Don't Forget to Check Your Teeth

Frank and Joan Manley with his first race car, a Deutsch-Bonnet

When my father and step-mother began to drift toward the unraveling edge of independent living--both health and mobility-wise--I flew to Bellevue, Washington. Several times. Eventually to diminished receptions as we drank lattes and good gin while putting off discussing the hardest things amidst the deteriorating circumstances of two brilliant lives lived in the literal fast lane (sports car racing and officiating and tours in far-off countries investigating airplane accidents). 

Here's what my year of rescuing my parents from the places and life they loved that could no longer sustain them taught me: there. is. no. best. way. There's only way. Way too hard. Way too messy. Way too complicated. And whenever it happens, for them it's always going to be way too soon. 

Unless it's way too late, and then--as a home care worker in Washington advised me--the next of kin can be held criminally libel for . . . I'm not sure what. But as an only child, I took heed. 

After months of researching independent living units in Kansas City, where their only child and three of their grandkids and their families live, and a doable drive from my step-mother's extensive Nebraska family, I embarked on yet another downward path to wisdom. What to do with the stuff--from a table made from a zebra skin (including legs, now illegal to sell in the USA, so donated, with like artifacts, to a local museum) to household records dating back to 1962. Post-its were applied: "Moving Van," "Donate," "Pack," "Estate Sale," etc. I spared them the "I've got Junk" truck labels. But there were two loads. 

Letting go is not for sissies.

Then all that's left is preparing a house to sell, arranging the estate sale, a car sale, emptying the safe-deposit box and moving accounts, checking on meds, getting the cats their shots and buying two soft, squishable carriers for under middle seats, asking your son to come lend two hands and a good brain, and buying four more plane tickets. Finally, in spite of the loose ends flailing around you like brain fog, you arrive at the airport, secure wheel chairs, and start to roll through what to my parents must have felt like the Wonderland rabbit hole. 

Joan Manley, now a young 97, and granddaughter Nancy 

Klein enjoying Happy Hour at Brookdale Wornall

And then . . . we discovered my father--world traveler extraordinaire--had put his wallet and passport into his checked bag. A fabulously understanding worker allowed us to go through in spite of that little hiccup--with wheelchairs, walkers, canes, a carryon with important papers and the family jewels, lattes, sack lunches, and two cats in carriers. Once on the plane in the front row of economy for the three of them, me across the aisle one row back in the middle so I could stow the other cat, my father needed to use the bathroom--fortunately just steps from his seat. But it was not an easy negotiation. I assisted, but still, we delayed the flight. On take off, the cat in the front row relieved itself as well. As soon as we were airborne, wet paper towels flew at my son who had charge of that feline. 

As I sat there deep breathing in a middle seat--willing the second cat to maintain control of its bodily functions for the duration of the flight--I made the inane mistake of shaking my head and wondering--almost aloud--what else could possibly go wrong? That's the exact moment I felt the bridge on my upper right side slip loose and settle onto my lower teeth. 

I rested my head against the seat and let the irony wash over me as we sailed over Washington State headed for Kansas. I desperately wanted to laugh, but how to explain that to the strangers on either side, and what if the bridge fell out into my lap and bounced onto the floor? With kitty under the seat, my purse and carry on were in the overhead compartment. Eventually, I ordered a drink through clenched teeth and discretely wrapped the appliance in a cocktail napkin and stuffed it into my pocket. I thought about wiping it off and jokingly asking the flight attendant if it was too late to check it, but even I know a bridge too far when I see it.

#SCCA #sportscars #seniorliving #pettravel #aging #caregiver #brookdalewornall #racing #flying #i'vegotjunk #passport #dentalbridge #looseteeth

RIP Skip

We were both way past our prime when I brought the skinny white horse to Four Mile to be a companion to my Tennessee Walker, Travis. Trav was going on five, Skip was going on twenty-nine.

People who know horses said he probably wouldn't last through the winter. Boy did they underestimate him. He was a retired show horse whose former family had to let him go. You could see it in the lightness of his feet, the way he held his head. He never forgot who he was. And he put on nearly a hundred pounds that first winter and never lost it.

During his five years at Four Mile, Skip carried more than 20 riders--some bareback--with never a wrong step or a head toss. His youngest rider was 18 months old, his oldest 70. They were five really great years.

When he was a few months shy of 35 (around 100 in people years), he went blind in one eye from the pressure of glaucoma (like a steady headache). Then he began rubbing his good eye until he split that eye lid open as well. It was clear that he was struggling with the pain in spite of the treatments and medications we'd tried.

Eventually, we all said our goodbyes, and the kindest, gentlest vet on the planet set him loose on the rainbow bridge.

That's a popular if somewhat childish image. But better to dwell on than the empty stall, the green winter blanket with the leg strap stitched back on wrong-way-round lying in the garage with the red halter that looked so striking against his white face. Or the silver champagne chiller half full of the hydration hay soaked in warm water there wasn't time to finish before a friend's horse trailer circled in front of the barn for one last haul. Nope, rainbow bridge it is.

At first, I worried whether Skip would take to our more humble facilities, tolerate my lack of expertise. Then one day, I was watching a friend work Travis in the round pen, and I felt the softness of a chin settling onto my shoulder and felt warm breath on my neck. I think it was Skip's way of saying I'd do.

I hope I did.

#equine #horses #rainbowbridge #riding #puttingdown #showhorse #paint #tennesseewalker #vet #horsevet #olderrider #womenandhorses

Word Clouds

I miss my old typewriter that took everything I had to give and reliably mirrored it back at me--typos and all.

Now we live on and in computers, where ideas are reshaped and replaced and even stricken almost before we’ve finished thinking them. 

I’m bothered by where all the letters go that I mistakenly type outside the designated boxes--when my screen doesn’t capture what my careless fingers fling at it. 

Do these mistyped fragments of instructions, queries, reflections, and heart-deep secrets careen down some cyber rabbit hole as they miss their marks? 

Do they slam into a cyber wall and disintegrate into the ether, or drift like marooned astronauts, raising a serif as they float past each other searching for an appropriate word cloud? 

Perhaps they accumulate in nonsensical clusters, not unlike much of my input that actually reaches its destination more or less intact. I prefer to think they swirl in an alphabet cyber soup where they stir themselves into the true meaning of life and that someday I’ll get a taste.

#cyber #cybertalk #alphabetsoup #typewriter #typos #meaningoflife

Space Dust and Human Ashes (Part Two)

 http://www.fortbragg.com/explore/glass-beach/. 

The coast of northern California is my all-time happiest place. I used to live in Fort Bragg and take visitors to see Glass Beach, a glittering, multicolored remnant of the town dump--multicolored glass bits and ceramic beads stretching along the shore still being polished by the waves. 

I've also visited the ruins of the Roman port Caesarea Maritima in Israel.

Miss Ogyny Attends the Olympics

Wedding rings? 

Back when I taught journalism at College of the Redwoods, I told my students that once they found the story their goals were to get it right and make it interesting. Recent reporting on women competing at the Olympics has been interesting, but not quite right.  Women make up 45-percent of the competitors, and more than half of the U.S. athletes at the games this year are female. But as Washington Post reporter Petula Dvorak points out, that doesn't mean they'll be treated equally. In case you missed it,

Some Days, You Wear the Egg Salad

Last Friday, I splattered egg salad on my foot while rushing to make a lunch to take to a last-minute subbing job. Here's the good thing: I was wearing crocs. For fashion-challenged readers, that translates to rubber shoes. The not-so-good thing . . . I called Carl over to have him lick it up. He's very accommodating that way. (If you haven't concluded that Carl is a dog, your life is a lot more interesting than mine.) And I didn't have to slow down in my race to eighth-grade science. But still. Is it really better to have dog slobber on your foot instead of foodstuff?

It wasn't until I got to school that I discovered that while my shoes were egg-salad free, not true for the horse poop that I'd traipsed through in the barn in my goin-ta-town rubber shoes instead of my shit-kickin', steel-toed rubber boots.

Marble Stairs

Hey, you builder of marble stairs,

Look at your hands when you think of love;

Behind your eyes hide the secret of stones

And the baffling fits and turns of your woman's love,

The fickle patterns that it weaves

Into the fabric of your life.

When you bend over tiles of mosaic witchery

That should outlast the tread of passing time,

You see how well your hands have done,

But will they ever be smooth again

As in those days when all you built

Were dream towers in the sun?

Ah, to hold her hands again...

Sweet passage towards the rosy end...

Soon, soon, my love, the stones

Around you cry, echoing your own:

I shall be happy then.

Poor, poor builder of marble stairs.

Bienvenido Nuqui Santos

San Francisco, 1990s

#poetry #bensantos #bienvenidosantos #marblestairs #marlismanleybroadhead