Mining Nuggets

A note to my blog

Dear blog,

I have not forgotten you, nor have I lost the urge to write about anything and everything. It seems that I have been so busy learning about what it is going to be like when I retire from my full-time professor job. For example, I have started reading novels, and am enjoying it very much. Plus, I adore taking long walks and having coffee or breakfast with friends in my community. 

I decided to take me on as a challenge to be healthy and fit so that when I go into my seventies next year, I will be able to stand firm and face whatever the new developmental stage of old age will have to offer. So, I have been eating healthy, walking more, doing strength training and yoga exercises. I am enjoying this. Taking care of me. It feels new and different. 

I can't wait for spring and summer, and I seem to be enjoying all my time spent learning to do things that I love. Recently I read Ursula Le Guin's, No Time to Spare, a compilation of her blog posts about aging. I especially loved how she described the idea of "spare time:"

The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don't know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It's occupied by living.

Having the spring semester off means I am home a lot more. And Oscar and Mimi love having me around. They gather around me wherever I plant myself - by my computer or with a good book. They snuggle around me and keep me warm. This past weekend when I was feeling poorly with the latest stomach flu that I might have caught on the planes flying back and forth from Israel, they kept me as warm as can be. 

Don't get me wrong, blog. I am still working. I completed a book and it will be published this July. I am particularly fond of this one, and look forward to holding it in my hands. It will come out exactly 30 years since I immigrated to the States from Israel. I think I might want to have a party to celebrate both its arrival, and my thirty year immigration anniversary. And, blog, I am still presenting workshops and lectures here and there all over the country. So, even though I only have one full academic year left at my professor job, my plate is full and glass is overflowing.

Oh - before I forget ... did I tell you that I spent ten days in Israel recently visiting my mother's grave for the first year memorial after her passing last March? I think I might have forgotten to tell you that. My sister, Elise, has been taking care of her grave with such dedication and love. Indeed, she created a rock garden on it just as my mother would have loved. She tends it weekly by watering and adding new succulents she brings to plant from her own garden. And every Friday, she lights a memorial candle. Here is a photograph:

As I stood by the graveside, I felt peaceful, grateful and happy to see the flowers and cacti enveloping my mother's memory with such creativity and love.

So, dear blog, I will be back again to tell my stories, and write out my emotional theories about this and that. Thank you for being so patient with me. I love knowing you are here, always quietly waiting and supportive, a vessel to carry my ideas and thoughts, emotions and words out into the Interwebs. 

Much love always, Tamarika.

In like a lion

What a storm that was! Forceful winds whipping and plastering heavy, wet snow and ice to the trees, burdening them to crashing to the ground atop buses and cars demolishing them and pulling down power lines leaving devastation in their wake. Being left without power for days on end without an end in sight creates a situation with many different feelings. The first is one of being out of control and naively thinking it will end quickly. Then reality sets in and there is a brief period of frustration, anger and sadness. Hopelessness that we will live like this forever: cold to the bone, dark early in the day, with none of the usual media outlets that kept me so preoccupied and distracted all the days of my life, it seems. And then, acceptance. Here is the situation – force majeure – and nothing to be done about it. What seemed like an uncontrollable and unbearable situation becomes day to day life. I start to realize that there are things that I can do to make life more bearable again. Purchase a kerosene space heater that will take the chill out of the air; reach up for the coffee press pitcher so that we can have coffee in the morning; fill a hot water bottle to put under the cats’ bed clothes, so they can feel comfortable and warm, and then take it to bed so that sleep becomes peaceful and bearable again; discover that there are other ways to reach media: library, iPhone, a visit to friends, reading before the dark sets in; and most importantly developing relationships and connections, discovering a community of people who are going through similar experiences, and hearing from an extraordinary number of supportive others, who offer us their homes, showers, food – whatever we might need.

There are many moments of gratitude that our fate could have been so much worse but isn’t. For example, we have a gas water heater, so we can have a hot shower each day. Plus, our stove top is gas, so we can boil water and cook food. It is cold enough that even though the fridge is out, the food doesn’t spoil as fast. We have the means to purchase a kerosene heater at all. We have blankets and plenty of winter clothing to keep us warm. Each day, I reflect on all the many, many people out there in the world who have lost their homes, who constantly live out in the cold and are not even sure where their next meal is coming from. What about all those refugees running for their lives, living in terror each second from murderous bombings, plundering and homelessness? Our lot is really only one of inconvenience and discomfort that will certainly end if not in the next couple of days, at least by the next week.

Before we know it, we will be back to being distracted by all the comforts and our millions of media outlets. I only hope that when that happens and we return to our former lives, we don’t forget this experience and what we have been through. I want to hold onto feelings of gratitude and appreciation for the support of all our friends in the community. I want to remember how much I cared for our cats with love and tenderness. I especially want to hold onto the feeling of strength and resourcefulness when I realized that there were things I could do to make our lives bearable again – different and disorienting, yes – but bearable even, at times, to the point of joy.

Last year at Mining Nuggets: Openings