consolationland

Mary: Whenever I take Bingo on walks myself, he really gravitates to that phone pole there.

Angelina. Yes he does. And there he goes. Who’s a good boy?… So! Mare! Back to you. Just read your latest blog page. I’m intrigued! It describes a whole new side of you. One that only people in churches get to see. But I do not, because I don’t even know anyone else who is more inclined to the heart of Christ.

Mary: Bingo is.

Angelina: That’s a given; Bingo is a pure soul. But please walk me through the steps of how these church encounters happen.

Mary: It’s every church. They all have a different path which has always worked beautifully for that community: baptism as an adult vs. baptism as an infant, baptism as triple immersion vs. 1950s forehead dab, fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays and other fasts year round. I fall short at all of them.

Angelina: So first, people meet you being there all quiet and polite, and they underestimate you in a wildly drastic manner or find you threatening for some reason. Second, they walk up to you and just say this stuff, while you sit there listening patiently.

Mary: It really hurts. I mean, how hard can it be to just blend in and be normal and abide as a good church member? Maybe God only put me here as some hapless anthropologist unawares.

Angelina: Now before you step in to churches, do you first put on a pair of Dumb Eyes?

Mary: Yes, the eyes are very large with rolling googly beads. Like on Planarian flatworms, when you view them under a microscope in science club.

Angelina: Then, you stand there looking like a raving idiot?

Mary: Uh. I guess?

Angelina: Thus prompting people to diagnose you with lust, and fleshly desires. Do they even know that you handwash your socks in the sink?

Mary: I did go buy that Mexican scrubby washboard. That counts as a labor saving device.

Angelina: No. That still counts as self-flagellation.

Mary: And I do have a fleshly desire for an Excalibur food dehydrator. Then I can make my own apple rings.

Angelina: Well meanwhile, you’re getting pasta. Here’s some Tupperware; I made lots. You can eat it tomorrow for lunch. Night, Mare! Bingo, we’re not gonna chase that bunny now; let’s go home.

Another Thought, 4/8: Just reading Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. One of the points is that to engage in a negotiation (and many personal conversations are exactly that), we have to settle What are we talking about? Who are we? How do we feel? Well, in the conversations described here, let’s suppose that the other people were peacefully tending the home base of their faith, and I was crashing into the china shop with these big sandbags of unresolved grief and then expecting all sorts of understanding and approval? It would be good in the long run to circle back with all these good people and explore how they are, and how they felt. Maybe some day when my plumage grows back in.

The Big Disclaimer: This is not the path of “God must grant me the ideal life that I imagined, or I will not believe!” Nothing in this post is cause for complaint compared to the immense suffering in the world. Religious faith is an immeasurable blessing, and I am very happy for my friends whose faith is flourishing right now. This is only the rumination of a melancholic sort who is alone too much and would benefit from having someone at home to set her straight and help process these experiences the day they come up.

A friendly neighbor, young enough to be my grandson, called “Hi Mary! Heading to work again? Why not just retire?” For this common question I usually have a cheerful joke all ready to hand back. This time to our mutual dismay I just said “Because I’m really tired of being alone.”

“Whoa,” he cautioned. “You know, there is such a thing as being TOO desperate. When women hit up on me I show them this wedding ring and say ‘Thank you Lord Jesus, for giving me such a beautiful reason to say No.'”

In other news on the Christian front, a sweet warm-hearted acquaintance with a delightful family saw me when I stopped in at her church for some quiet time. I confided my bewilderment with the Gospel message, and how I’d tried to live up to it all my life. She kindly sat down for a heartfelt pep talk with me about my spiritual walk. She mentioned the salvation verses of the Romans Road, and our hope of heaven. She gently questioned whether my salvation years ago was really certain, whether my own faith in my salvation was secure, whether at the time I had really been aware of my inherent sinfulness and need of Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross, whether I fully accepted the church as God’s chosen family for me, and finally the barrier in the way: my fleshly desires. Of course, the fleshly desire she meant was the wish for a family of my own at home, but at first I just stood there with a dumb look, thinking of my bed = yoga mat, and breakfast that day = split peas, with weeds foraged from the tree farm near the post office. I am sad to say that my response was to finally take my leave and blunder off waving my hands in disconcerted surrender; later on I’ll go back and thank this gentle sweet soul for her kindness and concern. (Culture note: the Romans Road to Salvation topic is long long familiar from my years in the Bible Belt, where it came up as a caring everyday pleasantry everywhere — at gas stations, at the Jesus Laundromat, in line at the bakery to buy doughnuts. The town phone book even had little fish symbols to designate businesses owned by Christians. I was sincerely whole-heartedly saved there in 1980. The problem is that no one since then witnessed my conversion, so how can they be sure it was genuine?)

Last year I was attending a beautiful church. After two wise and welcoming interactions with a member of the clergy and his hospitable family, I booked a counseling appointment to discuss membership. He and his staff welcomed me to their office. There I openly confessed the greatest impediment in my spiritual life: exhaustion and despair caused by utter loneliness. “I expect to die alone and to be forgotten right away, and that’s just life for many people. But I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like, to love someone who would actually like to be loved by me. Someone that I have the right to talk to about anything, and the right to touch, in a relationship where no one is assaulted or humiliated or screamed at. I want to go home to my husband, and to lie down and be at rest.”

“Let’s just call it what it is: Lust,” he smiled. “You’ve chosen to feel lonely. You make sadness your comfortable choice, with fantasies about the pleasures of the married state. Our society believes celebrities like Dr. Ruth [Westheimer] — that to be happy, we need to be having sex!”

“No, it’s that… to be human, we need other humans,” I told him. “We need to know and be known as our whole selves. I experienced that one time long ago, with a deeply serious young man in Russia. Right before I left the country he and I became acquainted and spent several days with his family, taking walks and talking about life, and he asked whether I would ever consider a future with him. I took that very much to heart, and I think of him every day. But we never saw each other again.”

“You could have married him, yet ended up right where you are today,” he laughed. “He could have died in a year or two.”

[Momentarily speechless.] “He did.”

“Well, see? There ya go!”

He compared me with my adamant family-life wish to a little kid with his fist stuck because he’s trying to get a pebble out of a precious antique vase; or to an elephant chained up as a calf, who grows up and doesn’t understand that she can just break the chain and walk away.

Then for two hours he encouraged my path forward: renunciation of earthly desire, and union with the true Bridegroom of my soul. He told story after story about martyrs of the flesh, centuries ago in other countries. One young man was so enamored with prayer that he had himself walled in, standing up until he died; his remains are still there, and people come to his grave to pray for special intentions. Another woman in her devotion to God became a pilgrim, and spent the rest of her short life walking. Passersby discovered that she gave clairvoyant answers to their questions, though she lost all awareness of her past and her own name as her clothes fell into rags and her body wore away. “And YOU can have this same divine Eros, this same joy in the Lord! You can have the same trust in God that my children have in me.” He concluded with suggestions about texts to read, and ways to incorporate weekly fasting.

He’s a radiant generous person in general with a warm manner, someone I would ordinarily be happy to see again in his church. Still, as he talked I sat twisting my mind into a Mobius strip, pretzeling out the logic for that cosmic step of renunciation into ultimate fulfillment. I’d walked in looking forward to a meeting of the minds about deep spirituality. I walked out feeling like a naughty little girl harboring carnal thoughts, and haven’t had the heart to return to that church since. Being too dissociated to even remember saying goodbye, I left the church whimpering and groping along in a strange inner darkness to the bus stop. The bus was empty. I huddled up in a seat. The driver checked on me in the rearview mirror. Before starting the bus he turned and nodded to me and smiled with remarkable kindness. Getting off the bus later, still whimpering, I smiled back at him.

I arrived home and packed up all my Bibles and religious books, and boxed them in the closet. “I’m sorry,” I told the icons on the wall with their sad eyes, as I took them all down. “Something is wrong with me. Some day I’ll be ok, and we can all live together again.” That night, and every night for weeks after, I woke up in the dark gripped by fear: for the first time in my life, the night sky was an empty shell. Outer space held no heaven any more. Time was empty too; history had lost its meaning. There was no sense or plan for the full circle of eternal redemption or heaven, not for me.

The day after the session, my dear former dental hygienist passed me on the street. I watched myself cracking jokes about a real estate poster on a phone pole, making hilarious fun of the stylized commercial euphemisms and prices. That night she contacted me to follow up. “How are you doing?” she asked. “Something was wrong today. You didn’t look or sound like yourself.”

She had a point. The counseling encounter had hit like a concussion, a head injury that still hasn’t gone away. Now church services that mesmerized with their beauty seem like a nicely decked out puppet show. Decades of memorized chants from Liturgies and Mass and feast days and akathists and hymns (in Slavonic, Old Russian, Latin, Greek) have disappeared from memory. Those cherished daily prayer books are just obsolete words on a page. The favorite luminous promises and prayers of Scripture sound like trampled dust. God’s whole historic united body-of-Christ plan has marched off without me; he’s in some other part of the cosmos, a pleasant well-meaning guy with good ideas and care for better people.

Maybe the real fleshly desire, other than Trader Joe 72% chocolate, has been the lifelong desperation to belong to a church, to follow all the advice, to feel saved enough, to feel included like everybody else. Along the way of trying so hard, I lost my faith and want it back. I miss the words in print and hearing, the eyes on the wall. Most important I miss myself, and the way God used to lead me — a prompting of intuition that cut cross-wise right through my ordinary thoughts and showed the way, and was always always right. It’s time to find that again.

In fact, after my neighbor had the gentle word with me about salvation, she urged me to try prayer, asking Jesus for guidance. That night I did, and right away there was an inner flash of intuition. “You can be lonely, you can be sad,” that awareness seemed to say. “That does not interfere at all with the work I gave you, of sitting with souls in pain. But do not ever, EVER, speak to them the way those people spoke to you.” Maybe I needed to hear everybody’s advice, to feel exactly which words do not help.

Meanwhile, back to that driver on the empty bus. His silent nod and smile were holy, the sacrament I’d been looking for. He inspired me to carry that kindness forward, to kindle sacramental meetings ever since, all day every day, one human being at a time.

(No bunnies here. Just a nice view this week, on the walk home after work.)

Each morning, the alarm in their bedroom rang Ding! then with a polite pause Ding Ding! then with another polite pause really warming up with jazzy bright chimes in a doot-doot-de-doo rhythm. A fast online search turned up a picture that looks like theirs — a Westclox Big Ben Chime Alarm. Memory is a curious thing; I had no visual recall of that clock, but spotted it right away just now in a whole page of vintage models.

Every morning, when they turned off the alarm, Grandma’s voice would say to Grandpa “4:30 already! Goodness. After you retire, I’m going to sleep late until 6:00 every morning of the week. What a shame to wake up the little one in there.”

The little one though was up & at ’em, wildly excited to be visiting Gram & Grandpa, with the amazing novelty of being awake in the pitch dark and cold. Soon Grandpa and I were down at the table in the chilly kitchen by the warm gas stove, me on my foot stool for extra height, bundled up warm with an extra pair Gram’s woolly knee socks. Gram whipped up sausage patties, perfect round poached eggs, toast, and sometimes (my favorite) mashed potatoes fried crisp in butter, and delicious oatmeal cooked in milk. I got to eat it all up with a special tiny child spoon of real silver, and drink out of a special glass with a beautiful red Kentucky Cardinal painted on the outside. Every morning I looked at its red and black colors and jaunty crest, wishing I could go to Kentucky and see a real Cardinal, because we all knew New York is too cold to ever have any. (The first time I saw a bird outside that matched the bird on the glass, I burst hollering into the house to tell Gram to come running and see.)

Grandpa was silent at breakfast, and silent in general. He worked every day except Sunday from 6:00 in the morning to 6:00 at night at the family business, generally in the bitter cold. For the coldest days and snow, as outdoor clothes he put on just a quilted vest and a black and white hunting hat with ear flaps, made of hounds’-tooth pattern wool. I never once saw him wear a coat or scarf or gloves. Mornings we left the house at 5:30 or so, crunching through snow under the moon to the car. Grandma put me in the back seat and always said “Where’s your HANDS?” and I had to hold them straight up where she could see them so she knew it was safe to close the back door without hurting me. Then she drove very slowly all the way down the hill to town, to drop off Grandpa for the workday, and he got out of the car with a roast-beef sandwich in brown paper to tide him over until supper.

After work we picked him up. In careful stiff stages he eased in to the car after his long day. If my cousins were in the car, and if it wasn’t too close to supper to spoil our appetites, sometimes Gram opened the glove compartment up front and took out her supply of Black Jack gum for us to chew on. (In Wikipedia I just looked up Black Jack gum. By golly, that was really a thing — a licorice formula confection since 1884, the first flavored gum in the US and the first gum available in sticks. The licorice (pronounced lick-rish) flavor was completely strange to us, but we chewed it anyway. Then while Gram drove the car we kids took the gum wrappers and very carefully speared them on the long pearl pin that Gram always wore with her hairbun. We thought she might enjoy the fun of having gum wrappers falling all over when she walked into the grocery store or took off her hat.)

Back at home, Grandpa sat down on the foot stool while Grandma unfastened his high boots, working the laces free of the metal hooks from toe to top. His hands couldn’t handle small things like bootlace knots, after getting frostbit in World War I. I didn’t understand then how come if the War was more than 40 years ago, why didn’t the frostbite melt away by now? But Grandma said that’s how it goes with frostbite, and that’s why girls have to put on mittens and warm socks for outdoors. After easing his feet into fresh wool socks and slippers, Gran gave him a cup of hot tea to hold and then opened the freezer and took out a package of pure white goose-grease from the butcher, and she rubbed it on his hands to help them warm up for the night. Then he would sharpen his straight razor on a long leather strop, shave with a little mirror on the wall, watch a few minutes of TV news over a very light supper (small patty of round steak chopped, three spoonfuls of cooked spinach, three prunes for dessert). Then he said “Nacht Nacht” to all and climbed the stairs to bed.

But before work, in their half hour of pre-dawn free time, my grandparents went searching for bunnies.

Bunny watching was for short days and long winter nights, before the sun came up, when roads were empty and creatures were still out and prowling. Gram went a little bit out of their way, on the beach road looking out over Long Island Sound. At that hour there was not a car in sight; we had the woods and shore to ourselves. The car cruised at a gentle little pace, avoiding any signs of ice, taking its time. In the dark forest the stars trailed right along, hiding and seeking through the tops of the trees and over the horizon with its twinkling lights from the city.

We watched out both sides of the car with close attention. Gram always managed to spot them first. Bunnies! They dashed along the road with white cotton tails high, and sometimes right across, lucky to be seen by the slowest careful driver. Sometimes it was squirrels. Or mallard ducks. Or a cat with shining eyes. One time a real raccoon! Climbing out of a storm drain! And once it was a ringneck pheasant, with a great flapping soar of surprise and flashes of color and elegant tail. I kept breathing on the windows and rubbing off the frost with my mitten to see everything, and trying to trace the animals on the window so I could have a lifelike shape on the frosty glass to look at later. But the animals were all too fast for me, so mainly I did a lot of bouncing in the back seat trying not to yell and scare the creatures. It was just so amazing and great to see real nature animals that weren’t on TV.

Tonight for Catholic Holy Week, looking for an Easter memory to capture here, what came to mind somehow was bunnies. After growing up, and growing older now than those grandparents were then, it’s easy to see: the point of looking for bunnies was not scoring bunnies. It’s about two greatest-generation Germans born in the 1800s, weathering hardships and heartaches that they were not about to mention to us and that we can never fathom, saving string in a ball and bacon drippings in a jar and keeping a scrubbed warm well-fed home for the grandkiddos to visit and mess up and holler in.

Bunny watching was their one light enjoyable tradition of leisure; traveling in silence, side by side down the years, watching for the frozen dark to yield some sweet surprise along the road.

On Saturday somebody dropped their recycling in shopping bags next to (but not in) the recycling dumpster, the way folks do. One bag held two crumbling pasteboard folders. So I grabbed the bag to toss it to the bottom of the full bin, and then with a yip of surprise saw what was inside. I left the bags and hurried my discovery upstairs.

There I set it on the bathroom counter and fetched a sharp knife and scissors. It took about ninety minutes of chipping in little careful bits to remove crumbling pasteboard and layers of very hard mucilage. Then I cleaned up the bathroom, wrapped up the board and glue debris and ran that straight back to the dumpster, washed hands and tools, then took my find into daylight for a good view.

It was two photographs. There were no names and no date. Both came from Roberts Studio, Brooklyn New York, and were printed on Eastman Kodak film. I turned them face down on the balcony laundry rack for an airing in the sun. Then I opened the internet and started some research.

Roberts Studio was at 683 Fresh Pond Rd., Ridgewood, New York. The Ridgewood Times had a little article about the Fresh Pond neighborhood.

Exploring the history of Fresh Pond Road from Ridgewood to Maspeth: Our Neighborhood, The Way it Was

The newspaper invites readers to share any pictures or memories. I may just make prints of these, and send them to the paper. Meanwhile I photographed them, then showed my cell phone images to people around me. One neighbor made a little fun of my all-out rescue. “You do realize,” he said, “that one day all of your stuff is going in a dumpster too?” I said “Yes it will, but their stuff won’t if it depends on me. The hope and beauty in these faces does not belong in the trash.”

How old are these pictures? Kodak film was invented in 1889. Roberts Studio had a second shop as well, at 1230 Fulton St., Brooklyn. That was originally a family house built in 1910; it still stands today. My sentiment, and it may be wrong, is that the wedding fashions are from before the Roaring Twenties, perhaps even before World War I.

Both pictures have the same faint painted arch background. Both grooms are dressed alike, down to the little flower ornament in their lapels. The brides seem to be dressed alike too. Perhaps instead of buying wedding clothes, they rented them from the studio? If so, that would suggest that they were not wealthy people. Judging by everything I heard from my relatives, and from Brooklyn scenes I saw as a kid, life there 100+ years ago might have had its spirited occasions but was in no way easy or serene. There is something appealing and heartfelt about two people facing the future side by side in the best clothes they could manage.

For right now the wedding pictures are in page protectors at the front of my address book binder, protected from light. At first it was only basic respect, to pounce on ancestor pictures put out with the garbage. Then, the work of freeing these pictures from their old folder frames, and doing the research, made me care about these people. Now I want to find out how to preserve them well. Unless of course a reader at the Ridgewood Times says “Holy Smoke — that’s Grandma and Grandpa!” If so, they’re getting sent back home to be with their relatives.

I like to go open the binder to look at these young people, to hope that they got through the Great War and the 1918 flu, to wish them a good and long life together.

Big Disclaimers: 1. Warn the guests that these have peanut butter. 2. Don’t lick the batter off the spoon. The label on my oat flour warns that the flour must NOT be eaten raw. There are warnings about wheat flour nowadays too, that we can’t let the kiddos lick the spoon any more. Apparently, wheat fields are now contaminated by the deer population, as deer have proliferated so much and bring diseases along with.

Recipes for these cookies are all over YouTube, posted by better cooks.

This recipe might work with any kind of potato. At a St. Patrick’s Day party at college 45 years ago, one of our generous warm-hearted fellow students brought rolled “Irish Potato” bites including peeled white potato mashed with condensed milk and coconut cream and a whale of sugar and cinnamon. At the time I didn’t understand, and was too polite to ask, why these delicious treats had a biting astringent metallic aftertaste. Since then I learned that it means the potatoes had developed solanine (boiling doesn’t remove it), and they should have been thrown away. Potatoes can solanize even before they sprout or turn green. If the flavor bites, don’t eat them.

Back to our recipe. Sweet potatoes are sweeter to begin with and apparently they have a gentler glycemic index than white potatoes, so we use those.

Bake the sweet potato, mash it with peanut butter and oat flour, form into cookies, press with a fork, and bake. The cookies don’t rise, so you need not space them apart in the pan.

I used leftover steamed potatoes, peeling off the very outer papery skin. Then I inspected the potatoes carefully, cutting out anything that looked like a potato eye; the eyes are very bitter and not healthy to eat. Then I mashed the potato in the Cuisinart with cinnamon and vanilla first, and turned it into a bowl before adding unsalted creamy peanut butter and just a little dash of honey. I kneaded that well, then mashed in enough oat flour to form a soft dough. You can roll these into flattened balls, place them in a baking pan on parchment paper, use a fork to press in cross-hatch patterns to make them look more like regular peanut butter cookies, and bake.

They came out fine, but at first bite the flavor was a little cloying. Next time I’ll add a pinch of salt to the oat flour, and perhaps use chunky peanut butter. The starch-rich potatoes can carry more flavoring than I thought; a good dash of pumpkin spice would work.

After 25 minutes of baking at 350 F the cookies were still quite soft, so I let them sit in the oven while it cooled down. That improved the texture. My guess is that frozen they will taste even better.

They have a nice dense moist marzipan quality. It would be interesting to try almond butter, almond flour, and almond extract next time. Tahini and some ground sesame seeds with a dash of orange would be worth a try too.

These Hellebores didn’t come from the green valley. They’re at the local garden center.

Last Friday at our beloved surviving store of venerable books, the dollar cart turned up a real gem: a mint new Richard Llewellyn in the prettiest jacket with a picture of a village in the mountains. Of course I carried my find to the sensitive sweet cashier, and gave her my dollar and a story: “Once upon a younger time, a man ended our dating association with a dire prediction: ‘Some rainy Friday night you’ll think of me, when you’re in bed all alone. Probably reading How Green Was My Valley.‘”

The cashier’s look of eager friendliness slacked down to dismay.

   “And — I can hardly wait!” I confided to her, waving my new copy.

She was all smiles again. “Oh, what a lovely cover! Well, we can say he was giving you a helpful book recommendation.”

That night the rain and wind were in great form, a comforting racket for being all tucked in with this nice edition. It’s a good size copy, easy to hold and read. It fell open to Chapter 40: “I had splendid minutes in a bookshop…. O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.”

After joining narrator Huw Morgan from cover to cover this week, I watched the lyrical warm-hearted 1941 film, made in California, and enjoyed the many viewer comments full of nostalgic memories and praise and movie lore and wit:

“This film stole the best picture award from the amazingly brilliant Citizen Kane and it is considered a shocking lapse of Hollywood’s taste. But you know what? I have watched this a dozen times and haven’t had the slightest desire to see Citizen Kane again.”

“Some weird accents to anyone who’s ever heard a real Welsh voice. Are the adult sons played by German POWs?”

It was a pleasant surprise that the plot faithfully followed the book and its dialogues. The choral soundtrack brings us “Cwm Rhondda” (we English-speaking Catholics call it “Bread of Heaven”), “Calon Lân,” and other fine songs. The black and white sets and scenes were beautifully composed. Young Roddy McDowall as Huw was a luminous hardworking presence all throughout. In the climactic scene shown below, Huw finds and brings Dada’s body up to the surface of the shaft with Chaplain Gryffud just before the mine collapses.

Why isn’t this book popular??? Maybe Americans want a plot that builds up something successful. Maybe they don’t want a lengthy plaintive remembrance about family and friends cherished and loved who all die under a mountain of coal or fire or starvation or exile, about a village and valley abandoned under creeping black slag as the narrator ties his last belongings into Mother’s head shawl, and walks away from his crumbling house never to return. There’s graphic violence and heartbreak too, hair-trigger tempers and fisticuffs and bloodshed and suffering at childbirth and drunkenness and madness and social shunning and English cruelty to children who use Welsh at school.

But through it all, there are lilting passages of intricate ecstatic praise of family and hearth and home and singing and the valley and animals and flowers. There is even tenderness for the little beasts of burden who power the mines underground their whole lives. Before the final cave-in that destroys all the life they know and Huw’s father at the bottom of it all, Huw rushes into the dark to get them out:

“Well, if you had seen the little horses when they saw us. Like children, they were, ready to sit down at a party, and with just as much noise…. the ponies were so full of joy that they pushed against us with their noses, and rubbed their necks…. all shouting to be going on top to grass.

Eh, dear.

If you had seen those ponies running when we let them loose. Blind they were, but they knew that mountain had only kindness for them and nothing for them to trip on or trap to bring them low.

If only we could all have been as happy.”

An improving read, something to be grateful for on a rainy Friday.

One week of rare forays in unvarnished emotional honesty.

1. Virtual seminar at work: medical research all about loneliness in society. Takeaway points: Loneliness means a subjective perception that one is isolated. Loneliness has become an epidemic. It’s big! Feeling lonely is a health hazard equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to the Surgeon General. [The same Surgeon General, in an interview I heard about loneliness, gave two suggestions. One, spend quality time with your spouse, children, and family. Two, look confident. This will encourage people to want to socialize with you.] Statistics, figures, pie charts, all show negative health outcomes of loneliness. Fortunately, elderly people report less loneliness as they age. Recommendation: treat young people with cognitive behavioral therapy in virtual video sessions. Train them to replace their negative thoughts with positive ones, and to learn behaviors which enable them to socialize with peers and become more self-reliant and resilient. Thank you.

Presenter: Discussion?

Me: Loneliness as a subjective perception really isn’t mentioned in this culture. Many susceptible people are too distracted with their drugs, junk food, guns, pornography, and pets to articulate it even to themselves. Elderly people can quietly faint from dehydration because they lose touch with their own sense of thirst; caregivers know to just hand them a glass of water instead of asking them whether they want it. In the same way, the loneliest senior citizens may not know how to verbalize to researchers that they are lonely. They may have lost touch with the sense of or need for close connection.
Participant: Actually, the research does show that older people report less loneliness.
Me: [They may not sit around reporting anything to YOU if they are busy planning to do something about it. Check your suicide stats in PubMed, especially for older men.] Sure. And, older people have been trained to not admit that they’re lonely. At least if they would like people to visit them.

2. Zoom meeting with friendly caring remote offsite co-worker who I’ve never seen: So, all set for Christmas?
Me: Well, Christmas is more for families. So actually no, I don’t celebrate it any more.
Colleague: Mary!! I am your family. All of us are! Your family is our whole department.
Me. Thank you! I hope your family have a wonderful holiday.
Colleague. We’ll be skiing — this time with the dog. Should be interesting!

3. Very intelligent science colleague: It’s been pretty rainy lately, but the days are getting longer now. Your problem is just seasonal affective disorder. 
Me: You know, it’s actually not. Summer is much harder. Rain is comforting and calming, but sunshine hurts.
SC: You could wear sunscreen.
Me: No, it’s the light itself. Sunshine fires off way too many neurons in my brain. That’s why rainy weather really helps.
SC: What really helps me is my full-spectrum light, timed to reflect just the right balance of blue/orange light throughout the day to aid in a healthy melatonin cycle. You can buy [brand name] on Amazon. It wakes me up every morning, and makes all the difference in my mood.
Me: That’s great. I’m happy you found something so helpful.

4. My oldest girlfriend: When in the WORLD are you going to retire?
Me: To whom?
OG: What?
Me: Retirement is our chance to devote our lives to our families. Who is that?
OG [?????]: Well if that’s how you feel, why not invite a co-worker out for coffee?
Me: My co-workers work remote at home. With their families. And their coffee.
OG: I sure wish I had some alone time away from our full house here. Your life sounds so peaceful.

5. Favorite bus driver: Jeez, Mary. Back on the bus again. When are you going to retire? What are you gonna, go to work and ride the bus back and forth until you just keel over and die?
Me: That’s the plan, Bernie. This seat will do fine.

6. Celeste, grandmother with a close growing dynasty: You need to gather your women friends together, and once a month go out and treat yourselves to lunch at a nice place. Then as the years go by, you will have more in common with them as they become widows too.
Me: Thank you. [Uh. Widow?]

7. A Favorite Neighbor since 2010: Hi, Mary! Happy New Year! How was your Christmas? What did you do?
Me: Uh, I didn’t get up. Mostly over the years I’ve worked really really hard to make it meaningful. But maybe for me it’s just a black flatline and that’s how it is? So I just stayed put until it was over. Then I started calling and checking on people in the building and in my life. Some of them are really struggling.
FN: Oh gosh, I was really sick! I’m fine now, but it was like… flu or something. Poor Gary had to keep helping me to the bathroom. He had to bring me hot fluids and hot water bottles and keep tucking me in. And then my sons drove to town, and they pitched in and did all the shopping.
Me: That sounds awful! I’m really sorry to hear that. Thank goodness Gary was there and you got to see your sons too.

8. After Church: [This conversation may be the most kind, caring attempt by a Christian congregation member to even listen. See how much nicer this is, than the Christian woman who once clapped her hands directly in front of my nose, shouting in the parish hall “You must have an unconfessed sin OR lack of forgiveness toward others. Forgive now! Just do it!”]
Very warmhearted church member: Mary! How are you? Doing okay?
Me: Hi! Working on it.
VWCM: Wait — working on what?
Me: Working on doing okay. Last week the sermon was about the Prodigal Son being left lonely and forsaken, and how loneliness is a sign that we have to repent and turn back to the Lord. I really worried about that all week. How do you turn back to the Lord if you didn’t turn away? Does loneliness mean that the greatest prodigal sinners are people in Medicaid nursing homes?
VWCM: The sermon didn’t say that!
Me: Well, and tonight’s sermon was about joy in suffering. What’s joy? My friend is red/green colorblind. He says God is the color green: something people tell him about, but he doesn’t know how colors feel. Maybe joy is just another color.
VWCM: But don’t you have joy in your life?
Me: Doesn’t feel that way. People talk about it at church all the time.
VWCM: It’s the joy of the LORD. The joy of the Lord is our strength!
Me: Okay. And what is that?
VWCM: Why, joy is different for everybody. Everybody has different things that bring them joy.
Me: Where is it in our chest? Is it red? Green? Like, here’s this lovely photo card you gave me of your whole family at Christmas. Every year people mail me these group photographs. The family members look like they feel a lot of joy being together. Then I open the envelopes and look at the photos and they just make me cry.
VWCM: Well our family also has concerns as well.
Me: Yes. It’s been very inspiring to watch you relatives care for each other. Families like yours face your concerns united, not alone.
VWCM: But single women can still have joy!
Me: Okay. And what is that? What does that feel like?
VWCM: [Hug] Well, at church we love you!

[Typed up thanks to the moral support of listening to many reps of “Cloud Nine” by Nik Kershaw.]

Big Disclaimer: Angelina is back. I would never mention anybody’s travel plans until they are safe at home again. Nobody needs to worry that their whereabouts will be blurted about under their pseudonym on an anonymous virtually unread blog written by another pseudonym in a city far away.

Bedtime for Bingo — a very, very good boy.

Angelina: Was that a knock? WHO’S AT THE DOOR? Let’s see who it is. Look, Guys! IT’S MARE!

Me: Hi Sweetie! Hey Super Pup. Hey Bingo. I didn’t bring treats, but you can come sniff and lick me anyway.

Angelina: This week while I’m away, Vickie is staying with the dogs. You don’t know her yet. Lovely woman. I think she is a Genius. Like, literally. You know how with some people, you can just SENSE that they’re a Genius?

Me: I wouldn’t know.

A: You’ve got to meet her.

M: I’ll watch for a stranger stealing your dogs, and go introduce myself. What time is your Uber pickup?

A: At 4:30 am.

M: So in seven hours.

A: Say a prayer for me, that I’m downstairs in time.

M: Okay. Have you packed yet?

A: No.

M: I’ll say two prayers. So, you’re off to Island X___ ! Exciting times.

A: Swimming with wild pigs.

M: Huh. So, like Chincoteague, but…?

A: Pigs. Look: Here are pictures on my phone. People swim with them.

M: Did they run out of dolphins?

A: Dolphins don’t live there. Pigs do. Careful, Bingo: I don’t want to trip on you. There, there; you go lie down. Good boy. Bingo’s joints are hurting him. Want some tea?

M: Not if you’re waking up in five hours. Aren’t pigs, like, large, heavy, faster than we are, and wicked smart with teeth?

A: A few injuries here and there apparently. But my friend wants to go.

M: Hence, she invited Nurse Angelina, R.N. Good plan.

A: Do you need extra tomato sauce? Here’s a jar. Here’s two. And, a scarf for you. It’s warm.

M: Thank you, it’s very pretty. You could stay home and swim with Bingo in a hot tub of Epsom salts.

A: Poor old fella. It’s time for his pain meds. Take this waterproof jacket. Let me hold it up to you. Good, it’s long enough. Eddie Bauer. Put it on. It’s just a shell.

M: Shells are what most people tell me to come out of, not put on. Gosh, nice jacket. Thank you!

A: So tell me ALL of your news!

M: My friend Gabrielle, the art appraiser and historian, is coming to visit next year.

A: That’s great! The one who was your boss.

M: Right, like that movie “I Heard the Mermaids Singing”? She’s the gorgeous cultured Curator, and I’m Polly, her organizationally challenged Girl Friday. I told her she can have my apartment and I can stay in your spare room. I guess I could have asked your permission first.

A: What about THE BED?

M: In your spare room? If your spare room doesn’t have a bed, that’s fine. I’ll sleep on the floor, like at home.

A: No no no. I meant the bed at YOUR place. As in, you don’t OWN one.

M: Oh. You’re right. I can’t put Gabrielle on a floor, because she has a stiff back.

A: Mare. Get a grip. You can’t put Gabrielle on a floor because she is A HUMAN BEING. That settles it. We are buying her an air mattress!

M: Tonight???

A: As soon as I am back. Or no — you take MY bedroom. She’ll take my spare room. You girls can stay up all night and talk. That’s half the fun. I’ll go to your place and sleep on the floor.

M: Well, we’ve got a year to argue about it. Better let you pack.

A: Take this carry bag for the tomato sauce. I put in some pasta to go with. And here: keto granola bars; Costco had a sale. Jacket looks good on you. But it’s just a shell, with no warmth.

M: Just like me. Bye Bunny! I’ll miss you!