, the global nature of businesses. For instance, if the health department seeks cooperation from businesses in closing the Lloyd Center Mall, they may have to call owners in China. Jessica was clear that Multnomah County doesn't have the authority to enforce martial law, nor did it seem she wished for it. She emphasized that within the department they work towards consensus. Her overall message seemed to be that best practices involved cooperation, not authoritarianism.