Tapestry of Reflection

Tapestry of Reflection


Lately, I’ve been feeling, for lack of a more delicate way to describe it, older than dirt. Many of my friends and most of my family are either dying or dead. I no longer leave home often for work because I am the sole caregiver to my eighty-six year-old mother. My children are busy living their lives, following their dreams, and are preoccupied with relationships. I should have listened to my grandmother when she told me “Child don’t ever grow old.”

My lawn has become my reprieve from daily negativity and my escape from the rooms in my home that seem to grow smaller with each passing day. I have entered a new phase of creation and perfect maintenance. I work with the soil, I plant seeds, I cultivate flowers, and sometimes while digging up a plot of ground for a new rose bush or Hibiscus I find a treasure trove of memories. I found one of those today.

I stopped to allow a few tears to flow when I found the old rusted out coffee can buried about a foot deep in my back yard. When it was placed there the boys had called it a time capsule. When I first hit the can with the shovel and stopped to see what was keeping me from digging into the soil, I was aware of just how much time had gone past. I gently scrapped away the dirt around the can and with trembling hands lifted it from the burial spot two young boys had chosen about fifteen years ago.

Inside of the can I found two empty shotgun shells, a piece of old pipe, an old porcelain insulator, one Batman figurine with a broken arm, one Spiderman figurine with a missing foot, one black checker and one red checker, and about four of my daughter’s N’Sync dolls. Her dolls, I’m pretty sure, were not meant to be any kind of clue for historians. There were meant to disappear and never reappear where the boys would have to see them.

Children enter the house wrapped in blankets, snug in the arms of anxious parents. Before long they are drooling and spitting up on everything they come in contact with. They learn to run almost before they learn to walk and it seems like only hours have passed before you hear, “Mom, he just hit me with that rubber chicken!”

I wish I could remember more of the concoctions the boys put together when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. The youngest boy once painted the bathroom walls with a mixture of toothpaste, mouthwash, and spray bathroom cleaner. “You said you didn’t like the color anymore and wanted to paint it,” he said in self-defense right after I cut loose with a high pitched scream that broke the next door neighbors drinking glasses.

Once the two boys, determined to have revenge on their older sister, decided to cook her some pudding. She had used the boys as make up experiments when she had friends over and the older boy was left with a strange shade of blue on his eyelids while the younger boy looked like he had a permanent case of Fifth's Disease on his cheeks. The pudding was a vanilla pudding base (leftover dessert from lunch that day), mixed with balsamic vinegar, red food coloring, and plastic ants that were strategically placed in the bottom of the serving dish. Thank goodness the first bite gagged her and she never found the ants!

Then, before the mess from the pudding was even cleaned up, my daughter appeared in designer blouses, pierced ears, and painted nails. A telephone seemed to be growing from the side of her head because it was always attached to her ear and she was always with a friend. They giggled when the rest of the house was quiet and sat sulking over God only knows what when the rest of the house was alive with noise and movement.

The boys were wearing pressed shirts and tight fitting jeans, brown and blonde locks (respectively) either plastered down on their heads or sticking up in the air as if they just stuck their finger into an electrical outlet and the voltage escaped through their heads.

The girl loved to shop, one boy was artistic and the other boy loved to play basketball. Then one boy decided he must be in dress clothes at all times while the other boy wore jeans and sweatshirts with hoods. All three children were enthusiastic when report cards were due from school because they knew they would receive an extra allowance for each “A” they received. One time I thought I would have to take a loan out on the house to pay them for the perfect marks they brought home but I didn’t care. It was worth it. THEY were worth it.

The boys sometimes made their sister cry. She sometimes made them laugh out loud. Somehow it all balanced out and they learned from each other. “You retard!” she said to one of the boys. “You nerd!” one of the boys replied.

“You’re brats!” she said loud enough for me to hear. “Well, you’re like a bad apparition that won’t go away!” the oldest boy replied.

“Mom! What’s an apparition?” she yelled out to me. (Keep in mind she was almost ten years older than the oldest boy.)

They all entered the house, kissed me, sometimes argued, sometimes pulled pranks, but always went to sleep in their own beds, safe, well-fed, exhausted, eager to face the next day.

Now the house feels empty. One teenager lives in the house, though not one of the original three children who grew up here. The youngest of the Three Stooges, my nickname for my children, has already died and the other two live in separate cities. If I put my car keys on the dining room table and come back two hours later they are still there. If I buy three boxes of cookies at the market only one box gets eaten the same day I bring them home. I thought I would enjoy this time in my life but in all honesty, it’s just plain weird. The years went past way too fast for my liking.

I mow the lawn. I plant seeds and plants. I hoe, I mulch, I cultivate. I tenderly pluck withered petals from the roses and attack weeds around my flowers as if they were burglars invading my home. My flowers beds are lush, filled with green plants and potted flowers. I tend to them with love and dedication just as I once tended to my children.

I placed the rusted coffee can and all of the contents back into the ground for someone else to find sometime in the future. I will keep the memories it brought back to me safe within my heart. Life is really a tapestry of moments shared and moments spent wishing you were sharing them. I just wish I had more time to spend on weaving an even more elaborate tapestry.

© Dianna Doles-Petry

6/02/2010

Questions for a Writer

Questions for a Writer

She asked me, “Why do you write poetry?”

I searched for a worthy reply.

I am driven by a need to be heard,

But answered, “I’m not sure why.”

I began a quest to comprehend rhyme.

I had many thoughts to convey.

The melody of a flowing river,

The sunshine I find along the way.


She asked me, “Why do you write stories?”

I write to touch hearts through open ears.

I create moments of pure delight.

I answered, “To chase away my fears.”

I used to be like this young girl,

With long hair spun from golden sunlight,

With no time for naps or worry,

I was eager to share a kiss by moonlight.

She asked me, “Why do you like happy endings?”

She is wise well beyond her years.

“I can keep people from turning to dust,” I replied,

Then I turned to brush away my tears.

© Dianna Doles-Petry

4/27/2010

Blessings in an Ordinary Day

Blessings in an Ordinary Day


My eighty-two year old neighbor came to visit with me today. She appeared at my back door at a time when I was trying to juggle three tasks at one time; preparing breakfast, refilling my mother's medicine tray, and brewing coffee, or as my family often reminds me, my life blood. At first I felt a pang of anxiety because I was so busy and didn't want to have a visit with anyone but then she held out a gift for me and I not only smiled, I stopped to take two Tupperware containers from her hands.

Without realizing what I had done at just that moment, I know now that I made a split-second decision that felt right to me. It was the right decision to make. By stopping to smile at my neighbor and thank her for making my day a bit brighter we had both received a gift. She needed the gifts of attention and friendship this morning while the gift I needed was a reminder to stop and smell the roses, or in this case, the coffee.

The Tupperware containers contained freshly ground coffee and memories of a different era in my life. Sally, my neighbor, asked, "Dianna, do you remember where I got that Tupperware? You were just a strip of a girl and you had a party with this stuff. It was the first time I ever went to a party to buy plastic containers but I sure did have a good time. Now I come over here for coffee about every day so I figured I would bring you some coffee for brewing and get you to take a break long enough to drink a cup with me."

I slathered heart-healthy spread on the butter I took from the toaster, added milk to two bowls of shredded wheat, and took fresh strawberry jam from the refrigerator. My mother and Sally took seats at the dining room table and I poured three cups of coffee, one for each of us. While the two older women enjoyed cereal and toast, I checked out the Tupperware.

"Sally, how in the world did you remember where you got this Tupperware?" I asked.

"Well, Child, lift up the lid. You'll see. I always figured on giving it back to you some day and today seemed like a good day to do it."

I lifted the dark blue lid of one of the containers and saw that my name had been neatly etched into the plastic along with a date, July, 1974. My thoughts started to drift back to my teenage years. I always seemed to be finding ways to make a few dollars back then. One year I wore the rubber right off of my tennis shoes by walking door to door selling greeting cards. Another time I sold a tabloid like newspaper, "The Grit", door to door for a few months. I sold raffle tickets, I cleaned windows, I washed cars, and I groomed pets, but my biggest money maker had turned out to be selling Tupperware.

My mother and most of the women in this community were old fashioned stay at home wives. The only parties they attended were baby showers, bridal showers, and family occasions or events held at church. Even those were rare because I grew up in a coal mining camp where the men worked swing shifts and dads were not always available to watch the children while a woman went anywhere alone. Babysitters, while not unheard of at that time, were not in high demand in this area. The point is that these "parties" could be held in the middle of the afternoon or in the early evening and they were perfectly acceptable. The Tupperware was also an item that could be used by women of all ages.

"Dianna," Sally said, jolting me out of my stroll down memory lane. "Do you remember trying to teach us all how to burp those containers?" Sally laughed so hard at the end of this question that coffee spewed from her nostrils. "I think it was harder than burping a baby! I also think you learned to make sure the container was empty when you did that demonstration!"

Have I mentioned that Jell-O was also wildly popular as a dessert in the 1970's? I can still see the look on the widow Brown's face as bright red Jell-O seemed to jump from a little square Tupperware container and land right at the top of her ample bosom before beginning a slow decline through the mounds of flesh and onward to the top of her girdle. She was jiggling more than the Jell-O as she worked to unfasten the top buttons of her dress to remove the Jell-O.

"Oh, I remember that very well, Sally," I said with a smile.

"Child, you might not have known it, but every one of the women that came to your parties left there smiling and just praying you would have another party like that. We all went home thinking about the plastic junk we had bought to add to our saved up butter bowls and jelly glasses in the cabinets. We didn't really need that junk, we bought it to help you and we bought it to get together and save our sanity. You were funny, friendly, and fed us all finger foods we didn't have to fix ourselves. You wouldn't want to have another one of those parties would you? I'd buy some more of that Tupperware and you could send it to your daughter!" Sally's face was full of expression and happiness. My mother's face was full of need for me to refill her coffee cup.

I realized at that very moment how overwhelmed I sometimes feel by the frustrations of trying to be everything to everyone in my life. There are many moments when I ponder on the dreams that seem to have evaporated and my days that seem to have stalled in a rigid zone of chores and responsibility. What happened to that teenager who was so full of energy, determination, and ingenuity? Well, I think that young girl went through many changes of seasons and scenery and to be honest with myself, they were not all bad.

I've experienced people and places I never dared to dream about and I am still tapping into the potential I never even knew I possessed. I have learned and I have grown. I have been able to see past the rain falling around me to see the rainbow developing after the storm. I have taken the moments from my life and turned them into adventures I can retell and memories I can use to warm my soul during a cold period in time. That teenager seeking to make a fortune and see the world became a woman who brings her own unique gift to this world every day in some small way.

My mother started to bang her spoon against her empty cereal bowl and Sally gently placed her hand on one of my mother's hands. My mother seemed to calm down and I saw a tear trickle down Sally's face. "Would either of you ladies like another cup of coffee or some more toast?" I asked.

Sally stood and said, "Well, I'd better be heading home. My phone might be ringing off the hook you know. Every now and again one of my children remembers that they have a mother.” Her facial expression saddened and then she looked at me before adding, "Dianna, you have no idea of how blessed you are to have such a close family. You're a blessing to your friends and family every day."

I felt a tear trickle down my cheek as Sally walked past me. We aren't alone in this world. Many people face the same struggles and we all need a human touch of kindness. I'm pretty sure that I often search for the wrong blessings and overlook the blessings I'm given in an ordinary day. Sally is one of those blessings.

I guess Tupperware might have been designed to keep food fresh but for me it preserved memories, friendship, and a reminder that miracles happen when you least expect them. I think I need to purchase some new Tupperware very soon.


© Dianna Doles-Petry

03/25/2010

One of Life's Embarrassing Moments

An email I received from a friend earlier today caused me to take a stroll down memory lane this evening. A statement at the end of the email said something about breaking elastic and having your panties falling down around your ankles if you didn't forward the contents of the email. My grandmother had her own version of breaking elastic and it had nothing to do with friendship or email.


You see, my grandmother had nine children and money got very, very tight when my grandfather lost his coal trucking business and his ability to make a living for the family came to a screeching halt. He did what he could to make ends meet but with nine children there was never any money left over to be spent on luxury items.

My grandmother made do with what she had for as long as humanly possible. She learned to stretch a meal in ways I don't even like to think about. For the longest time she sewed clothes for the children to wear and made repair after countless repair on every dress, blouse, sock, and anything else the family was wearing. Finally, her sewing machine wore out and everything had to be sewn or repaired by hand. When the elastic in her undergarments started to lose their grip, she began using a safety pin to keep them snug on her waist.

One beautiful sunny day, as her story went, she walked three of her nine children to the nearest grocer (almost two miles away) to purchase food staples. She always left the oldest child at home to watch over the younger children and took the next three oldest with her to help carry the bags of groceries. Only the necessities needed for the kitchen were purchased and the girls knew it would be a much longer walk home than it would be to get to town. On this day, just as she and the children stepped out of the store, all carrying arms full of bags containing flour, sugar, beans, lard, etc., my grandmother felt a snap against the skin at her waist. Then she felt a slight prick as the open end of the safety pin pushed into her hip.

There was no where to set the bags of groceries down and the children walking in front of her had no idea of what was going on behind them. My grandmother felt her panties sliding over her hips and she tried to squirm around to keep them in place with no luck. Within seconds the panties were down around her ankles and the only thing she could think to do was to simply step out of them and continue walking.

As luck would have it, the three girls started to grow weary from the weight of the bags and their pace became slower and slower. Before long a man and woman who attended church with my grandmother walked up behind her and the girls. The gentleman took the heaviest of the bags from my grandmother before moving forward to talk with the girls and help to lessen their load. His wife, with a face red with anger, started to talk to my grandmother. "Okie, did you see the panties some Jezebel had the audacity to leave laying right there on the side of the road where decent families have to walk? I'm telling you, there is no telling what goes on after dark in these parts. I surely won't have my Albert out here to catch sight of such goings on!"

My grandmother said he could feel her face and neck flush with embarrassment. She didn't dare tell the woman that it was not a Jezebel that dropped her panties. It was good old church attending Opal who dropped her drawers because she didn't have any elastic! After that, as I understand it, she used two safety pins to hold up her undergarments at all times!

© Dianna Doles Petry
3/3/2010

The Power of Prayer

The Power of Prayer

During a hospital visit to see my mother today, I met a lady I had not seen before and we started to talk. This lady, a good ten or fifteen years younger than I am, was denouncing the power of medical doctors and insisting that we don't really need modern medicine when we have the power of prayer. She was upset with her siblings for not allowing her mother to "suffer through God's will" in her own home without the prying eyes or needles of the medical professional. She needed someone to listen to her and give her some kind of encouragement to continue on with her battle to get her mother back home away from the hospital environment.

My faith is strong, it has always been strong, even during the darkest hours of my life but I cannot say that we should forego medical treatment and rely solely on the power of prayer. I also believe that we often pray for miracles that are not meant to happen and are not a part of the greater plan. For instance, my mother is eighty-six years old and in very fragile health. To pray for a total healing and restoration of her youth is not logical nor meant to happen. Praying for her to pass from this life comfortably without extensive suffering makes more sense to me, along with a prayer for strength and understanding for myself in the days following such a great loss.

Prayer is meant, in my opinion, to help us reach a glorious and promised destination when this life is over. It is not meant to help us win the lottery or acquire success without putting forth any effort. At times I have prayed for others to find success and for all of us to better our lives. I have always found an inner peace that comes from trusting God.

If you trust God with your health, you know that he has given man the knowledge to understand the complexity of the human body in order to help us help ourselves. The lady I met today caused many thoughts to jump from hidden places in my mind into a bubbling cauldron of possibility and life experiences I have stored away like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. I examined and reexamined my thoughts on medicine versus prayer. Must God be mythical and mystic to be believable? I think not.

Before I left the brief conversation today, I had come to this conclusion; God is mighty, he gave man knowledge and endurance, faith and precision. The power of prayer brings us closer to God. Maybe instead of choosing a side we should pray for God to hold the surgeon's hand as he wields a scalpel and pray for any of our doctor's to be rich in faith and patience. I think the power of prayer and the power of medicine work together as a team. I'm not sure the lady I was talking with appreciated my thoughts but she did not turn away in a huff. I have to think she at least considered my view of prayer and medicine as a joint treatment.

Tonight as I close my eyes I will be praying for God to guide my mother's physician's and to give us the strength to face the days ahead. I will praying for her to pass from my arms to God's arms without fear or guilt at leaving her family behind. I will not pray that she be made as healthy as she was at the age of fifty but I will pray that any time we might have left together be spent peacefully and in her own home.

Prayer is not a replacement for medicine, it is an equal partner in the course of treatment and accepting the consequences of living.

© Dianna Doles Petry

2/23/2010

Oh, the Joys of Aging!

Oh, the Joys of Aging!


Warning! If you are male and have not reached the age of maturity required to understand a woman going through “the change of life,” please stop here. Reading the rest of this post could frighten you away from women for the rest of your life.

I’ll start with my mornings. Just five years ago I sprang from my bed each morning like a recruit going through boot camp. I dressed, applied make-up, started breakfast and then jogged in place while it was cooking. I gulped down a couple of cups of coffee and a small bowl of cereal and I was ready to face the day. I was so upbeat and perky that my neighbors thought I was using drugs and asked me about it. “Hey, what kind of drugs are you taking? Do you have any extra? I sure could use some!”

Now I wake up feeling like I have been fighting with Jackie Chan or Chuck Norris all night long. I can barely force myself into the kitchen to start the coffee pot but I know I NEED that caffeine fix to even manage to get myself dressed. Breakfast is something I prepare for others since virtually everything I eat ends up in the land of cellulite buried within my now gravity-challenged body. Before I can consume the first whole cup of coffee I am on my way to the ladies’ room and I make sure to keep the décor in that area simple and bright because I now spend a lot of time there. In fact, one of my dear friends was visiting here not long ago and thought I was hiding a bottle of liquor in the linen pantry of the restroom because I made so many trips in there while during the day. Grief, she would really think something was going on if she saw how many trips I make there during the night!

By midmorning I often feel as if I’ve wandered off into the heat of the Arizona desert. We are in the middle of winter here and I’m wearing sleeveless summer blouses and still sweating from my neck down to my thighs. I am sure the house is far too hot and I even consider turning on the air conditioning until I look over and see my elderly mother shivering, the dogs packed tightly together huddling under the dining room table and I realize that I can see my own breath in the air every time I exhale. Then, as if on cue, I start to feel the chill in the air and announce loudly, “God, the temperature is dropping again! I need to get a sweater and turn that thermostat up.” Is it possible for dogs to clap their little paws together? I’m sure I’ve heard applause a time or two when my hot flashes have passed for a bit.

I’m not sure I should even mention how my skin itches, my thoughts seem fuzzy at times, I am having a hard time with multi-tasking these days, and I’m finding it impossible to get a full night of sleep that allows me to wake up feeling refreshed.

My grandmother warned me about the change of life, or at least, she considered it a warning. She made it sound like racing through the child bearing years was enjoyable and I would want to grieve once the day came when I would not be able to conceive anymore. My grandmother had nine children and I know that the last child, her only son, came just as she was entering the point in her life when cycles become irregular and gray begins to appear in your hair.

I think she had to have been drinking or something. I look into the mirror and I see my mother looking back at me. I take a pill for high blood pressure and another pill for a thyroid condition. I have stiffening joints and sometimes I have to write my age in the palm of my hand with an ink pen before I go to a doctor’s appointment the way I used to write crib notes before a big test in high school. I would never be able to keep up with an infant at this age and I would probably lay the poor little thing down somewhere and forget where I put it.

The truth is; I feel liberated these days. I don’t have any young children at home and I can spend more time exploring my own needs rather than worrying about who needs to be where and who has a school project due. While I am a caretaker to my elderly mother, I am blessed to be able to do this and I’m sure that the long hours I keep doing this are a part of what keeps me tired but it also leaves me feeling fulfilled.

I may not be a walking magnet for a man’s attention anymore but I accept my body as a living roadmap of the journeys I’ve traveled and the battles I’ve fought. I’ve accomplished a lot in my fifty-one years of living and I plan to accomplish a lot more before I’m done if God’s willing and the creek doesn’t rise. I still clean up pretty good too, I just have to remember to cover up the wings I now have where my upper arms once resided.

As a younger woman, I planned my entire existence around other people and their needs. I thought every detail of my life should be in order and meet the approval of friends, family, neighbors, and people I’d never met but MIGHT meet sometime in years to come. I wasn’t sure who I really was or what I was supposed to do with my creative energy. Now, I’m not afraid to face a good challenge and I have more self-confidence than I’ve ever had. I’ve learned to slow down because life is not a race. I breathe, I think, I vent when necessary, and most of all, I don’t waste a minute of my life unnecessarily.

Oh, the joys of aging! Who would have thought it?

© Dianna Doles-Petry

1/28/10