​A wealthy white male politician with three children, a wife and available in-laws has put childless cat ladies in the news.  He did not do this to uplift childless cat ladies or to garner their votes.  No, he did it to demean them and keep the attention on himself.  He stated outright that the United States is “being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”  He asks:  “And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Wow, J.D. Vance! You might want to hike up your pants. I think your soul is showing.

In response, I want to honor the childless cat ladies in my life, women who gave their lives to others, investing in the future and in me.

First, shout-outs to family women: Aunt Phoebe, Aunt Lillie, Aunt Gen, and Ellie, remarkable women who, while they never bore children, were never childless.  They invested in me and my large pack of cousins, their communities, and their country.  They made the world a better place.

Lillie, Phoebe, Gen, and Ellie, you never birthed or adopted children, and it never occurred to me to question your marital or parenting status.  You always belonged to me and to all of us.  It was just the way it was.  Lucky us!  Perhaps you had your reasons or even your heart breaks.  I will never know.  If you were sad or unhappy with your life, it never showed.  And one thing was always clear to me, your lives were never focused on yourselves; your lives were always about others, about us, about the future, and not just our futures, but that of your community.  You offered us examples of different choices and circumstances, of acceptance for what life gives and takes. Without your own children to care for, you were free to care for all of us.  And you did.

To Aunt Lillie, I want to say thank you for sharing your name with me.  I am proud to carry it.  I want to thank you for your service to our country during World War II caring for soldiers injured in Europe.  You showed me that a woman can serve in uniform and in war.  By your example, you showed me that a woman can live a life of adventure and still be nurturing, generous, and a master of the home arts.  You taught me to keep house and to cook, to adapt to the needs of others and the demands of life, and to sacrifice for family when crises occur.  You showed me how to stay on my feet when illness strikes.  You introduced me to Gidget movies, Tammy movies and Johnny Carson.  For all the sleepovers, summer respites, and wise counsel, I thank you.

To ​Aunt Phoebe, you showed me that a woman can be an entrepreneur and savvy investor without selling her soul.  You ran a local store where I met my neighbors and learned about commerce, kindness and generosity.  You took the time to learn the many languages in your immigrant community.  You offered credit to folks when times were hard.  You sent us to leave surprise bushels of groceries on front porches.  You worked standing all day, sometimes until your legs looked like they might burst.  You showed me when to hold your tongue and how to get along with everyone.   I watched you at night studying the stock market reports in the daily newspaper.  You showed me that one does not have to go to school to learn.  You were self-taught in everything and a master of it all. You left a small fortune to your family and to your community.   I thank you for the security that came from always knowing that no matter what happened, there would always be food on our table. 

To Aunt Gen—you married but never had children.  I don’t know why.  You showed me what a happy marriage looks like. Thank you for bringing Uncle Harry into our lives with his humor and his ability to fix anything, and for showing us all how to nail down a bargain!  You shared your finds with all of us so generously and so often.  You will be happy to know even my children are bargain hunters!

And to Ellie…you were not born into our family, but you might as well have been.  You came to us as a mother’s helper when you were just a child yourself. You came and you never left us.  You moved from one growing family to the next.  You showed me that faithfulness is not born of blood but comes through the love that grows from time, commitment, and sharing lives together.  You know more about my family roots than I do.  You saw it all.  And wisely, you accepted it and kept your mouth shut!

As Mary Pipher would say, each of you, all of you “did the hard work of loving me into existence…Through (your) eyes, I began to see myself.” When politicians carelessly label and categorize, I feel a personal sense of outrage and the need to stand up for you and for all women.  All of you taught me that.  You were never miserable.  You always gave me somewhere to turn, and I would turn the country over to any one of you.

While I have spoken of family, I cannot disregard the many, many childless cat ladies in my life who have been my teachers, medical professionals, and lifelong friends.  They taught me to read, cared for me when I was sick, filled my life with adventure, and rushed to my aid in emergencies.  They had a flexibility that I did not have as a single parent, and they used their skills, money, and time to care for me and for others.  My life would have been so empty and so hard without them. 

Please, J.D.,  don’t mock the childless cat ladies.  They are part of the backbone of America.  They make it all work.
 

            Mirth is God’s medicine.  –Henry Ward Beecher

After I posted my last blog, Grease on Earth, a friend wrote to share her memory of the family-owned gas station in the neighborhood of her youth.  She reminded me that we once called those places “filling stations.”   

I remember my dad pulling our well-traveled Rambler station wagon up to the pump of our filling station, cranking the window down, and saying to the attendant, “Fill ‘er up with Ethyl.”

As a young child, I found that confusing.  The only Ethel I knew was Ethel Mertz, Lucille Ball’s partner in crime and at least 50% of the reason that we all loved Lucy.  I can recall my still-developing mind turning over that word “ethyl,” and trying to dispel the confusion.  It did not compute.  Concrete operations of thought made homophones a problem, one that can still bewilder me even at my advanced age.  By the time I figured out the distinction between ethyl and Ethel, I was pumping my own gas, and it was unleaded.

But once upon a time, I was willing to accept that at the filling station we got gas and filled our car with Ethel, or at least her hilarious qualities.  Mirth was much needed for the long drives to my grandmother’s house or across the country when my father deployed.  Filling up with good humor can take you a long way and keep you from being tossed out of the car in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Today, I pump my own gas at the local BP station, but it is inside where I fill up.  And I am not talking convenience store junk food.  When I walk inside my local BP station, I feel like I have entered Cheers, that famous Boston bar operated by Sam Malone and frequented by Cliff and Norm.  My mind wanders to the episode in which Norm enters the bar and Cliff calls out, “Hey, there Nahmy, what’s shakin’?”  Norm replies, “Four cheeks and a couple of chins.”  My heart fills with mirth.  In this urban BP station, everybody knows my name.  And I know what's shakin'--their long-distance girlfriends, health issues, roommates, and staff holiday parties.  We exchange more than money.  I know their names, too.

In our increasingly individualistic, technology-obsessed world, we still need places where everybody knows our names and something about us, places where we can share a laugh.  Mirth is another kind of grease that keeps the wheels of life turning and the valves of our hearts pumping.  Friendship has always been my filling station.  Some friendships are new or casual.  Others reflect a lifetime of loyalty and shenanigans. In every case, they are lead-free, but high octane still.

Alloftheselves.com became my filling station during the COVID pandemic when the doors to the world closed. You, my dear readers, filled me up during that long dry spell. I take you with me now on my new journey through ​breast cancer.  I hope you find on these pages some mirth that fills you up, too!
 

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine suffered sudden heart failure while dining out at a local restaurant. 
It happened just before the peanut butter pie was served.

In what can only be explained as divine intervention, a physician, a navy medic, and a retired cardiac-care nurse were also dining at separate tables in the restaurant.  They came to my friend’s aid.  In their frantic life-saving efforts, a couple of my friend’s ribs were broken.  That was a small price to pay for restoring life to this happy, much-loved, vital woman just a few days short of her 45th birthday.  My friend later learned that the restaurant patrons gathered in a circle to pray as the emergency squad drove her away to a nearby hospital.  Everyone was shaken.  And moved.

It is a powerful thing to watch life leave a person, and it is an equally powerful thing to recognize the awesome power in our hands to restore life, to feel the formidable responsibility for the ongoing existence of another human being, to see our hands as life-giving tools--a spark of the divine in each of us.

In this time of growing hatred in which too many people are preoccupied with sucking the life out of each other, it is inspiring to learn of a situation in which good hearts responded without hesitation to breathe life into a stranger.  It did not matter my friend's political persuasions.  All any one needed to know was that she was in trouble and every second mattered.  It was a heart-to-heart decision.  Humanity and decency prevailed. 

When there is no one to mock us or create doubt in us, our good hearts are stirred to do the right thing because life matters--to us and to each other.

My friend received outstanding cardiac care at the hospital.  Chalk one up for science!  She is now the recipient of an implanted defibrillator that will provide electric current to power her good heart should it ever again go out of rhythm.  I think we could all use a defibrillator to shock us now and then, restore our good hearts when they are out of whack.  Plug us in.  Bring back this transformative power to the people.
​
May the beat go on.
 

The English language can be slippery,
and a lot of words sound alike.  I sometimes find myself living in a parallel universe with others who share my space.

Younger people think that older people can’t hear.  That’s not my problem.  I don’t need volume; I need context.  And maybe a little less background noise.

I experienced a classic case of such confusion a couple of years ago after I was recruited for a two-year contract job in Missouri.  I pared down my possessions to just what would fit in my car and started driving.  I knew no one in Missouri. 

I sublet an apartment and settled in.  I loved the small rural community with its two main streets and slower pace of life.  Everything I needed was clustered within three miles of my home.  The welcoming culture of the town and its conveniences were a nice relief from the aggressive traffic and harried pace of the big city I left behind.  This could be home.

One sunny Saturday morning I set out on routine errands.  I did not get far before I saw flashing lights and slowing traffic.  As I inched toward the scene, I could see that a car had driven through a storefront. Crumbling bricks and shattered glass filled the parking lot where a vape shop once stood.

The sight of a car’s rear end sticking out of a collapsing building was peculiar enough, but what was even stranger? It was the second such accident I had seen in less than a week.  What have I gotten myself into?

I called a co-worker who was a new friend to tell her what I had witnessed. My friend was not aware of the fresh accident, but she seemed to know quite a bit about the earlier one.  “Oh, yes!  I heard Alexis drove through the window of the candle shop.”

My friend said this as though Alexis was someone I should know.  I checked off the names on my short mental list of people I had met in Missouri, but there was no one named Alexis.

“Who’s Alexis?”  I asked.

“Not Alexis.  A LEXUS,” my friend shouted into the phone’s receiver.

“Oh!”

Once we cleared that up, my friend proceeded to share another interesting bit of local gossip--some wrong perpetrated on Dee Dee.

“Who’s Dee Dee?”  I asked.

“Not Dee Dee.  THE DD.  The DD Highway!”

Oh, again.

I thought this kind of conversation only happened on greeting cards, but my friend and I had a good laugh over it, and not just once.  Our friendship was cemented by a case of mistaken homophones.  If laughter is good medicine, it is also strong glue.  It is inside jokes such as these that help to form the enduring bond of friendship. During the pandemic, my friend adopted a puppy and named it Alexis.  Just to be clear, this Alexis was nowhere near the candle shop in 2019. 

It is now perfectly evident that Alexis is a pet and an out-of-control Lexus can do a lot of damage to a storefront.  Thankfully, a couple of poor gals named Alexis and Dee Dee did not end up serving time for crimes they did not commit.  I think we can agree that I should never enter a court of law to provide testimony based on hearsay.

I returned to Ohio just ahead of the pandemic.  Cars protruding from collapsing buildings now seem like a minor social problem compared to disease and conspiracy theories.  Confusion is everywhere, and troubling news easy to come by.  Some of the news is so strange, in fact, that I find myself full of doubt and afraid to speak.  Not everyone is a good friend who will find humor in auditory mix-ups. Today, it might even get me killed. And so, I find myself questioning everything:  Is there a heroin problem in my community or a heroine problem?    Given the current state of politics and reports of corruption at the Columbus Zoo, is it guerilla warfare I should fear or gorilla warfare?  If someone tells me that a hummer interrupted the school’s choir performance, should I call a tow truck or the principal?  It’s all too much—a classic case of homophonophobia.

And to whom should I turn for treatment?

A Colonel of truth perhaps.
 
                              

​

​A friend of mine lives in a suburban neighborhood where the wildlife is becoming too friendly, some might even say BOLD.  Despite repeated attempts to discourage them, the groundhogs have taken up residence underneath decks and porches and the deer walk right up to the front doors and ring the bells.  The family pets do little to deter the wildlife, and that includes a pet pig that can moonwalk on command.  It appears that the animals have taken up the lives we used to have.

My friend spent the first half of the pandemic trying to woo a groundhog out from underneath her back deck and then keep him out.  Since I am not sure where all of this is headed, my friend shall remain anonymous.  Let’s just call her Q.

Q began her interventions by placing a small fence around the groundhog’s front door.  To no avail.  The groundhog simply dug a bigger hole and went underneath the fence.  Next, Q piled small stones around the entrance to the tunnel, but the creature moved the stones to the side, crafted a pair of gargoyles that looked remarkably like my friend, and went on inside.

Q thought the natural animal fear of a predator might work.  Q got a large plastic owl and placed it at the entrance.  The groundhog knocked the owl over, slapped it to the side, and spit on it before regaining entry to its groundhog digs.

Giving up on barriers, Q then tried appealing to the groundhog’s senses.  Q sprayed the area with ammonia.  Again, to no avail.  Perhaps, the scent was no worse than the typical smells of a groundhog home.  Q also tried sprinkling cayenne pepper at the entry, but it appears that the creature preferred life spicy.  Shiny, spinning pinwheels were no distraction and may have been enough extra wind power to provide electricity to the underground tunnel.  Q tried sleep deprivation as a discouragement strategy and kept bright lights focused on the groundhog’s home night and day.   Q was pretty sure she heard the groundhog laughing at her. Desperate, Q left the groundhog a written notice of eviction and posted a Keep Out sign at the entrance to the hole beneath the deck.  Q later found a tiny pair of reading glasses in the snow.  The Keep Out sign was turned around with the words Live, Love, Laugh printed on the back.  There was no response to the eviction letter.

Q then sprinkled baking soda around the deck to track the groundhog’s footsteps so that she would know when it left the tunnel and which direction it had gone.  While the animal was out, she backed up the truck and filled the area with large rocks.  Q says she hasn’t seen the groundhog since, but Q has no will left.  If Q sees signs of the groundhog’s return, she plans to declare him a dependent on her income tax return.

Now the neighborhood is getting together on a Zoom call to discuss the deer problem—upping their game so to speak.  My friend is eager to hear what the neighbors have to say. 

This has me worried.  We are all a little on edge given the politics, the pandemic, and the weather.  I remind my friend of the lyrics to that old folk song, Home on the Range: …where the deer and the antelope play…never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.

We need that…
​
but I think it might be too late.

​