HOW TO BUY A USED CAR

Exhaust yourself by driving around for three hours in your old car. The car you have come to hate. By this time you are in the mind frame of "any car will do." You are supple, vacant, Zen-like in your approach to how the river of life flows. Drive to West Hills Honda and park your Volkswagen Beetle. The one you can't handle. The one you've had for four years and you still can't figure out where the front or back begins or ends. In other words, you are zoned out and It Is Time.

Struggle to get out of the car, grab your purse and limp up the hill to a line of four young men who look like they would eat wombat balls if only you would meet one of their eyes. You look at one of them and say, "I don't know how to do this."

They positively shiver in delight.

Really. You can feel the ground move.

You know you have made, by this time, possibly four or five big mistakes while telling the truth. You don't know how to do this. Life no longer has any room for truth. Life is a game, damn it, when will you LEARN this?

One man, name of Frank, herds you away from the rest. Frank wears thick glasses and is not, like the rest of the guys, sweating. He says, "It's easy!" He doesn't yet know what it is I want to do, and it's easy. I like his attitude, kind of devil-may-care. Kind of Mary Poppins Meets Harpo Marx. Heido Ho! It's Easy!

We go inside and sit down at Frank's desk. He wants to know what I do for a living. I tell him I'm a psychologist. Frank's major interest seems to be Frank. He leans back in his chair, gathering some kind of points. "Well, now," he says, "roll your chair over here," and tell me what you can tell about me."

"You suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder," I say. "Yep, sure do!" he says, happily. "You're divorced, and you have one or two children," I say. "One," he says, "Oh boy, you're good," he says. "You drink too much," I say. "Hey," he frowns," how do you know that?" "I can smell it on your breath, Frank," I say.

He straightens up. "I'll have to watch that," he says. "Now. What can I do for you?"

"I want to trade in my 2007 red Volkswagen Beetle," I say. "For something inexpensive like a Kia or a Hundea."

Frank happily slaps one of the perfectly placed pieces of paper on his desk. "We can DO that!" He says. "We can DO that! Come on and let's go find some Kias and Hundeas for you to look at and drive! You're gonna love this!"

Frank's small eyes are blinking fast. He may have some kind of tic that I missed mentioning, I don't know. He certainly does have an ability to go from down to up in a New York second, all that money.

We walk around a big curve and end up in Kia and Hunda-ville. I climb inside a cool looking jet black Kia. It's nice Chic. The motor sounds a little fast. I drive it around the area and decide against it. I love the look but am sorry about the motor sound. "I don't think so, Frank," I say.

"Oh, we've got LOTS of cars," Frank says.
"I know you do, Frank, I looked them up on the computer, last night." He didn't seem to cotton to this information, I don't know why. I drove the Hundea but the wheel was a bit jerky and I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, either. As we were parking the Hundea my eyes lit on a nice looking red car. Too long? Too sleek for the likes of me?

A 2010 Nissan. With my trade I could have it for $4,000. I drove it around, the motor sounded good, it felt right, I liked it. What more should I know? "I'll take it," I said.

"I'll take it," I said.

And so I did.

After an hour and a half of signing forms which is one of the things I most hate in life (you're credit is excellent, your mileage is low so we'll knock off...., do you want the this, do you want the that, you have one more year of waranty left on this Nissan....), I paid my money and drove it home.


Later, I called Alan and said "I bought a car.
Silence.
"A 2010 Nissan."
Silence, then, "Did you ask questions about it?"
"You mean about the price?"
"No, I mean about who owned it before?"...."Or.....anything?"
"Well, the people who owned it before didn't want it anymore and so they took it to West Hills and traded it in."
Silence. Then,"Good luck."
"What?"
"I said 'Good luck'."

It's not easy being me. It's not easy being a car that belongs to me. How I ever even got to the ripe old age I am sometime just floors me. How I ever made my way into the professional world and delivered all those lectures I used to deliver and taught all those classes around the U.S. and got all those degrees......I mean, I was the same me then as I am now....how the hell did I do it?

"And I shall easy to be", said Emerson. Well, yeah, it's pretty easy to be me, too, or at least it feels like it, until I get next to other people and they explain to me the Right way to do things, or, indeed the Only way to do things.....but if it really were the ONLY way, then I wouldn't really BE here, would I? My father used to suggest that all of this (he's wave his arms) was just a dream, HIS dream, as a matter of fact, and that I was simply a part of his dream. It was only when he died that I could truly let my breathe completely go (I was thirty-four by then) and absolutly know down deep inside that he had NOT constructed me through his dreams. I was me. I existed all by myself.

And so does that beautiful 2010 red Nissan sitting down in my garage. I know where it's front is. I know where's back is. I know where it's sides are. It's longer than the Beetle was but at least I CAN SEE WHERE I BEGIN AND END.

Which is a good thing.

Please, y'all. PLEASE. Wish me good luck.

KEEP ON SWINGING

It's been a year, folks. One year this weekend. One year since I actually cancelled patients (oh my god Loss of income, big irritation to patients, lots of rescheduling, something I never do)....to meet this "Island Man" named Alan. With one "L". And he was late due to traffic. And he was tall, due to genetics. And I was so nervous I still don't remember one word I said. What's to say? "Hi, I'm Kay, I love hot dogs and Tolstoy and Woody Allen and I'd rather read books than travel and I'm only slightly koo-koo and I'm always thinking about the worst that could happen and I'd love to see you with your shirt off......." ???? !!!!

Oh, God. Those Match.com things are SO difficult. I don't have any idea what he said, either. He'd worked for the state in energy for twenty-four years but I thought he told me he'd worked in salmon.I went around telling everybody he worked in salmon. He was sixty-five, near sixty-six. I was sixty-four, never sixty-five.

At lunch's end, he bent down to kiss me and I blushed and he said, "Oh, look at you! You blushed! Just like a little furry thing!"

I had to get back to see a four o'clock patient. But I couldn't find my car.

We've seen each other every single weekend since. Every. Single. Weekend. Since.

In June of this year, we became spiritually tied to each other (married) and we wear rings on our wedding hands. They are like us. Beautiful. Well, handsome and beautiful. Anyway, this picture is taken not long ago at the Sawatdy Thai which is the first the first middle-of-the first-weekend restaurant we ever frequented. Something about spice.

The above picture was taken in my oldest daughter Kelly's yard. Alan had a conference nearby and off we flew. Kelly, whom I raised from the time she was...ten? eleven? along with her sister Erin, are my daughters, and I love them both immensely. There are many many pictures taken at Kelly's which, though adorable, are simply not fit for public viewing. Dancing, dancing, dancing to the music. Kelly, her friend Carol and me....and, of course, Alan, who won not one, but two, dancing contests, just like John Travolta in Saturday Night Live, when he was young. Jumped up, twirled around, landed in the splits, used one arm to spring himself back up and....you get the picture.Whew, I would have loved to have been there. Well, we went to the market, brought back food and ate. California watermelon, berries, avacados, string beans, raspberries, strawberries, CORNDOGS, salmon, chicken, oh my god, we ate, we ate, and we danced it off each night.

It's been one slam-dunk of a summer. Watch the sun go down at Alan's sweetheart of a bungalow with it's straight-across view of Mount Rainier. Dining with dear, dear friends. Tolerance up, expectations down. Learning each other. Laughing. Loving each other's familles and friends. Knowing we don't have limitless prospects but that even makes it better, somehow. We'll keep our heads down. We'll keep our eyes on the ball. And we'll keep on kissing and swinging.

Hospitals? Get DOWN With Your Bad Voice!

Well, it's nearly two weeks since I had the fifteen inch medical implement surgically removed at the U. of W. hospital. I was scheduled for a one day (in and out) visit (don't you love the euphemisms?), but I got to thinking -- gee, that's a long implement to give such little attention to.....what would Eugene O'Neil have to say? Surely he would trot out his famous statement and bellow it to the skies: "Attention muct be paid?!" After all, it was this very instrument that, (unbeknownst to me, because I didn't know it was in there until 2-8-11) led me to relocate to Bainbridge Island where I would be able to walk nearly everywhere I needed to go because car seats where the worst, left me buying six chairs plus two medical chairs my neurologist swore by (and I swore AT), brought me to a year in rehab, six months in acupuncture, chiropractic practice, medical hypnosis, rounds of inner and outer botox, shots in my spine, pain clinics dispensing morphine and oxycodone.......and all I get is an in and outie? No, no, no, no, no. By this time, I was afraid. I was uneasy. A couple times before this surgery my blood pressure had zoomed to zero during day surgeries.

And yet.....I was afraid of my doctor. Oy! My doctor! She is golden, she is the queen of the department at the University Hospital, she's one of those women who was once the smartest girls in those adolescent books about...well, smart girls. You need to tie a knot and there's nothing around but broom and a horse? Use the horse to tie the knot and the horse to ride out on. Dummy. She has a no-nonsense approach, not much of a bedside manner at all: "Hello, I'm Dr. ____________, I'll be seeing you next week to remove the ____________." She doesn't waste a word. Or a smile. Other doctors worship her. "Oh, Dr. _________ is doing the surgery? Oh, my God, you can't do better than that!"

I CAN'T?
Then I want her for longer then an in & outie!

"You've got to be your own best advocate," said Alan. "Stand up for yourself. You're paying, she's doing her work. Tell her what you want. Use plain English. Tell her what you want and tell her why you want it. Be firm. Nice, but firm. All she can say is 'No', but you've got to give her a chance to say 'Yes'. You can do this. Just everybody else seems to worship her doesn't mean that you have to worship her. Now, get in there and Go for it."

What does he think this is, football?

There are about five things in my life that I'm really proud of and not one of them has anything to do with being firm with doctors. Well, there was the time at Virginia Mason when the doctor wouldn't examine me because, she said, that wasn't part of what she did, and I looked at her and said, "Okay. You're the doctor here. I'm you patient. I'm going to pull down my pants. See? See me pulling down my pants? Now, YOU, as my DOCTOR, are going to walk up behind me, closer, closer, and TAKE A LOOK! I don't care if you've never examined another patient in your LIFE! YOU ARE GOING TO EXAMINE ME!" And she did. But I wasn't afraid of her. Come to think of it, I think she was the department head, too. But she was a weenie compared to this UW doc. I have all kinds of nerve when it comes to weenies.

So the day of surgery came and they had found my veins (terrific veins) and piled my hair into the cartoon cap and put the breathy-warm-air-blankie over me and suddenly here she comes. I'll call her June. "How are you doing?" she asked. "Fine, just fine," I said, "but....June....I believe it's in my best interests to spend the night here in the hospital." She turned her back away. "So you think you ought to spend the night?" she questioned me.

"I do," I said.
"It can be a long wait for the ferry and there's all kinds of lumps and bumps on the
planks getting on to the ferry and I'm uneasy about the first night. I am not at all convinced that I won't need hospital care tonight."
She turned towards me. "Well," she said. "I'll see what I can do about that. I'll try to find a room for you."

After surgery I got a cheeseburger. Ice cream. Morphine every six minutes. My blood pressure began to slide downwards all through the night but that was okay because there were doctors there to come in and check it and do what doctors are trained to do, things Alan is NOT trained to do. And the next day I was let go at about one o'clock, by which time many of the staff and I were singing and having a high old time. Well, I was having a high old time and they were having a contact high old time.

Four days ago a representative from the U. of Washington called to give me the date of my follow-up visit. September 20. Okay. "And you were a 'day patient'?" she asked. "Nope," I said, "I spent the night." She whistled through her teeth. "How did you manage that?" she questioned me. "I just asked." I said. "Wow," she whispered.

This morning, another staff member called, wanting to re-remind me of the follow-up date. "And what was it that we did to you?" she asked. "You removed a _________________," I said. "Did we do anything else to do?" she asked. I laughed. I laughed and I laughed. "Other than monitoring me and changing my dressings and making me feel safe and being very very nice to me, that's it." "I just wanted to be sure," she said.

So that's it. I'm much less sophisticated about these things than the rest of you are, out there. I just want to put my two cents in and say GRAB YOUR VOICE AND USE IT. Because it's true - nobody's gonna say it for you. And there's nothing. Nothing at all to lose.

By the way - - no more pain!!!!!

"Mama Kay," Aleister said on the phone to me today, "do you realize we have met our Higher Power?"
"How's that?" I asked.
"The Space Needle!" he exclaimed. "We have sat and eaten in It's Lap."
I must have gone silent for a few seconds too long because he followed up with, "...that was a joke."
"I know, I know!" I said.
"And you're not laughing," he observed.
"But I'm grinning!" I insisted. "If you could see me, you could see the grin. It's a really, really big grin, Aleister."
"We're on the telephone," he said, drawing out the word tel-e-phone, "and you could be sitting or standing or lying down; tears could be running down your face, you could be licking an ice cream cone, you might not be grinning at all."
"You're right," Allie," I said. "Absolutly. That's the great things about phones. Or at least the old fashioned kind that we have, without cameras. You can be doing any thing you want to be doing and you cn tak at the same time and it's cool, because nobody knows the difference."
"AHA!" exclained Aleisiter. "Another lie! I am beginning to worry about you. You told a lie inside the Higher Power and now you are admitting to a second kind of lie."
"Oh my God," Allie, saying it was your birthday at the Space Needle restaurant was a perfectly acceptable social kind of lie. And it got us a wonderful window seat! Without a reservation! And who did we hurt by that little lie? Nobody was behind !s? We were at the very very end of the brunch line. It's not like we were hurting anybody else...."

"But, Mama Kay, it was still...." Aleister tried to point out....
"Oh, stop," I interrupted.
".....a lie." He finished.

"So do you wish we hadn't gone? And eaten that fabulous food? While the restaurant totally revolved itself not once, but twice?" I asked.
"I'll bet you are not grinning right now, Mama Kay, "Aleister commented.
"Righteo," I said.
"No, I had a very great time with you and Grandpa Alan. He was an excellent protector. I did not think I would ever be able to go all the way up and keep all that food down."
"So how many people have you told about our adventure?" I asked.
"You mean about the lie?" he said.
"No, Smarty Pants, I mean about going all the way up to the Observation Deck and then down a bit to the restaurant and sitting there for two whole hours and eating our guts out."
"Uh.....five."
"Who were they?"
"My mom, my dad, my friend Alyssia, the Fred Myer guy and somebody else I forgot."
"Well, I'm gonna put it on my blog," I said. "Because for me it represented getting over a huge phobia about heights."
"Okay, you put it in your blog and I will put it in my dreams," Aleister said. "And if you or Grandpa Alan ever want to visit the dream, just ask. Okay?"
"Okay," I said. "We will."
"Mama Kay?" Aleister said, before we hung up.
"Yeah?"
"Did you get a look at the bolts on that thing?"
"Yes I did, Allie, "yes I did."
"I didn't know what to say when Grandpa Alan showed them to me so I just said 'wow'."
"I think that's the perfect thing to say," I said.
"Yeah," Aleister said. "Wow".
And then we hung up.

TWO CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES

So we did it, dear Reader, we married. This past Sunday we spent several hours debating about whether we should or should not go through with an actual wedding ceremony, since neither of us wish, for several very good reasons, to not have a civil wedding. If not a ceremony, though, filled with family and friends, then, what? Very few of Alan's friends would be able to make their way to such a ceremony....it would be filled with my side of the family and my friends; and, although he has come to love my friends and my family as I have come to love his daughter Star, his sister Fran, her husband Leo and his cousin George, Fran and Leo can not attend, and George is not ambulatory.

We awoke Monday, ate a light breakfast, dressed for the day. I threw on a dress, something I rarely do (wear a dress on a "day off", I mean; usually I wear jeans) We stopped at a thrift shop, where I found Alan the most gorgeously made Japanese (or are they all Japanese?) kimono and where he found (and wore out of the store) a kind of hippie-ish traditional "wedding" shirt. Then we took off for Poulsbo.

In Poulsbo, at the restaurant Mor Mor's, which we love because it serves our favorite red wine, called Abacela, a kind of Tempranillo, I asked him what he needed to feel married to me. He said, "Nothing. I already feel married to you." In turn, he asked me the same thing. I felt the same way. "Me too," I said. "I need nothing at all. I have felt for some time as if I am your wife."

The day went on. The day was a strand of ribbon, a length of rope like life itself, a new measure of time where mystery leads to what suddenly appears to be inevitable. That's how feels now. Inevitable.

We said our vows. Past the afternoon of our lives, but still open to meaning and wonder as we were in the morning of our lives, only the meaning and the wonder and the purpose are now different.

What did we say? What did we vow? Our vows were spontaneous. I remember words like "love" and "commitment" and "care for" and .....oh, why bother trying to remember? As one who has lived in a long term marriage I know one thing; a couple lives it's vows as a poet writes her poems...in step with whatever reality sets inside the couple's path. We vowed to keep the channels open. Perhaps that is the most important vow of all.

I am afraid I may have disappointed my children by behaving so spontaneously. On the other hand, the money I have saved means that Alan and I can more easily fly to pay visits to see my children.....and I pray they realize how much they know I loved their father and how much I love them and how much Life and Love must go on, if one is willing to resist living mechanically. I hope I have not disappointed my friends (actually, I don't think they give one fig, so long as I am happy).


I will end with a quote, from which I have taken the title for this blog - - and a poem.


"For two personalities to meet is like mixing two chemical substances: if there is any combination at all, both are transformed."
Carl Jung


And the poem, which I read aloud more than a month ago to Alan:


YOUR BLINDED HAND

Suppose that
everything that greens and grows
should blacken in one moment, flower and branch.
I think that I would find your blinded hand.
Suppose that your cry and mine were lost among numberless cries
in a city of fire when the earth is afire,
I must still believe that somehow I would find your blinded hand.
Through flames everywhere
consuming earth and air
I must believe that somehow, if only one moment were offered,
I would
find your hand.
I know as, of course, you know
the immeasurable wilderness that would exist
in the moment of fire.
But I would hear your cry and you'd hear mine and each of us
would find
the other's hand.
We know
that it might not be so.
But for this quiet moment, if only for this
moment,
and against all reason,
let us believe, and believe in our hearts,
that somehow it would be so.
I'd hear your cry, you mine -----
And each of us would find a blinded hand.
- Tennessee Williams

Try A Little Gratitude

In writing a eulogy for Lucretia Eddy, my best friend, Christine Dosa's mother, I ran across this quote from the philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel: "The truth of being human is gratitude. The secret of existence is appreciation, it's significance is revealed in reciprocity. Humankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation."

Today I am thinking about gratitude.

The above picture features Aleister in a rare moment of allowing a camera to catch him in a big smile, his Mom Angela, and me; photo taken by Alan. The camera clicked just after Aleister just informed us that "Sometimes I just like to go with the flow of other people....as long as their flow feels like a proper flow." I am grateful for Aleister. Grateful for Angela. Grateful for Alan. Grateful for this reality which I live, day after day, my house in Bainbridge, my patients, my books, the few friends I have been able to make despite my crazy schedule, the many friends I love but do not see nearly often enough and the plans I make to see them, grateful for my daughters Kelly and Erin, grateful for the Dietz's and my deep love for them as well as for Steve and Katy, grateful for Christine and my Cousin Linda and my friends Magge and Robin, grateful for my dear Dr. Buskirk, my psychiatric supervisor, whom I have been with for eight years, now.

I am even (sometimes) grateful for my chronic pain, which has informed me of human frailty and how much compassion is needed in the health field, mental or physical, it doesn't matter.

I am grateful for my shampoo. I am grateful for my bar of soap. I am grateful for cold water. I am grateful for hot water. I am grateful to have toothpaste and my new electric toothbrush which Alan bought me. I am grateful to be able to read my self-imposed number of two books a week. I am grateful for my wardrobe of (mostly) black clothes. I am grateful for my engagement ring, which surrounds my finger like a demanding lover.

I am grateful for my friend and fiance and lover, Alan.
Here he is.



It has been said that realism is "the belief that things are in reality as they appear to be in the mind". Well, perhaps that's true. If true, then Alan is one big smart fun kind hottie, both in and outside my mind. He's....authentic, which is one of the decade's overu sed words to be sure, but there you go and here he is. He IS authentic. And I am grateful for knowing him. I can not, can not, can not imagine not having met him. How could it be, not to have met him? How could that have even been possible? I suppose all lovers spend plenty of time questioning each other on this one.....if only I hadn't showed up at the.....if only you hadn't sent that.....if only I hadn't answered the....if only you hadn't made that call....if only...if only.....But yes, my God! It's true! We all cook the facts in our favor, but, Wow! If only!

"For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
- Shakespeare, Hamlet

Forget Yoga. Forget Yogurt. Forget flat stomachs. Forget Botox. Forget ipods. Just sit there and consider what you live with every day that you are grateful for. And WHO you are grateful for. Cereal. Soap. Milk. Your garden. Dirt. That hummingbird. Old Ray Charle's songs. Your bath tub. Your shower. Your hair. Your bald head. Your legs. Your teeth. Your false teeth. Your telephone. Your nail clippers. Your robe. Your windows. Your electric lights. Your candles. Your radio. NPR.

Go ahead. This could go on for years. Try a little gratitude.