Whole and Present

     Maybe, like my family, yours needs healing for the holidays, more than anything else. We can bring about change, as difficult or painful as it seems. Family time need not be just a time to "deal" with relatives. My family is contentious, like so many. It seems, we so often reflect how we deal with the world in how we manage our family relations. With family, however, bad behavior may be heightened by bad manners. Hurts tend to be deeper and the anger we suppress in the interests of "getting along," festers. So it came to pass this year, some family members were "avoiding" each other, unwilling to attend our annual Thanksgiving celebration. Without judgment, here is my plea.

     "Of all of us, I'm the least likely to stay silent on any topic. I hope you will indulge me this time, as I feel I must speak my peace. May it be authentic and from my heart. Here are a few things I find remarkable. Seated around our holiday tables of the past, present and, future are unique reservoirs of education and intelligence, not to mention qualities such as civility. As a group we possess an astonishingly large reservoir of creative talent, as well. Why, then, would we settle for divisiveness and dysfunction?

     My plea is for everyone to come to the Thanksgiving table in gratitude for life, love, sustenance, beauty and the freedom to enjoy them. For a moment I lost track of my great friend, Adil, in the bloody chaos of the terrorist attacks of Paris. After a terrible night I did find him. He had gone to bed early, after a long day. He has a booth in Montmartre. From it he sells his paintings of Paris and Heidelberg to passersby and tourists. He shares his space and swaps stories with other artisans and merchants there. Drifting off to sleep, Adil was awakened by the sound of an explosion, followed by others. Adil knows (knew) some of the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. He was very much affected by the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the killings in the Jewish hypermarket January 7, 2015. Now he struggles through the aftermath of a fresh nightmare. We cannot know what tomorrow will bring. Let us live in the moment, whole and present.

     Gene and Rosann have made us all welcome to their lovely home and table.  Maybe we could each choose to make the McCullough home and table a safe place for each and every person who comes to Thanksgiving. In the interests of convocation we can choose not to say one word of past hurts, bitterness or anger to anyone. We can choose to love unconditionally for a few hours. To do so, I believe, is the essence of gratitude. It can also be a starting point for a spirit of true reconciliation to take hold. Reconciliation is not forgiveness, nor does it forget. Rather, It is an exercise in relinquishment. It does not deny wrongs on either side. Rather it takes no side. It calls a halt to animosity, to begin. Then it calls us to seek healing and reconstruction, not restitution.

     I'll gladly start. I relinquish hurts of the past absolutely. I am grateful to have met and known Gene. I am grateful to have been his wife and the mother of his children. I am grateful to Rosann for loving Merritt, Margaret, Colin, Ryan, Cole and Aidan as more than a stepmother, as a mother. My gratitude for my children and grandchildren is boundless. You are all remarkably intelligent, talented and generous. To my grandsons, I find you to be, each in his own right, handsome, bright and wholehearted. More important each person around our Thanksgiving table is the owner of a lion's heart. Contentious we may be, but the world finds us independently courageous and generous to a fault. Be this to each other.

“Kintsugi is a pottery technique. When something breaks, like a vase, they glue it back together with melted gold. Instead of making the cracks invisible, they make them beautiful. To celebrate the history of the object. What it's been through. And I was just... Thinking of us like that. My heart full of gold veins, instead of cracks.” ― Leah Rader, Cam Girl

     
     This year, alone, some family members have striven to return to school and work. People have moved, built and rebuilt homes. Some have chosen to make enormous changes and strides in careers. Others have overcome terrible injury and illness. We have managed our pain, collectively and individually. We have done so with courage and integrity. At the end of 2015 and into next year, let's heal hearts. None of us can judge the others. None of us is better than any other. None of us struggles harder. We are a company of excellent people, each of whom has come a long way. Respect everyone, criticize no-one. Mohandas Gandhi said, “Hatred is not the enemy; the enemy is fear.”
     I hope everyone will come to family Thanksgiving in the spirit, as well as in the flesh. If not I have no expectation. Rather I will count you there in my dreams. Meanwhile this is no time for shame and blame. We have a common goal, but everything has its time, and each of us holds the key to the clock. It would do my heart good to see us together again. The family bread baker, I am casting my bread upon the waters."

A Year, Lost and Found

A friend, writing about the highlights of 2015, inspired me to write a post. I have felt the year slipping by me, almost since it began. I felt it was a wash. Writing always brings me back to a more mindful state. This morning is no exception. I follow the Chinese lunar calendar, so today, November 18, is an auspicious day to move forward. On that note here are my highlights for 2015.

-The early months of this year were unproductive in terms of professional writing. I did not manage to monetize my blog. The legal document processing business also suffered.
-January and February were physically draining. Arthritis and cold, dreary, weather do not mix well. I was, frankly, racked with pain, and living as a virtual recluse.
-Spring never came to Denver. It rained, man, it rained.
-One daughter is making a splash in her career. She has exceeded sales benchmarks, to be awarded as a Pacesetter and Silver Pacesetter by her employer. She is destined for management.
-Another daughter is changing her life and career, devoting herself to painting, rather than design, a tough transition.
-My son made enormous strides in his life. He is working on a degree, maintaining a 4.0 average in college. He has an apartment and his own truck. He makes time for me, shares his stories and his strength.
- Received an invitation to enter a prototype for a new publication in The Knight Foundation's innovative journalism category. My prototype, one of 800 entries, did not win, but generated a second invitation.
-Summer came and went in a flash. I took on two pro bono legal document challenges, a blizzard of paperwork. Both people both got off the hook for serious financial penalties. One dodged an impossible deadline.
-One takeaway for the year is to choose the mountain! Death on some mountains is, not merely painful; it is a waste.
-My year has also been marked by family divisiveness. We seem destined to remain a rigid, contentious and unforgiving bunch! My daughter complimented me for having the ability to write people "carte blanche." No, it is simply that I have learned the hard way all it takes to truly reconcile.
-Still striving for better answers to chronic inflammatory disease, to share with blog readers. In the process I've discovered a world of information and some very compassionate people.
-November's national and international news has been particularly grim. The dreadful, events in Paris, were personal. I lost track of a close friend. The day after the terrorist attacks, I was relieved and grateful to find him, safe and sound.

Prayer, desperate prayer, seems so simple, but it’s a step rarely taken by those in family conflict. ~Erwin W. Lutzer, When You've Been Wronged: Moving From Bitterness to Forgiveness

Finally I am so grateful to my family and close friends for their love and generosity, for shining a light in dark times. Our lives seem to be forever marked by violence. Terror has cast a long shadow everywhere in the world. Cruelty and brutality are the order of the day. It is that time when we need the voices of sanity and compassion.

Oprah Power

Where is your gratitude?

Despite the humor intended in the title of this post, I am truly disgusted. Of course Oprah Winfrey is a proponent of gratitude! The primary issue I address here is my gratitude and that of my neighbors, although Oprah inspired me to write it. You see, my original intention and hope for this blog was to inform seniors, their families and caregivers. It was also to empower people; only a tiny percentage of the world's people, even of the world's wealthy, have Oprah Power.

Most readers who follow my blog will be familiar with some of the issues facing tenants of public housing. I happen to live in a comparatively nice-looking LIHTC, a highrise near downtown Denver. To my astonishment (not to mention the amazement of some of my neighbors) the building and landlord were featured on Denver's Channel 9 News recently. I say we were astonished, because, although this is reasonably attractive housing, it was touted as a progressive solution to public housing woes. I wrote two newspeople at Channel 9, two women, Adele Arikawa and Kyle Dyer, to express my surprise at the coverage, and to voice my concerns. Their reply? The single tenant of this housing with whom they spoke expressed her profound gratitude for her apartment. With regard to the issue of segregating the tenants of the tax credit set-aside portion of the property from the tenants and all of the amenities of the adjoining portion of the development, the tenant said she was aware of the situation, but has no objection on the grounds she is grateful for her home!

I have heard this standard applied previously; indeed, by this landlord's site manager on another publicly subsidized property, a senior multifamily Section VIII.  Gratitude was Manager Ginny's trump card, and she played it continuously, with impunity! The housing had originally been developed under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Denver and/or Catholic Charities and Community Service of Denver. When the complex opened its doors, as Higgins Plaza, it was managed by vowed Catholic nuns. As such gratitude for this shelter is virtually compulsory. (-Have an issue with bullying by your neighbors or the management team?  Are maintenance and repairs are mediocre at best? Have you long suspected the Manager of stealing the property of elderly tenants, transferring to long-term care, deceased or dying?) Where is your GRATITUDE? My own son-in-law, while I was protesting my unhappiness in living at Higgins Plaza, alluded to life under one of the City's bridges as my unacceptable and only alternative!

By the measure of gratitude I submit to you I am a generally grateful individual, hence the name of this blog. By the measure of gratitude for "the little things," Oprah is remiss, to reduce this to the ridiculous. If memory serves, the unredoubtable Ms. Winfrey protested the treatment she received as a member of the public entering Hermes. Apparently Hermes felt she was mistaken to enter the store. A clerk advised Oprah she could not afford to purchase so much as a handbag in the store, so the story goes. In any case Oprah did not care for the presumption behind the statement, nor its racist overtone. Hermes, on the other hand, appeared to feel she should have been grateful not to have been immediately barred from its store.  See: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8338268/#.VkI0V66rRQY

You know the rest of Oprah's rather public issue with Hermes. No, Oprah was not sufficiently grateful to step foot in Hermes. Her gratitude for haute couture proved insufficient to overcome her expectation not to be followed, questioned and insulted, by high fashion's presumptuous bigots. Unlike the rest of us, Oprah had the luxury of publicly proclaiming her objection. Although we are told, as residents of public housing, the landlord cannot retaliate against us for voicing our concerns, legitimate or otherwise, it is absolutely not true. My former close friend and neighbor was effectively evicted and sued for unlawful detainer for disagreeing publicly with the landlord's new non-smoking policy and the manner in which it was introduced (and enforced.) The man's responses were inappropriately couched, but he should have had the right to express his objection and, for that matter, his annoyance, within certain limits of acceptability. The landlord could have insisted he keep it appropriate, not insulting, but, instead chose to evict, leaving him devastated. He lost a great deal of property, and has returned to his previous homeless state. He is a disabled American veteran. We should be grateful, and be able to demonstrate our gratitude for his service.

The Civil Rights Movement, it wasn't just a couple of, you know, superstars like Martin Luther King. It was thousands and thousands - millions, I should say - of people taking risks, becoming leaders in their communities. ~Barbara Ehrenreich

When the site manager at Higgins Plaza stated that "as a recipient of a housing subsidy, you should be grateful for shelter. My response was swift and clear. I said, "My financial status and arrangements are absolutely private. My housing subsidy neither removes any of my rights, nor does it negate my expectation that my housing will be decent, safe and secure, in decent repair and reasonably clean. Your company is accountable for adherence to federal law!" I have said the same things in my current tax credit housing. The sad thing was my willingness to move into housing under the control of the same landlord and management company. Be assured it is due to the scarcity of affordable housing in this city.

It all depends, I suppose, upon whether shelter is or is not considered a human right. It depends on one's view, also of the civil rights of Americans. Bottom line ... segregating people by income is egregious. Segregating an entire portion of a development by income is unlawful, if that portion of the development is a separate building and populated by a preponderance of the ethnic minorities in the development. This condition creates "disparate impact," and it is against the law. Perhaps one woman in this LIHTC is not at all concerned about being unable to swim in the pool, use the health club, or sip a cup of coffee in the courtyard of the development. That does not make it right, not by any standard.

So I ask, am I grateful not to be under the Cherry Creek bridge with my little dog and what remains of my belongings? You tell me. Am I grateful for America's tax credit program, which is notorious everywhere in the Nation for promoting segregation? You tell me.

Nail Biter

After a Summer hiatus, it's time to get back to blogging. We live in an over-anxious world; the personal control which accompanies financial security teeters on top of a hat pin.

One of the women I count among my friends, is a neighbor of six years. We began talking as new neighbors, grew interested in each other's work, families and social lives. We are separated by a generation, Marti is young enough to be my daughter. We are dissimilar in personality, although, each of us, in her way, outspoken and independent. Marti, however, is someone who suffers from an anxiety disorder, and knows it. She has had treatment in the past, but nothing, so far has been consistently successful.

Marti is a hard worker, diligent and painstaking. She is a pleaser; it is part of her professional persona. She is a catering supervisor, both working for an international corporation and for a small, but highly successful, local caterer. It is a stressful, unpredictable, business. Tastes, the fortunes of clients, trends in food, entertaining and marketing  ... all bring new meaning to change as the only constant. Perhaps not the best choice of career for a nail biter, but, the reality of the workplace rarely meets the ideal. Most of us, let's face it, work to pay for life's necessities, not to mention, most are only a paycheck away from temporary shelter. 

Marti, however, worries about everything. A Colorado native, for example, she worries about Winter coming. So when she came to me, to ask whether my document processing business included living wills, trusts and powers of attorney, I might have guessed she would jump right in, only to back-pedal furiously shortly thereafter. Here is my personal confession. In spite of my customary lack of fear,  I have done this. At 75 I had no living will, no advance medical directives, no powers of attorney in place. The reason was no reason at all -- no, it wasn't pure procrastination. It came down to dread at the acknowledgement, not so much of death, but, of catastrophic injury or illness. What terrible words are limitation, relinquishment, incapacitation ... isn't death preferable, in other words, to ultimate indignities and dependency?
Marti says she's "not ready," and I don't blame her. However, I hope she will reconsider. She is a divorcee, with one child and one grandchild. Her former spouse died recently. His protracted illness and lack of preparation for the end of his life cost his son dearly.